Marc's Review of
The Other Side and Back
by Sylvia Browne
Ok Debbie, I've finished Sylvia's book.
Monday, 09-Oct-00 08:51:45
24.18.203.50 writes:
(fyi, this is from reading the paperback
version of The Other Side and
Back, for page references)
What seemed to be the biggest content
for the book was stories. Stories
of this reading or that investigation, yet
another incredible experience.
While interesting and amazing, these are
pretty much valueless. There is
no truth in advertising putting limits on
'non-fiction' books, as
demonstrated by the books explaining why OJ
is innocent sitting next to
ones saying why he's guilty. These stories
may be true, they may also be
inaccurate, exaggerated, built up, or
outright lies. It is not unheard of for
proponents of the paranormal to make up
'true stories' in order to
promote their beliefs.
The second biggest content for the book
was surprisingly good advice. I
have to admit there was a lot of stuff in
there that made sense. I guess
every self-help idea or philosophy,
(including my favorite cult) has at least
some good advice buried in the center of
it. If they didn't have anything
then they probably wouldn't be able to
attract any followers.
Now we get to the various feel-good
fluff being passed off as reality.
Psychic Detective?
Sylvia apparently thinks she's a psychic
detective in addition to her other
stories. On pg xxiv "I began to get
calls from law enforcement
agencies and the medical community, asking
for help with
everything from unsolved murders and
missing persons to
physiological and psychological
problems...,The day I demand a
check for helping find a missing child or a
murderer, or guide a
doctor to a diagnosis or cure for a life
threatening medical or
psychiatric problem, is the day I imagine
my psychic gift will be
taken away, exactly as it should be."
I guess charging for readings isn't
included in that. I'd like to know
exactly what crimes she is supposed to have
solved, what missing
persons she has found. According to This
article "How Psychic Sleuths
Waste Police Resources" "As these
examples show, psychics are a
hindrance rather than an aid to police. In
fact, the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, a branch of
the Department of Justice,
states there is not a single documented
instance of anyone finding a
missing child through the use of psychic
power. (Marder 1994.)"
Life on the Other Side
One interesting claim is that the spirit
world is 3 feet above our own. She
supports this statement by saying People
who have seen spirits
invariably describe them as "floating
above the ground. pg 3. First
off, are spirits invariably seen floating?
From so many paranormal shows,
web sites, etc., there have been many
stories about spirits, but I don't
think that many of them were 'floating',
certainly not invariably floating.
So the idea is the spirits are standing on
land that is a little higher than our
own, which makes it look like they are
floating. Does that mean the spirit
world has EXACTLY the same topography as
our world? What about
building? If you are on a platform 6 feet
high, will the spirit appear 3'
inside the ground? Are they incapable of
appearing on the second floor
of a building?
Lets see, animals exist on the other
side. pg 24 "the animals on the other
side include every pet we've had in this
and all our past lives" So that
means dogs have souls? Do stray dogs end up
on the other side? What
other animals? cats, gerbils, mice? rats, mosquitoes,
cockroaches, slugs?
It's nice to think our beloved retriever
would be there waiting for us, but
that would mean the vicious dogs that
attacked children would also be
there. Oh, but that would be solved by
saying there is no 'negativity' on
the other side, so they would be good
little puppies over there.
On life on the other side, we learn they
speak all languages. "The most
universal language on The Other Side is the
eloquently descriptive
Aramaic of ancient Syria, a dialect of
which was spoken by Christ and
His disciples." pg 7 I asked someone
who's knowledge on the time is
much greater than my own (CX) and he
described Aramaic as 'guttural'.
It was probably the language Christ used
not because it was eloquent,
but it was in common use and so would be
easily understood by the
people he was preaching to. Oh, by the way,
there are 9 continents on
the other side, and while people can just
teleport wherever they want,
they sometimes choose to instead take
landspeeders like in Star Wars
pg 272.
So what do spirits do over there all
day? Pretty much whatever they
want. What is interesting is "they
study, work , research ... create
everything from inventions to medical cures
to great art, music,
philosophy, and scientific
breakthroughs." pg 6 Strange thing, why exactly
should they engage in scientific research?
After all "Like all entities on the
Other Side, we will have access to all
knowledge when we get there"
including Askashic records, and
"constant, total communion with God"
pg 7. In fact "there's no such thing
as not knowing on The Other Side".
