Category Archives: Important Ideas

User’s Manual For The Mind

Powerful Mind Part 4
Originally posted March 31, 2023

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, August 9, 2024

Most people would agree that it would have been handy to have been given a User’s Guide when born. Remember the takeoff on the Emergency Broadcast System?

This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.

Such a guide would have to start very simply, since the child at birth will not process anything complicated. It might start out like this:

Hi! Your name is ________. But YOU are much more than your name. You are a living being in a vast, mostly-unknown universe. You are a member of the dominant life form on the planet. You became dominant because you’re the smartest. That means you know how to use your mind.

Q. So what IS your mind? Are you and your mind the same thing?

A. Yes and no. You are your mind. But remember, “mind” is just a word; it depends on how you define it exactly.

One way of defining “mind” – the way we define it – is everything you experience, your consciousness, your awareness. Other definitions say the “mind” is just the “intellect” and does not include the feelings, intuition, perceptions, imagination, memory, willpower, or ESP we might experience. If you follow either of these definitions then You are more than your mind, as defined, since you do have all these other things.

Q. Waah! Want Mama! All these other what things? You’re saying I’m made up of all these things, and I won’t even know what these things are that make up who I am.

A. No problem, let’s go over the list. These are among all the good things you have, going in:

  1. You will have the persistent sense of being you – we call that the “Self”.
  2. You will have attention.
  3. You will have feelings – some good, some not so good; you may learn how to re-set yourself back to good feelings, by solving specific small and larger challenges in your life; over time you may learn how to re-set to good feelings faster. Confidence is a feeling, as is lack of it. This list of feelings goes on. You’ll see.
  4. You will have five physical senses – sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.
  5. You will have hunches – intuition. By following these hunches and using the rest of what you have, you will be able to predict the future, but only imperfectly.
  6. You will have memory.
  7. You will be able to generate imagined stories and experience them, called dreams when you are sleeping, and imagination when you are (relatively) awake.
  8. You will decide that things have to be a certain way and you will do things that tend to cause that outcome; this is called willpower.
  9. Free will. This means you can make up your own mind. And you can do whatever you decide to do, but you must accept the consequences, meaning it will be wise to think out consequences before you act. You’ll need something else for that, something that none of these first eight parts of you can do.
  10. Hence, the intellect. This part of you is the thinker, the part of you that can take apart a situation into pieces and thereby better understand it. This part can also make plans, always a good thing to do before taking action. This is also the part you are hearing or seeing whenever you hear or see words in your head. And it’s the part that most helps the intuition when it comes to making predictions.
  11. Motor control (and body). You will be able to move the body you are currently inhabiting as you will it (unless you become intoxicated or are otherwise physically challenged). You use this body of yours, and the motor control that you have over it, to take actions in the world that appears to exist outside and around you, to relate to what appear to be other selves.
  12. ESP. You will discover for yourself whether these exist for you or not. These are Extra Sensory (meaning “extra” to the first five) Perceptions. Telepathy, precognition (greatly improved ability to make accurate predictions), telekinesis, gaining additional influence over outcomes “as if by magic”.
  13. Spirit. This is the part of you that feels like a part of Something much larger. There is much for you to discover by exploring this asset, and the same can be said for all thirteen of your assets, aspects, faculties, manifestations, whatever you choose to call them.

Q. This is a mindblower – what a trip! How can I manage 13 parts of myself and keep it all coordinated?

A. Don’t overthink it. The rational mind is not designed to consciously control all parts of you. If you try to use the rational mind that way, you won’t even be able to catch a ball. Be spontaneous and natural, so long as you are careful at all times to not hurt other people’s feelings or their bodies. You will have to discriminate carefully and quickly, all the time, to decide which of your impulses to follow, and which ones to hold in check. If you are unsure or there is any negative feeling, don’t act too quickly. Be spontaneous and go with your own flow, but be prepared to take control and stop yourself from getting yourself in trouble. This means both hands on the wheel of yourself. Pay attention. And never forget to be on your own side.

