An absolute standard! Pure therapy! The mirror is there, now you just need to face it.

Dr Naranjo has written the most definitive and difficult work on the enneagram of personality to date and anyone who really wants to understand him/herself in a deep way, needs to climb this mountain. The language is quite subtle and full of careful distinctions, and while it lacks insight into subtypes (except on occassion and in the case of the Six), it contains the core of the knowledge about the enneagram as a system of self-understanding and awakening. The good doctor is enigmatic and infuriating at times, but those who hang tough and make the required effort will be well rewarded. The other enneagram books read more easily but lack the deep insight which Naranjo seems to capture. No one should claim to know this rich body of knowledge, much less teach it, without having mastered this book.

Claudio Naranjo describes very deeply the main characterisics of each type of personality. He makes comparision between different typology theories for example DSM-III, Homeophatic tradition and others. Recomended for all who really want to know the structure and dynamics that interact and the different motivations of each Enneatype. I have started teaching Enneagram at my city (it is not know) and the students have become enthusiasitc about it.

Lee Lozowick is an underrated Master. I think he is criticized by many because he scares many. Out of the hand full of Guru's that have fallen from "grace" in the last 20 years, Mr. Lee is still going strong. This book is a condensed articulation of his way of teaching; his living philosophy. What makes Lee a MASTER par excellence is his example. He once said: "The work you have come here to do is the work I have come here to do. The difference is, I have assumed it, you have not. His amazing discipline is the furtile manure that informs his wit and shining clarity. Lee's words are time bombs that will explode in your consciousness six months later. Whether or not this Man fits your preconeptions of what a spiritual teacher "should" be or not, even more so than Evander Holyfield, This MAN is the REAL DEAL. Back to the book. Lee clearly states his vision of the importance of such themes as: community, diet, spiritual practice, the role of the teacher among other important topics. Remember as you read, this Master is not a master of rhetoric he is an exemplar of the highest degree. Not until you can walk the kind of walk that he has walked will you be qualified to be even close to having an inkling of where from this Master speaks. Jai Guru!

Lee Lozowick lets us all know in this book that he is a true spiritual teacher. He educates the reader to what a true spiritual teacher asks of his students. He takes the confusion out of spiritual practice by writing in clear, concise language. Spiritual practice is shown to be difficult for most seekers. Surrender is difficult for all but a few. The ego dies hard.

Claudio Naranjo heads a gathering of 9 therapists, each representing a unique point on the Enneagram, who come together with the express purpose of seeing how they each relate to one another. They submit themselves to this process, sharing anecdotes of professional relationships with clients, in order to grow in understanding as to how they might better help their clients heal. They also perform various exercises in smaller group settings to gather data from first-hand experiences.

This book is from a time before the Enneagram became widely popularized in the mainstream self-help movement. It is a captivating read because this sort of information is just not found these days. And the format was original, as well, in that it was mostly conversation style. Each therapist had a turn to speak about their experience of each type, and it is not just their words, but their way of speaking that informs the reader. One can see "type-in-action".

This book comes highly recommended for those who wish to understand how to employ the enneagram therapeutically, to help others and not just themselves. Gratefully, there is no suggestion of quick cures, and preferred remedies, only the meat of personal experience coupled with the wish to help and grow with others and some insightful commentaries by Naranjo. Those already well-versed in therapeutic modalities are likely to find that the information in this book helps tie up many ends left loose in university-style teachings.

This review was written with the idea that the reader would already be acquainted with the basics of the Enneagram study. While I do not recommend this book as an introduction to Enneagram, I believe that it would serve nicely as supportive material for any interested. I say this specifically because modern day books, while full of potentially useful information, are of the 'talking at you' style which impacts the reader primarily in his intellectual center. The book in review, once again, has a conversational style to it and this will have the effect of impacting the reader emotionally. You must see for yourself.

Good luck. I hope this helped.

ps. I believe myself to be an evolving 7w6.

An incredible book analysing the more scientific aspects of meditation. Discusses the underlying basis of meditation from the viewpoint of three major religeons of the world. An insightful and exceptionally thought provoking book. Inpires a desire to delve into deeper realms. I currently share a very old and dog-eared copy with my family and am looking for a new one. Please e-mail me if you can help.

