Book Review of 'Many Life, Many Masters'

Book- Many Lives, Many Masters

Author- Dr. Brian Weiss

Pages- 218

Blurb-

Psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss had been working with Catherine, a young patient, for eighteen months. Catherine was suffering from recurring nightmares and chronic anxiety attacks. When his traditional methods of therapy failed, Dr. Weiss turned to hypnosis and was astonished and skeptical when Catherine began recalling past-life traumas which seemed to hold the key to her problems.

Dr. Weiss’s skepticism was eroded when Catherine began to channel messages from ‘the space between lives’, which contained remarkable revelations about his own life. Acting as a channel for information from highly evolved spirit entities called the Masters, Catherine revealed many secrets of life and death.

This fascinating case dramatically altered the lives of Catherine and Dr. Weiss, and provides important information on the mysteries of the mind, the continuation of life after death and the influence of our past life experiences on our present behavior.

My take-

We all know that there is a reason for everything. Perhaps moment that an event occurs we have neither the insight nor the foresight to comprehend the reason, but with time and patience it will come to light.

The author states the story as a true life event between a patient (named Catherine) and himself and the regression therapy (that can be also used as an anonymous to hypnosis in the book). Regression therapy basically is a technique that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories or past lives or incarnations. It holds that as a person moves through life, they collect memories that are then stored in the mind. Even though the subconscious memories are not able to be accessed, regression therapy believes they can still have a significant impact on a person’s development and ability to function in daily life.

Catherine was having anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias for which she came seeking help to Dr.Weiss. Although these symptoms had been with her since childhood, in the recent past they had become much worse. Every day she found herself more emotionally paralyzed and less able to function and she was terrified and understandably depressed.

The author (Dr. Weiss) had grown up in a loving home and had a good stable marriage. Two young children, and a flourishing career.

Dr. Weiss, after hearing from Catherine about her problems, used conventional methods of therapy for the first eighteen months, and then when nothing seemed to work, he tried hypnosis.  In a series of trance states, Catherine recalled ‘past-life’ memories that proved to be the causative factor of her symptoms. She also was able to act as a conduit for information from highly evolved ‘spirit- entities’, and through them she revealed many of the secrets of life and of death. In just a few short months, her symptom disappeared, and she returned to her life, happier and more at peace than ever before.

The story is the conversation between Catherine and Dr. Weiss from the stack of audio tapes that he had made during the sessions with Catherine.  

When the author asked Catherine about the things in her life, isolated memory fragments emerged. When she was about five years old, she had panicked when someone had pushed her off a diving board into a swimming pool. She said that even before that she however never felt comfortable in water. When Catherine was eleven, her mother had become severely depressed and her strange withdrawal from the family necessitated visits to a psychiatrist with ensuring electroshock treatments. These treatments had made it difficult for her mother to remember things. This experience with her mother frightened Catherine, but, as her mother improved she became herself again. Catherine said that her fear dissipated. Her father had a long standing history of alcohol abuse and sometimes her brother had to retrieve their father from the local bar. Her father’s increasing alcohol consumption  led to having frequent fights at home and she viewed this as an accepted family pattern.

Through the regression therapy (hypnosis) Dr. Weiss was able to know about the past life of Catherine (and what shocked me was to realize the fact that she lived 86 times in physical form. Can you believe that?) There were memories of some sort, but from where? The authors reaction was of amazement. He knew very little about reincarnation and past lives. He thought it couldn’t be but the fact was that he couldn’t deny the reality of it either.

Catherine was born with different names in different places at different period of time (one was 1568 BC as far as I can recall) and what was more strange is that she remembers everything from her past lives.

Through the hypnotic session Dr. Weiss got to know many facts and information which he had never had otherwise known. Catherine was able to tell Dr. Weiss about the death of his grandfather and his boy child (although Dr. Weiss have never revealed any information about himself to her. Just imagine someone who knows about your past, whom you have never met before and to whom nobody has shared your detail with. How would you feel? For me I will get Goosebumps for sure and maybe i'll just run as fast as i can from that person?)