At the first unpleasant feeling, stop what you’re doing, and figure out why that was unpleasant, and how to make it more pleasant “next time”. Don’t take the alternative course of just bypassing those little clues, suffering the unpleasantness without understanding it fully. These imperfections pile up and eventually, you are looking at a full-scale problem, and what seems like a million unanswered questions in your head.

In reality, if your life goes along like most peoples’ lives in the 21st century, you will probably reach a point of pile-up and possible breakdown, and fortunately, that challenge will bring you back to start over, to figure things out for yourself.

Always come back to who you are. We pick up mannerisms and other behavior patterns from other people and these conditioned behaviors are like a short circuit between motor control and memories. Memories of what you have seen other people do or say program your body without your agreeing to it consciously. Be alone and use all parts of yourself to figure out what has gone wrong and how to fix it.

Love to all,
Bill

 

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Umberto Eco Deeply Understood and Cared

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog:  July 26, 2024

Umberto Eco at his home.*

The Italian novelist, essayist, deep thinker Umberto Eco won first prize in a Fascist essay contest when he was ten years old. He was a product of his culture: Mussolini’s Italy was all he ever knew up until that point. That was reality. Fascism was his way of life, although not consciously. He had no inkling of other worlds then. The year was 1942.

Less than a year later on the morning of April 27, 1943 he learned from a radio broadcast that “Fascism had collapsed and Mussolini had been arrested.” (Five Moral Pieces) He ran out and looked at the headlines on the suddenly large numbers of newspapers and saw that political parties that must have existed in secret were all coming out. Until that moment he had believed that every country had just one party and in Italy it was the Fascist party.

“My God, I had never read words like ‘freedom’ or ‘dictatorship’ in all my life. By virtue of these words, I was reborn as a free Western man.”

Eco having been conditioned as a Fascist was released from that condition by outside forces and uplifted. He became a teacher, philosopher, scientist, best-selling novelist.

His concept of semiotics permits us to read the signs in all things since all things may be interpreted as signs in themselves. We all constantly create signs, both intentionally and without conscious intent. This was his unique perspective on the nature of reality.

In Five Moral Pieces he dissects fascism in its broader sense (i.e. not limited to Italy’s version) into a specific set of attributes. This is relevant because he was a person born into fascism and took it for granted as part of life. He experienced liberation by the Allies and the transformation of the way of life. His mind changed and he much preferred the new social contract and its freedoms. He realized himself as a passionate supporter of diversity.

Eco provides the following list of clues to help humanity detect fascism:

  1. The cult of tradition“. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur.
  2. The rejection of modernism“, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity.
  3. The cult of action for action’s sake“, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
  4. Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action.
  5. Fear of difference“, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
  6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class“, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
  7. Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson‘s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
  8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak“. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
  9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight.
  10. Contempt for the weak“, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
  11. Everybody is educated to become a hero“, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death.
  12. Machismo“, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.
  13. Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.
  14. Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

Thanks to Wikipedia for distilling these attributes, which saved me time; I have condensed the Wikipedia listing.

Eco published his essay on this subject in 1995. On July 11, 2024, another great writer and thinker, David Brooks wrote an essay in The New York Times aimed at understanding why America today is not repelled by the idea of authoritarianism. His conclusion is that, until the 1960s, America had a balance between reason and religion which, while disagreeing on one level, agreed upon the moral and ethical grounds for conduct. Then, starting in the 1960s, America began to become less religious, and reason and science on their own did not present as compelling a case for upholding idealistic values:

“At the same time, science and reason failed to produce a substitute moral order that could hold the nation together. By 1981, in the famous first passage of his book “After Virtue,” the philosopher Alasdair Macintyre argued that we had inherited fragments of moral ideas, not a coherent moral system to give form to a communal life, not a solid set of moral foundations to use to settle disputes. Moral reasoning, he wrote, had been reduced to “emotivism.” If it feels right, do it. In 1987, Allan Bloom released his megaselling “The Closing of the American Mind,” arguing that moral relativism had become the dominant ethos of the era.”

