Existentialism Books

The Birth of Tragedy-75 Aphorism-Beyond Good and Evil-The Genealogy of Morals (3 Essays)-The Case of Wagner-Interpretations/commentaries

A great collection, though a strange chronological leap from BOT to BGE. Right for the price and a great review of the later published books of FN. All of Kaufmann's footnotes are maintained. You'll at least want to have had read The Gay Science before coming to this, or even TSZ; Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals are NOT the place to get your feet wet and FN is not joking in Ecce Homo when he says that a close reading and familiarity with his earlier writings is necessary to delve and dredge up all that he has thought through--and to then move on to further possibilities presented by the various threads lain therein.

But if you are really eager to get to these later works, do at least have some familiarity with Hegel and read the Untimely Meditations and then make the leap to this volume.

Caveat: I cannot recommend the Zarathustra translation by Kaufmann, as available through the Viking Portable Library or Penguin; it is truly facile. Hollingdale's translations of the TSZ, Twilight and the AntiChrist are much preferable, thought they lack K's commentary.

Whether you agree with him or not, Nietzsche's thought is pivotal in understanding modern Western society. This one-volume compilation provides an excellent introduction to his core philosophy.

Nietzsche changed my life. This translation and selection heightened and developed my sensibility more than any other philosopher or work of fiction. I think the difference in dynamic plays a role here: in works of fiction the characters represent man in various and hyperreal circumstances, but it is only a representation. With Nietzsche, the life of the real man and what he wrote underscore each other.

Nietzsche is utterly enjoyable. One almost feels a wicked pleasure as he dismantles the various and prevailing constructions of the world. But he always fights fair: he allows his targets to live on the page and fight back.

I love the aphoristic style. The way he briefly but profoundly treats a topic, and then returns to it again with a new twist or perspective. It is rich!

I've typed that name what seems like a thousand times in the last month. I used Beyond Good and Evil for two papers this semester, and he gave me an idea for a short story. What a writer! Not a guy you'd like to be on a desert island with, but his philosophy could be purposely misinterpreted and made into a somewhat logical or at least palatable set of ideas. The interpretation seems to be pretty good...I also used Kaufman's Nietzsche for the research paper I did, and he seems to be pretty knowledgeable and unbiased. I can't wait to read some of the other pieces in this.

a great collection...i don't think it includes 'thus spake zarathustra', though. if it does, my apologies. if i'm right, then that's an odd omission. otherwise, i love it.

In response to some of the prattlings below-only those who do not know the first thing about Nietzsche think that he was at all anti-Semitic. He wrote clearly, very clearly, against that and against nationalism. In one of his books he stated that Germany should not admit any more Jews inside of her borders. Why? Because he felt that the German people lacked an identity, and knew that Jewish people had a very strong identity. He did not think that Germany, weak and unrealized as it was, could stand an influx of a people that he repeatedly characterized as remarkable.

I am somewhat obsessed with Nietzsche, and this book started it all. Do not dive into his later, more well known masterpieces (Beyond Good and Evil, the Genealogy of Morals, The Gay Science) without acquainting yourself with this book. It is an introduction to his style, and there is no better example of his mastery of psychological observations. In this book he comments on all elements of social reality ("no one thinks to thank the clever man for restraining his wit when in the company of those who cannot practice wit" for example), going into love, friendship, the tenor of social gatherings, absolutely everything that is psychologically investigatable. He brings this method to his later books, in which he tackles larger issues, like the history of religion, philosophy, morality, and other things. But it all starts here-his later critiques of Christianity and everything else are far more understandable after a thorough acquaintance with his psychological method, first and best presented here. If you are at all sensitive and introspective, this book will move you to tears more than a few times.

O.k. So I have a minor in philosophy and Nietzsche was one of my inspirations to pursue this as a degree in college. Nietzsche deals with androgony. In more modern terms, men and women are crossing over the line of androgeny with their jock image. They are getting more and more androgynous you can't distunguish between even basic differences between the sexes anymore. While my philosophy professor and classmates dismissed Nietzsche as "not being a first rate philosopher," he does have his points about god and androgeny. This is part of our changing world and in philosophy class I did make my points.

I feel obligated to correct a distortion suggested by `unraveler' below. It is popular to suggest Nietzsche was an anti-semite, but this is a rather lazy habit. Nietzsche's remark on `the youthful stock-exchange Jew' was mentioned. Here it is in its proper environment:

. . . the entire problem of the Jews exists only within national states, inasmuch as it is here that their energy and higher intelligence, their capital in will and spirit accumulated from generation to generation in a long school of suffering, must come to preponderate to a degree calculated to arouse envy and and hatred, so that in almost every nation . . . there is gaining ground the literary indecency of leading the Jews to the sacrificial slaughter as scapegoats for every possible public or private misfortune. As soon as it is no longer a question of the conserving of nations but of the production of the strongest possible European mixed race, the Jew will be just as usable and desirable as an ingredient of it as any other national residue. Every nation, every man, possesses unpleasant, indeed dangerous qualities: it is cruel to demand that the Jew should constitute an exception. In him these qualities may even be dangerous and repellent to an exceptional degree; and perhaps the youthful stock-exchange Jew is the most repulsive invention of the entire human race. Nonetheless I should like to know how much must, in a total accounting, be forgiven a people who, not without us all being to blame, have had the most grief-laden history of any people and whom we have to thank for the noblest human being (Christ), the purest sage (Spinoza), the mightiest book and the most efficacious moral code in the world. . . .

Is this anti-semitism???

if you want to have your moral foundations knocked out from under you, read this book - and then build upon the ruins - Nietzsche's, in my opinion, most accessible work, as his aphoristic style floats over many different topics - don't stop here however, i recommend Kauffman's "Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, AntiChrist" as a starter if you find the complexity and diversity of Nietzsche's thought to be overwhelming or incomprehensible - he's frequently ambiguous and contradictory but it's more a positive trademark of his works and shouldn't dissuade one from further readings.

If you like aphorisms and philosophy, this book will become one of your bibles. If nothing else, it's just plain fun to read for his incredible wit. Of course you have to put his ideas in the context of the period in which he wrote and understand that he has his own odd prejudices, but the brilliance of his understanding of the human condition really shines through. The biggest mistake any reader could make is to think Nietzsche was an anti-semite---far from it. He was anti-neanderthal. In this book especially the reader sees his low tolerance for received wisdom. This book is nothing less than part of the origin of Western psychology as practiced today. It also represents the demolition of science and philosophy polluted by the received Western theological framework. Some of the best parts are when he skewers religion. You have to love his style even if you do not agree with his pessimistic disgust for piety. This is the kind of philosophy book you need not fret over, unless you harbor wishful thinking about a supremely benevolent deity. Instead of making an elaborate argument about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, as preceeding systematic philosophers did literally and figuratively, Nietzsche bends the pin and throws it in the trash. I wish I had read this before his Genealogy of Morals, as knowing his thoughts here would have made that book far more interetsing and understandable. I highly recommend philosophy students first approaching Nietzsche pick up Human, All Too Human to start their study. And if you are religious and want to bolster your faith, well, you should stay far away from this book.

Based on Kierkegaard's book, it is clear that despair is essential for a person to realize he is not a "self," and thereby turn to God; but many people choose to create a self on their own-they become a carbon copy of everyone else in the world. I was intrigued by Kierkegaard's insights. From what I understood, there are two possibilities a person can have: (1) There is the possibility of becoming the self that God intended for the person, or (2) The alternate possibility when one manufactures a "self" then for the rest of his or her life, strives to attain it. The "fantastic" is the result of one's idea of self that is always being improved and refined from the previous "self." However, a person can only have a self if God gives it to him or her. The "sickness unto death" is when the person does not realize this until he or she faces death and had lived a life in sin (sin was explained as the spiritual and actual position of a person in comparison to God).

The person had a chance to live in "actuality," but instead was in despair and now is left with the "sickness unto death." Kierkegaard offered an insight to the human soul that ought to be the foundation to understanding the psyche of the Christian. His work is still relevant, and had probably ushered the Christian psychology movement into existence. It would be safe to say that he is a "founding father" of Christian psychology and was a very observant man. This book is not easy to read, but it is worth the effort.

This was my first Kierkegaard book, and I can't imagine it'll ever not be my favorite. This should be everyone's introduction to him. It's short, sweet, beautiful, encouraging, exotic, convicting, brutal, and funny.

Written by Anti-Climacus, K's very idealized Christian author who always does his best to expose externalisms in the lives of human beings--both Christians and pagans.

I'm not going to get into a major discussion of this book here; you can do that on your own or peruse some of the other reviews on this page. I will, however, give a very cursory sketch of _some_ of his great ideas.

