| The Secret Life of Plants - Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird I found this book absolutely fascinating and much more than I had bargained for.It's also a book on it's own,because it deals with a lot of agricultural history,not the standard fare of most paranormal books,and not a subject I was at all familiar with.But the writers provide such insights into the nature of living things on this planet that it has helped me make a stronger connection between the paranormal and the natural history of this planet. However I'm going to concentrate on just one earth shattering (well it was to me anyway) piece of information in it,which I've looked for verification of it ever since without success.However,the evidence is strong enough to stand on it's own and it's basically this;For over the last four centuries many scientists independently have discovered that plants and animals seem to be able to transmute elements,the 'irreducible' components of chemistry,which Science says can only be created by the extreme conditions of stellar physics. We are taking here about the Damned subject of Alchemy.But this is Alchemy in a much more mundane setting. Let me give you one example:- A Chicken fed on oats alone,the calcium content.being carefully monitored,produced four times as much calcium in its faeces and eggs than had been ingested.The repercussions of this information are immense to the conventioal theories of life and the universe,well for starters it must bugger up the calculations upon which cosmologists base their figures on.But since they've blatantly ignored these facts that's their problem. For me it's in the para-world where it all gets interesting,because it may validate certain anomalies which seem baffling or nonsensical even to me.Firstly,consider the fruitarians,some of them exist on one fruit only and appear to be perfectly healthy,contrary to conventional medical opinion which says they should be dead.Well it seems obvious to assome their bodies are creating alchemically the necesary stuff they need to survive. Pushing this information to it's limits may give credence to a seriously way out,loony belief of people who say they can live without food and can live forever.We are talking here about an extreme version of mind over matter and maybe they get what they need from the air,by osmosis,or by gulp... creating it out of nothing.Who knows? I personally don't see any 'spiritual' sense to wanting to live forever,but I see that,based on the information in the 'Secret Life' it at least sounds theoretically possible,however misguided the desire to do so is. OK this seems pretty radical stuff,but this Alchemical talent that all living creatures have,puts the paranormal in the heart of evolution and therefore has massive consequences for the orthodox view of life on this planet.And this is for me the abiding knowledge I will take from 'The Secret Life of Plants'. |
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| Dimensions - Jacque Vallee This book really brought me back from the world of Ufology that I had abandoned back when I was 14 year old reading Erich Von Daniken books. Vallee has an open minded, truely scientific approach that I instantly warmed to, and I went onto read the rest of this trilogy of Vallee books, Confrontations and Revelations. I became aware afterwards that a lot of Dimensions was going over ground he'd explored in the 60's seminal works Passport to Magonia and The Invisible College which somehow gave the impression to some people, he didn't believe in UFO's. This was not so in Dimensions, because he clearly states there is a reality to the phenomenon, it's just to understand that reality pushes the boundary of all our knowledge. In Dimensions we are given the full complexity of the phenomenon, including the bizarre elements, but importantly he gives us a framework to understand their place in human history. He gives us a lineage that starts with the Creatures from folklore, to Strange Airships in the 1800's, to the modern day UFO that is most persuasive. However there is one thing that even in the later works he seems ambiguous about and leaves me with the question. Are UFO'S real in any material sense or are they just 'psychical' projections in our minds from some alien source that are not really 'existing' in our space. In Confrontations through his experiences in South America he seems to be clearly stating that they are real in the nuts and bolts sense. But if there is confusion here I share it also, because if you take on the whole range of Ufological events that's the core problem you're left with. This problem I see with Vallee's hypothesis, is also the reason he is sidelined in modern day Ufology. It pleases no particular group. It does not please the 'sceptical' Ufologists because what he proposes verges on the paranormal. It does not please the 'Nuts and Bolts' Ufologist either, because Vallee looks like he's suggesting that UFO's as we 'understand' them don't exist. Also his Hyper dimensional source for the aliens does sound like a bit creating one vague unknown to explain another unknown. However accepting those criticisms, to me Vallee is still the best position to stand on the subject and the fact that he is swimming against the tide of both forces, having no masters to please and being a bit of an international misfit just makes me believe him more. There is another thing I wished to mention about J. Vallee that differentiates him from his UFO critics. He has spent a large part of his life actually directly investigating the cases himself through the formative years of the whole UFO phenomenon. Most of his critics are of the armchair kind and lack the knowledge that comes from talking to the witnesses, seeing the alleged site that gives all the kind of stuff, scientific and personal, that convince that the strange story you are being told is genuine. Dimensions has this extra edge and you are listening to the voice of experience, the voice of an open minded scientist who is trying to come to terms with a subject that refuses to be pigeon holed. |
| Books reviewed on this page are |
| The Secret Life of Plants - Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird |
| Dimensions - Jacque Vallee |
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