Book Review- Sylvia Browne’s “Past Lives of The Rich And Famous”

By Josslyn Streett, Reiki Master/Teacher of Rain Shadow Reiki

I have enjoyed watching Sylvia Browne on television for years and read many of her books.  I have at least 8 of them available in the Rain Shadow Reiki lending library, and have read them all myself.  I like her no-nonsense, no apologies attitude and the fact that she is highly talented as a psychic doesn’t hurt either.

I just finished re-reading “Exploring the Levels of Creation” and got so much good information the second time reading it,  I decided to join her Facebook page.  (I rarely read books twice.) While checking out her page I saw she had a newer book out, “Past Lives of the Rich and Famous”. Not having TV, I’m a little behind on up and coming things.  I have no idea when it came out, but it’s new to me.  Boy that sounded like a fun book so I got it.  I do love anything having to do with past lives and I wanted to know, like everyone else, who these rich and famous people were in past lives.  Don’t you?

All the people in this book that she reads the past lives for are dead, to respect their privacy I’m assuming or not to get sued, probably both. ( I list many of them at the bottom of this blog.)  So, some of the people are from a generation before me but I know and am familiar with them.  When I finished this book I realized it is not the fluff book that many may think it is.  It is a very interesting study into past lives and the effects they have on our every day lives.  It has also been a wonderful lesson in judgement and it made me think a lot about how to use this knowledge in the past life healing that I do with my clients.  It was well worth my time in reading it and I highly recommend it if you have any interest in past lives at all, not just the celebrity aspect but the learning and healing aspect too.

THE One I Can’t Get Off Of My Mind

The reading that has affected me the most and I can’t get my mind off of, has been the past life story of the King of Pop himself, M.J.  I don’t want a whole bunch of wild fans coming to my page for the wrong reasons so I won’t put his full name here, but I do believe most of you can figure out who I’m talking about.  Maybe some photos will help.

M.J. was a HUGE influence in my musical life growing up.  But, the mysteries behind his life and personality I believe are what makes this reading so amazing.  So much of his past lives explains why he was the way he was in this life; child-like, constantly working towards perfection on his face to his own personal definition  and how he was so passionate about helping children and children’s charities.  I personally never believed that M.J. would hurt children but he was attacked by a lot of people who simply didn’t understand him.  I don’t pretend to understand him but it never felt right to me that he had done the things people had accused him of doing.  I feel that sharing his story is an excellent lesson in UNDERSTANDING others rather than JUDGING them.  This is something most of us on earth need to work on and reminders like this one, help.  It was a very good reminder to me as well.  I found myself judging him on the plastic surgery issue.  I’d find myself wondering why he had to have so much, why he wanted his face to look so different.  His past life reading, in my opinion, answers these questions too.  It’s helped me to see that we don’t always have to know people’s motivations to do things that we see as different because they may not even know.  If our preferences to look a certain way are based in a past life, and many of them are, then none of us can fully understand WHY until we’ve investigated the lives creating them.  It’s all about understanding or just not judging in the first place.  It’s a tough one but the more we are aware of ourselves doing it, the more we can work on it.

I tried to go on with the rest of the book and enjoy the other readings but I kept thinking about the M.J. reading.  For weeks people would bring him up in conversation when rarely did he ever come up before in my many spiritual conversations.  My 12-year-old son who barely knows who he is would read an article about M.J. from a magazine that we don’t even get.  Signs kept pointing to me writing this blog and I know I better not ignore my guides AND the signs, so here I am, writing a blog about Sylvia’s book because I’ve been told to and I want to.  In respect to Sylvia’s wonderful  and fun book and double respect to M.J. for his life’s work,  here is an excerpt from Sylvia’s book, which I highly recommend buying and reading yourself, “Past Lives of the Rich and Famous” a past life reading by Sylvia’s guide, Francine about the King of Pop, M.J.

Book excerpt “Past Lives of the Rich and Famous” by Sylvia Browne

The Past Lives of Pop Star M.J.

“M.J. was a young soul, with only nine incarnations on this earth, and the lifetime that ended in 2009 will be his last.  One of the most remarkable aspects of his past lives – and I’ve never seen this in all my years of doing regressions and consulting with my spirit Guide, Francine, about specific people’s histories – is that Michael’s ninth and final incarnation was the only one in which he lived past the age of fourteen.  For everyone who’s ever wondered why he seemed so much more comfortable with children than adults, now you know.  And let me stress something with absolute certainty; he was no a pedophile.  Not once, not ever, and it’s tragic that he was misunderstood enough to even be accused of such a thing.  As for his passionate, lifelong involvement with children’s charities, I should add that seven of his lives were spent in poverty – three in Africa, one in El Salvador, two in the Middle East, and one in the Appalachian mountains of the United States.  He ached for starving, impoverished children because he was one, over and over again.

