March 29, 2013: Midday with Dan Roddicks | WIPR Baltimore .

Dec 8, 2012: Mary Cowper | Midwest Book Review

Those who enter science often look for answers, but some things science has yet to fully answer. "The Effect: Where Science Meets Spirituality"is a discussion of metaphysical spirituality from Linda Hoy who presents a break down into this discussion of mysticism and how it can meet with science, as we try to divine our fates, the afterlife, and the ultimate nature of our purpose in the universe. "The Effect" is not to be overlooked for spirituality collections, recommended. Mary Cowper ~ Mary Cowper, midwestbookreview.com

Dec 3, 2012: Debbie McDougall | Heaven Wise Health

This wonderful book is a lot of fun and does what it says on the tin...Linda has gathered a lot of ideas, theories and proven facts from the worlds of science and spirituality and has woven them into a coherent and humorous book

A once-conventional and 'down to Earth' fictional author and staunch cynic of all things religious or just plain 'weird', Linda found that she was thrown into a bit of a quandary as all her beliefs were tested to the limit when divine intervention in the form of countless synchronicities began to take over her life and lead her down a very different path

As a result, she set foot in that 'no man’s land' between conventional science and the unconventional world of spirituality and began to explore the works of those who have trodden such a path before. This book is the result of her time, effort, extraordinary discoveries, amazing experiences and her wonderful sense of humor.

I thank my lovely new-found friend Mary Sewell in Singapore for providing me my own little synchronicity and leading me to reading this!

I leave you with an excerpt which continues on from her introduction to her 27 Angels that came into her life to prompt her into action:

Nov 1, 2012: Julie G Hughes | Random Musings

The tagline / subtitle for this book is what captured my attention and my curiosity: Where Science Meets Spirituality. Could there be such a thing?

A self-described "fundamentalist, evangelical born-again atheist", Linda Hoy begins to have experiences far outside her belief system. Being a curious sort, she goes looking for answers. But, there simply aren't any sources that answer all of her questions.

And thus we have The Effect, a compilation of her experiences, in-depth research, and some amazing conclusions.

Not to mention, a trip down the rabbit hole into the paranormal, dark matter, precognitive dreams, entanglement, multiple universe theory, and Groundhog's Day. The fact that each chapter starts with a quote from Alice's Adventures is just one more example of coincidences in need of explanation. There is a lot of information here. But, without a doubt, it is fun. Ms. Hoy's Yorkshire sensibilities, wit, and self-deprecating humor keep the pages turning.

If for no other reason than to see how in the world this was all going to tie together. How she would answer her own question: "... if we really are surrounded by a multiverse of universes, why should science and the spiritual always live light years apart?"

Much of the work relates to the nature of time: what is known, what is questioned, what is hypothesized, and what may well be the truth. Calling on the work of Priestley and of Dunne, Hoy makes a fascinating case for mixed up time; for circular, not linear time.

This forms the basis for discussions of synchronicity, near-death experiences, lucid dreaming, parallel worlds, and Groundmut. (Don't ask, you'll just have to read the book).

And read it, you should; no matter which side of the theological fence you call home. This is a thought-provoking book, challenging commonly-held beliefs in both the scientific and lay communities. It asks questions such as whether dejá vu occurs because we are experiencing an event that occurred in a previous time or because we are getting a brief glimpse into the future. Or both.

The Effect, and its author, don't shy away from some of the harsh realities, either. In coming to believe in the power of prayer, Ms. Hoy points out the very real fact that it doesn't work for everyone:

"... for one of the most demonstrable examples of this failure, we have only to look to those tragic families herded on to the trains that would deliver them to the most diabolical places of incarceration ever devised. Were most of them not righteous, godly people? Wouldn't they all have ... prayed earnestly every hour and minute of their journey into hell. ... And would those with children not have prayed that, at the very least, if they were not to survive, then the lives of the children might be spared?"

Despite my own personal experiences, I remain unconvinced. But, I will be reading this book again. And, undoubtedly, again.

There is a lot to digest and it may take my stubborn mind a bit of time to circle back around to relive the future. ~ Julie G. Hughes , Random Musings

Nov 16, 2012: Steve Sullivan | Sullicom.blogspot.com I had the pleasure today of interviewing Linda Hoy, author of a terrifically entertaining and thought provoking book called The Effect. The book explains how spirituality and science not only can co-exist, the principles of one can actually help support those of the other. Ms. Hoy takes readers on a bit of an intellectual roller coaster, exploring issues of life, death, afterlife, time and multiple universes. The ride includes Aboriginal philosophy, research into near-death experiences, quotes from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the art of Salvador Dali, a primer on quantum physics and lessons learned from the movie, Groundhog's Day. It's written in an fun and accessible way that is sensitive to the inevitable questions the topic raises from both the scientific and religious communities. I'll have much more on this book soon. Stay tuned... ~ Sullicom, Sullicom Interview

Linda Hoy is a well-known children’s novelist – one of her books is a set text in schools. She is also a Friend and an explorer who has presented us with a book I can only describe as warm-hearted, imaginative, a mine of information, eccentric and slightly outrageous. It is wonderful to read something by someone who is willing to re-examine her own prejudices in such a witty manner and with such style. It is an autobiography of sorts, a description of an educational process, a journey into belief and meaning, with angels, and Quakers, and marginalised scientists in attendance.

There is a whole industry of books on spirituality from every conceivable angle. A sub-section of this industry deals with the relationship between spirituality and science. The columns of the Friend echo this debate, though I sometimes feel the driving force of this is a determined escape from the religious strictures of the past, rather than a deep examination of more enlightened thinkers, theologians, and mystics of the present. Linda Hoy has managed to draw upon a vast amount of research and literature to examine a numbers of theories that might once have seemed heretical in scientific circles: near death experiences, the curved nature of time and space, telepathy and so forth, but which are now being taken more seriously beyond the community of New Age adepts and scientific eccentrics.

This book has made me realise how agnostic I am on many issues. I simply do not know whether reincarnation makes sense – and there are a number of different understandings of reincarnation anyway. I do not know what form questioning and judgement take at the time of death or just after. I cannot say whether the sensation of déjà vu is based on the fact that the future has already happened in one of the myriad universes possible, or are they multiverses? But Linda holds my hand as it were into a discovery of worlds beyond words. It is the tone of the book which I find so enchanting.

Linda is a reluctant explorer. She begins with the question, what if?... and allows her creativity to lead her where it will. She is self-mocking, sassy, down to earth, and seems to dare herself to go further. Each chapter begins with a quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and through the Looking Glass, so we follow the White Rabbit down the whole, are perplexed with Alice about her size in relation to the world and the whereabouts of the key, and wonder how many seemingly impossible things we can believe before breakfast.

The title of the book, The Effect, comes from the writings of J.W. Dunne on time; the ‘effect’ she writes is his expression for finding a portal into DreamTime. So the whole matter of the book is a profoundly mystical one. How do we live deeply the present moment in such a way that we are in touch with that which is beyond time? (Linda is well aware of the sceptics even among Friends and imagines the reaction of some people to her writing, but her desire to explore further means that she will go on regardless).

In order to live at this level she feels the need to try to discern the relationship between time past, present, and future, the nature of space, and the relationship between waves and particles: quantum science suggests that everything is made from quivering waves of energy, waves which move and vibrate; these quivering waves pass through each other but then turn to particles when they’re being observed.

If it is true that our observation makes a difference, then how much of our creativity alters our relationship with the world in which we live? Amazingly after all this speculation, analysis of experiments, reflection on physicists, astronomers, gazers of heavenly things, we are brought back to the simple question of why we are here and how we live among all these possibilities.

If you want an adventure into a land of wonder and are willing to put aside prejudices of every kind, I would recommend this book. Treat yourself.

