Customer Reviews

One Cosmos under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit

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The author, a clinical psychologist, has a great writing style and a talented way with words. Not only does he use words insightfully but he also invents them. Godwin believes that there is no reason to dispose of the spirit just because you're a strong believer in scientific methodology. For that reason you will not find science and spirit being incompatible in "One Cosmos under God." He starts with the big bang which created all matter in the universe, then talks about the sticky and difficult problem of life arising from dead matter. I feel he really hits his stride in the section entitled, Psychogensis and loved his telling the story of how we became human and how babies continue to become human. (P. S. It's the same incredible way) Needless to say, this was my favorite part of his book. From there he ties in history, transcendence, religion, the problem of evil and more.
"One Cosmos under God," contains over 500 footnotes and has an extensive bibliography. The one theme which runs throughout this book is "origins" as Godwin delves deeply into understanding and patiently explaing how everything came to be. His use of the concept of "mind parasites" to explain the origins of our individual personalities was brilliant. After a concept is explained, Dr. Godwin does not leave it at that but then explains it over and still once again. But he is such a good wordsmith that you might find yourself rereading a page just to enjoy his writing style. " One Cosmos under God "was not the easiest book I've read but I plan to keep it around as a reference manual. It surely was one of the most genuine learning experiences I've had.

Since Godwin in this book has written a unified theory of everything from the perspective of a spiritual psychologist, the inevitable comparison will be to Ken Wilber, but in a lot of ways Godwin's book is more accessible than Wilber's brilliant and invaluable work. The book starts as a kind of fundamental apologetics, arguing in the first two "Books" from contemporary physics and biology for the presence of spirit. "Book Three" deals with the development of mind in the race and in the growing child, and this to me is one of the more interesting sections of the entire book as here Godwin explains the "mind parasites" that sabotage human happiness and evolution toward spirit, detailing also how and why these mind parasites arise. "Book Four" deals with spirit. Here Godwin develops an "unsaturated" language for talking about spiritual experience and reality inspired by W. R. Bion's similar language for psychoanalysis. Another of Book Four's highlights is Godwin's ten commandments for "Extreme Seekers."

In a way, the tone of Godwin's work is as important as its content, because the book was able to add new passion to my own spiritual practice, but at the same time that Godwin communicates his own passion and seriousness, he also projects a high humor and lightness not always found in spiritual literature.

Dr. Godwin has made a remarkable effort here. I recommend this book highly. It will make you think. I just finished it yesterday and am still digesting it's rich bounty of enabling and masterful theory. This book does not instruct as much as it provides for further education and introspection. Dr. Godwin described writing this book... a book he searched for but could not find... so he wrote the book he longed for..himself. I am personally grateful I found this book and that he took the effort and time to write it.

In `One Cosmos under God`, Robert Godwin shares his thought provoking insights into the deepest workings of the cosmos, each individuals purpose on earth and the ultimate destiny of mankind. In explicit detail he explains the universe's progression and transformations from Oneness with Spirit, to Matter, to Life, to Mind, and ultimately back to Oneness. Mr. Godwin turns the contemporary understanding of the workings of the universe on its head and fleshes out that theory with reasoned logic and well documented research. In addition to being a theoretical exploration and explanation of the Cosmos, the book also serves as an ultimately practical guide to realizing your own spiritual evolution.
This book has enabled me to think about the universe and my place in it in ways I never had before, and the clues contained in the book have contributed immensely to my own personal and spiritual growth.
If you've ever asked yourself "What's this life all about?" then this book offers keys to those on a path of spiritual discovery and understanding and is well worth the price of admission.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, but I got something more important and lasting than enjoyment--inspiration, and a useful vocabulary for reminding myself, when I need reminding that 'this' is not all that 'is.' What you see around you, matter, your town nation Earth solar system stars galaxies, is not the whole of the truth about Reality. We all need to be reminded of this from time to time, lest we slip into the half-sleep of the human herd animal, going to work to get the money to buy the food to give us the strength to go to work to get the money...until finally the blessing of the Last Sleep relieves us of such petty concerns.

Dr. Godwin (aka Gagdad Bob) has provided us with a pleasurable and humorous reminder.

Now a good many other fine authors, starting approximately at the time of the invention of writing (before that, they were after-dinner speakers), have attempted to communicate and reiterate this important truth to their fellow humans, with more or less success. Bob's great strength is his ability to gather, study and evaluate a few thousand years worth of material on the subject and synthesize it, with humor, compactness and readability, into a coherent Wake Up Call. This is no mean feat, as others who started out with great promise have ended up caught in eddies and cul-de-sacs, writing whole bookshelves worth of obscurities that awakened no one, at least not without great difficulties. Aleister Crowley is an example that comes to mind.

I'm not going to go through the book from beginning to end and try to describe what can only be grokked by actually reading the whole thing; I was most struck, personally, by the symbolic system Bob has devised (starting on p. 207) "to create an unsaturated spiritual language through which each individual may 'realize' and 'discover' their meaning." In this system O stands for "the ultimate, unchanging, unqualified, non-dual ground and source of our being." I 'discovered' this to mean everything above and beyond what the senses tell us is there; the One Big Thing that surrounds everything else, that contains it, The Thing that we all too easily forget as we go about our business.

