David Icke's Truth Vibrations: Short Summary and Review

The Truth Vibrations in Context

Including David Icke's latest release (The Perception Deception) back in 2013, David has authored a total of twenty books since 1983. The Truth Vibrations is the account of his own spiritual awakening. It is preceded by two earlier works: It's a Tough Game, Son!,  published in 1983 and It Doesn't Have To Be Like This: Green Politics Explained, which was published in 1989 and provides an overview of his visions for an alternative political agenda during his tenure as a UK Green Party national spokesperson during the late 1980s.

The publication of The Truth Vibrations in May 1991 led to his infamous appearance on the Terry Wogan Show in April 1991, which in turn resulted in his portrayal as a messianic lunatic and subsequent years of public ridicule both on and off screen. 

From the mid 1980s and during the time of writing Truth Vibrations, David was privately starting to seek solutions for the management of his own medical condition (rheumatoid arthritis) in homeopathy and other forms of alternative treatment. At the time of publication, he was also still very much a mainstream celebrity on British TV, who had not long departed the BBC in a row over having violated the broadcaster's impartiality charter. (He publicly criticised the introduction of the so-called Poll Tax.) Since leaving the broadcaster in 1990, Icke continued to pursue his career as a national speaker for the UK Green Party. All in all, he had a healthy public profile at the time. In the absence of such a pre-existing media profile, none of the mainstream outlets would have paid the slightest bit of attention to Truth Vibrations, I dare to suggest. The book and its author would have simply slipped through the net of the mainstream.

David Icke on the cover of Truth Vibrations (Aquarian Press / Harper Collins, 1991)

The Truth Vibrations - Summary and Review

Summarising The Truth Vibrations is no easy feat. The book can best be described as a wild ride. I recommend two sittings to bring some order into Icke's literary chaos. (I still have to complete the second round.) There was obviously a lot going on in his mind and it would be fair to say that the absence of structured thought in Truth Vibrations is testament to Icke's inner turmoil. It is also clear that in the run-up to the book, he dedicated time to the investigation of a wide variety of subject areas. Truth Vibrations can clearly be seen as Icke's attempt to amalgamate the insights gained from intense personal study. At the same time, the book aims to be an account of his spiritual agenda. 

Truth Vibrations is partially autobiographical, partially a tale of Icke's travels across the globe on a hunt for stones and crystals to unblock clogged up energy lines as well as a collection of psychic messages, which he has personally obtained with the help of a trusted circle of psychics and spiritually gifted friends and acquaintances. He also uses the channelled messages to back-up theosophist teachings and insights borrowed from Eastern philosophy throughout the book.

The messages David receives, which he either interprets himself or with the help of connected individuals, deal with a variety of topics including karma, reincarnation, the significance of vibrations, chakras, leylines, standing stones and the systemic state of imbalance of both Earth's eco system and humanity in general.

At the time of writing, David is influenced - without ever acknowledging this in the text - by theosophist, perhaps anthroposophist teachings; and he applies these to how he views and makes sense of the world around him. It should come as no surprise that he considers the world around him ever more out of balance, endangered and entering a critical state. His ecological observations are complemented by his critique of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production in the latter part of the book. 

Here, David - quite outspokenly - criticises materialism, the rationale of ever-increasing output and profit under the capitalist mode of production as essentially incompatible with the requirements of a finite ecological system. His critique of capitalism comes quite late in the book. Nevertheless, it forms part of the more coherent parts of his narrative..  

David is less coherent in the preceding chapters, especially in his account of Earth's history. Notwithstanding this apparent lack of structure, his writing once again demonstrates a familiarity with and knowledge of theosophist teachings. For anyone interested in tracing the theosophist influences more closely, I recommend his account of mythical Atlantis, which can be found in chapter eight, which is titled Journey to Aquarius.

Remaining with the topic of mythology, the attentive reader cannot help but notice that David clearly consumed a lot of literature on religious mythology at the time; and I seem to detect a very strong desire on his part to rework such a narrative in Truth Vibrations. He does so by drawing his readers' attention to the commonalties in the imagery and narratives of key religious texts across cultural, geographic and historic divides.

Given that David was up to the publication of The Truth Vibrations in May 1991 still considered a mainstream celebrity, it should come as no surprise that large parts of the book are dedicated to his own karmic anecdotes of past lives and long stretches of psychic messages that either involve him, his immediate family and friends or provide the reader with a justification for his latest adventures; i.e. travelling the globe in a mission to unblock leylines in Canada, just before heading off to a conference on Animal Rights in the U.S. as a representative of the UK Green Party.

In short, Icke's Truth Vibrations is an arduous read at times, simply because its author is trying to convey autobiographical anecdotes with psychic experiences and channelled messages, Eastern spiritualism, theosophical teachings, religious mythology and a critique of the capitalist mode of production. All this is rounded up with a call to action directed at interested readers wishing to join him in the quest to redress the globe's imbalance. Perhaps I should also mention that the page count of my edition of the book comes to 144 pages. David tried to convey an unmanageable amount of insights in a format that can best be described as an 'extended essay'. As a result, his message does not always come across clearly and he appears to be losing his thread. Nevertheless, in retrospect and especially in view of his later works, with Truth Vibrations, he manages to introduce his readers to a wide variety of topics and broader themes, which will resurface in his later books and talks. Truth Vibrations not only introduces the reader to his own spiritual agenda, it also provides a fundamental overview of Icke’s future topics of investigation. Sadly, he does not provide any references to the sources that clearly inspired him and his narrative at the time. Contrary to the media debates of the past, which focussed largely on whether he was claiming to be the ‘Son of God’, I actually do not recall such a claim throughout the entire book...