“In other words, Americans lost faith in both sides of the great historical tension, and with it the culture that had long held a diverse nation together. By the 21st century it became clear that Americans were no longer disagreeing with one another; they didn’t even perceive the same reality. You began to hear commencement speakers declare that each person has to live according to his or her own truth. Critics talked about living in a post-truth society. [James Davison] Hunter talks about cultural exhaustion, a loss of faith, a rising nihilism — the belief in nothing. As he puts it, ‘If there is little or no common political ground today, it is because there are few if any common assumptions about the nature of a good society that underwrite a shared political life.’”

“Was there anything that would fill this void of meaning? Was there anything that could give people a shared sense of right and wrong, a sense of purpose? It turns out there was: identity politics. People on the right and the left began to identify themselves within a particular kind of moral story. This is the story in which my political group is the victim of oppression and other groups are the oppressors. For people who feel they are floating in a moral and social vacuum, this story provides a moral landscape — there are those bad guys over there and us good guys over here. The story provides a sense of belonging. It provides social recognition. By expressing my rage, I will earn your attention and respect.”

“The problem with this form of all-explaining identity politics is that it undermines democracy. If others are evil and out to get us, then persuasion is for suckers. If our beliefs are defined by our identities and not individual reason and personal experience, then different Americans are living in different universes and there is no point in trying to engage in deliberative democracy. You just have to crush them. You have to grab power and control of the institutions and shove your answers down everybody else’s throats.”

“In this climate, Hunter argues, ‘the authoritarian impulse becomes impossible to restrain.’ Authoritarianism imposes a social vision by force. If you can’t have social solidarity organically from the ground up, then you can impose it from top down using the power of the state.”

“The task, then, is to build a new cultural consensus that is democratic but also morally coherent. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that this work of cultural repair will be done by religious progressives, by a new generation of leaders who will build a modern social gospel around love of neighbor and hospitality for the marginalized.”

I agree with Brooks that America, and the human race, needs and deserves a reason to value liberty, equality, justice, democracy, and differences of opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with his proposed solution of waiting for religious progressives to convince the masses of a modern social gospel. We need a solution now. My proposed solution is for the media to provide broad coverage to the idea that science cannot rule out the possibility that the universe is a single consciousness, the same consciousness that each of us thinks of as “myself”. Once there is near-universal realization that this is a real possibility, all of the moral compunctions required by religion return as the only logical course of action if we are all universally connected. It was aimed at this end that I wrote A Theory Of Everything Including Consciousness and “God” and made the ten-minute video Connectedness.

I am convinced by my own experiences that the truth is we are all parts of the greatest adventure that could ever exist, and we all benefit by win/win thinking and action. This is diametrically opposed to the zeitgeist of the present day. My research finds that this concept of who we are and what the universe truly is, appeals to all factions in the political spectrum. This scientific lens also supports the claims of the great religions, that their founders and saints received knowledge from a higher source, and even explains how “miracles” might have actually happened. This scientific and spiritual picture of reality can be the glue that puts us back together. We don’t have to prematurely accept it as scientifically proven until it is, but we can popularize the notion as a leading possible explanation for the nature of reality. The more this idea is exposed open-mindedly in the media the more likely we are to survive as a species.

Carpe diem!

My best to all,
Bill

 

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*Image source: Aubrey, CC BY-SA 1.0 resized <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

SPECIAL EDITION: An Eye for An Eye

Created April 15, 2024
Special Edition

The Iranian tactic has an ancient basis in the respective bibles of the “People of The Book.” As a species we have known for a long time the disastrous consequences of escalation.

This demo by Teheran starts a new era in geopolitik.

It was prophesied in my 2022 novel Pandemonium: Live To All Devices. Not to make more of a spoiler than necessary, a virtual reality television star leads a coalition to prevent escalation, sort of a global NATO, and it works by careful judgment of the optimal degree of retaliation (e.g. page 457).

