The prose in this book is generally good. It’s pithy and has the odd memorable observation or phrase. A ‘fingernail moon’, feeling ‘like an old scoured out frying pan’ and the feeling of smack being like ‘warm lead running through your veins’. Unfortunately this is married to some rather less good pretensions. First, what I would call cheesy ejaculations. These are one sentence paragraphs, usually a decent warning for grandiose rubbish, that are seemingly selected for their profundity. If only. A few of the worst offences were:
“A person might not be ashamed to wish for love.” (p9)
“I was afraid of his moods.
I was afraid of my own.
I was afraid of being afraid.” (p32) - why is this italicised? Is it a poem?
“There was a life to be made.” (p75)
“Fear of being loved; fear of not being loved.” (p139)
“I would like to love and yet not to love.” (p203)
As if this kind of thing wasn’t vomit inducing enough, the protagonist is also fond of quoting the I Ching. Of course, this is entirely in keeping with what a bohemian Aussie from the 1970s might well have been like. That still didn’t stop me groaning everytime she attempted to use it to reflect on her life. I thought, ‘have you ever considered the deep and universal truth that a junkie who treats you like shit is a bad choice of lover!?’.
This brings me to my fundamental issue with the book. I did not like Nora and could not empathise with her at all. Her self involvement is truly staggering. The whole book is essentially a stream of consciousness with only one topic covered: her unhealthy and inexplicable obsession with Javo. Other characters never develop much and even central aspects of her own are washed away in the deluge of narcissism. For example, she hardly ever talks about her kids to the point where I spent a hundred odd pages wondering how many she had. It turns out she only has one but doesn’t even mention what she does with her when she goes to Tasmania with Javo. I found it hard to like a character who spent all their time worrying about what an uncaring junkie wants rather than what’s best for their child.
Simultaneously, the self-obsession is mixed with an almost total lack of self-respect. Why have a junkie round your children? Why let him treat you like shit and ignore you in public? She’s not even on smack herself! Love is the excuse given. Either that or the hypnotic nature of Javo’s blue eyes, a fact that’s infuriatingly repeated every 10 pages. While being addicted to heroin is near universally acknowledged to be bad for you, people tend to have a much more positive view of being in love. In this case, the two seem to be as bad as each other!
In spite of not liking the protagonist one bit, this book seems an accurate representation of a deeply troubled woman with very little self-esteem. I wouldn’t recommend it and nor would I say I learned anything much from it because I already knew addicts are emotional black holes and people use love as a justification for incredible stupidity. That said, the prose is good and the presentation feels authentic albeit deeply depressing.
Tuesday 30 June 2020
Thursday 4 June 2020
Robert A. Monroe - Journey Out Of The Body
Many people dismiss the idea of out of body experiences (OOBE) as, at best, hallucinations and, at worst, fabrications or a sign of insanity. The only OOBE I’ve ever had was when I took too much ketamine. Testimony like this may be behind a lot of the scepticism people express about this subject. The witnesses are under the influence of drugs or exhibit other external distortions of their perception that harm their credibility. Equally, some accounts of OOBEs are made alongside such extraordinarily bizarre claims it’s hard not to dismiss them as delusions or blatant self-interest.
It’s hard to put Robert Monroe in this category of dubious testimony. He was a successful businessman and ran a radio production company. He was not a cult leader or a drug addict. Indeed, talking about his OOBEs and publicising them was probably more of a risk to his career than a potential boon to it. He doesn’t make any dogmatic claims about what his OOBEs signify and doesn’t link them to a larger schema of beliefs. He simply reports what he has experienced. Furthermore, he was also involved in scientific research. He conducted research into the effects of sound wave forms on human behaviour and had several patents in the field. As such, he tries to be as empirical as possible in his experimentations with OOBEs and reporting of them. He also explicitly recognises their limitations as data points in the scientific method. He makes no wild claims and he seems to be a demonstrably reasonable and scientific person.
