Customer Reviews

Reality

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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

For over half a century many people in the West have looked to the Eastern world for spiritual insights and practices. There are many reasons, but many, including the Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung, have suggested that it is difficult for Eastern practices to take root in the Western mind. Many of us have never been taught that there is a vigorous Western mystical and contemplative tradition that goes back thousands of years and existed even before the Christian era.

This book is about one of them.

Most of us would probably agree that there are many ways of knowing, the power of reason being but one of them.

Some books are to be understood by the use of this reasoning, by making sense of the data, the meaning and interpretations of the author. Others create images in the mind and stir the emotions. There is yet another group - and it is by far the smallest - that communicates at many levels, producing shifts and insights in the reader. You can enjoy Shakespeare for his masterful use of the English language, or for the ways in which his words suggest and conjure profound meanings. More than one person has found that Shakespeare has the power to transform and change them.

This is Peter Kingsley's third book about the ancient Greek philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles and it is most definitely in that third group. It is his belief that over the centuries rational philosophers have edited, distorted and corrupted their work by ignoring the non-dual mystical and shamanic origins of their insights. So what we have is a neat and tidy rationalism, rather than the profound and challenging works that would mark the beginning of a process of initiation.

Kingsley could have played it safe, and produced an academic treatise. Instead he decided to re-create the works of the philosophers as they were meant to be. So the book is mystical, subversive and passionate: it is an intense and direct appeal to the reader to enter a transformative path of initiation. It is a direct esoteric transmission of a teaching that has been largely forgotten or emasculated by later writers who only understood parts of it.

Most people, even those involved in spirituality, have been lead to believe that the only ways to achieve insight and enlightenment are through meditation, prayer or perhaps by using mind-altering drugs. But it was not always so, and we have many traditions that are alive and well today, in which the path of enlightenment and initiation involves challenges to the mind and the ego. Even one of the great sages of the last century, Sri Aurobindo, did not sit and meditate. His spiritual practice was writing. The whole of Kingsley's book is an invitation to awaken, and for the person who is ready, he provides the tools for doing so. Not through sitting and thinking, or through stilling the mind, but by trying to come to terms with what he has to say. And then will come the stilling of the mind and the understanding. It is rather like a huge kơan.

Kingsley overturns centuries of scholarship, and you quickly realize that he is trying to turn the reader inside out in the process. The philosopher Parmenides held that our rational sense of familiarity is an illusion that has to be challenged. Echoing him, Kingsley says near the beginning, "if you want to keep a grip on what you know, you will have to dismiss what I say." He translates the Greek word "Noein," not to mean "Thinking," but to mean a "whirlpool of subtleties," that implies a direct intuitive perception beyond the senses. The implication is that this direct perception allows us to the see beyond separation and duality to understand the Universe as it is, whole, interconnected and undivided.

Another piece of mind twisting comes in the section on Empedocles' two principles of Love and Strife. Kingsley proposes that Love traps the soul in matter, while Strife sets it free. This is similar to the Gnostic concept that love, pleasure and sex can make the soul forget its real identity by drawing it into incarnation. In Kingsley's interpretation these Greek philosophers believed that the development of witness consciousness: being able to watch the mind and its perceptions, is a step toward releasing the wisdom that has been waiting at the root of the world for more than two thousand years. This could have come straight out of any piece of Eastern teaching about non-duality, but he claims that it developed independently.

And what are the implications for this non-dual view? It is that in the end reality perceives itself through you. The notion of personal transcendence has to be re-framed: if all is One, then there is nowhere that we need to get to. The ultimate Reality lies within us, and the methods of these Greek philosophers were designed to awaken us to that realization. The trouble is that even after this extraordinary work of scholarship and insight, not all of their methods are available to us.

Reality is a large, thick and demanding book and not everyone will be ready for it. If you skim the surface, you will miss the point of it. Understanding the book and the treasures that it contains is an experiential rather than a rational process. But be warned that Reality requires stamina and perseverance if you want to go on the inner journey that it reveals.

