Ecstasy Books

I found this book to be heart warming, informative and, most of all,clear. I was drawn into the stories and the teaching, reading uninterrupted for hours. In the end, I realized that I was at a new beginning.

If you are interested in seeking, practices, the way to get there, skip this book. If you want to see that you are already enlightened, how life might work out and allow the journey to end, this book is it.

After being blown away by the Joan's authetic admission of her own (human) inauthenticity in 'Bare Bones Meditation', I've discovered that it is possible to be authentic beyond the bare bones. In this book she reaches down to the marrow. A true dharma heir to Bodhidharma or to the trafic jam occuring just now, whichever you prefer.

I discovered Awake in the Heartland while exploring information on Advaita. I had encountered Zen in 1960 and have meandered my way along various paths. The title intrigued me since I had lived in 'heartland America' in the 70's and most such books tend to have californian dimension. The magic of the book form is the mixture of real life and ideas - the human dimension of the exploration of awareness. Everyday miracles - you must read this.

Alan Senior London,UK

Of all the books that I have read, Joan Tollifson's, "Awake In The Heartland", is the one book I want to share with all of my friends. Her story is unique in this genre in that Joan shares this material as if each and every reader were a long lost friend. Personal and open, deeply moving and alive, Joan invites us into her life with the absolute and uncompromising awareness of a true and genuine human being. I am very grateful to have found this powerful and clear expression of love and presence as it exists in the eternal now.

Awake in the Heartland changed my life. I had been practicing Buddhism for 20 years but never understood that the mirage character (what I call 'me') was not the one to wake up. Also that the path is not about trying harder, as most religions encourage, but about relaxing into what is. It gave me completely new insights as to the way to work. I bought two of the books--one as a loaner--as mine is now completely marked up. It's full of life experiences, not just theory, and resulted in uproarious laughter at many points. I would recommend to anyone who is interested in the spiritual path. It turns it upside down. It turns it from a demand into a joy, and it's fun reading.

Books usually are. This is the one to get--if you're interested in The Ed Wood Story.
I read bits and pieces of Wood's prose on the internet--and the funny thing is, or maybe I should say the INTERESTING thing is, he was far better at writing prose, than he was at writing movie dialogue and directing.
The problem with Eddie's paperbacks is that the guy was so damn obsessed with crossdressing. Why? Why couldn't he stay away from it for a while, at least long enough to write a paperback or two or three (even) without having the male lead dress up in a bra and angora sweater?
Sheesh. Stuff gets old after a while.
It's easy enough to relate to him for wanting to do something in the creative realm (as a filmmaker, etc.), and not be able to pull it off.. I mean, whose heart doesn't go out to him for that? Better yet, to anyone? Who couldn't get that?--other than the typical businessman who is solely focused on the bottom line, making a profit?

Anyway, this book has the whole story. It's a sad tale--with a downer of an ending. What can you do? The cards had been dealt--and poor Eddie's hand did not show much promise.

And the biggest BUMMER OF ALL is that people out there are making tons of money off this guy's hard work and sweat!
Justice? What's that?

This is a labor of love, taking ten years and many interviews, as well as research, to give us the best hope we'll ever have of getting an understanding of maverick Ed Wood.

The structure is mostly clips from interviews, letters, and some of Wood's works, mostly interviewes. Thus one gets a sense of Ed Wood that in no way tries to be objective - instead it's about people who knew him, and their statements stand on their own (even when they conflict). There is actual research done as well - filmographies, book summaries, a small history - but most of the book is interviews.

The style however actually works - someone like Ed Wood may not always leave a very good trail. In addition, being very much a unique person in the unique culture of bargain-basement hollywood, personal testimony is just about the only way to have a hope to comprehend his stories.

The result is a fascinating, personal, and respectful book on a surprisingly complex man. Don't expect any punches pulled either - Ed Wood for all his likeability and charm (which he had in spades), was an occasional conman, and as his life degenerated, he fell into alchoholism, poverty, and domestic violence. Do expect a very personal portrait.

This book is an absolute must for any fan of Wood, B-movies, and the underside of Hollywood. As I write this it is out of print, but I gladly shelled out the money for a used copy. May it return to press soon - but you owe it yourself to get it.

Rudolph Grey has interviewed many of the people who knew and worked with Edward D. Wood Jr, and the entire book is compiled of quotes from these people. This non-narrative style may at first seem boring, but it's not. It is fascinating and touching, sometimes funny and tragic and gives a good understanding of several aspects of Ed Wood.

It also contains many pictures and a detailed list of Wood's films and books, including plot descriptions. This definately is a must-have for everybody who is interested in Ed Wood or old Hollywood independent films in general.

I first heard of Edward Wood Jr, the so-called 'Worst Director of All Time', when the Tim Burton film "Ed Wood" was released in 1995. Although the film is excellent, it does paint quite a rosy picture of Wood's life. The story in this book is much grimmer.

The book itself is a collection of interviews with the people who knew and worked with Ed Wood, copiously illustrated with black and white photographs, and covers his life and career. There are many entertaining stories here, covering the making of such films as "Glen or Glenda", "Bride of the Monster" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space", and the reader encounters a wide variety of eccentrics, losers and dreamers, who Wood met living on the fringes of Hollywood.

Sometimes the recollections of interviewees contradict each other, but that is memory. Grey doesn't give his own opinions on the interviewees and their remembrances but wisely stays outside and avoids judgement. The book is a fairly comprehensive account of Wood's life, but it is let down by mispellings, and often the phots are quite hard to see. It is however a must for anyone interested in Wood, 1950s "B" movies, or Hollywood.

Born in 1924, Wood was a highly decorated WWII Marine with an itch to wear women's clothes, make movies, and drink to excess. During his lifetime he would be notorious for transvestitism and alcoholism; he would also be involved in some twenty films, all of them cheaply made, all of them remarkable for their ludicrous incompetence. At the time of his 1978 death he was a raving drunk scratching out a living by writing pornography, and his film career was considered so trivial that not a single industry trade paper bothered to run an obituary.

But time does strange things. Within a few years of his death, Wood's films began to gain a cult-following, and in 1992 Rudolph Grey published NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY, a loosely structured "oral history" of Wood's life as related by those who knew him best: his various wives and girl friends, his actors, his employers, his friends. The book would form the basis of Tim Burton's brilliant 1994 film ED WOOD.

Wood comes off as considerably less likeable here than in Tim Burton's bio-pic, which stopped short of detailing some of his more unsavory antics--including fraud, vicious alcoholism, the occasional fit of wife-beating, and his work in pornography. The Ed Wood of the 1950s might have been fun to know, at least so long as you didn't have any money in his ventures; the Ed Wood of the 1970s, however, was someone you would might have crossed the street to avoid.

Although a number of Wood's acquaintances led solid lives and attempted to help Wood as his life spiraled out of control, by and large Wood seems to have acted as a magnet for Hollywood hustlers, riff-raff, and trash--and before too long Wood himself became indicative of Los Angeles lowlife scene. While the interview subjects give conflicting accounts of specific events in Wood's life, the end result is the same: a tremendous sense of wasted effort, futile dreams, and unending pathos. This is some seriously bitter stuff.

NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY concludes with a fairly solid chunk of factual data, including biographical notes on interview subjects, a chronology of major events in Wood's life, a bibliography that includes passages from Wood's novels, a comprehensive filmography--and even an annotated list of projects Wood was never able to get off the ground. I recommend the book, but I do so with a warning: if you're looking for a restatement of Tim Burton's film, you'll be significantly disillusioned.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Trust me! I looked everywhere and couldn't find it til I read this book. Now I know that, "I Had It All the Time". Execllent book written by an excellent author. This is a fast read and easy to follow.

"This book will not have a sequel; to the contrary, it heralds the end of a long and self-diminishing train of thought- the notion that you need to be something other than you are. It will not introduce you to a revolutionary technique; but it will introduce you to yourself. This book will not direct you to a mystical master or exotic gems- but it will assist you to unearth your own hidden treasures and awaken the master within you......The Spirit within you is greater than anything in the outer world. The power of your life is now redeemed to your own hands, where it has always been. You had it all along." (from the introduction)

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This book does everything it claims to. It was the one book that I gave all my coaching clients and everyone that has ever read it has raved about how much they loved it. With chapters like....

Let It BE Easy
There Ain't No Future In The Past
If You Can't FIx It, Feature It
First Class Flying
and
I'm Off To Be The Wizard

....You know you are obviously going to have FUN on this journey of rediscovery. With lighthearted wisdom and practical evidence of our internal greatness, Alan Cohen makes self-help a thing of the past and self-worth a household mainstay.

I can't recommend this book enough. I wish I could attach a picture to show you all the flags that adorn its pages. It looks like a rag quilt with all the frayed edges from hours and hours spent revisitng its wisdom. Treat yourself to yourself. Give yourself the gift of this book.

Another great read by Alan Cohen. Reinforces the notion that you already know how to live your life and just need to be reminded (or rather need to reach deep down through the denial).JUST DO IT!

After being a self help junky for the last 15 years Alan Cohen gives good advice and stop trying to fix your self and just enjoy life

I found this book by Alan Cohen much better and different in style than anything written by Wayne Dyer (who is very good) if that helps put my review into perspective. Refreshing, insightful, and uplifting yet down to earth in a spiritual way (which is what are all doing of course).