Israel will now know that unmanned missile and drone attacks are the preferred mode of making “just enough” reparations. Next time there is an October 7th type action. But can anyone afford one more such action?

Does this new context offer an increased feeling of safety, that forms of mischief which have been vaguely tolerated in the past, fighting terrorists but not the people that sent them, those mischief forms are now off the table? Would anyone blame Israel for using these same air missile and drone tactics on Iran if there were to be one further provocation?

Should not everyone take the moment to back away from provocations they are causing right now? Start quietly winding them down?

We have reached a moment that was easy to see coming. For the past 8 years and even longer, governments around the world have been continuing to rattle sabers and appear as strong as possible to one another, as if we were still using TNT, as if bioweapons and cyberweapons and thermonuclear weapons and propaganda weapons were still back at the primitive WWII level.

A bunch of macho men in a life raft, each loaded to the gills with all sorts of exotic and superpowerful weaponry, goading each other in a dominance drill that goes on for a seeming eternity, until one of them accidentally shoves another due to a sudden ocean swell, and there is an explosive bloody free-for-all, which they all call off when they see they are all going to die.

That’s where we are folks.

Time to bring cooperation and competition back in balance.

We have been unbalanced in the competition direction as far back as we can see in written history.

The Greeks and the Romans made slightly better use of cooperation for a time, and rose as empires as a result.

These United States have until recently (with the exception of the Civil War) shown an amazing degree of cooperation. The Native American tribes had been the inspiration for the Federalist philosophy of government which the Founders adopted. This gave us the States.

If we are – the whole universe is – a single consciousness at play, this would explain the reason why cooperation works so well. It’s natural to our nature.

Nature also shows us competition, for mates, for land, for food.

We are hard wired and soft wired for both cooperation and competition.

Hard wired meaning in our physical structure including nervous system. Soft wired meaning programmed by our experiences.

Perhaps we were looking to the animals as our role models when we started off on this competition kick, where cooperation is less to be seen. And yet we see incredible cooperation among cetaceans, fish, birds, certain insects. In WWII we saw incredible cooperation by the Allies. We saw it on April 13th (EDT) when so many nations pitched in to work against an attack.

The U.S. Congress which has been commandeered and far from successfully achieving actual cooperation, is not going to play deaf to this wakeup call “courtesy” of Iran. If the public does not see a change in behavior it will demand the immediate removal of obstructors, those who show no sincere intention to legislate for the good of the public. I think we will see improvement before it goes that far. The moment calls for showing that one is alert to some need to change something. And that it cannot be delayed, procrastination rarely helps in a fire.

No more nonsense.

My Best to all,
Bill

Awakening Your True Will

Powerful Mind Part 16

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog, November 1, 2024.
Created June 23, 2023

Read Powerful Mind Part 15

 Although the inelegant coinage “Woke” has been given many layers of automatic associations by today’s external world, use the strength of your own personal will to prevent being in any way affected by the word “awakening” – it’s as good as any other word, and it’s important because the entire species is walking around in a kind of dream state.

To review, what we are shifting over to when we cut away remnants of conditioned thinking imposed on us from the outside, is our own God-given self, not just our mind but our body and feelings and intuitions – the “ME” that was born. The unique nature package that will never be duplicated again. With your own gifts to bring to the world. When awakened to your own gifts you will be a soul-inspired and in Flow state for much of the time your gifts will actually help the world.

You are cutting over to your own will power, your ability to force aside old habits, and teach your mind and your body new and better habits, those which come from inside you.

This will take resolution and perseverance because of the strength of the conditioning each of us has received. Hundreds of thousands of hours of habit creation and reinforcement. Each habit repeated over and over tens of thousands of times. Most of the neurons in the brain perform automatically and at a subconscious level to determine 95% of our decisions. This is the part of you that I call “the robot”.

What is not the robot is the real you.

From moment to moment, from thought to thought, feeling to feeling, impulse to impulse, you need to know where it is coming from. Is it coming from you, or from the robot?

