cover image The AIDS Book

The AIDS Book

Louise L. Hay, Chris Hay. Hay House, $10 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-937611-32-6

This follow-up to Hay's bestselling You Can Heal Your Life repeats and further elaborates on her philosophythat self-love can create salutary changes in physical healthby applying the theme specifically to AIDS. Hay's discussion of reincarnation and other issues, however, will comfort sufferers of all varieties of disease, especially those labeled ``terminally'' ill by the medical establishment. The author believes that AIDS is ``a message from the body, the final attempt of one's own consciousness to communicate''; at the same time, she maintains that worldwide famine and poverty as well as the universal threat of nuclear holocaust are forms of AIDS that affect the whole planet and that will force us to ``look at what we are doing on an individual and collective level.'' Hay's methods of safe sex, nutrition, exercise, and of dealing with parents, doctors and hospitals, living wills and the like are highlighted throughout by case histories of People with Aids (PWAs) ``in the process of healing themselves,'' who explain what combinations of diet and spiritual exploration they employ. While some will surely object to Hay's basic premise (``From the many PWAs I have come to know, it seems clear that the lack of lovelove of themselves, love of and from othershas played a large role in their acquiring the disease''), her dual message that the mind is a powerful healer and that we must all take responsibility for our own lives and health has broad appeal. (September)