An engrossing work on unearthly visitors, written for the nonbeliever. Bryan (Friendly Fire, 1976, etc.) embarks on this account as a skeptic, but his deeply affecting chronicle is remarkable for its balance of journalistic distance with compassion for individuals who, whatever actually happened to them, have clearly been traumatized. Bryan uses a five-day conference at MIT to introduce us to a cast of characters that includes psychiatrists, researchers, ``ufologists,'' and abductees—or, as many prefer to be called, ``experiencers.'' Significant among them are John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard who treats abductees (and wrote last year's Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens); Richard Boylan, an anthropologist and psychologist crusading to open government files on extraterrestrial life; Budd Hopkins, who researches and runs support groups for abductees; and science journalist Linda Moulton Howe, one of the book's most lucid voices. (She made a documentary about possible links between bloodless animal mutilations and UFO sightings.) Bryan allows the participants to speak more or less independently of his own narration, as he outlines the flux in how experts deal with the topic. Abduction stories have often been seen as screen memories for childhood sexual and satanic ritual abuse, to which they bear great resemblance. Bryan even suggests in passing that the reverse might be the case. While he concludes that the abductees believe what they are saying, he is not on a crusade for the truth but rather to engage readers in this strangely compelling subject. But sometimes it goes on for too long;. the author rambles towards the end, and the abduction accounts begin to read like other people's dreams—interesting only if we can get a handle on what they might mean. Despite these problems, a highly enjoyable and thoughtful introduction to the subject. (First printing of 50,000; Book-of- the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections)
Pub Date: June 9, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42975-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
If Charles Reich is your bag, then this may be your book. If you want your neuroscience qua science, then head over to where...
A head-spinning guide to supercharged meditation.
If life is like a box of chocolates, to quote the philosopher Forrest Gump, then, to quote Siegel (Clinical Psychiatry/UCLA; Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, 2016, etc.), “consciousness is like a container of water”—undrinkable if a tablespoon of salt is put into an espresso cup but just fine if the container is a bathtub. And why is it like a container of water? That’s never quite explained, except to say that cultivating the mind to maximize awareness makes our experience of things different. That heightened experience can be a deeply positive thing, for, as the author points out, neural integration makes problem solving easier, and “open awareness” boosts the immune system. Siegel delivers a “Wheel of Awareness” to visualize the process, with attention as the spoke, knowing or awareness as the hub, and “knowns” on the rim. But those knowns can be awareness-inhibiting prejudices as well as hard-won knowledge of how the world works. Siegel favors a murky, circular style: “When we open awareness to sensation, such as that of the breath, we become a conduit directing the flow of something into our awareness.” Well, yes, that’s how breath works, but Siegel means something different—“enabling the sensation of the breath at the nostrils to flow into consciousness.” Further along, the author complicates the picture: “And so both focal attention involving consciousness and nonfocal attention without consciousness involve an evaluative process that places meaning and significance on energy patterns and their informational value as they arise moment by moment.” Can there be meaning without consciousness? That’s a question for Heidegger, but suffice it to say that it’s a clear if empty statement relative to the main, which is laden with jargon, neologisms (“plane-dominant sweep”; “SOCK: sensation, observation, conceptualization, and knowing”), and lots of New Age cheerleading.
If Charles Reich is your bag, then this may be your book. If you want your neuroscience qua science, then head over to where Damasio and Dennett are shelved.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-99304-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
A moving account by renowned English medium Altea of her life, her preternatural gifts, and the meaning that she sees in these for herself and others. From earliest childhood, Altea heard strange voices and saw terrifying faces at night. Lonely and rejected by her unhappily married parents, who often beat her, she was haunted by the fear that she was mad. She grew up in poor health with the one desire to pass as a normal person. Even this was finally denied her when, toward the end of her own disastrous marriage, she came into contact with Spiritualists in 1980 and learned to develop rather than resist her psychic powers. The turning point came in her first encounter with Grey Eagle, her Apache spirit guide. Altea recounts many fascinating stories of contact with the dead that seem to defy ordinary understanding. She explains that in a trance the medium vacates her body so that it can be used by a spiritual entity. The purpose is not only to console the living but also to help the departed, who somehow need to communicate and, in extreme cases, to relive and accept their actual death experience, as in the case of a woman who had been buried alive. Although Altea reproduces many of the stock themes of Spiritualist literature and sometimes lapses into moralizing, her true contribution here is the heroic story of her own ``blossoming'' into life and establishing centers where people can receive spiritual and psychic healings. The author's simplicity and patent sincerity will warm the hearts of readers who reserve judgment on Spiritualist phenomena. (Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate; Quality Paperback Book Club selection; author tour)
Pub Date: May 19, 1995
ISBN: 0-446-51969-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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