A Book of Life

The individuation process involves the transformation of one soul at a time (Jung). Peter Kingsley shares a brief autobiographical account of his soul’s transformational journey meant to correct the influence of his inherited environment - the one-sided enslavement to the rational way of approaching life’s journey. It is a modern Exodus experiment of setting new captives free by helping them wander in the desert of their souls for a symbolic 40 years before reaching the Promised Land. Put another way it is the highly constellated coniunctio archetype hell bent on healing the split between spirit and matter, between masculine (rational) and feminine (non-rational) knowledge. A union of opposites is desired. This split was brought about by the reign of the Logos Christ of which Jung said, "Christ may have redeemed spirit but Nature was left undone."At a young age of 11 or so Peter is made aware of his need to find his way into the non-rational knowledge of the feminine principle. The one-sidedness of the Logos ego rational integration that has gripped the world for over 2,000 years in the West has run its course – mission accomplished. The Gods gave approval to Abel’s sacrifice about 2500 years ago - whose smoke rose into the sky (=s Logos or rational consciousness) while Cain’s smothered the land (=s Eros or non-rational consciousness) was denied being integrated first. Thus, the necessary psychological sequence of events was set by the Logos Self to the utter frustration of the Cain’s in the world, including Parmenides and Empedocles whose message was also denied by the rise of Aristotelians also 2500 years ago. Winners and losers? Or victims all since the split gave rise to the hostile brothers. Cain slew Abel in the aftermath as you may recall.At our time in history the Logos Christ followers and the Aristotelian adherents of the world, must now bend their knee to the Eros Self in order to become more whole. She seeks our cooperation in a new co-creative effort to help incarnate new births in consciousness. One soul at a time. Jung figured, based on the over 80,000 dreams he analyzed during his lifetime, that such a feat would take 600 years before a critical mass of humanity (about 10%) would turn the tide in the collective towards greater wholeness in the general human population. In the meantime, those of us on the cusp, the leading edge of this pending world-wide transformation, who are conscripted to integrate their portion of the tremendous energies of the damned-up compensation of the Eros Self have our lives on the line. It puts such a one in the role of being (mostly silent) prophets for what is to come.Those caught in the grips of this transformation at our time in history are the latest victims experiencing what it is like to be involved in the slaughter of the innocents as Peter began to realize at the age of 11. A victim of the first-born ego integration (Logos rational integration) is victimized further by the need to enter a second-born ego (Eros non-rational integration) which involves learning from the spirit in the depths, the Eros Self, that now wars against the spirit of the times that began to be created in the soul of humanity at the start of the Christian eon. The vast separatio phase at the start of the Christian eon - that split the masculine and feminine principles, spirit and matter, apart began the process of the integration of the opposites. The unintegrated opposites had to be split apart so it is clear who was who. And the integration of the Logos ego was to be the first. This is Jung’s understanding of Western history.Now the integration of the Eros ego is next and that involves an Eros ego altered state of consciousness, as in mediation. Peter’s autobiography clearly conveys what that meant for him. My experience of the Eros ego is very similar. One is characterized as being a savior of the world and prophecies of the saving of the 144,000 in the Book of Revelation may arise as well as the Hopi prophecy of the Blue Star Kachina that Peter mentions. It is a life-long individual task to save more of one’s own soul.It was not a mistake that the psychic nature of Cain was denied integration back in the day, nor that of Parmenides and Empedocles. It was a sacrifice of their contribution to wholeness that was made by the Gods. Now a great richness awaits all who are called to become more whole and embrace the Eros Self wisdom emanating from out of the unus mundus. And that requires a sacrifice of the rational Logos ego – at least during meditation time. As Peter notes the Wisdom of the Eros Self comes from a 2nd center of knowledge, the belly-brain, the Gut-brain – the VNS (vegetative nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system) not the CNS (central nervous system) that governs the upper brain. The intestines have nearly as many neurons as the gray matter of the upper brain.GOOD LUCK TO ALL!Gregory SovaVictoria, BCPhoto Caption: A Grape of Wrath - A BLUE STAR Kachina Implement

