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A Book of Life
Peter Kingsley’s Book of Life is the culmination and completion of an extraordinary body of work. As a historian he has revolutionized our understanding of ancient philosophy and religion; as a mystic, he introduced us to what philosophy and religion are meant to be.
Hauntingly personal, almost autobiographical, this is not the story of one man’s life. It’s the secret story of us all. Beyond scepticism and cynicism, belief or imagination, A Book of Life offers a roadmap to reality by showing how it still is possible to experience the sacred truths our ancestors knew and lived—that inside every human being lies the universe and that life itself, in all its splendour, is what lies behind our tiny lives.
This little book is a wide open door into the timeless magic and unfathomable mystery our modern world has managed to forget. Even so, to encourage anyone to read it now would be totally wrong—because it was written to be read not by people today but in a distant future.
“This indescribable book is more than a book. It’s an apocalypse—a fire from another world.”
PIR ZIA INAYAT-KHAN
Hauntingly personal, almost autobiographical, this is not the story of one man’s life. It’s the secret story of us all. Beyond scepticism and cynicism, belief or imagination, A Book of Life offers a roadmap to reality by showing how it still is possible to experience the sacred truths our ancestors knew and lived—that inside every human being lies the universe and that life itself, in all its splendour, is what lies behind our tiny lives.
This little book is a wide open door into the timeless magic and unfathomable mystery our modern world has managed to forget. Even so, to encourage anyone to read it now would be totally wrong—because it was written to be read not by people today but in a distant future.
“This indescribable book is more than a book. It’s an apocalypse—a fire from another world.”
PIR ZIA INAYAT-KHAN
258 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2021
About the author
Peter Kingsley
10 books287 followersClassical scholar and spiritual teacher Peter Kingsley was born in the UK. He received his BA from the University of Lancaster, his Master of Letters from King's College, Cambridge University, and his PhD from the University of London. He is a former Fellow of the Warburg Institute in London and has held honorary professorships or fellowships at universities in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Kingsley's early writings are traditionally academic, and culminate in the 1995 Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. His more recent works emphasize the lived experience and daily application of the ancient mystical tradition that helped give rise to the western world.
He continues to write and teach, working to make the spirituality and meditative disciplines of Empedocles, Parmenides, and those like them available to people today. His most recent book, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity, is due to be published in November 2018 and for the first time it shifts the focus of his work directly onto our modern world.
Kingsley's early writings are traditionally academic, and culminate in the 1995 Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. His more recent works emphasize the lived experience and daily application of the ancient mystical tradition that helped give rise to the western world.
He continues to write and teach, working to make the spirituality and meditative disciplines of Empedocles, Parmenides, and those like them available to people today. His most recent book, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity, is due to be published in November 2018 and for the first time it shifts the focus of his work directly onto our modern world.
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August 29, 2023Top 3 by Mayim Bialik
September 7, 2021
When reading A BOOK OF LIFE, I experienced fire – fire in all senses and uses of the word. The book is a living, conscious being and it is fire. Instead of A BOOK OF LIFE, it could have been called, A Book of Living Fire.
This is a book that can only be understood as it is experienced inside oneself. If the reader has the courage, one is drawn to follow the poetry and birdsong of the text that leads into depths that we may wish not to enter – or that we may long to enter – that underlie the reality of existence inside and outside. It is a creation of concentrated intensity with the urgency and power of drawing the reader into another state.
A BOOK OF LIFE by Peter Kingsley is not a book to be read. It can hardly be called a book. As for genre of literature, it is difficult to place; it is in the tradition of ancient ecstatic texts. If one were to describe A BOOK OF LIFE as an autobiography by a living prophet speaking on behalf of the primordial tradition of western spirituality, that would be only the veneer of this profoundly devastating and enlivening book.
Even though the book relates the most intimate experiences, it is not a book about the author. Through sharing the work of the divine in his life, he is inviting readers to honor the sacred in their own lives. Kingsley taunts, deceives the reader; and he speaks from a place where there is no “he” at all to speak of or from.
And in true mystical tradition, perspective is reversed: the book reads you and judges the reader, as opposed to the reader judging and reading the book. As it lies on the table next to me, I find myself glancing at it, furtively, warily, as I might regard another conscious presence in the room, or a wild animal who is watching. By some magic, being read awakened the dull paper and ink.