This book claims to use 21st century science to validate what mystics and spiritual leaders have always been telling us. If "validate" is used in the strict scientific sense, and if this book actually did that, then it would be worth at least a double Nobel prize in physics and literature. What it actually is, is a vivid and compelling autobiographical account of one person's evolution in mind and spirit.

This is accompanied by arguments that the modern physical concepts of parallel universes, dark matter, entanglement, and quantum uncertainty are compatible with paranormal experiences such as telepathy, precognition, and near death experiences. Whereas 21st century physics does not, strictly speaking, validate these phenomena, there is no conflict between them, as there is with the mechanistic Newtonian world view in which much of scientific thought is still locked.

Linda Hoy's exploration of the paranormal is centred on what she terms "the Effect". This she interprets in terms of Wheeler's branching multiple universes, and Dunne's Experiment with Time in which Dunne claims that it possible to "go up", as it were, into a higher time, and so overtake ordinary time, and therefore see what is about to happen. Many examples are given of her awareness of this possibility.

(NOTE : - By far the best example was given to me by Air Marshall Sir Victor Goddard, As an air cadet in 1930 he was flying a biplane over airfield which he knew was derelict after the 1st World War. To his amazement he saw that it was restored to activity, and on the ground he saw yellow painted monoplanes. At that time, 1930, the RAF has no monoplanes. On landing he reported what he had seen, and if he had been best cadet of the year, he would have been thrown out as being mentally unbalanced. The report, however, remained on the records. Ten years later, in 1940, he was flying over the same airfield, which had been restored for use in the 2nd world war and had Miles Magister monoplanes on the ground painted the training yellow).

This possibility of moving around normal linear time is equated with the "dream time" of aboriginal peoples, and their acceptance of the reality of group telepathy.

Perhaps the most memorable incident in this powerfully written book is where she points out the limits of the paranormal and of her understanding of it. Her awareness of parallel streams of time enabled her to avoid an accident which would have otherwise occurred. She then thought of the trainloads of victims herded into extermination camps. Surely there were lots of spiritually aware rabbis and priests who must have prayed to alter the inter weaving threads of time, so at least some of the children might be saved. None were. She is left with a deep sense of mystery. The dogmatic formulae of orthodox religion cease to have meaning. All that is left is that human life can have purpose in an upward striving towards greater fulfilment.

"The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the "opium of the masses"--cannot hear the music of the spheres." --Albert Einstein

When Linda Hoy, author of The Effect, quotes the above from Albert Einstein, she knows of what she speaks. Her book is a wonderful attempt at uniting what has been torn asunder ever since Nietzsche declared that God was dead. Hoy traverses both worlds here---exploring everything from the Pauli effect and Rupert Sheldrake's exceptional parrot---to the near death experience as detailed in the work of the likes of Elizabeth Kubler Ross and the recent offerings of Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick.

Along the way, Hoy makes use of one of her greatest gifts, her ability to write in the engaging manner we expect from an author well versed in the art of story telling. The questions she leaves us with are important and timely--how do we bring together these two disparate lines of thinking and feeling (the spiritual and the scientific) so that we enlarge our world view? How do we get the dialogue going in a time when the likes of Richard Dawkins rule the airwaves?

With Hoy at the helm, a respectful and engaging conversation between the two camps looks more possible than ever. If you are interested in quantum physics, the sudden appearance of (in this case, 27) angels, what lies behind the creative impulse and the concept of synchronicity, this book is for you.

Linda Hoy has tackled a vastly important subject with her characteristic panache and energy. Don’t be fooled by the jaunty style – this book will make you think again and again.

Down-to-earth, irreverent, witty, self-deprecating, intimate, it is nevertheless far-ranging and hard-hitting. Linda spreads lashings of common sense through both science and spirituality, and she somehow brings the two together without too violent a collision – an antidote for anyone who takes either too solemnly. She shows us how she herself moved from arch-atheism to a spiritual way, but retained enough of her original scepticism to keep her away from credulity or excessive piety – Linda is not holier than thou.

