I finished Reza Aslan's God: A Human History a few weeks ago, after hearing him present in Houston, TX. He was an excellent speaker, down to earth, witty, and certainly knew his stuff. Having come down from the cloudy stratosphere many years ago, I found his thesis of the gods being created in our human image very appealing.
His book is more entertaining than Karen Armstrong's "A History of God," but less comprehensive. Aslan's book itself is quite short, while the bibliography, notes and index are long, but very useful for scholars. What I liked best, as expressed in the book as well as in his lecture, was Aslan's pantheism. As he said, despite all his caveats, he is a believer. There is something about the "All" that creates a sense of the divine, even if merely a neurological phenomenon. As I have said elsewhere on my blog, I once sensed that feeling of being one with the All, accompanied by light phenomena, for about 15 seconds. It is indeed divine to feel coexistent with the "All," even for only a few seconds.
Furthermore, I believe in, have experienced, and continue to research paranormal phenomena that I and others have experienced. As pointed out in many of my blog posts, there is some power of perception beyond everyday cognition, if you are lucky enough to connect with it.
Jahn and Dunne's Consciousness and the Source of Reality also has a lot to offer. As they say, "telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition et al., evidently entail information acquisition by anomalous means (p. 331).
Jahn and Dunne see light, in the form of very low intensity biophotons, as a means for the exchange of information. This definitely resonates with my own light experience and those of so many others.
The brilliant English poet, John Milton, who became completely blind, said ". . . Celestial light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thense Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight (quote p. 196)."
Similarly, Paracelsus said, "Man also possesses a power by which he may see his friends and the circumstances by which they are surrounded, although such persons may be a thousand miles away from him at the time (Ibid.)." Emanuel Swedenborg "testified to frequent experiences of clairvoyance (p. 197).
The PEAR Odyssey's project, then, became an experiment in discovering the powers of the non-local mind. What can be seen or known without being there? "Insight and inspiration usually cannot be forced, but tend to intrude uninvited into a variety of intense personalized contexts. These anomalous events are examples of Jung's 'acausal connecting principle (p. 336).'"
In fact, it was a dream message that brought me to Jung in the first place. As the voice said, "Freud only got it half right. Read the two Hyperion poems."
I invite anyone who has had anomalous access to information to tell their story here, whether it was a precognitive hunch, a warning in a dream, or an anomalous voice while awake.
Please tell your story!!
