Thavis is Here by Harry Homewood, 1978.

[Deb]

I believe the book is out of print, but I found a very yellowed and moldy copy for next to nothing. The book had promise, as I'd heard it was on par with the Seth materials. The spirit guide/teacher Thavis was communicating by automatic writing with Homewood, and Homewood wrote the book explaining the contact and Thavis's explanations of reincarnation, the survival of the soul, no time/space, self healing, why we are here (to learn), places to go other than Earth, OBEs (difficult to do), our amnesia while here, what happens after we die. It started off well enough, but then started sounding religious and preachy the more I got into it despite HH's insisting in a few places in the book that he is not and was never religious. I tried to overcome my knee-jerk reaction to the word God, mentally replacing it with ATI, but eventually I just couldn't ignore that the book was sounding more religious.

Some examples of things that turned me off to the book (after the first few chapters I just skipped around):

HH: "As I said in the first chapter of this book, I am not a religious man in the formal sense that I go to church, that I accept any specific religious doctrine. I do know that God is there and always has been, that we are here on Earth because of His will, that if we are wise we will obey His laws." pg 10

"Once a soul returns to God, it may need a period of adjustment.... If the soul has been in an evil person, if it has been hurt and injured, then the soul will require much love and tenderness." pg 77

[In an evil person? The person is separate from the soul?]

Can you choose your family when incarnating?

Thavis: "No. I know what you are thinking. It would be nice to be born into a wealthy family. I admit, that would be pleasant for anyone. But would such a choice work very well in the learning process? I don't think it would. You will be born of a woman selected by God. He knows what is best for your soul."  pg 83

This was the deal breaker for me. When questioned about what God's other worlds were like, Thavis said he didn't know because he'd never been to them, and finished with "I do know why you ask this question. It is more than idle curiosity, I think. If you knew about other worlds from me or from a soul who had been to several of them, you might want to write a book and make a lot of money." pg 88

On having an OBE — is there a silver thread connecting the soul and body that can accidentally break?

Thavis: "There are no silver cords or any other sort of ties between the soul and the body. The soul occupies the body so long as God wishes it to do so. Only God can say when the soul will leave the body, and that information is His and His alone to know." pg  151

Personally I think Homewood read the Seth books and came up with his own twist—Seth for people with religious faith. But non-denominational faith.

Oh, and how do you heal yourself? By praying to God.

[jbseth]

Hi All,

I first read the book, "Thavis Is Here" in either 1978 or 1978, about 6 months "before" I discovered Seth.  This book was written by Harry Homewood, in 1978 and it was generated by Harry via "automatic writing", by a personality who called himself "Thavis".


Thavis, was a bit of a jokester. He liked to joke with Harry Homewood, as can be seen in the following dialogue between them found on page 75.


TH:  "Thavis is here, how are you my friend."

HH: I am well thank you. I won't ask how you are because you always give me the same answer, that you are a "good soul" and that everyone on the Other Side is good. It is an old, old joke by now and you should stop using it.

TH: "You take all the fun out of life. Try to get around that one. It is a new joke and just for you."


Thavis seemed to have his own personality and it appeared to be different than either Harry Homewood's or Seth's for that matter.  I don't believe however, that Thavis was as knowledgeable a teacher as Seth, especially in regards to the multiple topics that Seth talked about. In fact, on page 146 of this book, Thavis even mentions that there are more advanced teachers than him.

Below are example's of some of the concepts that Thavis talked about.  In my copy of this book, which is a paperback, on the following pages, I found the following ideas expressed by Thavis.


Page    Comment
32   You will not die.
38   There is no such thing as time.
75   The soul is immortal and reincarnation does occur.
76    After death, the soul remembers all
77   After death life review
78   As human, a soul does not know what it knows
79   We communicate (Thavis and Harry) mentally
79   We (Thavis) have no bodies
83   Every living creature has a soul
86   There is only one being God; there is no Satan.
87   There is life on many worlds

96   "Thavis said that all souls live in eternity in a time dimension that is different
than our own and one in which there is no such thing as time." 

103   A guide can move into your subconsciousness
145   Astral Travel

145   "As you know, I am not qualified to give all the training that is needed. I could take you only so far, and then I would have to turn you over to another teacher – one who is far more advanced than I."

146   "What mode of power does the soul use? None that you know of. The soul uses the power of thought"

146   "Now let me explain time or the lack of time here. We have no time because we
   are eternal, as your soul is eternal. All time is not time, and no time is all time."


Now, Harry Homewood had his very own set of religious ideas, as Deb pointed out above on page 10, and they were different than those, many of us here probably have.

Given this however, I do think that Thavis tried to help guide Harry and enlighten him, where he could, by sharing some of the following concepts with him: 1) you don't die, 2) reincarnation occurs, 3) after death life review occurs, 4) every creature has a soul, 5) There is only one being God and 6) there is no time.  I also think that Thavis tried to do this in terms that Harry would accept.