The status of the classic, fascinating Tibetan Book of the Dead, despite its reputation, remains vexed and it is finally an apocryphal and late text in the Buddhist tradition. Travel light and stick to basics.And beware of the associated abuses.
This work by the notorious Gold, a cloned wannabe in this vein, is essentially a pointless text, whose core meaning might become clear if you have read the last paragraph of Gurdjieff's All and Everything. Be forewarned! The 'work' is a false concept, and doesn't mean 'liberation', beware of what you agree to. Don't be caught in the clutches of these operators. It is one thing to groove on Sufi sayings like 'die before you die', quite another to take it as a form of spiritual practice at the hands of those with lunatic thinking in this field. I read an early version of this book years ago while interviewing a few of Mr. Gold's victims in a state of shock (he has plenty of groupies however), whose tales bespeak a singularly nutty versions of Gurdjieff-Sufism mishmashed. I was struck by the especial viciousness of the goings on in this regard, and the symbolic manipulation of the 'book of the dead' archetype. Sometimes posing as a Indian style guru, sometimes the Sufi sheik and/or 'successor' to Gurdjieff, this man with no stated credentials whatsoever, save the clear hints of being no guru at all but a Crowley style occultist, has let loose some stunning and dangerous howlers in this field, and I would recommend staying well beyond his influence. Period. The question of the Gurdjieff 'school'is hopeless at this point. There is no such thing as the 'fourth way' and the ersatz ashram in tricky combinations has drifted down history ad infinitum and this is no exception. You are under no obligation to spiritual obedience to these entrepreneurs. None whatever. Wake up and watch your step.

Having been familiar with the Evans-Wentz translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead for many years I decided to give this "Americanised" version a try. I was aware that much of the rigid detail and ritual of the original was probably unique to Tibetan culture and I wanted to see how the author dealt with it. Now that I've read this version I'm somewhat conflicted as to my opinion of it. The basic ritual and structure of the original is preserved, but with modern terminology and images substituted. This is an improvement- sort of. However, I'd rather cut through the accrued ritual and superficial detail and get down to the core truths- not just make the dross more modern and "hip." There is truth here, but you still have to cut away the obscuring distortions. First of all, the existance that is being described is both beyond time and beyond conventional aristotlian sequential logic. Think about it, do you really believe memorising this sequence of events- or reading them aloud to the dead on a rigid timetable- is of any real value? The afterlife doesn't run on a bus schedule folks- to use my own little modernism here.

What is truly important are the deep truths and values that you have welded to your spirit before you cross over- memorising spiritual "cheat sheets" and last minute "cramming" just isn't going to cut it.... Though, the state of mind immediately before one's passing is of importance. It isn't the overriding determinate, however.
Still, what is being described here as the "macrodimensions" do exist. I've always been sensitive to them, and you probably have too. And, yes, we do project much of what we are superficially familiar with upon them- as have those who have passed that way before us.

Worth reading, but do so with a discriminating mind- and cross check it with your "inner guide."

DISCLAIMER: This reader, being feeble and infirm of bodymind, is woefully ignorant of both Sufism and the various New-Age paths and practices (and E.J. Gold for that matter).

But upon encountering the ABD some years ago, it seemed an imaginative, clear and well-rendered paraphrase of the Zhi-Tro teachings (Padmasambhava's Self-Liberation teachings), much revered in the Tibetan Nyingma tradition.

Note that this work is not represented as a translation or as an "alternative" to anything, and is thus not bound by language. It's not prose; it's a manual. It's in the application, more than in the casual reading, that one finds the spirit if not the letter of the teaching.

Who knows? Maybe it's terma (revealed treasure).

I've seen it used by Nyingma ngakpa yogis, side by side with chants and mantras during bardo prayers/sadhanas.

Homage to Teachers; to lineage masters and hidden yogis -- may they bless us in the Three Times and between.

om ah hum hri

The use of the enneagram--that nine-faceted esoteric symbol--as a tool to map personality dynamics carries some interesting and surprisingly complicated cultural baggage. On the one hand, its extraordinary popularity shows the hunger many people have for some easily graspable method of self-understanding; indeed, not since the Sun Sign fad of the 1970s has there been such an iconic typology. On the other hand, the proliferation of popular books which, in their reliance on lists of adjectives and traits, seem to reduce--or encourage the reduction of--this characterology to superficial thumbnail sketches would appear to leave the seeker with very little essential sustenance indeed. After all, simply knowing that one is an ennea-type "Seven" or "Four" doesn't really carry any more depth of insight than knowing that one is an "Aries" or a "Virgo."

