Further Mention
A woman professor of Anthropology at Ohio State University (Erika Bourguignon), a Russian mathematician and philosopher (P. D. Ouspensky), a senior research engineer at Stanford Research Institute (Demetri P. Kanellakos), a British surgeon (Dr. Kenneth Walker), the man who introduced Zen to the Western World (Alan Watts), a director of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center (Stanley Krippner), a German who became a member of the Tibetan Buddhist Order (Anagarika Govinda), a man active in the study of psychedelic drugs (Walter N. Pahnke)—these are seven of the 33 scholars and contributors to a Double/Anchor Original ($2.95, 492 pages), entitled The HighestState of Consciousness. Edited by John White '61, the book contains essays attempting to explain "Cosmic Consciousness," "Peak Experience," and "The Transcendental Unconscious." In the introduction, the highest state of consciousness is defined as "a self-transforming perception of one's total union with the infinite. It is beyond time and space. It is an experience of the timelessness which is eternity, of unlimited unity with all creation." Some contributors approach the highest state of consciousness as a mystical religious experience. Others describe it in physiological terms. The value of the book is enhanced by suggestions for further study by means of books, periodicals, tapes, records, films, and a list of organizations and growth centers.
Dr. Stewart F. Alexander M'35 is an editor of Hazards of Medication: A Manualof Drug Interactions, Incompatibilities, Contraindications, and Adverse Effects (J. B. Lippincott Company, 895 pp., with many charts and monographs). Dr. Alexander, who figured prominently in the recently published Disaster at Bari, is Director of Medicine, Bergen Pines Hospital, Paramus, N. J., and Instructor in Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Professor of Geology at Ohio State University, Richard P. Goldthwait '33, assisted by Fred Pessl Jr '55, has edited Till: A Symposium to which 33 scholars have contributed papers. The übiquitous facial deposit by which every former Racier is most surely traced, Till is a homogeneous sediment of mixed sizes (clay to boulders) and assorted rock-mineral trains. Constituting the first volume in English to be devoted to Till, these original papers represent a systematic and coherent study of those aspects of primary interest: genesis, structure, stratigraphic correlation, composition, and fabric. The volume of 400 pages with 113 linecuts and halftone illustrations, published by Ohio State University Press, costs $20.
Gregory Rabassa '44 has translated LeafStorm and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, published by Harper and Row (146 pp., $6.50). It received the leading review, written by Alfred Kazin, in the February 20 issue of The New York TimesBook Review. Márquez, a native of Colombia with its 20th century history dominated by civil wars, now a resident of Barcelona, is compared by Kazin to Emerson, Poe, and Hawthorne in that "every sentence breaks the silence of a vast emptiness, the famous New World 'solitude' that is the unconscious despair of his characters but the sign of Márquez's genius."