Moreover, the book also contains certain sections where the Master spirit speaks in Catherine’s regression therapy (the voice of which can be clearly differentiated from hers). There are many Master spirits who teaches us at different period of our life. There are many lessons taught by the Master spirit in the book and the one I liked the most is-  

 ‘Patience and timing, everything comes when it must come. A life cannot be rushed, cannot be worked on a schedule as so many people want it to be. We must accept what comes to us at a given time, and not ask for more. But life is endless, so we never die; we were never really born. We just pass through different phases. There is no end. Humans have many dimensions. But time is not as we see time, but rather in lessons that are learning.’

There are many state we go through according to what Catherine describes- State of renewal, and three others (Catherine describes only two states and says that she didn’t experiences the other two states and she can’t tell what the other two states were) Catherine also describe the in between state between life and death and beyond. The experience with Catherine brought Dr. Weiss a force to write this book.

After the termination phase of the psychotherapy, Catherine made an appointment for Dr. Weiss again. This time only to share with him about a well known psychic- astrologer who was specialized in reading past life. Catherine was surprised that Iris Saltzman (the psychic astrologer) was able to tell about her past life to a great extent. What Catherine had arrived at through hypnotic regression, Iris had reached through psychic channels. Very few would be able to do what Iris did. Although hypnotic therapy helped Catherine in a great deal that she could live her life carefree and being herself once more, she was amazed by knowing the relation of psychic channel with her past lives.

The book truly described the effectiveness of hypnotic therapy. Although anti-anxiety, tranquilizers or even anti depressants could be used to treat the symptoms of Catherine, but, when nothing worked, regression therapy did which revealed the things that could be read in detail in the book. (Somehow at some point of time I felt it is exaggerated. But again the feeling that what if it really happened stuck me.)

To those who what to know about the past life therapy, this book can be your guide, with all the details between the therapist and the patient.

P.s.- It is a great book if you like real life stories.

Overall rating- 4/5

Book Review of 'Love Lasts Forever... only if you don't marry your love'

Book-  Love lasts forever… only if you don’t marry your love

Author- Vikrant Khanna

Pages-248

BLURB-

 Eighteen-year-old Ronit falls madly in love with Aisha the moment he meets her at his graduation day from a naval college. He believes he has found his perfect soul mate, and come what may, his love for her will last forever. Seven years later, he gets married to her. Big mistake! A week later, he completely hates her and believes she has turned into a devil.

But his perception about love and life changed when he hears the poignant love story of Shekhar, his Captain, on a ship that later gets hijacked by the pirates of Somalia.

As they are left fighting for their lives they confront if love truly can last forever…? But does it get too late?

MY TAKE ON THE BOOK-

 Love lasts forever…only if you don’t marry your love as the title suggest is a book wherein the author describes where lack of understanding after marriage can lead to.

The storyline is simple with few characters, Joe Singh, from the early days that Ronit had known him, he’d always been easy going and carried himself with aplomb. They were friends for more than a decade and first met at a school in Delhi. Joe Singh’s uncle was a Captain, earned loads of money, traveled all over the world and bought properties in Mumbai every year. It was pretty much then both of them decided and made an irrevocable decision of joining the navy.

 They story starts with Ronit and his Captain Shekhar travelling on the ship towards United Kingdom with fifty thousand tons of crude oil loaded in it from ‘Reliance Jamnagar Marine Terminal’ located in the ‘Gulf of Kutch’ in Sikka port in Gujarat. The en route has the transit through the ‘Gulf of Aden’- a piracy infested area near Somalia that scares the living daylights out of all seafarers.

There in the ship, Ronit thinks that getting married was the worst decision of his life. He was in love for seven years before making that horrible decision and since then love has been nose diving and now he doesn’t even likes that girl a bit. He planned to divorce her after completing the tour of three months in the sea.

Graduation day was the day where he found the love of his live. He fell in love with Priyank’s sister Aisha. Back there in his naval college, Priyank has been forever teased by the name Priyanka for his feminity in his voice, gait, stance and everything. 