As an experienced author, her book is totally readable – you will keep turning the pages, partly so as to link it all up, but mainly to see what will happen next. Thoroughly recommended.

Jan 16, 2013: Geraldine Charles | Goddess Pages

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be, said the cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

I have no problem with the idea of science meeting spirituality and eagerly read anything that will help me to understand the concepts. I love it when someone explains modern physics to me – suddenly I get it! Then, within seconds, the clarity is gone again … is this just me? I suspect the cat understands on some level I don’t have access to.

So anyhow, I grabbed this book to review, expecting a bit of a chore ahead, but not this time! “The Effect” is very well-written and I got through it practically in one sitting, although I’ve already returned and re-read some for deeper understanding. I also usually turn the page at the mere mention of angels but I’m disarmed as Linda Hoy admits to having been a born-again atheist and read on from curiosity, drawn in ever deeper by the amazing synchronicities – which I’m sure most of us have experienced. And her angels are not the floaty, new-age phenomena I’ve come to know and dread:

“So much for angels as airy messengers of peace. More like a delivery of hard-core rubble and concrete”.

The book doesn’t stop at synchronicity. Near-death experiences, dark matter, premonitions, multiple universes, intuition and more are beautifully handled. I loved the chapter on creativity, and although I would have liked more on the role of Goddess in inspiring us, it all rang many bells of memory and recognition, the act of writing as – often – a piece writes itself, you see a sentence you have apparently just produced, and know exactly where it leads – despite the fact that you didn’t consciously mean to write just that sentence.

The humour keeps the pages turning and makes some of the more difficult topics easy to read and absorb. The tone may be light but there is a lot of good information here, particularly for anyone interested in time – is it circular or linear? If time is circular, would that suffice to explain many otherwise seemingly impossible phenomena?

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of this book, and enjoyed it immensely. The Effect is a rare treasure – a book that addresses the great questions of life, but does it in funny, readable and positive style. She doesn’t offer concrete proof of life after death, but the author provides what was, to me at least, convincing evidence that we have been here before – and will be here again. At the heart of this book is the theory that we actually live many lives. Phenomena such as strange coincidences, déjà vu and near-death experiences could in fact be ‘glimpses into dreamtime” – glances into lives lived in parallel universes.

However, this book is not a religious work - it’s firmly grounded in science. Recent scientific discoveries prove that two objects can exist in the same space simultaneously, which the author says, opens up a whole new school of thinking that could eventually go a long way to reconciling the scientific and the spiritual. The “Effect” of the title is taken from the writings of a little-known Edwardian engineer, J.W. Dunne, who published a long-out-of-print book called “An Experiment with Time”. While his theories on space and time are now unfashionable, Linda Hoy argues that they just as relevant today as they were in the 1920’s, a time when scientific minds were more open and less subject to ridicule if they did not follow the consensus.

For me the most interesting part of the book was the chapter on near-death experience. Although many attempts have been made to rationalize the strange things that happen on the verge of death, the author holds that few have been remotely successful. However, if we accept that Dunne’s “Effect” is at play, she says, then science can indeed provide a viable explanation with such experiences This book is full of funny anecdotes and quirky stories, which make the subject matter much easier to understand. Although it’s written in a humorous, light-hearted style, for me this is for me an extremely important work that deserves to be taken seriously. Essential reading.

~ Jon Velstadt, Tower Books

Behind a catch-all sub-title, this book is mainly about making a case for life after death and the need for further scientific investigation of near-death experiences.

In setting out her stall, children's fiction author and erstwhile teacher Linda Hoy, from Sheffield, UK, takes a tour through quantum science and the wisdom of the ancients, exploring 'doorways' into what the Australian Aborigines describe as Dream Time, referring back all the time to (often psychic) happenings in her own life.

