Customer Reviews

Unfinished animal: The aquarian frontier and the evolution of consciousness

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the unfinished animal is roszak's journey of going beyond our futility of instinctual drives to looking at our potential and actuality of our existence. the evolution of consciousness is a step backward in examining the sacred culture of myth, magic and mysteries. roszak looks at everything from theosophy, to the golden dawn, to eastern philosophy and psychology. he contends that we can never do justice to one another as social animals until we have done justice to the visionary powers within us. written in 1975, the book is slighty outdated as many of the concerns about new age philosophy and wholistic thought is now more part of our culture and medicine than it was then. still a good book and recommended read.

I read this book in 1976, just after it was published in paperback, and it helped me to make sense of the 60s landslide in my own life. Re-reading it many times over the years, together with Roszak's other very insightful work (Person/Planet, 1978) is always an inspiring reminder of the counterculture's deep potential for cultural renewal. Forty years after the Summer of Love, Roszak's insights are still right on.

Roszak eloquently details the evolution of consciousness and calls for an "evolution we deserve" to counter the mindless surfeit of modernity masquerading as self-fulfillment.