If it’s coming from the robot, you don’t want to act on it. If it’s a bad feeling, you want to drop it as if it were a living leech. Because that’s exactly what it is. Habits you have acquired that work against who you are. Leeching energy, time, and attention which you would prefer to use in other ways. Be aware of your own will power as the strength to enforce these decisions in the moment without backsliding into being controlled by a mind invader.

How do you know if you are in the robot or in your own true self?

One sign it’s the robot is the presence of fear. Take control by befriending the robot and discussing the situation with it. It is a biological AI, and you have common interests, so you are leading consensus, not bickering.

What are you afraid of, old chum?

Tell the robot where you are going with this, and why that fear is not useful. You have that situation figured out and are patiently applying the solution step by step, and the robot can cancel those ancient alarm requests.

Of course, if you don’t have the solution worked out yet, you can thank the robot for calling your attention to it, and ask it to turn off the distracting alarm emotions so you can work out the solution clearheadedly.

Anger is another sign that it’s not you. It’s the robot. The real you has reservoirs of courage and forgiveness that prevent flareup of anger. If you are not experiencing that arc, that space between having cause to feel angry and actually letting the anger in, you are not exhibiting metacognition. Metacognition is that arc. The space between neurons is where the synapse connection occurs, and in your consciousness, you need to have that kind of space too, where any action of the mind arises to consciousness to first be inspected, rather than automatically engaging the gears of the fight-or-flight response.

Overwhelming sadness is another sign of the robot. The true you is not overwhelmed by anything. You have your free will, your agency, your resoluteness, and courage. If you are sad you might be in your true self or in your robot, but take the reins and move into your real self by objectively determining the cause of your sadness and your alternative courses of action to remove the cause of sadness. If you come up with some solutions which favor you but not others, be suspicious it could be coming from the robot.

Put aside the fear of schizophrenia. Guiltless housecleaning of the mind, and finding that there is a robot you built yourself by giving yourself a great number of subconscious orders, doesn’t mean you have a split personality. It means you have a lot of externally imposed requests you are still obeying years later and you no longer need to follow those constraints. Your one self is your one self. These other automated parts of yourself are like Clippy the Microsoft Office Assistant and all of the other unhelpful and annoying attempts computer system designers have made (with good intentions) to provide even better service to users. In the case of your personal Clippy inside, you threw every external exhortation that hit you in that steamer trunk and expected it to sort everything out and cause your behavior to be found exemplary in the eyes of others. Your instinct to seek the approval of others is what caused the robot in the first place.

You only need the approval of yourself – and God (if you accept the possibility of the universe being conscious because that is what God could actually be, scientifically speaking).

Running after the approval of others is definitely robot behavior.

Not caring about others is definitely robot behavior.

Look out for these conditions as you observe yourself. Switch into objective Observer state and do not wish for specific outcomes, start from observation first, then problem statement, then solutions, then a plan. That plan will aim at specific outcomes but do not allow yourself to become attached to the outcome, the situation or your knowledge and understanding of it might change, and that might change the outcome targeted. Stick with the plan and enjoy carrying it out.

If you find yourself rushing, that’s the robot. Set up your plans so that you don’t need to rush anything. You want top quality Flow state within the time constraints that are beyond your control. Reduce the number of specific things on your list to permit non-rushing. If you overbook yourself, you are forcing the robot on yourself.

Love to all,

Bill

 

 


Listen to my recent interview about my book THE GREAT BEING
Moments with Marianne with Bill Harvey KMT radio interview about THE GREAT BEING book

In this 15-minute interview with Marianne Pestana on KMET ABC News Affiliate, I talk about THE GREAT BEING, my latest book in the Agents of Cosmic Intelligence series.
Listen here.

 

 

 

You may know that I’ve been publishing a sci-fi series called Agents of Cosmic Intelligence, an alternative history of the Universe, in which some of the main characters put into practice the mental methodologies I’ve compiled into my nonfiction books. All of this is aimed at enabling the human race to become more effective and to undo the messes made in the past. By contradistinction to AI, Artificial Intelligence, I think of this as HI, Human Intelligence. I feel that it’s obvious we should be putting at least as much time, money, and effort into HI as into AI – especially if we are fearful of what AI can do to subjugate us.

