Forget the OBE Movie... it's all about the fiction

[PeacefulWarrior]

PS- the author is LDS, like myself, and this has a lot to do with the subject manner she usually writes about.  It's also how I came accross the book.
-Dan

"Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?"

[PeacefulWarrior]

The following is the intro to a new young adult fictional book entitled "My Body Fell Off" by RJ Rowley. It is part of a series called "Light Traveler"...

The reason I entitled this post "forget OBE movie" is because I believe that stories like this one, especially geared for children and young adults (which can be read and enjoyed by adults as well!) Is much more likely to get people to be interested in the natural spritual and intellectual "evolution" (as RB puts it) than a film would.  

Check out the site and read the sample chapters.  Get back to us and tell us here in the forum what you think about stories like this.  Although there is a lot of good to be said, there maybe some of you who find negative aspects of fictional stories regarding OBE.



http://www.bjrowley.com/MyBodyFellOff.html

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A Breathtaking Out-of-Body Adventure That Will Have You Sitting on the Edge of Your Chair!

    Imagine going to bed one night and suddenly finding yourself floating around on the ceiling—looking down at your own sleeping body!

    Imagine being able to leave your body anytime you want, and passing invisible through walls and doors—and even people!

    Imagine transporting yourself to your friends' houses in the blink of an eye—without them even knowing! Or floating right into movies and concerts for free! Or enjoying the Super Bowl on the fifty yard line—right behind the quarterback!

    Then, imagine finding yourself inadvertently and invisibly witnessing a secret meeting of some of the most dangerous criminals of our time as they plot a multi-million dollar conspiracy involving blackmail, kidnapping, and murder!

    Bart Elderberry experiences all this and more after becoming the recipient of a very unique and special God-given ability. A recent transplant from California to Utah, Bart is just beginning to enjoy the excitement of high school, driving, and dating, when his whole world is turned upside down by the bizarre events transpiring around him. And suddenly, his unusual ability is the only thing standing between life and death for himself and his new-found friends.

    Now...imagine trying to explain to ANYBODY about your rare skills and abilities without them thinking you're as crazy as a three-dollar bill and throwing you in the loony-bin for life.

    My Body Fell Off! delivers a fast-paced, heart-pounding adventure that will leave you gasping at every turn. An adventure that, once begun, will be impossible to put aside until its final, dramatic conclusion

One review of the book:
My Body Fell Off!
By Brent J. Rowley

Covenant Communications, 1997. Paperback: 190 pages.
Suggested retail price: $10.95 (US)

 
Reviewed by: Jeff Needle


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At first, I thought I could write the shortest review I've ever written -- five words -- "Hey, what's up with this?" I decided on a fuller treatment.

Bartholomew Elderberry is transplanted, with his family, from California to rural Utah. As a teen about to experience the best years of his life, Bart is not altogether pleased with the idea, but he has no choice.

He quickly becomes friends with his several of his new classmates. One evening the group decides to go for a "joyride" along a steep mountain pass. An impatient truck driver behind them tries to run them off the road. The brakes on Bart's vehicle give out, and they plummet over a cliff. Bart suddenly finds himself floating up and away from the accident, a real "near death experience."

He soon discovers that he can have such out-of-body experiences at will. Separate from his body, he can travel wherever he pleases, undiscovered by the human eye. He reluctantly shares this knowledge with his best friend Paul, who shockingly suggests that such a talent could come in handy vis a vis a girls' locker room. (Don't worry -- Bart is too good a Mormon to even think of spying on the girls.)

It isn't long before he overhears a plot to kidnap a young girl. This discovery, along with others, leads the young people on an adventure that would place them in harm's way, and test Bart's mystical abilities to the max.


Evaluation
I don't quite know what to make of this book. The "About the Author" page at the end of the book claims that Mr. Rowley "enjoy(s) adventure stories and others about exciting and interesting things that could happen to normal LDS people." Yup, out of body experiences, hair-raising adventures with kidnappers, blackmailers and murderers sounds exactly like a day in the life of a normal LDS person.

One is tempted to dismiss My Body Fell Off! with a shrug, but I think there are some issues that need to be addressed:

Without revealing the ending, suffice it to say that the author sees some romance, some beauty, in death. It is made quite explicit in the beginning of the book, when Bart has his first out-of-body experience. As he rose into the air, he looked down on his body:


    Time has stopped, I reasoned. My mind is rushing at such high speed, it looks like time has slowed down. That must be it. Any second now the fall will be over, and I'll be. . . .
    Dead? So, this is it, I thought matter-of-factly. I'm dead. It didn't even hurt.
    The ground started to settle away from me, and I realized that I was floating upwards. I felt as light as a fluff of feather. There was no sensation of rising, falling, or moving at all. I felt . . . free, as though heavy chains had been removed.
    Strangely, I felt ALIVE! More alive than I had ever felt before.
. . .
    That's Bartholomew Elderberry, I observed, without any emotion whatever. I knew Bartholomew Elderberry was me, but the body I was looking at no longer held any interest for me.
    I'm done with that body now. I don't need it anymore.
This on pages 35 and 36, very early in the story. I was a bit troubled by this ecstatic view of death, particularly given that the intended audience of this book is LDS youth! Surely the problems of teen suicide are sufficiently well-known to give any author pause in producing such a depiction.

I had to read nearly to the end of the book before there was any specifically life-affirming dialogue. Weak as it was, I appreciated the passing nod to the pleasures of living.