1. It is written from an unabashedly orthodox Christian standpoint (orthodox meaning Apostles Creed). While there are a few passages contained therein that can be read like Arminian creeds, overall this book presupposes God's Word as Truth itself and thus is congruent mostly with what is later called Van Tillian apologetics (of course one could then say that Van Til had some Kierkegaard in him!).

2. It is written to examine what faith, in its nature as an exclusively Christian concept, is. But ever heard that Kierkegaard hated doctrine, that he loved the irrational leap into blind faith? Forget it. That's Johannes de Silentio. The passion and power of his prose here, along with his journal notes as provided by the Hongs' priceless scholarship, show that when he lists "dogma" with the three essentials of Christianity (the other two are faith and paradox), he meant it! (It wasn't just Anti-Climacus's idea.) He even says that once people throw out the "thou shalts" and God's special revelation as what it is--that Christianity is dead. Once we make Christ into an event, once philosophers merge God and man together--that Christianity is dead. Very powerful stuff. Now what does this have to do with faith? Kierkegaard shows that all natural men put their faith in themselves--and they will despair forever as they autonomously insist that they are the source of themselves. What Christianity insists on in men's putting their faith in the Creator as the Bible commands. Faith in God is not irrational, Kierkegaard says; but it is the gospel, as so wonderful, so inexpressibly amazing, that cannot fit into the minds of rationalistic men. This is a huge distinction. And a wonderful one!

3. It is written to examine thanklessness in those who don't look like they're despairing. This is where he attacks the Danish State Church. It's brutal and very convicting. I won't spoil it for you.

Despair is the refusal of man to admit who he is--a creature of his Creator. It's hubris, it's solipsism, it's pride, it's fear of humiliation. But Kierkegaard doesn't stop there. He shows the solution; he shows Christ as the only answer, using Christ's character as manifested in the gospels to show that it is our rebellion that He saves all men from. In this way, Anti-Climacus is in no way judgmental or self-righteous.

Another note: the Hongs are amazing. Write them a letter and tell them how amazing their work is. Each Princeton Kierkegaard book contains journal entries, an historical introduction, earlier draft changes, indices, &c.

And one more: another reviewer was totally right when he said that some of this is so powerful and--yea-- beautiful that you won't know you're reading Theology. The passage starting with the hourglass on pages 27-8 comes to mind immediately.

I only detract a star because of the ambiguity in certain places that has deceived many non-Christians into thinking that they're a-okay. And I've met a few of them, working at a bookstore as I did. It's written for Christians, so use your Biblical framework while reading it.

As a student at St. Olaf College, I got Kierkegaard pretty much thrown at me. The professors Hong translations of Kierkegaard are the most erudite I've seen. They own the largest Kierkegaard library in the world... They know their stuff. It's definitely worth the extra money over and against the penguin translation.

"The self is a self which relates itself to itself or is a relation relating itself to itself in the relation."
Don't get too flummoxed by the first page, it gets better.

One thing I like about Kierkegaard is that he knows how to WRITE. Other philosophers lose common literary skills that make writing enjoyable, for example, Kant. You cannot sit down and read 200 pages of a Critique of Pure reason straight, your head will explode. With Kierkegaard however, he is so enjoyable and fun to read, you hardly notice your're reading philosophy.

This book however, I wouldn't recommend to beginners, I'd choose either "Either/Or" or "The two ages"

where is God? this is the question i asked my self in my own suffering. kierkegaard's sickness unto death helped me understand where God is/was in my own despair. when i read kierkegaard i know i am reading something that was told from one's heart. kierkegaard really understands despair and he understands the struggle one goes through in despair. despair doesn't just happen to a select few. it touches us all. this book really saved me from sinking deep into my own despair. if kierkegaard were alive today i would send him a thank you note!

This is hands down the greatest book I have ever read, not including the Bible. I say that as a Christian and as an individual. I can understand how some choose to apply the concepts without the religion, but I personally think this would have infuriated SK.
Again, not including the Bible, "The Sickness Unto Death" is perhaps the only literary work I have ever read that altered my life, either by perception or action.
His elaborations on the various forms of despair should hit everyone, as there are several, each applicable to each personality.
If anyone were to ask me to recommend a single work, this would be it.
I must add, that I have not read scores of philosophy, only a handful. I say that to say this. This book may seem somewhat difficult to understand at first, but it gets easier the more you read and the more accustomed you get to SK's style. Once the first few pages regarding the definition of self have been comprehended, the rest falls beautifully into place.

Antipodes is a major milestone in the scholarly and scientific theory and methodology of visionary plants, entheogens, and the phenomena of the dissociative cognitive state, in the tradition of William James. Nitrous showed James the ordinary state of consciousness isn't enough for a full account of the mind.

Shanon critiques previous approaches to cognitive psychology, entheogens, and the mystic state and surpasses previous coverage of drug-induced mysticism. He presents and calls for a sophisticated, well-informed phenomenological Cognitive Psychology approach to the mind and to the dissociative cognitive state and primary religious experiencing.

He presents a research methodology, framework, and paradigm of extensive first-hand experience and training in the dissociative visionary cognitive state, with extensive comparison of experiential observations with many other experienced observers or trained practitioners, per Ken Wilber's Eye to Eye. He demonstrates how the altered, dissociative cognitive state informs the scientific study of the mind, and how a phenomenological cognitive psychology perspective informs the scientific, systematic study of the states induced by visionary plants.

He approaches cognitive psychology as a concern with overall dynamic mental activity and phenomena, rather than underlying-level mental representation. He critiques the established Psychology models of mystic-state experiencing, emphasizing that the visionary altered state affects and works comprehensively and non-specifically upon the entirety of experiencing and cognitive activity, including movement and performance, neither centered in uncovering hidden layer of already-ongoing sub-cognitive activity nor being restricted to merely the isolated faculty of imagination.

Antipodes opens a new era in research and theory on visionary plants and mythic metaphor. Myths were discovered through the use of substance-induced altered states of consciousness; the world of myth is the world of entheogens. Ayahuasca drinkers tend toward the universal metaphysical conclusion, of idealist monism: only interconnected thoughts exist.

Although noting Ancient Jewish mysticism used a Ayahuasca mixture such as Rue and Acacia or Mimosa, he emphasizes myths as metaphorical description of dissociative cognitive experiencing induced by visionary plants, not of the plants themselves like previous entheogen scholars. Myth describes dissociative experiencing through small-scale mythemes and larger-scale structures, and represents mental transformation over multiple sessions.

Shanon's coverage of mystical phenomena is less developed and coherent than of imagery. His categories of experiential phenomena and visionary metaphor don't cover the specifically religious-experiencing realm such as a willing sacrificing of kingship; he covers temples as merely a visual object, not really explaining why kings and temples are seen. He covers control-instability, personal autonomy issues, and fear as though separate from religious/spiritual divine-encounter aspects.

Practitioners fearfully cross themselves and pray for mercy before taking the Eucharistic potion. Cognitive dissociation brings thought-control crisis in which reliance on one's own powers and resources is of no avail; to combat fear and restabilize mental control, trust is needed in something beyond one's local autonomous self.

He advises mastering fearful thoughts and remembering you're an autonomous self who can influence thoughts -- yet asserts Ayahuasca drinkers feel the source and master of which thoughts happen isn't themselves, but external forces; it's scientifically unknown how thoughts originate; and the source of thoughts, control, and what happens in one's mind is not oneself, but a hidden, transcendent source.

Metaphorical descriptions of dissociative phenomena are also covered in Metzner's Unfolding Self; Culiano's Out of this World; Collins' Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys; Arbel's Beholders of Divine Secrets; and Thorne's Marihuana: Mysticism & Cannabis Experience. Antipodes is a must-have for consciousness and entheogen researchers.

To this date this book is the best analytical physiological examination and charting of the ayahusca experience that I have ever before seen. It is an exceptional book and a must read for any one interested in Psychology, Visionary substances, Ayahusca, spirituality, religion or the mind. Benny is going through the book charting cataloging and grouping the various Ayahuasca phenomena and experiences into the first ever-scientific exploration into the visionary state. He is very loyal to the scientific western model and I respect this as well as many of his ideas and personal views on the visionary experience as well as his deep admiration for Platonic thought. Although I would like to say that I feel it is quite a shame on his part that he discounts the Spiritual dimension so. I feel that in his attempt to categorize the ayahusca phenomena has allowed him to miss the Forest through the trees if you will. I think it is very presumptuous to assume the entire shamanism history of the world as well as the entire visionary and Ayahusca community is largely in fault to believe in the reality, how ever large or small it may be, to the spiritual dimension. But then again he is not a Physicist and the idea of Other physical realitys as noted in quontom theory is not something he belives in at all, I know I have talked with him personaly on this matter in Peru. But in benny's own words from the book " Ayahusca brings us to the very limits of what rational western psychology can comfortably know or answer he then delvs with the conclusions of his book with a examination of Platonic thought wich I fing beutiful and a perfect intalectial match to the tone of this amazing work. I give this astounding book 5 stars, and a must have for any personal Library.

INTRODUCTION
What happens when a worldly Israeli cognitive psychologist goes to the Amazon Basin where he ingests the famed psychotropic concoction Ayahuasca (the `vine of the dead') again and again and again? Our intrepid philosophical psychologist is no longer a sprightly youth, maddened for adventure. He is instead an accomplished theoretician with widely published articles (several in this journal) and a noted book (*The Representational and the Presentational*, 1993) that speak the from the perspective of cognitive (or phenomenological, for Shanon) psychology against the reductive tendency to view the mind's activities as created by the the brain's activities. Even before his Amazonian quest, he placed himself in the Gibsonian camp seeing the mind as dynamic intermediary between organism and environment and active participant in both. What did happen is this extraordinary book, a scientific analysis of his own visions and the education of both Shanon's views and, perhaps, his soul.

Benny Shanon's accomplishment in this unique and carefully written treatise is nonpareil. In his landmark attempt to chart and classify the experiences that follow ingesting the Amazonian brew, Ayahuasca (always capitalized by Shanon), he demonstrates a will to observe and explain as relentless as carbon steel, but his seeing and experiencing also require him to be as flexible as tungsten when he must shape his interpretations within experiences that have all but overthrown the pretense of objective observation. Indeed, as he becomes `educated' through his journeys with this brewed plant compound, apparently beginning his own shamanic initiation, his will, his very self must capitulate to experiences beyond words. Later, back at his desk, Shanon will use his notes and memory to go discover the order of things. This breakthrough study will achieve the respect and renown it deserves, but it is currently causing a stir in certain circles and amongst the openminded international intelligentsia.

Shanon has written a slow-rising classic that should stay aloft for the duration of our era, not just as cognitive psychology or even as another narrative of the psychedelic experience, but as the revelation of the boundless potentials within the human journey itself. Since its release, it appears to have received universal praise from other critics and readers. However, word has not filtered out into the hungry minds of the general public or surely *Antipodes*(1) would be on a bestseller list. Either its subject matter - pharmaceutically induced altered states of consciousness - is still considered too politically threatening or Benny Shanon needs to hit the talk show circuit. His book enters deep waters yet never loses its way. It may be a challenge for some to wade through his classifications but in doing so may find their thinking clarified. Shanon's writing is clear as a mountain brook. He wastes no words for grand effect but always goes straight and true for the point of the topic he had begun. This makes for a very satisfying read, which is helped immensely by the greater story lurking within it to do with one man's awakening from the sleep from self consciousness. *Antipodes* is neither obscure nor excessive, so it might make a good selection for a book-of-the-month for educated readers. Oprah, are you listening?

Nothing exactly like this has ever been written before(2), beautifully rendered and incisively analysed yet finally superseding its own analytic. The reader joins a dedicated scientist on a journey that most would consider well beyond the possibility of scientific data gathering, except in terms of chemistry or anthropology. This journey is a phenomenological analysis, Shanon's close observation his own experience. He wastes no pages speculating on what the neural correlates of his visionary experiences might be, not even taking much time to explain the active ingredients of the `brew' or how it changes the brain. Within this work (but not always within his own experience), the phenomenological-analytical approach seldom wavers. Such an approach still requires a certain distance, so when the object of study is his own earthshaking visions or emotional tsunamis rising up to lay bare every suppressed anxiety, guilt, or self delusion - not even to mention the digestive trauma often encountered(3), one finds oneself in mute admiration for this stalwart scholar who steadily perseveres, refusing to be swept away from his purpose. He admits to making wrong choices in his early Ayahuasca journeys, lingering at banquet or resisting the lure of jaguar metamorphosis when he should have continued his quest, but he learns and begins again. As new worlds open before him, sometimes terrifying, he never retreats in a desperate attempt to turn the experience off. But he also learns when to surrender. Song pours from him amongst strangers, but he knew he must allow the joy to have voice. Though only briefly alluded to, it seems his perseverance and purity of purpose allowed him to finally transcend the limits of knowledge altogether by surrendering his cognition and his very self in a metanoia beyond the realm of words, memory, or interpretation. Needless to say, this experience is not described.

It is in this sense that *Antipodes* may find itself attacked (or ignored) from two opposed positions at once. Most hard science does not consider phenomenology a respectable undertaking since one's subjective experiences can neither be observed by anyone else nor shown to produce repeatable effects. One attempting to draw up analytical structures for drug-induced visions is likely to be dismissed out of hand as delusional, taking hallucinations for reality(4). On the other hand, true believers - religious followers, mystic esotericists, New Agers - will be annoyed for though Shanon puts the stamp of `reality' upon his altered-state journeys, he continues to be skeptical about the existence of supernatural deities behind the metaphysical curtain. In his captivating Prologue he states: `For years I characterized myself as a "devout atheist". When I left South America I was no longer one' (p. 9), but he later explains that his `theism' is more related to a Spinozan pantheism grounded in creative dynamics than to anybody's pantheon or hierarchy of static divinities. He also rejects as unlikely the many reports of enhanced psi powers during the Ayahuasca intoxication (noting that increased perceptual sensitivity and interpersonal attunement can explain the `mind reading' he has experienced and heard reported). He remains open, however, expressing the wish that reports like that involving the remote viewing of an actual European city by an Amazonian native who had neither seen pictures nor heard stories of such a place should be objectively investigated.

Others will argue, and have done so, that immersion in the vision quest involves the suspension of the judgmental, cognitive faculty. Shanon seems to have learned the right steps to his dance between reception and cognition. When the moment presents itself, he allows the imagery or ambiance to take over; but when he returns he makes note of all that can circumscribed. Such imagistic encouragement is similar to Spinoza's intuitive mode of knowing, as Shanon notes (p. 205), but he also stands by the need for subsequent careful analysis in the same way elucidated by Whitehead (1978): `The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation' (p. 5). Whether this `rational interpretation' infects that which is so interpreted, thus standing on the primary ontological ground beyond that of visionary experience remains an open question, to be asked again below.

In what follows, I will attempt the briefest of summaries though such is an injustice to this groundbreaking psychological cartography of what is terra incognita to most of us. I will then share my perplexities and a personal response, before concluding.

SUMMARY
As a reader, I was hooked immediately by the dramatic Prologue as well as the few selected illustrations, all details from the artwork Planos by Brazilian `shaman-turned-artist' Céu. Each detail is a picture unto itself - a `frame of reference' - yet `the big picture' reveals them all as aspects of a greater dynamic spiralling out from or in towards a core of light that no doubt `passeth all understanding'. The plates seemed to be metaphor for *The Antipodes of the Mind*, frame of reference within frames of reference, each part structured by the whole, while the whole is changed by the activity of the parts.

In the Prologue, Shanon tells the story of his first encounters with the Ayahuasca brew and the questions that brought him to begin his mammoth research project. In his first experience of any consequence he had visions that included jaguars and snakes. He learned later that this was commonplace for Ayahuasca drinkers and his professional curiosity as a cognitive psychologist was roused: `Snakes and jaguars seem to be just too specific to define cognitive universals' (p. 7). But he also underwent horrible visions of human cruelty throughout history, including what must have been especially wrenching, the Jewish Holocaust. But rather than back away or fall into bitter cynicism, he countered it with contemplation of the beauty that humans had brought into the world: `However evil and petty human beings are, I thought, they are also the creators of some of the most beautiful things that exist in the universe. With culture and art, as well as with religion and spirituality, humankind can be redeemed' (p. 5). The anguish or fear evoked by unexpected and shocking presentations of evil must be the gate that has turned away many other first time drinkers from further pursuing this course. Through his faith in life and the human journey, Shanon himself emerged beyond the gates in a centre of serenity within which it seemed the world and himself was born anew: `It seemed this was the first day of creation' (p. 6).

After these first world-changing experiences with the Santo Daime Church (daime=Ayahuasca), he was thrown into a period of critical self-analysis. He knew he had to further study this vine and its power, but how? It seems he first had to accept who he already was, an accomplished cognitive psychologist; he confirmed this identity by ending his self-analysis and beginning his journey to other realities found through Ayahuasca and then a long critical, objective, and categorical analysis of the Ayahuasca experience. This book is the fruit of his labours. It is clear, however, that he had also personal motivations to discover a way to confront the human dilemma of good and evil, as well as facing (or `being faced by') the everpresent questions of a spiritual nature.

