Lifting the Veil by David Icke & Jon Rappoport

Lifting the Veil is a transcript of a series of interviews that researcher Jon Rappoport held with David Icke in 1998. Rappoport is the author of several books including The Secret Behind Secret Societies; Oklahoma City Bombing: The Suppressed Truth; AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century. Icke needs no introduction on these pages, as this is the eleventh book of his that I have reviewed.

This is a slim volume of only 135 pages, but it covers, however briefly, a vast array of subject matter, including Princess Diana’s death/murder, secret government, religion, the formation of the USA, signs and symbols, pyramid power structures, money, the suppression of knowledge, mind control, ritual child abuse, consciousness and other dimensions, the New Age movement, the education system. Towards the close of the book there are also some interesting pages of reflection on the early days of ridicule that Icke endured.

Lifting the Veil was published not long before Icke’s most popular book The Biggest Secret, and can be viewed as a summary of much of the information found in that larger volume (albeit without the reptilians). I’ve read so much material by Icke that I didn’t really learn anything new from Lifting the Veil, but it’s a great opener into important information that rarely gets a hearing in the mainstream. It doesn’t demand too much of your time, and it might make you think, “Maybe, just maybe, the picture of the world that we’re being fed on the TV news isn’t quite the way things really are.”

The Biggest Secret by David Icke

I think this is the tenth David Icke book I have read. It is, I believe, his most popular and biggest selling volume. You may wonder why I didn’t make this one a priority. Well, it’s because this is the book where Icke introduces the lizards for the first time, and I just wasn’t ready to tackle that. I couldn’t fathom that I could end up believing that our world leaders are actually shape-shifting reptilian entities from another dimension. I also didn’t want to have my opinion of Icke dashed to pieces, since I have benefitted so much from other parts of his research. But … I reckoned it was time to bite the bullet and dive in.

Firstly, the title of the book led me to believe that the entire five-hundred-page volume was going to revolve around the theme of reptilian entites. It doesn’t. The reptilian theme is something that Icke weaves throughout the pages, but a lot of the material in the book is concerned with hidden agendas in human society. In essence, the theory that the world is ruled by reptilian entities is based largely upon the view that the gods of antiquity were actual beings of an extra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional nature. Mankind was ruled by these so-called “gods,” and many cultures do speak of reptilian gods. In Icke’s view, the gods never left. Overt rule was exchanged for covert rule. Today, the British Empire is nothing more than the ancient Babylonian Empire relocated and repackaged. Rather than dismiss this whole thing with a knee-jerk reaction, there are certain elements of this research that I personally find fascinating. One is the importance that ruling monarchy place on bloodline, and especially how the bloodline of many key figures in politics, both here and in the USA, can be traced back to Charlemagne (assuming the research is accurate). I find it interesting, and a little suspicious, that we have Egyptian obelisks placed outside powerful buildings around the world. We even have a pyramid with an “all-seeing eye” on the dollar bill, and the same on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States. This is very much tied into the secret society known as Freemasonry. A look at the key figures involved in the formation of the United States reveals a massive prevalence of Freemasons. Furthermore, Freemasonry has definite links with the occult.

Icke, by his own admission, has never seen an actual reptilian. Evidence for their existence relies on the testimony of witnesses that Icke has been in contact with, including Arizona Wilder (allegedly a “mother goddess” involved in occult ritual), Christine Fitzgerald (allegedly a close confidante of Princess Diana), and Cathy O’Brien (allegedly a Project Monarch MKULTRA mind control slave). Much is said about the British Royal Family in regard to reptilians and occult ritual. Icke places massive amounts of confidence in the testimonies of the people he quotes, and it’s hard to see why he should expect the reader to be carried along with it all. This reminds me of his early books, which are full of “channelled” messages from so-called psychics that Icke placed his trust in. I have to wonder if he’s making essentially the same mistake here again, merely in another context.

The closing chapter of the book, and one of the most fascinating, is about Princess Diana’s death. Icke goes into a lot of detail in an attempt to show that it was an assassination, and not only that but a pre-planned occult ritual sacrifice.

Much of the research in the book was sloppy, disordered and inconclusive, and in the end, I felt frustrated that I couldn’t hold something resembling proof in my hand and say, “Here it is!” So, do reptilian shapeshifters rule the world? Only in the imaginations of those who read uncritically.

Heal the World by David Icke

David Icke, after his “spiritual awakening” (or whatever term you choose to put on his transformation from BBC sports presenter to spiritual teacher), wrote five books in a period of three years, which was a prediction given to him by psychic Betty Shine. Heal the World, published in 1993, is the fifth of those books. It could be argued that this was merely a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the only thing I want to draw attention to is that this book does appear to mark the closure of an era for Icke and the opening of a new one. The focus of Icke’s first five books is entirely spiritual; there is little to no trace of the conspiracy material that defines most of his later writing.