Garage, House, Acid House, Techno, Balearic, Drum & Bass, Jungle, whatever you call it: this is the book about the real history. Sometime in the past fifteen or twenty years rock died finally, amd weren't you glad? I was happy but I was on E and my vote doesn't count. I was taking alot of smart drugs too and I wrote a few novels on those so-called "pep pills." But I wasn't hanging out in Ibiza with Danny Rampling of Claire Manumission, or even Larry Levin at the Paradise Garage. I was still listening to Wire and Gary Numan. Like most people, at first I didn't care for most techno or house, but you know what? It's all I listen to now (I am still living in 1999). How did that happen? Before I used to listen to a lot of punk, ska and reggae, and then dropped out of the music scene for a while. I liked punk music especially since there were no rock stars, and anyone with long hair (or even looked remotely like Evan Dando) was immediately uncool and we used to beat them up. Boy, we were thugs back then, eh? But sometime in the late 1980s, someone slipped me a hit of E, and this disco record came on and it sounded like the best record I ever heard, and I was in love with everyone and I dove in the middle of the groping room. A few years later, I got serious and became the literary insider, and read Joyce, Proust, Beckett, Pynchon, Irvine Welsh, back to back, you know the story.... Well, what I'm saying is this book is a wonderful read, and adds a little narrative to the no-narrative techno policy. It also documents the most profound youth movement of the last ten or fifteen years. That's what I like about Techno: no rock stars!

Excellent, informative history of the rave scene in England... everything is in here: how influential Ibiza was to the scene, MDMA and its history, smiley faces, baggy pants, all the main players and djs... it brought back a lot of happy memories of my raver days in NYC in the early 90s. A must read for those interested in this scene especially the beginning which shows that it all started in America: Larry Levan and the Paradise Garage, Frankie Knuckles's Warehouse parties, Dr. Shulgin and his MDMA studies... Britian took it to the next level in the 80s beginning with the Summer of Love and raves and was then past back to the US in the early 90s: Frankie Bones and the Storm raves, NASA, and the rest. This book tells you all about it!

This book is truely entertaining, it covers music, culture, politics, drugs, ect... It was hard to put this book down, I was sucked into it and learned a great deal about the scene in Eroupe. I recommend this book to people who are looking for answers to questions they didn't know they were asking...

As someone who "came of age" in the club culture of Austin, Texas in the mid-1980s (Halls, Stephanie's, 606), I have been quite surprised that the Dallas (Starck) and Austin dance subculture has not been fully explored in many books as "ground zero" for the ecstasy-fueled rave movement that developed in Europe during the late-80s and early 90s. Although MDMA had been around for a while, if it wasn't for a chance meeting between a certain Austin DJ and one of Britain's top new wave bands after an Austin concert, England's 1988 "summer of love" might not have happened (or at least it would have been delayed for a few years). That "three days of love" on Lake Travis had a tremendous influence on the social history of youth over the next twenty years! The book mainly focuses on Britain's experience with the rave and dance subculture. However, it is the first few chapters that I find so fascinating . . . the development of MDMA and its infusion into the mainstream population through unassuming college students who had no idea they were guinea pigs for the multitudes to follow. Well worth the read, especially for those of us who experienced the phenomenon first hand.

Recommended to me by a friend. I have read all the books on our culture, and found this to be the most informative, historical, and unbiased description of the Rave culture. I was also quite suprised that the book dealt more with the actual culture of ravers, and didn't spend so much time on drug talk. Interesting discussion of the role the Alcohol industry played in the criminalization of ecstasy. Gives a lot of food for thought. A definite MUST HAVE.

Shay's and Braxton's story was sooooo dramatic and sweet. I love the romancing and the sexual attitude they have towards each other.

Also, what got me into this story is that it wasn't just another romance novel. It had spice in it. A little bit of mystery, fright, anxiety, romance, etc. It was worth reading however i think it was too short. I love the whole murder-romance-envy situation. Great roleplay on each character...i love the way everyone were involved in the story.

The mystery was resolved too quick and caused the story to end too soon. I wouldn't have mind a few more chapters or hey even an epilogue.

However, this was a beautiful story and i can't wait to read your next book Ms. Bussey and congratulations and good luck on your up and coming self titled CD.

This is a must read book. The suspense keeps you on the edge of your seat. I really enjoyed this book.

I really enjoyed this story! One can come to expect great work form Bussey. The thing I liked most about this book was that it did not just concentrate on the two mean characters, but on almost ever character in the book. A really nice read, please go get a copy!

If you are looking for an excitingly sexy, and suspenseful read, then 'IMAGES OF ECSTASY' is the book for you. I read this book in one sitting and didn't want to put it down even when I finished.

From the moment they first met, Shay and Braxton were the perfect match. With so many things against them, they were able to find true love with each other that some people only get to dream about. The love scenes were both passionate and enduring.

The storyline, a mixture of romance, suspense, and intrigue make for a very satisfying read. This is one that will keep you wanting more.

If you enjoy this as much I did you have to go out and get 'A Taste of Love'.it will knock your socks off.