Shanon set the time aside, returned to the Amazon, underwent prescribed purifications, and became a dedicated student of the School of Ayahuasca, a mystes into its mysteries. He knew from the first he would never `graduate' as the result of a handful of Ayahuasca sessions, so he took his work seriously indeed. He travelled to gatherings among the three churches (two Christian inspired, one an offshoot of the Umbanda movement) in Brazil that use Ayahuasca as their sacrament and participated in their organized sessions. He sat with Amazonian tribespeople under the jungle canopy, often with the guidance of a ayahuasquero, the `specialist of the sacred', a shaman. Later, as he began to master his visions, he journeyed with few others among accomplished shaman-healers. He shared the brew with experienced users in urban settings, and, when he felt ready, flew solo. At the time of publication, he had gone on over 130 Ayahuasca journeys, though the `core corpus' of his phenomenological research work is his first 67 sessions. Each session was summarized at its conclusion. Beyond that, he read everything he could find on the brew, from early reports of missionaries or explorers to current extended scientific analyses. None combined scholarly analysis with extended personal experience. Finally, he set out in good cognitive psychological fashion and interviewed others who had just concluded their own sessions or anyone in general who also had extensive experience with the brew: `My estimate is that, all told, the data discussed here are based on about 2,500 Ayahuasca sessions' (p. 410).

Then Shanon got back to his desk to reveal the structure of the world (perhaps that should be `worlds'). The bulk of the book consists of prolonged exegeses, enumeration and elaboration of steps, systems and subsystems, categories of subcategories within supercategories, and lists of effects and affects. His point of departure is the phenomenology of his `core corpus'. I will not summarize here his structural program, central to his topic as he deems it to be. Strange to say, I rarely found this approach tedious. For one thing, as noted above, the objects of his classifications are confrontations and participation with other realities, so there is a veritable tale of wonders interwoven within the data. Running through the exposition like an unruly stream upon well-manicured fields is the underlying narrative of the paradigmatic hero's journey into meaning. Furthermore, Shanon's mind, as expressed in his writing, is so refreshingly clear and organized that one feels perfectly secure in boarding his `aeroplane' to survey mysteries of terror and delight well beyond most of our experience or comprehension. It may be, however, that Shanon needed this comprehensive organization as a grounding for his more ultimate revelations. Perhaps it was necessary for him `systematically to chart the various phenomena that Ayahuasca may induce and *to establish order in them*' (p. 48, my italics), so he could at least recall the pathway back toward the Source, the `still point of the turning world'.

Shanon learns there are stages of advancement into these mysteries: The novitiate begins passively watching wonders unfold as on a screen, but with experience and courage, learns to enter the vision and explore its reality from within. Then there comes a stage where a certain degree of control over the unfolding reality is possible, though such `control' is always partial and participatory - Shanon often uses the metaphor of playing an instrument or being played as such: `Thus, I say that the Ayahuasca experience is like music played on an instrument which is the soul and that this music is a perfect mirroring of one's entire being' (p. 380). Indeed, the final stage seems to involve gaining the power to engage many worlds (or realities) simultaneously, but also the power to act in this world in ways never previously attained or attempted, such as the expressive arts or guidance and healing. The `grades' of the School of Ayahuasca are summarized thus:

`First there was an exposition. ...the second course was discipline. ... The third course of my schooling was primarily concerned with healing and disease. ... The grades that followed focused on the sacred and involved powerful spiritual experiences. Then I had a long period-coupled with my partaking of Ayahuasca with traditional Amazonian healers-that focused on shamanism. ... The subsequent course ... focused on a variety of more specific issues' (pp. 302-3).

To get this far, the novitiate or mystes has endured many trials and temptations, yet s/he must be bold enough to know when to surrender to the reality that presents itself and wise enough to know when to actively alter it. One must have overcome the narcissistic limitations of one's fears while not inflating vanity over one's piloting control or expanding knowledge. Such hubris, as myths have taught us, may lead to the pride that goes before a fall.

Shanon found the pure heart and `empty centre' to be accepted amongst the healers of the Amazon rain forest. He mentions that now he feels his role has become more performative than explorative as guide, hierophant, and something of an ayahuasquero himself. In terms of powers, Benny Shanon emerges as `Benny Shaman' (though I doubt he would admit this or appreciate the wordplay). In terms of wisdom, he states his conviction that the most expressive gesture of ontological truth is found simply in songs of praise for all creation, in the 'Hallelujah' of his ancestors. As to the ontological question of what exactly is being so praised, Shanon avers it is not anything at all but the joy of the eternal dynamic process - neither God as an entity (or any other form of the supernatural), nor is it humanity or nature, as such. Creation is what the name implies, an ongoing unfolding of the infinitely potent creative core of all things, including ourselves.

Obviously, such `knowledge' cannot be attained either through phenomenological or analytic reduction. It is everpresent beyond the edge of the `known world', that is, beyond the conscious mind `Wherefrom words turn back,/Together with the mind not having attained...' (*Tattirïya Upanishad* 2.9). It is at this point that Shanon the scientist must give up on science and even knowledge in any usual sense and admit that such direct communion exceeds communication: `Yet, there were occasions that it was clear to me that I had to make a choice-if I really wished to undergo the experience presenting itself to me, I would have to forgo my future recollection of it and give up any thought of ever talking about it' (p. 355). Furthermore, even the path to the edge of this unspeakable awakening is one not of ordered signposts and structured roads but of intuitive knowledge, well beyond categorical reasoning. After all his phenomenological analysis, Shanon at last confesses that

`very poignantly, I realized how limited the scientific approach is. It was evident to me that [in] pursuing this stance, there are realms of knowledge that can never be attained. I further comprehended that there are levels of knowledge that demand one to let go and relinquish all critical, distanced analysis. ... In this respect, despite all its limitations in terms of sociological power and cultural permanence, the indigenous stance has the upper hand' (p. 356).

PERPLEXITIES
I continue to be perplexed about several things hinted at in this tome but not fully explained and I outline them here. These mainly result from my own application of traditional reasoning to that which eludes it or from Shanon's expressed reticence to reveal more personal detail or delve into metaphysics. My perplexities are mainly to do with the world of light and truth revealed to the author and apparently to other experienced Ayahuasca drinkers. Either the dark side is less real or it plays a smaller role than I had imagined.

Unlike with LSD, there are said to be no `bad trips' with Ayahuasca. Shanon admits he interviewed no one who drank the turbid brew but once, which would surely be the result if anyone `freaked out' or was just turned off by the whole experience. The nausea, gastritis, and vomiting, emphasized in other first person accounts, may be enough to cause one to avoid the substance next time, but actual `mind-blowing' has not been reported, to my knowledge. Shanon makes it clear that when faced with a personal crisis under the intoxication one must soldier on, dealing with fear and related negative emotions in as grounded and unperturbed manner as possible. Still, crises occur: `Quite commonly,' he states matter-of-factly, `people feel that they are about to die' (p. 57). Elsewhere he notes that a mental breakdown is real possibility. Yet not in Antipodes or anything else I have read to do with Ayahuasca experiences is such a breakdown recorded. Is it bad-trip free?

Along these same lines, my all-too-human binary thinking gets skewed in Shanon's brief discussion of the ontological status of good and evil. On the same page he reports that `Ayahuasca leads people to the conclusion that the world contains both good and evil, that the two are intertwined, and that the ultimate reality is beyond good and evil', but that, `Finally, there are visions in which one feels one is encountering the Supreme Good' (p. 174). I realize I'm probably not getting the mystical paradox here, but elsewhere it's said that Ayahuasca has a cosmic sense of humor (not always benign), that it lies or hides as much as it reveals. Is the Supreme Light without shadow, or what?

I wonder also about the dark side of the initiatory process, especially shamanic initiation. In the pattern of the ritual death-rebirth cycle, there must be a dark night of the soul before the dawn of revelation. Shamanic lore especially emphasizes the almost universal experience of death and dismemberment(5) - apparently the death of the everyday self - before the shaman returns, being one with death yet remaining alive. Shanon modestly and perhaps wisely downplays the significance, but he acted as shamanic healer and guide for others and was accepted at least among one ayahuasquero guild. The fact of this exceptional book's existence is enough to convince me of Shanon's shamanic metamorphosis. No ordinary insight could have carried it through to the end. What I want to know is what sort of ritual or visionary death did our author have to endure? Or did he achieve his dawn without a dusk? Admittedly, he states such an autobiographical confessional was not his purpose here and may have to await a future literary venture.

