Q: When
did you start writing
visionary fiction?
A: It
began in my late teens, but I didn’t know what it was yet. Even
in the books I read, I liked the visionary elements very much.
When
I read science fiction as a teenager, I was most interested in the
sci-fi
books that delved into the human mind, like Robert Heinlein’s STRANGER
IN A STRANGE LAND. I loved the mental powers its hero has.
When I read books by Stephen King (CARRIE, DREAMCATCHER) or by Dean
Koontz
(WATCHERS, LIGHTENING), it was the enhanced mental abilities of the
characters
that intrigued me. When I read literary fiction in college, I enjoyed
writers like Hermann Hesse, who was a very “mind-oriented”
writer.
The stream of consciousness writers (Joyce, Faulkner) then the magical
realists out of South America, like Marquez, wrote literature that
tried
to mimic the way the human mind flowed through life. The interior
world made exterior--this was what I liked reading.
Even when I read mystery novels as a teen, it was the “thinkers”
I liked the most (Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes). I liked the
mental puzzle of life. Carlos Castaneda’s books intrigued me in
the seventies because they showed the limitless potential of human
consciousness. In all this, I was gravitating toward books that
showed the expansion
of human consciousness. I was lucky to be a baby boomer; our
whole
lives have been lived in the context of a human mind evolving at the
fastest
rate our brains have ever evolved in history.
So the “brain” and the “mind” have been my interest since very
young. Not surprisingly, then, when I began to write, I wrote
books based in
brain science. I studied the way the human mind works and hoped
to help people understand themselves, their relationships, their
children,
their schools and their communities from a brain-based point of
view.
At the same time, I’ve been writing fiction that focuses, also, on the
human brain from an imaginative point of view. Many themes cannot
be dealt with in nonfiction that can in fiction.
Imagining the limitless mind is the subject of my visionary fiction
(for a complete definition of visionary fiction, see below). I
think there are two uncharted frontiers in contemporary life:
outer space and the human mind. I think we are evolving into a
new kind of human being, one that will not be able to fully explore
outer space unless it parallels that exploration with the expansion of
human consciousness.
Q: When you
say “a new kind of human being,” is this the “new human” you talk
about in your novel, THE MIRACLE?
A:
Yes. I think we are evolving into a new species of human
being. Our
exploration of the human mind leads us into this new human.
For about two hundred years we have been focused as a race on accessing
more and more of our own power of mind. Every few hundred
thousand years our brains expand their abilities in such leaps that our
cultures have to follow. This last happened millennia ago, when
we evolved
to employ abstract intelligence in our civilization building. We
came to rely on reason (the cerebral cortex) more than on instinct (the
brain stem and lower limbic system). In
THE WONDER OF CHILDREN, my
nonfiction study, and in THE MIRACLE, my latest novel, I have hoped to
make sense of our contemporary evolution in both scientific and
imaginative terms. Our minds are now expanding from the 10
percent brain usage that has characterized homo sapiens to perhaps 15 -
20 percent brain use by the end of this century. This is a
significant leap in use of the mind--a new leap in human evolution--and
visionary fiction is about this new human. In terms of genus and
species, I think we are in the process of evolving from homo sapiens to
homo infiniens.
Q: How would
you define
“visionary fiction” in this context?
A:
“Visionary fiction” is fiction in which the expansion of the human mind
drives the plot. Where science fiction is characterized by
storytelling based in expanded use of science to drive narrative,
visionary fiction is characterized by storytelling based in expanded
use of mental ability to
drive narrative.
My visionary novel, THE MIRACLE, is driven by the characters’ immersion
in new experiences of mind. Expanded mental abilities also drive
my first novel,
AN
AMERICAN MYSTIC, which was part visionary novel, part spiritual
fiction. Carlos Castaneda’s THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN (and all
his Don Juan books) were driven by new mental experience, the human
mind’s expansion of mental ability. The television show TOUCHED
BY AN ANGEL is built on expanded mental ability (in its case, the
ability to see angels).
The key to this genre is the focus on mental ability. In
visionary books, the following sorts of things happen in ways central
to plot and character:
- mystical experiences (sudden, loving experiences
of mind that transform self)
- visions (seeing ‘God,’ ‘angels,’ ‘power’ in dreams or
other waking images)
- clairvoyance (seeing into someone else’s future or
past)
- telekinesis (the ability to alter the composition or
motion of physical objects using mental ability)
- telepathy (reading other people’s minds)
- meta-telepathy (controlling other people’s minds)
- hallucinations and meta-hallucinations (seeing what
is “not there” and seeing what is “not there” many different times in
similar patterns)
- precognitive dreams (dreams that come true years
later)
- clusters of eerie coincidence
- psychic and paranormal experience (not the dial a 900
number kind of stuff, but the kind that makes a reader stop and say, ‘I
think I had a grandmother who was like this,’ or ‘I had an experience
like this years ago.’)
- “presences,” like ghosts (not exaggerated horror
movie ghosts, but the chill of a presence you can’t turn away from)
- after-death and after-life experiences
- visitations from “spirits”
- channeling
- feeling safe and utterly one with the world (whether
in a religious context or while out in nature or, suddenly, in any
place at all)
- profound insight that transforms depression into
joy
- remote viewing (seeing what is happening somewhere
else in the world as its happening)
- past life realization (dreams or visions of oneself
as another person long ago)
- uncanny accuracy of personal intuition.
Remember, these are fiction, so we don’t have to spend time “proving”
the existence of angels, or of telepathy, or of light that curves the
human mind, or whether intuition is right or wrong. Since these
are fiction, we can enjoy the visionary experience for what it is--a
new direction
of the human mind. In the same way, science fiction does not need
us to “prove” that there is such a thing as a “transporter” or “the
starship Enterprise.” If the story is well written, we will
experience verisimilitude--the sense of reality--and let the story lead
us. Good visionary fiction can encourage the same kind of
“suspension of disbelief” where mental ability is concerned.
Billions of people are having uncanny experiences. These same
people don’t have a fictional world, yet, in which to see their
experiences reflected and given paths of meaning. Visionary
fiction, with its visionary realism, not only gives these people a
mirror for their mental and emotional experiences, but ultimately gives
our whole civilization access to experimental landscapes in which to
keep expanding the human mind through the power of story.
Q: How did
you, personally, get interested in focusing your fiction on these kinds
of experiences.
A: I grew up
with a mother who had a number of these kinds of visionary
experiences. She was confronted by a ghost. She had
precognitive dreams and
visions. She saw in her mind a house we moved to years before we
moved there. She knew future events before they occurred.
I also have had many of these experiences myself. For instance,
in the early eighties when I was in England, I dreamt that my former
girlfriend (who was married by now) was in the room with me. She
held out
a baby, saying, “Mike, I want you to meet Rachel.” I woke up with
a start and called back to the States. Her husband answered the
phone, saying, “Yes, we just had a baby last night! How did you
know? And how did you know we named her Rachel?” I was
thousands of miles away, and hadn’t been in contact with my former
girlfriend for years. How did I know the moment her baby was
born, and the name?
This was a visionary experience. This is the kind of experience I
and a skeptic could argue about forever if we start with, “What’s the
scientific explanation for that?” I like scientific analysis and
have based over a dozen of my nonfiction books on the kind of brain
science that allows this debate. But I also want to understand
the experience without debate, as intuitive evidence of the human
mind’s limitless abilities. To this end, I write fiction plots
that include, integrate and are driven by this kind of uncanny mental
experience.
Everyone at some point in life has a mystical experience, an uncanny
experience, an unexplainable mental vision. Visionary fiction is
about those moments in human life: the ones we have almost no known
language for; the ones we hide from others or disbelieve; the ones we
feel foolish or “woo woo” about; the ones we sense are leading us
somewhere but don’t have a map by which to follow. The greatest
barrier to the expansion of human consciousness is the fear of new
vision. Visionary fiction is a way to push through the fear, a
way of exploring the relationship
of the world and the mind, in the same way that science fiction gives
us
a fearlessness to explore the human being’s relationship with science.
I have a personal interest in becoming fearless in my own growth
as a human being, and visionary fiction, like all worthwhile art, is a
way that I, as an artist, can share the human journey toward of courage
with others. I continue to write science-based nonfiction,
social philosophy, and literary fiction; meanwhile, I hope to continue
writing visionary fiction because it is its own unique challenge and
joy.
Q: How is
“visionary fiction” different than “religious fiction,” or “spiritual
fiction” or new age literature in general?
A: Religious
fiction is a phrase that generally means Christian fiction. The
most famous examples would be the LEFT BEHIND series. In this
kind of
fiction, plot is driven by a religious topography. Whether
Christian, Jewish, Hindu in base, religious fiction is a footnote to
the already written topography of the religion itself. Visionary
fiction has no established topography. It is not based in a story
already written long ago.
Where religious literature is pre-structured by a religion, “new
age literature” tends to be the opposite: employing loose adventure
formats which can be laden with personal wisdom teaching. The
topography
or structure of the narrative is not very important in new age
literature: the teaching is most important. New age literature
tends to be about laying out spiritual principles in lieu of
established religion.
In a visionary fiction, even if the book uses a typical quest or
adventure format, the mental abilities of characters are the key to the
book, and those abilities take characters and plots into journeys that
may or may not lead to the establishment of a new spirituality or
religion.
Whatever wisdom teaching might occur is an integrated part of the
narrative
map created by the fiction--it is not the focus of the fiction.
Most new age fiction feels like it’s trying to be nonfiction.
Visionary fiction strives to be like the best of literary fiction:
fictions that uncover new mental and emotional maps.
I make a distinction between “spiritual fiction” and “visionary
fiction” that others may find to be too fine. To me, books like
THE CELESTINE PROPHECY are spiritual fiction rather than visionary
fiction. In spiritual fiction (as in new age literature),
spirituality rather than mental ability drives the plot.
Spiritual fiction is more like new age fiction: adventure, quest plots
which primarily serve as vehicles
for wisdom and spirituality teaching.
Visionary fiction is fiction about the journey of the expanding human
mind itself. Visionary fiction has a clear signature--the story
exists as a vehicle for showing how mental ability is expanding in its
characters (and how that expansion affects everybody and the
world). My own
book, THE MIRACLE, is written in this mode. Visionary novels are
not plots set up specifically to teach spirituality. Rather, the
visionary stories exist to stretch human vision completely into realms
of free mystery.
It’s true, however, that a lot of visionary fiction is very spiritual
(my own certainly has spiritual elements and elements of spiritual
teaching). And it’s also true that right now, in the publishing
market, visionary fiction, spiritual fiction, new age fiction and even
new age nonfiction all blur together for marketing purposes. But
I think there is a
distinction to be made over the next decades between novels that are
written
for the purpose of teaching spirituality and novels that are written
about
our growing mental abilities per se, with the story itself breaking new
ground. The best of science fiction or literary fiction is not
about
teaching principles; it’s about the story itself, the pure naked story
driving the reader to new realms of seeing. This is the kind of
literature
visionary fiction strives to be. Thus I see a distinction between
it and the other literature that it is seemingly like.
Q: Are there
others beside yourself who are writing visionary fiction?
A: As
far as I can see thus far, visionary fiction is being written in other
genres, as if in disguise (the Castaneda books are a clear example of
this--visionary fictions that could not succeed as fiction thus were
promoted by author and publisher as nonfiction). Visionary
fiction
is now being written as nonfiction, religious fiction, science fiction,
fantasy, new age nonfiction, etc. Part of my unconscious
motivation
to write THE MIRACLE was to create a pure piece of visionary fiction, a
novel that hopes to push the envelope of religious and new age
literature
toward a pure literary form called visionary fiction; in this form, the
mind
is the plot driver, rather than science, fantasy, spiritual teaching,
religion,
or any other established format.
