The Seat of the Soul

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Summary: seat of the soul
Review: This book has changed my life around. It is very profound. The author is very knowledgeble on this subject

Rating:
Summary: If you loved Wu Li Masters, you'll hate this one!
Review: Gary Zukav has obviously lived in Marin County
too long. This new book is a smarmy amalgam of
New Age hooey based on the unsupported
precept that human beings are evolving to some
higher state. Actually, of course, we're rather
played out as a species and we're working real
hard to make our planet uninhabitable for our
own kind. Save your money!


Rating:
Summary: Required reading for your journey
Review: Discover the window to your soul. Zukav writes with simple language about evolution, power, karma, light, emotion and addiction. A sensitive tool for personal and global exploration and growth.

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Summary: Choice and Consequences
Review: Picked this up from the Oprah's BC list and it was thought provoking. I also read another novel inching up the Oprah's BC list that highly complements Seat of the Soul called LUST OF THE FLESH by Beverly Rolyat. A must read!!! About a corrupted distract attorney, Nick Allapapalaus who gets caught up in the lusts of his fleshly desires and have some serious consequences to face as a result of his decisions in scandalous activities. Sexually explicit novel but that accounts for its title and theme. An enlightening, compelling, riveting, engaging, eyeopening novel through and through. Highly recommend.

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Summary: Your Choice!
Review: This book will offer some profound learning to a great many people, to others some learning and to a few maybe nothing. Your spirital growth will determine which.
To the many reviewers who have given this book a total negative. This says more about you than the book! If you really believe that there are no learnings in this book then you haven't read what I have read. Even if you believe, rightly or wrongly, that Gary Zukav has nothing original or enlightening to say or that he has plaigarised the great Eastern philosphies or mystics that have gone before - he does bring to the masses knowledge from the aforementioned albeit in a different package.
Lastly, books dont become best sellers unless they have something to offer us. Listen to the wider audience.

Rating:
Summary: Vague, redundant, questionable, but ultimately valuable
Review: I picked up this book in a senior citizen lending library as part of my ongoing pursuit of personal growth. But I did so having already developed a cautious, even cynical attitude toward books such as these on account of some of the questionable material I've read in the past. And ironically, after reading passages from this latest one, I now know that people everywhere should approach such works with a skeptical eye. Sadly, my journey has been tainted by the perception, reinforced by the prevalence of Zukav-type material, that there is only one point of view, one path to wholeness. But thanks to one of them, I am attempting to release the bondage that ensued from believing so much of what they say. And to think these liberal folks think fundamentalist Christians are all-knowing. All persuasions have their own brand of righteousness and sense of superiority.

Similarly, I was heartened to see such wonderfully articulate reviews by those who had issues with the book. They not only made me laugh, but helped to restore my sense of individuality. Perhaps, then the best wisdom I ever received came from a schoolteacher, who encouraged me to trust myself.

Glad to see at least some people aren't swallowing this stuff lock, stock and barrel!



Rating:
Summary: Great Insights
Review: I liked Seat of the Soul because it contains insights familiar to me from the near death experience I had in 1979. Reading this book helped confirm that what was presented to me in my experience was indeed true and useful to others. I liked the confirmation coming from an independent source and I thank Gary for this. Try reading this book, then read Soul Bared: A Metaphysical Journey and you'll see what I mean.

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Summary: Enlightenment of a Modern-day seer
Review: Who are we? Are we this physical body or do we exist even without it? What is the purpose of this life? Why have we come into this world? We all ask these questions at some point in our lives. The lives of some people revolve around these questions, whereas some of us focus on them for a while but soon the pressures of life force us to look somewhere else. Psychics, seers, spiritualists and prophets since the beginning of time have been trying to find the answers of these questions. In modern times, Gary Zukav is one such personality that has devoted all his life to search for the spiritual aspects of humanity. His book The Seat of the Soul discusses the metaphysical patterns of our lives. We follow these patterns without knowing it, and most of us show little interest in the mechanics of these patterns despite the fact that all our worldly success and spiritual growth depends on them.