And one wonders about the whole question of the existence or creation of orderly categories from the data resulting from his phenomenological and statistical analysis. What sort of lists, tables, categories, and structures are being brought forth here, and why? On the one hand he notes commonalities in his visions and those of many others as well as intriguing parallel reactions to these visions, especially amongst the Ayahuasca cognoscenti. As noted, it was in fact these inexplicable similarities that set him on his quest in the first place, professionally speaking at least. Does he then think his structural analyses is revealing the universal latticework of creation, or at least of the Ayahuasca experience? Or is he himself creating such a latticework to place over the chaos of creation? Neither, it seems, or both. Shanon is well aware of the ambiguities of his project and how boundaries in the realms of visionary experience seem to shift or even, with a wink and smile, disappear altogether. In a universe in which the only constant is creative dynamism itself, it is impossible to distinguish between that which one discovers and that which one projects. He states that `there is no clear-cut differentiation between interpretation and creation. ... In essence, all is interpretive, all is creative' (p. 351). If it is so that all phenomena are simultaneously the product of interpretation and creation then - aside from the author's need, personal or professional, `to establish order in them' (p. 48) - it feels like such cartographic detail is mapped onto shifting tides that will change with the phases of the moon.

This is a slippery metaphysics with which we are left. Shanon lays his detailed phenomenological analysis upon the creative essence with some ambiguity, it seems to me, like placing the picnic blanket on the lake. If our acts participate in the unfolding of reality then categories, maps, structures, laws of science, and what have you achieve their substance over millennia of cultural or even transcultural `use', which results in the reality of habitual consensus. They are as real as anything else that seems to just be there, in one place, here and now. Does this leave his categories and structures and patterns with a ground on which to stand? Probably - at least temporarily. In fact, his studies prove beyond much question that certain visionary and experiential patterns reoccur across cultures and in times far apart.

Several times Shanon asserts that his purpose is not to explore ontological questions, but he takes enough steps in that direction that the reader understands that when Shanon finally states that `the view put forth here is that the Ayahuasca experience is one of generation and creation' (p. 383), he is tantalizingly close to claiming this for our usual experience too.

He even briefly discusses the source of these patterns of creation, which brings me to my last perplexity, the uncertainty over the terms `creativity' and `imagination'. Early on, Shanon assures us that `Ayahuasca visions [exhibit] a beauty that is beyond imagination' (p. 17)', referring to our usual notion of the imagination as a post-language faculty activated by the self from other images already stored in memory. In speculating on the source of such beauty, he denies that such creative imagining comes either from a `world of forms', already `out there' in their own ultimate reality or from psychology, that is, the unconscious `in here'. So, in his interpretation, neither Platonic ideas nor Jungian archetypes will do.

To account for the reality of Ayahuasca experiences (and by implication, all experience), he posits a creational reality in which our own creativity participates but which ultimately exceeds our personhood or existence. So, `the notions of "human creativity" or "power of imagination" turn out to be much more fantastic then they are usually thought to be" (p. 396). Yes, indeed, but the originality of this position is where perplexity arises. In the first place, isn't this the core of the Romantics' apotheosis of the transpersonal imagination? Creativity as the core can also be found in some form in both Bergson and Whitehead.

In the second place, I think Shanon is too dismissive of Jung's concept of the collective unconscious by reducing it to residing `in here', but this may be mistaken assumption based on Jung's misuse of Freud's original term, the unconscious. In his later years, Jung wrote a good deal about the *objective psyche*, meaning that the collective or transpersonal unconscious is the very world with which we engage and which is our source. Shanon refers approvingly several times to the somewhat similar notion of the *anima mundi* (`world-soul') as source of the real, both subjective and objective. Then again, as a result of his experiences of communion he would likely disagree that the world or world-soul should be understood as `unconscious' (even if Jung meant `unconscious from the perspective of our self-contained conscious').

The Jung-inspired archetypal psychologist James Hillman (1975) brings us to the point where Jung meets Shanon when he proclaims that every perception, cognition, or memory is fantasy-laden and not possible without such imaginative elaboration. Fantasies, in this sense, are not individual: `The revelation of fantasies exposes the divine, which implies that our fantasies are alien because they are not ours' (p. 184). This may add some flesh to the ontological skeletal frame of Shanon's `generation and creation' pantheism, though he adds the last note that in the `dance' of creator and created it is impossible to tell who is leading.

Allow me to reemphasize that my above `perplexities' are not in the way of criticism. These are questions I would love to sit and discuss with the author; no doubt the inadequacy of my understanding would soon be made plain. I should even apologize for critiquing the few hints of ultimate matters which he deigned to mention, for he himself admits they have not yet been fully thought through. However, feeling perplexed by Shanon's extraordinary encounters and the great work of his phenomenological analysis, I couldn't help but wonder, `What does it all mean?' Perhaps in his next book Shanon will explore an answer to that question.

PERSONAL REACTION
After reading Antipodes with great pleasure and new discovery each time over several careful readings, I retain two reactions that are probably mine alone. One is that I am now sure I will never seek an opportunity to drink the brew of the `vine of the dead'. Put simply, I doubt that I have the strength of character it took for Shanon to advance from audience member to conductor of the orchestra. In part, my reticence arises from my tendency to wander off and become thoroughly lost in the aforementioned psychedelic era, sidetrack to sidetracks. It is my understanding - faith, if you will - that cognition, rationality, and analysis are themselves particular cultural fantasies. When one give intuition primacy, one tends to wander as way leads on to way. Shanon could absorb his incredible experiences and then later at his desk, `establish order in them'. In fact, to the extent that it is possible, he has done just that. However, I fear I would become an Ayahuasca drifter, lost in other realities, but with no wish to return and nothing in order at all.

The second reaction was not one I had expected. *The Antipodes of the Mind* gave me, first dimly then with increasing illumination, *hope*, suffusing me generously with that unfamiliar but uplifting emotion. By reminding me, `There is more here than meets the eye and you know it!', a flood channel of forgotten memories opened and I was able to recall the moments I had found myself elsewhen or elsewhere (and not always as the result of substance ingestion). In the need to `get real' as I grew older, I had simply suppressed such experiences of wonder and awe because they were not `useful'. I had pushed aside visions or encounters that threw into doubt the solid finality of day-to-day reality so I could join the grim march through the lifespan toward dusty death. I'm no fatalist, but I felt as though this book fell into my hands at just the right time. It is not just poetic license but a fact of consciousness-limited awareness that we walk about in worlds unrealized. So I wish to end this book review with appreciation rather than criticism: Thanks, Benny. You've done wonders. Hallelujah to you and your important book.

NOTES
1. There is no singular form of `antipodes'. From my 1938 Funk 'n Wagnalls *New Standard Dictionary*: `antipodes, n. sing. & pl. 1. A place or region on the opposite side of the earth; also, any two places or regions so opposed; as, australia is the antipodes (or at the antipodes) of England. 2. Those who live on the diametrically opposite sides of the earth; as, our antipodes sleep while we wake; the two nations are antipodes.'

2. The only comparable work I know of may be John Horgan's (2003) recent study. Former senior writer at *Scientific American* and noted science writer, Horgan takes a similarly skeptical show-me approach, even to his own ayahuasca experience. In Horgan's Amazon.com review, he puts *Antipodes* on a par with classics on the further reaches of conscious experience by such as William James and Aldous Huxley. He errs, however, when he states that, after his journeys, Shanon remained an atheist, except in the most narrow definition of the term.

3. Shanon downplays the extreme digestive tract disturbances that have been widely reported, occasionally resulting in projectile vomiting. With experience, Shanon found he could avoid bringing forth such unpleasantness by bringing forth spontaneous song instead!

4. Benny cogently argues that such visions are more `other realities' than fictional hallucinations (also see Shanon, 2003).

5. `The shaman learns to know death in the course of his initiation, when he goes for the first time into the underworld and is tortured by spirits and demons,' declares Mircea Eliade (1990, undated entry 1952). Such universality (all universality for that matter!) remains highly controversial in academic circles.

6. It would be most intriguing for Shanon write a phenomenological cartography after experimentation on LSD trips. Knowing the differences and similarities would tell us much about the status of visions. Do they arise from specific drug, personal idiosyncrasy, or have they a transpersonal status?

Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience by Prof. Benny Shanon, Oxford University Press, 2002

This is a difficult review for me to write. There is only one word I can think of to describe how I feel regarding the level of scholarship Prof. Shanon has put forth in this book: flabbergasted.

Beyond this single word description, the rest I'll try to elaborate, however inefficiently.

I have read, I would guess, some one hundred plus publications regarding ethnopharmacology and botany surrounding the likes of what is generically called "shamanism" - not to mention authoring my own book. I can honestly say, without solicitation or hesitation, that this book stands out on its own as hands down the best book I have ever read. I don't say this meaning within these certain parameters of study, i.e. ethnopharmacology or psychology. I mean - Period.

