Henry Reed, Ph.D.
“The title of this important book, Unveiling Sophia: Heart Wisdom in an Age of Technology, contains a secret message that seems to go unnoticed, not just in this book, but in the news. We’ve gone from an age of stress to an age of change to an age of threatened existence to an age that anticipates the “end times.” The Apocalypse, translated as the “lifting of the veil,” refers to the elimination of a boundary that has kept us separated from many truths, a separation that began with the administration of a fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. For some time now we’ve been undergoing an almost invisible crisis in the loss of boundaries, which has had more consequences than generally realized.
The author of this book, Anne Elizabeth Taylor, speaks to this issue via two important metaphors of boundary transcendence: the heart and the feminine. In some sense, we have been witnessing the return of the feminine consciousness, the yin side of things, empathizing and connecting rather than discriminating and using since the advent of quantum physics: Nothing exists in itself except in relation to something else—a statement of the feminine principle and an axiom of indigenous prayers. A whole way of life is undergoing transformation, and it involves the functional loss of many types of boundaries, causing great stress and confusion to the yang mentality.
With the onset of pollution we discovered that national boundaries were but a concept. As other boundaries disappear, evaporate, or dissolve, we are left with conundrums, confusion, and often conflict. AIDS challenged biological boundaries and our response was to recreate the boundary via condums rather than focus on the quality of relationships. The digital age has confounded the boundaries of intellectual property. Non-dual sexuality has created a lot of pushback and an attempt to find still another way to discriminate.
We are familiar with the metaphysical heart that is accredited with spiritual, intuitive and empathic powers. “I know in my heart” is a statement of intuition. “When hearts are joined, no words are needed” is a description of empathy as unitive, while words divide. In my own book, The Intuitive Heart, I have collected many of these familiar quotations as evidence that we already understand what’s coming.
We have the organization known as “HeartMath” for the concrete evidence that the heart responds best when we are feeling grateful. “Heart coherence” becomes a technological paradigm to plot a spiritual consciousness. The nitty gritty research from HeartMath nails the facts. Gratitude and heart awareness opens you to another world, the world of implicit awareness, communication with plants, animals and beings in consciousness.
Anne Elizabeth Taylor should get high marks for her ability to express difficult concepts in easy to understand phrases. I know from experience how difficult it is to get across the idea that the heart sees via the imagination, but it is not making it up. Ms. Taylor takes the time to go into the ancient traditions, updating them via the consciousness of Jung’s archetypal psychology, to bring us an aesthetic—yes, art practice is important if you wish to be a fully functioning member of this consciousness of perceptual reality—taking the world into your heart and allowing the flow of experience to carry the day.
The book is also worth reading, not just for its depiction of the up and coming new paradigm, nor for its ability to reach out and form a heart connection between us gringos and the indigenous folks, or for is well grounded research in the relevant laboratories and philosophy towers, but for her ability to speak simple, make a connection with the reader, help the reader form a new vision of reality, and dance to that tune. I’m not passing long insights from the book because I think you really need to get this book and read it for yourself!”
Henry Reed, Ph.D., is a visionary psychologist, an “academic shaman,” an artist of dreams and dreamwork, and an innovator of intuitive methodologies of creativity. His published books include Awakening Your Psychic Powers (St. Martin’s), The Intuitive Heart (A.R.E.), and Edgar Cayce on Channeling your Higher Self (Grand Central). Henry was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Princeton University and served as a research consultant to the C.G. Jung Dream Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland. He currently serves as Director of the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies.
Ginette Paris, Ph.D.
“Taylor’s Sophia is truly a book to be read by medics and psychotherapists as well as anybody with a heart condition. It offers a competent, intelligent, sensitive passage through the quarrels of our time by addressing the complexities of the multiple forms of connection between body and soul that is responsible for heart coherence.
Taylor draws upon a wealth of scholarship and clinical experience to capture the essence of what heals, and what kills the human heart. She captures the transcendent dimension that has never been explored with such thought-provoking arguments and elegant style.
After reading this book, the healer as well as the patient will understand why the actual emphasis on diet, medicine, exercise, is radically insufficient to grasp why some hearts heal and some don’t. As many wisdom traditions have repeatedly taught, the heart has intelligence unknown to the brain; it is urgent that we learn from it.”
Ginette is a psychologist, therapist and author of many books, including Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience (Routledge 2007). She is now Faculty Emeritus, and was trained as a psychologist in Montréal, Canada where she was a tenured professor in the Department of Communication of the U. of Québec in Montréal for 15 years. In 1995 she became a permanent US resident and a core faculty at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara.