Customer Reviews

The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution Of Human Nature

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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Michael Murphy is the co-founder of Esalen Institute, a gorgeous little retreat in Northern California, part spa, part think tank, that was a key incubator of the "New Age" movement. He's also author of some compelling books including the amazing "Golf in the Kingdom." He has spent a great deal of time over the years studying the possibilities of human transformation - of our becoming more alive and conscious and happy and tuned in to the true vibes of universe. In this book he tells us pretty much everything he's learned. It turns out to be quite a lot.

It's a 785-page tome. The bibliography lists something like 2000 books and articles. He provides a rich and detailed history about human efforts toward transformation and transcendence over the centuries, and includes capsule summaries of many technologies used today in pursuit of that elusive goal, including bodywork (Alexander work, Feldenkrais, etc.) and new philosophical/psychological/spiritual approaches such as psychosynthesis. He examines spiritual healing. He delves into mesmerism, hypnosis, the martial arts and the contemplative practices of modern-day monks. He talks about erotic love, sports and stigmata. He's nothing if not wide-ranging. Murphy's basic belief is that we humans have vast "uncharted powers" in our bodies, psyches and spirits beyond what we think we have, and that these can be cultivated to our benefit. He is a true believer in the possibilies of the New Age; he thinks that we may be on the verge of a significant leap in evolution, and that if we diligently pursue some of the disciplines described here, we will hasten the process. He writes, "I remain convinced that as a species - and as individuals - we either grow or die. If we deny the actuality of these uncharted powers, they either stagnate within us or erupt painfully and perversely." The book is impressive and inspiring if you're into this sort of thing and may be an eye-opener for you if you're not. My only criticism is, the prose style is too often dry and pedestrian, so you actually may NEED to be into this sort of thing to wade through it all.

The Future of the Body, has been on my book shelf for years, I picked it up often for a practical explanation of all things unexplainable. Everything from Astral Projection to the Zone. This huge book keeps on giving in a practical easy to comprehend manor. A must for folks working in the spiritual arts, metaphysics, or healing arts. I felt the author to have researched and recorded some of the best information on subjects hard to research, such as Kundalini, channeling, levitation, etc. A wonderful book. Thanks.

The Future of the Body is what I would consider a "modern classic."
It is one of the truly comprehensive texts published on modern consciousness and transformative studies. I can't recommend it enough as mandatory reading for any student in the field of consciousness, transpersonal, and transformative psychology (or any field directly related to human potentials). However, my only reservation is that there is virtually no mention of psychoactives, those taboos of human culture, within the text as a whole. This fact alone keeps it from being truly comprehensive in terms of transformative capacities and forms of transcendence as defined by leaders in the field such as Susanne Cook-Greuter and even Ken Wilber (though I recognize his lack of attendance to this issue). Despite this omission, this text is, in my opinion, required reading for all students of consciousness-related studies.

-Ph.D student at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

I gave this book 5 stars because it is very extensive in its scope - it is not, however, the final word on this topic, there is more - I guess there is always more and there are always even more amazing stories. The book explores different phenomena, some rather rare and unusual, as in the following excerpt:

"Thurston quoted a sister Margherita Cortonesi:

"On one occasion, among others, when [Sister Veronica] being in a trance state was reciting her Office alternately with some invisible being, she was observed gradually to stretch out until the length of her throat seemed to be out of all proportion in such a way that she was altogether much taller than usual. We, noticing this strange occurrence, looked to see if she was raised from the ground, but this, so far as our eyes could tell, was not the case. So, to make sure, we took a yard-measure and measured her height, and afterwards when she had come to herself we measured her again, and she was at least a span (ten inches or more) shorter. This we have seen with our own eyes, all of us nuns who were in the chapel."

In 1629, a Donna Hortenzia Ghini stated under oath that:

"Sister Lisabetta Pancrazi, formerly a nun in the same convent, told me that on one occasion, seeing that the said Sister Veronica when in ecstasy seemed taller than in her normal state, took a yard-measure and measured her height, and that after the said Sister Veronica came to herself she measured her again with the said yard-measure, and she found that she was half an arm's length shorter."

Among other religious who allegedly exhibited elongation, the Capuchiness Abbess Costante Maria Castreca was said to have grown a considerable height from the ground during a religious ecstasy; the Venerable Domenica dal Paradiso grew taller in trance, according to her spiritual director and confidants. Because such phenomena were not thought to be marks of holiness, they were noted simply because they were unusual.

I include such phenomena in this discussion because they indicate the body's responsiveness to altered states of mind. When consciousness is released from some of its ordinary constraints, whether in ecstasies or dissociated states, ligaments and muscles are sometimes liberated too.:

This book is a must ready for anyone interested in increasing their human potential. Murphy cites countless studies done on the human body, ranging from the normal to the paranormal. In my case, as a writer and long time yoga teacher this book has been invaluable for quoting to my students. I recommend it to people who want to open their minds to ever expanding human potentials.

The thesis of the book: We only live part of the life we are given. We are unaware of the subliminal depths and capabilities each of us possesses in our physical, mental, and spiritual spheres. But today, anthropology and comparative religious studies reveal to us what is possible, and psychology and medical science venture and explore these human functioning. With the well-researched documentation of what have been achieved, we can come to see that self-realization is genuinely possible. By exploring and developing the broader spectrum of our body and mind, using transformative modalities, we can tap into our latent, unrealized potentials, and live an extraordinary life. As Rainer Maria Rilke puts it (quoted by Michael Murphy, pg. 1), "We must assume our existence as broadly as we can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. This is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most inexplicable."

