October 11, 2018
Just as with my nonfiction books MIND MAGIC and YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE, my intent in THE FIRST SON is to free the consciousness of the reader from habitual thinking and feeling. Sharing with you here my hope for the effect that reading my new sci-fi alternate history novel will have on its readers.
Click the book to read about my first novel.
First of all, I hope the reader will be drawn into the characters and their love for each other. THE FIRST SON is like a family drama in a way. I’ve spent years working to make each of the characters three-dimensional and alive.
Almost as important is the visceral realization of the heroes’ dilemma. If you don’t get the trouble the heroes are in, or don’t care which way it comes out, I haven’t succeeded in really immersing you in the story, in which the whole multiverse is threatened.
At some point in THE FIRST SON story’s unfolding, I hope the reader experiences a shift, recognizing the subtle differences between the traditional historical account and the alternate perspective of the story, and gets the feeling that either way of looking at these events could be true. I am also hoping that the underlying thrill of history itself becomes part of the reading experience. The mystery of history—the fact that we don’t know exactly what really happened, and have always been just trying to piece it together.
A great deal of the action involves beings taking over each other’s minds, which is a metaphor for the way we continually hijack our own minds and feelings. The way psychic agents in the story protect themselves from takeover is the same advice I give in MIND MAGIC, morphed into fiction. I’ve found that one has more ability to discipline one’s own mind and feelings if a lens of defending oneself against an outside adversary is used. Readers will let us know the degree to which the novel has this effect of increasing self-mastery.
The most important cognitive/emotive shift THE FIRST SON hopefully creates is the opening of the reader’s mind to the possibility that science and religion are entirely compatible, and that what we call religion came out of visionaries who had psychic powers that are at the heart of all religious experience, what Freud called “the oceanic experience”. This can manifest as Flow state, being taken over by a benevolent and super-competent higher Self. It can manifest as speaking in tongues, channeling, shaking/quaking, dervishing, the Subud Latihan, oneness, mind reading, precognition, bliss, chills up and down the spine, hair standing on end, crying with happiness, laughing at a suddenly perceived cosmic joke, and other phenomena associated with all religions in one form or another.
In our culture today, these phenomena have been assigned to a sort of by many people, and are not given much serious attention. By turning our backs on the most important questions in life and in history, we diminish ourselves. The wiser course of action is ours for the taking.
I have high hopes, as you can see.
Most of us would like to make at least a small contribution to making humankind less warlike, greedy, and unkind, and more loving and peaceful. Each day many of you readers are doing your best along these lines. We have to try new ways to achieve these important ends. THE FIRST SON is my current offering to this end. I hope you enjoy the journey.
One experience I know you will enjoy is listening to Paul Harvey’s brief and inspired A Letter From God.
In similar spirit to THE FIRST SON, except where Paul says we can never understand The One Self Inside Us All, and where he says that The One Self never speaks with us individually.
All my best,
Bill
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