Heal the World is one of the better books from Icke’s early writings. It’s a slim volume of about 100 pages, like its predecessor Days of Decision. Some of the same ground is covered: an expose of religion as mind control, which has always been fundamental to Icke’s worldview, as well as a stepping beyond the constaints of conventional science. The theme of this book is self-healing, and by implicition healing the world. Topics include taking responsibility, overcoming guilt, respecting others, judgementalism, spiritual awakening, intuition, UFO activity, channelling energies.

There’s much in here that Icke stands by today, but also some stuff that he has changed his views on. That’s not a bad thing, really. Better a man who openly changes his mind when his understanding grows than one who stubbornly refuses to evolve. His early works had a distinct emphasis on themes like reincarnation, karma, and channelling, which he appears to have moved past. Heal the World is not a book I can agree with one hundred percent, but I don’t think there’s any Icke book I’ve felt perfectly aligned with. Besides, buying into a specific belief system is not what Icke’s writings are about.

Having read ten of his books, I’m struggling to find something new to say about this one, other than it has its moments of profundity, as do many of the others. If you’ve never read one of Icke’s books, Heal the World would make a great starting point.

Love Changes Everything by David Icke

After reading many books by David Icke and being impressed with some of his views, I grew particularly interested in reading this early work as a result of the author’s own comments about the book in a 2008 interview: “Love Changes Everything … I don’t like that book, because it was written at the most extreme time of my transformation, when wasn’t sure what planet I was on, never mind what my name was.” It’s well known that Icke was ridiculed in the early days for his claim of being the Son of God, or rather a Son of the Godhead. I really wanted to get to the bottom of all that. I thought his first book The Truth Vibrations would tell all, but people often get the chronology wrong. The Truth Vibrations was actually written before his head blew, and is reasonably balanced in comparison to this follow up. People associate The Truth Vibrations with Icke’s “Son of the Godhead” phase because its publication coincided with the infamous Wogan interview, at which time Icke had gone through a startling spiritual experience in Peru which resulted in him transforming into someone who wasn’t sure what planet he was on. And the book that lets you look into that phase of Icke’s life is Love Changes Everything. The book doesn’t start well, as on the very second page of the introduction, Icke states (emphasis mine):

Since the publication of The Truth Vibrations I have learned so much more as I have communicated almost daily with Rakorski, the one known as Lord of all Creation, who is directly responsible for the changes the Earth will undergo. I also communicate often with the one we know as Jesus, the Spirit of the Earth, and many others.

Icke’s present view is that there never was a Jesus, and he has held that view since at least 1999 (he talks of it in The Biggest Secret). Icke now says the story of Jesus is purely astrological, containing many elements from the stories of other saviour gods of antiquity: Horus, Mithra, Buddha, Krishna, etc. It’s rather startling to hear him talk of communicating with Jesus in the early days. What was really happening? Was Icke lying? Was he being deceived by lying spirits? Who can tell. At least it clears up the notion that he was claiming to be Jesus, if nothing else. What exactly did he mean by “Son of the Godhead”? From page 103:

Some find it hard to accept that there is more than one Son of the Godhead. They believe that Jesus is the only Son of God. It is true that Jesus is the most evolved of these beings, but there are many of this evolution around the universes. Sons and Daughters of the Godhead carry and channel energies which can have a very powerful effect on the energy system [of the planet], and they can also restore links between a planet and the network. They have a different role to that of a Son of Man, and the two are not the same. They are created by the Godhead to serve Creation and the energy system, and are given a particular energy package that allows them to channel and generate incredibly pure and powerful energies. The more they evolve the purer and more powerful those energies become. They also have the ability to stimulate energies in other life-forms when they travel to or through an area. However, Sons and Daughters of the Godhead should not be seen as more important or special than anyone else. They have a role to play, but then so does every single life-form, nor are they super-human. They struggle with the same emotions and problems as anyone else.

The book continues by listing some people that Icke says were Sons and Daughters of God: Akhenaten (Egyptian pharoah), Cleopatra, then Jesus. He devotes a whole chapter to Jesus, retelling his life, disregarding a great deal of what is revealed in the Bible and supplanting it with information channelled through psychics. Here, apparently, is a channelling directly from Jesus himself: “I hoped that the Earth would change. That we could remove negativity with minimal landshifts and volcanoes and then continue with the energy work. Many people seemed willing to change …”

Here’s some information about John the Baptist that will give you a flavour of the sort of re-telling Icke is doing:

John had a mervellous understanding of cleansing energy systems and chakras and opening up beings spiritually by removing negativity and past-life karma. It is said that he lived in the wilderness, but it’s more correct that he lived in an area where many varied plants, rocks, and crystals were available. It was also near a place of Divine Water. Divine Waters are rivers or springs which carry Godhead energies as part of the energy system. People went to John to have their physical body cleared of any lingering negativity. The final cleansing was total immersion in the Divine Waters.