How could a book be the best I've ever read? That's a good question and one I'm somewhat startled over, but I'll try to elaborate:

For starters, the unbiased presentation. Prof. Shanon not only studied ayahuasca, but took it himself 120 (now 160) times for his study, something that is rare in most clinical investigations. Unlike other publications on ayahuasca (see Metzner, 1999), this book is thankfully not new agey, and it does reference indigenous reports, as well as reports from people from all walks of life who've partaken in the Ayahuasca ceremony.

As someone who has many years of my own psychonautical exploration, including with ayahuasca, I was awestruck at the literary composition and presentation of the ayahuasca experiences that Shanon has provided his readers, so many of which I have myself experienced. I've never thought that this level of description of the experience was possible.

I've read Huxley's Doors of Perception, from which Shanon's book is aptly named, but Huxley did not deliver us near the understanding and clarity that Shanon has here.

Furthermore, during Shanon's investigation of the Ayahuasca experience, he destroyed old prejudiced paradigms of psychological beliefs systems and created new standards by which researchers may continue further study.

Beyond these points, to which I'm here admittedly overly vague, Shanon also brings the metaphysical toe to toe with science - staring each other eye to eye into the great dance of wisdom - of opposites. I can not think of another book (at least that I've read) where this has ever been accomplished - except, maybe, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by Dr. Evans-Wentz.

As for my negative contentions regarding this book? I have none - except for maybe it's price - which is worth it regardless. I've never before read a book that I did not have some reservation or hesitation regarding some piece of evidence, presentation or conclusion. Not so here. At this point, I have no contentions against Shanon's work. He has raised the bar.

Antipodes of the Mind is the first book I've ever read that I whole heartedly endorse. Maybe this is due to my own level of ignorance in regards to the field of psychology, but I don't think so. I rather think Shanon has written one of the strongest arguments regarding any topic I've yet come across - much less the entheogenic experience.

This is THE BOOK to refer to when people ask about or question the authenticity of the entheogenic experience. This is THE BOOK to refer to when someone doesn't get it. Now the question is: will they read it? So, therefore, I guess I do have one real contention: That I had read it sooner myself.

Simply immense! You simply MUST read this book! 5 Stars!

Dr. Shannon has made an exceptional study of the ayahuasca experience. After reading such a very well written text,it was hard for me to immediately read other studies of entheogens currently in print, his thinking, use of vocabulary and general quality of argument were that muscular in a print world of terribly sophmoric writers, one-time experience experts, their oohs and ahhs fleshed out by flabby 1 and 2 syllable words in pages and pages of loose whipped-cream text.
He treats his subject with respect and breaks certain idea associations as "psychosis" as defining the ayahuasca state (bravo)and argues with evidence that indigenous cultural exposure alone does not necessarily condition visualizations content during the ayahuasca experience. For any individual looking for a serious, highly disciplined, ga-ga-lite approach to what could be a pretty slippery, "feeelings" driven topic, you must read this honest, unpretentious text.
Not easy, bouncy and full of New Age PC spirit-jargon. Despite this relieving manque, it is nevertheless a most inspiring read, personal enough at the right times to keep the mortal odour of subject clinician or pedantic social-anthropologist out of the air. Really a "right on" experiential read, built upon years of studied personal experience with the brew within and outside of the associated cultural settings and hence, rare indeed.
It is an award winning piece of work on an international scale.
Dr. Shannon is Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Although I wasn't there myself, I'm pretty sure this book is one of the most vivid, absorbing and true-to-life accounts out there of psychedelic hippy life in the late 60's East Village (with bits of Haight Ashbury). But the historical details (and the drugs - plenty of them) are a small part of the pleasure of reading (and re-reading) this memoir/novel. It's the perceptions of the human emotion - the uncertainty, anxiety, and occasional moments of almost mythic connection and becoming - that make this book so compelling and universal. Being young, on your own, a little lost and perhaps hungry, but with a pocket of pills and the address of the pad at which some friends are crashing, never sounded like so much fun or so much like the fundamental human predicament.

The gestures, the little turns of phrase or cheek or leg are so intimate, sometimes you feel almost like a spy, looking out from behind Peter's glasses as he weaves through a maze of tenement hallways, turn-ons and near misses. The most unforgettable for me were the coming-of-age epiphanies, including the first time on acid and the first time.... not to mention the down moments, sudden realizations of total directionlessness, or of homesickness for a for a temporary home you had fled just days or weeks earlier. Books and movies are full of cookie-cutter or melodramatic portrayals of life moments like these, but seldom do we actually see or read what thoughtful, self-aware and imperfectly graceful people (i.e. most of us) actually think or feel at these moments. From an LSD-induced realization of 20-something mortality while wandering alone along Ave. A at dusk, to appreciating the silent coaching of a more experienced lover, "I think, therefore who am I" is full of unflinching but tender accounts of why we actually do what we do, and what it feels like.

Having been in the East Village during the last stages of the 60s, I found "I Think Therefore Who Am I" an impressive recollection of what still lives inside me like a dream. But within that dream these memoirs felt like they resurrected real people, real imaginings, real drugs, real doubt and real angst. By turning on and tuning out, the world described here is seemingly more paradoxical than ever before: the author's predilection for capturing the essence of the countercultural revolution of the hippie world is strung alongside the existential mood of the characters who we find are often not that idealistic at all. Descartes' "cogito" started out as a dream that, when he woke, gave him the essential surety of his own self's ability to doubt. That kind of self-reflective keenness, taken into the poignant musings of a good observer and writer like Weissman, takes the question of "who am I" and surrounds it brilliantly with the aura of a particularly intoxicating time.

Utterly engaging and one hell of a lot of fun, I found myself genuinely unable to put this book down. I am a fan of Kerouac, Tom Wolfe (both Tom Wolfes, in fact), and Hunter S., and to me this book contained scattered elements that recalled all those writers, yet Weissman's achievement stands distinctly apart from these others in style, subject, and form. I am a very, very slow reader, so I particularly loved how the story is broken up into manageable chapters, each one feeling complete and self-contained, yet fitting in perfectly with the whole book, scene transitioning to scene as 1967 unravels in a staggering rush. The people are real, compelling characters and the imagery is some of the brightest and most vivid I have ever read. A candle can't flicker and a beautiful girl can't blink in this book but that the reader is there also, seeing it happen. A very impressive book, I hope to see more from Weissman!

Somehow, after all these years, Peter Weissman has managed to uncannily capture the texture, the rhythm and the dialogue of stoned young people living in NYC's East Village in 1967. At a time when books on the sixties have become more common as the protagonists reach their sixties, Weissman's work is unusual in depicting the life of an everyday hippie, not a Weatherman or a celebrity.

Anyone coming of age in the late sixties drug culture will recognize the daily characters and settings of Peter's hippie life with a sense of amazement - here they are again! While this is cast as a "coming of age" story, by the time Peter goes to California and returns, the drugs have overwhelmed any sense of growing up. Luckily, Weissman has a sense of humor, and I found myself laughing out loud again and again, which was good because, while the supporting cast goes through every kind of change, Peter himself seems to be heading in one direction, - from "a sorry scene... reminiscent of the thirties" in California to being "frozen in a particular purgatory" back East on his return, despite his recurrent hope that they're all on the brink of a new and more meaningful reality.

While the humor is wonderful, it's the epilogue which makes it work in the end. Since Weissman wrote the book we know he escaped with his brains intact, but it takes the epilogue for us to really believe it. As a sixty year old myself I loved the book and found it provided a rare and gritty assist to looking back and trying to make sense anew of those years. I highly recommend it to my peers and I can't help but suspect there's an audience as well among today's kids in their twenties.

This lucid memoir captures the hippie era of the sixties, the highs and lows of the psychedelic drug scene in New York City's East Village and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury during the "Summer of Love."

The author, conveying the shifting fortunes and mental state of his "acid head" narrator, recalls that scene and the young man he was with sardonic humor. His chronological yet nonlinear tale, covering the year 1967, is a pastiche of discrete, titled stories ("In the Realm of Mythunderstanding," "Beelzebub and His Sidekick," "The Eighth Street Commune," "Leo's Hexagram," "In Thought's Caboose"). It starts well and gets even better, as the various pieces mesh and the overall tale of transformation and disintegration moves toward its denouement with mounting dread. But the awareness that suffuses this memoir keeps it sharp and unsentimental, so that even as the protagonist loses his mind, his confusion is rarely solemn, but gritty, or hilarious, and sometimes both at the same time.

Indeed, as someone who experienced that era, I can say it was a roller coaster time when it seemed everyone was higher or lower than they'd ever been, and never one or the other for very long. For the former psychedelic drug user, or pothead, the sense of exhilaration and abject despair and paranoia will seem eerily accurate.

