Archives: Book Reviews

Looking for Carroll Beckwith: A True Story of a Detective’s Search for his Past-Life by Robert L. Snow

Reviewed by Linda Adler, L.C.S.W.
In JRT Issue 17, 1999

 

Police Detective Robert L. Snow had never given much thought to reincarnation and past lives; it wasn’t within his frame of reference. His life was concrete and dealt with only what could be proven. However, a friend challenged him to test his beliefs and recommended a psychologist for regressive hypnosis.

When Snow regressed to his life as the painter, J. Carroll Beckwith, he found the experience so vivid and realistic he began to question what it was. Convinced it was all his imagination, Snow was determined to find a “logical” explanation for what he had experienced. Using police investigative techniques, he embarked on a quest to disprove the evidence … Read the rest

11 January 1999

Life Without Guilt by Hazel Denning, Ph.D.

Reviewed by Thelma B. Freedman, Ph.D.
In JRT Issue 17, 1999

 

“Most people carry a burden of guilt. If it’s deep seated enough, it can be like an insidious virus that infiltrates every aspect of your life, so that all of your responses to life and others are filtered through the guilty feelings. Many people have been able to eliminate their guilt through the technique of past-life regression, discovering that there are spiritual lessons to be learned in all past experiences. You will read their stories here, in Life Without Guilt.”

So begins Dr. Hazel Denning’s inspired analysis of pervasive guilt in all its destructive forms: its sources, its effects on lifetime after lifetime, and how it can … Read the rest

11 January 1999

Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives by Tom Shroder

Reviewed by Thomas G. Shafer, M.D.
In JRT Issue 17, 1999

 

Old Souls is an interesting volume which details an investigative reporter’s first hand experience with the work of Ian Stevenson. I found it to be well written in a narrative style more like a novel or quality newspaper feature piece than the usual “kiss and tell” personal experience book or dry recital of facts and theories. The author paints very vivid word pictures of Lebanon and especially India and also develops his “characters” with good description and a marked sense of their inner motives and conflicts much more typical of quality fiction. In short, it is a very readable book.

The content, a review of Dr. Ian Stevenson’s … Read the rest

11 January 1999

Freeing the Captives by Louise Ireland-Frey, M.D.

Reviewed by Hazel M. Denning, Ph.D.
In JRT Issue 17, 1999

(

Everyone who is interested in hauntings and the spirit world will be excited about this new book, which has just been authored and published by Dr. Louise Ireland-Frey. It is a truly comprehensive work, covering the field in a well-defined and detailed manner.

When I get a new book I always start reading with the Foreword and the Introduction. In Dr. Ireland-Frey’s book the Foreword is a masterpiece of condensed historical facts in this field. Great figures such as Zoroaster, King Solomon, and the mother of Gotama Buddha are credited with practicing exorcism.

The conflicts between demonology and the scientific approach to mental illness are briefly outlined. … Read the rest

11 January 1999

CE-VI: Close Encounters of the Possession Kind: Interference from the Extraterrestrials Among us by William Baldwin

Reviewed by Barbara Lamb, M.S., M.F.C.C., C.Ht.
In JRT Issue 16, 1998

 

Once again, Dr. William Baldwin has introduced further startling, groundbreaking concepts and therapeutic modalities for use by therapeutic practitioners. In this most recent book, he reviews the main concepts of spirit attachments and Dark Force Entity (DFE) attachments that he first presented in his 1992 book, Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual. But in this new book he goes beyond to focus more closely on attachments and takeovers by extraterrestrial beings (ETs) and DFEs. Even for therapists who have been working with various types of spirit attachments, this book adds new perspectives, newly realized phenomena, and new possibilities for treating people with unwanted influences.

Baldwin acknowledges that … Read the rest

10 January 1998

Across Time and Death by Jenny Cockell

Reviewed by Robert T. James, J.D.
In JRT Issue 16, 1998

 

A fascinating book recounting the author’s successful search for her past-life children. The author today is married, has two children, and lives in Northampton shire, a County in Central England.

Throughout her childhood, Jenny Cockell had recurring dreams of a woman named Mary, who died in childbirth with her eighth child. Growing up, she had continuing memories of Mary’s life: Her children, a cottage near a small hamlet, roads, woodlands, boggy meadows, a stream, the local church, a butcher’s shop, a railway station, and other landmarks where Mary and her family lived, all of which later proved to be accurate.

She remembered Mary as a church-going Catholic; she … Read the rest

10 January 1998

Remarkable Healings: A Psychiatrist Discovers Unsuspected Roots of Mental and Physical Illness by Shakuntala Modi

Reviewed by Thelma B. Freedman, Ph.D.
In JRT Issue 15, 1997

 

Those of us who work with past-life and/or spirit releasement therapies have long anticipated the day when Shakuntala Modi, M.D., a psychiatrist for over twenty years, presented her findings to the world, and she does not disappoint us. Indeed, she gives us more than we had hoped.

Here she sums up her findings from eleven years of working with psychiatric patients with a wide diversity of symptoms, with different types of therapies. Modi uses an intricate mix of past-life therapy and the therapies of spirit releasement and soul integration, as called for by the particular patient’s needs and insights. Following her patient’s lead, she found that although many … Read the rest

9 January 1997

Regression: Past-Life Therapy for Here and Now Freedom by Samuel Sagan

Reviewed by Russell C. Davis, Ph.D.
In JRT Issue 15, 1997

 

Dr. Samuel Sagan lived in France for 27 years before moving to Australia where he founded the Clairvision School in Sydney to train past-life therapists. Clairvision is described as a western school of spirituality and the past-life training there is based upon many of the theories of traditional Hindu thought concerning the nature of the human being.

This is not light reading, though it is also not an obtuse tome of impossible-to-comprehend philosophical concepts. It is not a how-to-do-it book, but rather a how-to-understand-it book. Like the Clairvision School, it is based largely on Hindu concepts and constructs which are drawn from ancient Hindu texts thousands of years old. … Read the rest

9 January 1997

Reincarnation: A Critical Examination by Paul Edwards

Reviewed by Robert T. James, J.D.
In JRT Issue 15, 1997

 

In his Introduction, Edwards states that “The belief in Reincarnation and Karma has been steadily gaining support in recent decades,” and therefore, “There is an urgent need for a comprehensive and systematic evaluation” of these doctrines. In spite of his opinion that the beliefs in these doctrines are “one aspect of the tide of irrationalism that has been flooding the Western World, especially the United States,” Edwards assures us that in making his critical examination of these doctrines, he has “attempted to state, fairly and fully, all the main arguments offered in support of reincarnation and Karma.”

One would anticipate that a “critical examination” of such doctrines would … Read the rest

9 January 1997

Children’s Past Lives: How Past-Life Memories Affect Your Child, Carol Bowman.

Reviewed by Hazel M. Denning, Ph.D.
In JRT Issue 15, 1997

 

Seldom has a book come out in any field with more potential impact on society than Carol Bowman’s Children’s Past Lives. The information regarding the former experiences which impact children’s behavior today could revolutionize our educational system, the psychological approach to children’s problems, and parental responses to the aberrant behavior of their offspring.

There is probably no stronger evidence in our society today of the validity of the reincarnation hypothesis than the plethora of children who, from the ages of two to eight, spontaneously report in detail experiences about which they could have no knowledge in their current life.

This book is, indeed, long overdue and sorely … Read the rest

9 January 1997