Kripal’s book won’t quite silence the inner skeptic in those trained in such truths as the laws of thermodynamics, but it...
In which the material world dissolves into the immaterial and all that we know from traditional material science melts into air.
What’s a flip? By the account of Kripal (Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions, 2017, etc.), who holds a chair in religious thought and philosophy at Rice University and a research post at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, it’s an intuitive leap that leads to a new understanding of a scientific problem or reality: “a radically new real can appear with the simplest of ‘flips,’ or reversals of perspective, roughly, from ‘the outside’ of things to ‘the inside’ of things.” Some of these flips might be such things as Archimedes’ bathtub-born insight into the displacement of volume and Friedrich August Kekulé’s dream about the snake eating its tail that led to his divination of how the benzene ring works. Kripal goes a little farther into the land of esoterica, noting, for instance, that Marie Curie was no stranger to séances, while Wolfgang Pauli “was a pioneering quantum physicist around whose presence poltergeist phenomena erupted regularly.” Philosopher A.J. Ayer returned from a near-death experience rather confused about what he saw on the other side, except to announce to the medical staff who revived him, “you are all mad,” while neuroscientist Marjorie Hines Woollacott drew scientific insight from an experience with a swami in the nature of consciousness, which is “most likely not an emergent property of brain matter, contrary to what everyone around her in her professional life seemed to assume.” Some of the science seems squishy even as Kripal insists that quantum physics is a “flipped science”—i.e., “one in which consciousness is no longer understood as an epiphenomenon, but as fundamental to the very nature of nature.” More easily comprehensible is the author’s idea that the humanities be reconceived as “the study of consciousness coded in culture," which has fruitful possibilities.
Kripal’s book won’t quite silence the inner skeptic in those trained in such truths as the laws of thermodynamics, but it offers plenty of points to ponder.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-942658-52-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
