Customer Reviews

Between the Gates: Lucid Dreaming, Astral Projection, and the Body of Light in Western Esotericism

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

On an initial read-through, I found this book fascinating. I am not that familiar with the Hermetic literature, but I have not seen anything quite like Stavish's approach to it anywhere else. He links astral travel, lucid dreaming, and other psychic phenomena to the Qabala and path working in a unique way.

The exercises are not onerous, all the early exercises and many of the advanced are not time consuming, needing only 10-15 minutes a day. Like any other system, they require consistency and perseverance but do have the promise of yielding positive feedback fairly soon instead of years from now. Also Stavish puts his system in a context of other spiritual disciplines so the work he describes can me melded with many different paths. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in lucid dreaming or astral travel no matter what their spiritual path.

Between the Gates is the kind of book I wish I'd had in my hands over a decade ago, at the start of my spiritual journey.

This is an outstanding mixture of Hermetic theory, discussion and, most importantly, staged exercises that can serve as a strong foundation for those interested in spiritual exercises and "occult" practices. This book covers an amazing amount of material while still being quite accessible.

I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to build a solid foundation for their work in Out of Body Experiences and the many other paths that lead from it.

I really enjoyed this book. Although it is a quick read do not be fooled. The work involved is just that, involved. But, it is worth it! He has a very x-tian bent in his writings but that is his paradigm and it is tough to write outside your own view. Overall it is a very good book with exercises that explain much of what is not out in the open about developing the light body. Overall it is not a lot of new information and a good portion of this work can be found in other works. what makes this book so valuable is that it brings all of that information together into a system.

This book is kind of a case study in imbalance.

On the one hand, there is a lot of interesting information in this book, which introduced me to many meditations/visualizations from the Christian/Jewish/Hermetic traditions that I'd never heard of before and had imagined were basically confined to the Eastern traditions (such as meditating on, and then requesting teachings from, a tutelary angel or deity in some form). There are also many admonitions and much advice about the spiritual path - its difficulty and dangers - that seem to genuinely come from a man who is earnest and has walked that way.

Then, on the other hand, the author seems a little confused. The book jumps all over the place and confuses/conflates so many traditions and languages it can be mind-boggling at times. While the meditations are often interesting and worthwhile (in my humble opinion anyway), Stavish seems to take at face value the claims of astrology, alchemy, Qabala/Kabbalah, Tibetan Buddhism, gnosticism, and on and on. Stavish seems to be in that weird place where absolutely every practice from every tradition can somehow be corralled into his own Hermetic viewpoint. The result is the mashing-together of many, many disparate and frankly incommensurate traditions and viewpoints, glossed over by Arbitrary Capitalization and repeatedly pointing out that one won't understand such 'correspondences' until one is further advanced along the path.

Add to that the horrendous copy-editing (assuming such was ever done?) and the endless grammatical mistakes and you have a book that is worth reading but needs to be taken with a grain (or a thousand) of salt. Still, worth sifting through for the sometimes fascinating practices contained within.

Before you read this book, or any book like it, I suggest you read Manly Hall's book "Word to the Wise." Mr. Hall says, "Wherever profit is concerned, man's ethical standards are apt to be corrupted" (95). I question Mr. Stavish's motives, whether deceit is intentional or not, and I feel a caveat is necessary here because so much information shared in "Between the Gates" is true ... yet not so true.

In Mr. Stavish's book, "Between the Gates," he says quite clearly the following: "The closely guarded and tightly knit relationship between students and teacher-initiator no longer exists. This has led many to believe that a teacher is not necessary, as they have the 'Inner Master' to guide them. This is true, but only in so far as each student has the personal discipline, self-reflection, and honesty to listen to the words of their Inner Master. Until that time, an outer teacher will be needed. It is my hope that this book will act in some fashion as an outer teacher" (xix).

Unfortunately, no outer teacher can prepare a student for something that the student, himself, is not ready for. If the subject were different, say carpentering or automobile repair, then Mr. Stavish's position is somewhat understandable; but this is clearly a topic concerning a very different type of subject matter.

Mr. Stavish is well-educated and knows his material, but he is making a grand claim here that can't be delivered. I respect his knowledge-base (although he could've left Aliester Crowley out), but I question his motives and his claim to raise people to a higher level of consciousness--even when they, themselves, aren't ready.

His book is littered with recipes for enlightenment, step-by-step do's and don'ts. Maybe they work, maybe they don't. It's almost impossible to verify that any of Mr. Stavish's methods work and that in the end the reader isn't just duping himself because he wants them to work. Also, why is it that many of these methods aren't universal and universally detailed with a trail of records dating back to the earliest Mystery School teachers, such as Plato and Plotinus? Perhaps it's because Mr. Stavish wants you to believe only he can lead you, teach you, and guide you? Maybe he is suggesting that the more books you buy from him, the more you'll reach that higher consciousness within one lifetime?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Mr. Stavish knows Jewish Mysticism and Hermeticism, but he goes outside the base texts and claims his own books can teach you the secret of secrets. Even if his enlightenment recipes do work and afterlife retrogression is avoided for some "fortunate" soul who discovered Stavish's books, that same person can't come back and confirm the success. Regardless, whether Stavish's claims are true or not, one thing can be certain: he'll still make money off your purchase on Amazon.

I purchased this book with high hopes considering the good reviews given here and I was greatly disappointed. This book is filled with nonsensical gibberish, at least to someone who is not an expert on "Hermiticism" or "Esotericism" (neither of which I had ever heard of before). The author speaks with a tone of authority about a never ending stream of concepts about the nature of the universe without giving a hint of how he arrives at these conclusions. I admittedly only read about the first third of the book before I decided it was complete nonsense and skimmed over the rest.

As for lucid dreaming and astral projection, the book does provide some basics but there are much better texts out there, I recommend the works by Stephen LaBerge or Robert Bruce, particularly "Astral Dynamics"

"Between the Gates - Lucid Dreaming, Astral Projection, and the Body of Light in Western Esotericism" by Mark Stavish. I recommend if you are Christian to read the last three chapters first so you don't go off the deep end. The last three chapters are written, as I recall, from a Christian perspective. Then just carefully peek into the rest of the book with the lights on and a room full of people. http://www.peaceandconflictresolution.org/