The Daemon: A Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self Paperback – July 31, 2010

Very Detailed and most of this information I never Knew! Love it! I am going to purchase more books by this author.

My entire life I have been taken notice of the subtle coincidences and synchronicities that have led me to meet a certain person, cheat serious injury or death, or even arrive at a store or restaurant just before the rush. As a child I always felt that I knew things I shouldn't, wondered about the nature of life and reality, and had many many instances of Deja Vu. When sitting down to watch a television show I would recall a previous episode, only to sit in wonder as that very episode was replayed immediately after my recall. I have cheated death more times than I can recall and often wondered why I chose to take a certain course of action that was out of normal practice or been delayed by strange circumstances that led to my survival.I've wondered why I chose to watch a television show, read an article or a book, or listened to a podcast from someone I had never heard of, had no reason to listen to, and then discovered it contained information I needed.Such was the case when I heard an interview with Anthony Peake on a podcast, the name of which I have now forgotten. I ordered this book as a result of that interview and I have been absolutely floored by the information. Suddenly the precognitions, near death escapes, and coincidences that have marked my life all make sense. Even if Anthony's theory is not 100% correct it is the most likely explanation: We have lived this life before and one half of our mind, what he calls the Daemon, is living this current life as a memory. The Daemon is trying to ensure our survival in the hopes that this life can be all it can be. It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book with infinite courses of action or the greatest role playing video game ever invented.But this book is not just woo woo speculation. It's heavily footnoted and references the newest theories in quantum physics, psychology, and examines the origins of our oldest religious practices. Anthony's theory, it turns out, is nothing new.

This is the third Anthony Peake book I have read and I generally like reading his books. Peake is very much like a contemporary version of the British writer Colin Wilson who used to like to dig into the areas of the Occult, New Age Mysticism, the Paranormal and Parapsychology. Like Colin Wilson some of Peake's ideas are a little fuzzy and over reliant on anecdotes to support the arguments but Peake is much more concise then Wilson ever was. So what is "The Daemon" about? In a previous book (Life After Death: Cheating the Ferryman - a book I have yet to read but Peake frequently references) Peake puts forward a fascinating idea that the mass release of the brain chemical glutamate under times of near death or severe trauma causes psychological time to pass far more rapidly then physical time. At near death, a dying person re-experiences their entire life which is paradoxically experienced in normal psychological time but may occur over a brief period of physical time. Peake suggest this life repeat happens infinitely over shorter and shorter scales of physical time so that a person never actually dies but instead lives their life over and over again - an idea the philosopher Nietzshe called "Eternal Recurrence." Fortunately, in Peake's theory this eternal recurrence is not a simple "ground hog day" where one lives the same life over and over again as it is suggested in the book that consciousness at near death essentially realises itself to be two conscious entities. One entity Peake calls the Eidolon, which is our normal, everyday, left brained consciousness and the other Peake calls the Daemon, which is a kind of higher right brained consciousness that is aware of its past life or lives and can guide the Eidolon away from repeating the same life mistakes it has made in the past. In other words, Peake argues that each of us has a guardian angel - the Daemon - which is in fact none other then ourselves having done the journey of life before. Peake contends that the Daemon can "speak" to us and that certain neurological disturbances as seen in migraine aura, temporal lobe epilepsy and schizophrenia can enhance the lines of communication between the Daemon and its Eidolon. To support his thesis Peake sites a number of examples in history where people have appeared to be guided by some internal entity who appeared to have unwarranted knowledge of future events and influenced the actions of a person. Notable people that Peake contends may have been guided at times by their own internal Daemon are Joan of Arc, Winston Churchill and the science fiction writer Phillip K Dick. Peake dedicates the entire last chapter to the strange mind and experiences of the brilliant, yet troubled Phillip K Dick. I feel people should look at this book as a speculative idea being worked out and put out there for potential examination rather then a rigorous scientific hypothesis. Like most highly speculative ideas, the Daemon hypothesis perhaps raises more questions then it can explain but nonetheless I feel it would be a shame if this book was dismissed for that reason. Having said that, here are some questions that I found myself pondering while reading this book. Peake argues that the Eidolon's experience is like a virtual reality created by the brain - he calls this virtual reality the "Bohmian Imax" in reference to physicist David Bohm who suggested that the universe was a like a hologram. Peake contends that the brain encodes and uses information holographically but he fails to explain why the Eidolon doesn't experience the world holographically but instead experiences the world as localised in space and time. On the other hand, presumably the Daemon must experience both a non-local holographic world and one situated in the space-time of the Eidolon for how else can it guide the Eidolon? Nothing in current brain theory - whether involving mainstream neuroscience research on neural processing or speculative quantum-based theories of brain - can explain this dual nature of perception between the Eidolon and the Daemon. Mainstream science has difficulty explaining the consciousness of an insect let alone the consciousness of a brain that houses both an Eidolon and a transcendental Daemon. Perhaps a question which is more straight forwardly answered in relation to the assumptions of the book is how Peake explains cases like demonic possession where people feel they are guided by someone or something to act in ways that they feel or know are detrimental to their so-called Eidolon? Can the Daemon turn demonic? Perhaps this is a subject for another book?

This book is a must read! Once I began reading, I couldn't put it down. While I can't say that I agree with everything that Peake has come to believe through the years, as a result of his experiences and research, most of this book gave me the answers that I have been searching for.Many years ago, I had an experience with "TLE" (Temporal Lobe Epilepsy). Maybe, I should say - an experience that mimicked "TLE". It lasted for several days, but, it only happened once! Everyone around me during that time (and there were many witnesses) saw some of the "supernatural phenomena" that took place. I didn't know what had happened to me for many years, but what I experienced was profound. It changed me, and it changed many others, too.As far as I know, this book is the only book that gives the correct information on this particular subject, and it helped me make sense of what my "Daemon" was trying to get across to me. Peake also helped me to understand that this experience happens to many people.The world has become so materialistic that very few people actually recognize that we are spiritual beings, having a physical experience. Peake has courageously brought extremely important information to the world, and I hope that his work gets the positive attention that it deserves.I am so impressed with Anthony Peake, that I ordered his first book, "Is There Life After Death?" before I even finished this one!

Une étude sur un sujet passionnant

Infere sobre pontos chave da consciência humana de uma perspectiva científica. Recomendo, ótimo livro de leitura fácil para todos interessados no assunto.

Die Grundthese ist interessant, das Kapitel über Philip K. Dick ist gut. Aber das Buch wiederholt sich oft. Zudem scheinen die Kapitel im letzten Moment vor der Veröffentlichung umgestellt worden zu sein, da ein spätes Kapitel plötzlich wieder längst etablierte Begriffe definiert. Ok, um Zeit totzuschlagen, nicht als ernsthafter spiritueller Ratgeber.

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