5.0 out of 5 stars
An Astonishing Book, 29 Nov 2011
This review is from: Consciousness is All: Now Life is Completely New (Paperback)
This is a wholly remarkable book. I was put off just a little by the Introduction, and was afraid I was going to discover something a bit juvenile, or so New Age that I would be unable to take it seriously. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I've read hundreds of spiritual books, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Christian mysticism, A Course in Miracles, I mean a library of material. After decades of reading and meditating and self-inquiry, plus reading and doing a lot of stuff that's shallower and more embarrassing than what I'll confess to here, Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, which I read about 5 1/2 years ago, gave me both fresh insight and tools leading to experiential Truth which helped me, however marginally, to "break out of the dream and into Myself."
Then came Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Ramesh Balsekar, Byron Katie, Ken Wilber, Gangaji, and Adyashanti, among others. All of them proved to be immensely helpful. I'm enormously grateful to them all. This book is in that lofty league, and the author surely is breathing that rare air.
The beauty of this book is that it doesn't write down to you, nor does it lead you in endless intellectual circles. It'll tell you What's What, then spends 300 pages telling you that again and again in many, many brilliant ways. My hat is off to the Real Author; it's a genuinely remarkable achievement.
I'm also grateful to Amazon's suggestive features and the reviewers here. I'd never heard of either this book or this guy. Amazon led me here, and the reviewers pushed me over the edge. I hope I can do that for you.
When you are ready, this book will be astonishing. Until then, it will be gobbledygook. Buy it today. Try to read it. If you get it, so to speak, it'll change your life. If you've already more or less got this thing, but have no teacher, this book will help confirm that you're not crazy and let you fall on over the edge into the warm embrace of Reality.
Ultimately, it's always about Grace. The imaginary Little Me can't do anything to wake itself up, which means to make itself fall apart. Can an image in the mirror shave itself or comb its hair? Can it fail to follow directions from the thing casting the reflection?
If you read this book and don't get it, that's fine. Don't beat yourself up, and don't begin to deny what I've said here. This is Truth. It Is What It Is. Simply put it on the shelf for future reference, with the confidence that there are no mistakes. Pull it down from time and time and revisit it.
This book has the Truth in it. This is You writing to You about You. I could not recommend it any more highly. As of this writing, I've only read the first 60 pages and it's about the best $15 I ever spent. Good luck. Peace to You.
About three years later:
Since I wrote this review, Peter has become an active spiritual teacher and a friend of mine. He gives talks on weeknights in Phoenix and travels about the country as well. He's become a friend of mine, and I assure you that his book is worth your attention.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
This review is unreal, 22 Dec 2008
This review is from: Consciousness is All: Now Life is Completely New (Paperback)
According to Peter Francis Dziuban, ALL finite phenomena (walking your dog, eating a sandwich, reading this review) are unreal.
Well OK, Vedanta might seem to agree with that. Vedanta might say that they neither real nor unreal, they are mithya, name and form of the One substratum which is pure being - Brahman. But, according to Dziuban, they are not real in any sense (or indeed no sense) - they are not even afforded the status of illusion - even an illusion is utterly non-existent.
Consciousness is All presents a series of pointers and arguments to support and verify this sort of assertion (of course this verification must also be non-existent).
Already there may be suspicion that a sleight of logic is at work (in fact some of the reasoning here would make Zeno the ancient philosopher of paradox blush.)
The central claim that Consciousness is all is presented with clarity, but Dziuban's ultimate conclusions regarding finite reality are just so much logic based on abstraction and conjecture.
Oh, and the book is far too long and repetitive.
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