From Atlantis to the Sphinx

Rating:
Summary: THOUGHTFUL AND EXCITING SUMMARY OF ALTERNATIVE IDEAS
Review: Colin Wilson is both a prolific and talented writer, whose books always reflect a lot of serious research and thought. When I found a copy of From Atlantis to the Sphinx at a book sale, I grabbed it. But I soon found I was reading a summary of the views of the major alternative history writers, and I found myself skimming through material with which I was already familiar. He covers all my favorites -- Graham Hancock, Robery Bauval, John Anthony West, Zechariah Sitchen, Rand Flem-Ath, Cremo and Thompson, and such older luminaries as Velikoksky, Hapgood, Gurdjieff and many other authors who have put forth theories about the nature and history of mankind. Despite the rehash, Wilson's comments on these writers and their ideas make for interesting reading.

For instance, he does not buy into Sitchen's idea that our solar system contains the planet Nibiru from which the Gods of Sumer came to create mankind. But he accepts much of Sitchen's remarkable scholarship on the Sumerians. He is impressed with Hapgood's data on the shifting location of earth's poles and the evidence he gathered from old maps that there was once a highly developed civilization on earth that has been forgotten. Cremo and Thompson's classic Forbidden Archeology is an insightful and amazing read, as they pile up evidence over 1000 pages showing mankind may be millions of years old, and Wilson uses their examples. Wilson provides colorful "back stories" about these authors, since he has met many of them personally.

There is purpose to Wilson's long discourse on the ideas of other authors; he delivers the goods in the end when he gives up his own fascinating theory of ancient Egyptian society. Wilson's narrative leads us to see that mankind may once have had a different way of seeing reality, the same kind of seeing as the shaman exercising "magic" rituals. He invites us to consider the Collective Mind, consciousness acting in consort to achieve some end, much as birds move in a flock. Conscousness can be concentrated to build up power and this can be expended as a physical force. How did the ancient Egyptians move those giant blocks of stone to form the pyramids? Could they have used their own collective mental power?

It is fascinating to me to read of feats that should require a huge expenditure of power (like moving giant blocks of stone), but are somehow accomplished without any application of normal means of power generation. Consider the testimony of Douchan Gersi (an interesting author NOT mentioned by Wilson) who wrote about the "flying men" of Haiti who could dematerialize in one location and rematerialize in another. There was no technology involved. Did mankind once know how to use another kind of power, one based on group consciousness? We sometimes enter this consciousness, which we identify as "peak" experience, when we seem outside linear time, and reality somehow is altered.

Wilson is telling us that because our conscousness has evolved in a different direction from our remote ancestors, we fail to grasp how they accomplished tasks like building the pyramids. He does not see teams of sweating slaves, or ridiculously long ramps, or ancient fork lifts, but simply the collective power of human consciousness working for common purpose. Wilson, as usual, entertains while building a well-documented case for his own unique alternative view of human history.

Rating:
Summary: Wilson delivers yet again...
Review: I was told in high school (and not only there) that a construction made of 6 million tons of building material (!!) and with building blocks that weigh anywhere from 10 to 20 tons each and having been lifted as high as 250 feet up was done merely by using 1000s of slaves and primitive cranes..That's how the Egyptian pyramids were supposedly built. Answering to another reviewer here, you would have to be spectacularly gullible to buy such nonsense.
But I'd rather get to the point. What Colin Wilson is is a self-educated man, a person for whom the term "bibliophile" is a tremendous understatement. His strength as a writer, as many have pointed out, lays in the fact that he takes the works and theories of other people and composes them into his own, weighing the pros and cons in the search for facts, for truth. In this process he remains as open minded as such a task demands and in my opinion this is the biggest credit of respect you can pay to your readers before anything else. Why would we need another "scientist" ruminating the "same ole-same ole" regardless of how absurd or unlikely his theory is just so he fits in with the "knowledge establishment"? No thanks..
What this books maintains is then nothing that other researchers havent theorised (if not actually PROVEN) before. It provides facts and theories about a maritime civilisation that predated the Egyptians by 1000s of years and which had either the technological know how or simply possesed a totally different thought that enabled them to achieve things that seem incomprehensible to us..According to all these researchers (and Wilson) this civilisation was widely destroyed by a natural disaster but survivors of it transfered their knowledge, or more accurately, their knowledge system, to subsequent civilisations, in this case the Egyptians, but also to the Mayas to name another.
It's no easy thing to summarise what "From Atlantis to..." proposes as it composes parts and aspects from so many theories. The fairest thing to do is to read the book and allow yourself to be exposed to what it suggests and judge for your own, allthough, it must be said, if you remain/are openminded what will more likely happen is you'll feel inspired to read much-much more on the subject.
I think that exactly for that fact alone this is a great book from Wilson, it is one that pushes you to open a closet that conventional archaelogists stubbornly consider sealed. Far from... It's also a book that reads through very comfortably considering its task and it is definately very comprehensive on anything it deals with. But then again, for the initiated Wilson readers this is nothing new.
I am Greek. And Greece is a country filled with ancient "miracles" too which are being explained away by mainstream science with theories that make me laugh. Recently i was up at the Delphi temple. I'd last been there as a kid and hadnt thought much by what i saw. Wilson's books have made me look at things with new eyes. It's not what you believe it's how you come to believe in what you believe. That's why this book and its bibliography as a whole are important.

Rating:
Summary: Concise & Insightful! The Next Generation of it's kind.
Review: With the overwhelming amount of current research and information being publish on this subject in the last decade Colin Wilson has done a fantastic job. By collating and presenting ideas of authors and scholars in a coherent and linear fashion this book is entirely readable and understandable to all. (Especially those of us left brainers). However, his own ideas are as fresh and original as ever. Fantastic and insightful! This book sheds light on Humankind's history and possible future by synthesizing information on cultural roots, folklore, religion, hard science and their sociological affects. He gives credit where credit is due (i.e. Santillana, Hapgood, Hancock, Bauval, Flem-ath, West, etc) and has successfully written a book that can be called the Next Generation of it's kind.