Michael Schmicker's Blog - Posts Tagged "reincarnation"
Aloha and Glad to Be Here!
Aloha all!
I just recently joined Goodreads as an author, and will begin regular blogging as soon as I can settle in.
I greatly enjoy discussing anything and everything related to the paranormal and scientific anomalies, and welcome questions and emails from all of you. I've spent 20 years investigating and writing about these perplexing phenomena inexplicable by current science, but I'd like to know what YOU think!
I plan to eventually launch and host a paranormal experiences group (PEG) where Goodreads members can share their thoughts and opinions, personal stories and experiences involving anything paranormal-- premonitions, ghost encounters, possible reincarnation memories, out-of-body experiences, near death experiences, or your visit to a psychic or medium. I won't judge or play psychiatrist. I'll simply share with you what I've uncovered in my investigations, and suggest some of the better books I've read on each topic among the 500+ books in my personal library.
If we want, we can perhaps use "Best Evidence" as the common "textbook" to launch the PEG discussion group, but that's up to you.
But I do plan on throwing in a drawing for free copies of my other book, "The Gift: ESP: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People.
Could be fun!
More when I get a free moment. I'm juggling a lot of balls in the air right now. I just finished writing an historical novel with a paranormal twist, set in Italy in 1899 (if it were a film, the logline would be "Downton Abbey Meets the Exorcist"). It's now making the rounds of lit agents and keeping that project moving forward demands most of my time at the moment. But I'll be back!
Aloha,
Michael
I just recently joined Goodreads as an author, and will begin regular blogging as soon as I can settle in.
I greatly enjoy discussing anything and everything related to the paranormal and scientific anomalies, and welcome questions and emails from all of you. I've spent 20 years investigating and writing about these perplexing phenomena inexplicable by current science, but I'd like to know what YOU think!
I plan to eventually launch and host a paranormal experiences group (PEG) where Goodreads members can share their thoughts and opinions, personal stories and experiences involving anything paranormal-- premonitions, ghost encounters, possible reincarnation memories, out-of-body experiences, near death experiences, or your visit to a psychic or medium. I won't judge or play psychiatrist. I'll simply share with you what I've uncovered in my investigations, and suggest some of the better books I've read on each topic among the 500+ books in my personal library.
If we want, we can perhaps use "Best Evidence" as the common "textbook" to launch the PEG discussion group, but that's up to you.
But I do plan on throwing in a drawing for free copies of my other book, "The Gift: ESP: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People.
Could be fun!
More when I get a free moment. I'm juggling a lot of balls in the air right now. I just finished writing an historical novel with a paranormal twist, set in Italy in 1899 (if it were a film, the logline would be "Downton Abbey Meets the Exorcist"). It's now making the rounds of lit agents and keeping that project moving forward demands most of my time at the moment. But I'll be back!
Aloha,
Michael
Past Life, Anyone?
Past life, anyone?
I recently finished Dr. Jim Tucker’s fascinating book "Return to Life" – an examination of children’s past life memories (or confabulations, if you’re a die-hard skeptic). Next to Dr. Ian Stevenson’s pioneering reincarnation case studies, it’s the best I’ve read on the topic.
It got me thinking.
I’m a member of the Goodreads Historical Fictionistas group. We share a love of historical fiction, and I noticed many gravitate towards books set in a specific era (e.g. medieval, or Renaissance, or 19th century). I posted the following question to them:
If you had a chance to live life in another century, which one would YOU choose to live in, where, why?
I’d live in the late Victorian age.
I’ve read almost all of Dickens’ books, and thrilled to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve also devoured most of H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, etc.). The intellectual, political and technological ferment of that era is so heady – Darwin, Marx, suffragism, steam trains and telegraphs and a flood of mechanical inventions that transformed our world; the looming collapse of a haughty but doomed aristocratic social structure, and the grinding poverty which accompanied industrialization and led to World War I and the birth of the modern era. Its appeal never seems to die. I’m not surprised Steampunk resonates with young people. Life is more colorful, emotional, the highs higher and the lows lower, than today’s more boring, homogenized, global consumer society.
My life in that era?
