Lawrence LeShan
2012 Winner of the Scientific & Medical Network Book Prize
What Linneaus did for biology, LeShan does for human consciousness and behavior — provide a classification system for aspects and states of consiousness. This framework contains both the objective and subjective aspects of life and shows that they can be intelligibly connected.
Reviews
...worth reading by anyone who is interested in consciousness, and how human beings construct conceptual pictures of reality. ~ Matthew Colborn, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
No contemporary writer knows the history of consciousness studies better than Lawrence LeShan, or the problems that arise when this topic is rigorously examined. Landscapes of the Mind presents a radical taxonomy of consciousness and its "realms," a classification system that ingeniously resolves the problems and dilemmas that have frustrated other scholars. By understanding that consciousness is inevitably part of a cultural worldview, LeShan provides a theoretical model that has critical implications for psychotherapy, technology, medicine, religion, the philosophy of science, and even for politics. His application of his model to terrorism, to warfare, and to the Israel/Palestine dispute are worth the price of the book. LeShan has written prolifically for decades but Landscapes of the Mind is his wisest book. ~ Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University, Co-author: Personal Mythology; Extraordinary Dreams; Haunted by Combat
For years I have followed a simple rule that has served me well: Read everything Lawrence LeShan writes. It all started in the 1970s when I was gobsmacked by his seminal book The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist. This reading experience significantly rearranged my worldview, after which I could never look at things in the same way. Since then I have been delightfully clobbered by a succession of LeShan’s writings on a dazzling array of topics — psychology, science, meditation, parapsychology, healing, mind-body relationships, and consciousness. In each of these books, LeShan asks penetrating questions that most authorities in our materialism-besotted age simply ignore.
In Landscapes of the Mind, LeShan ups the ante by confronting the Really Big Questions that most people assume have already been settled in our time: What is reality? How are things really? How do they work? How do we find out? Where does consciousness come from? What happens when we die? Is there a world out there that is the same for everyone? Has anyone cornered the market on truth? Is there a way of knowing that trumps all other ways? LeShan’s premise is encapsulated in a comment by Max Planck, the legendary founder of quantum physics: “When you change the way you look at things the things you look at change” — and not just in Planck’s invisible, tiny quantum domain, but also in the large-scale world of cats, bathtubs, and people.
Do not bypass this book because you fear it is too philosophical. On the contrary, it is highly practical, for it is about survival, the highest form of practicality. Not only that, but this book is written in such an engaging, lovely, artistic style that paid-up, dry-as-dust philosophers will probably disown it as too reader friendly and comprehensible. As an author, LeShan meets you more than halfway. He is an incomparable, lyrical wordsmith, the sort of writer who leaves other authors envious.
Landscapes of the Mind is scientific and cultural dynamite. It has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach government, politics, religion, fundamentalism, terrorism, world affairs, and our next-door neighbor. If, unknown to you, you live next door to a terrorist sleeper cell, this is the book you’d most need to read.
In reading Landscapes of the Mind, I experienced a kind of epiphany — the thrilling sense of seeing history in the making, the unfolding of exquisite, crucial insights of monumental importance for the future of humankind. Do not deny yourself this experience. Read LeShan’s magnificent treatise as soon as possible. ~ Larry Dossey, MD, Author: The One Mind
Dr. LeShan wrote the book, Cancer as a Turning Point. He gave Jan Adrian permission to use his title for the free conference, Cancer as a Turning Point, from Surviving to Thriving™, which is Healing Journeys' signature event. In that original bookhe asked patients, "What is going right in your life and how can we be sure you get more of it?" He turned the medical model on its head in that doctors and patients usually are concerned with what is wrong and how can it be fixed.
Lawrence LeShan keynoted several Cancer as Turning Point conferences. Some of us will remember singing "Happy Birthday" to him on the occasion of his 80th birthday that day at Stanford.
