SEAT OF THE SOUL

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.


Rating:
Summary: A review of the reviews
Review: Interesting that my fellow readers/reviewers have such diverse reactions to the book - love it or hate it I suppose. Yes these are all recycled ideas, but written fairly clearly and without a lot of the cultural baggage and mumbo-jumbo that you would encounter should you try to ferret the same knowledge from the original writings of the Upanishads, the Gita, the Bible or whatever. I liked the book and how it reiterates things that I knew that I knew but had forgotten that I knew them or forgotten that it was important to apply them in my life. You may well be put off by Zukavs authoritative delivery without him attributing where he gets his knowledge. I think the Pharisees had the same problem with a guy called Jesus. But if you encounter useful advice, you should use it. This book has some useful advice and is exactly what some people will need to hear at this point of their lives. I find it rather densely packed with insight but at the same time don't feel a need to make Gary my guru either.