UdeRecife reviewed The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby
Review of 'The Cosmic Serpent' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is the kind of book that can be an eye-opener. Maybe one can find in it more juice if one has already some inkling about psychedelic experiences and studies, or if you have had some experience with hallucinatory substances, especially ayahuasca, which is central to the thesis of the book.
At times Narby seems to get too carried away with his part of the argument, but that also makes this book a very humane one, as it carries us through a simplified stream of consciousness as an idea evolves throughout the author's investigative effort.
In the end, what one takes from it depends on how open-minded one might be to face the world around us under different conceptual assumptions than those we (westerners, particularly) are mostly used. In any case, it's a good book to show how thinking outside-the-box can be achieved and how defocalizing (using Narby's word) one's …
This is the kind of book that can be an eye-opener. Maybe one can find in it more juice if one has already some inkling about psychedelic experiences and studies, or if you have had some experience with hallucinatory substances, especially ayahuasca, which is central to the thesis of the book.
At times Narby seems to get too carried away with his part of the argument, but that also makes this book a very humane one, as it carries us through a simplified stream of consciousness as an idea evolves throughout the author's investigative effort.
In the end, what one takes from it depends on how open-minded one might be to face the world around us under different conceptual assumptions than those we (westerners, particularly) are mostly used. In any case, it's a good book to show how thinking outside-the-box can be achieved and how defocalizing (using Narby's word) one's attention while trying to solve a problem can lead to very interesting results. If for nothing else, this book would already be worth a reading.