New Book Reviews
By Brent Raynes
Seven Secrets of Time Travel:
Mystic Voyages of the Energy Body
By Von Braschler
Destiny Books
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
2012, 163 pages, US $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-59477-447-8
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The author, Von Braschler, a lifetime member of the Theosophical Society and a former faculty member of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, presents a variety of concepts and meditation techniques that are designed to transcend the normal boundaries of time and space that most of us are constrained by. He offers step-by-step instructions that guide one into altered states of consciousness, perhaps even launching one into an out-of-body experience. In this book, you have a merging of metaphysics with modern physics, and you realize that they may not be nearly as incompatible as you may have once thought. After all, why was Albert Einstein reportedly so heavily into Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine? Why was the U.S. military so interested in “remote viewing”? What is quantum physics revealing about the true nature of time and space?
This is certainly a very thought-provoking book that gives the reader guidance and permission to explore the mysterious world of energy and spirit.
Discover Your Soul Template:
14 Steps for Awakening Integrated Intelligence
by Marcus T. Anthony, Ph.D.
Inner Traditions
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
2012, 294 pages, US $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-59477-426-3
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The director of MindFuture and a member of World Futures Studies Federation and the Darwin Project Counsel, author Marcus Anthony breaks through the lies and self-delusions that keep the majority of us from achieving our true human potentials. Read why the author disagrees with many cognitive scientists regarding free will, how to escape what he calls “the zombie delusion,” and how instead to draw upon what he terms “integrated intelligence.” While mainstream science rejects inner and spiritual realms, integrated intelligence is instead about “using all the abilities of the mind, including the psychic, to live the life you want.”
Anthony offers fourteen easy-to-use empowerment techniques (what he calls spiritual “tools”) so that we may tap into this integrated intelligence, what he calls the wisdom of our soul, allowing us to distinguish between the voice of our ego and that of our inner sage, and to strengthen our intuition.
The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim:
The Untold Story of Fallen Angels,
Giants on the Earth, and Their
Extraterrestrial Origins
By Scott Alan Roberts
The Career Press, Inc.
220 West Parkway, Unit 12
Pompton Plains, NJ 07444
2012, 255 pages, US $16.99
ISBN-13: 978-1-60163-197-8
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The author, Scott Alan Roberts, founder and publisher of Intrepid Magazine and former editor-in-chief of SyFy’s Ghost Hunters magazine, TAPS paraMag, sifts through the historical literature to explore the legends of the Watchers who descended to Earth and had sex with human women, creating a hybrid race of mysterious beings known as the Nephilim. For most of us, we’ve only had a glimpse into this subject from what we’ve gleaned and remember about from Sunday School or read from the pages of the Book of Genesis.
Roberts takes us much further into this subject matter, pondering the deep and profound potential implications and meanings behind these ancient writings in light of modern scientific interpretations that have evolved our understanding and insight into so many more areas of human knowledge, giving us quite a few points to ponder. For example, most of us are familiar with the Genesis account of Noah’s Flood that was to destroy the “wickedness of mankind,” while one righteous man and his family was spared. Roberts points out how traces of the Nephilim account emerge in many other separate cultures around the world. “The ancient Irish wrote of giant, shining gods called the Tuatha de Danaan who later become the Elven Folk of lore and Celtic mythology. The Middle Eastern and Mesopotamian cultures have the Anakim (Anunna/Anunnaki), and Rephaim—along with other beings and races described as having descended from giant Nephilim forebears. The Norse mythologies make reference to Niflheim, the underworld ruled by the goddess, Hel. The Hindu Vedas and Puranas tell of an antediluvian (pre-flood) giant-god, Daitya and the race of giant Andanari. Native American cultures speak of highly elusive giant, hairy, big-footed creatures that roam the American forests – just as Tibetan mountain peoples tell age-old tales of similar, equally elusive giant creatures in the Himalayas. The Greeks have their Titans and the ancient Sumerans have their flood epic of Gilgamesh, the giant half-god half-man.While these peoples, religions and cultures are widely diverse, their giant and flood mythologies, pictographs and folklore all seem to have common, historical linkages.”
In fact, Roberts discovers that there exist more than 600 ancient tribal legends throughout the world that describe a “world covering” flood. “And most of those tribal histories mention the intercourse between spirit beings and human women as partial cause for a deity to send flood waters to wipe them out,” he adds. Roberts furthermore sees a connection with these ancient accounts and modern UFO reports. “The majority of alien abduction cases recorded in modern history have the same earmarks and traditional elements as are seen in the written accounts of the Watchers descending to the earth to impregnate human women,” he writes.