Donna has researched with children for 18 years and has a special interest in the nature of self and anomalous experiences in childhood. She lives in Blackburn, UK.
Children remind us of the innocence, joy and--too often--the
sorrows and trauma of youth. The rich tapestry of human experience
starts in childhood and shapes how adults remember our childhood,
and experience self and world in the present. Children really are
our future selves. In this ground-breaking book Donna Thomas
provides a comprehensive review of the history of ideas and
research on anomalous experiences in childhood, including her own
work, and guides the reader through a mind-opening exploration of
what these experiences reveal about the nature of human
consciousness in a post-materialist world.--James Lake MD, author,
An Integrative Paradigm for Mental Health Care: Ideas and Methods
Shaping the Future
For too long, our culture has focused on teaching children and
forgotten that there is an enormous amount we can learn from them.
Donna Thomas's book is essential reading because it clearly shows
that childhood is a special, spiritual phase of our lives, in which
we have easier access to anomalous experiences. The books shows
that we may need to lip our normal assumptions about childhood --
in some ways, children's experience of the world is richer and
deeper than adults', and we need to find ways of regaining their
sense of wonder. At the very least, we need to value children's
anomalous experiences rather than treating them with disdain. This
book is an important step in that direction.--Dr Steve Taylor PhD,
author of The Leap and Extraordinary Awakenings
Having researched and taught parapsychology and transpersonal
psychology for many years, I am constantly privileged with
confidential stories of people's 'weird' experiences, which are not
weird to me. Very often people are sharing these exceptional
experiences for the first time, having feared all sorts of
pathological and diabolical stigma associated with these taboo
subjects, and very often these experiences occurred or started
occurring during childhood. So not only do these experiences often
remain subterranean, they are also woefully under researched, and
so Donna does us and our children a great service in
de-stigmatising and normalising these exceptional experiences in
children, and in exploring how these experiences affect children
and the meaning they apply to them.--Dr David Luke, author of DMT
Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule
In "The Free Man's Worship", Bertrand Russell (1903) describes the
world as it is portrayed within the materialistic worldview that
much of modern-day science has adopted: Man is the product of
causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that
his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his
beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms;
that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can
preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour
of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday
brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast
death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man's
achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a
universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute,
are yet so certain that no philosophy that rejects them can hope to
standYet such a bleak view is challenged by the kinds of
experiences that are recounted in this scholarly book and only
remains tenable if they are dismissed as a consequence of
credulity, misunderstanding or even as pathological. But when those
experiences become the norm rather than the exception, then it
becomes increasingly difficult to set them aside in these ways.
Rooted in the lived experience of young people who have not yet
been enculturated to differentiate between what is 'true' and what
is 'false', what is 'legitimate' and what is 'illegitimate', what
is 'silly' and what is potentially profound, a compelling case is
made that these voices need to be heard respectfully. Donna Thomas
outlines the nature of the anomalous experiences that occur (often
spontaneously and unexpectedly) to many young people and speculates
on their meaning and implications. It draws attention to the
tremendous value of adopting a participatory approach that sees the
experiencer as an intuitive social scientist who is constantly
trying to make best sense of their own experience in a rational and
coherent way. This contrasts with a traditional approach that sees
the researcher as the expert, and the experiencer as someone to be
managed, categorised and accounted for, which runs the risk of
simply confirming the researcher's own assumptions and biases, and
missing a great opportunity to learn something new. As well as
showcasing individual accounts, the book is rigorously researched
and seeks to contextualise the material within a wider academic
understanding. It addresses the taboo around disclosing anomalous
experiences that respondents become aware of from a very early age,
and can give support and guidance to parents whose offspring may
have reported similar experiences and are struggling come to terms
with them - it is clear that simply ignoring or attempting to
suppress them out of fear of reinforcing delusional beliefs can be
counterproductive, creating more distress or confusion than it
resolves. Children often assume that anomalous experiences are the
norm and it may come as a surprise when they find they are not
shared by others. When experiences can be shared in a
non-judgmental space that allows them to be interpreted and
understood, and parallels can be recognised in the experiences of
others, then they can provide the foundation for growth and
transformation.--Professor Chris Roe, Director, Centre for
Psychology & Social Sciences, Northampton University; resident of
the Society for Psychical Research and the International Affiliate
for England of the Parapsychology Foundation
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