Zukav served in Vietnam. He went to the war not so much to defend his country and the values that were dear to him but to spit out his anger. He was an angry young man and the opportunity to fight in a war provided a way to deal with the frustrations of his life. But the experience of war proved to be so horrible that his anger was consumed fast and in the ashes of it the seed of compassion found the best ground to grow. This tree of compassion overwhelmed his life and made a new path for him, a path that was full of spiritual endeavors. He writes "...my journey from an angry man with no regard for Life to who I am now has been long, often difficult, joyful, and extremely rewarding. It has shown me that anyone can make the same kind of journey in his or her own way." His own deeds and his search for the better world and the struggle through which he has come to his conclusions make him a spiritual being of immense value to the society.

Zukav has divided the book in four parts: Introduction, Creation, Responsibility and Power. In the Introduction, he talks about evolution but this time around it's not the physical evolution that we often hear about, but rather spiritual evolution. According to him, throughout the last millennium we perceived power only as something external that exists in the physical realm, but it's time that we should look at power as something that can be internalized. This internal power is the real power that can bring peace to this world and that can let us respect each other. In connection with power he writes "Underlying every crisis, emotional, spiritual, physical and psychological, is the issue of power. Depending upon the lens that you wear to interpret your crisis, you will either step closer to your soul or closer to the earth." The phrase "closer to the earth" is subtle way of saying "closer to the heavy dimension of physical reality." This dimension provides the basis for the learning process of a soul, but also has the potential to bog it down, depending on the choices that the soul makes.

In the first part he also discusses the role of Karma in our lives. Karma is a term that belongs to the deep-rooted belief of the East in reincarnation. In its simplest form it can be expressed as an equal reaction to each and every action that we have done in our lives, but there are many intricacies that are attached to the philosophy of Karma. Many western writers have struggled to encompass the definition of Karma but usually their explanation lacks certain important aspects of this philosophy. Zukav is probably the most successful writer in explaining Karma. He has tied Karma and its implications with the personality and psyche of a human being. Through this strategy he has been able to show us the Karmic tendencies that are inherent in us and the people around us. Without creating any fear, he has been able to explain to us the mechanics of our fates, both good and bad. He reminds us of the consequences of our actions by focusing our attention on our present; our present explains our past and our future relies on what we do in the present.

In the second part of this book Zukav discusses intention. We are all aware of our conscious intentions and endeavors in our lives but we never think about the conflicting thoughts that appear with our intentions and how these conflicting thoughts affect our intentions and in most cases slow us down. By breaking down the process of intention and then action on the bases of that intention, he has been able to explain the role of conflicting thoughts in this process. This phase of the book is not only thought-provoking but also provides some practical tools for the readers.

The third part of Zukav's book is about responsibility, choice and addiction. He believes that all of us have some spiritual goals in our lives and these goals he calls our "scripts." A script may consist of simple things like controlling anger or single mindedness in decision making to complex things like controlling addictions and struggling with low self esteem. He has also talked about "crossroads". He believes that all of us encounter some crossroads in our lives where we have more than one choice to make an important decision. This decision takes us away from our script or takes us towards it. We seldom see such practical application of spiritual concepts to problems of daily life in other books on spirituality. His simple way of explaining complex issues is definitely a blessing for its readers.

In the fourth and the last part Zukav discusses power and trust. Power is probably the most illusive human trait. A fearless person has authentic power, whereas a fearful person experiences powerlessness. Zukav believes that negative emotions are the result of negative Karma that leads to temptations and addictions. Temptations and addictions give birth to negative behavior; which leads to negative karma. This negative cycle keeps a soul entrapped in its whirl but in this cycle there is a phase where the soul can break the negative pattern; the phase of temptations and addictions. If an individual makes a responsible choice, he can move toward authentic power but if he makes an irresponsible choice, he remains entrapped in this negative cycle.

We all have experienced temptations in our lives and some of us also encounter addictions. We all have come across the points in our lives where we could lie for some advantage or where we thought we could avoid some of our responsibilities, but depending upon our tendencies we make a responsible or an irresponsible choice. The same way if we are successful in our struggle to overcome our addictions then we are successful in making a responsible choice. This seems very simple and obvious but it's difficult to comprehend its implications until we understand the affects of this negative cycle on our lives.

The success of Zukav's writing is in its simple narration and in its well-defined connection of spiritual concepts to our daily life and its practical issues and problems. The spontaneity in the language makes one go through it without effort, even if one disagrees with its contents. Zukav has extraordinary talent of bringing things to light, things we know about but that never get their due attention. This is one of the best books for those who are interested in ethics and spirituality and want to understand the purpose and meaning of human existence.



