This book is pseudoscience veiled as science. Many of the claims (when he is making claims and not just digressing with irrelevant anecdotes), are disproportionate to the cited evidence, the main claim being that the universe is a projection of consciousness and only exists within the brain--when we look away from the moon, for example, it ceases to exist. The analogies he employs are quite shaky, too. The overall tone is, ironically, hostile to science, and bombastic regarding his own theory. In the chapter that claims to speculate on the question of an afterlife, we get, after yet another anecdote, this embarrassing sentence regarding his deceased sister: "It's going to be hard to wait--I have to admit--but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in [her earrings] the next time I see her...in whatever form she and I and this amazing play of consciousness assume." Aside from embarrassing, coming from a scientist with so many credentials (and he never lets us forget these credentials), it is utterly unfounded. Trying on earrings from a past life? Come on. This is piffle. Why should consciousness, something we know can be altered, diminished, and is found in rudimentary form in the 'lower' animals, be eternal? If consciousness can be dampened, as with sleep or drugs, it can be extinguished. And don't get me started on the seemingly dual consciousness of patients whose corpus callosum has been severed to prevent seizures. All the evidence points to the brain as the inextricable foundation of consciousness, and when it dies, the 'self' dies with it.

On the front cover, Deepak Chopra, master of word salads and pretending-to-know-what-one-doesn't-know, praises the book. For me, this was a red flag in and of itself, but I like challenging my beliefs and changing my mind...when the evidence is convincing and proportionate to the claims, yet not when it is used as a springboard for the fantastic.