The book explains how he started to have OOBEs and details a representative selection of these experiences taken from his extensive notes. He also makes efforts to corroborate his experiences by attempting to visit people he knows and connect with them both psychologically and physically. He collects and collates a large amount of data and even goes as far as to try to have the experiences under various laboratory conditions. He categorises these experiences into three broad groups. First, moving around the physical world we know detached from his physical body (Locale 1). Second, existing in an entirely psychological realm totally distinct from the physical world, which includes contact with people who are dead in the physical world (Locale 2). Third, is a world ostensibly physical world very similar to our own but with significant differences in technology and societal development (Locale 3). The last realm causes him to posit a universe of parallel worlds. So far, so fantastical! However, the manner in which the book is written and the total absence of self-serving claims about the significance of what he has experienced make his account far more persuasive and interesting than anything I have read on the subject before, which admittedly isn’t much.
It’s possible to argue that some of Monroe’s businesses made it in his interests to promote these ideas. The ‘hemi sync’ machine he invented produces altered states of consciousness; a subject this book really piques the reader’s interest in. It could also be argued that his career as a media producer gave him skills in presenting information persuasively. Against this, The Monroe Institute he founded to further exploration of human consciousness is a non-profit organisation. There again, so are scams like the Donald Trump foundation and the CFA institute! I don’t know enough about the man or his institute to comment meaningfully on this but it would be foolish not to think critically about his motivations.
The book encourages readers to try and have OOBEs themselves using various techniques most easily described as akin to meditation. It doesn’t try to get you to join a cult or give all your worldly possessions to The Monroe Institute! In this way, his aims seem to be benign and motivated by curiosity.
It’s hard to put Robert Monroe in this category of dubious testimony. He was a successful businessman and ran a radio production company. He was not a cult leader or a drug addict. Indeed, talking about his OOBEs and publicising them was probably more of a risk to his career than a potential boon to it. He doesn’t make any dogmatic claims about what his OOBEs signify and doesn’t link them to a larger schema of beliefs. He simply reports what he has experienced. Furthermore, he was also involved in scientific research. He conducted research into the effects of sound wave forms on human behaviour and had several patents in the field. As such, he tries to be as empirical as possible in his experimentations with OOBEs and reporting of them. He also explicitly recognises their limitations as data points in the scientific method. He makes no wild claims and he seems to be a demonstrably reasonable and scientific person.
The book explains how he started to have OOBEs and details a representative selection of these experiences taken from his extensive notes. He also makes efforts to corroborate his experiences by attempting to visit people he knows and connect with them both psychologically and physically. He collects and collates a large amount of data and even goes as far as to try to have the experiences under various laboratory conditions. He categorises these experiences into three broad groups. First, moving around the physical world we know detached from his physical body (Locale 1). Second, existing in an entirely psychological realm totally distinct from the physical world, which includes contact with people who are dead in the physical world (Locale 2). Third, is a world ostensibly physical world very similar to our own but with significant differences in technology and societal development (Locale 3). The last realm causes him to posit a universe of parallel worlds. So far, so fantastical! However, the manner in which the book is written and the total absence of self-serving claims about the significance of what he has experienced make his account far more persuasive and interesting than anything I have read on the subject before, which admittedly isn’t much.
It’s possible to argue that some of Monroe’s businesses made it in his interests to promote these ideas. The ‘hemi sync’ machine he invented produces altered states of consciousness; a subject this book really piques the reader’s interest in. It could also be argued that his career as a media producer gave him skills in presenting information persuasively. Against this, The Monroe Institute he founded to further exploration of human consciousness is a non-profit organisation. There again, so are scams like the Donald Trump foundation and the CFA institute! I don’t know enough about the man or his institute to comment meaningfully on this but it would be foolish not to think critically about his motivations.
The book encourages readers to try and have OOBEs themselves using various techniques most easily described as akin to meditation. It doesn’t try to get you to join a cult or give all your worldly possessions to The Monroe Institute! In this way, his aims seem to be benign and motivated by curiosity.
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