This is a book that can only be understood as it is experienced inside oneself. If the reader has the courage, one is drawn to follow the poetry and birdsong of the text that leads into depths that we may wish not to enter – or that we may long to enter – that underlie the reality of existence inside and outside. It is a creation of concentrated intensity with the urgency and power of drawing the reader into another state.
A BOOK OF LIFE by Peter Kingsley is not a book to be read. It can hardly be called a book. As for genre of literature, it is difficult to place; it is in the tradition of ancient ecstatic texts. If one were to describe A BOOK OF LIFE as an autobiography by a living prophet speaking on behalf of the primordial tradition of western spirituality, that would be only the veneer of this profoundly devastating and enlivening book.
Even though the book relates the most intimate experiences, it is not a book about the author. Through sharing the work of the divine in his life, he is inviting readers to honor the sacred in their own lives. Kingsley taunts, deceives the reader; and he speaks from a place where there is no “he” at all to speak of or from.
And in true mystical tradition, perspective is reversed: the book reads you and judges the reader, as opposed to the reader judging and reading the book. As it lies on the table next to me, I find myself glancing at it, furtively, warily, as I might regard another conscious presence in the room, or a wild animal who is watching. By some magic, being read awakened the dull paper and ink.
October 5, 2023
This book felt like someone taking several hours to explain their incoherent Nyquil dreams to me.
September 14, 2021
This book is an object of beautiful. A word of advice, however, don't come to this book with lots of preconceived notions. It is eccentric and elegant and important. Read it first without preconceived expectations.
Peter KIngsley's entry in Wikipedia begins:
"Peter Kingsley (born 1953) is the author of six books and numerous articles on ancient philosophy, including Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic; In the Dark Places of Wisdom; Reality; A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World; Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity; and A Book of Life. He has written extensively on the pre-Socratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles and the world they lived in."
What you'll find in this book is so much more that a dry academic study of the pre-Socratics. Instead, it is a book to keep, reread and use as a springboard for more research. And by the way, it is not a simple personal memoir.
Read it with focused attention, and you'll be rewarded.
Peter KIngsley's entry in Wikipedia begins:
"Peter Kingsley (born 1953) is the author of six books and numerous articles on ancient philosophy, including Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic; In the Dark Places of Wisdom; Reality; A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World; Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity; and A Book of Life. He has written extensively on the pre-Socratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles and the world they lived in."
What you'll find in this book is so much more that a dry academic study of the pre-Socratics. Instead, it is a book to keep, reread and use as a springboard for more research. And by the way, it is not a simple personal memoir.
Read it with focused attention, and you'll be rewarded.
September 8, 2023
Mysticism isn’t for me.
October 21, 2023
I tried. The book has a beautiful cover. I feel absolutely inadequate for not understanding the concept of this book. Half the time I had no idea what he was talking about. Clearly I am not philosophical or grounded enough for this level of mental clarity.
September 20, 2021
Deeply poetic, otherworldly and devastatingly close to the bone.
I can only write what A Book of Life means to me, in the only way I know how. No easy task.
It was read with tears in the eyes. Peter always brings me ‘home’ with magnetic force. Which could never describe the whole story as the author himself has declared.
You could say it’s all very sad, this tangent that humanity in the West in particular has been on. But that’s not the reason I was crying. I cried for him, for Peter’s intimately personal retelling of his observations of having lived in awareness from the very start, a life of being forced to hide one's nature and every constituent interaction with the fabric of the real. I too, remembered some things too well. When I found myself separated by the deaths of both parents by the age of fourteen, four years apart. By that time, I was already safer with the dead and ashes, the wild stalkings rustling in the rainforest, in the presences looming in the treetops than with the so called living. My perfect solace was in the sound of the stream carrying impossible voices from afar calling my name. In pining at the night sky. An abyss of amnesia ensued when the overwhelming rejection and betrayal of those times from the world of 'civilised people' spared nothing. Peter Kingsley, I have found to my surprise, is that stream I would go to hear, to not feel alone. A Book of Life renewed the memory, the dark blooming of every thought and feeling, observations carried for so long like a precious secret. Hidden at all cost even through the darkest of times. That is surely not what he set out to do. He simply shows it as it is. Though through it, I have been nurtured by his writing. He shows that sometimes we make it through what we couldn’t possibly have.. He makes clear what was present all along. His unquestioning experience of what it is like to entertain with full command, some vague gesture to its end, to appear irrational only to discover its logic, to be weak, ill. To follow the intangible boundlessness. To wield the single-willed abandonment needed to retain that thread of one’s essence. Not without being crushed by the surrender to the vulnerability required. This is so life affirming in the hardest of ways possible, yet it is exactly what I believe we seek. If we do, why we seek. It brings to focus what it means to be truly rooted in life which has so insidiously and institutionally been smothered from sight and bored out from the awareness. Reading this book is a choice to fare into the thrust of powerful words that can hit hard (please let them). Peter Kingsley's voice is the distant call sent forth from a prior epoch brought close enough to hear. I welcome its circling, for this is also a book of healing, the greening after the fire.
