Title: Encounters with God
Author: William K. Dorrance
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 979-8765259412
Pages: 284
Genre: Non-fiction / Spirituality
Reviewer: Ephantus M.
Pacific Book Review
Encounters with God by author William K. Dorrance, an American optometrist and writer, is a combination of memoir, spiritual reflection, and exploration into matters most people consider mysterious or even taboo in nature- matters pushed under the carpet or even lampooned rather than talked about candidly.
Dorrance embarks upon describing his own experiences, the bulk of them mystical: a sense of unity, visions, voices, and states of awareness. He also ventures into the psychic and the paranormal which include reincarnation memories, channeling, and psychic healings. In this book he asserts that Western science and Christianity miss a deeper reality about God and the soul. Here, he attempts to bring this truth out by correlating the experiences of his own life with research by others.
The story alternates between his own life and evidence he has gathered. By evidence, this refers to a variety of research, testimonials, and cases that in his belief point towards a spiritual truth. He speaks of experiences from his youth, like being in a church sermon at age thirteen and feeling like God’s voice spoke to him giving him three necessary teachings. That shook him and made him take spiritual things seriously.
Later chapters of the book cover his life as a Sathya Sai Baba devotee, an Indian guru with a global following. For Dorrance, being able to see Sai Baba was the answer to his teenage prayer to encounter a Jesus-like teacher some day. By the end, the book feels like a mix of autobiography and a search report on spiritual evidence most people never hear about.
One major theme running through the book is his conviction that mystical experiences in the form of psychic visions, meditation or death visions are far more common and potent than many would assume. For him, they prove that consciousness is bigger than the brain. He uses near-death experiences in which one exits one’s body or experiences death visions as evidence that awareness doesn’t just stop when the brain stops working. He also claims that the individuals who experience these sorts of events also emerge without the fear of death and begin their lives in a different way – less materialistic and more loving. In a way, these experiences are not mere odd stories, they matter because they show something about life and point to something beyond reality.
The book is written in a straightforward, simple style. Dorrance doesn’t indulge in much flowery language or expatiation. His sentences are long, but they are straightforward, and he simply moves you from one point to the next, as if he is talking directly to you. His writing reveals his purpose: not to dazzle but to clarify and hopefully to convince. He sometimes restates himself as if he must pound the point in one’s head. This is one of those unique reads out there that’s written in the style of a testimonial which beautifully fits the subject.
Encounters With God by William K. Dorrance is expansive but intimate. The chapters are thematic not chronological, some of them addressing overlooked evidence by science while others address what Christianity is missing. Readers who need a tight, clean narrative will find it “rambling” but those interested in matters of the soul, or readers who themselves have had peculiar or mystical experiences and would like to know more about them will find much to savor here. This moving collection offers inspiration for anyone who has ever longed for a glimpse of the sacred in everyday life.
