These candid, fascinating experiences impart significance and possibility to the science of psychic conveyance.
A psychic medium discusses her ability to communicate with the dead.
As a “strange little kid,” Jackson experienced odd sensations of dread that foretold the death of her grandfather and, later, a beloved schoolmate. As the unsettling impulses evolved further, any fear and distress was allayed when her mother admitted that this gift “ran in her family for generations.” The daughter of a first-generation Hungarian immigrant and a German schoolteacher, the author passionately describes these formative years as a time when her paranormal talents expanded to encompass the channeling of others’ emotions (including those of her first love) and the superimposing of colors onto physical forms. Jackson’s full acceptance of her gifts would take time and patience, and with the aid of other psychics and years of trial and error throughout college, the author was able to embrace what she determined to be her true destiny as a psychic. The incremental development of her mediumistic capacity comprises much of the book’s second half, as compelling profiles of those visiting Jackson for celestial guidance further fortify the author’s testament to the spiritual power and emotional heft of her craft. Volunteer work with the Forever Family Foundation, a grief support collective, further connected the author to a larger psychic community. Readers fascinated by channelers of human energy and post-mortem communication with the “Other Side” will appreciate Jackson’s personal approach to the wonders of the psychic spectrum. While the phenomenon won’t hold much appeal for skeptics—particularly the author’s ability to give psychic readings over the phone—the author’s affable approach and breezy writing style create a welcoming environment through which to speculate and ponder the credibility of the “cords of light that tie us to those we love.”
These candid, fascinating experiences impart significance and possibility to the science of psychic conveyance.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9838-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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