Thus, between Harry's religious ideas, and Thavis's limited knowledge, and the fact that Thavis was trying to give guidance to Harry, who had these religious ideas, this book also contains some information that may come across as "religious and preachy".


jbseth

[Deb]

jbseth, thank you for taking the time to review this book and balance out my (biased) review. I have tried to learn more about HH as a person and wondered what happened to him after writing Thavis, such as did he write any follow-up books. I searched for a wiki or bio, and unfortunately didn't find much. A short and simple paragraph used on several different book sites (this is from Amazon):

"Harry Homewood was a qualified submariner before he was seventeen years old. He lied to the Navy about his age and served in a little "S"-boat in the old Asiatic Fleet. After Pearl Harbor, he re-enlisted and made eleven war patrols in the Southwest Pacific.

"After the war, Homewood became Chicago Bureau Chief for Newsweek magazine, chief editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and for eleven years had his own weekly news program syndicated to 43 PBS television stations.

"Homewood was the author of 6 books and lived with his wife in Tucson, Arizona, until his death in 1984."

Some of the most interesting things I read in the Thavis book were what HH wrote about himself. He spent a lot of time in the military, went on many missions including many on submarines seek out Japanese Imperial Navy ships during the war. He wrote a fair amount of books, the majority of them being military historical fiction that were popular and well rated.

The Thavis book was a complete departure from his other books and for someone apparently rooted in mainstream or at least non-metaphysical writing (Sun-Times, PBS). His books were all written in the late 70s/early 80s and Thavis was somewhere in the middle, so not his last book.

Do you suppose his personal religious beliefs distorted the Thavis information the way Jane's did with Seth? I wonder where his religious conviction came from as it really didn't seem to come from his upbringing. I can't member if he went through parochial school, I think he said his mother went to church but he and his father did not.

[jbseth]

Hi Deb,


In your last post, you asked the following question.

"Do you suppose his personal religious beliefs distorted the Thavis information the way Jane's did with Seth?"


Before I answer this question, I was wondering if you could give me some examples of what you mean by Jane distorting Seth with her personal religious beliefs?



On a separate issue, I've sometimes heard it said, "There are no "atheists" in foxholes."

On page 44 – 56, Harry talks about one of his most harrowing experiences as a submariner. In this experience, he and his fellow submarine crew sank a Japanese oil tanker and came under a grueling depth charge attack for many hours from 4 Japanese destroyers. In this section of the book, he talks about this very personal wartime experience and how it related to his belief in God.

This, I believe, probably explains his personal religious beliefs.

jbseth

[Deb]

Before I answer this question, I was wondering if you could give me some examples of what you mean by Jane distorting Seth with her personal religious beliefs?

I don't have any quotes at this point, it would be hard to say specifically what may have been distorted or tainted because there is really nothing I can compare with what's in the Seth materials about Jesus or biblical history other than the bible. My feeling us that Jane was heavily influenced by her Catholic upbringing and that affected how much and what information she allowed to come through her from Seth on the Christ entity and Christian history. Of all the material I've read so far, the only time I've questioned whether Seth contradicted himself had to do with the religious bits, which makes me feel like Jane's beliefs may have flavored the materials in that regard. I addressed my concerns about Jane's religious blocks here a couple of times, such as here:

Jane was brought up as a Christian, it began for her at an early age and was drummed into her head. She could never overcome it. Also, both Jane and Seth admitted that Jane could control what information came through her: if it was information that would upset her core beliefs, she could prevent it from coming through. My guess is she could also cloud the information that did get through, depending on how she felt at the time. My feeling is that this is the one topic that had the most opportunity for distortion, because of her deep seated beliefs about Christianity. She appeared to be more objective around other, less emotional topics. And while yes, there could be some distortions in all of the materials, Seth did say that with Jane there would be less distortion than with anyone else.

Other channels I feel had a religious influence to their works were Edgar Cayce, Joseph Benner, Neville Goddard. I'm not rejecting everything that Homewood or Thavis presented, just as I don't discount all of the Seth materials because I feel Jane's beliefs (filters) may have affected some of the materials with regard to religion. I just that feel that Homewood's religious convictions affected what was presented in the book. It's hard for me to accept things like "you will be born to a woman selected by God" and "only God can say when the soul will leave the body" because I believe we have free will and choose our own incarnational life and death scenarios.

Thanks for the explanation on Homewood in the foxhole. At one point I'd stopped reading and only skimmed through the book, so missed that story.

[jbseth]

Hi Deb,

This is in response to the comments in your Reply #4, above.

In that post, you said:

Do you suppose his personal religious beliefs distorted the Thavis information the way Jane's did with Seth? I wonder where his religious conviction came from as it really didn't seem to come from his upbringing. I can't member if he went through parochial school, I think he said his mother went to church but he and his father did not.