The first virtue of this, Claudio Naranjo's seminal work on the ennea-types, is that he understands each type as a consellation of variable traits that have as their common axis a singular, perhaps archetypal trait and which, *as an essential flaw in perception,* transfers its skewed spin to the entire structure. Actually, in this he is not entirely alone among ennea-type authors. What makes Naranjo's book unique is that it isn't focused on the psychological level. The essential flaws aren't just neuroses or quirks of character but "ontic obscurations," fundamental (and deeply entrenched) misperceptions about the nature of one's being. The depth of this phenomenon is futher conveyed through Naranjo's aligning of the nine "fixations" with the seven deadly sins-adding fear and vanity. As Naranjo puts it:

"The central idea underlying this book....is that we are looking for the key....to our ultimate fulfillment in the wrong place, and that this cognitive error is at the source of our dissatisfactions.... Throughout these pages I have called this key "being"....We may say that we are, but we don't have the experience of being; we don't *know* that we are. On the contrary, the closer the scrutiny to which we subject our experience, the more we discover, at its core, a sense of lack, an emptiness, insubstantiality, a lack of selfness or being."

And from this perceived lack of being, Naranjo states, developes the entire structure which the book explores and elaborates on a type by type basis-never straying far from the fundamental connection of each type to "being loss."

Another reason to recommend this book is the sheer concision, clarity and depth of the analyses. Naranjo has a way of homing in on the essential, and evoking the "flavor" of the character under discussion, partly through his own style, and partly by the judicious use of the apt metaphor, allegory (drawing frequently from the body of teaching tales involving the Sufi "Holy Fool" Mullah Nasruddin) and allusions to literature.

Of course, some may find his style to be alternately terse and clinical. In addition, nothing here is sugar-coated, as the earlier quote should help to convey. This is not a New Age exegesis of the higher aspects of our ennea-types; rather, this book explores the fixations at the root of our sufferings-and it isn't pretty. But it would be a mistake to confuse this approach with the excessive preoccupation with pathology prevalent in psychiatric circles: This work hits hard, but it needs to in order to penetrate our defenses, or rather, in order to prompt us to penetrate our own defenses.

One additional theme bears exploring here: The relationship of the ennea-typologies (yes, there is more than one discrete variety) to the venerable Gurdjieff lineage. In fact, this is one more example of the aforementioned cultural "baggage," though of a far more subterranean nature. For the "enneagram of personality" is nothing if not the bête noire of the more conservative factions of the Gurdjieff movement, and although the typical ennea-reaction of these good folks to the mention of the typology is a polite but chilly smile (followed by equally chilly turned shoulder), one can so easily picture them cringing every time Gurdjieff's name is mentioned in the dozens of ennea-type books. Why is this, you may ask?

It is true that Gurdjieff did indeed introduce the *symbol* of the enneagram (speaking of it as a glyph through which great knowledge can be conveyed-an idea to which his sacred dances attest admirably), and furthermore that he spoke of both human "types" and of "personality." But he never countenanced a marraige of "personality" or "types" with the enneagram, and this fact alone seems to be the first obstacle to the acceptance of even the theory of ennea-types within the mainstream Gurdjieff Work. Another related obstacle is perhaps the sheer commercialism-the popular mass appeal-of the enneagram as a typology, which perhaps evokes in some tradition-minded people the sense of the relevance of the esoteric principle which holds that the quality or power of a teaching diminishes inversely the more it grows in quantity. Simply put, in their minds the typology is twice-damned: first, insofar as bears no connection to Gurdjieff, while millions of unwitting people are led by inference to believe it does; and second, insofar as it's a suspicious application, of unknown provenance, which seems to degrade an esoteric tool of great potential.

There are, quite possibly, even more ramifications of this rejection of a powerful tool for most practical ends, but this is not the place to explore it further. Suffice it to say that, 12 years after its release, Ennea-Type Structures still stands as the preeminent book on the "enneagram of personality." It is the ideal ennea-type book for those abovementioned "traditional" folk who are wary of the legitimacy of the application of character study to the enneagram, or for anyone who has simply been put off by the apparent superficiality of so many of the enneagram books filling the marketplace. Ennea-Type Structures stands in relation to most other enneatype books as, say, Reinhold Ebertin's The Combination Of Stellar Influences stands in relation to the "daily horoscope" in the newspaper.

The most interesting feature of this book is Claudio Naranjo's proposal to use harmaline in order to treat alcoholism. As it is usual with this author and renowned psychotherapist, the style is very clear, but at the same time substantial. I would call it a compassionate lucidity. Naranjo's approach goes against the grain insofar as the "establishment" consensus (or what is instilled in most people anyway) is that "every drug is bad". However in this case we have the quite novel idea (as the title of the book indicates) that a drug, in this case a hallucinogen, can be used to actually wean someone from dependency to another drug.

This is the second book I read from C.Naranjo. His precise and deep points of view are fascinating. This book is for people who already know the Enneagram, because he shows some examples for the different Enneatypes that helps the reader to understand the psychologic dynamics and motivation of each enneatype.