To her, such portals include the near-death experience (NDE), inspiration and creativity, dreams, meditation and the emptying of the mind, all of which arise from what she calls The Effect – a phrase borrowed from John Dunne, an aeronautical engineer who, in the 1920s and 1930s, wrote books about time travel and suggested we could explore other dimensions and live our lives again in a series of 'groundhog days'.

For the first time in our history we have the resources to investigate the unexplained so, Linda asks, why don't we? 'Why such a veil of secrecy spread across everything connected with The Effect?' The answer to the question, of course, is the continuing force of scientific rationalism, although it is now beginning to be eroded by a shift in the prevailing paradigm.

Linda says this neglect of The Effect, about which we have much to learn from those who are dying, is a 'crying shame', suggesting that, as a Quaker, she is of the universalist persuasion. With a nod to Plato, she adds: 'Over and over again they have tried to share with us their realisation that there is more to life than this dark cave in which we sit and name the shadows.' Linda's frank and unsentimental testimony to this from her own life experience is, for me, the best aspect of her book.

Of course, the mainstream scientific view is that NDEs are devoid of supportive content yet of considerable interest to physiologists who regard them as a window on the interactions that accompany the gradual shutting down of bodily and especially mental processes. Observations reported by people who have undergone NDEs, however, are not made with the earthly senses but with the spiritual senses. The centre of consciousness changes because earthly senses become redundant in the NDE. This dovetails with narratives in all cultures of the world about how the soul leaves the body at the point of death.

Surprisingly, bearing in mind its subject matter, there is nothing in Linda's book about consciousness theory, which is fundamental to everything she discusses, and integral to The Effect, as she sees it. This is surely an oversight, although she does make accessible a range of other important issues which do need to be popularised among a wider public – for example, the importance of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence, in life, and how the concept of quantum entanglement must alter our idea of 'reality'.

Linda Hoy had some unusual experiences surrounding the death of her mother. She began to investigate the possibility that what we physically see is not all there is. Perhaps, like in Plato's story, we are only seeing shadows of reality.

She began looking for a theory that would explain everything and read everything she could get her hands on. She wanted to grasp the spiritual in an understandable way.

A dream encouraged her to investigate life after death, the brain and the existence of the soul. She writes about dark matter, how the Aborigines view time, creativity linking us to something beyond ourselves, dreams of future events, lucid dreaming, entanglement (mind and machine, mind and mind), entrainment, multiple universes, and more.

She was surprised by the Groundmut theory, found a spiritual home in a Quaker church, and draws from John Dunne (aeronautical engineer) and J. B. Priestly. Most of her book is about giving reasons that ‘something exists over and beyond our physical selves”

“ I am still unable to name what or who it is that's out there...,” she writes. (208) If pushed, she'd call it God, she later adds.

She realizes that people who abhor the idea of “Anything Out There” will never shift [their opinion] no matter how much evidence is trowelled on the page.” (209). She calls for an increased effort devoted to exploring the concepts she has covered in this book.

Linda Hoy begins her journey as an avowed atheist yet comes to the conclusion there is something or someone out there, beyond the observable physical reality. She has a great deal of anecdotal evidence as well as reports from investigative authors. After reading this book, one would need to face the overwhelming evidence of a spiritual reality.

Linda is very personable in her writing, including many of her own experiences. There were times when I thought she may have included too much of her personal experiences. She has by no means come to a point where she is willing to see the spiritual reality as the Christian God. But this is a good book showing the journey from atheism to “something” out there.

Linda Hoy is a British author best known for her works for children and young adults. She won the Children's Book Award in 1994 and her first television play won the Silver Award for Drama in New York in 1985. She has taught creative writing and regularly leads writing workshops in schools and universities. She lives in Sheffield, UK.

God or science, angels or answers, prayers or physics – sounds like the start of an age-old argument. Our current discussion of how and why the world works seems fated to always end with the scientific and the spiritual at odds with one another. Whether you believe deeply in the purity of science or the absolute truth of religion, there’s one thing we can agree on – we’ll never really agree.

Right?