Images of Ecstasy is a not too brief, but could of definitely lasted a few more chapters, amazingly take-your-breath-away love story. Like a highly-rated rollercoaster, "Images" gradually gains speed, drops down deeply into murder, creeps along carefully with mystery, pinnacles straight up with some sensual and sizzling romance and expertly twists you with several over and under turns of several possible suspects. Shay Hilton and Braxton Steele are a couple destined for love however,they must uncover the identity of the murderer, to keep Shay out of jail and in Braxton's or Shay's bed. This ride eventually settles you into a surprisingly pleasant ending. Loure Bussey's best love story to-date.

"DARKLY LUMINOUS....Tushinski's novel evokes one young man's discovery of and longing for the mystic chord into which he would transform his life. Van Allen's Ecstasy risks austerity and an expressive restraint too challenging and complex to be mistaken for plainness."

Reviewed by:
Peter Weltner,
Author of The Risk of His Music and
How the Body Prays

"'I remember and remember and remember,' Jim Tushinski writes, 'and the act of remembering becomes a physical sensation, like drinking water to quench a thirst.' In Van Allen's Ecstasy, the act of reading, too, becomes a physical sensation. This is the story of Michael Van Allen, a man unable to create in a family of natural-born creators, a man yearning for the joy of unrestrained creative activity--ecstasy. What Michael doesn't know is that there is a price to pay for ecstasy.

We are lost with Michael in a story in a mist, feeling our way through place, time, and people that ought to be familiar, but isn't. This is a story about how we are who we are, even without all the memories and connections we depend upon every day to help us define ourselves. Tushinski has written in a prose that is by turns major-key bold and then minor-key tentative in response to the estranged world that we--the writer, the reader, and Michael Van Allen himself--must make familiar once again."

Brian Bouldrey,
Author of Love, the Magician,
Monster, and The Boom Economy

"A FASCINATING ENTRÉE into the mind of Michael Van Allen, who has undergone a nervous breakdown during a performance by his famous father of Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 5. Tushinski masterfully achieves a rich portrait of Michael's internal struggle for sanity, as well as powerful characterizations of those around him. Tushinski's sensitive and confident command of language immediately engages the reader...IMMENSELY SATISFYING."

Reviewed by:
Jim Van Buskirk,
Program Manager
James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center
San Francisco Public Library

From the first sentence, the reader is plunged into the mind of Michael Van Allen: and the mystery begins. Who is he? Who was he? What happened? As he struggles to regain his memory, we gather the clues with him, and it's difficult to put this book down until we reach the climax. Engagingly written, with a roster of memorable characters; you can almost hear the piano soundtrack in the background as you join Michael's journey.

Michael Van Allen is a young man who is awash in successful relatives-his father is a famous composer, his mother a well-known painter, and his siblings Karl and Sara are, respectively, an attorney and columnist. It's not for not trying-Michael has taken several paths in the arts to try for success, and now works as a file clerk.

Michael wakes up in a mental hospital, where he's received treatment supposedly after screaming through one of his father's concerts. But he can't remember anything-nothing about his past, nor why he has a partner, Paul. It's like being in a world of strangers-only they know all about you! This imaginative concept provides a gripping read. It's especially captivating when Michael discovers his old journal and begins reading the entries. Somehow, reading his own words about his past rekindle dark emotions.

This had to be a challenging story to write, and, fortunately for us, was brilliantly done.

Consider the varieties of verity: there is the naked truth, the whole truth (and its halves...and have-nots), the unvarnished truth, the awful truth,the real truth (whatever that is)...and the nothing-but-the-truth. Then consider "Ecstasy," whose truth is neither light nor dark. Call it, perhaps, the dappled truth. The kind that lingers in the long shadows of an eternal Sunday afternoon. A spacious, generous truth which allows you to look, to really see this time, the awkward, painful process of your own becoming. Telling you to find the courage--that place in the hot core of your cowardice--that will let you gaze unflinchingly at what it means to be human. On the other hand, Eigen seems to say you can flinch if you want; sometimes he does.

This is an admirable book from a therapist humble enough to maintain silence in the face of stubborn mystery, daring enough to wrestle nothingness to the ground and if not to triumph,then not to succumb either. Like Jacob wrestling the angel, he lives till morning. A limp is a small price to pay for the sheer, diaphanous joy of survival.

The book gets five stars. The author gets the purple heart. We all come away just a jot and a tittle more sane than we were at the first page.

<<
This is an amazingly poetic book. Experientially, it reads as if a series of "day dream" remnants, that is, "primary process" in its purest and most psychological/spiritual form. It captures the primitive "feeling of the blood" that is the heartbeat of all culture, for better and for worse. There is such a rich sense of passion in this ecstatic experience and yet we know, for example, that the Nazi's fortified their macabre horror story, justified in "das blutgefuhl" ("the feeling of the blood") as the justification for distinguishing those of pure... stock from all other inferiors. Eigen's treatise on Ecstasy is enormously compelling, capturing both what drives us while in many cases also risks our destruction as well. There is a synthesis of what is most complex in our thinking and feeling with the primitive in a fashion that is unusual to the vast body of literature that even comes within a whiff of Eigen's subject. >>

I read Mike Eigens Ecstasy while on a dream-sharing retreat during the Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico and found it resonated with the spiritual comings and goings. Ebb and flow is important to Mike Eigen as it is to me--the ebb and flow of agony and ecstasy, darkness and light,death and life, male and female...all of the so-called opposites in dream and so-called real life.As both a dreamer and a therepist I want to thank Mike for Ecstasy and for my share of agony as well. I have read all his books and this one is my favorite.

