I discovered Lyall Watson about 30 years ago whilst browsing through my local Library.
Lyall Watson was a South African Botanist, Zoologist, Biologist, Anthropologist, Ethologist, and author of many books, among the most popular of which is the best seller Supernature.
He died in Australia in Gympie, Queensland in 2008
Lyall Watson tried to make sense of natural and supernatural phenomena in biological terms.
The Book I picked was “Lifetide”, A Biology of the Unconscious
The book talks about recent(dated 1979) developments in astronomy, biology, and psychology to the mysteries of memory, dreams, visions, UFOs, gods and devils, hypnosis, ghosts, ESP, creativity, and consciousness.
Being interested in all things Mysterious I found the book fascinating.
One passage reads thus; “The father reached for a tube of tennis balls that lay on a corner table. He took out a ball and casually rolled it across the carpet towards his daughter.
Claudia (His Daughter) picked it up and held it affectionately to her cheek. Then, balancing the ball in her left hand, she gently stroked it with her right.”
What followed left Watson stunned.
As he wrote in his book “Lifetide”
“One moment there was a tennis ball – the familiar off-white carpeted sphere marked only by its usual meandering seam. Then it was no longer so. There was a short implosive sound, very soft, like a cork being drawn in the dark, and Claudia held in her hand something completely different: a smooth, dark, rubbery globe with only a suggestion of the old pattern on its surface – a sort of negative through-the-looking-glass impression of a tennis ball.”
When Watson examined the ball closely he found that it was an everted tennis ball – one that had been turned inside out.
Yet it still contained a volume of air under pressure. When he squeezed the ball it returned to its former shape. He dropped it and it bounced.
In fact it seemed exactly like a normal tennis ball, except that it had somehow been turned inside out.
Later that evening Claudia performed the trick again.
This time Watson kept the everted ball and took it back to his hotel, where he placed it on the mantelpiece in his room.
As he later described it, the ball stared at him like a mocking symbol.
This enigmatic sphere completely defied his carefully structured view of the world. It seemed to undermine the very laws of nature.
“It still disturbs me”, he wrote.
“I know enough of physics to appreciate that you cannot turn an unbroken sphere inside out like a glove. Not in this reality.”
Watson was in fact faced by the same dilemma experienced by Albert Einstein.
When confronted by experimental results that he was unable to explain, he turned to Niels Bohr and exclaimed in frustration that his theories were too poor to encompass the works of nature. “No no”, cried Bohr, “Nature is too rich for our theories.”
I subsequently sought out Lyall Watson’s books and have 7 of his most famous works.
Supernature being his most well known book;
The legendary, ground-breaking book about the supernatural.
Lyall Watson has challenged scientific orthodoxy by applying new criteria to the investigation of supernatural phenomena.
His fascinating and open-minded scientific study proves beyond doubt that science is stranger than the supernatural.
If you enjoy mystery and intrigue, seek out Lyall Watson’s books.