Rating:
Summary: Some Useful Material, Some Questionable Material
Review: I have the unabridged audio version of this book and overall I do like it.

Many of the overall ideas relating to how people should become multi-sensory beings rather than a five sensory beings are extremely useful.

My main complaint with this program is an echo of a previous reviewer's comments. That is, he (Gary Zukav) makes many statements without backing them up with any explanations about where this material came from. Are these statements based on personal experience or by material gathered from other authors/researchers ????

To use one example: Zukav talks about animals not having individual souls but rather all being part of one larger animal soul. Yet, I have personally had a powerful experience that would certainly disagree with his statement.

As strange as this story may sound (and it would sound strange even to me had I not experienced it myself), we had a relatively young Yorkshire Terrior who died as the result of an accident. My wife, children and I were very attached to this little dog, she was a real member of the family who would sleep next to my son's bed because she loved him so much.

Anyway, the very next day after the accident, while we were all distraught and still in shock, a Chow showed up at our house (who had never been there before) and sat on our walk in front of my house. This dog wouldn't leave and just sat there staring at our door. After we went out and spent some time with it, we all felt that a lot of the sadness lifted. I remember feeling very light compared to just moments before the dog had arrived. This Chow then left (as if it's job was complete). A month later we got a new puppy for my Son's birthday and this dog has turned out to be very similar in personality to our previous dog. It was as if the Chow was somehow letting us know that "All was okay, that we'd somehow be reunited with our other dog in some way".

I also have friends who also have had similar such experiences with animals that they were very close to after those pets passed on and apparently there is much written about this sort of thing.

While perhaps it could be explained somehow in the context of an "overall" animal soul, it sure seemed that our connection with the particular dog that we loved so much and lost so tragically, and the events connected with it appear to be much more specific in nature than in the way Mr. Zukav talked about the "larger animal soul".

This is one example where Zukav's book made a statement, didn't back it up with any additional information, and yet I personally have had a personal experience that ran completely contrary to his statement. This sort of thing runs throughout the book which basically is a way of asking the reader to accept his "opinions" as if it were incontrovertible fact.

I could counterpoint this style of writing with that of Christopher Bache's book "Lifecycles" which is a book on reincarnation which has tremendous amounts of heavily scrutinized evidence from which he draws his conclusions. Bache doesn't ask the reader (listener) to commit intellectual suicide. Zukav often comes across with the same arrogance as an evangelist.

Much of the material also seemed very similar to much of Wayne Dyer's material along the same lines. To me, Dyer has gotten too new agey, where his very early material (Erroneous Zones in particular) was quite excellent and "real life" useful. In many of Dyer's later material I find that he contradicts himself all over the place from one program to the next. Anyway, it seemed that often in "Seat of the Soul" that Zukav was paraphrasing Dyer and that concerned me a bit. I don't know if this was just coincidental or not but the material is really close.

Anyway, all that being said, I still think that overall, the good outweighs the bad. If you can take the useful material and apply it to your life, certainly it could only be positive. I actually bought "Thoughts from the Seat Of The Soul" because it appears to contain the things I think are most useful to one's actual life that were expounded upon in "Seat Of The Soul".

I for one actually do have a very open mind, am a serious Yoga practitioner with a strong affinity for the Mystics of all faiths. I believe that reincarnation for example is a very strong possibility and believe that all of the worlds religions, (especially if you read the mystics of those religions), are saying the same basic thing. So many of the fundamental ideas presented by Zukav aren't what put me off but rather his presentation of the material which to me lacked detail and depth.

Namaste

Rating:
Summary: The Seat Of The Soul
Review: Two reasons I read this book, the first is that I was reading books such as this. I never read books of this kind before, but then I decided I needed to go a different direction in my life. To do this I needed help, so I started doing research into books of this kind. Now for reason number two, it was on Gillian Anderson's suggested book list and I am a fan.
I am glad I read this book, it has helped me. No book can change your life all on it's own, it is just not going to happen. But maybe you have something, whatever it is you are seeking deep inside you and you just need to find it. You need to be open to possibilities, don't close yourself off. Reading a book can bring that out, can help you find it.
I enjoyed this book, it was helpful to me. I will read other books by this author. I will most likely read this book again.