Love Changes Everything is based almost entirely on information channelled through psychics, in particular Mari Shawsun. The book provides a re-telling of history, including dramatically specific information about Atlantis, King Arthur, Lucifer/Satan. Are we supposed to simply take this information on faith? Apparently so. The Jesus part of this story is what really put things in perspective for me. We know those channellings are completely wrong (and Icke knows it, too, today), so that immediately throws the entire book into the realms of imaginative fantasy. It’s a nice bed-time story, but it has absolutely nothing to say about what really happened in history.

The overall problem with the book is that Icke has allowed himself to be taken for ride by the claims of psychics, and it badly damages his credibility. I can’t help wondering whether he’s making the same mistake today, in the credence he places in the claims of people like Credo Mutwa, Arizona Wilder, Stewart Swerdlow, Zecharia Sitchin and others – people he uses to validate his claim that world leaders are shape-shifting inter-dimensional reptilian entities.

You know, I can’t deny that I’ve been inspired by many a thing that David Icke has said, which is why I keep reading him despite the things (incredible or otherwise) that I can’t take on board. But his claim to have channelled Jesus damages my view of him more than anything else he has ever said. I am reminded to have my BS detector on full alert when reading his books.

Here are some of Icke’s personal reflections on the most extreme phase of his spiritual awakening, not long before writing this book. From page 141:

Then, in March 1991, I went over for a third visit to Canada to work with a channeller, Mari Shawsun. I can remember the time vividly: it was just as if someone had flicked a light switch. Suddenly, the David Icke I have just described had taken a step back. He was still there, but no longer controlling events. I think the same thing must have happened to Mari also. It was such a strange feeling. It was as if the real me had become an observer, just looking on, sometimes in horror, at what was happening. [...] What happened next, however, was a real shocker. Communications came through that I was from the evolution called Sons of the Godhead. More than that, a list of fantastic and specific physical events were given that were supposed to happen before the end of the year. To top it all I was to call a press conference and tell the world all this. [...] I will never forget that press conference and I doubt if any of the journalists will either. I stood there in my tourquoise tracksuit telling them all this stuff and as I read out the list of “changes” I remember my rational aspect saying with a distant voice: “David, what the hell are you saying? This is absolute nonsense.” But my mouth continued to open and my credibility continued to sign its own death warrant.

It’s clear that in Love Changes Anything, Icke is in the process of recovering his rationality, but he had far from fully recovered, as is clear from the information he continued to place credence in. I leave you with a full transcript of Icke’s personal reflections on the early days, from the 2008 interview mentioned at the top:

When you’re working with psychics, as I was in those early days, trying to make sense of what was happening to my life and make sense of what I was beginning to understand, you’re at the mercy of the psychic who is communicating information. For instance, what psychics do is they have the ability to access some of these other frequencies of existence and bring information from entities on those dimensions into this one. Now, you know, there are great footballers of world renown and there are people that kick a ball about on a team at the park on a Sunday morning. They’re both footballers, but they’re not the same quality of footballer – the same ability. And also, if someone has a belief system – a psychic – about a religion or Jesus or whatever, what happens is – it’s like telepathy – as the energy is communicated through the psychic, the psychic will put their own spin on it, and it can come out in a less than pure way or less than the same accurate way than it was communicated, because it has gone through a filter which is based on belief – belief in something. So all these factors are in there with regard to information, in regard to how accurate it is or whatever. What I will say about the The Truth Vibrations particularly – Love Changes Everything … I don’t like that book, because it was written at the most extreme time of my transformation, when wasn’t sure what planet I was on, never mind what my name was. I was transforming from the person who presented the sport on the BBC to what I became, and now it’s easy for me to transform from one state to another because, you know, you get used to it, and all the rest of it. But in those days, you know, I was a baby from this point of view. It was a real challenge. It was a very bewildering experience. So, Love Changes Everything was written at that time, with, to be honest, the bewilderment that I was feeling – the confusion that I was feeling. But The Truth Vibrations, the first one, which was written before my head really blew, I am extremely pleased with that. It’s interesting that when I talk about things today, I’m talking about them in a more detailed way, with a greater understanding than then.

The book Icke wrote after Love Changes Everything is his autobiography In the Light of Experience, which I have read and reviewed. It provides yet more insight into his past, and is an excellent book by comparison. Perhaps Love Changes Everything should be looked at as the one book by David Icke that should never have been written.