So what is there left to research? And what
do they do with these
breakthroughs? Why they telepathically
transmit them to capable people
on earth. This I find particularly
insulting. That is like saying Einstein did
not come up with relativity, he was just a
suitable person for the real
discoverer to transmit the findings to.
These researchers work hard to
make these breakthroughs, sometimes making
it their life's work trying
to solve some mystery, now to just say it
was a spirit that made the real
discovery and the researcher was just a
useful conduit?!?
We are told there is no negativity on
the other side, and no unfinished
business. If so, then how come we are
supposedly suffering from
lingering 'negativity' from past lives? A
story of a woman who did not get
along with her mother-in-law finds out they
had been sisters in a previous
life and had never resolved the constant,
competitive jealousy of that
previous lifetime. How come? Those lives
are over, since no negativity is
brought over to the other side, then they
wouldn't have any to bring back.
Bad feelings are not the only things
brought back. Illnesses can be left
over trauma. Say you were killed by a knife
to the chest in a previous
life. In this life you may have chronic
heartburn because of it. But wait a
minute!! in another chapter she also says
birthmarks are leftovers from
previous lives, so that knife in the chest
might also end up causing no
illnesses, just a funny mark. So which is
it? Do they result in illnesses or
birthmarks? Sylvia repeatedly claims her
daughter is the reincarnation of
her grandmother, as evidence she offer her
daughter's birthmark which
is on the same arm as a burn her
grandmother got. However, the burn
was on the inside of granny's arm, the
birthmark is on the outside. So
these remembered traumas do not even have
to actually match up the
place they are supposed to have happened?
So what evidence does she relay offer
for any of this stuff?
The evidence?
"I then validate it through
meticulous research, including regressive
hypnosis" pg 3. I don't know what you
think on this Debbie, but
hypnosis has been shown to be ABSOLUTELY
WORTHLESS in
aiding memory, of this life or any other.
Hypnotic regression therapy
does not help memory, it puts a person into
a suggestible state where
their imagination or the suggestions of the
hypnotist can be taken as
reality. This has been the source of
'recovered memories' resulting in
false accusations of child abuse, murder,
claims of satanic ritual abuse,
alien abductions, and past lives (including
my favorite cult). See the False
Memory Syndrome Foundation for more
information on the troubles
caused by false memories. The false
memories can be encouraged or
even created by suggestive or leading
questioning. Sylvia claims that she
never leads the subject, but on pg 120 she
asks "What was your life's
purpose?" This question is very
leading by implying that the life had a
purpose. She also suggests asking kids
"Who were you before this?
Who around here have you known before"
pg 86 which takes it for
granted the person was someone else before.
Oh yes, she also mentions the Bridey
Murphy case, a case that was
solved. It was discovered the woman was not
remembering a past life as
an Irish woman, she was remembering a
childhood neighbor Irish
immigrant who told her stories as a child.
"I have enough proof of
authenticated past life regressions in my
files to fill another book--and I
do mean authenticated." pg 120 I'm
sure a LOT of people would be
interested in those 'authenticated' files.
An interesting note, she claims
people wait around 100 years to be
reincarnated, yet she repeatedly
gives stories that would be people who
reincarnated in much less time,
such as her grandmother, and a boy
reincarnated from someone who
died in 1942.
btw: she claims to have had 51 past
lives, and I'm sure would say most
people have had a number of past lives. How
do you reconcile this with
the fact that the number of people alive
today just might outnumber the
people who have died?
Other misfits of science
Among her other 'evidence' she cites
Kirilian photography. A worthless
curiosity that is claimed to photograph
auras, even though you can get an
'aura' off of a penny with it. pg 108
"which captures on film an image of
the energy or aura that emanates from every
living thing, that an
amputated limb continues to appear in
energy form as a part of the body
long after it is gone." This is a
false statement. No photograph has shown
a nonexistent limb. This claim comes from
tearing a piece off of a leaf
then photographing it, using the same glass
plates which still have the
moisture and residue from earlier, giving
the false image of a whole leaf.
She also uses the old "energy can't
be destroyed" misrepresentation.
