Just when I needed an idea for my column this month a great book came along to provide one. Judith Curr, Executive Vice-President and Publisher of Atria Books and Washington Square Press, gave me a copy of MJ Rose's The Reincarnationist (Mira, September 2007) and I read it immediately. It is an incredible story that rings true for me about past lives and how they affect present ones. What you will find compelling about The Reincarnationist is that it serves as a fascinating primer for all of us to dig into our creative bag of tricks to align ourselves with who we were, where and with whom we've been and to untangle the knots that past deeds and control dramas got us into this time.
I spoke with MJ Rose and here is what she had to say about her book.
Q. MJ, what grabbed me about your book from the start was how you laid out parallel lives with your characters. How were you able to do that?
A. I write very much as if I'm seeing a movie in my head and just putting down on paper what's playing out in my mind and so a lot of the book unfolded for me going back and forth like the way you read it. So Josh-the main character-discovers his own past lives in real time in the novel-his action precipitate his memories and I simply followed that.
That said, there were two parts of the novel that I wrote separately and then integrated them in afterwards.
And since I did five drafts of the novel, I was able to smooth out the transitions.
Q. Have you always believed that you lived life after life?
A. Yes. When I was three years old, I told my great grandfather things about his childhood in Russia that there was simply no way I could have known. He became convinced I was a reincarnation of someone in his past. Over time, after more incidents, my mother-a very sane and logical woman-also came to believe it.
So, reincarnation was an idea I grew up with, that my mom and I talked about and researched together.
At some point, the idea to write a novel about the subject was just there, the way ideas seem to suddenly appear. And then for years, I flirted with the idea of writing a novel about someone like my mother, who started out skeptical but came to believe in reincarnation. But I kept putting it off, afraid that if I did people would think I was a "wo"o weirdo.
A few years ago, on the exact anniversary of my mom's death, my niece said some very provocative things to me about my mother-things she really couldn't have known. That's when the pestering idea to write this novel became an obsession.
Q. MJ, I click connected with the concept of Memory Stones, amulets to enhance past life recall. Were you insinuating that certain precious and semi-precious stones trigger past life memories? Explain.
A. In my own spiritual journey, I've done some work with meditation and mediation devices. And in my research into past life regression and my own experience being regressed I learned that the way to access past life memories is through deep hypnosis or deep meditation. So it was not a big leap for me to make that certain meditation devices would help induce deeper meditation which would induce past life memories. I call these devices memory tools. And the stones in this novel represent one of those tools.
Q. Do you plan to do a sequel to The Reincarnationist? The book seems to beg for one.
A. Not a sequel exactly. I'm doing this series a little differently. There won't be continuing characters but rather a continuing group of objects.
The first book is about the discovery of and adventure around an ancient memory tool that helps people access their past lives.
I've suggested in this book that there were 12 such memory tools created in ancient India over 5000 years ago. In each book in the series, a different one of those memory tools will surface and the story will flow from there.
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You can't know me more than five minutes without realizing that I know that we live life after life after life. Nothing about this planet makes any sense unless we have to inherit what we create. The tipping point about reincarnation for me was that God (the Divine) (the Creator) would not make one person handsome or beautiful, brilliant and richer than Croesus and another ugly, stupid and dirt poor. It makes no sense. What is reasonable is that each of us must experience everything and be everybody in order to understand our true identity. In other words, we must live through a lot of identities that are not who we are. Separation from the Divine ultimately enhances our desire to find our true self.
Give MJ Rose's book a good read. She has told a gripping tale about two people who must return to make amends for the past.
The Sun goes into Scorpio on October 23, so this is the month we all get to turn inward to see what the roots of our souls look like. There is a Full Moon at 2 degrees of Taurus on October 26th. This means that just as soon as we adjust to the dim lights and secretive ways of the Plutonians we must turn up the watts to see how much scratch we have left to tide us over for the month. Taurus is always about love and money. Who knows? For some of you the money may go bye-bye and so may the lover! The New Moon at 17 degrees of Scorpio on November 9th favors all water and earth signs, especially Scorpios.
Mercury is still retrograde until November 1st so you better pay attention to all things mechanical—lights, gas, computers, cars, late airline arrivals, lost luggage—and never sign contracts under these aspects.
Mars goes retrograde until January 28th, 2008 at 12 degrees of Cancer, which means that we might have to put up with the moody blues of the snarly Crabs for too long. In order to weather the emotional upheavals of this long and winding transit, be forewarned before engaging women—they may have a bark and a bite!
Uranus goes direct on November 25th at 14 degrees of Pisces which asks that mutable signs expect the unexpected and live with it. Like life and eventual death, there is nothing you can do to make a planet stop dead in its tracks: it is trying to teach those affected some important and life-changing lessons—like how to tell reality from make believe!
Happy Halloween, all of you signs of the Zodiac! |
