The Experiment
Ketherin Michaels
& Corvus Night
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buy *The Experiment: An Exploration of Perception and Focus, a Primer* online The Experiment: An Exploration of Perception and Focus, a Primer
Ketherin Michaels & Corvus Night
GreyBear Publishing Co.
Paperback
224 pages
January 2002
rated 2 of 5 possible stars

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The Experiment - An Exploration of Perception and Focus: A Primer is probably one of the best books I've ever read on color theory. Unfortunately, the writers are not writing about color theory for color theory's sake. For them color theory is a means to an end. It is a way for readers to open their mind and find the Way to truth, perception and ultimately perhaps pick up an unembodied spiritual teacher or two.

Curled Up With a Good Book No, I kid you not.

Aside from the spirits all-knowing of each other's works and dropping names (Seth, Carlos Castaneda), in the quoted passages below the spirits seem to be saying that our limited view (pun) of life closes us in and prevents spiritual explorations. Freed from the world's way of perceiving and its dichotomies: objective/subjective, three dimensions verus multidimensional and uni-verse, flat, planes/solids, mobius strips/eternity/linear. With the help of mind-expanding exercises on reflections, we will be able to move past the linear and connect to the astral plane. Like Helen Scuchman's A Course in Miracles, our birthright and destiny are in our minds if only we can learn "to read the unwritten, see the invisible, hear the unheard and know the unknown."

There are lessons on energy waves, light waves, sound waves, prisms, spectrums, visible and invisible colors, complementary and unperceived light, breathing techniques, quantum physics. There are color charts, mineralogy, sublime pictures of enlightened looking people, poems, references to mythic Greek goddesses and Greek philosophers, the Tarot and the I Ching, the ancient mystic orders, hermetic philosophy, the Mabinogion (a collection of ancient Irish folklore) and the obligatory dig at Christianity. Enough wisdom and lessons to help the would-be medium learn how to focus well enough to move through different layers of reality.

This book has several obstacles to overcome. The first is that the concepts they teach about color and music will be difficult for many readers to grasp. The authors are teaching their readers about the nature of perception and truth, negative space and colors, etc. Right brain issues that are difficult for the left-brain to understand.

The second obstacle is that the reader is asked to believe in a different plane of existence populated with teachers. For one thing, many people will simply think these sessions simply came from the authors' own psyches. The human capacity to delude itself is only equal to its love of power. What is more arrogant than thinking one has been singled out by cosmic teachers to teach new world-changing cosmic truths? Or it could be something else.

This leads to the last obstacle: the conviction by many people that these teachers, if they exist, might simply be demonic entities. The assumption that a spirit being is infinitely wiser than humans and therefore infinitely better and more enlightened is Darwinian evolution in its own way and should be challenged. Intelligence doesn't necessarily imply goodness. That the Teachers imply that those of us who fear danger simply are resisting "based on old interpretations of the danger of so much power" only makes this particular resisting reader more suspicious. Hey, we all like power but I've never liked the idea of hanging out with powerful people on the off chance that I will receive a little bit of their power.

This book was written with the help of a Spirit Teacher whom Ketherin Michaels met in one of her "sessions." The Teacher is kindly and jovial, as all enlightened spirits tend to be and tells her,

"Relax, child, into the light. You ask why receive all this information when others translate it so well, like Seth (a reference to the Seth books written by Jane Roberts and Robert Butts)? Seth paints grand landscapes of design, describing your and neighboring realities, focuses, but we shall deal directly with SHAPED SOUND, DIRECTED ENERGY. This is a focus of the instruction in THE EXPERIMENT, and an important unit to be added to the knowledge of the whole."

"Truth is the great power that is often feared in your reality. This power, greater than the perceiver, is a harmonious and just power, built of a multicomplex of consciousness constructs, interacting inter-being. Consciousness, in your reality, is ready to discard the Dark Age definitions of humankind and its place in the universe. Those misinterpretations and their manifest physical reflections will no longer be a part of your play, your song, your experience, your reality."

"The importance of sound in creation must be carefully considered. Sound, shaped sound, is the power that brings energy into form. You shape energy by the words you choose to speak and by the thoughts (the silent sounds, unspoken words) you choose to dwell on."
I am going to accept the authors' statement that a Teacher helped to write this book. After all, it is not up to me to challenge someone on something I know little of. And certainly, the Teacher/Being does seem sweet, kind-hearted and understanding. And yet, the Teacher is perhaps a bit too subtle for me. I found myself cringing at certain promises being held before me like a carrot before a horse. Perhaps I am a victim of fear of power. But I think not. I've simply seen too many beautiful philosophies that were wrapped in rhapsody. And this Rhapsodic textbook made me nervous. And it is not merely a textbook, but a primer. I have no doubt that the reader who faithfully follows all the exercises on color and perception will find his/her perception broadened. But is that necessarily a good thing? Certainly broadening one's mind and removing limits should not be done in a vacuum. Simply entering some odd other reality and accepting any teacher who happens to come along (disembodied or otherwise) is akin to walking down pre-Guiliani Times Square and taking help from anyone who happens to pass by.


© 2002 by Carole McDonnell for Curled Up With a Good Book


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