In LeShan's latest book he is still concerned with what we think, how we hold things, our awareness. The man who has been called "the father of mind/body medicine" organizes the expanding field of knowledge: Consciousness. It is a BIG book spanning history, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, much of life. Not an easy read, especially if you have chemo-brain. This reviewer found it worth the effort if you don't mind seeing things differently and then making choices based on your new awareness.
Someone dealing with cancer will recognize the questions of Immanuel Kant quoted on p. 57:
What can I know?
What dare I hope?
What is a human being?
LeShan gives us a delightful example of how people perceivereality differently (p. 35):
One night when my daughter was four years old, she called me after she was in bed. She had a nightlight but told me that she was frightened of the dark. I tried to reassure her and told her that there is nothing in the dark to be frightened of.
She replied, "I'm not afraid of your dark. I'm afraid of my dark."
This raises the question of cultural, historic paradigms and who creates reality? Can we recognize our perceptions and does that really make any difference?Father and daughter chose a new action:
. . . leave the hall light on and her door partly open. With this she slept peacefully for some months and then, herself, asked to have the door closed.
LeShan speaks to the micro level of relationship between a fearful child and a respectful parent. He also addresses a different understanding of what we call reality on the macro level of geo-politics, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and terrorism in the 21st century.
LeShan closes the book on a hopeful note that rings true with my experience of cancer as a journey to healing and shalom (p. 207):
Each solution is a door we laboriously open and find new
closed doors behind. The possibilities for new growth and
new adventures are endless!
~ Nancy McKay, Healing Journeys
...worth reading by anyone who is interested in consciousness, and how human beings construct conceptual pictures of reality. ~ Matthew Colborn, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
No contemporary writer knows the history of consciousness studies better than Lawrence LeShan, or the problems that arise when this topic is rigorously examined. Landscapes of the Mind presents a radical taxonomy of consciousness and its "realms," a classification system that ingeniously resolves the problems and dilemmas that have frustrated other scholars. By understanding that consciousness is inevitably part of a cultural worldview, LeShan provides a theoretical model that has critical implications for psychotherapy, technology, medicine, religion, the philosophy of science, and even for politics. His application of his model to terrorism, to warfare, and to the Israel/Palestine dispute are worth the price of the book. LeShan has written prolifically for decades but Landscapes of the Mind is his wisest book. ~ Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University, Co-author: Personal Mythology; Extraordinary Dreams; Haunted by Combat
For years I have followed a simple rule that has served me well: Read everything Lawrence LeShan writes. It all started in the 1970s when I was gobsmacked by his seminal book The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist. This reading experience significantly rearranged my worldview, after which I could never look at things in the same way. Since then I have been delightfully clobbered by a succession of LeShan’s writings on a dazzling array of topics — psychology, science, meditation, parapsychology, healing, mind-body relationships, and consciousness. In each of these books, LeShan asks penetrating questions that most authorities in our materialism-besotted age simply ignore.
In Landscapes of the Mind, LeShan ups the ante by confronting the Really Big Questions that most people assume have already been settled in our time: What is reality? How are things really? How do they work? How do we find out? Where does consciousness come from? What happens when we die? Is there a world out there that is the same for everyone? Has anyone cornered the market on truth? Is there a way of knowing that trumps all other ways? LeShan’s premise is encapsulated in a comment by Max Planck, the legendary founder of quantum physics: “When you change the way you look at things the things you look at change” — and not just in Planck’s invisible, tiny quantum domain, but also in the large-scale world of cats, bathtubs, and people.
Do not bypass this book because you fear it is too philosophical. On the contrary, it is highly practical, for it is about survival, the highest form of practicality. Not only that, but this book is written in such an engaging, lovely, artistic style that paid-up, dry-as-dust philosophers will probably disown it as too reader friendly and comprehensible. As an author, LeShan meets you more than halfway. He is an incomparable, lyrical wordsmith, the sort of writer who leaves other authors envious.
