Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I believe in reincarnation. There are just too many things going on out there that are inexplicable if you rule out survival of consciousness. And if this book is legitimate, which from the look of it it is, Journey of Souls only adds to the mystery.
A quick word on whether this book is substantial proof for the existence of reincarnation: if you don’t believe in this kind of thing, this book won’t rid you of your skepticism. It’s like the forever-discussed “proof” of the existence of God or not. Atheists would never accept or even recognize “proof” for the existence of God. If you are one yourself, sit down and think what kind of proof would be enough to convince you that God exists, and what other atheists would have to say on the matter. To be fair, respective theists would never accept the proposition that such a thing as proof is in fact necessary, either. Not when faith is the cornerstone of religions in general.
Back to the book. If you’ve ever heard of past life regression through hypnosis, Michael Newton is the guy who apparently first used and popularised the technique.
To tell you the truth, I imagined it to be better when I downloaded it for my Kindle. In the first paragraph of this review, I mentioned that the book only adds to the mystery. Big time it does: I came out of it more puzzled than enlightened. I disliked some of the questions he asked his hypnotised clients, and the whole after-/before-life system assembled by the info gathered from the tens (hundreds?) of cases used for the book seemed to me too anthropocentric, too much of the existing material world. Apparently there are levels of soul maturity, as well as soul “schools” and soul nurseries or, for lack of a better term, tribes.
Then again, if Journey of Souls reflects what’s actually happening at all, that would mean that it is actually the the human condition that reflects the way things are in the spirit world, not the other way around. It seems plausible; people are souls in meat suits. You don’t stop being a person when you drive a car, do you? Or maybe you become an “enhanced” person given a tool that expands your possibilities. I can see a similar reason for souls wanting to incarnate and indeed, such reasoning is given in the book.
At the end of the day, you can only know for sure if you’ve had a past life regression yourself. Maybe that’s the only way for any of us to be convinced that death is not the end, and maybe only then can we obtain the knowledge we can actually do something with in order to change our lives for the better. Anything else is so many steps removed it’s like reading sex stories expecting to feel what an orgasm feels like second-hand. Errr, I mean… What was I saying before ? Yes; at the very least, if Mr. Newton’s goal was to make me want to be hypnotised to find out my spiritual past, he got that part right.
So what do you say? Is the truth out there or in here?
I’ve thought about what proof I would need in order to believe there is a God. Since anything sensory can be ruled out because our senses can be liars. I guess an all powerful God could work around that, so I guess that’s what I would consider proof, some sort of instant universal awareness that ….
Actually disregard that, what am I on about… proving God exists is by definition unprovable, you can’t prove it any more than you can prove that something invisible is yellow.
“I believe in reincarnation. There are just too many things going on out there that are inexplicable if you rule out survival of consciousness. ”
Is that an appeal to ignorance?
Oh, my bad, not an appeal to ignorance. I get my terms mixed up.
But isn’t it like saying “We can’t explain X but we can explain it if Y is true, so Y is true”
Hehe these reviews are like small pieces of Garret bait. 😀
If the existence of God is unprovable, why is there even this big important debate between christians and atheists? Atheists are asking for proof of God when none can be presented or would be accepted, and theists are trying to convince atheists to work on faith.
“We can’t explain X but we can explain it if Y is true, so Y is true”. Yes, it’s every bit like that. But a lot of grand scientific world theories about the things that can’t be proven use this method of deduction, i.e. dark matter exists because something must account for all the stuff that keeps the universe together! It’s either that or the theory of universal gravitation is wrong, and who would want to make such a whopper of a claim with so little proof? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s the most reliable way of guessing what could be true in the absence of hard data. It’s just the assumptions with which people usually start, especially with stuff concerning more quasi religious matters such as this, that I have qualms with.
I chuckled at the second hand orgasm bit 😛