Eigen's "Ecstasy" is a profound book that moves spirituality and psychoanalysis into a dialogue in which neither loses and both are enriched. The struggles of a day and of a lifetime are given conceptualization here in the author's seemingly stream-of-consciousness style that rests on a disciplined study of literary, biblical, and psychoanalytic wisdoms. The reader feels a sense of discovery, of self and other, as deeply personal battles are rendered by Eigen in ways that leave one thinking, and feeling, long after putting the book down. And this book is hard to put down! An intellectual and spiritual work that reads like a fine poem, "Ecstasy" is a cogent antidote to society's de-ontologizing tendencies.

Michael Eigen is a wonderful writer and psychoanalytic thinker. I have
greatly enjoyed several of his previous books: "The Electrified
Tightrope," "The Psychotic Core," and "Toxic Nourishment." They combine
fascinating case histories from his practice, stories from his own
life, with Eigen's unique contributions to analytic thinking -- often
stimulated by the writings of Winnicott, Bion, Lacan, as well as sources
as diverse as Shakespeare, Greek philosophy, and the bible.

His books strike a resonant chord in me, emphasizing the range and
intensity of human emotions and the power of empathic therapeutic
listening. Reading Eigen makes one more accepting of the variability of
experience and more open to the mystery and paradoxes of life.

Eigen's newest book, "Ecstasy," is his most personal book to date.
Written in a free-flowing poetic style based on association and metaphor,
it is almost like a collection of journal entries and thus difficult to summarize.
As in his previous books, there are wonderful stories from his and his patient's lives.
The theme of "ecstasy" leads him to write about his deepest spiritual and religious beliefs.
Although I do not share his vision, I admire his
willingness to speak so passionately and openly.

Dr. Leary maintains a high ground in his defense of the value of the psychedelic. This is the early work and a must have.

Wow! What a book! Leary is a real psychedelic guru, not in the orthodox sense, but really a man ahead of his time, a Galileo in the charter exploration of the mind and consciousness. He started off as a conservative Harvard professor, yet not so conservative, as he had his own ideas. But after his religious experience, and that's what psychedelics do - the expanding of your consciousness to a religious experience - he became aware of the societal and cultural chessboards - the games - and here became outspoken apart from the Harvard rationalistic mindset which rests on only one static frame of a multi-dimensional, dynamic existence.

I read this book smiling, over and over again. I walked down the street with a smile, mostly for Leary's optimism, then his frank and bold statements, which in most part I agree with. His style sometimes just makes you laugh and smile and say to yourself "I wish I had the guts enough say this." And although his predictions did not come true, you can't help but subjectively comprehend the 60's atmosphere, enveloped with the baby boomers in their youth taking up the majority of the population and their experiential drug use in psychedelics, which in turn, brought forth all the femininity of creativeness, patience, tolerance, peacefulness and artistic development that was permeating the entire American culture and spreading around the world and thus brought on the male dominated aggression of control and police power. So Leary's optimism and predictions were really a good assessment of the time despite their failure to come true. And nothing makes me sadder than to see his predictions fail from the creative mind expanding youth to our current male power, controlling and agressive society.

You can write Leary off as a kook from the conservative's point of view, the rationalist who never "experienced," and that's the KEY here - never experienced a trip under favorable circumstances and environment. Leary is the same as other heretics and kooks of history, a Galileo of mind exploration and conscious expansion, a Guttenberg of exoteric enlightenment, as in this book as well as one who clearly recognizes the need for new symbols that relate the esoteric experience of LSD, of cellular memories, of DNA language outside the mind, of experiential journeys that can only be told under a new language, as the microscope discovered new world had brought forth, as quantum physics brought forth and every other new fields of exploration that can only be described outside the current symbols we currently use.

Leary on page 141: The lesson I have learned from over 300 sessions, and which I have been passing on to others, can be stated in 6 syllables: Turn on, tune in, drop out. "Turn on" means to contact the ancient energies and wisdoms that are built into your nervous system. They provide unspeakable pleasure and revelation. "Tune in" means to harness and communicate these new perspectives in a harmonious dance with the external world. "Drop out' means to detach yourself from the tribal game. Current models of social adjustment - mechanized, computerized, socialized, intellectualized, televised, Sanforized - make no sense to the new LSD generation, who see clearly that American society is becoming an air-conditioned anthill. In every generation of human history, thoughtful men have turned on and dropped out of the tribal game and thus stimulated the larger society to lurch ahead. Every historical advance has resulted from the stern pressure of visionary men who have declared their independence from the game.

