Product Description

Gary Zukav, one of the pioneer members of the New Age Movement in psychology, has built upon the contents of his first book "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" to show how we create our own reality through action and thought. The author argues that our souls evolve as we develop our own latent powers. This book examines cases of multi-sensory individuals, looks at conventional marriages and spiritual partnerships and at traditional and spiritual psychology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122159 in Books
• Published on: 1991-03-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 255 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Gary Zukav's American Book Award-winning The Dancing Wu Li Masters masterfully introduces the layman to quantum and particle physics, as well as Einstein's relativity theories. With a similar dose of amiable, easy-to-understand prose, Zukav guides readers into the spiritual realm in his bestselling The Seat of the Soul.

Zukav questions the Western model of the soul, asserting that the human species is in the midst of a great transformation, evolving from a species that pursues power based upon the perceptions of the five senses--"external power"--to one that pursues power based upon perceptions of the soul--"authentic power". He believes that humans are immortal souls first, physical beings second, and that once we become conscious of this transformation--once we align our personalities with our soul--we will stimulate our spiritual growth and become better people in the process. This insightful, lucid synthesis of modern psychology and new-age ideas has been described as the "physics of the soul". Who better to explain such heady concepts than Gary Zukav? --Ali Perry-Gallagher

From the Author
ALIGN YOUR PERSONALITY WITH YOUR SOUL
The Seat of the Soul began as a book called Physics and Consciousness. I intended to share the striking parallels that were evident between the concepts of quantum physics and the concepts of depth psychology, as well as the many historical ties between the founders of each. The book had turned into a three-volume project when a very dramatic thing happened to me. I discovered nonphysical reality. I had glimpsed it while I was writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. Now it came to stage center in my life. Nothing that I had encountered at Harvard, in the Army, or in science had prepared me for the experience of a Universe that was alive, compassionate, and wise.

Everyone expected me to follow The Dancing Wu Li Masters, which won The American Book Award for Science in 1979, with another popularization of science, such as the field of biogenetics. Now all of that became less interesting to me than the soul. The physics of the soul became my new passion. I learned to listen to what the Universe wanted to share with me. Then I began to experiment with it. Then I began to share it with others. That was the process of writing The Seat of the Soul.

The Seat of the Soul is for scientists – for those who love to experiment with life, and to decide for themselves what works and what does not. It provides a vocabulary, not a dogma, to express the forces that are moving this world of ours. It illuminates deeper causes of physical experience. It is soul satisfying. The message of The Seat of the Soul is this: The purpose of our journey on this precious Earth is now to align our personalities with our souls. It is to create harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Live. It is to grow spiritually. This is our new evolutionary pathway. The old pathway – pursuing the ability to manipulate and control – no longer works. It now produces only violence and destruction.

The Seat of the Soul is a practical, hands on books. It deals with the most important issues of our lives – how to know ourselves, choose responsibly, and learn together how to create a planet without conflict. The survival of our global village now depends upon our ability to do this. This is how we now evolve – or not.

To my surprise, The Seat of the Soul immediately became a National Best Seller. I had no idea that what I knew, so many others knew, also. And that what I was beginning to experience, so many others experienced, also. We are growing up as a family – the human family. We are beginning to see our deeper roots, and our deeper connections with each other. We are taking our place consciously in a larger fabric of Life.

If you want to know more, please visit zukav.com. Its sole (no pun) purpose is to support us as we learn how to participate wisely in the birth of a new human species. I am grateful to be a part of this process with you. My life is devoted to it, and, from my perspective, yours is, too.

Love,

Gary

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One

During the years that I was writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters and after, I was drawn again and again to the writings of William James, Carl Jung, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. I returned to them repeatedly. I found in them something special, although it was not until later that I was able to understand that specialness: these fellow humans reached for something greater than they were able to express directly through their work. They saw more than they could express in the language of psychology or linguistics or physics, and they sought to share what they saw. It is what they sought to share through the medium of their work that drew me to them.

They were mystics. That is my word. They would not use such language, but they knew it. They feared that their careers might become contaminated by association with those who did not work within the scientific model, but in the depths of their own thoughts they each saw much too much to be limited by the five senses, and they were not. Their works contribute not only to the evolution of psychology, linguistics and physics, but also to the evolution of those who read them. They have the capability to change those who touch them in ways that also cannot be expressed directly in the terms of psychology, or linguistics, or physics.

