Question: Is there anything in the research you've done that suggests that autistic people are more likely to have spiritual or paranormal experiences than other people?
Answer: I believe that we all hold the capacity to tap our spiritual giftedness with which every human being has been blessed; and the neat thing about being human is that’s going to look differently in every person, because we’re all unique individuals. The trouble is many neurotypical persons are “blocked” from perceiving this aspect of themselves because they are immersed in the stresses of every day life; or, worse, they’re self-absorbed, greedy, power-hungry, and concerned only with gratifying their own desires. Persons who spend time in solitude observing and revering nature; expressing gratitude; praying or meditating; committing altruistic, selfless acts consciously and on a daily basis are, in my opinion, better attuned to perceive their own spirituality—and this concept is supported by other spiritual authors and theologians.
I also believe that individuals who are born into extremely challenging lives, such as those with autism, are pre-destined to do so, and are not simply thrust into this world to fend for themselves without any protection or compensation. I’ve had dozens of parents contact me to express that they are better people than they would’ve been—that they are now spiritual where they hadn’t been previously—because of parenting a child with autism. Many other parents have reported that their children told them they were chosen before birth.
My friend Michael sums it up best in Autism and the God Connection when he discusses being a “whole soul in a broken body” which he contends is the reverse from what’s typical; the compensation he experiences is direct access to God and immediate answers to his silent questions in order to make sense of a chaotic world and his place in it. Michael states that, ordinarily, for those “broken souls in whole bodies" such responses are made known to others only once they pass on.
Question: How did you come to define “autism and the God connection?”
Answer: I’ve always had an interest in circumstances and events that defied rational explanation or scientific logic—I was always intrigued with the concept that human beings don’t have all the answers. And I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family in which such things could be discussed openly and with wonder, not dismissed as impossibilities.
I began to notice the “God connection” in my work as an autism consultant about six or seven years ago. At the time, I was working in a couple counties in rural Pennsylvania counseling several multidisciplinary teams unknown to one another. However, I began to observe—and learn about—a strong spiritual way of being for the persons with autism for whom I was consulting. A number of themes began to emerge such as precognition (knowing what was going to occur before it actually did), telepathy (exchanging, or tapping into, thoughts and images with another), animal communication (silently intuiting and interpreting “animalspeak” from domesticated or feral animals), communion with a loved one in Spirit, usually a grandparent (a strong focus on the deceased’s photograph and intimate, previously-unknown knowledge about their lives), apparitions of wayward souls (“ghosts”), and communion with benign, ethereal entities, defined as angels by some. I came to understand that, for those predisposed, these experiences were very common—natural, not supernatural.
As I learned more and more about these areas, I thought, “My gosh, if I’m seeing this happen in just a couple counties in rural Pennsylvania, what’s happening in the rest of the country?!” So I put out some cautious “feelers” by way of Internet postings and message boards, and was pleasantly pleased to have my suspicions validated by dozens and dozens of parents and professionals who began telling me of their experiences. People hundreds of miles apart—who had never before met—were all telling me variations of the same themes. This material formed the basis of my research in composing Autism and the God Connection, but I can also tell you that it’s only just the tip of a very large iceberg.
As a result of all that I was learning, I was also obliged to undergo a spiritual transformation myself. My original, working title for the book was Autism and the Clairvoyant Connection, but I soon realized that it was far more reverential than that; that the loving families I encountered often felt a deeply spiritual or religious sense of responsibility, and I knew there could be no title other than Autism and the God Connection.
