دانلود کتاب The Gathering

The following is distilled from over three hundred pages of raw material, most of it written and recorded during a period of fifteen days in the spring of 1996. Although it begins with an encounter that can only be characterized as “alien,” the theme is not alien contact. The theme is human consciousness and transformation. it details a number of events: dreams, visions, visitations, call them what you will. Any attempt to classify or categorize them would only impose demarcations that do not strictly exist—personal experiences that have left me stunned, awestruck, baffled on occasions, ecstatic on others, profoundly affected; but, above all, convinced of their reality. I know what I saw. I know what I experienced.
While the events detailed here are personal in nature, some may have impersonal implications; by that I mean they may conform to mystical, religious, or even strictly Christian archetypes. I am not concerned with the language of their imagery, nor am I too concerned with their meanings. I am concerned with their accuracy, and I have come to believe that visions are not the prerogative of poets, just as mystical experiences are not confined to saints; nor are encounters with aliens the preserve of lunatics.
Parts of this book will work like a spaceship for some of you, a vehicle into other dimensions, a subtle experience in which one senses a felt relief, or a felt shift. Some of these “encounters” may prove to have spiritual or even scientific significance; they may not. it may be that their sole purpose is to subvert the rational world view by keeping mystery alive. If so, that's enough. But let it be understood: These events, waking or sleeping, are not subjective. That is, my conscious mind does not create them. They do not belong to me in any conventional sense; they happen to me. Always, I seem not to be having an encounter, but seeing one in which I am involved.
The second half of this book both informs and is informed by that initial experience. While integrating all manner of new information, I am made to witness the destruction of whatever belief system I might have had previously.
Transformation has been described as an awakening, a new quality of attention. If so, this book is a conspiracy of transformation—not to impose it on those who are neither ripe nor interested, but to send a signal to those who are. Should you find these accounts difficult or even impossible to believe, then this book is probably not for you; put it aside.
At some point in our lives, it seems, we decide just how conscious we want to be. We establish a threshold of awareness. We choose how stark a truth we are willing to entertain, and how open we are to examining contradictions in our lives and beliefs. Our brains then censor what we see and hear, filtering reality to suit our level of courage. According to Marilyn Ferguson, writing in The Aquarian Conspiracy, at every crossroads in our life we make the choice for greater or lesser awareness: transformation is not a spectator sport.
My efforts here are not to convince or convert anyone. If you are not already a believer, this book will not change your mind. My aim is merely to add one more voice to the growing numbers who have been dragged to the edge of reality by something they have seen or experienced; something so totally strange and anomalous that it triggers personal transformation while inducing a kind of religious awe, but something which you cannot, or dare not, confide to another.
Transformation is difficult and singular. It is a journey with no boundaries, no rules, and no final destination. All this is just to say that while it is a lonely path, you are not alone on it.