When something incomprehensible yet incredibly intimate decides to write a book, it writes A Book of Life.  This book goes against all the spiritual concepts and beliefs that most philosophers and spiritual teachers have written about for over 2000 years A Book of Life opens the door to the real magic that lives as the sacred roots of our Western culture.  Peter Kingsley demonstrates, time and time again, what it means when wisdom is something we give our lives to (rather than something we try to attain for our own personal benefit).  His pre-Socrates teacher, Empedocles, is the father of all eternal wisdom and our forgotten primordial nature.  The mystery, profundity, humor and sanctity of Peter’s internal connection with Empedocles is breathtakingly beautiful.  This living intimacy of what it truly means to be bound to an internal teacher, makes external teacher/student relationships seem like a total joke and a complete distortion from its original and truest expression. 
When most spiritual teachers I know write about awakening to divine nature, what gets transmitted is a lifeless equanimity. It is often described as instantly accessible and spaciously expansive. Spiritual culture is also expressed as the innovative new age. It is driven by a ‘growth-centered’ spirituality where there is no need to sacrifice anything.  Just keep your vibrations high, keep expanding, work on your personal issues and we will soon enter the  enlightened age of Aquarius. In both of these ‘airy' spiritualities, the personal self remains in control and is center stage.  
In A Book of Life, Peter Kingsley is sharing about something that is the total opposite of modern day spirituality.  He shares about being a teenager and having this irresistible magnet that governs him, making him wander from place to place until the magnet guides him— sunstroke in the middle of the high heat Syrian desert—into stillness with a complete internal knowing that he found his heart's home.  Later, much to his surprise, he would discover that this place is the origin of the nearly forgotten Gnostic tradition. This ancient tradition continued to mysteriously guide him from within for his entire life.  His experiences of what guides him are dynamically alive, unknowable and unexpected.  It shakes the foundation of his life. Yet it IS the foundation of life and is closer than the breath. It is a walking wisdom.  As I write this, I am filled with an extraordinary sense of delicacy, knowing that even the hell he went through in his experiences of sunstrokes, illness and death encounters were governed by something so indescribably perfect.  This ancient wisdom demanded Peter be broken--unable to speak at times and even barely move his body—in order for the true life to claim him, speak prophetically through him and guide him where the sacred needs him to go.  This is a book and a message for us all.  It is not a call to our brilliance, clarity, evolution, personal wholeness and endless expansion.  Peter howls from the depths of the sacred.  He calls us to our brokenness.As Peter heralds the call of completion of our Western culture, there seems nothing more urgent or meaningful than to surrender our life to the Life that truly lives us.  That which we are longs for us to return home. This is the Absolute, the everything of everything, that sings in eternity as A Book of Life.

This is a stealthy kind of book. It grows inside you when you don’t notice.I’ve read this book three times now, and I have read three books. The first time I was curious to know about Peter Kingsley’s life, and I raced through it, gobbled it up. The second time I read it because I knew there was so much more in it, and I raced through again, and gobbled air.This is not a book to be raced through. You don’t read it in order to get to the end, to have read it, so that it can be put away along with the other books you’ve read.That is because it isn’t like any other book.I can understand the criticisms that some others have posted here; it is very uncomfortable to read something so heartbreakingly honest.Peter Kingsley is playing fair with us. He must have torn these words out of himself—and I hope for him, as he says in the last chapter, that he was able to forget once he wrote them down. The point is not what the reader understands, but rather that this record of his life and work and wisdom exists.The third time I read this book I forced myself to slow down. Not being a very patient person, this was not easy for me. It repaid with the beauty of the prose, the vivid imagery, the transcendent wisdom.Thank you, thank you, Peter Kingsley. In time, even perhaps sometime soon—though maybe not—the right people will read your words.

