I have just been sent the Scientific and Medical Network’s review of my book “The Out of Body Experience” that appeared in one of last year’s editions of the “Network Review.” This has taken quite a few years to appear but it was worth the wait. My thanks to Dr. David Lorimer for sending me this earlier today:
The Out-of-Body Experience Anthony Peake (SMN) – foreword by Ervin Laszlo – Watkins 2011, 222 pp., £10.99, p/b.
The thesis of this fascinating and wide-ranging book is that lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, remote viewing and astral travel are all elements of the same phenomenon, as also hypothesised in the earlier work of Celia Green and Charles McCreery published about 20 years ago. However, Anthony extends this with an up-to-date consideration of neurology, psychedelics and quantum physics, arguing that the OBE is not so much an ecsomatic as an introsomatic experience, a journey into inner space. This is also broadly the position of physicist and mystic Michael Whiteman, who is mentioned here, and involves the idea of multiple parallel spaces, which can account for discrepancies in perception. It is easy to forget that our normal perception of the physical world is a construction based on a very narrow band of reality and that communications from the spiritual realms beyond suggest that earth life now seems like a dream.
In the excellent chapter on physics, Anthony discusses the Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds interpretation and the Implicate Order interpretation of quantum mechanics. The first suggests that reality is created by the act of observation, the second that there may be many parallel worlds or spaces, and the third that the implicate order holographically folds within itself the whole universe, past and future. The emerging picture is that we are all creating our own universe as we go along, as is every other consciousness. This means that ‘our model of the phenomenal world is created internally, and then projected outwards to create the illusion of a real place located in space and time.’ (p. 190) The final chapter draws on Laszlo’s akashic field hypothesis in relation to the zero point field along with the work of Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose on the role of microtubules to propose a reconciliation of materialism and idealism, science and spirituality. It is a highly original and engaging hypothesis – any reader who already thinks that they understand this area will reconsider their views after reading this lucid book.