This blog has been set up to explore some of the issues raised in the recently published novel, The Domini Conspiracy.

Over the next few weeks a selection of extracts from the book will be posted with an invitation for comment and discussion from readers of the blog or of the book itself.

Although The Domini Conspiracy is a work of fiction and a fast-moving thriller, the insights it contains are based on a view of reality which readers find challenging but ultimately hopeful.

Big subjects are dealt with including:

The afterlife
Personal destiny
Near-death experiences
What are we here for?
Who is in control? - politics, power and religion
Are we alone in the universe?
Do those who have passed on watch over us?

To start with, here is a brief extract that describes a dream experienced by one of the book's characters, David MacLeod. Such events have been recorded by individuals over the centuries and are not dissimilar to the experiences described by some people resuscitated from clinical death. My view is that there must be some profound truth behind these phenomena. What do you think?

Extract from Chapter 7, page 39

I don't feel under any stress or difficulty. I am happy with my life and find my work as a minister deeply fulfilling. Yet last night I had a dream that will change my life forever.

In my dream I was an onlooker in an unknown place in an unknown time. I was with a group of people who were mourning the loss of someone who had been very important to them, someone who had loved them and whom they in turn had loved deeply.

The loss of this person was profoundly significant to these mourners. Their sadness and desolation brought them to the lowest depths of despair. All was dark. All meaning, all purpose in life had simply ceased.

Despite not knowing who it was they were mourning, I shared their grief. My heart was gripped with icy coldness. I felt their hopelessness and despair. All was lost. All was meaningless.

But just as the mourners, and I with them, reached the point of utter darkness, it all suddenly changed. Through some ineffable communication we somehow knew that the person we were mourning had not ceased to exist. It became nonsensical to us that this person whom we loved and who loved us should simply be snuffed out, like a candle in a winter's breeze.

Of course! Of course! It all made sense. As we had shared misery we now shared joy. And oh what joy! I have no words to describe it. Love! Love is the answer! Love is the essence of life, not just here and now, but always. Death is not the end! It is simply a doorway to the next stage.

What joy! What utter joy! I felt waves of love flowing through me and over me. I was engulfed in love. It was physical, it was emotional and it was spiritual. The closest experience I can think of is the fulfillment of sexual love, but multiplied a thousand fold.

My spirit soared into a place of glorious light and beauty. A million, trillion beings of light, full of love and kindness, shimmered and shifted together. There was laughter and great happiness.

My heart was bursting with love and I knew I could simply let go and join this glorious throng. But I pulled back. I cannot, I said. I have done nothing yet! I have done nothing in my life! It was only then it subsided. But I knew something I did not know before. From that moment I knew that life goes on after death and that love is at the heart of the universe.

Today everything seems different to me. I take delight in things I took for granted yesterday. Flowers and trees and clouds and birds and insects and ... everything holds a new meaning for me! People are different or, at least, I perceive them differently. Within each is a spark of something beautiful and eternal.
End of extract.