A Numbnut's Guide to the Universe

By Phil Gervais

Religion has long used spiritually-inspired stories to explain the universe and our place in it. As science began challenging religious beliefs, both sides dug in. Science said religion was for the weak minded. Religion said science was wrong. Using a series of personal experiences with the paranormal, our author shows how both can be used together to validate/debunk such events. In the end, this approach reveals the realities behind hauntings, post-death visits, exorcisms, karma, reincarnation and various other religious phenomena... all written in a simple conversational manner. It's an easy read, but there's a lot of depth too. It will definitely expand your view.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329595293

Book preview

A Numbnut's Guide to the Universe

A Numbnut’s Guide to the Universe

The connection between Science, Religion and Spirituality

By Phil Gervais

Copyright © 2018 by Phil Gervais ([e-mail])

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-1-329-60566-4

Foreword

Everyone should write a book at some point in their lives.  Not necessarily for others to read, but for self-awareness.  If you haven’t had enough life experience yet, use your imagination and see what comes out.  It’s a great way to learn about your inner workings.  If you end up liking the result, that’s great.  And if you don’t like it, figure out why. 

I once wrote a movie script about a reluctant rock star and his crazy sidekick drummer who go on tour, and the girl-next-door love target who isn’t impressed.  It had some great gags (drummer practicing in the motel at 3AM, the neighbors bang on the door, drummer looks out the little peephole and sees a middle finger, turns and says It’s for you), but overall it was kinda weak.  So I got mad and embarrassed and threw it out. 

Looking back though, it was a good indicator of where I was at the time.  The marriage was starting to go south, and I was writing about a guy who saw turmoil all around him, but he just wanted to have a simple life and be loved.  In the story, he got the girl.  In real life, I eventually lost the girl. 

We all have stuff like that in our lives.  To quote Ecclesiastes and Shakespeare, there is nothing new under the sun.  So there’s no sense hiding things.  Who knows?  You might help people by sharing your experience, even if you tell it in a story form through fictional characters. 

I’d been trying to find a supportive religious environment after the divorce and wasn’t having much luck.  I was raised Catholic, but they still had a tendency to rush out the door after Mass and not return for a week.  Plus, nuns and I historically didn’t get along too well. 

So I tried another place (a co-worker invited me), and had a good run for a year or two.  I taught Sunday School, coordinated Youth Band and was on several committees.  But they started preaching hatred of gays and restrictions on women, and I had to call it quits. 

I realized that they were using scripture to support their views, but their scriptures and mine didn’t quite match.  So I started learning everything, orthodox and not.  It really opened my eyes.

Add the increase in religious understanding to a wide assortment of paranormal things happening around me, and my brain was awash in stuff.  It was hard to describe to anyone because of its complexity.  Well this connected to that, which shows this, which means that…

So I had to write it down. 

Some experiences here covered multiple paranormal topics (such as the car crash), so they were split as they pertained to each concept being discussed. 

Overall this book is the merging of my paranormal experiences, basic scientific background, and religious studies to date.  I’m looking forward to future experiences, but this is enough to wrap up and call done. 

I have to thank a few people too. 

My kids of course—they rock!  Thanks for putting up with your flawed old dad for all these years.

My dear friend has taught me a lot about life, and I love her forever.  We’re spiritually connected in an amazing way.  And she is a truly beautiful soul.  Thank you my dearest! 

And I thank all of the people, alive and dead, whose paths have crossed mine.  Without them, I would have learned nothing.  I still pray for the not-so-fortunate ones, but I think we’ve all been enriched by the brief but powerful shared experiences.  

(Oh—add Lulu to that list.  The long haired black and white cat who definitely crossed my path, but in a good way)! 

So without further ado, here are the experiences and lessons learned from a numbnut who searched for life’s meaning and rediscovered God. 

Part I

The Big Picture

Look around you.  What do you see?  A room?  Furniture? Do you see the neighborhood outside the window?

Close your eyes and step back.  Step outside your neighborhood.  Are you still in the city, the state, the country?  Step back further.  Are you still on Earth?  Keep going.  Step back to the furthest regions of the cosmos.  Theoretically you could travel here someday. 

We are going to a place where you cannot travel.  Step back again until you are just outside the cosmos.  Until it is nothing more than a distant point of light. 

There, you have arrived.

Do you see wars and floods and famines?  Do you see people abusing each other and people helping each other?  Do you see fields and waterfalls and animals and oceans? 

No, it is all a point of light. 

And you are of that light.  In fact, you give off your own faint light, too dim to be seen by human eyes.  But a full-spectrum camera could easily catch your energy pattern, your spiritual fingerprint. 

You cannot stay here.  You are now in a dimension beyond the ones we understand.  You are in a dimension of nothingness. 

We must go back now.  Back to the realm of mass and energy, of cause and effect, of the real as we understand it. 

But hopefully this journey has reminded us of a few realities.  We are all part of the whole; we are all one.  We cannot separate ourselves from each other, from our environment… it is impossible.  Yet even though everything is one, as we travel back we see more and more differentiation.  The galaxies, the planets, the continents, the countries, the cities, the neighborhoods, the people… We even differentiate and battle within ourselves. 

How can we all be one, yet all be so different (and often destructively so)?  

Where Did I Come From?

I was born knowing I came from somewhere else, it was better than here, and I wanted to go back.  I couldn’t remember much about it—just that it was light and love and no pain, and it was my real home. 

This wasn’t home.   I didn’t want to be here.  I spent the good part of 45 years fighting the Universe to let me go back…  I even tried to assist the departure several times.  No dice.  I was stuck here.

During the