Christopher M. Bache
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By: State University of New York Press
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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Movements -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Movements -> General AAS
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
'Dark Night' adds light to spiritual journey 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.
For anyone interested in stretching the bounds of spirituality and exploring the limits of consciousness--and the unconscious--this is a must-read. Author Chris Basche is both courageous and humble in this undertaking, and the ideas he puts forth add much to the discourse on transpersonal communication and spirituality.
Read it 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.
A must for anyone with interest in the matters of life and death. Bache unravels his grasp of 30 years of psychedelic work, and where it lead him, with rare humility, grace and poise. This isn't a book that tries to hopelessly (albeit heroically) sell the future to the academic community; it's a substantial, juicy, and sometimes even heavy speculation piece. Inform you it will really not, but get you searching it will. Feels like a swift kick in one's karmic rear, if you pardon the pun.All in all, a rare gem. Read!
Disappointed 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.
As Christopher M. Bache explains in the introduction, this book is his "talking himself in from spirit", an attempt to comprehend two decades of experiences in nonordinary states of consciousness, primarily evoked using experimental psychotherapeutic methods such as Holotropic Breathwork and the supervised use of psychedelics.
Unfortunately for his readers, Bache failed to provide us with either a detailed biography and "travelogue" as for example Tom Pinkson did in his book Flowers of Wiricuta or to provide us with a grounded analysis of transpersonal states like Stanislav Grof did in any of his numerous books. What Bache ultimately delivered is just another mix of already seen ideas, personal speculations, ideas on the supposedly upcoming "end of the world", mixed with a few "trip reports" which represent the best parts of the book.
The general idea of the book is that humanity is on the verge of tremendous cataclysmic events, which will cause a species ego-death and its subsequent spiritual rebirth.
Bache fails to take into the account that traumatic events by itself are rarely spiritual liberating, but are more often that not extremely damaging to the psyche which rarely recovers to its previous level of functioning. A short analysis of post-traumatic stress literature would show that.
Instead of merely speculating on potential rebirth humanity may experience after it faces the upcoming cataclysm, Bach could analyze previous global traumatic events humanity as a whole experienced so far and look if any kind of positive spiritual liberations came out of them. If Bache hypothesis would be correct, we would definitely witness an "awakening" of some kind already at the end of World War II. Or were the suffering of millions on the battlefields and concentration camps not enough of a stimuli for the species-mind to awaken - at least even a bit?
In my view, Bache got caught up in the same loop as Terence McKenna did with his I-ching hypothesis (see The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching) and Daniel Pinchbeck did with his Quetzalcoatl hypothesis (see 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl). All three failed to seriously analyze the knowledge they received in non-ordinary states of consciousness and instead took it for granted. They also failed to realize that some things couldn't be understood rationally no matter how hard we try. To paraphrase Carlos Castaneda's mythic character Don Juan - the Abstract by its very nature cannot be understood rationally. Trying to do so only brings out confusing ideas of no real value or use.
The other mistake Bache got caught in was the fact that he failed to keep his process fully internalized. Instead it seems he started to project his inner experience to the outer world. I'm sure the cataclysm Bache saw coming is true, but not outside his own mind. The ego death is not of the specie, but of his own self (identified as the species mind). In starting to project that inner reality Bache ultimately created an amalgam of inner and outer experiences, which he tries to convince us as truth. During my own personal spiritual crisis I did the same, so I can understand his mistake.
In the end, I would like to say that I had great hopes for this book, but after reading it I'm left disappointed. I truly hope Bache will have the grace to write another book, this time with more personal tone, with less speculations on the nature of reality and the future of mankind and more of what got him interested in the psychedelic research in the first place and what were those two decades like for him. That would be something I would love to read.