But there’s no doubt that the point-of-entry incarnation that most dramatically shaped the extraordinary lifetime of the superstar we knew as M.J. took place in Burma, about a century before Christ was born.  His name, as best I can make it out from Francine’s high-pitched chirping, was Tha.  He was born prematurely and weighed just over three pounds at birth.  His beautiful young mother was very ill and depressed after delivering her first and only baby and traveled home to her parents in India to recuperate, leaving Tha in the care of his father and a live-in nurse.

Tha’s father was a member of the king’s court, and a loyal and trusted aide.  Rarely has a father adored his son more or been more sensitive to the emotional and physical fragility into which Tha was born.  Tha was a sweet, happy, introverted child, curious and funny and intensely respectful.  In fact, the first time Tha, at the age of three, was presented to the king, after a lot of coaching from his father, he genuflected so deeply and for so long that the king began to wonder if the boy had fallen asleep.

Tha was four when his father and a group of friends took him on a hunting trip.  On the first day, Tha’s father was excited to have killed a tiger, until his son let out an agonized scream, raced to the dead animal, and threw himself on top of its carcass, sobbing and asking his father over and over again, ‘How could you?  He did nothing to you.  How could you kill him?’  His father surprised and deeply saddened by his son’s despair, held him and promised he would never hunt again.  He kept that promise for the rest of his life.

They had barely returned from the hunting trip when Tha developed a fever and his skin broke out in a painful rash and blisters.  At first his father had thought it might have been a reaction to the trauma his son had suffered on the death of the tiger, but finally the king’s finest physicians were summoned to examine the boy.  Their conclusion was that Tha, with an already compromised immune system from his premature birth, was severely allergic to the sun.  From that day forward Tha never set foot outside the house, and his environment was kept as dark and sterile as possible to prevent any further inadvertent threats to his health.

The great delight in Tha’s life was one of his father’s skills, which had also proved to be invaluable in the king’s court:  Tha’s father was a brilliant puppeteer.  He’d created an amazing collection of hand-carved marionettes, to which he was constantly adding, and Tha proved to be gifted as well at the intricate carving and painting required to give each of them a distinct personality.

The marionettes served a far greater purpose than that of  simple entertainment.  They were also used as a kind of liaison between the king and his subjects.  When the king had news or an edict to announce to the pubic that he thought might be unpopular, he dispatched Tha’s father and the marionettes to perform the announcements, which helped to soften the blow and separate the king from his subject’s disfavor.  And when there was news or a message from the people that might displease the king, the marionettes were the perfect buffers against any initial rage he was likely to inflict on a living messenger.

The marionettes mesmerized Tha.  He loved carving and painting their intricate faces.  He loved designing costumes for them for his father to sew.  He loved watching his father rehearse with them for upcoming appearances.  But most of all, he loved duplicating their every move, from their lively dances to their oddly stiff but graceful ways of greeting and interacting with each other.  He was brilliant at it and would practice for hours, watching his reflection in the windows of the house to make sure that even the slightest gestures and steps were perfect.  His father was in awe of his talent, and he treasured the private recitals Tha performed just for him every night after they’d finished their dinner.  Sadly, no one but Tha’s father ever saw those performances; he would have proudly  had his son dance for the king, but Tha was too shy to even consider such a thing.  His father, always respectful of his beloved son’s sensitivities, never forced the issue and remained the only person to be blessed with a ‘preview’ of the extraordinary entertainer we knew as M. J.

Tha’s lifetime in ancient Burma ended when his immune deficiencies finally caught up with him.  He died of complications from pneumonia at the age of thirteen.  His father never recovered from the death of his son.  But Tha, when he arrived at Home, was overjoyed to be greeted by his mother, the woman who had ultimately died giving birth to him.

By the way, no one from that lifetime accompanied M.J. into his final incarnation.”

After reading this life of the famous M.J., I couldn’t help but be amazed at how much his past lives had shaped his most recent incarnation.  I know this of course through all the many readings and past life regressions I have done with clients but it still amazes me each and every time, this one in-particular.  I couldn’t help but think that he was carving his own face in the perfection of his long ago beloved marionettes and that his skin sensitivity to the sun effected his skin in this life as well.  So many parallels, it explains a lot, to me anyway.  I’d be very interested to hear your opinion on this famous reading.

Some of the other famous people Sylvia reads past lives for are Elizabeth T., Mother T., The Duke, J. Belushi, K. Cobain, M.L.K. Jr, H. Bogart, A. Earhart, L. Ball, M. Monroe, K. Hepburn, J. Hendrix, and many more.  Well worth the read, very interesting and entertaining in more ways than just puff.  I found each and every life and how they paralleled the person’s most recent incarnation the most interesting part of all.  But then again, I am very interested in this topic, obviously!

In Love and Light of our Divine Source,

Josslyn Streett, Reiki Master/Teacher for Rain Shadow Reiki

rainshadowreiki@gmail.com or 360-460-7829