In response to this, here's my thoughts. We know that Jane distorted some of Seth's messages because Seth talks about this. We also know that Jane blocked Seth on several occasions, because Seth also talked about this as well.  While I "suspect" that Jane "may" have distorted some of Seth's messages due to her personal religious beliefs, I really couldn't say that she did this for a fact. Especially since, if push came to shove, I probably couldn't prove it one way or the other.

You also said, more or less; Do you suppose that Harry Homewood's personal religious beliefs distorted the Thavis information?" 

Here, I really have no idea. He may have. On the other hand, maybe Thavis presented distorted information to Harry as a result of Thavis's personal beliefs; or maybe they both distorted the data?


Yes, I too sense that some others, like Edgar Cayce and Ruth Montgomery were influenced by Christian concepts.

And if by God, Thavis meant, "All That Is", then I personally don't accept Thavis's teaching that "you will be born to a woman selected by God" and "only God can say when the soul will leave the body".

I didn't expect anyone to necessarily believe any of the things that Thavis had to say. I just thought that it was interesting that he expressed "some" of the same concepts that Seth did (you don't die, reincarnation occurs, All Time is No Time, etc.). Some of these concepts expressed by Thavis, were new to me at that time, because I discovered the Thavis book, about 6 months before I discovered the Seth information.

jbseth

[Deb]

I didn't expect anyone to necessarily believe any of the things that Thavis had to say. I just thought that it was interesting that he expressed "some" of the same concepts that Seth did (you don't die, reincarnation occurs, All Time is No Time, etc.). Some of these concepts expressed by Thavis, were new to me at that time, because I discovered the Thavis book, about 6 months before I discovered the Seth information.

I also found the parallels to Seth concepts interesting but after reading the religious-sounding stuff I started to think that Homewood must have read a Seth book or two. Just my hangups about religion.

On the other hand, maybe Thavis presented distorted information to Harry as a result of Thavis's personal beliefs; or maybe they both distorted the data?

As far as Thavis vs Homewood presenting distorted information, my feeling is as with Seth vs Jane in that it would be more likely Jane would be doing the distorting than Seth because my thought that there would be no distortions from him due to him being focused in F2. But maybe I'm naive in assuming that Seth or any conscious being in F2 sheds personal beliefs. I hadn't thought about that before. Seth did say when we die, we take our beliefs with us (at least as far as the after-death experience) and depending on where we are along the growth line, those beliefs can stay with us  until we "come around."

What do you think? Would Speakers in F2 have personal beliefs that can affect their messages? Yikes, that's actually a scary thought for me. I feel the Seth materials on a whole depend on neutrality of the Speakers.

[jbseth]

Hi Deb,

I think that all personalities are at different levels of understanding.

In "Seth Speaks" Seth says something to the effect that just because you die, doesn't mean that you are automatically wise.  Seth also talked about how even though Jane and Rob were on their last reincarnational cycle, this doesn't mean that everyone on their last reincarnational cycle is necessarily at the same level.

Furthermore, we could see that Jane, was at a different level than Seth, who was at a different level than Seth 2.

In addition to this, in one of the Early Session books, Seth also mentioned that the Christ entity could do things that even he (Seth) still doesn't know how to do.

Also in one of the Early Session books, where Seth is talking about the experience of handling the "direct" experience of inner reality, he says that this isn't even for him yet. He's further along on his path to this than we are, but even Seth isn't at a point where he can completely handle the direct of inner reality.

Thus, I personally believe, that different personalities are at different level of understanding.


I think of it like people being in elementary school, middle school, high school, college, people going on for their master's degrees, people going on for their PhD's and then there's their teachers.

I think we're all somewhere in elementary school and Seth is maybe in high school. For us in elementary school, someone like Seth who is in high school is about as far as we can reach with our present understanding. Seth 2 is in college and his understanding is so much further along than ours that we almost can't communicate with someone at his deeper level of understanding. Someone at a PhD level is so far beyond our level of understanding that we won't be able to communicate with them until we increase our understanding to that perhaps of a college level.

In this model, I see, All That Is, at that top and All That Is teaches the people who teach the people working on getting their PhD's.


I personally don't know who actually had the deeper understanding Seth or Thavis. All I can really say is that the messages that came through Jane seem to have a much deeper understanding that those that came through Harry.

Seth "may" have had a deeper understanding than Thavis, but given the filters of the personalities of both Jane and Harry, I don't think that its possible for us to determine if this is really true.


jbseth

 

[Deb]

Well my hope is that if a consciousness makes it as far as being a Speaker, what they are teaching would not not clouded by personal beliefs. My hope. In my mind, Speakers have reached a certain level of knowledge.

Before I left on my trip I started collecting quotes for a new topic devoted to Speakers. Maybe it's time for me to launch the topic with the information I have so far and I'll fill in the blanks later.