Book Review - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

You may know of this book because of its popular 1982 film adaptation, Blade Runner. However, if you're unfamiliar with it then you should know that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the most well-known and critically-acclaimed of Philip K. Dick's novels. It's a classic science fiction piece that was first published in 1968. Set in post-apocalyptic San Francisco, lifeforms on Earth have been severely impacted by a global nuclear conflict, dubbed "World War Terminus". Unfortunately, most animal species are either endangered or completely extinct due to ongoing radiation poisoning from the fallout of the war. Therefore, owning an animal has become a status symbol that indicates one's position in life as well as a signaling to others of one's empathy toward animals, which is highly revered by the remaining human population. Only the wealthy can afford real animals—the poor have to resort to purchasing artificial (yet realistic-looking) electric animals.

The main plot follows our protagonist Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who is tasked with killing ("retiring") six androids who have escaped from Mars. These fugitive androids are the brand-new Nexus-6 model, which were recently made illegal on Earth because they went violently rogue while off-world. A subplot follows John Isidore, who possesses a low IQ and is therefore sentenced to live the rest of his lonely life on Earth while more intelligent people are allowed to emigrate to the off-world colonies. Isidore finds a much-needed sense of community with the androids and decides to help them evade their pending retirement. The novel explores the concept of what it is to be human, contrasting that experience with androids who are unable to feel empathy toward others.

The overall story is captivating and entertaining, the characters are fully-baked with believable personalities, and the overall atmosphere is tinged with just the right amount of darkness, paranoia, and confusion. Absent from this book—yet common in PKD's novels—is the use of psychoactive drugs. However, a device called the "Penfield mood organ" is capable of inducing any feeling or emotion in the user such as "a fresh attitude towards one's job", "the desire to watch television, no matter what is on" or "self-accusatory depression". This device is only mentioned in the beginning of the book, but it serves as a worthy replacement for the psychoactive drugs that normally accompany a PKD story.

This was my second reading of this book; I listened to the audiobook version this time around. And I also watched the film Blade Runner recently, so that was fresh in my mind during this reading. The first time I read this book (which was more than ten years ago), I was impressed but admittedly a bit lost and confused. Even though I didn't fully "get it" at the time, I knew that it was considered to be one of PKD's finest books so I ended up rating it with 4/5 stars at that time. However, having a better understanding of the plot this time, I feel that it is worth the full 5 stars. Not only that—I can tell that I'll be re-reading this book over and over again for the rest of my life. That's because even after this most recent reading, I know that I glossed over a fair amount of the story—leaving plenty more in store for when I return. I'd definitely recommend this book to science fiction fans and general fiction fans alike. If you're first getting into PKD, you can't go wrong with this book. And if you're looking for more after you finish this one, you should check out The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Ubik, and my personal favorite—The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Bon voyage, my friends.

5/5 stars. 244 pages.

Book Review - The Art of Happiness

Having been a student of Mahayana Buddhism for the past couple years, I had been meaning to read a book by the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and was overjoyed to purchase this one after being alerted that the Kindle edition had gone on sale by the excellent ebook deal-alerting service Bookbub. Since it was the first book by the current Dalai Lama that I ever read, I wasn't sure what to expect but I did expect it to be of high quality—especially since it is his most well-known book. Fortunately, it did not disappoint me in the slightest!

The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living was co-authored by psychiatrist Howard Cutler, who posed questions to the Dalai Lama over the series of many interviews. Cutler provides the setting and context for their meetings and also incorporates his own reflections on the issues raised in their discussions. In addition, transcriptions from several of the Dalai Lama's teachings are scattered throughout the book. It was first published in 1998, and I read the ten-year anniversary edition that was published in 2008 which includes a new preface and introduction.

The book delves into the concept of using various techniques to train the mind in order to achieve true happiness. In the preface, His Holiness the Dalai Lama states, "If you want others to be happy practice compassion; and if you want yourself to be happy practice compassion." This focus on developing compassion is consistent throughout the book and is a main focus in many of the answers that the Dalai Lama gives to Cutler's questions. It seems that this is a sort of prerequisite for cultivating happiness, a foundation upon which all of the other advice is based upon.

Another point that is made time and time again is that happiness comes down to one's state of mind more than by external events. There are a plethora of examples provided in the book, such as how lottery winners do not sustain their initial delight over a longterm period and instead return to the level of moment-to-moment happiness they were accustomed to prior to winning the lottery. Or how studies have shown that people who are struck by tragic events like cancer and blindness typically recover to their normal level of happiness after a reasonable adjustment period. Psychologists label this process "adaptation", which simply refers to the tendency of one's overall level of happiness to migrate back to a certain baseline.