They used to queue up for the fall-in where all the cadets stand in a line like donkeys and a head count was taken to ensure no one was missing. And if anyone was missing he had to run the entire length of the campus thrice, that was three kilometers three times making it a mighty nine kilometers. On the graduation day, everyone had turned up for the fall-in, afterall it was the last one. After the fall-in, they proceeded to a bigger ground where the passing out ceremony was planned amidst huge pomp and show.

 Priyank had been a pretentious person in the entire time they have spent in the naval college. Also, he always had to be the best and excel in whatever he did. Perhaps, to make up for his feminine image. Be it in studies, completing assignments, finishing his meals, waking up in the morning, reporting to the fall-in, the list was endless. Even at the Graduation ceremony, he was the topper of his batch.

Looking back at the time, Ronit recalled how they have had fun with Priyanka (Priyank) during their days at the college. Ronit shares a incident which costs him back for a lifetime.  One night, he and Joe tip toed to his room while he was asleep, undid his pyjamas, and then squeezed the entire toothpaste to the bottom till it covered the entire area and then the next day, Priyank was late in the fall-in and was given a punishment to run the entire campus three times.(That was one of the hilarious thing I've ever come across. Tooth paste! seriously?)

After the ceremony, they (Joe Singh and Ronit) congratulated Priyank for his achievement  when Priyank introduced them to his family. Then and there, he felt a hundred needles run up back to his neck.

Ronit passed on a tissue paper to Aisha on which he had scribbled something-

‘I don’t know if I’ve been searching for true love,

Or waiting for it to come knocking to my door,

But the moment I rested my eyes on you,

I’ve found what I’ve been looking for, and never want to let it go.

Soon they began dating ad after seven long years of dating each other, Aisha accepted Ronit’s proposal of getting married. Luckily their parents accepted and Priyank  didn’t play a spoilsport in this. Despite torturing him in the naval college, he let him marry his sister happily but not without the revenge of playing toothpaste game with him. (Yes! Ronit too went through the same. I recalled this phrase while reading it, What you sow so shall you reap)

After marriage, things started changing. Aisha was not the same or may be Ronit was not the same. They started arguing over little thing. They created issues which could have been resolved by them. May be they forgot that they have to live with the entire family and not just the two of them.

There are certain phases in life where we need to mold ourselves and adjust with the situations of the present. Ronit and Aisha didn’t care about the adjustment and went on quarreling on each and every matter. Two weeks of the marriage and they can’t tolerate each other. (Is it the way? They could have been considerate) Starting a new life with each other needs patience, trust, understanding and adjustment. Without which you can’t actually live happily. That was the main problem with both of them.

Well in the book, the cupid was the Captain who helped Ronit to understand about the meaning of love debating over the definition of love which has been lost with the newer generations. 

The entire book contains the story of the captain and his life and the tragic moment of his life when within few months of his marriage he had to divorce his wife. Only later he had known the fact that Shikha (Captain’s wife) died due to brain tumor. Sikha didn’t wanted Shekhar to know what she was suffering from. She didn’t wanted him to suffer along with her. She just wanted him to move on and find happiness in his life.

Meanwhile, the ship gets hijacked and few crew members among them were shot and beaten to death while one was put on fire alive. 

Ronit, Captain and few others were set free form the captivity of the pirates after their demands were fulfilled (Do they need anything other than money ever?)

One thing I liked the most of this book is the title and the ending. Both of them are ambiguous. Opposite from each other. The title says ‘Love lasts forever… only if you don’t marry your love’ while in the ending the authors ends it beautifully with the note that ‘I’ve realized now that love can definitely last forever even if you marry your love’.

P.s.- It's a good choice if you want a light read. 

Overall rating- 3/5

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Book Review of 'Being Mortal'

Book- Being Mortal; Medicine and What Matters in the End
Author- Atul Gawande
Pages- 282

Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constrains of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits. But again and again, the damage we see in medicine when failed to acknowledge such power is finite and always will be.

There are some people who know what losing someone means. What it feels like watching a person die each day. How it stirs our soul seeing them in pain. How we want them to live normally again, without any pain, without any sufferings. There are some countries having Euthanasia in their policy wherein, slowly the person would be drifted towards death withdrawing them from the ventilator or by giving them an overdose of morphine or as per their policy guidelines.