I can only write what A Book of Life means to me, in the only way I know how. No easy task.
It was read with tears in the eyes. Peter always brings me ‘home’ with magnetic force. Which could never describe the whole story as the author himself has declared.
You could say it’s all very sad, this tangent that humanity in the West in particular has been on. But that’s not the reason I was crying. I cried for him, for Peter’s intimately personal retelling of his observations of having lived in awareness from the very start, a life of being forced to hide one's nature and every constituent interaction with the fabric of the real. I too, remembered some things too well. When I found myself separated by the deaths of both parents by the age of fourteen, four years apart. By that time, I was already safer with the dead and ashes, the wild stalkings rustling in the rainforest, in the presences looming in the treetops than with the so called living. My perfect solace was in the sound of the stream carrying impossible voices from afar calling my name. In pining at the night sky. An abyss of amnesia ensued when the overwhelming rejection and betrayal of those times from the world of 'civilised people' spared nothing. Peter Kingsley, I have found to my surprise, is that stream I would go to hear, to not feel alone. A Book of Life renewed the memory, the dark blooming of every thought and feeling, observations carried for so long like a precious secret. Hidden at all cost even through the darkest of times. That is surely not what he set out to do. He simply shows it as it is. Though through it, I have been nurtured by his writing. He shows that sometimes we make it through what we couldn’t possibly have.. He makes clear what was present all along. His unquestioning experience of what it is like to entertain with full command, some vague gesture to its end, to appear irrational only to discover its logic, to be weak, ill. To follow the intangible boundlessness. To wield the single-willed abandonment needed to retain that thread of one’s essence. Not without being crushed by the surrender to the vulnerability required. This is so life affirming in the hardest of ways possible, yet it is exactly what I believe we seek. If we do, why we seek. It brings to focus what it means to be truly rooted in life which has so insidiously and institutionally been smothered from sight and bored out from the awareness. Reading this book is a choice to fare into the thrust of powerful words that can hit hard (please let them). Peter Kingsley's voice is the distant call sent forth from a prior epoch brought close enough to hear. I welcome its circling, for this is also a book of healing, the greening after the fire.
April 2, 2022
I kinda stopped reading his earlier book "Reality", to start reading this, which seemed a bit lighter, less dense, vis-à-vis philosophical thought. But, it seems pretty... delusional. Kingsley has attempted to stretch out and embrace indigenous American "Indian" spirituality. But, this isn't a direction that's similar or parallel to bringing Sufism and Persian/Iranian spirituality to Western philosophy. It seems a bit unhinged. It seems to involve a huge leap into a position of self-importance, that I won't elaborate as some might suppose this is a "spoiler". Now, his stories of growing up with supernatural guides earlier in the book is "out there", but having a central role in what sounds like what might be end-time prophecy: Eschatology... this is where I get off the train. We've left eccentricity of a brilliant writer, and moved onto territory of mental illness. Other people probably drew that line a lot sooner, others yet might be ready to stay on that ride with Kingsley. But, I'm having a hard time returning to "Reality" now.
PS it's relatively new to me to learn that many American Indians prefer the term "Indian" to "Native American". It's been explained to me that "Native American" was imposed from outside of the community, and that is, despite any good intentions, unacceptable. After having thought for decades that "Native American" was preferable I'm still getting used to this.
