The Book of Meditation
by Patricia Carrington PhD
Penguin, 1998, ISBN: 1862042365

Reviewed by Tracy-lee Andrews

'The Complete Guide to Modern Meditation'. No, not really! This book is however full of very good scientific research, lots and lots of interesting facts, figures and studies on the effects of meditation on the mind and body.

It looks at all of the evidence for meditation, and some reasons to be careful on how you approach the subject.

The author has experienced a good deal of change in her life from learning to meditate 'transcendental meditating' fashion. There are a lot of references to this method throughout the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels the need to have a scientific approach to the subject, it provides good answers to questions that people often ask.

The book does not provide exercises for you to learn meditation and does not look at the 'pathworking' types of meditation. On the whole it is a very positive book, but for me it is too scientific and calculating - it needs to have a little more heart, if you take out all of the mystery what is the point of the Journey?