But finally, what most recommends this book to me, a serious reader, is how fluidly it moves, from transition to transition, through the interwoven stories about spiritual and pseudospiritual realities and assumptions, politics and the existential poetry of the moment, sex and sexuality, the grungy details of life and the daily dreams of transcendance. I highly recommend it.

This is a very cool book, chock full of wild and creative illustrations. A quick, but fun read.

Reading this book, I felt like I could see the movie in my mind. The vivid descriptions and word play are incredible. The book is filled with awesome illustrations to accompany the equality descriptive words. This futuristic adventure is mildly paranoid while still touching on enough reality to make you think. It is almost like a cousin to a comic book. It was incredibly well written and engaging. I highly recommend this book.

Similar to Jack Kerouac's seminal beat novel On the Road, Montauk Babies is the story of Al Leedskalnin and quantum physicist Peabody Freeman, who are traveling across country in 2011 in a '73 Buick Riviera, on a mission to keep time-space from imploding in on itself.

The title comes from the 1930s secret government experiments in invisibility, time travel, and mind control, when Nikola Tesla and several other physicists undertook experiments in multiple realities, eventually creating a "time tunnel" between 1943 and Montauk Island of 1983. According to the story, Leedskalnin was a subject of the Montauk experiments and is thus acutely aware of how these interdimensional gaps threaten to destroy humanity. And only a "Montauk baby" is spiritually equipped to save the earth.

Montauk Babies could loosely be called a graphic novel because of its lavish illustrations, though the narrative is in text form, albeit printed, at times, on the horizontal and even upside down, in a font that is nigh impossible to read clearly. While this may echo the plot conceit of a world falling apart and of events dislocated in time, it is also downright impossible to read.

Even with this in mind, Montauk Babies is an entertaining and provocative read, of interest to science fiction buffs, conspiracists, and comic-book lovers.
[...]

This is a really well done graphic novel. The story is exciting and keeps you glued from beginning to end and the beautiful color illustrations are unlike anything I have seen in other graphic novels.

Great read and cool art. This book is really unique. Lots and lots of depth to these characters. I can really see this being made into a movie. I'll be the first in line. Best graphic novel to date that I've come across.

As a young idealistic college student protesting on behalf of humankind I was arrested on one occasion. And when they took all my "valuables" from me, I happened to have a copy of this book in my pocket. The police officer said, "Yeah, Every Man for Himself, that is just what we need more of in this country." And I said, this is not a selfish book about every man acting out of personal greed and selfishness, this is a book about how Mankind could serve its own interest in trying to do good for one another. And he said "Yeah, yeah, yeah - put this butt-head in cell # 4.
So as you can imagine this book has a significant personal memory for me. I will bet if I read it over today there is not that much that I would disagree with. I am now 65.

In this book the author gives an overview of his thinking on humanistic ethics, which is interesting from a speculative/philosophical viewpoint, but falls somewhat short if viewed from a scientific perspective. The book has an optimistic tone, as do many others by the author, and this makes the reading more palatable. If the ideas in it could be fleshed out with real scientific analysis, with supporting data, it would be a significant advance in the study of human psychology.

The author explains his optimism, interestingly, by reference to his experience with patients in his psychoanalytic practice. He speaks of encountering the strength of the strivings for happiness and health exhibited by his patients, which he believes is the natural embodiment of humans. "There is less reason", he says, "to be puzzled by the fact that there are so many neurotic people than by the phenomenon that most people are relatively healthy in spite of the many adverse influences they are exposed to". The statistics supporting this are overwhelming, and without a doubt are on the side of optimism.

The book is not a "pop-psychology", "self-help" book though, but instead a theoretical attempt to shed light on the problem of ethics and psychology. The author's goal is to get the reader to ask questions, and not to expect to find advice on how to obtain "happiness". The author's main goal is to find a validation for humanistic ethics that does not collapse into moral relativism but is based upon human nature and human's inherent qualities. The character structure of the mature and "integrated personality" is the origin of virtue, and vice originates from the ignoring of the self and "self-mutilation". To have confidence in values, the author argues, one must know oneself and be aware of one's capacity for doing good and being a productive human being.

The author carefully distinguishes between humanistic and authoritarian ethics, with the ethical norms of the former originating from humans themselves, while the latter some other entity. It is important for him to clarify the definition of "authority", one being "rational" authority, whose source is "competence", and "irrational" authority, whose source is always power over people. Rational authority he says, is based on the equality of the authority and the subject, with both of them differing only in the skill level in their respective fields and always having mutual respect for each other. Irrational authority on the other hand is based inherently on inequality, and denies the human capacity to know what is good or bad.

In humanistic ethics, as the author sees it, is formally based on the principle that only humans can determine the criteria for good and evil, and completely rejects any transcendent source of values. What is "good" is what is good for humans, and the "bad" is what acts to their detriment. Humanistic ethics, far from suppressing individuality and self-realization, encourages it, and there is no room in it for ethical doctrines that do not take into account the needs and nature of human beings. It is a life-affirming ethical philosophy, one that taps the human capacity for genius, and encourages responsibility for one's own existence. The crippling of human powers is the ultimate vice.

The problem then for humanistic ethics is to find out exactly what humans do in fact need in order to develop a healthy psychology. Throughout the book, the author attempts to characterize what such a psychology would be. In many instances throughout the book he makes some unexpected commentary, if judged by the overall theme of optimism in the book. For example, he views the human capacity for reason as both a "blessing" and a "curse". Viewing reason as a distinctly human capacity, not shared by other organisms (and this is troubling from the standpoint of current evidence to the contrary from biology), the author puts humans into a state of "constant and unavoidable disequilibrium". No matter what the level of accomplishment, humans will always be discontented and perplexed, and consequently driven to find new solutions, resulting in an endless restless cycle of achievement and discontent. But many humans do not fit into his sweeping generalizations here, but instead are very contented with their lives on this planet, and find the challenge of life fascinating, and who mourn only the prospect of it ending.

Because of his professional status as a psychoanalyst, it is not surprising perhaps to see a somewhat elaborate classification of what constitutes a healthy versus a non-healthy personality. There are "receptive", "exploitative", "hoarding", and "marketing" characters, which are non-productive and signs of personality "disorder" in his view. He gives detailed descriptions of these different types, but unfortunately does not quote case studies or any studies in the literature to support his views. Do individuals who have these personalities find it difficult to live and adjust in soceity? The author would probably argue that such an "adjustment" could be done, but that by itself does not mean that the individual at hand is not following a healthy course of action. The author seems to be getting quite dogmatic in his classifications here, and leaves the reader with a somewhat narrow view of what constitutes a truly healthy personality.

With more scientific research and justification put into his ideas, the author could have given the reader a more accurate view of what constitutes a healthy, integrated personality. The book is a good start though, philosophically speaking. Sometimes philosophy can encourage further scientific research, and sometimes it can clarify the issues involved in such research, but it can never take the place of science. The author's optimistic view of human nature is, to repeat, totally justified from a statistical point of view. And his view is somewhat rare, surprisingly, if one examines the statistics: the vast majority of humans are healthy, productive, and proud of their inner capacity for genius, and are without doubt fine examples of the humanistic ethic.

"There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers." This sentence may be one of the most important themes in this wonderful book.

....and toward a celebration of human-centered values: Fromm makes his case for it in psychological terms not to be missed. (He'd have liked Herbert's distinction between law and justice.) And yet, and yet...while this book is splendid, I can't buy making man the measure of all things; somehow there ought to be a recognition that some situations may harm and even kill the self (as in "self-actualization") that nevertheless feed the soul. Anyhow, well worth the read.

Can there be an ethical system that does not rely on moral absolutes on the one hand or moral relativism on the other? Is there any other way? This book says yes and -- amazingly, brilliantly -- lays it out in a way that makes perfect sense. The only value we can know, the only value we need, and the only value that can have any real claim on us is OUR value, human value, and that is neither absolute nor relativistic. If this sounds absurd or offensive to you, skip this book. If you see the brilliance in it, you're in for a treat. I've read this book several times and can't get enough. Fromm is an underappreciated genius.

you are a little bit happier than i am is about severely depressed hamsters. you are a little bit happier than i am is about existential despair. if you are a little bit happier than i am is about severely depressed hamsters, then cognitive-behavioral therapy is about a way for severely depressed hamsters to maybe transcend existential despair.

I enjoyed this short book of new poetry. Tao Lin is ordinary and honest, making him an excellent poet.

If you find it difficult to sleep at night and wake up with bed sores, aching bed muscles, it may be time to purchase a new bed mattress. King Koil bed mattresses are specifically designed to alleviate bed sores, bed muscles, and pain caused by improper alignment of the body while sleeping. If you suffer from these bed symptoms, consider purchasing a King Koil bed mattress.