PS it's relatively new to me to learn that many American Indians prefer the term "Indian" to "Native American". It's been explained to me that "Native American" was imposed from outside of the community, and that is, despite any good intentions, unacceptable. After having thought for decades that "Native American" was preferable I'm still getting used to this.
November 4, 2021
I need to preface this by saying that my low review is in comparison to Kingsley's other work. A 2-star Kingsley book is still far, far richer and deeper than most of the garbage out there in this genre.
That said, I find 'A Book of Life' to be a cold, soulless plea for future generations to understand themselves so deeply that they break through to understanding how life, the universe, and gods work. Kingsley is a genius and a genuine mystic. His delivery works well for masterpieces like 'Reality' and 'Catafalque.' Not so much in the context of an autobiography. The whole time I was reading this book about humanity I felt the tug of what was missing: a sense of humanity.
For all of its flowery prose, no one exists in any intimate way in this book of Peter Kingsley's life, including Peter Kingsley.
Let this be a lesson to you, future generations: If you're going to talk about wholeness in an autobiographical context, you have to bring the whole of you to the table or it falls flat--especially if you're speaking Truth.
That said, I find 'A Book of Life' to be a cold, soulless plea for future generations to understand themselves so deeply that they break through to understanding how life, the universe, and gods work. Kingsley is a genius and a genuine mystic. His delivery works well for masterpieces like 'Reality' and 'Catafalque.' Not so much in the context of an autobiography. The whole time I was reading this book about humanity I felt the tug of what was missing: a sense of humanity.
For all of its flowery prose, no one exists in any intimate way in this book of Peter Kingsley's life, including Peter Kingsley.
Let this be a lesson to you, future generations: If you're going to talk about wholeness in an autobiographical context, you have to bring the whole of you to the table or it falls flat--especially if you're speaking Truth.
December 21, 2022
A Book Of Life just naturally brings forth superlatives in reviews, and how could it not? I wouldn’t call it fantastic as much as seminal and challenging. But if you’re on a path where what is written here makes sense and has already been peripherally in your vision, you will experience validation after validation, challenge after challenge, and grief.
Truly a book for our times, but not of our times, responding to the soul sickness so outwardly on display now. Deeply profoundly satisfying, yet deeply profoundly discombobulating because it issues a call and a challenge that will disturb you if, at some level, you’re not able to respond to it. But I would still recommend it to most people, as just the awareness of what’s written here is of great help.
This book is autobiographical, but after reading A Book of Life, it’s clear he is his message and his message gives him life. It follows in the same vein of his prior books, a natural sequel to Kingsley’s Catafalque, which was a natural sequel to his book Reality. It's a description of the call on his life that presented itself very early, to academically come to grips with a deep misunderstanding of the Greek Pre-Socratics who shaped the bedrock of western civilization and then step beyond that, onto the path of those philosopher/mystics and live the experiences and understandings of what their teaching intended, instead of the intellectualized and adulterated versions (some of it willful) passed down to our modern western civilization, starting with Plato.
So his writings present what that gift and path for western civilization were meant to be. It’s taken reading his last three books, many years, to begin to understand what that gift was. Subtle, paradigm-shifting, but not completely understandable without experiencing it, which is where Plato, Socrates and Aristotle fell, with their intellectualization of it. Kingsley’s power and authority in his writings, and this book also, came from not researching it on paper only, but by living the experiences the Pre-Socratics intended all along. An extraordinary book.
Truly a book for our times, but not of our times, responding to the soul sickness so outwardly on display now. Deeply profoundly satisfying, yet deeply profoundly discombobulating because it issues a call and a challenge that will disturb you if, at some level, you’re not able to respond to it. But I would still recommend it to most people, as just the awareness of what’s written here is of great help.
This book is autobiographical, but after reading A Book of Life, it’s clear he is his message and his message gives him life. It follows in the same vein of his prior books, a natural sequel to Kingsley’s Catafalque, which was a natural sequel to his book Reality. It's a description of the call on his life that presented itself very early, to academically come to grips with a deep misunderstanding of the Greek Pre-Socratics who shaped the bedrock of western civilization and then step beyond that, onto the path of those philosopher/mystics and live the experiences and understandings of what their teaching intended, instead of the intellectualized and adulterated versions (some of it willful) passed down to our modern western civilization, starting with Plato.