From a Buddhist perspective, the root causes of all suffering are ignorance, craving, and hatred. The book fleshes out this idea and suggests methods for one to overcome them. For example, the Dalai Lama advises, "We cannot overcome anger and hatred simply by suppressing them. We need to actively cultivate the antidotes to hatred: patience and tolerance."

Overall, I was very impressed by this book. When I first started reading it I wished that the Dalai Lama had been the sole author, however I eventually grew to appreciate Cutler's additions. That's mainly because I did not realize that the book was co-authored until after I started reading it, so I had unknowingly and unintentionally set an improper expectation for myself. However, by the end of the book I had overlooked the co-authoring aspect entirely and focused more on the book's content, which is excellent. I would advise this book to anyone who is interested in the Dalai Lama, Buddhism, mindfulness, or becoming truly happy.

Namaste.

5/5 stars. 348 pages.

Book Review - Decomposing The Shadow

After seeing James W. Jesso's byline on several articles on the web and stumbling across his podcast Adventures Through The Mind (highly recommended, by the way!), I decided to check out his book Decomposing The Shadow: Lessons from the Psilocybin Mushroom. I went into my reading experience with little understanding about what the book is all about, but from Jesso's descriptions of the book in the early podcast episodes, I knew that he considers psilocybin mushrooms to be his primary plant teacher and that the book is an attempt to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to better put into language the psychedelic experience.

The first part of the book covers his personal experiences with psychedelics, including a strong focus on the relationship that he has developed with psilocybin mushrooms. Jesso then goes into an brief explanation of magic mushrooms and a concise history of psychedelics, covering topics like Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, the Good Friday Experiment, Ram Dass, and the psychedelic sixties. The middle section of the book is titled A Conceptual Framework, and it attempts to build a vocabulary of terms that can be used to define various aspects of the psychedelic experience. This section is definitely valuable, but it was a bit too academically-oriented for me and didn't hold my interest the same way a truly captivating piece of writing does. However, I did find it to be helpful for understanding various parts of a psychedelic experience and may incorporate some of the defined terms into my own psychedelic language. Ultimately, this particular section just felt a bit too textbook-like to me. The last few sections of the book focus on obtaining value from one's experiences and miscellaneous commentary about psychedelic-related topics, including an intriguing analogy between the psychedelic experience and the Dagobah scene from Empire Strikes Back that I quite enjoyed.

So—should you read this book? If you're interested in learning new terms to describe your psychedelic experiences, the history of psychedelics, spiritual work, or the formative psychedelic experiences that the author had, then the answer is yes. However, if you're not into any of those things then you may not get much out of this one. Ultimately, I found it to be a really well-written book and I'll definitely be checking out the rest of the author's works.

4/5 stars. 154 pages.

Book Review - The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Although I'd first heard of Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are several years ago, it wasn't until I watched Dakota Wint's YouTube video Top 5 Books Every New Spiritual Seeker Needs that I was motivated enough to actually check it out. First things first—I know that I will benefit a lot from re-reading this book several times. It's extremely dense and packed with a lot of valuable information, a lot of which I likely didn't absorb during my first reading of the book.

The basic premise of the book is that we have been told that we are isolated beings, "unconnected to the rest of the universe", which has led to our viewing the "outside" world with hostility and "has fueled our misuse of technology and our violent and hostile subjugation of the natural world". However, Watts asserts that this belief is mistaken and that we are in fact directly connected to everything else there is. In the beginning of the book, Watts discusses the concept of cultural taboos—things like making direct eye contact with another person or performing an act that is against one's religion. This leads him to make the following point:

"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."

The concept of "I" is extremely powerful and commonplace in most societies on Earth, and it is so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, as well as our laws and social institutions. Watts spends many words of this book arguing against the concept of personal selfhood in favor of a more universal concept of identity—one that includes the rest of reality in addition to the components that we would normally judge as "ourselves".

One of the other things I found interesting was Watts' definition of "attention" as "narrowed perception"—because when we attend to one thing, we ignore everything else. In Watts' own words: "conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice."

These are just some of the concepts that Watts describes in The Book. If either of these ideas sound interesting to you, I would definitely give this a read. I wish that this review was able to more fully show how wonderful this book is, but since this is only my first read-through, I feel like I was only able to skim the surface of its ideas and therefore will likely have more to say about it upon successive readings. I definitely give this one two thumbs up though!

5/5 stars. 178 pages.