Description:

End-of-the-world paranoia has been with us since time immemorial. Now, with the end of the legendary Mayan “long count” calendar looming on December 21, 2012 and recent threats of a worldwide economic collapse triggering widespread apprehension and a search for answers, The Cracking Tower offers an arsenal of strategies to turn these fears into an opportunity for spiritual and personal growth.

Beginning with a lively memoir of the author’s experiences in the ’60s, the book goes on to explore apocalyptic thinking through perennial philosophy, shamanism, gnostic mysticism, the body as a vessel of consciousness (and death as “an extended out-of-body experience”), and psychedelics. Shaping the discussion is the fascinating metaphor of the cracking tower, an apparatus for distilling gasoline, as a vehicle for distilling our awareness. Rather than speculating on what might occur in 2012, DeKorne proposes vigilance of a more introspective sort. “The important thing,” he says, “is to ignore the finger and strive to comprehend the moon,” to see what our apocalyptic tendencies reveal about ourselves.

Author Biography:

Jim DeKorne is a former epidemiologist and college English professor. He participated actively in civil rights and antiwar protests in the 1960s, the back-to-the-land and appropriate technology movements of the 1970s, and the psychedelic renaissance of the 1980s. He lives on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Reviews/Endorsements:

“Jim DeKorne expertly weaves together diverse threads…into a coherent vision of the challenges and potential that inhabit our modern psyche.”
—Erowid

The Cracking Tower

A Strategy for Transcending 2012

Written by Jim DeKorne

Price: $16.95

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