But there's a deeper issue here -- I found myself wondering whether the obviously-gnostic depiction of flesh-as-wrapper to be shed in order to achieve happiness. Common notions of purity and chastity are transformed into a dread of the flesh, and this I find antithetical to the best in Mormon humanism (by which I mean Mormonism's appreciation for life in the here and now).

Mormon youth-oriented literature is often criticized for being too preachy, too moralistic. Searching for some underlying message in Rowley's book, I could not figure what his goal was in bringing this message to us. Is life really all that bad? Should we be glorifying death in a book intended for the LDS youth market? I think not.

Later developments in this book introduce an Indian who can similarly leave his body, and elements of occultism and spiritism make their way into the book. Care should be taken that such objectionable views be presented as such.

I can only guess that Mr. Rowley did not intend his book to take this direction. Instead, he has tried to produce a unique piece of Mormon literature, the first I'm aware of to address the issue of near-death experiences.

While Betty Eadie has expressed such views in her books on her own experiences, no one thinks she reflects mainstream LDS teaching. Neither does Mr. Rowley, in my opinion.

Young readers may enjoy the story. Adults will find large holes in the plot -- impenetrably manipulative plot twists, rescued only by manipulating the spirits and dumbing-down the actors. I wonder whether Mr. Rowley will follow up with a second volume. If he does, I sincerely hope he considers the subliminal effects of this, his first novel.


... nfx v3.1 jeff.needle@general.com
taken from:
http://www.aml-online.org/reviews/b/B199847.html

Another review: (same from same site as above)
My Body Fell Off!
No. 1 in the The Light Traveler Adventure Series series
By Brent J. Rowley

Golden Wings Enterprises, 2000. Trade paperback: 202 pages.
ISBN: 0-9700103-1-1
Suggested retail price: $11.95 (US)

 
Reviewed by: D. Michael Martindale


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Score: Father 0, Daughter 1
It's a flashy, attractive cover. It's a catchy title. I examined the book carefully, front and back cover, and saw nothing to indicate genre except for the designation "Adventure Series." But I saw it shelved in the Young Adult section of Deseret Book. And the protagonist is a teenaged boy. I decided I would think of it as a Young Adult novel. I had to think of it that way, otherwise I would have to give it a negative review.

Bart Elderberry is a new tenth grader who would have been excited to start high school if his family had stayed in California. Instead he starts high school in some unspecified town in Utah Valley. The first four chapters spend time letting him get used to his environment, meeting the girl that will become his love interest, having a run-in with the cowboy bullies, and generally making friends he can interact with for the rest of the book. In chapter five the action finally gets started.

There's a church dance, and a bunch of them hop in the car to go for a drive in the canyon. On the way down, thanks to the careless driving of a passing vehicle, they go tumbling over the edge of the road. That's when Bart discovers his body can fall off.

He thinks he's dead. And he's having a great time flying around here and there. But when he suddenly is sucked back into his body, he's obliged to reassess his conclusion. As the phenomenon keeps occurring, he finally figures out he's astral projecting, and learns to control it.

He also comes across a kidnapping plot, tied to an even more elaborate plot cooked up by some local scoundrel. Bart and his friends get involved, and have an easy time working things out with Bart's ability -- until Bart discovers that the scoundrel has employed someone else with the ability to astral project, and that someone else knows how to control it a whole lot better than Bart.

The writing style is clearly Young Adult. I couldn't have enjoyed it without thinking of it as any other genre. Once you get past the lengthy four-chapter introduction (which really should be shortened up), the action zings relentlessly. The book is very readable. But don't expect any sophistication or profundity. For me as an adult, I wouldn't have liked the book except to tell myself I was about to read a Young Adult novel, and deal with it at that level.

But for my fourteen-year-old daughter, it was fantastic. She loved it. She devoured it. She instantly demanded books two and three, which I own but have not yet read, and devoured them, then regaled me with her misery that more books didn't exist. This series is definitely Young Adult, and works quite well at that level.

Okay, so they're Young Adult. What's the big deal? Why do I keep harping on that?

Because in the Author's Note at the end of the book, I get the impression that Rowley didn't necessarily intend that they be Young Adult. And I also get the impression that they have succeeded with other adult readers. One man's poison, I guess. Rowley believes in the reality of astral projection -- convinced after much research -- and claims that others have approached him who have the ability and found his books helpful in dealing with the phenomenon. He believes astral projection is one of the gifts of the Spirit -- a talent given by God -- to certain people.

This is the gist of the Author's Note, and it's obvious why he would feel a need for an Author's Note to explain his attitude about astral projection, since many members of the church would consider it approaching apostasy, if not blasphemy, to call something traditionally associated with new age spookology a gift of the Spirit. Yet there's nothing in our theology that requires dismissal of the idea. All you need for astral projection is a spirit that can separate from the body, and LDS theology can certainly accommodate that.

Personally, I'm not convinced. But neither am I dissuaded. I would simply need to do my own research to convince myself Rowley's theory is true -- a claim like that requires some serious evidence before acceptance. But I hope it is. I think it would be fun to have astral projection be a reality.

In the meantime, your kids can read the series and enjoy it, and everyone can call it harmless fantasy if genuine astral projection is too creepy a concept for you. And you may even find that you can enjoy reading it too, as long as you don't expect Moby willy or something. It's certainly a step above Goosebumps.


--  
D. Michael Martindale
dmichael@wwno.com


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"Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?"


Edited by - daniel on 03 April 2002  18:23:23