Kingsley apparently forgets that those most likely to buy and read his book are also those most likely on the planet at this moment in the circle of time to have already, or currently be, exploring the territory he has entered from any number of dreamy directions. He wants you to end all this exploration with the reading of his largely autobiographical text. Amazon happens to enable reviews. I rarely care to use the opportunity of foisting my opinion on anyone else. It annoys me that I’m even doing this. I wouldn’t do this without anonymity. However, I do believe that what Kingsley writes in this and a previous book ‘Reality’ is repetitively dangerous. Yes, many of us realise that we walk around in a dream much of the time. It has brought us here, to this very point. But, Kingsley clearly isn’t prophetically prive to what dreams are being dreamt. Unless he can see into the dreams of every being to come so shouldn’t aim to be so destructive. He appears to have looked externally at humans around him, apparently asleep and labelled us all academically illiterate and decided to use his writing in an attempt to literally bind (and bludgeon) the reader with his personal spell. He’ll repeatedly call you a fool and tell you to give up on your bodily consciousness and worse to stop using your imagination. I’m not saying everything he writes holds nothing of importance but I disagree with the empty shell he it attempting to mould the reader and appears to wish to influence humanity into into becoming. The book largely speaks of the route he has apparently travelled though his life, guided by his own imagination but ultimately refuses to permit that that readers could be following their own paths guided by some of the same inner and outer forces. He writes of his coming face to face God the father, being descended upon by the Holy Spirit, of being Buddha for a length of time and experiencing Jesus as the son and furthermore, of a descendant of Rumi stating Kingsley holds the inner Quran. In his mind it seems he’s raced ahead and bettered the rest of us. He basks in the wonder of his life dream he wishes others to read the details of, whilst claiming to want nothing more than to disappear. Although he speaks at length of his experience of coming close to death, I fail to recognise any evidence he has actually come face to face with Persephone in her subterranean realm. There is little suggestion of a cultivation of a Parmenidean-esque closeness of association with Persephone as Kingsley fails to acknowledge the basic realisation that her notoriety is not terminally “the Queen of Death”. After advocating so much strife he then has the audacity to lament the rape and abuse of the goddess which is caused by everyone else forgetting what he had discovered at the roots of our civilisation (the importance of strife in setting the immortal soul free)??? We’ve had copious, gargantuan strife without being needed to be reminded of it’s importance already. He’ll tell you he wishes to disappear from reality whilst publishing an egomaniacal work designed to shut you down and waste what has taken aeons to create into nothing with the unqualified assurance that you have an immortal soul that longs for escape. His evidence of this immortal soul is based on his imagination whilst sick coupled with a slanted interpretation of Empedocles magnificently ambiguous text. If I have two things to say to Kingsley, first would be a suggestion for his next physical hitch-hiking adventure. Mars. On a rocket. It’s lovely and sterile out there. If he takes off his helmet he’ll be immediately separated into his immortal elements without any worries of ever being woven back into flesh and blood. It would be safer for the rest of life on earth if he vanished himself to Mars. Kingsley appears to embrace and embolden Strife as the only way forward. These words are horrifically dangerous when directly addressing the planets apex predator who has manifested way too much strife already. My second suggestion to him would be a re-reading of Empedocles without the assumption of an immortal soul. Being immortal is not the same as having an immortal soul. It may give him cause for hesitation if he has the humility or innate ability within him to seriously contemplate the wonder and beauty which Death and Life and the work of love and perception of beauty have manifested, agreed, impacting our free will but limiting the work of strife. I’m not sure whether this would prevent him pulling his helmet off. The trouble is, it appears he’d fancy you, his reader, to be stood next to him, putting faith in ‘the Kingsley’ interpretation of Empedocles ‘trust in mad strife’ and pulling your helmet off at the same time. Then comes the finale. Where he convinces Native American elders to come and discuss/ weep with him. He presents himself as an elder of western civilisation holding the key to fundamentals of Western Society that the West has stupidly forgotten. I doubt he mentioned to them that his work advocates only ‘trust in strife’ to bring an end to life in its bloody form manifested by deception of beauty and love. He notes in excruciating detail why he is phenomenally special to these people too. I would only recommend, and then with caution, to those strong enough not to be persuaded, spell-bound by a person who I sincerely doubt has anything close to the same credentials of Parmenides in both being an immortal and truly respecting divinity when he meets it, perpetually insults it in the reader and everything else (except for Native Americans for whom he reserves reverence whilst likely not being entirely honest with them). Did he tell them precisely what he’s interpreted from Empedocles text when he invited them to weep with him? Oh and birds..he likes them. If he ever writes a book about what birds speak of since he understands their language as well as that of humans…it’s the only future book I’d buy from him. I’d be interested in what he’d say about the content of the Nightingales immortal song. That’s if he could actually find one to listen to anymore, so persecuted by strife as the last few remaining are).