Landscapes of the Mind is scientific and cultural dynamite. It has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach government, politics, religion, fundamentalism, terrorism, world affairs, and our next-door neighbor. If, unknown to you, you live next door to a terrorist sleeper cell, this is the book you’d most need to read.
In reading Landscapes of the Mind, I experienced a kind of epiphany — the thrilling sense of seeing history in the making, the unfolding of exquisite, crucial insights of monumental importance for the future of humankind. Do not deny yourself this experience. Read LeShan’s magnificent treatise as soon as possible. ~ Larry Dossey, MD, Author: The One Mind
Dr. LeShan wrote the book, Cancer as a Turning Point. He gave Jan Adrian permission to use his title for the free conference, Cancer as a Turning Point, from Surviving to Thriving™, which is Healing Journeys' signature event. In that original bookhe asked patients, "What is going right in your life and how can we be sure you get more of it?" He turned the medical model on its head in that doctors and patients usually are concerned with what is wrong and how can it be fixed.
Lawrence LeShan keynoted several Cancer as Turning Point conferences. Some of us will remember singing "Happy Birthday" to him on the occasion of his 80th birthday that day at Stanford.
In LeShan's latest book he is still concerned with what we think, how we hold things, our awareness. The man who has been called "the father of mind/body medicine" organizes the expanding field of knowledge: Consciousness. It is a BIG book spanning history, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, much of life. Not an easy read, especially if you have chemo-brain. This reviewer found it worth the effort if you don't mind seeing things differently and then making choices based on your new awareness.
Someone dealing with cancer will recognize the questions of Immanuel Kant quoted on p. 57:
What can I know?
What dare I hope?
What is a human being?
LeShan gives us a delightful example of how people perceivereality differently (p. 35):
One night when my daughter was four years old, she called me after she was in bed. She had a nightlight but told me that she was frightened of the dark. I tried to reassure her and told her that there is nothing in the dark to be frightened of.
She replied, "I'm not afraid of your dark. I'm afraid of my dark."
This raises the question of cultural, historic paradigms and who creates reality? Can we recognize our perceptions and does that really make any difference?Father and daughter chose a new action:
. . . leave the hall light on and her door partly open. With this she slept peacefully for some months and then, herself, asked to have the door closed.
LeShan speaks to the micro level of relationship between a fearful child and a respectful parent. He also addresses a different understanding of what we call reality on the macro level of geo-politics, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and terrorism in the 21st century.
LeShan closes the book on a hopeful note that rings true with my experience of cancer as a journey to healing and shalom (p. 207):
Each solution is a door we laboriously open and find new
closed doors behind. The possibilities for new growth and
new adventures are endless!
~ Nancy McKay, Healing Journeys
Table of Contents
- You and Your World Pictures: How Things Are and Work
- Consciousness and World Pictures
- The First Classification System: The Realms of Consciousness
- The Realms of a World Picture
- Some Implications of the Classification System: Technology and World Pictures
- Dealing with the World Pictures of Terrorists: The Problem of Fundamentalism
- World Pictures and the Structure of Consciousness
- The Realms of Consciousness and our Frequent, Strange and Inconsistent Behavior
- The Roads To Truth
- The New Beginning
- Appendix I — Where Does Consciousness Come From?
- Appendix II — A Dialogue Concerning World Pictures
About the Author
Lawrence LeShan published his first professional paper in 1942. Since then he has authored over 150 papers and 20 books, which have been translated into 19 languages. He holds a PhD in Human development from the University of Chicago, has taught at various universities and has lectured and given seminars widely in this country, Europe and elsewhere. He has worked as a research psychologist for over 60 years including six years as a psychologist in the U.S. Army.
Lawrence LeShan published his first professional paper in 1942. Since then he has authored over 150 papers and 20 books, which have been translated into 19 languages. He holds a PhD in Human development from the University of Chicago, has taught at various universities and has lectured and given seminars widely in this country, Europe and elsewhere. He has worked as a research psychologist for over 60 years including six years as a psychologist in the U.S. Army.