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Title: Messenger from the Summer of Love by David Rey Echt ISBN: 1-885003-75-7 Publisher: Robert D. Reed Publishers Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.86 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Enjoyable Read Stating Simple Truths
Comment: I can tell you that reading this book definitely resonates with something deep inside. Even though I wasn't born during the 'Summer of Love', I can get a sense of what it must've been like. It doesn't matter since the message is timeless. Definitely a must-read !!!
Rating: 5
Summary: The way is peace, the road is love
Comment: This generally well-executed and hard-to-put-down book is a fictional(ized) reminiscence about What Really Happened according to someone who was at ground zero when the love bomb went off.
That is, I _think_ it's fictionalized. At the very least, author David Rey Echt has changed his name to "Trevor" for the purposes of the narrative. I don't know how much of it is really supposed to have happened. But it doesn't matter, because the novel is true in the most important sense: something really did happen during the Summer of Love, and it wasn't just that a bunch of kids did a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex.
Zen master Seung Sahn once remarked to his then-disciple-and-protege Stephen Mitchell that the hippie mind was just a quarter-inch away from enlightenment. You'll find similar views echoed everywhere from Stephen Gaskin and Ram Dass to (more recently) Skip Stone's _Hippies A to Z_ and John Bassett McCleary's _The Hippie Dictionary_. And on my own website I write as follows: "It may be best to regard the hippie movement, on its spiritual side, as a recent example of that perennial underground countercultural mysticism that always seems to swell up, like grass through the cracks in the sidewalk, whenever a dogmatic and/or authoritarian worldview, religious or otherwise, holds cultural sway."
So you may well imagine that I'll be sympathetic to a novel suggesting that at the heart of all of this is a spiritual event that . . . well, I'd better not spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet. But fictional or not, the personal journey described in this book is realistic, and the spiritual advice is sound. (For whatever it's worth, this review is being written by someone who has been known to tote around a battered copy of Stephen Gaskin's _This Seasons' People._) Echt has clearly done his spiritual homework.
What can I tell you _without_ spoiling anything? Just that it follows the travels of a young man named Trevor from Topanga Canyon to San Francisco on a journey of spiritual enlightenment.
I can also tell you that there's some serious mojo in this book (or, more precisely, accessible "through" it, if you know what I mean). There are a few passages that will actually give you the spiritual equivalent of a contact high just from reading them. That's a nice feature, given the aim of the book.
If you lived through this period of time (whether or not you were at ground zero), this book will help to remind you of its real meaning. If not, the first-person narrative will show you what the air tasted like, so to speak. Either way, this text can push you a little further toward mindfulness, if you want it to.
One last thing -- I absolutely hate to Deduct Points For Spelling, so I'm going to pretend I gave it four and a half stars. But the reader should be aware that there are lots of typos and grammatical gaffes that got past the proofreader(s). This doesn't bother everybody, and I don't have any particular problem reading around such things myself. (And I think it's good to be understanding about the fact that, particularly at non-mainstream publishers, authors are often left to proofread their own books.) Nevertheless, if you _do_ care about such things, be warned.
Rating: 4
Summary: Nostalgia, Spirituality, and Food For Thought
Comment: I enjoyed this book very much but I am giving it four stars because it has a lot of editing errors that need to be corrected. This is a novel about a young man, Trevor, growing up in the '60s who like so many people during that time hears a different drummer and after following his path through the bohemian Topanga Canyon lifestyle in Southern California and breaking up with his girlfriend as their life-styles and values become increasingly divurgent, heads north to the Monterey Pop Festival and the hippie haven of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.
As Trevor encounters several synchronicities and follows their trail his path takes a spiritual turn and through the use of first LSD and then meditation he opens to a deeper understanding of what is happening during the Movement in SanFrancisco and all over the world during that Summer of Love. He meets a small community of people who are studying with a Master, a type of guru of transcendental spirituality, and they learn that there is a deliberate shift in consciousness that is being encouraged and supported from beings of high vibrational realms. The Flower Power era is NOT a coincidence but a deliberate paradigm shift. The book resonated with me because I grew up during that time and in those very same places and it rang very true to life. The 1960s was a complex, lovely, brutal, exciting and mind-expanding time, a time when many people took quantum leaps in their spiritual, emotional, intellectual and artistic growth. This short, sweet novel expresses some explanations for the climate of that time. It offers insight into how many people were feeling and thinking. The main character, Trevor, is portrayed very realistically and develops from a curious and open-minded young person into a seeking and realizing pilgrim on the path of self-actualization, peace, amd harmony. So many of us trod that same path. The '60s was not the same thing for everyone, my experience was much more political than Trevor's, I took way more LSD and listened to way more rock 'n roll, but my spirit opened up in exactly the same way to a unique vibration that almost seemed to be in the air and the water at the time. If you lived during that time you may enjoy a nostalgic look backward. If that is not your era you may enjoy this lovely window into a part of that experience.
At a time when the world seems to have forgotten how to love, this gentle book can go a long way toward reminding us of the capacity we all share for harmony and unity and peace. It might nudge you into recognizing how much fear you carry around with you and help you lay that aside in favor of love. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...and read this book.
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Title: The Other Side of Haight: A Novel by James Fadiman ISBN: 0890879842 Publisher: Celestial Arts Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Memoirs of an Ex-Hippie: Seven Years in the Counterculture by Robert A. Roskind ISBN: 1565220730 Publisher: Do It Yourself Pub. Date: 27 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Cannabis Spirituality: Including 13 Guidelines for Sanity and Safety by Stephen Gaskin ISBN: 0964785862 Publisher: High Times Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: This Season's People: A Book of Spiritual Teachings by Stephen Gaskin ISBN: 0913990051 Publisher: Book Publishing Company (TN) Pub. Date: 01 June, 1978 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Wisdom of the Ancient Seers: Mantras of the Rig Veda by David, Dr. Frawley ISBN: 0910261369 Publisher: Lotus Press (WI) Pub. Date: 01 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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