The book, ‘Being Mortal’ comprises of stories of many lives which the author has witnessed. Although, the stories the author depicted in the book, none of them could win from the nature. Life is quite unpredictable if you think. People who never have smoked a single cigarette gets cancer while the one who is a chronic smoker lives longer. People who have never had a family history of cancer catch hold of a chronic incurable form of cancer wherein people having history of cancer in their family stays safe. People who have been an active person in youth become quadriplegic and wheel chair bound due to some kind of tumor growing inside the spine which has high mortality rate even if a surgery is performed whereas people with paralysis are slowly drifting towards well being through physical therapy. The continuum of health keeps on drifting towards both positive as well as negative side.

Ruth developed health issues. A lifetime smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she survived, and kept smoking. Three years after, she had a stroke that she never wholly recovered from. She became increasingly dependent on her husband – for transportation, for shopping, for managing the house, for everything. Then she developed a lump under her arm and a biopsy result revealed metastatic cancer and then at the age of seventy three, she died.

Jewel Douglass, suffered from ovarian cancer wherein she was operated by removing the ovaries and then followed by total hysterectomy. Just when she thought she is well into life, her cancer reappeared. The metastasized fragments of the cancer cells have developed bigger that was causing her problem. The constant bouts of pain, nausea, intestinal obstruction made her difficult to carry on her activities. She didn’t like narcotics because they made her feel drowsy and weak that’s why she was just taking Tylenol. Then after few months, Atul gets a note from Douglass’s daughter which read ‘Mom died on Friday morning. She drifted quietly to sleep and took her last breath. It was peaceful. My dad was alone by her side with the rest of us in the living room. This was such a perfect ending and in keeping with the relationship they shared.’ Thus, she ended her life which she wanted since the inception of this disease.

Sara Thomas who was just thirty four and pregnant with her first child when the doctors learned that she was going to die. It started with a cough and pain in her back. Then a chest X-ray showed that her left lung had collapsed and her chest was filled with fluid. A sample of the fluid was  drawn off with a long needle and send for testing. Instead of an infection, as everyone was suspecting, it was a lung cancer and had already spread to the lining of her chest. The oncologist broke that she had a non-small cell lung cancer that had started in her left lung. Nothing she had done had brought the disease on. More than 15% of lung cancers occur in nonsmokers. Hers was advanced, having metastasized to multiple lymph nodes in her chest and its lining. The cancer was inoperable but there was an option of chemotherapy which she was started with. But, the chemo failed and the lung cancer had spread from the left chest to the right, to the liver, to the lining of her abdomen, and to her spine. Time was running out and later on after successive failure on using three different regimen of chemotherapy, she died.  

Again, howsoever you live a happy life by the progressing old age, a person becomes forced to take assistance. Independence is lost. Willingly or unwillingly a person has to accept what others think is best for him/her instead of the person himself taking a decision himself/ herself. Sometimes old age is a curse and sometimes it is not.  

  

One morning, Alice had a fall while alone in her apartment. She was not found until many hours later when Nan, who was puzzled at not being able to reach her by phone, sent Jim to investigate. He discovered that Alice laid out beside the living room couch, nearly unconscious. There was no explanation for her fall beyond general frailty.

Though the concept of nursing homes and assisted living homes have improved and helped people in getting the care they actually required, family support and home treatment still serves as a satisfaction in old age.

The book Being Mortal not only teaches the importance of time but also the fate of medicine and the limitation of medical studies. No one wants to die with pain. Everyone of us will want to live a happy life without any stress, without any problems, without any diseases or without any insecurities. Although we do not want any of them, Life is tragic and unpredictable. Sometimes it is too late when we learn we have an chronic incurable disease and sometimes it happens that we are lucky enough to get cured of them.

The book also describes about the hospice and palliative care team and the care provided by them to the terminally ill patients so as to provide them as much as comfort as possible.

This book is among one of those books I would like to recommend everyone to read.

Go and grab it if you haven’t read it yet.

P.S.- Depends on the taste you have on books.

Overall rating- 4.5/5