When William Fix was two years old, he dreamt saw a motorcycle speeding down a dirt road, mounted by a man wearing a German helmet. Suddenly a land mind exploded, and the man died immediately. Then "heaven cracked open ... like the shell of an egg. Great cosmic clouds boiled through the crack, and in the midst of them a giant hand and arm appeared, clothed in scarlet and blue."

Certain that he was that German soldier in a previous lifetime, Fix has never stopped resenting the nuns at his Catholic school who dismissed ideas of reincarnation. His book "Lake of Memory Rising" argues that Christianity is in fact compatible with a faith in reincarnation, multiple lives, and shamanism, and that numerology and astral projection can easily be squared with the Bible.

But the sub-theme of the book is his open contempt for the Catholic church. He blames the Catholic heirarchy for suppressing the truth about the basic unity of all world religions. In a chapter entitled "The Fascist Church," he argues that "the Roman Catholic church is not the only example of clerical fascism, but its epitome." One wishes an editor had taken a blue pencil to Fix's most outrageous descriptions of the Catholic church--they mar an otherwise fascinating attempt to mesh Christianity with New Age practices.