A book that closed my eyes

"Kuolemaa ei ole" is a book in Finnish, written by Rauni-Leena Luukanen, also known as Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde or Rauni Kilde. The former chief medical officer of Finnish Lapland, Luukanen currently lives in Norway. She is a conspiracy theorist weaving together UFO landings, mind control and opposition to Swine flue vaccine. You can watch several interviews with Ms. Luukanen on Youtube. The lady speaks near-perfect English.

However, you probably won't be able to read Luukanen's books. As far as I know, none of them have been translated to English. "Kuolemaa ei ole" was Luukanen's first book, published in 1982. It's been translated to Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Spanish. With the exception of Spanish, these are hardly world languages. I've read it in Swedish. The title means "There is no death". The book is apparently something of a classic. I found it in a used book store.

Luukanen's book is a collection of anecdotes about various supernatural phenomena, interspersed with some information on psychic research, and a lot of complaints against dogmatic materialists, clergymen and "sectarians". The book mentions Kathryn Kuhlman, Matthew Manning, Uri Geller and D.D. Home as examples of people with paranormal abilities. It references researchers such as Helen Wambach, Melvin Morse and Ian Stevenson. The author believes that parapsychology and UFOs are taken more seriously in the Soviet Union than in Finland or the United States.

Most of the anecdotes are from Finland or Sweden. One stands out. In 1942, the Swedish medium Martin Liljeblad published a series of purported messages from well-known Swedish archbishop Nathan Söderblom, deceased in 1931. Liljeblad claimed to have gotten the messages through "automatic writing", a kind of channelling in which the trance medium is induced to write down the words of the spirit, rather than speak them.

Söderblom had been a leader of the ecumenical movement and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, so Liljeblad's book was apparently quite a scandal, especially since the author was a clergyman. According to Luukanen, the Church of Sweden was so shocked by the book that poor Liljeblad was defrocked.

I haven't read Liljeblad's channelled messages, but judging by Luukanen's quotes, he might have been a Swedenborgian. At one point, the deceased bishop Söderblom claims to have repented his "sin" in not recognizing Spiritualism as part of the Christian family! Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. After all, there are also channelled messages (not mentioned in this book) from William James, Victor Hugo, Princess Diana and one Jesus Christ...

"Kuolemaa ei ole" also contains a long piece of automatic writing by Rauni-Leena Luukanen herself. The messages are from her deceased grandmother, and contain the usual New Age-Spiritualist notions about our sufferings being a great learning experience, intelligent life on other planets, all religions worshipping the same God, etc. There is also a apocalyptic undertone in some of these communications, claiming that the "physical cleansing" of the Earth is about to commence. World War III is implied at one point. The messages also promise scientific evidence for parapsychology, and attack "sectarians"...

In a foreword to the 1991 edition, Luukanen also mentions Area-51 and claims that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union have access to UFO technology from crashed alien spacecraft. It seems she eventually decided to develop these more extreme positions, and leave the conventional psychic research behind. I'm not sure if I like that particular development.

When I read this book years ago, during my sceptical-materialist period, I considered it crackpot. It was one of the first "true believer" books on the paranormal I've read as an adult (I read some books of this kind as a child, but that doesn't count). Needless to say, I was repelled and decided to stay away from the subject. I was particularly incensed by the chapter on "animal immortality" (dogs have astral bodies, too!) and the automatic writing. I must have missed Area-51. Together with Dannion Brinkley's "Saved by the Light" and Ian Currie's "You cannot die", this book actually strengthened my scepticism.

:D

Today, I'm no longer a materialist - thanks to the more conventional Colin McGinn - but I still think the Söderblom- Area 51 stuff is way too "out there" for my tender, Earth-bound tastes.

Still, for closing my eyes, (and old times sake), I'll give this cult classic four stars.