Days of Decision by David Icke

This is the fourth book David Icke wrote since his spiritual awakening in 1990. It’s also his smallest, clocking up only 86 pages. Nevertheless, what it lacks in size, it makes up for in content. Chapters 1 to 4 in particular will arrest the attention of newcomers to Icke’s work and dispel any notion of “crackpot” that might have festered in the wake of that long distant Wogan interview.

We begin with fast, sharp insight into all the planet-raping, soul-destroying insanity that we call normal life in the western world. Icke then shines a light on humanity’s lack of thinking, exposing the conditioning of everyday life and our unthinking acquiescence it. Then comes a courageous expose on religion and its use as a tool for control. Science then comes under fire, or rather, system-serving science, which is quietly destroying the planet. You won’t be unaffected by the information in these chapters. It’s as relevant today as ever.

The book then turns to matters of an esoteric nature, discussing psychic channelling; the universe as a frequency; consciousness and the eternal mind; positive-negative balance (a different way of looking at good and evil); Earth as a conscious entity; an approaching spiritual awakening of humanity; and finally the importance of love.

Icke is not totally on the same page today as what he was expounding in the early 1990s, but there is much in here that reflects the same understanding he now expresses at a deeper level.

Days of Decision is compiled from speeches that Icke made all over the United Kingdom, during or not long after the days of his widespread public ridicule. It would have been amazing to attend one of those early speaking engagements. I’ll bet a lot of mouths regretted their laughter before too many minutes had passed.

Copies of Days of Decision show up now and then on eBay. Well worth chasing it up. If you are someone who has never read any of Icke’s work before and are completely new to his controversial views, this volume is an excellent entry point. From the back cover: “This book is written for those who are beginning their journey to truth and understanding at this time of immense change.” You might well be changed after reading it.

In the Light of Experience by David Icke

Almost a year ago, I read my first David Icke book; it was I Am Me, I Am Free. Since then, I’ve been reading his work continuously, in tandem with my other reading. Icke’s books are tough on brain, and after devouring my fifth one, I was just about Icked out. Then In the Light of Experience came along, which is a refreshingly simple book by comparison, because it’s an autobiography.

What struck me as odd was that the book was written and published in 1993. Those familiar with Icke will know that he only got started on his spiritual journey in 1990, and a great deal has happened between then and now (2009). 1993 struck me as a bit early in his career for an autobiography. Nevertheless I was eager to read a detailed account of his early years, not least because these were the years when he faced the biggest ridicule – something that he has always said was the making of him, because it freed him from the prison of acting according to how others judge will us.

The internet is littered with audio and video interviews of David Icke, and he has often recounted his early experiences, such as his initial eye-opening encounters with psychic Betty Shine, his later spiritual experiences at a circle of standing stones in Peru, and the public ridicule that came on the heels of his appearance on the Wogan talkshow. You can also read a fascinating summary of his early years at the beginning of Tales from the Time Loop. I’ve listened to a lot of David Icke interviews (and I mean a lot), but there are things in In the Light of Experience that I have never heard him talk about anywhere else. Most fascinating of all was a relationship with a woman called Mari that resulted in a child, while David was still married to his wife Linda. Icke talks about this with brilliant honesty.

The first half of the book is devoted to Icke’s earlier years: his childhood, brief football career that ended because of athritis, his time as a journalist, sports presenter, and spokesman for the British Green Party. The other half of the book is concerned with 1990 to 1993. One chapter in particular is entitled “The Son of the Godhead.” Here’s a couple of excerpts:

I did not have the luxury of a long and gradual preparation period that many others enjoy. My higher consciousness and those working through me just opened the top of my head, the crown chakra, and poured in these unbelievable energies. For many weeks I was staggering about like some spiritual drunk, hardly knowing what planet I was on!

The most important three words in terms of publicity and profile were “Son of God”. I said I was a Son of the Godhead and this was immediately repeated in the media as the Son of the Godhead. What I said was true. We are all expressions of the energy that is everything, what I call the Infinite Mind, and what others individualise under the term God. Therefore, if you want to use symbolic language, we are all Sons and Daughters of God, all part of the Infinite Mind of Creation. But because society programmes people, even those who don’t believe in religion, to think the words “Son of God” mean the biblical version of Jesus, the media predictably linked me to that whole concept of “messiahs” and the “second coming”. The result was someone who was fundamentally challenging religion and the Bible view of Creation being dubbed in the media as someone who had discovered religion and was promoting the Bible!

For those who appreciate the work of David Icke, this rare and long out-of-print book is probably the deepest look you’ll find into his life. Keep your eye out for it on eBay.

Tales from the Time Loop by David Icke

The book begins with a short autobiography, which I read with great interest, particularly to hear David Icke’s own reflections on his experiences in the early 1990s, when he had his brief “son of God” phase that caused so much public ridicule. The rest of the book is divided into four parts, or layers, as they are called.