On page 196: My philosophy of life has been tremendously influenced by my study of oriental philosophy and religion. Of course, what the American, regardless of his religious belief, doesn't understand is that the aim of oriental religious is to get high, to have an ecstasy, to tune in, to turn on, to contact incredible diversity, beauty, living, pulsating meaning of the sense organs, and the much more complicated and pleasurable and revelatory messages of cellular energy. To a Hindu, the spiritual quest is internal.

Different sects of oriental religion use different methods and different body organs to find God. The Shivites use the senses; the followers of Vishnu are concerned with cellular wisdom, contacting the endless flow of reincarnation wisdom which biochemists would call protein wisdom of the DNA code; Buddhist manuals on consciousness expansion are concerned with the flash, the white light of the void, the ecstatic union that comes when you're completely turned on, beyond the senses, beyond the body.

On page 202-203: What we're doing for the mind is what the microbiologists did for the external science 300 years ago when they discovered the microscope. And they made this incredible discovery that life, health, growth, every form of organic life, is based on the cell, which is invisible.

You've never seen a cell; what do you think of that? Yet it's the key to everything that happens to a living creature. I'm simply saying that same thing from the mental, psychological standpoint, that there are wisdoms, lawful units inside the nervous system, invisible to the symbolic mind, which determine almost everything.

And I don't consider myself that mystical - unless you'd call someone who looks through a microscope a mystic, because he's telling you about something for which you don't have the symbols. Or the astronomer who detects a quasar and speculates about it.

On page 208: Every time you take LSD you completely suspend - you step outside of - the symbolic chessboard which you have built up over the long years of social conditioning. And you whirl through different levels of neurological and cellular energy, continually flowing and changing.

Your symbolic mind is flashing in and out. You never love your mind during and LSD session. It's always there, but it's one of a thousand cameras that are flashing away. Of course, the LSD freak-out, or paranoia, is where the symbolic mind freezes any aspect of the LSD session and defines a new reality, which can be positive or negative.

Read this book.

This is the single most influential book I have ever read. Completely legitmizes and encourages religious experiences through psychedelic means. Anyone currently using psychedelic drugs or interested in them should read this to gain greater understanding of their power. Learn why LSD and other are really illegal, the government knows they free minds!

...if you wish to stay the same because believe me, once you read it, you never will be. I got this book when I was about 26-27 years old when I felt as though I was just passing through life and not really living it. I felt like everything was "ho-hum". All of my senses were set to dull. Inside of me there was just this gnawing ache that there has got to be something more...not just "out there"...but "in here"...in my heart, in my soul, in my mind...

And then along comes Timothy.

Irreverent, Rebellious,Smart-Ass Timothy Leary espousing the Truth that all advancement in life is already in our very DNA. It dwells deep within the very marrow of our bones because we, as a species, were not meant to stand still...we were not meant to live lives of quiet desperation...we were meant to behold a world that burns and sparkles with Light.

People tend to think one is hallucinating when one sees vibrant colors, when everyday things seem to shine with a new brilliance, when even the song from a songbird feels like a musical triumph, but this is how life really is, boys and girls! We are hallucinating when we think that the world is dull and thick and leaden...we are hallucinating when we think that we are just these heavy clods of biodegradble clay that stalk the earth. We are here to discover...or should I say, uncover the paradise that is already within the invisible realms of the ancient mind that dwells within us and we in it.

Does this mean you have to take LSD in order to experience the jewelike radiance that all of life is made in and out of? Not neccessarily and I am not advocating that you do. What I am advocating is that you allow yourself to get enthused about life. Enthusiasm literally means to be filled with God. God wants to know Itself as you...as me...in each and every moment of creation.

Read Timothy Leary. Marvel at his excitement for life, join him in the mind & soul rebellion against flaccid governments and soul controlling religions and their warped politics and dissapointing creeds both of which are more than happy to think and decide for you, laugh in joyful relief that you are not a body with a soul, but you are a soul with a body,and be willing to stray from the pack of lemmings that's headed for the edge of the cliff only to drown in the shallow seas of mediocrity.

Open your eyes.
Open your mind.
Open your soul.
Open your heart.
Open this book and let the tingling in each of your 40 trillion cells remind you are here to do more than exist, you are here to LIVE and to LIVE WELL.

Peace & Blessings to this this place we call the world.

This work is a hallmark for questioning authority, pursuing individual freedom and happiness, and working to build a more enjoyable and enriched world. Lovers of liberty would be well-advised to study this work thoroughly, and then pass it along to the nearest religious extremist. It will surely get a reaction.

