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Rating: 
Summary: Mystery indeed
Review: This book should be undertaken as a study--it is not a light read.
Too difficult to understand for me, sorry. Nothing practical in it, only theory.
Rating: 
Summary: the best accounting of the human condition available now
Review: This is more than a book. It is a study. I have been studying it for almost 15 years. Well worth the time and effort.Get out your dictionary. Msrs G and Longchenpa are very exact. They say more in a paragraph than most "experts" on the human mind and livingness say in a lifetime. Mr G and L deserve highest praise. Michael Mourer
Rating:
Summary: the best accounting of the human condition available now
Review: This is more than a book. It is a study. I have been studying it for almost 15 years. Well worth the time and effort. Get out your dictionary. Msrs G and Longchenpa are very exact. They say more in a paragraph than most "experts" on the human mind and livingness say in a lifetime. Mr G and L deserve highest praise. Michael Mourer
Rating:
Summary: The Risks and Rewards of Syncretic Utterance...
Review: Walter Benjamin imagined himself writing a book wholly of quotations from other writers. (_The Arcades Project_ represents one way he moved in that direction as a writer.) Herbert Guenther has developed not a pastiche literary work but a pastiche language in which he translates and interprets the Dzogchen message, lifting terms from phenomenology (esp. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty), quantum mechanics (esp. David Bohm), and 1970's cognitive science and computer jive. I don't know if this appraoch successfully transmits Dzogchen praxis (I'm no guru, friends), but it's clear to me that this book is precious on its own terms.
Really, it's an interesting performance. This is not your conventional "Dharma book." It's not meant to make you comfortable or to reassure you about anything. Guenther's specific dialect of syncretese is not easy on the first reading, but the specialized vocabulary (meaning-saturated gestalt vs. scenario gestalt vs. display gestalt) leads to a very precise presentation, if one is willing to really try to follow what Guenther is trying to do with the ideas he's constructed. You just have to dig in and work at it if you're going to enjoy your time with this book.
I think this book is cool, to be straight with you. It's cool in the same way that Montreal's ambitious and excessive Olympic Stadium is cool, or Arcosanti, or Deleuze and Guattari's _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_. Like all these, _Matrix of Mystery_ arose in that bold zeitgeist of world-excavation, world-creation, and earnest experimentation. That the surfaces and contours are unfamiliar and largely uninviting to those used to Wal-Mart/McDo's architecture is not indicative of any flaws in those shapes and smoothnesses, and is basically tough bananas. There's always NASCAR.
_Matrix of Mystery_ is beautiful.
And like Olympic Stadium or Deleuze and Guattari (or postmodern anything), not everyone is ready to give it an earnest and openminded look. There are many paths for many people. Even those ridiculous Disney Channel movies are a part of the knowledge business, if your attitude is right.
Intrigued? Give it a shot. In any event, may you find your path.
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