The Mutant Message Down Under…and the truth

So, on my mother’s(61F) recommendation I (30M) started reading the book: Mutant Message Down Under, by Marlo Morgan. She wanted me to read something other than fantasy and Sci-Fi. She said it might be a spiritual eye-opener for me and maybe give me some perspective on life, which in all honesty I may be in need of.
Side note: I am usually very sceptical about this kind of stuff, being a man of science (MSc. in Geology), and even though my mother is highly educated (MSc. in Literature) she has a very spiritual side (Healing Crystals, auras etc.), which I always just endured.

So I start reading this book which is supposed to be “inspired by actual experience” and has 2½ page talking about this, but back to the book: it’s about a middle aged woman who goes to Australia and through weird coincidences ends up living with aboriginals in the Australian outback/bush for several months. During this time she experiences a lot of crazy stuff, the two weirdest things I want to highlight is these; she claims they telepathically communicate with each other and sees prof of this, and a guy gets an open fracture in his leg, which they heal in under 24 hours with; a herbal drink, waving their hands over it and applying mystical black “tar-like substance” to the leg. There are also many other things happening, but these are the ones where I stopped reading and thought to myself: either this woman was hallucinating, crazy or lying.

And Occam’s razor tells me it is the last. But how could this be? Then I started digging and lo and behold, the author Marlo Morgan apparently admitted to a group of Aboriginal elders in 1996 that it was “fiction, but based on her experiences in Australia” and many other sources debunks the whole story. And while it states that newer copies actually have a “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer mine didn’t, and don’t think my mother’s has one either.

So, knowing this I reflected on the book, and asked myself; even if it is a work of fiction, can it still be used to gain self-insight and maybe make me reflect on the issues troubling my life. Should I even finish it? I put it down about 2/3 through and started researching and writing this.

And another thing should I tell my mom? I am quite sure she thinks this is based on a true story and I feel like she is being lied to, but on the other hand isn’t it kind of harmless? If she enjoyed it and got something positive from the book, who am I to ruin it for her? So, I do not know if should tell her the truth about this book that she was looking so much forward for me to read.

by MMG43213