Customer Reviews

The Seven Mysteries of Life

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Guy Murchie was an amazing man and "The Seven Mysteries ofLife" was his most astonishing and magnificent book. It presentshis comprehensive, systematic, and brilliant vision of the worlds of matter, life, mind, and spirit in extraordinarily beautiful, simple, poetic, and apt language, with an endless series of absorbing and inspired illustrations that are mostly drawn, with noble erudition, from the scientific literature. It is a work of genius - a masterpiece of ideonomy - and I feel little hesitation in declaring it one of the 200 greatest books that have ever been written.

- Patrick Gunkel

...is what Guy Murchie's Seven Mysteries of Life has been to me. Avid, ardent reader forever. Almost 20 years ago, happened upon Murchie after my father died. You need a supple mind - not a brilliant one - to take in what Murchie says; a sustained spell of selective sci-fi, cosmology, or alternate-history reading might help. This book is science. But it is true knowledge that you have not previously seen marshalled this way. I have never been able to discredit any of the amazing assertions of fact that this remarkable polymath makes. Now, having also read Murchie's autobiography i understand the care with which Seven Mysteries was composed. By the end of the long, easy, pleasant book, you may have forgotten an enormous amount of detail, but you'll be left with an impression of awe at the organization of nature.

For me, this single mind-opening experience began a journey of intellectual and spiritual discovery which has transformed my life. Heretofore out of print, i have bought a half-dozen or so used copies for very careful giving to family and friends whose curiosity, openness, and capacity seem to make them good candidates for reading Murchie - including both a Jesuit priest and a seminary drop-out now a professing agnostic.

I've been wondering whether this only review i have put online was inspired as a thank-you to Guy Murchie. Maybe. But mostly i take the time to do so in the hope, and even confident expectation, that if you read and reflect on this book you may breathe up your own thank-you to its author.

If you don't believe that the real physical world we live in is incredibly fascinating, complex, and heart-breakingly beautiful, you need to read this book.

When I was a kid and believed in god and heaven and all that, I used to imagine that heaven was this beautiful, quiet, sunny library filled with books that clearly explained the mysteries of the universe. When I read Seven Mysteries of Life, I felt that this was a book that I would have found in the library of heaven.

Imagine a book that could explain practically everything in the natural world- how the various senses work, how sand is deposited on beaches, how sonar in bats works, how closely related we all are to other humans, to chimpanzees, to everything, how different creatures reproduce, how a tree is constructed, what a muscle is made out of, why the moon appears the way it does on the horizon- and yet somehow be an incredibly fascinating page turner of a book at the same time. That is this book.

You may not agree with everything Murchie writes (some of the mystic argument-from-design stuff toward the end doesn't work for me), but you can't help but feel that you've somehow fallen in love with the world after reading this book.

I have read this book several times, in addition to having read the "music of the spheres" books which preceded it. guy murchie has a rare talent of mixing poetic imagery, an incredible vocabulary, real science and theories of living systems that are sublime & thought provoking. i think this would be an excellent adjunct to either a philosophy class - or an introduction to biology, physics or general science. since murchie infuses philosophy with his science it should be read with a big dash of salt. some of the concepts are strange & some are contrary to what most western thinkers believe is reality. if you believe in animism, tao, and an underlying order under the fabric of chaotic reality, you will enjoy this book. * * * * * * * * * * * * i give it a dozen stars!!

This is the kind of book that can transform your outlook on life. Murchie, in his thorough analysis of life and his amazing insights, challenges the deep-seated notions of the average person. Firstly, you are led to realise that your concept of life is too narrow and prevents you from realising that life pervades everything - from particles and atoms to complex organisms - and that the Earth itself is a complex live organism. Then you see that all life is interrelated. For example, you realise that the most distant relationship among people is, approximately, 50th cousinhood, which means that all people are related and gives a new meaning to concept of `the brotherhood of man'. Next you are made to see that life acquires meaning through the principle of polarity. For example, life would be inconceivable without death and the same goes for binary oppositions such as good/evil, male/female, predator/prey and so on. Even the Creator need createes and creation in general to be defined since a creator without having created anything is meaningless. Another important principle underlining life is that life has been evolving through transcendence. For instance, the cell transcends itself through division, groups of cells transcend themselves to create organs and eventually organisms. The same goes with human beings who transcend themselves in terms of space, time and self. For example, concerning space, your initial world is your cot, then you become conscious of the room, the house, the neighbourhood, the city and so on until you eventually become conscious of the immensity of the universe.
Finally, perhaps the most important gift of the book for me was that a careful, sensitive, insightful examination of life can lead to spirituality free of religious dogma and which can, hopefully, make you a better person.

I can't remember how I first heard of this book--probably from reading book reviews on Amazon. I must have been impressed with the reviews because I bought one but when I received my first copy I was disappointed to find that the copyright was dated 1978 and every third or fourth page was illustrated with detailed, hand-drawn sketches that reminded me of my high school Biology class where I made similar drawings of cells and plants. My first reaction was that the book was a little less than cutting-edge. Nevertheless it was a new book and I started to read it.

After several nights of reading the book in bed, I distinctly remember that one night I stopped reading, opened my eyes wider, looked at the cover of the book, and I said out loud, very slowly and deliberately, "This is a good book." The next night I said to myself, "Every single page of this book is full of interesting ideas. I could pick any page of this book at random and really enjoy reading each page." There was no filler in the book at all. Every page, even every sentence was a work of art, thought provoking, and delicious. I reconsidered my opinion of the hand-made illustrations and instead of seeing them as low-tech productions I saw them as the careful drawings of a masterful philosopher, scientist, poet, or artist--I wasn't sure which.