The books in the series so far take place long ago or in the near future, but what was missing until now is how the Universe began, and what happened on Earth before ~3000 BC. That is now in The Great Being, which is chronologically the first book in the series.

Two reviewers have already written reviews of The Great Being and they really “get” what the whole series is aiming at. I’ve waited for this feeling of someone really getting it for a long time and it is heartwarming to say the least. Here are excerpts and links to the reviews. — Bill

Reviews of The Great Being Warm the Cockles of My Heart

Indie reader approved

4.2 stars. A compelling and thought-provoking work of science fiction. Harvey’s sprawling, hugely ambitious exploration of consciousness, free will, and the eternal dance between light and darkness is intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant. The novel’s central message—that all beings, no matter how lost or misguided, are ultimately part of a greater cosmic unity—is a hopeful and uplifting one…Read the full review. — Indie Reader

IR Independent Review

A singularly unique and eye-opening work of visionary fiction, Blending realms of historical, religious, spiritual, and mythological traditions, this is an ambitious and epically creative read … The full value will be more readily apparent to those readers who can see the threads of allegory, legend, and science woven into one unified whole. Enlightenment and radical self-awareness are powerful undercurrents within the narrative; the role of dogmatic thinking, hierarchical power structures, and the tyranny of knowledge are explored in various ways through the characters’ revelations, opinions, and personalities. The story within a story here is one of psychological development and the real-life pursuit of higher modes of thinking … A wide-reaching and insightful assessment of human civilization and behavior…Read the full review.—Self-Publishing Review / Independent Review of Books

bluelink review

Tonally amusing, aesthetically fearless, and packed with witty observation and divine incident … By turns accessible, erudite, and hallucinogenic, it is an intriguing philosophical romp that cleverly fuses psychedelic science-fiction and fantasy elements with organized religion’s creationist ideologies and the scientific theories of evolutionism … An ambitious, entertaining novel packed with spiritual curiosity, one that will greatly appeal to fans of intelligent science fiction and alternative history stories alike… Read the full review—BlueInk Review

booklife by Publishers WeeklyBlending spiritual philosophy, alternate history, pre-historic adventure, and brisk life-after-life storytellingThe Great Being is above all a beginning. First comes creation itself, which gets started with the knockout opening line (“The Nothingness felt surprise upon realizing itself.”), … This is the fourth entry published but the first chronological chapter. It shares the swift pacing, spiritual seeking, twisty plotting, and sharply human dialogue of the earlier books, though its focus feels tighter… Read full review, —BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly.  

kirkus reviewsIn Harvey’s retelling of the creation myth, heavenly agents combat a growing rebellion unfolding on Earth … this story deftly explores human nature—the uplifting qualities and dour traits alike … enthralling tale of humanity’s origins and cosmic espionage… Read full review, — Kirkus Reviews

Midwest Book ReviewA real standout…The radically inviting nature of this story brings with it the opportunity to view life and God in an entirely different light…Designed to awaken and introduce new interpretations of spirituality and life meaning. As readers who may not have expected such nuances come to absorb the greater gift of The Great Being‘s message, they will find the radically inviting nature of this story brings with it the opportunity to view life and God in an entirely different light … The story evolves with a reinterpretation of myths, events, and concepts that doesn’t just invite, but demands discussion and insights on the parts of all kinds of spiritual thinkers as the story evolves a unique and compelling flavor of discovery … One of Bill Harvey’s great talents lies not just in his storytelling ability, but his focus on translating life events and history with new interpretations … Readers interested in transformative reading… will find The Great Being‘s message to be one of hope, discovery, and new ways of viewing the universe [and] will find The Great Being a standout. Read the full review— Diane Donovan for Midwest Book Review

THE GREAT BEING is available in print and Kindle. Read an excerpt.