Has anyone here read this book? I'm curious to learn your reactions to it. I'll also give a quick overview for those of you who've yet to read it.
Travels is a non-fictional account of Crichton's own person travels, both geographical and spiritual. I read it when first leaving the organization, and it was helpful to me in many ways. As Crichton meanders his way through life, his perspective continues to broaden. He visits out-of-the-way cultures and learns about practices that are foreign to him, but which he finds delightful. His experiences were similar to mine, finding out that the culture on the outside of the organization was perfectly lovely.
It also helped me because as time goes on, Crichton becomes more interested in the paranormal. Being a born-in-the-troof dubber, I had that characteristic sinking feeling when I'd encounter a chapter about psychics or auras. But because Crichton is a rational man - a medically trained doctor - who you feel like you have come to know by this time, it's easier to trust his judgement.
I was particularly interested by the fact that Crichton claims to have directly seen auras and bent spoons. The meticulous care he takes in describing the details, and his general methodology in life, make me believe that he is not a man who can easily be duped. In the case of the spoon bending, he went to a party where everyone brought their own spoons, and nearly everyone was bending them, melting them right over. He bent the bowl of his spoon. He related that children were particularly adept at it.
In the case of the auras and other energy phenomena, the most impressive accounts had to do with third parties describing exactly what he himself saw, with no prior agreement. All of these things happenend even though Crichton himself was a staunch skeptic beforehand. It felt very much like my own experiences seeing the light on the organization against all previously held beliefs.
And although he had serious problems with pychics, he describes going to a convention and following very carefully predetermined conduct (such as never volunteering any information, etc), and still being impressed at the uncannily good abilities of some of the people there to describe his life to him.
So, my question is, do you think that any of this kind of thing is real? I know we don't believe in demons in the WT sense. But do you think that there is energy we don't understand that can account for such things? Do you think that any form of psychic phenomena is real? We all know that there are many quacks. Is any of it real?
Previously, I would never have given this a second thought. I was impressed by Crichton only because he is such a skeptic, such a rationalist. Even when he had come to accept the reality of auras, etc, he still tended to attribute all but the unequivocally supernatural to the human mind and our ability to dream things up.
So how about it? I'm interested in hearing what you all think.
SNG