Review by Joey Madia
Earlier this year, I reviewed a new book called Convergence: The Interconnection of Extraordinary Experience by Barbara Mango, PhD and Lynn Miller, MS. Mango and Miller were also guests on my weekly livestream and we belong to an informal research group. The subject matter centers on near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, contact/unidentified aerial phenomena experience, and past life regression/recall.
I am experiencer with three of the four. I have never had a near death experience. In all of these phenomena, there is one word that experiencers use in almost every case: transformative.
Having been interested in Reverend Carter’s work for many years, I was excited by the opportunity to read and review his new book, Initiation. You will notice that “Transformation” appears in the title, as it focuses on contactee/abduction cases. A second subtitle reads, “A Guide for Contact Experiencers.”
At 125 pages, which includes three Appendices, Initiation is an easily understandable, helpfully laid out handbook in two parts. The first, “Foundation,” uses Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as its structural guide, outlining the three “acts” of the journey: Separation, Initiation, and Return (although the latter is not an explicit section title). Intermixed are subsections titled “Indicators,” “Teachers and Mentors,” and “Trials, Disciplines and Vows.” The latter two are also sub-stages of Campbell’s full framework. Part Two has two sections: “Spiritual Transformation” and “In Their Own Words: Experiencer Stories.” Just from the Table of Contents it is clear that the content is a balanced mix of Spirit and Science, Theory and Application. Continue reading