As I came to understand, in retrospect, the magnetic quality that these works held for me, I came to understand that what motivated these men was not Earthly prizes, but that they put their souls and minds on something and reached the extraordinary place where the mind could no longer produce data of the type that they wanted, and they were in the territory of inspiration where their intuitions accelerated and they knew that there was something more than the realm of time and space and matter, something more than physical life. They knew it. They could not necessarily articulate this clearly because they were not equipped to talk about such things, but they felt it and their writings reflected it.

In other words, I came to understand that what motivated these men, and many others, was in fact something of great vision that comes from beyond the personality. Each of us is now being drawn, in one way or another, to that same great vision. It is an emerging force. It is the next step in our evolutionary journey. Humanity, the human species, is longing now to touch that force, to shed that which interferes with clear contact. Much of the difficulty in doing this lies in the fact that the vocabulary with which to address this new force, which is indeed the eternal force, is not yet born.

In this moment and in this hour of human evolution this proper vocabulary and means of addressing that which longs to transcend religiosity and spirituality and assume the position of authentic power is longing to be born. We need to give that which we as a species are now touching consciously for the first-time a vocabulary that is not clouded so that it can be identified clearly in the acts and judgments of the human race, so that it can be seen clearly, and not through veils of mystery or mysticism, but simply as the authentic power that moves the force fields of this Earth of ours. I hope that this book will assist.

As a way of talking about what we are and what we are becoming, I have used the terms five-sensory and multisensory. Multisensory is not better than five-sensory. It is simply more appropriate now. As one system of human experience winds down and another, more advanced system emerges the older system may appear by comparison to be lacking, but from the perspective of the Universe, the language of comparison is not the language of lesser and better, but of limitation and opportunity.

The experiences of the multisensory human are less limited than the experiences of the five-sensory human. They provide more opportunities for growth and development and more opportunities to avoid unnecessary difficulties. I have contrasted the experiences of the five-sensory human with the experiences of the multisensory human in each instance to make their differences as clear as possible, but this does not mean that the five-sensory phase of our evolution, the phase from which we are emerging, is negative in comparison to the phase of our evolution that we are entering, the multisensory phase. It is simply that it is now no longer appropriate just as there came a time when the use of candles became inappropriate because of electricity, but the advent of electricity did not make candle power negative.

Who among us is an expert on the human experience? The human experience is an experience in movement and thought and form, and, in some cases, an experiment in movement and thought and form. The most that we can do is comment on the movement, the thought and the form, but those comments are of great value if they can help people to learn to move gracefully, to think clearly, to form - like artists - the matter of their lives.

We are in a time of deep change. We will move through this change more easily if we are able to see the road upon which we are traveling, our destination, and what it is that is in motion. I offer what is in this book as a window through which I have come to see life. I offer this window to you, but I do not say that it is necessary that you accept it. There are so many ways to wisdom and to the heart. This is our greatest richness, and the one that gives me the most joy.

We have much to do together.

Let us do it in wisdom and love and joy.

Let us make this the human experience.

Gary Zukav

Customer Reviews

not easy to digest
I agree with a reviewer above that this book is not easy on the head; I,too, have read many, many books on this subject. I was familiar with the author from the Oprah show, and really enjoy him and his theories. However, as familiar as I am with this subject, I had to re-read certain passages many, many times to totally understand and digest the message. What is missing in this book is the personal touch, and the personal stories that are available in his appearances on the Oprah show. Actually, each time that Oprah refers to this book as her "favourite", (which of course is VERY influential ) I feel that she should add a word to beware the reader...I was impressed however with the level of intelligence and thinking pattern. I look forward to "Soul Stories". Perhaps this new book will fill in the blanks that "Seat Of The Soul" did not fill...

Not easy on the mind
Although I have read many books with a similar content to The Seat of The Soul, I found this particular book somewhat hard to digest. I think for some people the book would be heavy going and too complicated. My advice would be to start reading more simplified books on spirituality, and then move up to this one.

Probably, the best book in the world
This in my opinion is a life changing book. If you want to know the meaning of life, then this book is for you. It is not a light read by any means. You will have be ready to open your mind and be prepaired to ditch all of your preconceptions about life and the universe. If you have lost a loved one and need reassurance, or keep saying "Why does this always happen to me? Look no further.