Enter Linda Hoy and her new book, The Effect: Where Science Meets Spirituality. Hoy, once a diehard atheist became intrigued by a series of extraordinary coincidences associated with the death of her mother, and began to investigate the process of dying and the phenomenon of near-death experience.

She was amazed to discover that while spending millions on research into cosmetics and perfume, mankind spends virtually nothing investigating the most important question in life – what happens when we die? Writing with her classic Yorkshire humor and an endless curiosity, Hoy takes the reader on a journey down the rabbit hole into a scientific realm filled with alternate dimensions, multiple universes and quantum particles that seem to exist only when they know we’re watching them.

Expertly researched and a raucous page-turner, The Effect throws tradition to the wind and asks its readers to look a little deeper.

“We’ve been led to believe there’s a conflict between science and spirituality,” says Hoy. “Belief in some other dimension out there or life after death or prayer or being able to see into the future – we’ve been told that all of these are contrary to scientific thought. However, new modern science suggests that all these might be possible.”

It may see like all of this would be too much for Hoy to tackle, but she brings clarity and creativity to topics including the strange nature of quantum particles, near-death experiences, how 96 percent of our universe is “missing” and what might be filling that gap and scientific explanations of prayers, premonitions, and the paranormal

Nov 8, 2012: Dr Howard Jones | author of Evolution of Consciousness

.Linda Hoy is the author of some 15 fiction books for children and young adults. Here, however, she is tackling a very serious subject, or series of subjects, covering early religious beliefs and practices, the afterlife and NDEs, the nature of time, and interpretation of these issues through quantum physics, all written in an easy-going and witty style.

. The author’s experience in writing for children is probably an advantage here. She takes the title of the book from the writings of the Anglo-Irish aeronautical engineer John William Dunne, who wrote about parapsychology during the inter-war years in such titles as The Serial Universe and The New Immortality. His writings are referred to elsewhere in the book.

Each chapter is headed by some appropriate quotation from the Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass stories written by mathematician Charles Dodgson [aka Lewis Carroll, ed] . Indeed, the whole book reads more like a novel than a piece of non-fiction.

After the introductory chapters giving accounts of the significant coincidences or synchronous events in her life, the author writes a fine resume of NDEs (Chapter 4) and those who have written about them. There follows a good summary (Chapter 5) of what “dark matter” is all about and some of the highly non-intuitive ideas of quantum mechanics. And just for the record, the guy who suggested dark matter was Fritz Zwicky (though he may have been slightly Wacky as he is called here).

There are many quotes in the creativity chapter (No.6) that link the creative process with inspiration from the numinous domain. For Chapter 7 on Living Backwards I would recommend reading Nanci Danison¡’s book first to get some idea of the spiritual foundation, or sections on precognition in books such as that by Charles T. Tart.

I was delighted to read such a down-to-earth interpretation of the eastern concept of karma, and examples of prescience. This focus on the nature of time continues with Time and the Dark Arts (Chapter 8) and Finding the Key (Chapter 9). This awareness of incidents from the past and those still to happen in the Earth future and Hoy’s many occurrences of synchronicity are what Dunne called “the Effect¯ - the mystical interconnectedness or “beyondness¯ of things.

We’re in Chapter 10 now and there is a misprint on p.137 in giving the data from Peoch¡¯ s experiment described there. The experiment has a statistical significance of ¦Ö2 > 11; 0.001, not the meaningless figures given. Otherwise, this chapter is an intelligible account of the relevance and everyday significance of quantum entanglement. I find the mental multiverse created by the potential of the mind (hinted at on p.171) a more convincing picture than the apparently physical multiple universes Hoy talks about later in the chapter (No. 12). The mental multiverse picture is supported by the writings of David Bohm that Hoy quotes in Chapter 14.

The book ends with a very positive and enlightening account of facing mortal death, secure in the knowledge that there is a continuing life for the discarnate soul. This is a book written in a very accessible style about the significance of the New Physics to the everyday lives of ordinary people. I wish I could have written one just as easy to read.