Those interested in the past lives of those who were alive in Jesus' time would find this book appealing. Ruth, through automatic writing, receives the account of her life as Ruth, a sister of Lazarus who was not mentioned in the Bible. I found it fascinating, as the story immerses the reader into that historic time, with Ruth having regular contact with Jesus since his childhood, as their families were friends. A good portion of the book is about this significant lifetime.
The style of language that her 'guides' use to feed her the story, as she taps it out unconsciously to her typewriter, is rather highfalutin, which Montgomery directly complains of herself as sounding insincere. Such cautiousness, and her attempts to later verify what her 'guides' tell her, makes her channeling seem more credible to the reader. She is not a credulous new age foof, and came to this type of work after a long, respected career in political journalism.
Additionally fascinating is her guides' insistence that she was the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the past--the telling of which Montgomery was very reluctant to include in the book.
Those of us who are not new to the 'new age' scene will realize that Ruth's guides are indeed simply souls who are passed over, and not necessarily any more 'evolved' than any of us; except that they claim they can access the 'akashic records' for the past life info. The accounts of past lives, therefore, seem at times rather colored by the perspectives and emotions of those entities feeding Ruth the info. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating piece in the canon of research on the phenomenon of reincarnation. Ruth was indeed one of the first to bring such ideas to mass awareness, in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
The style of language that her 'guides' use to feed her the story, as she taps it out unconsciously to her typewriter, is rather highfalutin, which Montgomery directly complains of herself as sounding insincere. Such cautiousness, and her attempts to later verify what her 'guides' tell her, makes her channeling seem more credible to the reader. She is not a credulous new age foof, and came to this type of work after a long, respected career in political journalism.
Additionally fascinating is her guides' insistence that she was the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the past--the telling of which Montgomery was very reluctant to include in the book.
Those of us who are not new to the 'new age' scene will realize that Ruth's guides are indeed simply souls who are passed over, and not necessarily any more 'evolved' than any of us; except that they claim they can access the 'akashic records' for the past life info. The accounts of past lives, therefore, seem at times rather colored by the perspectives and emotions of those entities feeding Ruth the info. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating piece in the canon of research on the phenomenon of reincarnation. Ruth was indeed one of the first to bring such ideas to mass awareness, in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