Peter Kingsley's book "Reality" is that rare kind of book that comes along every once in a while that will kick the legs out from under you and leave you precariously holding onto the thread of the reality that you once took for granted. But do not read it unless you are ready to live without the reassuring substance of the material world and the cozy little circle of thought that we in the West have built for ourselves, cutting off the otherwise disquieting pieces of our experience that cause us to question our surety that we have got it right.

Kingsley, who is a master philologist, takes us on a voyage to rediscover the man Parmenides and the man Empedocles -- not the abstract Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers of crusty old books, but the men who were more than just philosophers. They were participants in, and indeed prophets of, a sacred tradition -- a way of life -- that existed for hundreds of years, perhaps longer, and which, according to evidence presented by Kingsley, was shared across the known world, at that time. In short he presents the human sacred tradition that predated what we now call the "West" and the "East." And he presents it as a story that will sweep you along, if you are open to the truth about these men, and leave you gasping at the treasure that was stolen from us in our march to rationalism.

In the ontology of Parmeneides, uncontrived and elegantly expressed in his poem which Kingsley provides a more accurate, contextual, translation of, is a foundation that has tremendous ethical and practical implications for human society and what it means to live a human life. For over 2,000 years we have stubbornly refused to see the holes in the fabric of Western Materialism. And I think it is fair to say that nothing would survive a reanalysis that took into account reality as Parmeneides presents it to us. Kingsley shows us how this tradition, which Parmenides and Empedocles shared, is in fact the foundation upon which our Western intellectual tradition is built; a fact which has been successfully pushed into the background or glossed over -- until now.

Kingsley's work presents a fundamental challenge to the edifice of Western intellection as it strips the past of its convenient shrouds and lays bare an imperative to once again contemplate the Sacred in Philosophy and in our lives. It is not just the clarity that he brings to the works of Parmeneides and Empedocles that lends a powerful force to this "striping bare," but that he connects disparate cultures in a once-widespread, shared, sacred way of life that existed before the transistor and integrated circuit. But beware: Kingsley is not some latter-day prophet bringing the Good News to us here in the 21st Century. Rather, it is up to us to take what his scholarship offers and find our way forward. The work of Parmenides and Empedocles represent an esoteric tradition which requires committed study, but which provides us all that we need, now that Kingsley has given them back to us.

James Corrigan
An Introduction to Awareness

In "Reality", Peter Kingsley makes a convincing (at least to the philological layperson) case for the presence of a non-dual mystical teaching right at the inception of the tradition of Western rationalism. Written in a somewhat poetic style that demands and rewards slow reading, the beautifully printed and presented text gradually clears away what Kingsley sees as the multitude of interwoven misconceptions that have veiled a simple, precise, yet subtle meaning in the fragments that have come down to us of Parmenides and Empedocles. He also traces the echoes of traditions stemming from these two ancient philosophers down through later history (although this is not the main focus of the work).

One of the most amazing insights Kingsley offers is revealed in his reading of the central "practical" teaching given by Empedocles to his disciple in one of the Empedoclean fragments - the practice of "common sense". We are accustomed to thinking of this term in a somewhat Blimpish way. According to Kingsley, the practice of common sense was actually a way of "pointing" to that which, common to all the senses, both "perceives", and is, Reality; a teaching startlingly reminiscent of the teachings of non-dual Advaita.

(So startling is the similarity that one is tempted to wonder to what degree this book represents a kind of special pleading, which is why I give it only 4 stars. There's an ever-so-faint whiff of histrionics in this book that makes me ever so slightly suspicious. One would very much like this book to be true, but to what degree it represents a kind of sophisticated intellectual hokum that only experienced academics could see through, is a question only an experienced scholar could answer; unfortunately, that scholar would have to be as experienced in both philology and mysticism as Kingsley apparently is! Has Kingsley just made it all up, cobbled it together out of his own experiences and his readings of Eastern mystics, and read his conglomeration into those texts? It really doesn't seem so to me, but I'm in no position to judge.)

Peter Kingsley is a man who believes he knows what is Real. In Reality, he is passing his knowledge through the mouths of two famous pre-Socratics that lived in Southern Italy ~700 BC. Parmenides and his follower Empedocles were Pythagoreans and, according to Kingsley, iatromanteis - healer-prophets and sorcerers who combined techniques of shamanic ecstasy with what eventually became, through Plato, the disciplines of philosophy, rhetoric and logic.

