The good (a list of my positive take-away messages):
I understand the thesis somewhat differently: INSECURITY IS THE SOURCE OF ALL VIOLENCE, DISCORD, PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIETAL AND SOCIAL AILMENTS. Relieve insecurity, not by abandoning the ego, but by embracing a healthy expression thereof. This means: we relinquish our need to control, we embrace and lift up others, and we express our passions in intellectual and artistic endeavors. To me, this plays on ideas of the importance of community and internal versus external motivation. These two ideas are deeply linked to happiness and human success.
The premise is essentially an ancient one: that ego causes suffering. Contrast this to work like Nathaniel Branden's work on self-esteem, or Maslow's idea of self-actualization: they all require a strong sense of self identity, self worth, and achievement. this doesn't imply possession or social status - quite the opposite, it often implies that some focus or passion takes us over. True self-esteem and healthy ego, elevate oneself AND others simultaneously. I prefer to maintain a healthy ego, rather than attempting to abandon it altogether.
On the neuroscience of "the Fall", Taylor writes: "This makes some sense in terms of split-brain psychology, that is, the study of the different hemispheres of the brain and their different functions. Ego-consciousness seems to be related to the left hemisphere of the brain. Our normal sense of self is, in the words of the psychologist Brian Lancaster, "bound up with..a language-based interpreter situated in the left hemisphere." On the other hand, creativity seems to come from the right hemisphere, which is typified by a "non-egocentric view of the world" and doesn't have the same urge to interpret and control the world as the left. The problem is that the two hemispheres seem, to some degree, to be mutually exclusive, so that the stronger a person's "right-brain" characteristics, the weaker the "left-brain" ones (or vice-versa)." (pgs. 130-131)
This is essentially accurate, and echos the ideas posited by Jill Bolte Taylor, William J. Broad, and others. My understanding of meditation and any kind of spiritual journey, is that it exists through altered brain states. It doesn't interest me whether or not these correlate to any kind of spiritual/non-physical reality; rather, I am interested for a distinct human experience for its own sake. My goal, through yoga, meditation, teaching, etc., is not to abandon my self-identity or ability to discern and describe ideas, but to learn how to balance and switch my subjective experience between the traditional linguistic monologue and some kind of "meditative state" of sensory perception. My scientific view doesn't reduce the feeling of intensity any more than understanding the neurophysiology of color vision diminishes the awe of a beautiful sunset. Hint: it doesn't.
p 269, on Buddha, "He never tried to attract followers just to increase his power and influence, and never forced anybody to accept his teachings without questioning them. Again and again in his teachings, he tells his followers that they shouldn't just take his word for what he's saying, but find out for themselves whether it's true." That is also your philosophy, and that's fundamentally what attracts students to you.
"Transcending superstitions and taboos" (Pgs 132-134) was well-written, and I would have liked to see this idea given more emphasis. This is where Taylor admits that "unfallen" people don't understand cause and effect, that they live with unfortunate taboos and superstitions, and that's really unfortunate.
The bad:
I'm incredibly wary of the premise. The idea of the "noble savage" is just as damaging, in my opinion, as that of the "white knight," the colonialist who is "saving" the natives from their own self-destruction. Many authors attempt to sell books by making a hyperbolic claim, and reasonably supporting parts of that claim with evidence, but ignoring other pieces of evidence that are crucial to a full picture. That is my impression of what has happened here.
Unfounded conclusions:
Premise: Inactivity such as unemployment causes depression Conclusion: We fear a lack of external stimulation, we are deeply psychically damaged and unable to live without constant distraction Does not follow Premise: "These peoples don't seem to have become obsessed with accumulating material goods or with gaining status and power" Conclusion:"....suggests that there wasn't a fundamental unhappiness inside them which they needed to find compensation for." Does not follow
Premise: Many mythologies include some "fall" myth Conclusion: This reflects a historical recording of events which actually happened Does not follow
Premise: Writing about The Next Development in Man by Lancelot Law Whyte, Taylor says, "people began to experience a sense of self division, a conflict between thought and instinct. The completely spontaneous, natural behavior of earlier peoples was no longer possible." (Implied) Conclusion: This is a bad thing I think thoughts are great. They are what allow us to have ethics, to practice science, to live the human experience as distinct from that of other animals.
