Explorers of the Infinite: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes-and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communication, and Touching the Beyond
Product Description
Real-life psychic, near-death, and paranormal experiences are combined with cutting-edge science and vivid adventure stories in this energetic look at why extreme athletes and mountaineers take the risks that allow them to push the limits of consciousness, and what they encounter there.
In the life-or-death world of extreme adventure sports, there is one thing that athletes often keep quiet about: the “forbidden” territory of paranormal experiences. Ranging from fleeting moments of transcendence to full-blown encounters with ghosts and everything in between—visions, near-death experiences, psychic communication—many extreme athletes have experienced these moments of connection with the beyond, but have been reluctant to talk about them.
In Explorers of the Infinite, award-winning outdoors journalist and lifelong adventure sports devotee Maria Coffey probes the mystical and paranormal experiences of mountaineers, snowboarders, … More >>
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First of all, the stories in this book are incredible…riveting…fascinating. Really. This could have even been a great book if the author left it at that–stories that show the spiritual side of adventure sports…
Instead, for each story the author tries to come up with a plausible explanation, and each time she turns to one of two places: Modern Science or Eastern Religion.
The scientific explanations for the paranormal can be quickly dismissed–of course the spiritual world can’t always be explained with logical, scientific responses.
It’s her attempt at spiritual explanations that are frustrating. She turns to Chinese mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Transendentalism, the Occult, the New Age, even voodoo to find the answers. In fact, she tries to find her explanations in no less than TWENTY-SIX different spiritual and cultural movements, even Greek mythology.
HEAVEN FORBID that she should consider God, Jesus or even Christian mysticism for any answers! After about the 20th explanation, where she’s grasping for answers within the Inuit spiritual tradition or morphic fields for her answer, it gets ridiculous. You won’t even find “Christianity” in the index, as if it were irrelevant to any major spriritual discussion.
One chapter focuses on spiritual visitors that been documented to have helped explorers and adventurers throughout history and up through modern times. The author happens to mention that more than 1/3 of Americans report having seen angels at some point in their lives. Do you know how many millions that is? Yet could any of the “spiritual friends” she mentions have been angels? HEAVEN FORBID that she would even HINT in her writings that Christianity exists! It’s ultimately sad to see how far out her way she goes to avoid it.
So in the end we have a tragic indication of where Western culture has come–to the point where our own religious traditions can’t even be mentioned in a wide-reaching book on spirituality.
Read this book for the spiritual adventure stories if you must, but take the rest of it for what it is: A politically correct tome based on Eastern religion.
For those of us that spend alot of time outdoors, and on mountains, we understand completely. This book reads so well, that the read itself is its own ten star review. Yes, it really is that good of a read. Go ahead, pick it up and start understanding why you need to get up from in front of that stupid tv you are attached to at the hip. Your tv can’t come close to the knowledge contained in this book, but I will say this; Banff films do. Got Banff Yet?
I found this to be an interesting and thought provoking examination of why many extreme athletes do what they do and what their minds?/spirits? do when the are doing what they do. However, it has application to those of us who are not extreme but can, just the same, be overwhelmed by the grandeur of nature.
Through a lot of first person stories of odd “spiritual” experiences and a good mix of possible “scientific” explanations, including her own, the author probes what we perceive at times of heightened awareness. I found it a fascinating read. Sources are cited if you want to go look them up and a good index is provided, essential if you want to use this for some reference.
There is some repetition that could have been handled better by a brief explaining that a return to that person’s story was coming up.
If you hike, ski, snowboard, climb, swim, surf, fly, jump, sail, bike, or rum it will have some great stories for you.
I bought the Kindle version after hearing Coffey on Oprah’s Soul Series. I read it more as a spiritual searcher than as an endurance athlete. The book was comprehensive in its exploration of what drives people to put themselves in the path of great suffering (made me think of the monks who built monasteries on chunks of rock off the coast of Ireland)… why? While the book is full of ghosts and other psychic phenomena, Coffey is even-handed in exploring these. She approaches mysteries with a true spirit of inquiry.
Also, I couldn’t put it down. In this snowy season, it did change my attitude about facing the cold as a mini-adventure.
Maria Coffey will be on Oprah in a few weeks (November 2008) because of this book – get a copy now and love it as much as I did! She gets right to the heart of what makes those who push physical limits tick, and does it in an incredibly palatable way. I highly recommend this book for extreme and armchair athletes alike.