The book will be released by Crown Publishers in early
November. Meanwhile there is a teaser page about the book on Dr. Mack's
website.
I've also transcribed an audio clip that appears on
his website:
I think of these experiences as a “crossing
over” from what in eastern philosophy is called the “subtle
realm,” crossing over and manifesting in the physical realm,
across a chasm that western material consciousness has created.
The physical aspect of it remains to a certain degree subtle,
and I think - and people do not agree with me on this, very few
people do - I think the physical dimension will not be more than
corroborative. I think it is there, I think it is real, but I
don't think it is where the real power of this is.
This experience along with others such as the near-death
experience seems to reflect the violation of that boundary between
the seen and the unseen world, the world beyond the veil, the
implicate order, the transpersonal realms - there are many words
for it; another term is “daimonic reality,” a great
book by Patrick Harpur, which doesn't mean demonic, it simply
means again, “unseen agency.”
Our achievement in the west has been to keep that
subtle realm from invading the “real” world, which
we still think means the material world. This and other phenomena
refuse to respect that boundary and insists upon manifesting
like a kind of “ontological return of the repressed,” if you will. When these phenomena show up in our world in a way
that we cannot deny, this powerfully shatters our worldview -
the word almost every experiencer uses - and when you shatter
a worldview, then new possibilities emerge. So I am interested
in this new book in exploring some of the new possibilities for
human identity and experience.
One of the elements that occurs when that worldview
is shattered is then the Earth and everything in the Earth and
every human relation and everything in the world becomes sacred.
You could no longer for example bulldoze acres and acres of Nevada
to get a little bit of gold to sell on the market, that would
be unthinkable. Or you couldn't explode nuclear weapons underground
anywhere, that would be unthinkable, that would be felt as murdering
the mother earth. And that kind of consciousness, that return
of the sacred, of the reverent sense of connection that emerges
from this experience when that materialist worldview is shattered,
transforms our whole relationship to one another and to the planet
itself. And it seems to me that's a good thing. So that is what
I find powerful and meaningful to me.
- John E. Mack, M.D.
excerpted from a recent talk
Passport to the Cosmos by John E. Mack, M.D. will
be available in bookstores in early November.
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