First, “The five-sense conspiracy.” This is the largest section of the book and comprises some two hundred pages. Icke begins by filling us in briefly on the overall picture of the conspiracy, involving secret societies, hidden-hand leadership, pryamid power structures, and the various scams that are played on humanity. The bulk of this section of the book is taken up by an examination of the wars in Afganistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11 – a tearing down of the propagana given to us by the mass media and a look at the US government’s real motivations, as well as the consequences of their actions for innocent Middle Eastern civilians. Icke’s previous book was Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Centre Disaster. Although I haven’t read that book, my guess is that the material in Tales from the Time Loop forms a sequel of sorts. The information quickly gets complicated to sift through, and I confess that at times I’m left not quite knowing what to believe. The chapter on civilian casualties is particularly moving, and at the very least the reader is left with a sense that he needs to question an awful lot more than when he hears on the TV news.

Layer 2 is “The extra-terrestrial/inter-dimensional conspiracy.” To call the information in this section startling is an understatement. Essentially, Icke’s claim is that many of the key people in positions of power (and throughout what is called the Illuminati) are possessed by entities from another dimension – entites that have a reptilian form. Icke was first introduced to this side of the conspiracy through receiving numerous reports in the late 1990s of people who witnessed another person “shape-shift” into a reptilian. When enough of these reports came to light, this indicated that there was something worth researching. 100 pages of Tales from the Time Loop is dedicated to this topic, merely a fraction of what went into his earlier book on the reptilians, The Biggest Secret, which I haven’t read. In summary, the secret rulers of the world can be traced back to antiquity, via secret societies and religions, right back to ancient Babylon and Sumer. The worship of the serpent, in various forms, can be seen far and wide in ancient religion. Human sacrifice is one of the primary ways these entities obtain energy. Such practices never ended, but go on in secret today, among the rich and famous. Reptilian shapeshifting is commonly reported in Satanic ritual abuse.

That’s just a fraction of the story. It reads like a science fiction extravaganza, and I can’t get on board with all of it. Icke’s big problem is that he never pauses long enough to let the reader catch his breath. The revelations come thick and fast, building one of top of the other, and the reader (me, anyway) is left behind somewhere along the way amidst a fog of information that he can’t hang on to as provable. Icke relies heavily on quotes from other written souces, particularly authors Zechariah Sitchin and Stewart Swerdlow. The former has written books which take an alternative view of human history and the latter claims to have had access to an underground base where reptilians were operating from. I simply don’t have enough information to make a decision. I wish Icke had simply tackled a few aspects of the reptilian theory thoroughly instead of trying to cram everything into a small space. For instance, I find it very interesting that the ancestry of the vast majority of American presidents can be traced back to Charlemagne. If that’s true, then there has been something very big and very fishy going on for hundreds of years outside the public eye. I also find it very interesting that so many Freemasons were involved in the formation of America, and that government people participate in a secret dark religious ceremony at Bohemiam Grove every year. It is unquestionable that there is something shadowy going on in the world that the public is not privy to. I just wish these themes were developed fully, but all too often Icke says, “You can read more about this in my book, X.” To be fair, though, Icke’s summaries do raise important questions and open up many avenues waiting to be explored. Every chapter has thorough footnotes about where you can go to find out more.

Layer 3 is called “It’s all an illusion”. This is where the book goes in the direction that I really appreciate, where we delve into the philosophical and the intuitive. Physical reality, as we know it, isn’t solid. Three-dimensional solidity is just a perception of the human body and brain. Underneath all of this, the universe is really an energy field. Now, you can believe that, or you can believe that physical solidity is the basis from which all else stems. Either way, it’s a belief, and none of us can get outside of our perceptions to find out. You might ask, what does it matter? Well, if the physical universe is just a perception, perhaps consciousness is a far greater thing we have imagined. Perhaps all that exists is one gigantic consciousness, and every human life is that consciousness undergoing an experience of separation from the full magnitude of what it is. The cornerstone of this part of the book is an experience that Icke had in Brazil, where he was invited to take a psychoactive drink called ayahuasca as a means of opening the door to a higher perception of reality (a similar account is told by Aldous Huxley, regarding mescaline, in his book The Doors of Perception).

Layer 4 is “Transforming the illusion.” The focus is on waking up from all the nonsense we’ve been conditioned to believe is normal life and all the traps that keep us hypnotised. The ultimate conclusion to all this is that we learn to laugh about life – to realise that this tiny life is just a game, full of endless possibilities, on the great canvas of infinite awareness. Really insightful stuff.

There were moments, in the earlier parts of the the book (especially the reptilian section), that I thought I was going to be giving this a bad review. But overall, when I’ve digested all 450 pages (and they’re pretty big pages), I find myself yet again impressed with David Icke’s insight. Once more, my mind has been stimulated to learn more and more from the wealth of information that lies ignored just outside the mainstream.

