Godhead: The Brain's Big Bang [Hardcover]

This is a remarkable book which has both a beauty as well as energy as metaphorically bracing as any rollercoaster ride, whether or not one might ultimately concur with Ivan Tyrrell and Joe Griffin's reasoning and insights. The book's organising thesis is that there is a way of understanding the origins, structure, evolution and even destiny of the universe, perfectly consistent with much established and respected human knowledge. Moreover, they assert and set out to show how humanity has an essential role to play within the unfolding universe and that our evolution as a species is connected to this purpose. Integral to the enterprise is an explanation of consciousness, which is suggested to pervade the entire cosmos and, within their explanatory model, accounts for the currently unexplained phenomena of dark matter.

Use is made of texts from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, quantum mechanics, psychology, religion and the writings of mystics from several millennia. Each of these areas of human enquiry is drawn upon to make the case for what the authors describe as an up to date "myth" - formulated in a manner consistent with current ways of thinking - and designed to shine light on the nature of reality, as every previous effort of scientific understanding attempted. The end result is very much their own formulation and in total quite unlike anything that has come before (as far as I'm aware at least) - other than the intriguing utterances and poetry of mystics, whom it is claimed have always been referring to the very phenomena which Griffin and Tyrrell suggest explain the underpinnings of reality.

The scope of the material drawn upon in the service of their argument can be breathtaking. Particularly interesting is their respectful reading of the questions and reflections of some of the greatest scientific minds of the last hundred years - including John Wheeler, Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, Julian Barbour and Robert Oppenheimer - alongside the use of biblical sources. Anyone familiar with previous of the authors' work will recognise the place given to the REM state as having a critical role to play in human development and stability. And the book's first section suggests - as others have too - that the flowering of human development began around forty thousand years ago: the brain's big bang of the book's title. It is suggested that this period saw the emergence of imagination - an example of the REM state working - which made possible a distancing from automatic, instinctual responses and that thereby formed the basis for rationality. The balance between these two states is suggested as possessing huge explanatory power for understanding creativity, pathologies such as psychosis and the nature of the autism spectrum - in fact a new organising idea.

Whilst much in the book presents as creative and reasoned speculation - albeit impressively supported in ways described above - the book ends with an assertion: that the suggested basis of all reality is in fact verifiable. Not by way of laboratory experiment or peer review but by personal experience. This is the science of mysticism but requiring very specific personal qualities and specialised, guided practices.

The book is accessibly written, even if requiring close attention in several places such are its ideas unfamiliar and consequences so thought provoking and potentially even life changing.

Highly recommended.

There are many books that attempt to deal with God, spirituality, our origins, and the very nature of being human. Most dabble, and few reach the mark. This one is for real.

Its title, Godhead: The Brain's Big Bang, is a bold announcement of what lies ahead. The book very clearly lays out the appropriate meeting points of physics, psychology, anthropology, myth and religion, and how they weave together to explain our evolution and our potential future. As such, it's a practical tool for anyone who sincerely wishes to know how one 'ticks', and better understand his or her own purpose in this life.

It is indeed for the open-minded and will challenge many assumptions. Yet, it will also offer a window on how we can meet the many challenges facing us across the globe. The book's implications for new and effective roads are vast.

Be ready for a surprise.

An astonishing book, rarely have I read one as rich or thought-provoking - it covers an amazing amount of history, archaeology, psychology, physics and even mysticism and pulls them all together in the most powerful and convincing way. I couldn't put it down and read it into the early hours of the morning, night after night.

Unlike many books which have one basic idea that is padded out to fill enough pages, here is new insight upon new idea interwoven with a wealth of fascinating information all of which sent my brain whizzing. Penny after penny dropped as I read. Their explanation for what the true nature of reality might be, for instance, especially their oscillating universe concept is the most plausible I've ever read - it pulls together and explains much from quantum physics. In fact to me it really does seem that they might have found the missing jigsaw piece that physicists etc have been searching for for decades. Their theory for what 'nothing' might be and how the cosmological big bang could explode from it and the universe evolve as a result also made logical sense, as did their explanation of how we experience continuous 'time'. These are not small questions and, as with anything subtle and potentially difficult to convey, in some parts of the book you have to allow yourself to simply follow their argument to its conclusion, but it really is well worth the effort and the clarity of their writing helps you follow their train of thought.

But these amazing new ideas weren't the only things to grab me - what also struck me was the way that the ideas put forward in 'Godhead' clarified for me previously incomprehensible religious and mystical writings (from different faiths) - here at last is a way to understand what others have been trying to convey for centuries that is also compatible with modern scientific findings. And they give example after example, all apparently talking about the same thing. The idea that there has long been a continual stream of hidden knowledge about the true nature of existence and our purpose in the universe (which has been transmitted through the ages and in different cultures) is, of course, not new, but here the authors suggest that this stream goes back even further than we may have thought to prehistoric times.

And our potential for connecting up to ultimate reality, they suggest, is inextricably linked with why human beings are also highly susceptible to a wide range of disorders and mental illnesses - a fascinating connection. I would have liked to know a bit more about some of the discoveries they mention about depression, dreaming and psychosis (and their relaton theory) but I can appreciate that this was already a long enough book and so as they've written many others on those topics I'm looking forward to getting tucked into them next!

Not many books have genuinely changed the way I think about things, but this one has. If you enjoy going on a mentally stimulating journey and are interested in the 'bigger' questions (including why we are here) then I can't recommend this book highly enough. I don't think I will ever look at life, the universe and our part in it in quite the same way again.