Premise 1: Fallen people are incredibly impatient and can't stand waiting Premise 2: Unfallen people are incredibly patient and don't mind waiting at all Conclusion: Fallen people have some fundamental psychic flaw Both premises are questionable at best, and the conclusion is just totally unrelated to either.
Premise: Unfallen people experience the world in a visceral, phenomenological way without "ego chatter" Conclusion: Unfallen people are filled with joy all the time. This is just ridiculous. Consider animals, who presumably also fit the premise - they clearly also experience loss, anxiety, fear, etc.
Premise: "But how did we lose this awareness of the aliveness of things and the presence of spirit-force in the world? The best way to understand this is to think in terms of energy. We all have a certain amount of psychic energy (or consciousness-energy, to use my preferred term), which we expend in different ways. There are probably three main ways in which we expend it: through mental activity (that is, thinking), concentrative effort (that is, doing, including our jobs, and hobbies such as crosswords or playing musical instruments) and information processing (that is, absorbing perceptual information from our surroundings, verbal information from other people - talking - or information from other sources such as books and the Internet)..." (p.139) Conclusion: fallen people are too busy with the ego to have time to perceive the phenomenal world around them. I pretty much agree with the idea of a tradeoff: that we can either have a constant internal source of chatter interpreting the world around us, or we can live in a sensory, phenomenological state that is similar to our meditative "enlightenment." But Taylor is far from fair in describing fallen peoples as apart from the universe, feeling separate from it. He quotes Existentialist philosophers. That is just one tiny part of all of human history, certainly does not apply to all history or even the whole world during that era. Again, it is a very eurocentric view. Also, the amount of "mental energy" we have is NOT fixed, it varies depending on our diet, exercise and sleep patterns, or our interest and excitement in the task at hand.
Premise: "at the core of the materialistic and hedonistic values of our culture: nothing really means anything and we're going to die at some point anyway so we've just got to enjoy ourselves as much as we can while we're here." (Implied) Conclusion: This is a bad thing
Premise: we spend "money on hedonistic pleasures and amusements (holidays, socialising, going to concerts or resaurants or nightclubs, taking drugs, etc.)" (p.150) (Implied) Conclusion: This is somehow different from the leisure time of the unfallen people, whereas unfallen leisure time is good, and fallen leisure time is bad.
Poorly defined concepts:
Ego
An internally focused experience. Taylor defines "reading books" as externally focused. What about reflecting on the information you previously read? Isn't almost every "internal" experience a reflection of external experiences?
Misunderstandings and factual errors:
Claim that the United States outlawed slavery by 1817 on page 283.
He also dramatically misunderstands evolution again on pages 298-299. Basically everywhere he talks about evolution, he is wrong.
Also, he doesn't use the Oxford comma. Technically not an error, but annoying.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend the book. I find the author to be incredibly biased, especially eurocentric. He warps time, ideas, scope, and magnitude, to suit his own purpose. Speaking of Ego, Taylor has no qualms in borrowing and appropriating myths, philosophies, and cultural practices, subverting them all neatly into his simple paradigm of the world. That's unfair and removes a great deal of richness from each of these traditions. Taylor's facts and premises are well-researched, and some of his conclusions happen to be valid, but his intermediate reasoning is irresponsible at best. Don't romanticize a culture in which everyone's roles and activities were unquestionably prescribed from birth. Call me a product of the most egotistical country of the modern age, but I personally prefer to make my own choices, develop my own interests, and live in a society large enough for me to find other like-minded people. Focus your "limited psychic energy" elsewhere.