This book was a huge disappointment. I found nothing of interest. I was very excited about the potential of this book because of the artist, who is a major talent. But there was very little art at all. In fact, I can't recall a single drawing.

The writing was very poor. If I was something like a QA manager, I definitely would have put the whole book in the "On hold/Do not deploy" status until a capable Interface Engineer looked at it.

I was blown away by both the writing style and illustration quality of this magnificent book. I loved it so much I had to go out to about a dozen book stores to purchase 50 copies, which I gave to all my friends and family over the Easter holiday.

Keep up the great work!!!!

I loved this book. I don't know why it's not grown into a series. To set the goal of merging the fun of the web with the beloved media of the book, and then to pull it off so successfully, is too rare an accomplishment in the book publishing biz. My only hesitation is the quality of the art. It's good, but not as good as the writing. It's like matching Gomer Pyle with Bo Derek, or a McDonald's cheeseburger with a Bombay martini.

This is a curious book. It gives an overview of Elvis' spiritual search as seen through the eyes of Larry Geller, his personal hairdresser and self-proclaimed Guru. Geller got Elvis to explore his spiritual side mainly through New Age readings and meditation, and his own conversations with him. But the book seems to be a series of anecdotes, and bits and pieces of information thrown together. It was interesting, but did not give the kind of insight into Elvis' spirituality that I was expecting from Mr. Stearn. Perhaps I am expecting too much - Elvis the mystic?

All that time that we were enjoying Elvis' music, films, and personality, we never had an inkling that the spiritual life was important to him. Maybe this fact was deliberately withheld for the sake of his career. In any case, it is too bad that we did not really know him while he was alive. This book describes the real Elvis.

At the time he was born, a blue light surrounded his home. This was a sign that the spiritual would be important to him. It began in blood and thunder churches that he quickly rejected. Then he found gospel churches, where he learned to naturally move his body to exciting music. Then, after his career began, Larrry Geller entered his life. Of course, you never heard of Larry Geller, but he was Elvis' best friend and spiritual confidante for many years. Larry was a student of what is called metaphysics, a very broad field that Shirley MacLaine helped popularize. The author of the book, Jess Stearn, has also popularized it. The book describes Elvis' long interest in this field, from numerology to astrology to pre-Christian spirituality to Christ himself. For Elvis, it was a lonely path, as his friends and wife were not interested.

The book, like Out on a Limb, is a good introduction to metaphysics, and describes what a typical (if Elvis could be called typical) student experiences. His study helped him to face death with no qualms, and the book explains the real cause of his death (not drugs)

Finally a way to get MET info w/o spending $12 a pop for games I may never play (Oblivion comes to mind). The opportunity to write in offers an excelent sounding board to tell your stories to people outside your group (and like all good tubists, I love tellin' stories). I look forward to future issues with hopes of a subscription possibillity.

I picked this book up and was skeptical at first, of course, because of the connotations that could evolve from such a publication. "Oh no, another book of fluff. More stuff to buy." But after reading it cover to cover, I'd have to say I was quite impressed. No ad's really (just ones telling you about future White Wolf Mind's Eye Theater publications) , full of USEFUL information, including the all important forum and FAQ sections, as well as a listing of LARP's for all genres in the WoD. I can see this will be a great tool for communication in the world LARP community and is must for Live Action Storytellers and players everywhere. Good job guys!

I was looking for a more descriptive, informative guide to 'soul mates' phenomena, however, in purchasing this book, I found a more fictional type account - (likely to be based on factual collation of research) of the soul mate concept. It makes for interesting reading though.

Stearn makes you look deeper into yourself and reflect on the speed, intensity, and depth of your relationships. He writes of the experiences of normal people like you and I, who, with hypnosis softening the wall of time, slip comfortably back to a period when they lived and loved before. The resulting stories should change the way we all view life, death and love. This book can change your life and help you on your quest for your soulmate, the love to whom you can honestly say, "I feel like I've loved you forever."

