Demystifying the journey of life and afterlife

Tracing one's past births and knowing what one's erstwhile identities were is a fascinating journey one would take to the unknown. TVRK Murthy, popularly known as Viswapathi, attempts this exercise with his latest book ' Met Again', an English translation of his highly successful book ' AmruthaDarsanam' released in Telugu last year.

A prolific writer, he has churned out 27 books since 2005, 16 of them on Lord Venkateswara alone of whom he is an ardent devotee.As the author says in the introductory note: 'SrivariDarsan', a book on Tirumala, written by me in 2018, has received international acclaim and is now kept in the libraries of the world's prestigious universities. 'SrivariDarsan' is used as a reference book by many professors in several universities across the world. I have also written many prayer books on many other Hindu Gods and Goddesses. All those books are simple to read and do not advocate the practice of any strict rituals. An interesting fact is that people of all religions have been reading those books'.

Split into 45 chapters, his recent production, the 263- page book and a family-backed one is a mosaic of thoughts on past lives and the innate bond which human beings enjoy with the cosmos. As Murthy elucidates:" We all feel very pleasant while on a vacation to a wild life sanctuary or even staying in a cabin deep in the forests. It is mainly because we all have lived in proximity to nature for millions of years. It is only in the last two thousand years to say so, that we distanced ourselves from nature and started living in modern buildings with modern facilities. But our soul still feels happy in the wild…why? It is because for millions of years, in all our earlier births, we happily wandered in nature. It is just in the last 100 births or even less that we built the modern world and became an integral part of the same. Met Again discusses all those things and more…of course briefly and concisely.

It may sound unbelievable but the author is firmly of the belief that he has been meeting many of the 108 whom he had interacted during one of his 'divine visions' and how they were destined to be part of his life's journey. This forms the basis of his book, which he has updated from the Telugu original after his trips to America, which he undertook recently.

Described as a Divine Voyage in to past lives he says: 'The soul remembers that person…it immediately recognizes him/her…but our mind cannot recognize… the soul tries to tell the mind about that person…but the mind cannot understand it's message…the mind, however, gets the feeling at a very subtle level, that he/she is very familiar to us…it happens to many of us several times…Our soul in its travel through millions of births remembers several of such people …It knows where, in which places, we are born…but our mind cannot understand it…but it feels familiar when it meets a particular person whom we might have met in our previous births…'

For many of us who believe that human existence is an endless chain of birth and death, the result of one's karma, this book can be a fascinating experience.