Kingsley dissects a famous Parmenides poem, pointing out evidence ostensibly suggesting that the poem - thought by most scholars to represent a foundation of what was to become `logic' - is in fact an account of a mystical journey and a blueprint aimed at guiding the `mystes' on his/her own descent into a shamanic Underworld. Kingsley stands on increasingly firm ground with respect to his hypothesis that Greek philosophy originates in shamanic practices. Greeks encountered shamanism from Central Asia through their contacts with Scythians and Thracians as well as through Persian 'Magi'. Plato himself talks in Phaedo how "first prophecies were the words of an oak" and that "everyone who lived at that time found it rewarding enough to listen to an oak or a stone, so long as it was telling the truth". Pythagorean descent into the underworld was apparently practiced through `incubation', a form of shamanic `dreaming' first practiced by the Sumerians (the Sultantepe fragments), Babylonians (the stela of Nabonidus) and Egyptians, later to be inherited by Gnostics and Hermetics.

Kingsley seems to be comfortable with ancient Greek texts and provides a number of novel (idiosyncratic?) translations of key terms such as logos, mythos, elenchos and metis (awareness) which seem to have had different meanings for the pre-Socratics than they did for classical Greeks. He also provides a number of intriguing readings of fragments from the Illiad to support his translations.

Kingsley's approach also has a number of disconcerting elements mainly to do with classical scholarship as we understand it. While he lets us know, in literally dozens and possibly hundreds of places, that he, PK, is first person to ever correctly interpret these pre-Socratic texts whereas other scholars had it all wrong, direct references to these `others' are unfortunately very skimpy. Attribution is not PKs forte. Many important contributors are never mentioned. Heidegger, who had a similar approach and in fact seems to have had many of the same general ideas is not even mentioned in the text. More worrisome is PKs need to adapt pre-Socratic ideas to fit his own theory rather than what we know from the ancients themselves. If Kingsley's interpretation disagrees with Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Plutarch (who one would imagine knew Parmenides and Empedocles rather well), Kingsley simply tells us the information these ancient guys provide about P and E is wrong - because of their jealousy (Plato), ignorance (Plutarch) or their self-promoting philosophical agendas (Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus).

There are many extremely interesting pieces of information here about the ancient Greece. I personally liked the chapters on Phocaea and those describing links between pre-Socratic texts and Sufi orders of the 9th century. The Sufis apparently held their own `Empedocles circles' and used Empedocles' ideas as a foundation for their alchemy and `magic'. The speculation about the role of the shamanic underworld in Pythagorean practices is in itself a supremely interesting and juicy subject matter. One has to give credit to Kingsley for his boldness and idiosyncrasy, as well as for his decision to eschew a classical scholarly approach for a more poetic, and evocative one. One has an impression that his main motivation for writing the book was less a desire for promoting scholarly dialogue than teaching the reader about the foundations of what constitutes our reality and techniques one might use to liberate oneself from the bondage of the preconceptions and expectations foisted on us by our fellow man. I liked that.

Finally, one has to acknowledge the tricksterish quality of "Reality". The book meanders the reader through a maze of ideas, metaphors, allusions and alliterations designed to evoke an altered state, a poesis where things are seen as what they are as well as what they feel like. And those feelings are like a veil drifting in the wind, never making it clear whether they reveal or conceil, enlighten or deceive. I liked that as well.

This is not your ordinary book. As Kingsley writes on page 315: "If you look, you will see that everything you hear or read is meant to entertain; amuse; inform; inspire...this book offers nothing of the kind...all the details in it are just a trick...what it does offer is the space for you to create a nest in it, make yourself at home...the reality behind these words is quite different, I can only remind you, from whatever you are able to understand through thinking." It would be the most dreadful of mistakes to think that this is another New Age self-help book, or another learned tome.

What Kingsley offers instead is an esoteric transmission--he is doing exactly what the texts he describes did--offering words that are like seeds; words that, if treated rightly, have the potential to grow into something magnificent and beautiful.