Infinite Love Is the Only Truth, Everything Else Is Illusion by David Icke

David Icke has written many books on the subjects of the global conspiracy and the nature of reality. I’ve read three before this one, all of them published on or before 1996. So I thought it was about time I jumped in at the deep end and read something from his more recent research. This one was published in 2005.

The book begins with a couple of chapters summarising Icke’s research into the global conspiracy and the inter-dimensional side of the manipulation, including his theories about shape-shifting Reptilians. These chapters serve only as a taster, and to really get into them properly, you need to read books like, And the Truth Shall Set You Free and The Biggest Secret – something I haven’t yet done, and therefore I have to remain on the fence with some of his assertions.

After that, the book starts going in the direction that most interests me, in a chapter called “Downloading Reality,” where the author aims to show to that the physical world is nothing more than a holographic illusion. Some of the claims are startling and fascinating – that our own DNA can be consciously modified, and this is the real explanation behind evolution. We also have the ability to heal ourselves to some extent. Icke talks in a lot of detail about DNA/RNA, and unfortunately I found myself getting confused, but that material did serve as an interesting introduction to some thought-provoking ideas.

There’s a chapter on the nature of religions. I first read Icke tackling this topic in I Am Me, I Am Free, and I was stunned by his insight. This time round, oddly, he concentrates on Judaism rather than Christianity, exposing the craziness of all the impossible rules and regulations.

Another chapter takes a look at society and invites us to take a hard look at much of what we consider to be normal life, in education, the media, health services, banking, etc. Good stuff.

Another chapter is critical of the New Age movement, which shows a dramatic shift in Icke’s views since he started out in 1990 with The Truth Vibrations. Back then he was very pro New Age. Now he believes the New Age movement to be the most enlightened of all expressions of religion, but still caught in the program. In the past, Icke spoke about our souls being on a journey of evolution. Now he denies that. Now he sees reincarnation as part of the program – another aspect of us being trapped in this physical life “matrix.”

This change in ideas is due, it seems, to an experience Icke had a few years before, when he was invited to take ayahuasca, a drink that shamens use to tap into the reality beyond our five senses. He claims that he was spoken to by a female voice for five hours. One phrase that was repeated many times was “Infinite Love is the only truth, everything else is illusion.” Getting to the bottom of that is the cornerstone of this book. For instance, if we are all one consciousness, if our separation from each other is just an illusion, if the only thing that exists is Infinite Love, and if we are everything that exists, then how can we possibly evolve by experience? I have to admit, he is asking the right questions and getting right down to the nitty gritty of what this idea of “oneness” (that he has been promoting for many years) implies.

My only criticism of this book is that the amount of new material in here is relatively small. Much of the book is a refresher course in research Icke has already expounded in previous books, and in greater detail. I have his previous book, Tales from the Time Loop (2003) on my shelf, waiting to be read, and I can tell that it contains massive amount of overlap. That said, I appreciate that Infinite Love was written to be self-contained, so that it can be understood without reference to other works.

It takes a certain type of mind to appreciate a book of this nature. You have to be unafraid to question everything you’ve been contitioned to believe, to take no norm for granted, and also to abandon skepticism in favour of allowing yourself to flirt with new possibilities. That’s me, for better or worse. I found the ideas in this book stimulating and thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

The Truth Vibrations by David Icke

David Icke has written over sixteen books between his spiritual awakening in 1990 and the present (2008). The Truth Vibrations was the first one, and it was the book that led to his infamous appearance on The Terry Wogan Show and the subsequent years of public ridicule. I’ve read a couple of Icke’s later books and found them to be quite enlightening, so I was eager to read the author’s first outing. I hoped to find some substance behind some of the harder-to-digest claims of the author, and also to find whether there was any truth to the media’s portrayal of him as a messianic crackpot.

In the first chapter, Icke talks about how it all began for him. In short, feelings of a presence around him that led him to seek out famous psychic Betty Shine to help figure out what was going on. Through channeled messages, he learned that he was chosen: “He is a healer who is here to heal the earth.” Interestingly, I think this book was written prior to a significant experience he had in Peru that he has talked about in other books – a “kundalini awakening,” a spiritual experience that literally blew the top of his head off and led to a higher degree of enlightenment.

There certainly is a marked difference in tone between this book and others I’ve read. The prose has less bite. Here, you won’t find chapters with titles like “It’s a piece of shit, walk away” (from I Am Me, I Am Free) or “It’s all bollocks” (from Infinite Love Is the Only Truth, Everything Else Is Illusion). Here, the tone is more reserved, although he is still very courageous in what he’s saying.

