Rating: 
Summary: Not a very 'enlightening' read
Review: This is the true story of a woman who acheives an advanced state of consciousness or enlightenment that the rest of us dream of experiencing, and spends the next 10 years moaning about how scary it is and how she doesn't understand whats happened to her. She keeps claiming that she never did anything to trigger the change, never sought it or performed any practice to bring it on, yet by her own admission she spent most of her life practicing transcendental meditation and was trained by the Maharishi himself! Not to mention having many experiences of loss of ego as a child while meditating on her own name. Instead she spends 10 years visiting one psychologist after another and asking them whats 'wrong' with her, all to no avail. I wanted to shout in her ear - 'Suzanne, this is a result of your years of meditation. Why cant you see that?' Finally she realizes she's had a spiritual transformation - something any of us could have told her at the outset, and starts to enjoy it. I read this book in the hope that it might offer advice and encouragement in my own quest for spiritual advancement but instead it did the exact opposite. Suzanne herself states that there is no point in any spiritual practice as there is really no-one doing the practice, but she herself spent her life meditating. Most confusing of all though, was the epilogue, where we are told that she died a few years after publishing the book and that in the intervening time she came to the conclusion that she did have a 'self' after all! A very confusing, unhelpful read. She did however do a good job of trying to describe the state of unity consiousness or 'no-self'.
Rating: 
Summary: An instant classic that tells how a selfless life feels
Review: This memoir offers some insight on how one might interiorly feel about having no sense of personal self or ego. This near legendary state of some advanced contemplative is here given an autobiographical setting. It is important for its hints of psychological insights but even more revealing as an historic document to show how difficult such states are in the context of current spiritual culture. This an extraordinary account of the experience of selflessness points to the heart of spiritual experience that is fully gifted and not an achievement of practice as self-control. The simplicity of the narrative and its reasonable honesty provides an illuminating account of one woman's experience of loss of personal identity and constant sense of Emptiness. Her eventual discovery, after much fear and pain, the emptiness become a calm entrance to unity and peace. Segal's opinions in COLLISION WITH THE INFINITE will also poke holes in the work-ethic of Buddhist practice and other forms of spiritual go-gettering. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrific...
Review: We are talking here of an event, claimed by the author to be spontaneous, in which she simply CEASED TO EXIST! Her ego dissolved like a sugar cube in a cup of tea. This is said, by those who are supposed to know, to be the much sought after, enlightenment. Are you listening all you seekers? You are aimed at SELF ANIHILATION!Her story of the total loss of her identity is the most harrowing and frightening thing I have ever read. The state she fell into was one in which there was no perception of herself and no percpetion of the world as separate from herself, therefore. She and the world became identical. She had no self referential emotions. If she was asked to write her name on a form she had the greatest of of difficulty in being able to know what the form was asking for, because, to her, she did not exist!!! and she never had!!! Are you getting this? If you achieve the the spiritual goal, considered by those that have "attained" it, to be the only true religious experience, YOU WILL NOT BE THERE TO EXPERIENCE IT!!! YOU WILL NOT EXIST!!! It is not that you won't have a big ego anymore, it is that there will not be one at all, you will have gone, disappeared, vanished with no trace, dead. Dwell on this, if you can. The only "escape" religion offers is for you to die whilst the organism lives on. OK, although I have found that most seekers are actually VERY DENSE and have very ingrained ideas about what satori, or salvation, or the enlightenment actually is, I am going to hope that my words above have penetrated and you will not pick up and read this book lightly. It is not interesting, amusing, entertaining, "a jolly good read", funny, intriguing or anything else other than a book that will open your eyes to the potential of the UNREMITTING HORROR, repeat HORROR that spiritual awakening can be. Is that how you saw it when you started your quest? Didn't you hope for deep inner peace and some kind of personal trancendence? Well you are mistaken. The culmination of all your meditation and insight and all the rest is this: NOTHING. Limitless, eternal void. Although it has different flavours, depending on the author, all of the books that deal with non-dual conciousness tell you the same thing, and when you read them you are left with an intellectual choice. Are they right, and your ego is an illusion, or have they gone insane? There is no middle ground. Sitting on this side of the "enlightenment" I think that they are insane. The author of this particular book was abused as a child and I think she was damaged, deeply. It left her with a massive longing for the love she never got. She persued peace through tanscendental meditation and romance, trying to stitch over the rip in her soul. Eventually the body found a solution for her: no ego at all, death, the void. If you read the life stories (not the books my friends, the life stories) of many of those who have had the "realisation" you find that many of them were deeply unhappy before the "realisation" occured and seem to have had childhoods that predispose them to the unhappiness and the search. After their "awakening", "catastrophe" ( they all choose a different name for it) they profess to have suddenly seen the illusion of believing that they ever existed. In the caseof Susan Segal her period of awakening was protracted and scared her deeply. But, to me, all that happened to her and all the others is that a particular form of conciousness, i.e. the one where you actually exist in the world, becomes too painful for them and, after, typically, a few minutes of lost conciousness, they find that they wake up and the circuits have been reorganised. The one that sustained the ego has burnt out; the organism still functions, but there is nobody there to know it. You choose. Face this life and the damage done to you with courage or seek "peace" in religion.....and die. That's what's before us folks. I know how I've chosen. Oh, and God, "the almighty", "Jehovah", or whatever we're calling you today, if you're out there, sorry, but if the greatest thing we could ever do for you is to cease to exist you could have saved us all a lot of time AND NEVER MADE US IN THE FIRST PLACE! That one slip past you, did it? Dimwit! It may be just me, but it does seem that your ultimate religious experience is just a little bit silly, what with the fact that I WOULDN'T BE HERE TO KNOW ABOUT IT and all! So, if it's OK with you old bean, I'll pass, if you don't mind. See you on the other side. Oh and make sure you dress properly. Turn up in a T-shirt and jeans like last time and you can stuff your discussion right where the sun doesn't shine!!! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? Nah, thought not.
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