Elsewhere in the book Kingsley writes about the extraordinary lengths that professional magicians had to go to in order to protect people who are not ready from a direct encounter with the divine. Kingsley is no different from those magicians. He knows whereof he speaks. And his words are veiled. If you read this book as if it were just any book, you will likely miss the point. As some of the book's reviewers so amply demonstrate, if you are not ready for what this work has to say, rest assured you will remain well-protected from it.

So look again, look more closely. I'll say it again: this book is an esoteric transmission. There are worlds within this book--the whole cosmos is there waiting for you. There is a sacred space inside all of us just longing for what this ancient tradition has to offer--keep it open, keep it clear, and you just might find all you could ever need, more than you could ever imagine, inside it one day. But try to think about it, and you've already lost it; disrespect it, and it will leave you. This is not a book merely to be read. It is meant to be lived. You are the missing piece of the puzzle, and what it has to say can only come together inside you. Best of luck, and Goddess bless.

In Reality, author Peter Kingsley addresses the necessity of discerning what is "real" in the chaos and uncertainty that afflict the contemporary lives of ordinary men and women. Reality presents the story of Parmendides and Empedocles (ancient masters of wisdom who laid the foundation for our present Western culture some 2500 years ago) revealing how their teachings had been distorted, suppressed, and forgotten -- until now. Kingsley's text is direct and accessible as he guides the reader gently but deeply into a body of remarkable teachers which addresses everything from healing to cosmology -- while expanding an awareness of what is real and timeless in human life. Reality is a unique and enthusiastically recommended contribution to Metaphysical Studies collections and a welcome addition to supplementary Philosophy reading lists as well!

The veiled and mysterious world of divine beings (Gods and Goddesses), does not easily lend itself to description, particularly given the criteria for reality which informs our modern Western culture and its vocabulary.
The incubation process as transporter to another world is an experiential one, and like many who have turned to the arts when having difficulty in the translation of experiences that lie outside the parameters of our consensus reality, Parmenides turned to poetry to faithfully portray and animate this inner world. But his poem was not simply to be appreciated for its clever prose and beautiful form. Instead it provided an enticing invitation to the reader to share the experience that bore it and heed it's challenge to Truth.

Centuries have passed, and the invitation lay unanswered.
Enter Peter Kingsley, an accomplished, credentialed scholar who has managed no small miracle - to bring these ancient mystical experiences into a modern day consciousness. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Kingsley takes our modern-day consciousness to the ancient mystical world of Parmenides.
Regardless, it is a powerful cultural exchange.

This book is revolutionary in it's bold mastery of that feat alone as evidenced by the stir it has caused among Kingsley's academic peers. He adheres to the proper dress code by donning the cloak of academic acceptibility through extensive research, a hefty bibliography and a broad historical contextual knowledge of cultural influences that animate Parmenides' world.

Yet Kingsley's revelations do not seem entirely of this world.
They instead seem to have been born of the deep conviction and heartfelt dedication to Truth of one who must surely have bridged this gaping hole in our philosophical/mystical lineage through his own incubation-like experiences, however brief his glimpse behind the veil. And perhaps this, more than academic credentials imparts the powerfully transcendent Truth that resonates throughout his thesis.
At least it seems unlikely that Kingsley's vantage point could have been achieved simply by intellectual means - through research alone - no matter how comprehensive the material or insightful the interpretation.

Given that our culture's topsy-turvy academic criteria for establishing Truth does not value such experiences in it's formulation, but instead relies on separation from experience, an objectification that is untarnished by the imperfections of our common humanity, it would seem unlikely that any academically trained author would call attention to this 'imperfection'. But the folly belongs to those who assume such a separation could provide a reliable reflection of Truth, let alone be achievable within the natural laws which bind us all.

If this hunch about Kingley's experiences is correct then there may be important implications in the very existence of Reality (the book) for our culture. I wonder if such a book could have been written and received without a broad experience in common with Parmenides and his connection to divine consciousness?

If, in order to reap the benefits of Kingsley's writings, one must first hold a similar vantage - at least some awareness derived of experiential knowledge that provides the foundation upon which Kingley's interpretations can take root and illuminate the ancient precident laid out by Parmenides - then who is his audience?

