Dmitry Leontiev read Michael Murphy’s book The Future of the Body for us.
This book has been in the making for about 30 years. It collects, systematizes and comprehends a huge amount of evidence about the manifestation of bodily and mental abilities by people that clearly go beyond what is considered natural for a person (for example, levitation, false pregnancy, telekinesis, shamanism, spiritual healing and other borderline phenomena). At first glance, this book may seem like another piece of esoteric literature.
In reality, its author Michael Murphy remains in the position of science, but understands its boundaries as developing. He calls not to brush aside what is poorly consistent with today’s theories, but to patiently study evidence and phenomena that have not yet received a clear scientific explanation. «In order to explore the deeper realms of human experience, we must be open and open-minded, but alert to all kinds of exaggeration.» Murphy does not view extraordinary abilities as inherent in a special type of person: «Research results refute the claim that supernormal abilities are available only to some of us.»
He is convinced that humanity continues to evolve. “We live only part of the life potential that is given to us,” this book begins with these words. And it ends with how transformative practices that develop the integrity of human nature help everyone realize this potential.
This book is an event. Murphy bridges and connects, not divides and opposes. Offering a lot of information and inspiring ideas for a wide audience, it simultaneously opens up a number of new perspectives for research at the intersection of different sciences: philosophy, psychology, medicine, anthropology, religious studies.
Do only a few of us have supernormal powers? scientists deny it
The translation of this extremely complex and voluminous book could be considered almost perfect, if not for one unfortunate minus: in a number of cases, the names of famous people, as well as other proper names, for example, Shakespeare’s characters, turned out to be distorted. As a result, a number of errors remained, sometimes curious (Gloucester instead of Gloucester, Janet instead of Janet, Durkheim instead of Durkheim, Galton instead of Galton, the names of famous books by Plato, Jung and Romain Rolland were distorted. So, when reprinting (and they will obviously follow), translators and editors still there is work to be done.”