As for subject matter, the book covers reincarnation, chakras, ley lines, standing stones, planet earth as a living entity, and other issues generally not accepted as truth. The book is written as a mixture of strange teachings and autobiographical accounts of Icke’s actual experiences, such as his adventures with others moving rocks to various places in the world, as directed by spirit beings, to help heal the Earth’s energy grid. Oh, I know exactly how all this sounds. And it basically puts the reader into the position of saying, “This guy is either a nutcase of supreme proportions, or the things he’s saying are true.” It’s no surprise that people laughed at him in 1990 (and I was one of them). But now, almost twenty years later, the world grows ever closer to the kind of world Icke has been predicting in his later books.

The Truth Vibrations is all spirituality and no conspiracy, unlike Icke’s later writings, which marry the two. Many of the spiritual ideas he expounds he still stands by today, only he has developed them a great deal over the years. And that, I suppose, makes The Truth Vibrations a fairly unimportant book by comparison. One marked difference between this book and his others is the emphasis on channeled messages. There are many of them scattered throughout the book. Some are prophetic in nature and they’re not always accurate: “He should not worry about cars – electric cars will be used in eight years’ time.” Well, it’s nineteen years later and the electric car still hasn’t replaced the petrol car. Conversely, there are messages such as “There will be earthquakes in various places. These will come as a warning to the human race. They will occur in places that have never experienced them.” Icke’s later books do not emphasise channeling and he has said himself that channeling can lead to misinformation. To his credit, within this very book he admits that his ideas may change and evolve over time and that predicted dates should not be seen as set in stone.

Incidentally, there’s not a messianic word in the whole book. Not a single “I’m the Son of God, worship me.” Not even an “I’m better than you.” There is only humility, and the sense that the author knows he is embarking on a tremendously difficult quest that’s going to involve public ridicule.

Another channeled message: “One man cannot change the world, but one man can communicate the message that can change the world.” Well, David Icke has spent the last two decades tirelessly doing just that. This is going to sound corny, but he has changed my world and woken me up to ways that the world needs to change.

The Robots’ Rebellion by David Icke

As a relative newcomer to David Icke’s controversial spiritual and conspiratorial views, I homed in on this book specifically, as a result of seeing a small segment from a lecture he gave. I could talk about how inspiring this video clip was, but you might as well take ten minutes to watch it for yourself and make up your own mind (see bottom). The complete video is entitled The Robots’ Rebellion and is a two-hour exposition of the themes of the same book.

The Robots’ Rebellion is a relatively early book by Icke, and I think it might be his first to tackle conspiracy in a big way. As an early book, you will not find any mention of Reptilians in here, nor will you find anywhere near as much detailed information on the illusory nature of reality. This book is essentially a retelling of human history from the point of view that humanity may have been massively manipulated. This manipulation is done, in one sense, by people in positions of power, but above that is something that Icke terms the “Luciferic Consciousness.” He doesn’t call it the Devil, because he’s not a believer in Christianity, but he is talking about the same concept.

In the early chapters, Icke talks about the ancient legends of Atlantis and Lemuria. This stuff had me going, “Hmm, that’s interesting, but I don’t quite know what to do with this information.” In other words, I couldn’t connect to it anything I knew to be true. My eyes widened at times with how specific he was prepared to be in detailing events that conventional history doesn’t acknowledge. Icke’s more recent books are loaded with footnotes for further research; sadly this is not the case with this one. Nevertheless, I persevered.

Aspects of the book on religion were fascinating. Icke’s view is that extraterrestrials came to earth and set themselves up as gods over mankind. This is certainly not a new view. After reading the book, I put a lot more credence behind the idea than I did beforehand.

Science also comes under fire, and this is where I personally had a major eye-opener about how I have been manipulated. Science is, or should be, a tool to help us understand the universe. But it is being used as a god-like authority. Scientists (and people of a scientific mindset) often assume that physics is the only reality, and since science can’t penetrate effectively beyond that to the realm of the spiritual, it has the audacity to claim that ideas like God and an afterlife are a farce. It’s essentially a case of “If I can’t see it with my microscope, telescope, etc., then it isn’t real.” When the sheer arrogance of this assumption clicked with me, I thought, “Wow. It’s just an assumption. That’s all it is. And I’ve been tossed to and fro by it for years without realising what was happening in my head.”

As the book moves from the ancient world to the modern, Christianity comes under fire in a big way due to the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas. Secret societies like the Freemasons are also said to play a large part in history, occupying a more powerful place in the pyramid of manipulation than even heads of governments. There are many quotes from a document called The High Protocols of the Elders of Zion, supposedly a leaked Illuminati document detailing how they plan to take over the world. In the mainstream it is believed to be fake, but Icke maintains it isn’t on the grounds of what it’s actually saying and its syncronicity with what we see happening in the world. It certainly is a complex and disturbing document that I’m not inclined to dismiss out of hand.

