By Rory Patton, NLP Practitioner
I was writing a novel when one of my characters was stabbed by a sword whose legend was that anyone it killed was consigned to oblivion. When she woke up in unfamiliar surroundings she had lots of questions. Brianna became my proxy, her questions ones that I have asked over half a century; underlying them is the big question. ‘What if everything you know to be true is untrue because of the way in which you are knowing it?’ From this arose my book ‘Brianna: A Life Between Lives’ in which she investigates the underlying structure of reality and the limits of knowledge.
It is easy to forget that there are alternative models of reality. Modern science is constantly demonstrating how little we know about the universe, let alone any alternative universes now being postulated. One question I looked at was whether conflicting models of the world might be both true and false. When we accept multiple levels of reality the answer becomes obvious. Not necessarily easy to accept, but obvious and logical.
As humans we tend to be digital thinkers and have real difficulties in accommodating contradictory beliefs. Freed from the limits of ordinary reality Brianna discovers an ability to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast except that she is forced to redefine her understanding of ‘before’ or of time itself. Could God both exist and not exist, how many gods are there, are any real? When we die what happens to us, do we go to heaven or hell, are we reincarnated, perhaps there is no afterlife, what if all of these are true? This is a book of rational possibilities beyond rational comprehension; questions to consider, but not necessarily to answer.
Brianna is helped in her quest for understanding by a guide, Caraid, who employs insights from various sources to help her consider new possibilities not just for her. As she learns more, Brianna becomes excited about what unlimited possibility can provide. Unfortunately there is one dark cloud on her horizon; whether she was allowed to continue her journey or have it ended in eternal nothingness depended on the decision of a tribunal. You might say the book is a metaphorical undermining of the roots of fear, you could just enjoy it as an odd story. Either way you may find your world looks a little less solid by the end.
You can contact Rory Patton at
