A Gripping Spiritual Thriller -- Psychiatrist-author John Nelson’s primary intention in “The Remembering” is to tell a compelling story, one that entertains as it explores humanity’s most pressing issues, including overpopulation, religious fanaticism, genetic engineering, climate change, and the eternal dance of shadow and light in the human soul. The novels protagonist has experienced six lifetimes, three as a male and three as a female during epochal times of history from humanity’s Paleolithic roots in Africa, through classical Greece, Renaissance Venice, San Francisco’s summer of love, paradisiacal Bali, and finally to an apocalyptic future high in the Tibetan Himalayas. Having neared the end of her final lifetime, Shyloh tells us what she has come to remember of the rise and fall of humanity’s fortunes and her epic quest to master the arts of a gentle warrior.

The Remembering: A Novel of Karma and Global Peril

“The Remembering” is an incredible spiritual thriller that follows the soul of Shyloh through six incarnations.  Shyloh’s first life begins in the year 40,000 B.C.E. as a male.  In this form, he is a healer that has to deal with issues of choosing what is right.  He makes choices that follow him into his next life that takes place in Dephi Greece in 336 B.C.E.   In this form, Shyloh is a female from a sheep herding family.  The Greek god Hermes appears to her in a vision.  She follows him to Delphi.  Shyloh becomes a Pythian healer priestess.  She encounters incarnations of people from her former life including her father, mother, brother, grandmother and lover.  While these people are in different forms their roles are similar. 

The next incarnation takes place in Venice, Italy in 1596 A.D.  Shyloh is a male medical student who gets wrapped up in trying to help people that have been targeted by the Inquisitor of the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition of Venice.  Again Shyloh keeps encountering the incarnations of his former lives.  The next lifetime for Shyloh is in San Francisco in 1967.  Here she is a psychiatric resident.  She begins experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs.  She unites with the other souls of whom she has been sharing her life.  As scientists, together they create perfect child named, Kalki.    Shyloh passes on into her next incarnation as a male doctor in Bali in the year 2106.  Kalki is still alive and is able to help Shyloh remember his purpose and what he needs to accomplish.  The human race is rapidly dying off as a result of environmental catastrophes and disease.  Shyloh’s final life is in Shambhala, Tibet 2607.   In this incarnation, Shyloh is living in a hidden peaceful valley as a woman that is second in command to a female Dalai Lama.  Shyloh also continues to be a healer.  Her struggles involve the Yeti in this story.  The Yeti leader is an incarnation that Shyloh has had to deal with since her first incarnation.  

As Shyloh passes between each incarnation he is made to forget.  As each lifetime passes, he remembers more and more from the past incarnations.  This enables him to start the healing some of his karmic debts.  The more experiences Shyloh has with the people from his past, the easier the remembering is.

The author, John Nelson, draws upon his gift as a psychiatrist to delve deeply into the psyche of the main characters.  They are very well developed and it is interesting to see the progress along their path and how they learn to resolve their karmic issues.  I loved that Shyloh’s soul covers such a huge range of time.  This is the first story of reincarnation that I have read that takes the main character into the future.  Dr. Nelson also does an excellent job of making each era of time complete and realistic.  I highly recommend this novel, “The Remembering: a Novel of Karma and Global Peril.”