This review by Ghostwriter Reviews, Reviewer, Sunshine is posted by D. K. Christi as a member of Amazon.com

Arirang: The Bamboo Connection
Arirang The Bamboo Connection

AUTHOR: D. K. Christi¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
Melani, a young American wife and mother working in Korea, is the picture of the proper image; faithful, dutiful wife, loving, attentive mother and hard-working, dedicated teacher. She has a "friend" on the side, Dale, whom she spends her time with due to the lack of interest and communication on the part of her husband. But then she meets Jack, a handsome officer on temporary duty. What ensues with them is a flirtation with trouble, as they begin to sneak around to meet each other and spend time together behind closed doors. If word got out, she could jeopardize everything she has, her job, her child, her husband, even her household help. Should she stop because of those reasons or continue with it because her husband has his share of company as well? What happens when Jack's time there is finished?
Wow, some women have all the luck! A beautiful son, an interesting job, a husband, a "friend" to spend time with when your own husband doesn't give you the attentiveness you need and another man who makes you feel what you've long ago forgotten. Being an enthusiastic reader, I can really appreciate the effort this author put forth in writing this book, from the plot, to the descriptions, to the over all feeling of the story. When an author puts in this kind of effort, it makes it easier to get into a book such as this one. Since I also have a very active imagination, the descriptions of scenery and locale really helped me visualize the idea the author is going for. I also appreciated the effort put into the technical research, like describing the various cultures, history and mannerisms that are encountered throughout the character's lives. Though it's long, this is a book I'd read more than once, just because the descriptions allow my imagination to run away, taking me with it.

I give this book a very enthusiastic 5!
Reviewer: Sunshine
Ghostwriter Reviews

ISBN: 142414776X

It is a book of adventure. The reader will learn much about foreign living and travel to a variety of locations. The reader will also sail the seas enjoying the high life with all the hazards of sailing. The frustrations of life and survival play a large role in D.K. Christi's book. It includes romantic encounters with the agony and ecstasy of love given, received and lost. The book gives a down to earth look at life's struggle and the plight of people to survive in the land of plenty.

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (1/07)

Jack has the bluest eyes Melani has ever seen. There is something special between them when their eyes meet. She met him at the tennis courts in Korea never suspecting their paths would cross again. Jack wanted them to meet again. Melani is married but her husband "spends his business evenings in the Kiesing houses, arriving home too drunk to miss me. Like Cinderella, the ball has come to an end."

Jack mesmerizes Melani. "He has impressed on me that our whole existence is based on our relationship together at that moment in time. The rest of the world is another place, not allowed to intrude on our feelings for each other. Nor do our feelings need to affect anyone else."

This is the life story of a young girl, from childhood through her "senior" years. Melani's life is an adventure. She travels from America, to Korea, the British Isles, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. Her marriage to Derek began like most with dreams and ideals but it ended with affairs and divorce.

Another marriage ends in rage and abuse. "When he was good he was very, very good but when he was bad he was horrible." Melani and her son Brian were on their own again "with an ocean of tears behind us." Jack will always remain her soul mate.

This is a book of tears, joy, adventure, pain, love, duplicity and grief. Melani is a woman of great character and intellect. She is strong but doesn't always realize it. This book is a window into her soul.

D.K. Christi is a tremendously talented author. She writes "Arirang: The Bamboo Connection" from the first person perspective, giving readers the sense of being Melani. She offers great insight on the personality of her main character. Despite character flaws I could not help but love Melani. She shows strength that one would not expect; a strength that grows with each page. I could have been easily convinced that this was not fiction but based on a true story if I had not already read otherwise. The cover of this book teases the reader to delve inside. This book is of epic proportions. I truly enjoyed reading it.

ARIRANG, an incredible story of a young girl's journey through life from childhood to the "golden years." It is filled with adventure, betrayal, love, joy and sorrow. As you witness Melanie's life as seen through her prospective, Melanie will soon live in your heart from the beginning of the very first page through the last. She is a person of great intelligence, integrity, passion, depth of character and "true grit" that the author has an uncanny ability to reveal to the reader. This is not just a book traversing seven continents, but a book that takes you into the depths of Melanie's psyche allowing the reader to identify and feel her pain and her joy. The reader will experience the terror of surviving life-threatening seas to the frustrations of performing daily tasks while Melanie and her husband sail their sixty-seven foot sailboat from Miami to Venezuela. It is my hope that D.K. Christi will write many more books. This one, I could not put down. Melanie remains in my heart.
Nancy Canter

Review by D. L Montgomery, author of A Nanosecond To Eternity in the Twinkling of an Eye . A tour of heaven and how the earth comes to the end of life as we now know it.

Book Reviewed:
Arirang: The Bamboo Connection. By D.K. Christi

ISBN: 1-4241-4776-X 487 pages, Softcover PublishAmerica

D.K. Christi unfolds a compelling tale that has everything that you would want in a romantic novel: travel, love, adventure, happiness, pain, grief, disaster and finally how to live comfortably through the rest of our days on earth.
D.K. Christi, uses her vast education, her many travels to foreign lands and her knowledge of various cultures to write this brilliant, seamless, love story.
Melani, her main character in Arirang: The Bamboo Connection, is married, has a young son Brian and works and lives in Korea. She is not happy with her marriage but has made friends with Dale and Jack, who have given her the friendship and love that she so desperately needs.
Melani, her husband Derek and son Brian take a vacation to various exotic lands in the mid east, that are described in the book with exacting detail; one can see in their minds eye every enchanting sight, smell the aroma of the food available in the various outdoor market places and have a tingling sensation at the back of your neck when reading some of the harrowing adventures that take place during the vacation and through the balance of the story.
I found the book to be a tour de force that will be enjoyed and appreciated by readers of all genres.