this is, to me, a profoundly beautiful, powerful and poetic book that could be of immense significance if it is indeed as it self-declares: a source text from the one, true source. that is for the reader to discern.i gather, from the reviews, and the style, that it is also deeply provocative. either Kingsley knows what he is talking about and truly coming from that place or he is an arrogant, vain and self-aggrandising waffler. i give him the benefit of any doubt as i hear the ring of truth in much that he touches upon.which brings me to what for me is a glaring and interesting omission in his auto-hagiography. to be fair he makes no attempt to go into the circumstances of his own life in any particular detail. it is at best a sketch, tracing outlines and relating details only here and there where it might suit the barest thread of a narrative and in that is quite skilfully done. but there is one man and one author- the Australian spiritual teacher that Kingsley was a close and devoted student of for around 10 years: Barry Long that might have warranted a mention. if not here, then elsewhere in his writings and work though i understand why Kingsley is covering his tracks. Kingsley helped Long prepare his own magnum opus: the Origins of Man and the Universe- the myth that came to life, and if one reads one and then the other there is no doubt there was a mutual and very considerable collaboration.if reading and/or studying Kingsley seriously i would highly recommend the above mentioned epic work and Long's own autobiography: My Life of Love and Truth where Peter Kingsley gets a couple of mentions and is put into a context other than his own.

Amazing book that details Kingsley's experiences with the numinous and the various masters of the world.

It's hard to rate or review this book, as it's very much sui generis. Perhaps the closest description would be "spiritual autobiography", in that Kingsley presents moments of spiritual significance in his life without much context and uncertain chronology. I think it wouldn't be too interesting for anyone not already interested in Kingsley's works, but I am so I found it enjoyable enough.The tone might be off-putting to some, it's a bit druggy, disconnected, as if Kingsley can't put anything into words, except the fact that he can't put anything into words. It would be easy to pastiche, e.g. "we are beings from another order of starlight. The ancients knew that starlight was a spiritual consciousness. If you are ready to listen to starlight, you must be very quiet. You must read this book in a state of utter quiet. And then you can hear the sound that stars make. It is that sound which created this book." (I just made this up to demonstrate). If you can get used to Kingsley's style, which tends to the diaphanous, it's a worthwhile read.It has many alarming or amusing anecdotes of Kingsley wandering through deserts until he nearly dies, randomly hitchhiking for no particular reason, and so on.Much as with the poetry of Emily Dickinson or Wordsworth, you're left with the spiritual equivalent of a Cheshire cat's fading grin. That is, it's not a self-help book, it has no spiritual exercises for you to perform, but one feels somewhat altered after reading it, as if one's sense of things is a little disordered, a little rearranged.

The very notion that the book would be reading me, rather than me reading it, scared me from the outset. It’s not a cliche, or a hook. It gave me an option to put it down and walk away from its pages. I didn’t. This reminded me of looking at a Barbara Hepworth sculpture in her garden in Cornwall, then 20 years later the same sculpture was in Tate Modern. I stood before it, anchored to that time 20 years ago and again to the now moment. I thought about all the things that had happened to me since last being in its company. I had changed: It had not. I was the art: It was not. I was being seen by it. Again.Peter Kingsley’s The Book of Life, is the same. He has shown me things that I half knew and now cannot unknow. When my eyes and the text next meet, I will have lived with that knowledge. I feel that the book ends with many, many chapters unwritten: they will be my chapters. Each of you who read it, will also have chapters I am sure.My sense is that this book comes from a place that is not here. That is truer than this facade of shallow breath.Proceed with a purchase all you pioneers who are prepared to visit a place that feels most sacred and intimate. Once it is in your hands, there will be an ‘old you’ and, after reading it, a ‘new you’.It’s for everyone but you may not be for it.