Children's Unexplained Experiences in a Post Materialist World

Unusual experiences of children and adolescents tend to be dismissed as the result of an Evelyn Elsaesser imagination or, more damaging to them, as pathological. With Donna Thomas, young people finally have an advocate who does not conduct research on them but with them. In this book, rooted in the most up-to-date scientific expertise and infused by genuine empathy for the youngsters who have those experiences, a new interpretation framework is proposed, based on the most recent findings in the field of consciousness research. What caring parent will not be delighted to finally have the information needed to better understand their child's unusual perceptions? What responsible professional will not be grateful to have the tools to assess whether therapeutic or pharmacological treatment is really the right way to go? Children's Unexplained Experiences in a Post Materialist World is a groundbreaking work with the potential to fundamentally transform the current clinical practice. It is also a must-read for anyone seeking insights into those unusual phenomena that their children - and they themselves - may one day experience.

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.

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.

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.

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.