David Wilcock (1973–2026)

Everyone who writes a book like this thinks that what they're doing is so shocking and never been done before. Yet there are literally hundreds of books like this. All this was covered in Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine more than a hundred years previous, but no modern new age writer seems to want to admit this. All the same, there's a few good points made here. The worst part of the book comes when the author tells us about the tricks to writing a screenplay and then proceeds to use the show more worst big budget trash as his examples. show less

This hefty book about "hidden science and lost civilizations" would make a fine study in the wonders of confirmation bias. The author, who gazes on us from the back flap with clear blue eyes under a lofty forehead, does not appear to be peddling snake oil to a gullible public; he seems sincere in his expressed belief that extraterrestrial civilizations are already in touch with us, and that we will soon have access to limitless energy and “stargate travel” to parallel universes. Contrary show more to the fringe apocalyptic buzz about 2012, Wilcock insists that 2012 is the point in time at which we all will have a consciousness revolution leading to Oneness with the Living Universe. (Like many “spiritual” authors, David Wilcock is fond of the Portentous Upper Case.)

This living universe is the Source Field of the title. Like much of the material in the book, it seems to be a half-step away from a concept found in science fiction movies (force field --> source field). Hollywood, especially stuff like Stargate and Contact, has made a palpable imprint on this book, just as the movies themselves clearly made a palpable imprint on the author. (Wilcock is a small-time movie producer himself, responsible for Convergence: The Movie.)

Besides the incontrovertible SFX just mentioned, Wilcock has assembled masses of other evidence — press clippings, New Age publications, articles from fringe science journals, and the testimony of people who claim to be channeling spirits or interdimensional beings. Again I don't think Wilcock is trying to fool us. He's convinced by the sheer quantity of this stuff, the fact that it is not univocal, that its authors are "diverse," and that there is a thrill to synthesizing stuff that the orthodox science community refuses to take seriously. (Or do they? Wilcock thinks the UN Security Council secretly knows all about certain alien technologies, which it is sharing with India for some reason.) Besides, Wilcock rejects some self-proclaimed mediums and visionaries as invalid, although he stops short of actually naming names (unless I missed something). The book has hundreds of footnotes, although many of these are just rows of "Ibid." citations, sometimes more than a dozen at a time. All this pageantry seems to suffice for Wilcock as confirmation that his work has led to a synthesis of actual knowledge rather than wishful fantasies.

I mentioned confirmation bias, a concept that it seems Wilcock has not yet encountered in his quest for higher consciousness. It refers to the human tendency to accept evidence that accords with one's beliefs while rejecting evidence that does not. The only way to avoid it is to deliberately gather evidence that your hypothesis is wrong, then compare it to the evidence that it's right. This practice of critical thought takes discipline and humility, and neither of these qualities comes naturally to us. Somehow this practice also seems to have eluded all the exalted spiritual beings who supposedly speak to us through mediums. Therefore it plays no part in this book.

Well, I suppose this stuff isn't doing much harm. Maybe this specious book will lure some deeply confused folks away from the (equally specious but more pernicious) fantasy that the world is about to boil away into space because of some marks on a Mayan calendar stone. show less

Everyone who writes a book like this thinks that what they're doing is so shocking and never been done before. Yet there are literally hundreds of books like this. All this was covered in Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine more than a hundred years previous, but no modern new age writer seems to want to admit this. All the same, there's a few good points made here. The worst part of the book comes when the author tells us about the tricks to writing a screenplay and then proceeds to use the show more worst big budget trash as his examples. show less

Fascinating book with truly alternative viewpoints cloaked in science (fringe, as most would dub it). While I don't subscribe to its assertions wholesales, there's a lot of good food for thought here from both a writer's inspirations and a broad point of view on perceiving reality.