Gifts of Unknown Things by Lyall Watson

The power went out yesterday and we were so bored in the dark that we forced ourselves to go someplace less oppressive. After buying candles we ended up in the big bookstore and I found myself standing in front of hundreds of books, waiting for something to jump out at me. Something did. I am reading the work of a "scientific nomad" who writes of mystical things and scientific things skilfully combined in a tale of his travels in Indonesia. I have learnt about squid and holograms and many other things already. There were other books in the same section that pretend that because you pick them up you have a mystic link with them, but this one does mean something to me and tries no coy ploys like that. It is called Gifts of Unknown Things, by Lyall Watson.

Lyall Watson attempts to de-mystify precognition. He says to imagine time as a wave on a tranquil pond. As we float along in one direction the wave moves from now to the future. But as a significant event occurs ahead, a ripple is caused in the wave and so we receive interference and some of us can interpret that interference and see things that are going to happen. It is a good metaphor in that it allows for everyone to receive the interference at any time but I have a few problems with it.

How do you account for receiving interference with regards to other people, about events which are not significant to you at all? If I dream of a jade sculpture and the following day see the sculpture on t.v. as I flip the channels, I can't see how that is a significant enough event to cause more ripples than say an earthquake. I suppose it is the judgment inherent in the idea of significant that I stumble over.

It is a book that started well for me, held my attention and then suddenly lost it when I couldn't make out whether he had suddenly abandoned realism and switched to literary metaphor or not. Got very irritated at that point. Plus I don't find anything remarkable in a young girl singing to a dying beached whale - seems like an entirely appropriate response to me so I bristled at his wonder. Anthropology can be patronizing. Also, if I had been convinced the last part of the book was real, I would have enjoyed considerably more. But as it was it became too much of a case of preaching to the converted and being excessively dramatic without being very clear. Well, anyway, it got on my nerves. But the squid and hologram stuff was very cool.

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