The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 is called “The Darkness” and is essentially this alternative look at history. Part 2 is called “The Light” and is a depiction of what the world could be like if humanity changed its ways – what the world might have a chance to be like in the event of the collapse of the present world system.

Icke brings to light the horrors of our own lack of responsibility – our thoughtless exploitation of the planet’s resouces, our greed for gain, our lack of love for others. He puts a spotlight on many things we’ve been conditioned to think of as normal life and dares us to change. It’s very, very inspiring.

Despite the complex nature of the conspiracy stuff and my inability to accept or deny much of it, there is enough in the way of self-evident truth in this book for me to give it a hearty recommendation. Inspirational.

I Am Me, I Am Free by David Icke

I first heard of David Icke on the Terry Wogan show in 1991. I was about nineteen at the time. Icke had once been a famous footballer, until his career was cut short by arthritis. He then went on become a BBC television sports presenter. The reason why he was being interviewed by Terry Wogan was because he had recently published a book called The Truth Vibrations, where he claimed to have undergone profound spiritual changes and was in contact with beings from a higher dimension. The audience was very amused. Even more amused when Terry asked him if he was the Son of God. Not given time to explain the difference between a son of God and the Son of God, hilarity ensued. For me, the outrageous nature of this made the Wogan interview one of the unforgettable moments of television, and the name David Icke was firmly locked in my mind, forever shelved under messianic crackpot. Well, not quite forever, it seems.

Earlier this summer, whilst browsing the website of Christian conspiracy theorist Mark Dice, I came across an audio interview of Mark interviewing David. I thought it was a strange combination of interviewer and interviewee, given their opposing backgrounds, and so I got curious. I can’t remember what specifics in the interview caught my attention, but I was enthused enough by David’s presentation to seek out some of his books.

I chose I Am Me, I Am Free first, primarily because I was more interested in Icke’s spiritual views than his conspiracy theories or his radical theories about shape-shifting reptilians. Why was I not put off immediately by the knowledge that he believes reptilians are walking among us in human bodies? I don’t know. Maybe the Mark Dice interivew sounded too sane, and maybe the fact that I couldn’t marry this sanity with the outlandish claims created a sense of intrigue in me. In any case, I chose not to jump straight in with his reptilian book, The Biggest Secret, but rather to break myself in gently.

I Am Me, I Am Free disturbed me from the first chapter. And it disturbed me because it was chipping away at a closed-minded attitude that I possessed and didn’t know I possessed. It disturbed me because it seemed to be right. Some way into the book, I felt that I was finally starting to understand the greatest spiritual battle of my life: the battle between athiesm and Christianity. Icke woke me up to the “mind prison” that is conventional science – the idea that the world should only be understood in terms of “this is all there is,” that the burden of proof is the only measure of rational thought. But wait, he doesn’t stop there. He also makes an attack on religion, too. This was the most problematic aspect of the book, because I was a Christian as I was reading it, and had been consistently a Christian for about seven years.

But for the first time in my life I started understanding that there was an alternative to dogmatic religion and equally dogmatic science. And that alternative was the pursuit of truth without any attachment to an “ism,” without the necessity of taking on a strict set of beliefs, without fear of damnation. Just the breaking free from closed-minded assumptions you’re not even aware of and the openness to all possibility. I dared to deconstuct my Christian beliefs and start again from the ground up. Guess what? I can’t accept the Christian view of reality any more. One personal example of this (not from the book) is the way we can encounter things in the Bible like God commanding the Israelites to slaughter the men, women and children of Amalek (1 Samuel 15). We can’t understand this, so we put it on a shelf in our mind, thinking that we’ll get an explanation some day. But you know, it never comes down the from shelf. It just gathers dust. But you start to wake up to some of the craziness you’ve allowed yourself to believe, when you dare to deconstruct your beliefs and attempt to put them together again. Suddenly the bricks don’t fit as neatly as you thought they did.

The book covers much more ground than I’m mentioning here. There’s some excellent material on self-esteem and a particularly difficult chapter on mind control, which makes some terrifying claims that need further verification. But it’s the sort of book that contains much in the way of self-evident truth, and it’s the sort of book that you don’t have to accept hook, line and sinker. You can gain something from it and leave what you find unacceptable.

For me, this was a totally life-changing book. I didn’t expect this to happen to me when I started out. I know the world is full of people making all sorts of claims to enlightenment, and I don’t consider myself an easy man to fool. Richard Dawkins didn’t get very far with me. I’ve been waking up to a lot of things over the past few years, and this book has served only to step that awakening up a gear.

David Icke is an extremely important thinker in today’s world, and I am a better person for having discovered his books.