Already, in other genres, visionary fiction has been peeking through
for decades. We’ve mentioned sci-fi; we also should mention the
fantasy genre. Michael Moorcock’s fantasy series, DANCERS AT THE
END OF TIME, has elements of visionary fiction (the characters have
extraordinary mental powers). Orson Scott Card’s THE SEVENTH SON
is similar (his characters also have new mental powers). In
Ursula Le Guin’s THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS we see similar mental
topographies. As far
back as the Victorian era, there was visionary fiction; for example,
G.K.
Chesterton’s THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE NAVIGATOR
can
be characterized as visionary fiction. I think we’ll gradually
see
visionary elements creep into detective and crime thrillers (in a book
like
SHIBUMI, by Trevanian, or Umberto Eco’s THE NAME OF THE ROSE, it
already
has), as writers and readers want crimes to be solved not only with
reason
or physical aggression but with even more of the brain. The film
industry
has already utilized elements of visionary fiction (for instance, in X
MEN
and THE MATRIX). Television shows have embraced visionary
elements.
TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, CROSSING JORDAN, and MIRACLES come to mind. The
show
THE DEAD ZONE is built completely around clairvoyance.
SORCERER’S CROSSING, by Taisha Abelar is visionary fiction, as is Marlo
Morgan’s MUTANT MESSAGE DOWN UNDER. Deepak Chopra’s THE LORDS OF
LIGHT and James Redfield’s THE CELESTINE PROPHECY are seen as visionary
fiction by the publishing industry. About three years ago,
publishers and booksellers decided to call certain spiritual and new
age books “visionary fiction.” For the last five years,
publishers, agents, and booksellers have been having an intra-industry
dialogue about whether to create a separate visionary fiction shelf in
bookstores. (Some stores have experimented with it
already). But because there is no vital and robust marketing
niche for it, a lot of visionary fiction is being self-published,
re-cast as nonfiction, hiding in other categories or genres, or simply
not finding the light of day.
Q: What
would have to happen for visionary fiction to succeed as a new genre
all its own?
A:
Publishers would have to identify the genre on the book jackets, then
booksellers promote these books as a new genre. Writers would
have to write
high quality books in this genre. Agents would have to place
visionary fiction with publishers without going for big advances.
Huge advances were paid for new age and visionary books after the
success of such spiritual fiction as THE CELESTINE PROPHECY and MUTANT
MESSAGE DOWN UNDER, but the
new books didn’t succeed in the mainstream (and there were no visionary
fiction shelves on which the actual visionary novels could be
promoted); publishers lost millions of dollars. It’s hard to
blame them for being skittish about fully committing to a new genre
when they’ve already lost money.
A new genre needs a ten year building period during which everyone,
including authors and agents, need to carry the risk. Some small
publishers already specialize in spiritual and visionary work.
New World Library, Hampton Roads, Fair Winds come to mind. They
need to be encouraged. I hope in the near future a press devoted
only to visionary fiction (perhaps called Visionary Fiction Press) will
start up and be successful.
Mainstream and religious writers who have large audiences would need to
come out in support of the new genre. Caroline Myss, author of
ANATOMY OF THE SPIRIT, has talked eloquently about the development of a
new human. Deepak Chopra has written books in spiritual and
visionary fiction. Dan Millman, author of THE PATH OF THE
EVERYDAY WARRIOR, has tirelessly lectured on expanded
consciousness. Many others must devote energy to making sure a
new genre exists as a receptacle for stories about the changing human
mind.
Q: What
specific help do you need to help create this new genre?
A: I think
we should form a
Visionary Fiction Writer’s Association.
It ought to give out an annual award in the same way that science
fiction writers give out the Hugo and Nebula, or literary judges give
out the Pulitzer.
One person can’t take this project on (I’m certainly not the best
organizer in the world and would be ill suited to organize an
association or an award), but people with good organizational heads
could make this happen. If this takes off, it opens new avenues
for writers over the
next generations. I envision a publishing culture in which my
children
and their children have access to visionary fiction in the same way
that
I--because of the hard work of previous generations--have access to
science
fiction.