I did not like this book. First of all Mrs. Perez never defines what a socalled "spiritual mystic" is, even though she insists that she is one. 2.She brags about her spriritual achievemnts and drops many names, which makes that I seriously question her spirituality. 3.The experiences she relates become very repetitive and uninteresting after a while. 4.The language is not very strong.

While the book might not convince anyone hasn't met Maya that she was a credible mystic, no one who knew Maya well would bother arguing the point. I am as skeptical as they come and I suspect everyone is trying to con me - everyone but Maya. She was accurate in more than a clairvoyant sense; Maya was accurate when it came to reading a person's soul and spiritual destiny.
A 'spiritual mystic,' incidentally, means that the medium, as it were, concerns herself with a person's spiritual well being. While money and romance are the metier of so-called psychics, these elements were irrelevant to Maya. Her readings were first and last related to how a person might live a more fulfilling life - meaning solving their psychological and spiritual problems.
Notwithstanding the purity of Maya Perez's soul, mission, and life, I must also admit that if you didn't know her, this book would mean very little to you. At best, it's a guide to the life and experiences of an astonishingly gifted woman, whose written words, sadly, portray more of the sensational side of her experiences than the spiritual.
And yet, if one can read between the lines of artifice, a woman of profound sensitivity and awareness might still be revealed to the reader.

In general I concur with the previous reviewer (staceybr)comments. But the writing style took the edge of it (in my humble opinion). This was in stark contrast to a book of the same Genre - Where Heavens Meet - by the female author k.t. Frankovich

More drivel condensed in one book you would be hard pressed to find -- that is, unless you read any of the other trash rushed out by this one-man publishing outfit. Note: "University Press" has absolutely nothing to do with the highly reputable University of California Press.

I read this book a while back, and although another reviewer calls it garbage, it's because he thought our intel agencies could do no wrong. Now, in hindsight, we know better. We see the chapter detailing the omissions by our intelligence agencies was Totally Correct. These authors were the First to reveal these truths, and this shows they are top notch investigators. They knew what the NY Times and Wash Post only published months and months later. Hopefully, their upcoming book, America Betrayed, will be even more prescient and revealing

This is a sad yet scary book, and probably the only book on the market that tells a true and coherent story as to the events leading up to and the events of September 11. Although the reviewer below might be surprised, not just the twin towers but the Pentagon was struck by a jet and it did cause extensive damage and it did open up a huge crater in the walls. This is a great book. It really tells it like it is. I could only find one error. The authors say that over 6,000 were killed. It is true that this was the estimate for several months after 9/11, but now they are claiming only 3000 were killed. Will we ever know for sure? Other than that, this was a great book. The authors even wrote about the so called "20th hijacker" and identified him months before the mass media even became aware of his existence. This is a great book that tells a sad but true story.

Hollenback spends most of his book dedicated to the premise that the mystical experience is culturally and historically conditioned. What Hollenback never takes into account are the ideas of German anthropologist Adolf Bastian. Bastian recognized that throughout the mythologies and religious systems of the world, the same images, the same themes are constantly recurring, appearing everywhere. He called these "Elementary Ideas," Elementargedanken. But he recognized also that wherever they occurred, they appeared in different costumes with different applications and different interpretations. He called these provincial differences "Folk Ideas," or "Ethnic Ideas"-Volkgedanken. Now this is a very important distinction. It divides our subject into two quite different departments. Historians and ethnologists are interested in the differences, and one can study the mythologies and the philosophies of the world with an accent on these differences. On the other hand, the problem emerges of the Elementary Ideas. Why are they everywhere? This is a psychological problem, and it's a problem that separates us in our discussion of comparative forms from the whole research having to do with differences.

Hollenback, a historian, spends most of his time analyzing the ethic ideas, and ignoring the elementary aspect of the mystical experience. Put simply, he is interested in plot and ignores theme. Furthermore, Hollenback associates mysticism with persons who are clearly not mystics, namely Moses, Augustine, who is a conservative fundamentalist if there ever was one, and St. Francis of Assisi and St. Theresa of Avila who were contemplatives. He further confuses the mystical experience (elementary idea) with the relating of the mystical experience (ethnic idea).

In completion, this is a very poorly written and conceived book which amounts to a 600 page waste of time.

