I'm generally a pretty intense, high-strung person. After reading this book, I really mellowed out and learned not to take things SO hard when they go wrong, to take things in stride. We're all here to "LEARN" - to be better people. Better spirits.

This book somehow taught me to live a healthier lifestyle, to be happier and really enjoy my life, my friends, my family. I'm now reading it for the 2nd time and I'm enjoying it just as much as the first time.

OBVIOUSLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.


The kind of hoax that motivates suicide bombers   October 9, 2001
 37 out of 77 found this review helpful

I'm rewriting my review since some readers expressed the comfort they found in the ideas described in this book, in the face of the recent terror attacks.

I thought I should remind these readers that it is exactly these false ideas about afterlife and reincarnation that motivate suicide bombers who think their soul will not die with their body.

In general, not only for terrorists, these ideas undermine the value of our current and only incarnation.

I would not talk about the influence or value of these ideas had I believed they were true but, as I hope to be able to convince you, I know they are false.

All the reported reincarnation events are about persons claiming to recall events in past lives.
This is natural, since how else could one prove that one has the soul of somebody else?

Now, these stories assume something that we know for a fact not to be true: they assume that the memories are in the soul and not in the body (how else would the reincarnation of the soul enable the new person to know about the old one?).

How do we know this is wrong? Simple! We know that we can lose our memory or parts of it through an injury or malfunction of our brain. This is a common phenomenon we encounter in car accidents. This is also the basis for some diseases like Alzheimer. Now, in all these cases, it is only our brain that is damaged. We don't lose our soul. If the memories were part of the soul, we would not have lost them!

Hence, the memories are not in the soul and all the stories of recollection of events in past lives cannot be true.

To me, the reincarnation of a soul with no memory is as meaningless as the reincarnation of some of the atoms composing my body in the body of the worms that eat it. After all, what are we but our memories? What is it that makes us "us"?

I knew all that before I started reading the book but a friend urged me to read the book in spite of my understanding. He kept saying this book talks about facts, which I should not keep ignoring.

So I started reading this book.

I almost stopped when, on page eleven I found the sentence "I have slightly changed Catherine's identity to ensure confidentiality" since through this sentence the book declared itself unscientific, providing me with no means to check whether or not the facts my friend was talking about were, indeed, facts.

Still, I decided to continue and see if I can find something I could relate to.

On page 27, the author describes his first encounter with a previous life cycle Catherine was able to recall under hypnosis. I'll cite only a few sentences from her testimony:
"We live in the Valley... There is no water. The year is 1863 B.C. The area is barren, hot, and sandy"

Now, we all know that people in this time could not use the term B.C. to designate dates! How could she know then that in exactly 1863 years, Jesus will be born? Even if she really wanted to translate some other date representation to the terms we use today, how could she do it? No way!

Some readers, reacting to my previous review and to other reviews that pointed to this flaw, suggested that it could be explained away as something the author introduced using his current knowledge (oddly enough, nobody tried to counter the stronger claim I raised, that reincarnation itself is impossible).

Besides the fact that this suggestion contradicts the author's own claim that he only changed the details that could have been used for identification, it cannot be the case for logical reasons.

Imagine you had a time machine that could not be told to go to a specific date but only to go back, go forward and go to 1 minute after the moment of initial departure (so you won't get lost) and you could prepare to your journey to the past and learn everything that is known to mankind. Had you activated this time machine and landed in 1863 B.C. you would not, with all your knowledge, and even if you stayed there for several years and collected all the data you could, be able to tell the year in these terms.

OK, only almost so. There are means I can think of that none of the readers suggested. I can find a tree from that period that still lives today and count its rings (assuming I can do it without changing the way the tree looks today, if I don't want to stumble into the time travel contradictions) but I don't believe any of the defenders of this book thinks this is what Catherine did (The author could not have done it since only Catherine is claimed to remember these days). Note that if you maintain Catherine did it, you must claim she counted the rings of the tree (sometimes growing in an area that is barren) in all the reincarnations she is reporting about, and she must have done it without knowing that she'll need this knowledge in the current incarnation.

In short, not only is reincarnation impossible (which is the main thing I'd like you to remember), this book unmasks itself as a hoax through additional inconsistencies.

It was, hence, my friend who was ignoring the facts.