The book is clearly not meant for those who measure the unmeasurable with leaden weights and circular intellects.

In that context this is the most encouraging and remarkable revelation of all! Kingsley's revelatory interpretations of ancient text and poems could not have been so well received within the collective were its message unrecognizable. Instead it has struck a chord in empathetic resonance with a shared and transcendent knowledge.

So perhaps despite itself our culture has, in however limited or clumsy a way, made itself ready to at last receive this dormant seed. Perhaps we have, in subtle and imperceptible ways, been fertilizing an inner landscape made barren by centuries of neglect and ignorance. Lands that can nurture closer union with divine consciousness through the careful cultivation of the inner stillness at the core of the process described by Parmenides and the embrace of holistic principles within a non-dualistic reality. Kingley's work seems to offer an important confirmation of this readiness, while providing a reunion with our profoundest roots. He is an Alex Haley for the colorless intellect in search of a soul.

Could it be that Kingsley has provided 'empirical proof' that our inheritance survives still in a centuries old seed?

Ponder that!

I just want to add a voice to the chorus of accolades for Reality. I came into this world reading, had a library card in NYC at age three, and have not paused in reading for half a century. Simply, there has not been one book better, either in the realms of spiritual literature, sacred texts, philosophy (in it's original sense), anywhere. This is a book of life, from life and for life. If the possibility of something cracking the cover concealing your life somewhere resonates with you, read Reality. But don't read it like a newspaper, amassing facts and ideas, read it as if you are hearing birdsong or seeing fireflies for the first time. Find the still place in you that is read by a book.

Aphrodite; She who binds so freely & beautifully not even the Gods know they are bound nor are they capable of recognizing it. Surely we can nowise come to our senses as they've been filled to overflow with th sound, light & fury of "the real world' with all it's societal conventions & trappings that pull us closer to Her& bind us even more tightly.

That's the path most of us in the West tread- sometimes reluctantly but then other times gleefully as we close in on new car, higher social status, or some other form of material attainment. Most just rumble along this path with the herd taking what scant pleasures get too close to escape our desperate grasp & allow the path to dictate the terms of our aquiessence; " Paris Hilton is a Star!/OldNavy makes Fashion/GeorgeBush is a president". The sheeple nod & go along, convinced that the world is outside themselves.
I mean no judgement- I was there too. I used to think that being a caucasian/hetero male meant I always had better ideas than any woman or minority in the room & if one of them used a word I wasn't familiar with, I just assumed it probably was NOT a real word.

The only thing that can pierce the veil is Death.

Hekate/Persephone; She who holds the keys to Death & rebirth is the one who cuts through bindings- ALL of them & the more tightly you have wound yourself in illusions, the more merciless She seems to you. "We're all in control, until we're not" as the saying goes & then happens a breakup/divorce, loss of job, wealth, or most dreaded- health. Suddenly, all those things which were the axis upon which your world turned, (what the neighbors/your friends etc. thought of you, getting into "the right school", owning a pair of Jimmy Choos et al) must be abandoned & your old identity burned. Her force separates the dissimilar & makes like things go together & contact upon themselves in Her Helish cold. And it is here we learn to reconcile ourselves to the many Deaths we all experience throughout Life which preceed rebirth.

Reality by Peter Kingsley is a transmission- possibly for ANY who can read (&reread) it start to finish, but surely for those who've familiarized themselves with ancient symbolism & "the occult". If you're looking for practicality, checkout the Chilton's car repair manuals. It's unlikely that humans were meant to evolve toward practicality- it's just one of the first rungs on the ladder of development- important for sure but a poor arbiter of value in matters of higher learning.

I look forward to several subsequent rereadings.

Kingsley interprets the writings of Parmenides and Empedocles in a different way than the usual mainstream traditions. Easy to follow and understand without all the intellectual jargon, also very enriching. I enjoyed this book and think it deserves the 5 stars. Some philosophers will disagree with his handling of the texts and interpretations but he shines a new light on a tradition that has otherwise been stagnating, and one that is refusing to accept new fresh ideas or theories. I would qualify him as a "modern" philosopher and his writings as "modern" philosophy. A definite read for all those with broad minds and horizons.