Reality

Rating:
Summary: Really exciting Reality.
Review: Delightful, stimulating, profound, enlightening, exciting.
Deserves to be read more than once.


Rating:
Summary: Addresses the necessity of discerning what is "real"
Review: In Reality, author Peter Kingsley addresses the necessity of discerning what is "real" in the chaos and uncertainty that afflict the contemporary lives of ordinary men and women. Reality presents the story of Parmendides and Empedocles (ancient masters of wisdom who laid the foundation for our present Western culture some 2500 years ago) revealing how their teachings had been distorted, suppressed, and forgotten -- until now. Kingsley's text is direct and accessible as he guides the reader gently but deeply into a body of remarkable teachers which addresses everything from healing to cosmology -- while expanding an awareness of what is real and timeless in human life. Reality is a unique and enthusiastically recommended contribution to Metaphysical Studies collections and a welcome addition to supplementary Philosophy reading lists as well!

Rating:
Summary: Addresses the necessity of discerning what is "real"
Review: In Reality, author Peter Kingsley addresses the necessity of discerning what is "real" in the chaos and uncertainty that afflict the contemporary lives of ordinary men and women. Reality presents the story of Parmendides and Empedocles (ancient masters of wisdom who laid the foundation for our present Western culture some 2500 years ago) revealing how their teachings had been distorted, suppressed, and forgotten -- until now. Kingsley's text is direct and accessible as he guides the reader gently but deeply into a body of remarkable teachers which addresses everything from healing to cosmology -- while expanding an awareness of what is real and timeless in human life. Reality is a unique and enthusiastically recommended contribution to Metaphysical Studies collections and a welcome addition to supplementary Philosophy reading lists as well!

Rating:
Summary: A different approach.
Review: Kingsley interprets the writings of Parmenides and Empedocles in a different way than the usual mainstream traditions. Easy to follow and understand without all the intellectual jargon, also very enriching. I enjoyed this book and think it deserves the 5 stars. Some philosophers will disagree with his handling of the texts and interpretations but he shines a new light on a tradition that has otherwise been stagnating, and one that is refusing to accept new fresh ideas or theories. I would qualify him as a "modern" philosopher and his writings as "modern" philosophy. A definite read for all those with broad minds and horizons.

Rating:
Summary: A book worth buying in Hardcover
Review: Peter Kingsley's book "Reality" is that rare kind of book that comes along every once in a while that will kick the legs out from under you and leave you precariously holding onto the thread of the reality that you once took for granted. But do not read it unless you are ready to live without the reassuring substance of the material world and the cozy little circle of thought that we in the West have built for ourselves, cutting off the otherwise disquieting pieces of our experience that cause us to question our surety that we have got it right.

Kingsley, who is a master philologist, takes us on a voyage to rediscover the man Parmenides and the man Empedocles -- not the abstract Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers of crusty old books, but the men who were more than just philosophers. They were participants in, and indeed prophets of, a sacred tradition -- a way of life -- that existed for hundreds of years, perhaps longer, and which, according to evidence presented by Kingsley, was shared across the known world, at that time. In short he presents the human sacred tradition that predated what we now call the "West" and the "East." And he presents it as a story that will sweep you along, if you are open to the truth about these men, and leave you gasping at the treasure that was stolen from us in our march to rationalism.

In the ontology of Parmeneides, uncontrived and elegantly expressed in his poem which Kingsley provides a more accurate, contextual, translation of, is a foundation that has tremendous ethical and practical implications for human society and what it means to live a human life. For over 2,000 years we have stubbornly refused to see the holes in the fabric of Western Materialism. And I think it is fair to say that nothing would survive a reanalysis that took into account reality as Parmeneides presents it to us. Kingsley shows us how this tradition, which Parmenides and Empedocles shared, is in fact the foundation upon which our Western intellectual tradition is built; a fact which has been successfully pushed into the background or glossed over -- until now.

Kingsley's work presents a fundamental challenge to the edifice of Western intellection as it strips the past of its convenient shrouds and lays bare an imperative to once again contemplate the Sacred in Philosophy and in our lives. It is not just the clarity that he brings to the works of Parmeneides and Empedocles that lends a powerful force to this "striping bare," but that he connects disparate cultures in a once-widespread, shared, sacred way of life that existed before the transistor and integrated circuit. But beware: Kingsley is not some latter-day prophet bringing the Good News to us here in the 21st Century. Rather, it is up to us to take what his scholarship offers and find our way forward. The work of Parmenides and Empedocles represent an esoteric tradition which requires committed study, but which provides us all that we need, now that Kingsley has given them back to us.

Rating:
Summary: common sense...
Review: Read this book once. Then, read it once more. Have you heard 'her' yet? If not, then stop at the fork in the road and wait, with all your senses lit, and expect a peek at Reality. It's there, right Now. By the way, don't read this book... do it.