We are only limited because "all of our capacities, whether normal or metanormal, somatic or extrasomatic, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially-conditioned nature" (92). If our perceptions can be less filtered by half-conscious or unconscious psychological processes, we can be transformed.

So, exactly how do we transform ourselves for the better? In the end, he proposed an integral approach which include many practices of the body (e.g. various somatic and athletic disciplines), mind (e.g. various psychotherapies) and spirit (e.g. meditation, yoga) to sharpen our perceptions and cognitions, somatic awareness, communication abilities, vitality and movements, love, pleasure and creativity - so that we can be all that we can be.

I find it an incredible book. Thick and very well-researched. Hopeful and inspiring. It's for people who want to grow, transcend, and be all that they can be. I don't know if we as a human race can eventually evolve to reach our highest human potential, but we can certainly make a good use of our remaining lifetime to give it a little push, give it a try. Highly recommended.

This is an ambitious book, and must have been a labor of love for Mr. Murphy. It is a thorough treatment of every conceivable mystical or healing arts practice, with plenty of anecdotal evidence, some of it well supported, some not. I say the book is not convincing because so much of this stuff is so bizarre that I need to "see it to believe it." For example, exhumed bodies of highly religious poeple, such as saints, that show no decomposition after years of being buried. How could that be possible? Without photographs you just have to take the witnesses' words as gospel...or not.

If you want a thorough survey of these themes, though, this is definitely your book.

Michael Murphy (b. 1930) is the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, a key figure in the Human Potential Movement and author of both fiction and non-fiction books such as Golf in the Kingdom and In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports (Arkana).

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1992 book, "discoveries about our developmental possibilities are scattered across the intellectual landscape, isolated from one another in separate fields of inquiry. In this book, I bring some of these pieces together to see what picture of human possibility they present... Indeed, the evidence assembled here suggests that we harbor a range of capacities that no single philosophy or psychology has fully embraced, and that these can be developed by practicing certain virtues and disciplines and by building institutions to support them... Their cultivation, in other words, would carry forward the earth's evolutionary adventure."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"But in spite of the worldwide lore about levitation, no one has levitated upon command for modern investigators." (Pg. 109)
"But there is another, more fundamental reason for emphasizing culture's formative role in human development, namely that exceptional abilities develop most fully in cultures that prize them." (Pg. 160)
"Even if we remain agnostic (as I do) about (Aurobindo's) delineation of higher mental levels, we can accept the general idea behind it that consciousness is far more fluid and complex than more Western philosophers realize." (Pg. 188)
"Given these various beliefs, each attested to by religious adepts, there is good reason to remain agnostic about most pictures of post-mortem existence." (Pg. 221)
"Like levitation, telekinesis has not been demonstrated in controlled experiments nor documented in motion pictures. Still, there exist many compelling anecdotes about it." (Pg. 522)

i love this book. it's title is absolutely succint of what it contains. a book i will want handy for a lifetime. endlessly interesting.

With some reservations I found this compendium of disparate information a useful survey and a flying question mark about the meaning of the term 'evolution', a term long since fallen into a ditch whence it stumbles forth into still more confusion, with a black eye from the brain-dead Darwin debate. The number of wild pitches (the phantom index in most such books being high)is not out of hand. The New Age attempts to define the term 'evolution' are at their best as an indirect comment on Darwinian versions, but fail as soon as they attempt to remap its meaning in 'spiritual' terms. Nevertheless this text indicates the only avenue of approach, which is to map out just what creature it is that we are supposed to be explaining. And the answer is that we don't know. The temporary ongoing 'conclusion' is that we can't produce a theory of evolution because we haven't the foggiest what man's 'evolutionary psychology' really is. But one thing is clear, Darwinism is very far off the mark, and the current ostrich style of pontificating the subtle side of man out of existence in the name of Darwin's phoney theory can't go on forever. Or maybe it can. Scientists simply don't respond to suggestions that they don't have a grip on man, and who man is.
The standard problem with books like this (and this one is much better than most)is the 'passing of bad pennies', sudden passages of garbage in, garbage out. That is, metaphysical versions of occult or other 'spiritual' phenomena. The road is long and hard here, but, taken with reserve, we have grounds for protest at the amputation of man being enforced in an age of Big Science dogma.
One problem is that New Age thinking has spawned a category of 'self-evolution' and this has become the favorite of many gurus, and others. This attempt to appropriate the word 'evolution' adds still more confusion. The problem is that 'evolution' is confused with 'self-realization', the evolution of that self being unknown, a mystery of the descent of humans in the Paleolithic. Sometimes evolution and involution are confused or braided together. It is not true that realized men have a better understanding of evolution. Indeed, the legacy of gurus show they can't reckon their own history,let alone the large scale development of the species man. It is worth noting the legacy of German classical philosophy, as this suggests, prior to such figures as Hegel, the 'noumenal' aspect of the conscious subject. That insight might be helpful in putting the labyrinth in perspective, for the New Age field is littered with metaphysical zoo items mixed with the genuine insights into the sheer complexity of human nature that make the 'sociobiology crammed down our throats' an episode of primitive hi-tech cavemen. The implications of the Axial Age concept and data give one hint of the scale of 'macro evolution' that transcends even the insights of the Enlightened, for there we see the 'generated' aspect of world religion, acting beyond the realm of the oblivious yogi, what to say of the mechanized monotheist.
Usefully provoking book, taken with considerable caution.