So his writings present what that gift and path for western civilization were meant to be. It’s taken reading his last three books, many years, to begin to understand what that gift was. Subtle, paradigm-shifting, but not completely understandable without experiencing it, which is where Plato, Socrates and Aristotle fell, with their intellectualization of it. Kingsley’s power and authority in his writings, and this book also, came from not researching it on paper only, but by living the experiences the Pre-Socratics intended all along. An extraordinary book.
December 26, 2023
I have no doubt readers who identify with this book would smile knowingly at my review as an example of someone too blind or afraid to 'really see' what's happening around them.
So be it.
A never ending stream of pretentious twaddle.
If the purpose of a book is to entertain or educate the reader (referably both), this does neither, and excels at it.
If you enjoyed it, good luck to you, although if I can be permitted my own foray into pretention: Did you *really* enjoy it, or did you gain a warm glow of achievement in the act of reading it whilst managing to ignore that tiny part of your brain begging you to tear your own eyes out? 🙂
Only joking (mostly), each to their own.
So be it.
A never ending stream of pretentious twaddle.
If the purpose of a book is to entertain or educate the reader (referably both), this does neither, and excels at it.
If you enjoyed it, good luck to you, although if I can be permitted my own foray into pretention: Did you *really* enjoy it, or did you gain a warm glow of achievement in the act of reading it whilst managing to ignore that tiny part of your brain begging you to tear your own eyes out? 🙂
Only joking (mostly), each to their own.
November 27, 2023
My brain hurts.
October 28, 2021
My professor, John Tietz, once told our existentialism class a joke about the German idealist philosopher Johann Fichte: "Fichte would proclaim to anyone who would listen I AM THE UNIVERSE! Well, I wonder what Mrs. Fichte had to say about that?" I thought of this anecdote as I tripped over parts of Peter Kinsley's new book. Don't get me wrong: I've very much savoured the Kingsley corpus, having read most of what he's written and reflected on much of it. But how to fathom claims such as "...I am behind all and I am all... I am the one who sleeps forever, twin watchers perched at either shoulder. Here I lie waiting, so patiently, to draw everybody back to me." How to understand the claims of prophet-hood and the claim to be the closing pitcher for our aging Western culture? Is this poetry? Deep understanding of the metaphysical underpinnings of existence? Delusions of grandeur? Even to entertain the latter is to be greeted by a ready-made Kingsley moat: Critics "...who try so hard to refute what I write without realizing that what I've written has not only already refuted each of their arguments. It's refuted what they are." It's hard not to feel a bitterness and resentment in Kingsley's words.
I thought many times that I might be deeply incapacitated in classifying more than a few passages as cases of self-deification. I don't know. Maybe. But even the book isn't meant for me—or you. Kingsley page five: "...this book has been written to be read—but not by you." Maybe it's all a vast trick, a carefully laid out deception for the unwary Goodreader. How many times, after all, did Kingsley reference encountering a raven, the great trickster of much Indigenous lore? And, of course, there was the Tiwa elder who identified Kingsley as Coyote—that other great arch-trickster.
I can be deceived and, perhaps, I have been by this book—or worse, by myself.
I thought many times that I might be deeply incapacitated in classifying more than a few passages as cases of self-deification. I don't know. Maybe. But even the book isn't meant for me—or you. Kingsley page five: "...this book has been written to be read—but not by you." Maybe it's all a vast trick, a carefully laid out deception for the unwary Goodreader. How many times, after all, did Kingsley reference encountering a raven, the great trickster of much Indigenous lore? And, of course, there was the Tiwa elder who identified Kingsley as Coyote—that other great arch-trickster.
I can be deceived and, perhaps, I have been by this book—or worse, by myself.
October 4, 2021
Excellent! Brilliant!
Read
February 1, 2024I usually never dislike a book, but this one was horrible. It’s like some rich guy from London decided to go on a self-discovery trip and came up with all the knowledge that many generations before had already discovered. I bought it because it was a celebrity endorsement (guilty as charged :P), so I had my hopes up. This book, however, deserves zero attention.
January 9, 2024
This is a profound book that touches the spiritual beyond of humanity.