I’m a man, of course (a woman’s life would be too confining), and I’m not too poor; maybe a minor member of Parliament, with a flat in Mayfair, a country house in Kent and membership in the Arts Club where I dine with my friends Dickens and Kipling as they discuss the British Raj in India and how to handle a pushy, upstart America; debate poor house laws and women’s emancipation; wonder over Rontgen’s discovery of x-rays; and shake their heads at the French Impressionists. Hard for me to imagine a more interesting historical time and place to live in!
And you? When and where would you live?
I recently finished Dr. Jim Tucker’s fascinating book "Return to Life" – an examination of children’s past life memories (or confabulations, if you’re a die-hard skeptic). Next to Dr. Ian Stevenson’s pioneering reincarnation case studies, it’s the best I’ve read on the topic.
It got me thinking.
I’m a member of the Goodreads Historical Fictionistas group. We share a love of historical fiction, and I noticed many gravitate towards books set in a specific era (e.g. medieval, or Renaissance, or 19th century). I posted the following question to them:
If you had a chance to live life in another century, which one would YOU choose to live in, where, why?
I’d live in the late Victorian age.
I’ve read almost all of Dickens’ books, and thrilled to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve also devoured most of H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, etc.). The intellectual, political and technological ferment of that era is so heady – Darwin, Marx, suffragism, steam trains and telegraphs and a flood of mechanical inventions that transformed our world; the looming collapse of a haughty but doomed aristocratic social structure, and the grinding poverty which accompanied industrialization and led to World War I and the birth of the modern era. Its appeal never seems to die. I’m not surprised Steampunk resonates with young people. Life is more colorful, emotional, the highs higher and the lows lower, than today’s more boring, homogenized, global consumer society.
My life in that era?
I’m a man, of course (a woman’s life would be too confining), and I’m not too poor; maybe a minor member of Parliament, with a flat in Mayfair, a country house in Kent and membership in the Arts Club where I dine with my friends Dickens and Kipling as they discuss the British Raj in India and how to handle a pushy, upstart America; debate poor house laws and women’s emancipation; wonder over Rontgen’s discovery of x-rays; and shake their heads at the French Impressionists. Hard for me to imagine a more interesting historical time and place to live in!
And you? When and where would you live?
John + Sabina, Forever (BOOK REVIEW)
Admit it. You’re curious about reincarnation.
Who isn’t intrigued by the possibility that we may have lived a past life?
Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism famously enshrine the idea, but reincarnation belief is global. Eskimos, Pacific Islanders, the Yoruba of West Africa, the aborigines of Australia, and the Teutonic and Celtic tribes of Europe all accept the idea of multiple rebirths. The biggest surprise? – a 2013 Harris Poll found one in four Americans believe in reincarnation. That’s 80 million people. Next time you’re standing in line at Starbucks, chances are a “born again” believer is queued up with you, looking for a venti mocha.
Voltaire, that quintessential, French rationalist and philosopher, didn’t find reincarnation intellectually absurd. “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.” Neither did Socrates, Napoleon, Balzac, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Carl Jung, or the Beatles’ George Harrison – just a few of the many famous people who embraced the possibility.
If you’re among their ranks, or simply fascinated with the thought, fire up your Kindle and download M.J. Rose’s "The Reincarnationist" – a time-slip thriller with an inventive, twisting plot that moves back and forth between modern Italy and 391 AD Rome, where a newly triumphant Christianity is brutally eradicating the last vestiges of Rome’s ancient, venerable state religion, the Vestal Virgins.
The time-traveling hero of this two-millennia romance is AP photojournalist Josh Ryder. He’s covering a delegation of peacekeepers visiting the Pope in Rome when a suicide bomber detonates his weapon just steps from him. The explosion lands him in the hospital; it also triggers troubling memory lurches back in time to a past life as the illicit lover of Sabina, a Vestal Virgin buried alive for having sex with him. I’m up on Christianity and the Roman Empire (I was raised Roman Catholic; I read history avidly), but knew almost nothing about Vesta, Roman goddess of the hearth, and the unbroken succession of young priestesses who served her for over a thousand years. Author Rose brings the banished religion back to vivid life, expertly weaving its fascinating catechism, rites, rituals, and harsh punishments into her intricately plotted tale.
