I read the review, then the excerpt.

A.M. Homes (whom I have never heard of before) seems to be on target, in terms of the process we must go through, in order to move beyond the rationalist labrynth, that is the legacy of Western philosophy. Not surprisingly, Anhil (perhaps through his contact with Vedanta?) is able to "re-orient" the hero in a moment of insight. What the reviewer misses, is the possibility that this could, and does, occur.

The more that we speak openly, about the alternatives to exclusive attachment to self-promotion, the more we are to be praised.

Al Brau

Stunned by the excerpt (I lived through something similar that "happened", but it "happened" fully - and so I had some closure on that part of my story); stunned by the truth in the life-changing potential for a catastrophic event - or a potentially catastrophic one - because I did live through something that fully "happened" and it did change my life - so dramatically that only this little story, this excerpt from an obviously very important book, is as close as I have been able to come (and I fancy myself a writer) to being able to explain, describe, touch upon even, what such an event meant to me, what it felt like from the first explosion of pain to my emergence into a new world and having to shed that old one in order to move deeper into the light.

Finally, stunned by the paucity of responses thus far. Maybe one cannot be touched in any other way than being forcibly placed on the threshold and given the choice to either live or go on dying.

Anhil is right: For such a smart people, we are awfully stupid.