There are some books that are not meant to be read, but rather experienced; this is an experience.
I daresay each time a person enters the pages the experience will be new and different, as they do not enter nor exist the same.
I cannot tell you more, only that if you are open - then the experience is yours to encounter.
I will visit these pages again.
There are some books that are not meant to be read, but rather experienced; this is an experience.
I daresay each time a person enters the pages the experience will be new and different, as they do not enter nor exist the same.
I cannot tell you more, only that if you are open - then the experience is yours to encounter.
I will visit these pages again.
May 1, 2024
If you’ve ever felt lost, like Earth wasn’t your first home this book is for you. So you can remember then forget.
The first part was incredible. There was some parts in the middle that felt like, as another comment already said “NyQuil ramblings” but the ending was good. Well worth a read. Thank you Mayim.
The first part was incredible. There was some parts in the middle that felt like, as another comment already said “NyQuil ramblings” but the ending was good. Well worth a read. Thank you Mayim.
Read
September 17, 2023DNF … I read 60% and really tried but feel nothing but confusion. Not for me. It does have a bright, beautiful, artsy cover.
February 3, 2024
That's enough of that
October 17, 2023
This book is hard to describe - it’s more of an experience than a book. Something it will tell you itself in its opening pages - a roadmap to the soul and ancient truths that can only be experienced, and not always understood.
What a trip lol
What a trip lol
January 14, 2024
Despite his best efforts, I did find this book compelling. The author sounds like a schizophrenic person when he talks about how he is high above everyone else's consciousness, he's figured it out.... But he never quite gets around to saying what it is he's figured out? The best he can do is say that he can't put it into words. But that begs the question, why the fuck did he write this book? To brag that he's better than everybody else? To say that it's possible to transcend reality but he doesn't have any real tips somewhere to start with that? These sorts of people are insufferable. It reminded me a lot of those annoying people who take drugs and then try to tell you about how significant their experience was. It is impossible to describe, for sure, but that's because it also wasn't real.
Probably the worst thing that happened was him talking about how a bird told him about 9/11 and then he went to a conference of Indians and proved that the white man is just a spiritual as them. Embarrassing all around.
Probably the worst thing that happened was him talking about how a bird told him about 9/11 and then he went to a conference of Indians and proved that the white man is just a spiritual as them. Embarrassing all around.
February 15, 2024
I’ll preface my thoughts by saying that this might be a book that needs the reader to be in a different headspace than I am to fully grasp its message. But, I consider myself a very spiritual person and open to the wisdom (even the woo-woo wisdom) of many different guides and ancient philosophies and religions, and I finished this book still waiting for it to make sense. Definitely a bridge too far for me to follow.
October 30, 2021
Beautiful...Rare...Thank You
November 20, 2021
Peter Kingsley is for me first of all the author of''Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic'', ''In the Dark Places of Wisdom'' and 'Reality''. He is an acute reader of the Greek texts, has a profound knowledge of the context, and he even thinks archeology not beneath of his dignity (as many philosophers and classicists do). All these scholarly qualities are there, as you can expect, but being a mystic makes him a unique voice in the choir of scholars.
With all due respect for the mystic, Kingsley must also have been a hard working student of the Greek (and Latin) language and literature, and thereafter a hard working scholar (books, articles..) in the field. That takes time and energy---and that aspect is entirely missing in ''A Book of Life''.
As it is so important for me, I give A Book of Life 3 stars, although it may deserve more, giving the enthousiasm of the other readers.
According to Kingsley, scholarship is ''putting on a cloak''.I hope that in the future he will put on that cloak for a while, and give us another book on the Presocratics. With a chapter on Heraclitus.
With all due respect for the mystic, Kingsley must also have been a hard working student of the Greek (and Latin) language and literature, and thereafter a hard working scholar (books, articles..) in the field. That takes time and energy---and that aspect is entirely missing in ''A Book of Life''.
As it is so important for me, I give A Book of Life 3 stars, although it may deserve more, giving the enthousiasm of the other readers.
According to Kingsley, scholarship is ''putting on a cloak''.I hope that in the future he will put on that cloak for a while, and give us another book on the Presocratics. With a chapter on Heraclitus.
