The Evolutionary Mind

Paperback, 226 pages

English language

Published by Monkfish Book Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-0-9749359-7-3
OCLC Number:: 60619644

(1 review)

Stimulating and often startling discussions between three friends, all highly original thinkers: Rupert Sheldrake, controversial biologist, Terence McKenna, psychedelic visionary, and Ralph Abraham, chaos mathematician. Their passion is to break out of paradigms that retard our evolution and to explore new possibilities. Through challenge and synergy they venture where few have gone before, leading their readers on an exciting journey of discovery. Their discussions focus on the evolution of the mind, the role of psychedelics, skepticism, the psychic powers of animals, the structure of time, the life of the heavens, the nature of God, and transformations of consciousness. "Three fine thinkers take us plunging into the universe of chaos, mind, and spirit. Instead of leaving us lost, they bring us back with startling insights and more wonder than we knew we had." -Matthew Fox, "Original Blessing and Sheer Joy" "A jam-session of the mind, an intellectual movable feast, an on-going …

Stimulating and often startling discussions between three friends, all highly original thinkers: Rupert Sheldrake, controversial biologist, Terence McKenna, psychedelic visionary, and Ralph Abraham, chaos mathematician. Their passion is to break out of paradigms that retard our evolution and to explore new possibilities. Through challenge and synergy they venture where few have gone before, leading their readers on an exciting journey of discovery. Their discussions focus on the evolution of the mind, the role of psychedelics, skepticism, the psychic powers of animals, the structure of time, the life of the heavens, the nature of God, and transformations of consciousness. "Three fine thinkers take us plunging into the universe of chaos, mind, and spirit. Instead of leaving us lost, they bring us back with startling insights and more wonder than we knew we had." -Matthew Fox, "Original Blessing and Sheer Joy" "A jam-session of the mind, an intellectual movable feast, an on-going conversation that began over twenty years ago and remains as lively and relevant today as it ever was. Sadly, Terence had to leave the conversation a little earlier than planned. But the appearance of this book of trialogues at this critical, historical juncture is a reaffirmation of the potency of the optimistic vision that the trialogues express." -Dennis McKenna, brother of the late Terence McKenna Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of many books including "The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind." Ralph Abraham is a mathematician, one of the pioneers of chaos theory and the author of several books including "Chaos, Gaia, Eros: A Chaos Pioneer Uncovers the Three Great Streams of History." The late Terence McKenna was a scholar of shamanism, ethno-botanist, psychedelic researcher and author of many books including "Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations."

2 editions

gesang reviewed The Evolutionary Mind by Rupert Sheldrake

Cranks, but good

4 stars

While these are cranks and fringe theorists, they're not stupid. Rupert Sheldrake is very much a crank who is devoted to developing a superficial theosophy-like (not that it is theosophy but it has some family resemblance to theosophy) cosmology that has no explanatory power over anything whatsoever but how his mind works is still an interesting thing to ponder upon. Terence McKenna got some strange ideas but is overall philosophical and (strangely) deep. Ralph Abraham is modest and not-that-Crankish. Reading conversations like this awakens people from the "dogmatic slumber" that they're embedded into, and from the rather filmsy reasoning it is still possible to observe a kind of possibility that they might be right in some regard. And, moreover, the conversation shows that these cranks are actually brilliant minds. One thing I don't like about New-Age stuff is, though, since they're American, their aesthetic choice is so poor that one …

While these are cranks and fringe theorists, they're not stupid. Rupert Sheldrake is very much a crank who is devoted to developing a superficial theosophy-like (not that it is theosophy but it has some family resemblance to theosophy) cosmology that has no explanatory power over anything whatsoever but how his mind works is still an interesting thing to ponder upon. Terence McKenna got some strange ideas but is overall philosophical and (strangely) deep. Ralph Abraham is modest and not-that-Crankish. Reading conversations like this awakens people from the "dogmatic slumber" that they're embedded into, and from the rather filmsy reasoning it is still possible to observe a kind of possibility that they might be right in some regard. And, moreover, the conversation shows that these cranks are actually brilliant minds. One thing I don't like about New-Age stuff is, though, since they're American, their aesthetic choice is so poor that one cannot really take them seriously without some actual effort.

Subjects

Consciousness
New-Age
20th-Century Counterculture