Mysticism: Experience, Repsonse and Empowerment may yet found a new paradigm for the study of mystical phenomena. The author, J.B Hollenback, offers a masterful review of previous theoretical approaches with a radical new understanding of mystical practice and experience. Hollenback combines a sensitivity to the role of cultural context in shaping mystical experience with an unbiased approach to the claims of mystical practioners. Thus, he avoids psychologistic reductionism and is willing to seriously consider phenomena such as astral projetion and telepathy and examine how they actually work. His thesis: Concentration, often charged with affect, leads to an empowerment of conciousness which enables the mystic to attain abilities not accessible to ordinary states of mind. This focus on the question of power brings mysticism into the forefront of contemporary discussions of power, such as James Hillman's Kinds of Power. Hollenback displays exceptional openness to the mystical practices of tribal cultures, and one of his case studies deals with a Native American Shaman. The openness, innovative claims, erudition and conceptual clarity of this book make it a "must" for students of mysticism and comparative religion. For further discussion and critique, see my review in The Journal of Religion, 78 (4) 1998, pp. 593-601.

A great disappointment. While the organization of information is greatly improved, the tradition itself has been turned into a Mage version of the Children Of Gaia. The interesting sub groups have all been termed "Extinct" or "Dying", and the focus is now on the neo-hippie "Joybringers", severely limiting the tradition. I regret buying this book, and intend to give it to someone who has the old book, and can actually pull something out of it. Don't waste your money. It also ties in with the new WW metaplot, further destroying creativity.

I have never really cared for the Cult of X, but I bought the book anyways because I had a lot of player characters who where playing them so I figured I might check it out. Well, the Cult went from being close to my least favorite group to being one of my favorite traditions. The book explored the Cult in a more in depth manner. Instead of just saying "ok they do drugs heres a list of drugs the do." It went into detail about their history and talked about their metaphysics in a way that made it seem a lot more plausible than the old "hehehe I'm stoned so I can control reality" sort of paradigm that it seemed there was in the books.

When I picked this book up, I expected to read a book written by someone with a graduate degree. What I actually read was a third-grade-style report. There were incorrect grammatical usages and shady Artificial Intelligence applications.

The connection between religious fanatacism, repressed homosexuality, and self-hatred has a long an ugly history, and the authors make their case. But do they have to do it over and over and over and over again? Jeez! they clumsily revisit every point ad nauseum. On top of it all, their facts are a disaster. For example, they give historical background on Boy Taliban's hometown in Marin County, and state that its old Spanish Mission San Rafael was founded in 1681 (it was founded in 1817), and that those same missionaries enjoyed burning the Indians alive. I have studied California history my whole life, and have never, ever, ever, ever, read that, ever (Oh, do I repeat myself? That's a tic I developed after reading this book). As for clumsy, after giving useless detail about Marin County, they state that Boy Taliban liked playing with plastic Jedi warrior("Star Wars") figurines, yet failed to mention George Lucas and company are based in Marin County as well. So what was the point of local color when you forget the obvious? Later on, they talk about Islam's jehadi (jihad) warriors, and completely missed the opportunity for delicious irony...

I wish that this book is written by John Walker, then readers may be able to have a clearer picture for how and why he became a Taliban. The authors provide lots of information about John Walker's childhood and boyhood, but there are lots of "gray" areas, for instance there are 8 months nobody knows where John Walker was and what he was doing. The authors are able to raise a lot of questions but I don't think they have the answers. Same as most readers I disagree what John Walker did but I feel sorry for him and his parents. The only thing I "respect" him is that he left America for searching the life of purity because he was tired of American's materialism. Not too many young people realized that how materialism influences this country.

This is an interesting, insightful, and fascinating book. Its easy to see why Lindh's attorneys attacked it. The authors raise a lot of questions and bring out a lot of facts about this young man and his trips to Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, that his attorneys would probably rather we did not think about. For example: Why did Bin laden thank Lindh? What was Lindh doing in Yemen when the USS Cole was attacked? I also found the book insightful from a psychological perspective. It answers a lot of questions. This is an intersting book. I recommend it.