Have I deprived you of your hopes for reincarnation?
Look at the bright side. At least I gave you a good advice for free and not a bunch of lies for money.
I hope I have also encouraged you to make the most of your current (and only) incarnation and (inter alia) not waste it on pseudo science nonsense.

One last suggestion. If you intended to buy this book, please buy a book about science instead. I'd recommend you start with "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins.


Many Lifes, Many Masters, But Few Answers.   April 3, 2004
 37 out of 42 found this review helpful

In this book Dr. Brian Weiss deals with reincarnation. I have been interested in this subject for years and have been looking for something to provide the some kind of evidence. In this book the author gives us descriptions of past lives that he happened upon accidentally through one of his patients, who was suffering from phobias that he regressed. He attempts to explain that our lives are schools of sorts where our souls learn their lessons. In the words of Goober, "DaaaHaa". All of that was previously explained by Cayce, Roberts, Bailey, ..... The list goes on .... This book left me asking the question "Where does the learning process for our soul begin? And why?"

I have found a book that I feel has headed me towards the path to discovering these answers. The book is called, "The Book of Thomas," by Daniel Aber and Gabreael . This book is composed of RAW channeled material.I have not seen work of this magnitude since Edgar Cayce's work came out many moons ago. In this book the authors discuss in detail the beginning of the soul, charting our lives paths, the different levels of heaven and so on. I enjoyed it so much I read it twice and gave it to my mother to read.


Use A Little Critical Thinking   March 30, 2006
 36 out of 49 found this review helpful

The number of good reviews of this book is astonishing given how much suspension of logic one must embrace in order to view this book as anything but a fairy tale.

The few who have panned it have already detailed the obvious errors and contradictions so I won't rehash that. Rather, here are some quotes from another book "Old Souls" by Shroder (a book I have not read. It has several critical reviews at Amazon with which I would probably agree with but despite that the following quotes are still valid.)

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There is an old skeptics' saying: "If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out." That was the position of some doctors I spoke to, and I tended to agree with them. Dr. Jack Kapchan, a clinical psychologist at the University of Miami with a special interest in parapsychology, for instance was troubled by Weiss's claim to being scientific. Where was the concrete evidence? Where's the thorough background check on the patient?

"What Weiss has in the book can be explained in naturalistic terms," he said, citing suggestion, fantasy, multiple personalities. In such a case, Kapchan said, it is improper to offer explanations that involve "the paranormal process." What sense does it make to "explain" a relatively simple set of facts - a woman describing a scene from the historical past under hypnosis - by conjuring up a vast array of phenomena, such as a soul, an afterlife, a reintroduction of an old soul into a new body, that have never been detected by any objective measure? That kind of explanation, clearly, should be a last resort, to be used when all other simpler, less-demanding explanations have been ruled out.
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And this one, in reference to Catherine's alleged correcting a tour guide at an Egyptian exhibit at a museum:
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I was impressed with Weiss's sincerity, but not by his evidence. Had he located the museum guide and the guide confirmed Catherine's account, admitting that he had later researched the artifacts in question and found himself wrong and Catherine correct, I might have been impressed. But none of that had happened. And in none of Catherine's past-life memories did she come up with the kind of details that any fan of historical fiction couldn't have manufactured. Catherine did not speak in archaic languages or scribble madly in Sanskrit or even mention the name of a single person who could be proven to have existed.

"I was so overwhelmed by what was coming out that I didn't really probe for that kind of thing," Weiss responded. "When I did try to steer her, she would often ignore me. This is the kind of thing that would be interesting to investigate. I've only made a small beginning. Catherine is just one case history."

And not a very convincing one, I decided, the more I considered it. In the session when Catherine remembered the life of Aronda the Egyptian, she used the term "1863 B.C." - "before Christ" - a term that no ancient Egyptian would know, and a translation of the ancient dating system that would require painstaking calculation by an Egyptologist. Furthermore, despite this eerie omniscience displayed as an eighteen-year-old Egyptian, in another lifetime Catherine could not come up with the date because she "can't see a newspaper." I also noticed that according to Weiss's account, Catherine said she was living as a Ukrainian boy at precisely the same date that she later claimed to be a Spanish prostitute.
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That Dr. Weiss' assertions don't stand up to even the simplest scrutiny and worse, that Dr. Weiss, "the scientist", offers none is all the indictment needed.