A Book of Life

It's hard to rate or review this book, as it's very much sui generis. Perhaps the closest description would be "spiritual autobiography", in that Kingsley presents moments of spiritual significance in his life without much context and uncertain chronology. I think it wouldn't be too interesting for anyone not already interested in Kingsley's works, but I am so I found it enjoyable enough. The tone might be off-putting to some, it's a bit druggy, disconnected, as if Kingsley can't put anything into words, except the fact that he can't put anything into words. It would be easy to pastiche, e.g. "we are beings from another order of starlight. The ancients knew that starlight was a spiritual consciousness. If you are ready to listen to starlight, you must be very quiet. You must read this book in a state of utter quiet. And then you can hear the sound that stars make. It is that sound which created this book." (I just made this up to demonstrate). If you can get used to Kingsley's style, which tends to the diaphanous, it's a worthwhile read. It has many alarming or amusing anecdotes of Kingsley wandering through deserts until he nearly dies, randomly hitchhiking for no particular reason, and so on. Much as with the poetry of Emily Dickinson or Wordsworth, you're left with the spiritual equivalent of a Cheshire cat's fading grin. That is, it's not a self-help book, it has no spiritual exercises for you to perform, but one feels somewhat altered after reading it, as if one's sense of things is a little disordered, a little rearranged.

Amazing book that details Kingsley's experiences with the numinous and the various masters of the world.

Kingsley apparently forgets that those most likely to buy and read his book are also those most likely on the planet at this moment in the circle of time to have already, or currently be, exploring the territory he has entered from any number of dreamy directions. He wants you to end all this exploration with the reading of his largely autobiographical text. Amazon happens to enable reviews. I rarely care to use the opportunity of foisting my opinion on anyone else. It annoys me that I’m even doing this. I wouldn’t do this without anonymity. However, I do believe that what Kingsley writes in this and a previous book ‘Reality’ is repetitively dangerous. Yes, many of us realise that we walk around in a dream much of the time. It has brought us here, to this very point. But, Kingsley clearly isn’t prophetically prive to what dreams are being dreamt. Unless he can see into the dreams of every being to come so shouldn’t aim to be so destructive. He appears to have looked externally at humans around him, apparently asleep and labelled us all academically illiterate and decided to use his writing in an attempt to literally bind (and bludgeon) the reader with his personal spell. He’ll repeatedly call you a fool and tell you to give up on your bodily consciousness and worse to stop using your imagination. I’m not saying everything he writes holds nothing of importance but I disagree with the empty shell he it attempting to mould the reader and appears to wish to influence humanity into into becoming. The book largely speaks of the route he has apparently travelled though his life, guided by his own imagination but ultimately refuses to permit that that readers could be following their own paths guided by some of the same inner and outer forces. He writes of his coming face to face God the father, being descended upon by the Holy Spirit, of being Buddha for a length of time and experiencing Jesus as the son and furthermore, of a descendant of Rumi stating Kingsley holds the inner Quran. In his mind it seems he’s raced ahead and bettered the rest of us. He basks in the wonder of his life dream he wishes others to read the details of, whilst claiming to want nothing more than to disappear. Although he speaks at length of his experience of coming close to death, I fail to recognise any evidence he has actually come face to face with Persephone in her subterranean realm. There is little suggestion of a cultivation of a Parmenidean-esque closeness of association with Persephone as Kingsley fails to acknowledge the basic realisation that her notoriety is not terminally “the Queen of Death”. After advocating so much strife he then has the audacity to lament the rape and abuse of the goddess which is caused by everyone else forgetting what he had discovered at the roots of our civilisation (the importance of strife in setting the immortal soul free)??? We’ve had co...

This is a stealthy kind of book. It grows inside you when you don’t notice. I’ve read this book three times now, and I have read three books. The first time I was curious to know about Peter Kingsley’s life, and I raced through it, gobbled it up. The second time I read it because I knew there was so much more in it, and I raced through again, and gobbled air. This is not a book to be raced through. You don’t read it in order to get to the end, to have read it, so that it can be put away along with the other books you’ve read. That is because it isn’t like any other book. I can understand the criticisms that some others have posted here; it is very uncomfortable to read something so heartbreakingly honest. Peter Kingsley is playing fair with us. He must have torn these words out of himself—and I hope for him, as he says in the last chapter, that he was able to forget once he wrote them down. The point is not what the reader understands, but rather that this record of his life and work and wisdom exists. The third time I read this book I forced myself to slow down. Not being a very patient person, this was not easy for me. It repaid with the beauty of the prose, the vivid imagery, the transcendent wisdom. Thank you, thank you, Peter Kingsley. In time, even perhaps sometime soon—though maybe not—the right people will read your words.

When something incomprehensible yet incredibly intimate decides to write a book, it writes A Book of Life.  This book goes against all the spiritual concepts and beliefs that most philosophers and spiritual teachers have written about for over 2000 years A Book of Life opens the door to the real magic that lives as the sacred roots of our Western culture.  Peter Kingsley demonstrates, time and time again, what it means when wisdom is something we give our lives to (rather than something we try to attain for our own personal benefit).  His pre-Socrates teacher, Empedocles, is the father of all eternal wisdom and our forgotten primordial nature.  The mystery, profundity, humor and sanctity of Peter’s internal connection with Empedocles is breathtakingly beautiful.  This living intimacy of what it truly means to be bound to an internal teacher, makes external teacher/student relationships seem like a total joke and a complete distortion from its original and truest expression.  
 When most spiritual teachers I know write about awakening to divine nature, what gets transmitted is a lifeless equanimity. It is often described as instantly accessible and spaciously expansive. Spiritual culture is also expressed as the innovative new age. It is driven by a ‘growth-centered’ spirituality where there is no need to sacrifice anything.  Just keep your vibrations high, keep expanding, work on your personal issues and we will soon enter the  enlightened age of Aquarius. In both of these ‘airy' spiritualities, the personal self remains in control and is center stage.   
 In A Book of Life, Peter Kingsley is sharing about something that is the total opposite of modern day spirituality.  He shares about being a teenager and having this irresistible magnet that governs him, making him wander from place to place until the magnet guides him— sunstroke in the middle of the high heat Syrian desert—into stillness with a complete internal knowing that he found his heart's home.  Later, much to his surprise, he would discover that this place is the origin of the nearly forgotten Gnostic tradition. This ancient tradition continued to mysteriously guide him from within for his entire life.  His experiences of what guides him are dynamically alive, unknowable and unexpected.  It shakes the foundation of his life. Yet it IS the foundation of life and is closer than the breath. It is a walking wisdom.  As I write this, I am filled with an extraordinary sense of delicacy, knowing that even the hell he went through in his experiences of sunstrokes, illness and death encounters were governed by something so indescribably perfect.  This ancient wisdom demanded Peter be broken--unable to speak at times and even b...