Guy Murchie began his book's preface with these words: "When I undertook this work in the spring of 1961, I was quite aware that I would almost certainly be thought presumptuous in attempting to write about all of life in one book. But I have to go ahead in the faith that any such seemingly impossible, if not harebrained, project on such a universal theme could hardly help being worthwhile--largely because of its rarity."

Rarity is an understatement. Murchie's book is more densely packed with great ideas than anything I had ever read before. Unlike many popular science books that spend 300 pages restating the same three ideas, or unlike other science books that are impenetrable because of a masochistic writing style that heaps abuse upon any would-be reader, Murchie's book is a sheer delight to read and constantly surprises the reader with insights about life, the universe, and what it all means--insights that are expressed so freshly that they seem new. Murchie took seventeen years to write this magnum opus and "averaged less than one finished sentence a day during all this time," he said in his preface. He called his writing, "painstaking" which must be true because I can't imagine any poet laboring more over word choices than Murchie obviously did. His writing flows, is enchanting and reveals a universe that is more beautiful, rational, and caring than anything I had ever heard from science before--although later I would discover similar joy from guys like Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman.

Unlike a magician who astounds by what he does not reveal, Guy Murchie astounds by what he does reveal that we have not been seeing but which has always been in plain sight. Murchie is, then, in this sense, a revelator.

Toward the end of his book, on page 614, Murchie wrote some kind words about the prophet Baha'u'llah. I immediately started to worry that the author of this great book that I had been falling in love with would suddenly reveal himself to be an unbalanced follower of yet another cult leader. I researched the Baha'i Faith religion that Baha'u'llah founded and encountered what seemed to be a peace-loving-enough community. After reading a list of their core beliefs (and after reading Murchie's book), I honestly felt that I had never read a one-page list of beliefs written by someone else that I could agree with more than this one. Nevertheless, I knew that what looks good on paper may not necessarily be so beautiful when practiced as an institutional religion. So I haven't attempted to learn much more about the Baha'is except to find out they conduct meetings in San Diego that I would like to attend once just to get an idea about how successful they have been at putting their wonderful ideas into the messy realm of organized religion. I wish them well.

I searched for "Guy Murchie" on the internet and learned that he was a tall man and just as gracious and charming, by others' accounts, as I had imagined him to be. Although I would love to read a little biography about him, it is not really necessary for his writing sufficiently reveals the man Murchie to be one of my all-time favorite human beings whose hand I would be honored to shake while expressing a little gratitude for creating a work so beautiful that I can only describe it as art, an odd choice of words for the book that I would most like to take to a desert island.

I feel May Sarton pretty much hit the nail on the head with her praise found on the back of the book. "A good book to take to a desert island as sole companion, so rich is it in knowledge and insight." I can't sum up my feelings towards the book in any more concise terms. This is basically an entire biology textbook expanded and opinionated. This is one of the few textbooks that isn't one. If you are able to complete this entire book and retain all of its teachings you would now have a comprehensive knowlegde of all life. This book is almost a sacred text, you can gather most of your knowledge of life from its contents. This brings me to the downside of this illuminating book. This author may turn off several scientific readers in the book because part of the exploration into science and philosophy includes facing the spiritual world as Murchie would have said it. His wider thinking is in no way dogmatic, but it more closely resembles a new age type. However I urge you, a religious skeptic, to read this book. There is NO other book of its kind penned by another author. So buy it. I would buy a couple dozen copies just to own. To conclude with the praise of Buckminster Fuller, "Embraces all the most important information about everything humanity needs to know for continuance aboard planet Earth, or anywhere else in the universe."

I found this book in a University of Washington book store over 10 years ago. Trying to decide whether to purchase it I read the dedication to a woman born in 1877 who taught him to ride and write poetry among other things. When I scanned the book and saw sections on how birds navigate by the inherited maps of the stars, near a section on tachyons (particles that travel faster then the speed of light), I was hooked. His chapter on the evolution of death is fascinating among others. I was so intrigued by the man that could write such a book (over 17 years at the average of a sentence or two a day) that I found his address and met him. In his late 80s at the time I had a delightful afternoon talking about everything from physics to aging. He said the worst thing was his "loss of balance". He is truly the Magister Ludi of Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. You won't regret owning this book

This is the first book of Murchie's that I have read. Starting with the smallest of "life" and moving to the largest (the universe? God?), Murchie explains the variety of life and opens your eyes to the universe around us. Classifying his findings in Seven "Mysteries". It is a great blend of science and philosophy as the back cover attests to. I have since given the book as a gift to others who have loved it as well. It's a thick one, but one you can put down, and pick up several times w/out losing your place.

The sheer scope of the book is absolutely bananas. B A N A N A S!
With that said, ahem.
I ended up picking up this book on a whim when meandering through the book store and brought it home, half expecting to never finish it, just to PRETEND to read it to show how people how deep I am. But alas, when I read it, well, let's just say I might ACTUALLY be deep now.
The first half of the beast of a work is pretty much everything Guy and the science community already knows about life. All life in all worlds as he so eloquently puts it. But what's fun for you and I and the reader is that we don't know much about life. Sure, we know about TV and... TV stars, but we don't know about the amazing feats of the average hook worm, paramecium or even our closests relative, the salamander. Or the chimp. All jokes aside, some of this stuff will literally blow your mind. You will constantly find yourself reading snippets to your friends, or doing further research on certain subjects on the internet.
After concluding the psuedo-biology lesson, along with some psych thrown in for good measure, he gets to the real meat and potatoes of the book:
The Seven Mysteries of Life
Topics such as superorganisms, divinity, tracendence, dimensions and other, well for lack of a better word, mysteries make for a very heavy read. And in this case, a very good kind of heavy.
If you think you think outside the box, read this book. You might finally find what's outside of that.