This brief but engaging nonfiction book explores Australian healer Oliver’s lifelong quest to define and understand the nature of consciousness. His well-organized narrative breaks the subject matter down into easily digestible, themed chapters, leading readers through the exoteric and esoteric points that define the nature of mind, thought, and cognition. There are diagrams, a glossary, and a source bibliography that help to clarify material and aid with further self-study, although there is no index to assist with locating topics at random. Still, this is a good introductory guide for anyone interested in tackling the complexities of human consciousness and the tangible and intangible components of reality. The book may also bring solace to anyone facing the imminent death of a loved one. As a healer, Oliver is concerned with the non-local nature of the mind due to his experiences with friends worried about what might happen to their conscious awareness after death.

Oliver defines the mind as a non-local conscious awareness that exists outside time and space, therefore existing beyond our bodies. He writes, “I have tried to present an alternative view of mind and memory, and indeed of consciousness itself.” The author meshes his understanding of relevant yoga sutras with his scientific understanding of quantum physics, drawing from Eastern spiritual philosophies and practices such as Hinduism and yoga and crediting his scientific inspiration to the work of his mentor, the late Dr. Bevan Reid and also the late David Bohm, a theoretical physicist whose work suggests that the universe is an interactive whole. Oliver also cites biologist Rupert Sheldrake as another source of information about wholeness, modeled on the concept that “any part of the hologram provides access to the whole.” Readers curious about this subject might enjoy discovering the author’s take on the topic.

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