I have mixed feelings about this book. Parts of it I found great and others very frustrating. Luckily the ending chapters were very good, so that compensated for the sections that bothered me.
To really enjoy it, I suppose one must believe in the transmigration of souls and in past lives regression hypnosis. I don’t know if I can believe in either of them. Of course, I’ve read accounts of people whose memories, behavior, or knowledge of certain things couldn’t be explained other than (maybe) by reincarnation. But I am skeptical. As for hypnosis, even if hypnosis in general could probably work on suggestible subjects, I have my doubts that it can truly access memories so deeply hidden that they might be coming from past lives. Maybe it can, but I don’t know, again I am skeptical… I need to see to believe, or perhaps I need it to happen to me to believe it.
The method of questioning that the author is using in her interviews under hypnosis makes sense, but the text conveying the results lacks consistency. For example, since Tuin, the character whose memories she retrieves, has lived possibly thousands of years ago, he can use only simple words to describe his life and his surroundings, and certain words from today’s vocabulary must be explained to him. Fine, but other times Tuin uses words and concepts a lot more complex than what he is supposed to understand. Also, if his persona is the one taking over during the sessions, so much so that the present-day patient doesn’t even remember any of this when she wakes up, how come he speaks English at all?
The section with which I struggled the most is the one where Tuin’s spirit is contacted directly in that realm where spirits exist in-between lives. While there, the spirit knows everything, nothing is hidden to him anymore, he has access to any time and any place. He can now tell the whole story of the Old Ones. But wait a minute… What?! I thought we were accessing memories… Memories, by definition, refer to the past, don’t they? I don’t pretend to know where they are stored, or if the brain is a place of storage or a place of access. Why then do the research presented in the final chapters to try to locate Tuin’s tribe in space and time, when the spirit could have provided that information directly? And wasn’t that spirit incarnated in the present day’s patient? How was it in the in-between world at the same time?
Despite all my doubts and frustration, I am not doubting the good faith of the author. The book tells a story, not exciting enough to be (science-)fiction, but quite interesting as non-fiction, including a strange creation myth. In a way, it reminds me of “Looking for Something”, Frank Herbert’s first sf short story. A lot of food for thought.