If one is truly a strict materialist, life can have, indeed must have, no meaning, for meaning is not a material thing. The problem is that all of us human-all-to-humans have a natural tendency to fall into routine and slide, so to speak, down the slippery slope into a default materialism. We forget about O.

But I find myself forgetting it less, since reading this book. It's gotten to the point where I see that television commercial where the very attractive woman purrs, "It's all about the O" and I find myself answering back, "You got that right, baby!"

Hey, that alone is worth the price of admission. My recommendation: Buy it! The yokes alone are Chappelle Perilous, and eventually you'll find that the beginning was The End all along, in the Apocalypse Now. And yes, Every Man and Every Woman is a Star.

At least Crowley got that much right.

Godwin obviously is endowed with a penetrating intelligence, but also a keen sense of humor. Here is someone who is well versed in the philosophies of the East and the West, but he makes the inscrutable scrutable. Sorry, Bob, just trying out your style.

You need to read this book more than once. The first read is to see what Godwin is up to; the next one, or more, is to understand what he is really saying. The book is a fascinating and uncontrained by the various disciplines he visits.

A recent New Yorker cartoon showed a clown sitting in a bar, talking to another customer. The caption: "I tell the truth, and sometimes it's funny." Robert Godwin could make the same claim about "One Cosmos Under God."

The author presents four books within his book. The first considers matter, the field of physics. The subject of the second book, life (the field of biology), transcends and includes the first book. The third, mind (the field of psychology) transcends and includes the first two. Finally, the fourth book, Spirit (what Godwin terms cosmotheosis) transcends and includes the first three. For readers familiar with Ken Wilber's developmental and holarchical model of the Kosmos and integral approach to knowledge, this book provides a view that is intellectually rigorous, emotionally engaging, and spiritually sensitive and aware. I come away from the book with a strong impression that Godwin is writing to my mind, my heart, and Spirit.

Godwin takes his biggest risks in the third book in building a scenario of how the opportunities and challenges of self-consciousness in early humans created considerable fear with which we must continue to contend today. It's a sobering argument.

While respectful of religious traditions, Godwin argues that they have created words and symbols that are highly "saturated" with cultural baggage, and therefore weak as effective pointers to Spirit. In the fourth book he presents an intriguing set of symbols that on the one hand are precise and clear, and on the other are quite free of content. This spiritual glossary offers an excellent reframe for fresh ways to communicate about Spirit.

Robert Godwin, if not in the Punster Hall of Fame already, definitely belongs. Throughout Godwin's writing is playful, yet his punning has behind it the serious intent of connecting the old and familiar with the growing edges of Spirit. His plentiful puns create new "wineskins" so that we may hold and share for awhile a taste of new wine. This is a book I will continue to study for some time to come.

I agree with the other reviewers here, this is a magnificent book that spans eons of time and numerous disciplines...
I picked up Robert Godwin's book after his intriguing interview in `What is Enlightenment' magazine...
It's not an easy book to read, but this is in no way a lack in Godwin's writing style which is engaging, clear and humorous... No the difficulty comes from the depth and breadth of the subject matter...
This is an Integral approach to what is basically the spiritual, psychological and corporeal history of the Cosmos no less... Whew...
By Integral I mean that along with other modern day thinkers such as Ken Wilber, Coombes and Beck, here is an attempt to pull together what may appear to be disparate threads of varied concepts, theoretical models and even religions that have spanned myriad times and places and integrate them into a `whole'...
There is no doubt in my mind that we are in a position now to re-evaluate science, spirituality and psychology and place it into a new modern context in view of the strides we have taken all these areas ...
This doesn't mean `cherry picking' ideas and making them `fit' our modern or should I say post-modern (get with it!) world view... But along with Wilber's `Integral Spirituality' (recommended book), there can be a reframe of where we are and where we are headed in view of what has gone before and the fact is, that zeitgeist can only be observed for past events...
So exploring the past, as Godwin does, from the perspective of all we know right now gives new `juice' to religion for example...
There are some books that you really should read, and this is one of them - and I am amazed that something so profound can be so much fun - this is one of the real strengths of the book... It is an emotional and intellectual roller coaster in places, for the reasons outlined above, but feeling your worldview change as you read is thrilling...
A tour de force...

And psychology and lots of other stuff.

This is the most brain changing book I've read it years, and will probably be one of the three or four books I've read that will change my philosophy of life in general.

You can't skim this book. You have to read every word and pay attention. I'm almost done and I'll probably have to read it again. That said, the book is written in accessible language that any literate person should be able to understand, if they only choose to understand.

So, buckle in your brain cells and grab this book and go on the white knuckled reading adventure of your life. And, like a roller coaster, it ends where it begins. How about that?

I found this book to be excellent. Were I stuck on an island with five books, this would most certainly be one of the five.