King Koil mattresses are available in standard bed mattress sizes that include bed twin (single), bed double, bed queen, bed king and California bed king. As with any other form of bed mattress, the price will depend on the bed size and bed quality of the bed mattress. A single bed mattress will cost considerably less than a king sized bed mattress, but will not provide nearly as much space for bed sleeping.

[...]

I don't think I usually like poetry. I went to a poetry reading tonight and I did not enjoy it. I liked this book. It was like reading transcripts of my own thoughts. It validated my thoughts somewhat I guess, in letting me know that other people thought similar things, and that other other people were publishing transcripts of them. I think writing like this is positive in that it encourages calm reflection on one's own life through direct analysis of another's. I feel like an idiot right now. I have tried to describe why I like this book. I like this book.

Motifs in _you are a little happier than i am_ include emails, fruit, hamsters, loneliness, beauty, and sadness--what would have been a difficult and problematic combination of objects and abstract terms in the hands of a less talented poet. Tao Lin, however, links these elements effectively with plain, frank language that conveys immediate feelings and observations, often with sympathetic or humorous results.

The surprising concerns in these poems range from the personal to what many readers may resonate with. For example, in the poem "thanksgiving," Lin writes:

i feel most comfortable around middle-class japanese people
i know they are all thinking the same things as me

WHY ARE THE LINES SO LONG?
WHY AM I IN NEW JERSEY?

though their faces appear calm
their thoughts are exactly like i just put them
(Lin)

It does not seem to matter here whether the people are middle-class Japanese or middle-class any-other-American-or-foreigner. Lin points out how anyone might feel in this situation: the lines are long, and (more philosophically) why New Jersey? The contrast between calm faces, yelling interior monologue, the poet himself and Japanese people proves humorous when one reads Lin's conclusion to the poem "we just want to get our food/ and eat it/...and go to sleep."

An uniquely enjoyable, highly recommended collection. Tao Lin's other books include Bed, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

I have not read the book but have talked with Chris on the telephone on several occasions. I do plan to read the book as soon as it arrives.

Having written many books about child abuse, as well as many stories for the Chicken Soup for the Soul Books; I can tell you this is a very interesting story and one that has been written from the heart. I have heard that the emotion it invokes is well worth the read.

Having been verbally, emotionally sexually and physically abused as a child, I know well the strength it takes to write such a book.

It is not easy trying to tell a story and get the word out to the public about child abuse, or what it does to an adult in their adult years. It takes many hours of work, sometimes years, just to tell a story correctly. Many authors had fallen to the wayside and many stories will never been told because the public will not purchase or support such works. That is why the world continues to be plagued by child abuse

I have much respect for Chris.

I stumbled upon this book title while surfing a Woodstock website. This was an awesome read. It in an anthem for all of us who face demons as we travel the road of life. This is the story of a troubled boy who suffered with an unstable family life and learning disabilities. Religion enters his life, which gives him hope for his future. With plans to enter priesthood, the turmoil of the 60's takes it's toll. Inner struggles cause him to re-examine the direction of his life. I don't want to give away too much. Buy this book !

My nephew wrote this. The Closer's Song is a book that will touch many hearts. I grew up on the "Farm", and it is amazing how after so many years to read about this wonderful place. It was not a palace, but a home with a lot of love. Christopher put in writing a beautiful story about his family life and the struggle to do what he felt was right after all the tragedy of taking a turn down the wrong road. I am very proud of his accomplishments in life, and wish him much success in his future.

Read this book. You will not be disappointed.

My cousin wrote this book. The Closer's Song brings back many memories from my childhood. All the ranges of emotions were captured from the best of times to the worst of times. Everyone I have asked to read The Closer's Song have all been in agreement that the way Christopher crafted this book lent itself to be a common blueprint of everyone's growing up. Christopher recognized that there was a need for all of us to take a deep breath and take a long, hard look at where we have been to appreciate what we have today. I am happy that The Closer's Song not only tells stories of glory that hit our hearts but relates the tragedy of life that touches our souls.

CLOSER'S SONG is a special story and my response to it is deeply personal. It is a spiritual journey that begins when an autistic child realizes his view of the world is different than his peers'. Dyslexia conceals a gifted mind and he finds himself ignored by family, abandoned in classes for the mentally challenged, laughed at and ridiculed by his peers. He is isolated and lonely, and it is within this atmosphere that Jesus calls him to a special mission, one that will go unrecognized for forty years.

He spends that time searching for understanding, first with Francis, his alter-ego, a gregarious and popular teen who introduces him not only to friends and the beauty in the world, but also to drugs and a counterculture that leads to further alienation. He finds peace for a time within the serenity of the parish rectory, deals with his learning disability, and enters the seminary. Instead of finding God, he finds a road filled with potholes and detours that include anti-war demonstrations, pop culture, sex, money, power plays, and finally betrayal at the hands of someone he'd thought to enrich. Gerald's journey is my journey, the story of a million other people entering a new millennium...troubled souls looking for answers to age-old questions, searching for God, hoping the search will not be in vain.

Christopher Cole has overcome dyslexia and he has written a book. As a teacher I find that as inspiring as the journey he relates. The editing challenges were daunting; the few that remain are evidence of a courageous battle...waged and won.

Despite Lord Russell's criticism that "intuition works best in bats, bees, and Bergson," in this work Bergson not only finishes the uprooting of the Western and Platonic disembodied intellect (a deconstruction taken only so far by Kant), he presents us with the spectacle of unbridled life creatively shaping, not only its world, but itself in accord with its own telos: the need for eyesight creating the eye, so to speak. Difficult in places but a treasure, although one could wish he gave more credit to Nietzsche's obviously great impact on him. Jungians would do well to peruse Bergson too.

Creative Evolution is not so much a work, but a milestone in print of a new direction of thought. It is a book that is of immense importance to anyone who wants to understand the mystery of humanity.

Henri Bergson's seminal ``Creative Evolution'' starts off with the flowing movement so prevalent in his philosophy of the organism, one idea flows into the next in a smooth undivided motion. Not only does Bergson explain his work with analogies and examples supported by the biology of the time, thereby distancing himself from the purely intellectual pursuit of most philosohpy, trapped in the world of the mind, but he demonstrates his thought in the very way of exposition he uses throughout the book. One feels his thought is produced like a Mozart symphony, all at once with no corrections needed. This aptly demonstrates the idea of duration and time he proposes in this book. His influence is profound in thinkers such as David Bohm and Alfred North Whitehead which so to speak ``run with it'' in the parlance of baseball. This is a book worth reading twice for its rich display of creativity and also to reread sections not followed the first time. One does feel however that at times the flow is interrupted by disturbances in his mode of thinking leading to disjointed reading. Nonetheless, not only does he open a whole new way of thought free of dualism and the old patterns of mechanism, but he also expalins the reason for mechanistic thought itself.

I first came across Ibsen's monumental work when reading 'Tropic of Capricorn' by Henry Miller. Despite my complete lack of evolutionary and biological knowledge, I found Ibsen's eschatology mind blowing. Several times I was forced to leave the book for days in order to fully contemplate the philosophical ramifications of his insights. From this great stride forward into the fringes of human understanding Ibsen states: 'A conduct that is truly our own, on the contrary, is that of a will which does not try to counterfeit intellect, and which, remaining itself - that is to say, evolving - ripens gradually into acts which the intellect will be able to resolve indefinitely into intelligible elements without ever reaching its goal. The free act is incommensurable with the idea, and its "rationality" must be defined by this very incommensurability, which admits the discovery of much intelligibility within it as we will. Such is the character of our own evolution; and such also, without doubt, that of the evolution of life." No one, despite their educational backgrounds or lack thereof, should feel intimidated by the possibility of transcending one's very own intellect.

Bergson's thesis is that Darwinian and Lamarkian evolution are only half the story and that there is a creative urge inherent in life that defines the direction of evolution. It is distinguished from Creationism in that his system does not posit and eschaton or final perfect form, nor an external agent (God).

It has some similarity with biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields. In his theory, there is an energy field (as yet undetected by modern physics) that controls the shape of organic molecules, i.e., one protein is shaped one way and the same collection of atoms gets shaped another way under the same pH and temperature.

Aldous Huxley mentions Bergson's theory of consciousness several times in his writings. Bergson thinks that consciousness pervades everything, and that intellect serves as a filter that presents only what is comprehensible to mental categories. This has several implications. One is the possibility for a monistic metaphysic. The other is that it leaves open the possibility of perceiving an alternate reality (what excited Huxley).

Chapter 3 is abo