Ryder, physically recovered but mentally tormented, subsequently returns to Rome seeking answers to his flashbacks. He finds them in a tomb being excavated by the reincarnation-focused Phoenix Foundation, which has hired Josh to photograph the dig. The Foundation is surreptitiously looking for more than pottery, beads and bones; it suspects the Vestal Virgin burial site may also contain the legendary “Memory Stones” –ancient gemstones which reputedly allow people to view their past lives. The Foundation finds its priceless, metaphysical treasure; Josh finds the body of his cruelly suffocated 4th century lover, Sabina; and a vicious struggle ensues for control of the stones, sparking robbery, kidnapping and murder. You’re hooked.
Erudite and entertaining, The Reincarnationist went on to inspire the 2010 Fox TV series "Past Life."
Rose has a fascination with the supernatural, a fervent following, and a suite of best-sellers exploring the metaphysical. If you enjoy historical fiction with paranormal twist, don’t forget to check out her latest novel, "The Witch of Painted Sorrows," a tale of spirit possession set in decadent, 1890s Belle Époque Paris. Who knows: you may have been there – a genial flâneur strolling Boulevard Haussmann in a previous life.
Isn’t that a pleasant thought!
Who isn’t intrigued by the possibility that we may have lived a past life?
Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism famously enshrine the idea, but reincarnation belief is global. Eskimos, Pacific Islanders, the Yoruba of West Africa, the aborigines of Australia, and the Teutonic and Celtic tribes of Europe all accept the idea of multiple rebirths. The biggest surprise? – a 2013 Harris Poll found one in four Americans believe in reincarnation. That’s 80 million people. Next time you’re standing in line at Starbucks, chances are a “born again” believer is queued up with you, looking for a venti mocha.
Voltaire, that quintessential, French rationalist and philosopher, didn’t find reincarnation intellectually absurd. “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.” Neither did Socrates, Napoleon, Balzac, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Carl Jung, or the Beatles’ George Harrison – just a few of the many famous people who embraced the possibility.
If you’re among their ranks, or simply fascinated with the thought, fire up your Kindle and download M.J. Rose’s "The Reincarnationist" – a time-slip thriller with an inventive, twisting plot that moves back and forth between modern Italy and 391 AD Rome, where a newly triumphant Christianity is brutally eradicating the last vestiges of Rome’s ancient, venerable state religion, the Vestal Virgins.
The time-traveling hero of this two-millennia romance is AP photojournalist Josh Ryder. He’s covering a delegation of peacekeepers visiting the Pope in Rome when a suicide bomber detonates his weapon just steps from him. The explosion lands him in the hospital; it also triggers troubling memory lurches back in time to a past life as the illicit lover of Sabina, a Vestal Virgin buried alive for having sex with him. I’m up on Christianity and the Roman Empire (I was raised Roman Catholic; I read history avidly), but knew almost nothing about Vesta, Roman goddess of the hearth, and the unbroken succession of young priestesses who served her for over a thousand years. Author Rose brings the banished religion back to vivid life, expertly weaving its fascinating catechism, rites, rituals, and harsh punishments into her intricately plotted tale.
Ryder, physically recovered but mentally tormented, subsequently returns to Rome seeking answers to his flashbacks. He finds them in a tomb being excavated by the reincarnation-focused Phoenix Foundation, which has hired Josh to photograph the dig. The Foundation is surreptitiously looking for more than pottery, beads and bones; it suspects the Vestal Virgin burial site may also contain the legendary “Memory Stones” –ancient gemstones which reputedly allow people to view their past lives. The Foundation finds its priceless, metaphysical treasure; Josh finds the body of his cruelly suffocated 4th century lover, Sabina; and a vicious struggle ensues for control of the stones, sparking robbery, kidnapping and murder. You’re hooked.
Erudite and entertaining, The Reincarnationist went on to inspire the 2010 Fox TV series "Past Life."
Rose has a fascination with the supernatural, a fervent following, and a suite of best-sellers exploring the metaphysical. If you enjoy historical fiction with paranormal twist, don’t forget to check out her latest novel, "The Witch of Painted Sorrows," a tale of spirit possession set in decadent, 1890s Belle Époque Paris. Who knows: you may have been there – a genial flâneur strolling Boulevard Haussmann in a previous life.
Isn’t that a pleasant thought!