January 14, 2024
Persistently egotistical
November 12, 2023
A profound mystical story of truth! This book will not be understood by everyone but may be experienced by all. I loved the experience of Peter Kingsley because I have many times in my life jumped off proverbial cliffs going into the deepest darkest abyss of truth...I loved this book as it is deeper than the deepest re-set...and so needed for humanity today
February 19, 2024
Excellent read. I literally could not put it down and read it in a day. It reminded me to listen to the birds and remember what I have forgotten. I really resonated with the description of teaching children to be adults and teaching adults to be children.
January 30, 2024
Mysticism still has a place in modern life
January 22, 2024
I purchased the book based off the recommendation of Mayim Bialik. I saw one of her TikTok videos, and she had recommended it. My rationale for buying the book was that she is a neuroscientist so she may know a thing or two about a good read.
Let me start off by saying the book cover is absolutely beautiful. It is truly a work of art. However, the words inside the book, for me, left much to be desired or rather left much to be understood. I did try to wholeheartedly understand this book, and it took me quite a while to get through it. Several times I was tempted to not finish it, because the writing meandered around so many abstract things that it was very hard to keep up with what the author was trying to say.
I still am not sure what type of writing he reminds me more of: Matthew Fox, or Paulo Coelho. The writing style does remind me of the book The Alchemist. BUT when I read The Alchemist, I could understand the journey of the protagonist and I truly enjoyed reading that book, however in this story, the author is perplexing. I also found the beginning, and the ending of the book to be quite depressing and bleak, almost like a King Solomon, lamination.
Perhaps I have completely misunderstood the story. And it’s possible that it is over my head intellectually. I’m not big into the Greek philosophers and there’s a lot of reference to them in A Book of Life. I gave it a three star review, based off of the multiple historical and cultural references that Peter Kingsley provided in his book.
Let me start off by saying the book cover is absolutely beautiful. It is truly a work of art. However, the words inside the book, for me, left much to be desired or rather left much to be understood. I did try to wholeheartedly understand this book, and it took me quite a while to get through it. Several times I was tempted to not finish it, because the writing meandered around so many abstract things that it was very hard to keep up with what the author was trying to say.
I still am not sure what type of writing he reminds me more of: Matthew Fox, or Paulo Coelho. The writing style does remind me of the book The Alchemist. BUT when I read The Alchemist, I could understand the journey of the protagonist and I truly enjoyed reading that book, however in this story, the author is perplexing. I also found the beginning, and the ending of the book to be quite depressing and bleak, almost like a King Solomon, lamination.
Perhaps I have completely misunderstood the story. And it’s possible that it is over my head intellectually. I’m not big into the Greek philosophers and there’s a lot of reference to them in A Book of Life. I gave it a three star review, based off of the multiple historical and cultural references that Peter Kingsley provided in his book.
December 12, 2023
Let me read a few random quotes from this book.
“Death is not to be recommended. Even so, when mystics from all most all traditions talk about having to die before one dies they are not just making things up. We are too prone to foolishness or self deception, unless, until, our physical existence has been broken down into the finest powder.”
Or
Life flowed on, although it’s no easy matter to help break the sleep of a world that’s broken every rhythm of the sacred. The essay grew into a dissertation, and eventually was done. But that’s neither here nor there when each breath and step taken or another word inside the book, you’ve been asked to write.
If this speaks to you, bravo, this is the book for you there are about 300 pages of this. It sounds elegant and sage, but then, when you just keep reading this for me, anyway, my inferior intellect did not grasp any takeaways. To each their own and probably I’m just not very enlightened.
“Death is not to be recommended. Even so, when mystics from all most all traditions talk about having to die before one dies they are not just making things up. We are too prone to foolishness or self deception, unless, until, our physical existence has been broken down into the finest powder.”
Or
Life flowed on, although it’s no easy matter to help break the sleep of a world that’s broken every rhythm of the sacred. The essay grew into a dissertation, and eventually was done. But that’s neither here nor there when each breath and step taken or another word inside the book, you’ve been asked to write.
If this speaks to you, bravo, this is the book for you there are about 300 pages of this. It sounds elegant and sage, but then, when you just keep reading this for me, anyway, my inferior intellect did not grasp any takeaways. To each their own and probably I’m just not very enlightened.
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