Book Review: Many Lives Many Masters

Many Lives Many Masters
--- Brian L Weiss

Though it is ironical to drop "God is not great - How religion poisons everything --- Christopher Hitchens" to read this book, I couldn't sustain pressure from a couple of friends to check out this supposedly very convincing true story of a prominent psychiatrist's past life therapeutic experiences with one of his young patients.

If I have to describe this book in one line, it goes like this. It is about a person experiencing and recollecting most of the things (from several past lives) that Lord Krishna had tough time explaining to Arjuna just before that great Kurukshetra war, which forms The Bhagavatgita.

Catherine, a psychic patient, walks into the clinic of Dr. Brian, an Yale Medical School educated psychiatrist, allegedly a firm believer in intense scientific methods, and seeks his help in getting rid of her anxiety. And they both claim that what followed had changed their lives for ever. How ? Catherine recollects several of her last lives spread across 1000s of years and narrates them, as if doing live commentary of a cricket match, during her hypnotic sessions. Masters, who govern the world, used her as a medium to talk to the author and answer several important questions that humanity has been breaking its heads to get answers to, for several centuries.

Summary of the universe demystification attempt:

• There is something called soul, which never dies. It just moves from one body to another
• Your brain stocks all memories across lives, but, you may not be able to recollect all of them at a time of your choice
• You will end up reincarnating with a certain set of people close to you through some or other relation
• There are some masters who govern the world
• There are some planes which are hierarchical and one ascends/descends them as per one's learning and good/bad deeds in a life
• People, who met with near death experiences, have a lot to say about soul leaving the body, seeing some blinding flash of light, talking to some monks before deciding whether to leave the body or not, and somehow soul coming back to the body
  
• etc., etc.,

Sounds familiar ? Yes, the Hindu philosophy. No wonder this book is even referred at Hinduism.about.com. So, at the end, there is nothing new in the book. This psychiatrist just claims to have a living proof to theorize several hypothesis used by current day religions. I must say, a pretty bold claim.

But, he proved one thing. Humans are darn gullible. Nothing else can explain my friends' recommending me this book, and actually believing in everything that the author wrote.