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If I had the opportunity to explain to someone how to read this book, I would quote John Lennon, “turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream…it is not dying”. Lennon more or less “borrowed” this line from Timothy Leary’s book, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but the ideas provoked throughout this book (The Field) continually induce a sense of eastern wisdom and thought, in addition to altered states of consciousness that border on the line of paranormal.
I must admit, my emotional connection to this book comes in waves from chapter to chapter. The previous three chapters that dealt with water’s amazing recording properties were astounding to read. Perhaps it is because our bodies are made up of an enormous quantity of h20, our acquisition of stored memories and function is easier for me to ascribe this theory to. On the other hand, chapters 7-9, while extremely compelling, left me feeling less connected to the theories discussed within them. My biggest concern is with the numbers provided themselves. I am an adamantly skeptical person in regards to everything. I have always been a “show me” and I’ll consider it, show me it again and I’ll mention it to others. It is only when I can be shown the same results again and again that I will be convinced. Room for trial and error is essential, but I trust the rigorous tests issued by the scientific community to rule out any faults.
For example the text in chapter 7 reads, “Braud carried out his experiment sixteen times. In most cases, those being stared at showed significantly greater electrodermal activity during the staring sessions than would be expected by chance (59 per cent against the expected 50 per cent) – even though they were not consciously aware of it.”
Trust me; I deeply want to be in an interconnection like this. We could come dynamically closer to understanding and issuing compassion, trustworthiness, love, despair, needs, desires, and others, but 59% accuracy if rough for me. But at the same time, because it IS 59%, disregarding it entirely is ludicrous. We must examine exactly what IS happening to make this percentage as high as it is.
These chapters reminded me of a comment that was made in class last week. It was something along the lines of, “a person’s aura can be determined just by them entering a room. If they are in a foul mood, we can detect and feel this without them actually saying anything.” Sort of like the “elephant in the corner” concept. At the time this was said, I couldn’t agree more, but as I thought about it, I would like to perform an experiment to test otherwise: fill a room with four people that know each other and have another person that they know wait outside the room and then enter the room in either a bad or good mood and base their judgments on appearance only. More than likely, the participants will have known this person for a substantial period of time, and will theoretically “telekinetically” communicate their emotions to the others in the room. The other part of the experiment, a stranger enters the room. What happens then? Can we telepathically communicate our deepest emotions with strangers? Believe me, a part of me wishes we could.
I would not be thinking about this topic if it wasn’t for this book. This is truly amazing stuff. I am grateful.