Yea, in ordinary reactions energy and
matter are not created or
destroyed. Take a wineglass to the top of
the world trade center and
throw it off. Technically no matter has
been destroyed, but you don't
have a wineglass anymore. Then there is her
weird statements on how
hundreds of spirits can occupy the space of
an elevator without being
crowded. She explains this is possible
because their matter is much
denser than ours?!?! pg 265. Umm... density
doesn't make any
difference how many people can fit in a
small space, it's volume. Greater
density just means they weigh more, or they
are much smaller. So is she
saying we all become tiny when on the other
side?
Oh, and I like this one under exorcisms:
"Ancient rituals sacred to any
religion are powerful precisely because
they carry the sanctity of the
ages with them" pg 177. So it doesn't
matter if you worshiped a stone
carving of a turtle, it just matters if it
was worshiped long ago? Hey, does
that mean I can make up a hokey ritual
involving peanut M&Ms to
exorcise spirits? Sure they won't do
anything, but in 3 thousand years
they will have the 'sanctity of the ages'
and will be able to do stuff then.
Medicine
Besides blaming health problems on past
lives, Sylvia also blames them
on words. Saying "He/She makes me
sick" will make it so. pg 98 Or
they are symptoms of psychological problems
"Eyesight failing? What in
your life don't you want to see? Chronic
laryngitis? What don't you want
to say.. or what did you say that you
shouldn't have?" etc. Depression
might actually be a 'psychic attack' by a
Dark Spirit pg 199.
prophecy
Sylvia claims to be able to talk to the
dead. Then again, she also claims
to be able to predict the future, and even
you have seen she does not
exactly perform well on that front. In
looking at her predictions for the
new millennium I found these two
interesting tidbits: "Atlantis will begin to
reappear in 2023 and be fully visible by
2026" pretty good for a place
that never existed. "Aliens will begin
allowing themselves to be seen on
earth in the year 2010. They will not harm
us. Instead, they will be here
to observe what we are doing on this
planet. They will also teach us
again to use anti-gravity devices, as they
did during the construction of
the pyramids." Do I even need to go
into this nonsense?
Blueprints
According to Sylvia we decide the course
of our lives before we are
born. " includes everything from the
kinds of parents, families, and
childhoods, career, health, financial,
sexual preference, marriages,
children, length of lifetime." pg 8
" illness is such a natural part of the life
experience that we include it in our
charts" pg 232 Now, since we plan
our lives before we are born does that mean
we don't have any free will
while alive? that we have no choice but to
follow this path? I know
you've said yes we do Debbie, but Sylvia
seems to say differently. pg
135 "we cannot change our life's
themes". 218 "am I following my chart?
answer is unequivocal yes". "no
one- not even ourselves- can interfere
with those life themes or the unfolding of
the charts we've written" 137
That seems to put it very clearly that we
can't change our 'destiny', only
change how we react to it. So if you accept
everything Sylvia says, then
you have to accept that our future is
planned out and we can't change it.
It is useless to try and save a marriage if
you've written it in as going to
fail, despite what you and your loved one
want.
Now, assuming we choose our lives to
learn things, exactly what does a
person learn by being born and dieting a
week later? If they really do
learn something from that, then are they
forced to choose parents from
poorer countries, where they lack the
medical resources and infant
mortality is higher? We supposedly choose
our parents too, so does
taking fertility drugs make parents more
attractive to spirits, suddenly
getting pregnant for septuplets? Can we
choose parents who did not put
'kids' into their blueprint? or do we have
to arrange that ahead of time? If
you choose to have a lot of kids, do you
have to recruit spirits to be
them ahead of time? and do you have to
coordinate your blueprints? Say
you wrote into your blueprint that you'd be
a great mother, what if a
person born to you wrote into theirs they
would have a lousy mother?
That's the problem with the concept of
'choosing your life', it's not just
your life, but the life of everyone else
you touch. To truly decide on it
ahead of time you would have to coordinate
it with everyone you would
eventually come into contact with. Now if
you throw in that concept of
'exit points' you are really throwing other
people's plans into a tailspin.
What if someone chose to lose a child in
this life, yet the kid decide not
to take that 'exit point' and live to a
ripe old age? That throws the
parent's blueprints into the trash heap. Or
worse, choosing an exit point
before they meet you, when you had written
in an important relationship
for the two of you.
I think I've rambled on enough for now,
it's late and my eyes are tired.
Not even going to get into her Dark
Entities/demons now.
Marc
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Last change 16 Sept 2002 am