Facing West from California's Shores: A Jesuit's Journey Into New Age Consciousness

A Jesuit priest and editor of Commonwealstet, Toolan calls himself a fellow traveler of the human-potential movement. He studied meditation at the Esalen Institute, experimented with LSD, went to India to practice yoga in ashrams and sought wisdom from gurus and psychics. His personal odyssey is interwoven with a searching history of the consciousness movement. Avoiding the euphoric optimism and glib generalizations common to New Age tracts, Facing West is a bold, philosophically grounded attempt to relate the New Age movement's search for spiritual meaning to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Whether describing the death-rebirth struggle of patients in psychedelic therapy, or probing David Bohm's theory of the universe as a hologram, Toolan defines each facet of the movement as part of a long-term quest for a new definition of reality. (July 17)