If there is a better book on the subject I have yet to find it. That is not to say there are not other good books on the subject. Certainly there are. Most of those other books, however, seem to be a mix of fact, speculations and the author's personal opinions. Nothing wrong with that. But what impressed me about Stray's book is that it is so remarkably comprehensive in scope and seems to present no bias one way or another. Stray has not written this book as a tool to promote any particular agenda. It is a thoroughly well researched piece of work that covers just about every thought, idea, and theory that exists on this subject of the end-date of the Mayan calendar and what it might mean. He presents an in-depth look at each theory and provides a thoughtful and often insightful analysis of each one.

The book is extensively illustrated with drawings, diagrams and photos, a complete bibliography and over 30 pages of chapter notes and references. This is not "just another book on 2012". This is a scholarly masterwork and, to paraphrase one of the other reviewers, this is the 2012 book by which all others should be measured. That is not to say, however, that it is a dry and stuffy read or that one needs to be a "scholar" with academic degrees in order to get something out of it. Quite the contrary. Stray seems to have written this book with the lay reader in mind.

Stray's book has become a constant source of reference for me and as far as I am concerned it is the Bible of "2012" books.

Gary Val Tenuta
Author of The Ezekiel Code
"2012 is coming...The clock is ticking...The code must be deciphered...And only one man can save the planet...If he can just figure out how - before it's too late."

The Ezekiel Code

BEYOND 2012... is a virtual Ph.D. dissertation on just about every subject related to 2012. Although Geoff Stray has written this book in layman's language, with plenty of illustrations and color plates for entertaining and informative reading, this is nevertheless a very scholarly work with great attention to detail and an impressive dedication to "getting things right".

Quite simply, this is THE most comprehensive book on the subject of 2012 I have read so far. And the least agenda-based or theory-driven, so readers have more freedom to draw their own conclusions. Impressive in both its scope and depth, it not only covers familiar ground, but does so with fresh insights, and also reaches out to more distant vistas, to the "event horizon" surrounding 2012, and the predicted changes within its influence.

This is a beautiful book and though softbound I would say that no expense has been spared in its production. It's also a BIG book, almost 300 pages and is well worth the modest price, considering it represents 25 years of research. This book belongs in any serious (non-strictly empirical) thinker's library.

As we rapidly approach the year 2012, initially brought to prominence by its now famous association with the "end of the Mayan calendar", there seems to have been a veritable avalanche of books published purporting to address the period leading up to this extremely important event.

However, due to its potential importance to all mankind, it is absolutely crucial for as many people as possible to be in full possession of all the true facts as we know them to be at this juncture, to understand their meaning and significance, and most importantly presented without any bias in line with current "new age" and similar trends.

Beyond 2012 by Geoff Stray is an absolute masterpiece of 2012 research, analysis and factual documentation, and one by which all others will be measured. Geoff has executed an absolutely brilliant, and to what most would be daunting task of thoroughly researching, analysing and presenting the facts and nothing but the facts in an extremely detailed, conscientious, impartial, professional, compelling and above all highly understandable way, without the slightest hint of personal bias or creative interpretation of the facts.

If you are looking for a book about the potential events associated with 2012, and these are events that everyone on Earth without exception should understand and be prepared for in the next few years, then Beyond 2012 is the only such book you should ever need in your library.

If you also require a book that deals with the Maya aspect of the 2012 scenarios, I would highly recommend Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date by John Major Jenkins as the ideal companion book to Beyond 2012.

I have been waiting for a book like this for a long time. Stray has bestowed an enormous service on those who wish to come to grips with the many teachings and theories about the various scenarios surrounding 2012. The subject is imbued with debate and counter-debate and it can be confusing for not only those who are new to the 2012 subject but even those of us who have a deep interest in future events. The back cover of the book says it is "the most comprehensive guide available to the theories behind what many believe could be the most pivotal time in modern history.....". This, statement is not the usual publisher's hyperbole, in my view, but an accurate description of the contents of the book. Many thanks to Stray for the time and effort in writing it as it is sure to significantly increase our understanding of 2012 "end time" scenarios. This should be one of the first books we recommend to others on this subject.

I found this book to be very informative in my quest for understanding the 2012 enigma. I've been studying this for quite some time and found this source to be an impeccable guide to understanding this prophetic date; this opus of 2012 covers a myriad of topics ranging from the calendar of the Maya to Christian correlations of 2012 to the scientific understanding of our Earth/Sun connection. I encourage any true eschatologist to pick up this book.