Pathways to Higher Conciousness (The Master Game)

The book is a clear and concise set of formulae for achieving a higher state of consciousness and gradation of reason. De Ropp outlines the field of battle, and shows how an individual, armed with deep understanding, discipline and real necessity, can wage his or her own personal war against sleep. There has never been a better book written on this subject, and it deserves a permanent place in your personal library. It is a book that, once read, will never be forgotten.

Dr. Robert S. De Ropp, scientist, author, teacher, was a biochemist who carried out research in the fields of cancer and the biochemistry of the brain in England, and in the U.S. at the Rockefeller Institute. He was the author of many influential books including Drugs and the Mind, The New Prometheans, Warrior’s Way, Church of the Earth, and Self-Completion.

When everyone else was writing books in praise of sleep, Robert de Ropp faught the current and went upstream in this consciousness classic, Pathways to Higher Consciousness. Struggling against sleep was a new idea to most people, and Gurdjieff's writings had not yet penetrated the American book market when Pathways to Higher Consciousness appeared on the scene. It took the public by storm, and instantly became a classic best-seller.

Pathways to Higher Consciousness is a clear and concise set of formulae for achieving a higher state of consciousness and gradation of reason. De Ropp outlines the field of battle, and shows how an individual, armed with deep understanding, discipline and real necessity, can wage his or her own personal war against sleep. His definition of sleep and blisteringly revealing proofs of the sleep state cannot be refuted, and therefore must be confronted and dealt with. He leaves no stone unturned in his attack against the sleep state and leaves no doubt as to the need for immediate action on the part of the reader.

There has never been a better book written on this subject, and its original publication met with instantaneous and worldwide acceptance and appreciation. If you devoured Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Ouspensky's Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, this is a must read for you, and it deserves a permanent place in your personal library. It is a book that, once read, will never be forgotten.

Pathways To Higher Consciousness: The Master Games has been out of print too long—for a book that we consider definitive of "Consciousness Classic". It was written in the late 1960's by Robert S. de Ropp, Who was already the successful author of a series of books on science for the general reader: Drugs and the Mind, Science and Salvation, Man Against Aging, Sex Energy, The New Prometheans. With every one of his books, de Ropp anticipated a cultural wave and the flow of consciousness in the U.S. and Europe. Note the .publication date of his study of mind- altering drugs—1951. De Ropp was a laboratory scientist, but he was attracted to this subject due to life experiences, including his interaction with the Ouspenskys in England and especially the loss of his first wife to schizophrenia during World War II. Church of the Earth, his book chronicling on experiment in subsistence living through formation of a spiritual community in Sonoma County, California, anticipated the movement towards sustainable and ecological lifestyles, including alternative energy usage, self- reliance, organic gardening, and pooling of both financial and human resources. While the communal living experiment failed, the book stands as another historical marker from the desk of this extraordinary scientist and literary author.

The present book was Robert de Ropp's greatest success. It sold more than 200,000 copies for Delacorte Press, at a time of accelerated social change in the United States when so many of the post-war baby generation were looking for "pathways to higher consciousness beyond the drug experience." In the words of Kenneth Pelletier, it "inspired an entire generation to seek a synthesis of science and mysticism." Pathways Of Higher Consciousness led de Ropp, a confirmed hermit and a staunch critic (in this book....) of media fame and celebrity, to give the only recorded interviews, for New Dimensions Radio, as part of the book's publicity. I read this book in 1969, while living in the country in upstate New York, and it opened my eyes to a whole new realm of applied spiritual and mystical ideas, actual practices that are available. So many people 1 remember Pathways To Higher Consciousness from their "early days" that while Gateways had remaindered copies of the out-of-print edition, courtesy of the author's widow, Kathleen R. de Ropp, some customers would order 10 or even 20 copies at a time to use for gifts or for study groups.

As a compendium, a summary and an overview of the consciousness field, the book is unique and irreplaceable. True, it speaks for its time and represents a snapshot of the sixties’ received knowledge and ethos. The author built his argument on such icons of the decade as Eric Berne's Game People Play and books by Szasz, Hesse, Wiener see bibliographic notes to Pathways To Higher consciousness. The book is definitive of a powerful trend in the culture of 1968. However, its value goes far beyond the historical moment, since few other authors had the breadth of interest. to line up the century's greatest psychological thinkers and researchers—-William James, W.H. Sheldon, A Korzybski, C.G. Jung, Abraham Maslow— alongside philosophers and mystic from Epictetus, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Philokalia to Rumi, Blake, Boehme, Gurdjieff, Huxley, Watts, and so on. The research has been extended in the thirty-odd years since de Ropp's summary work, but seldom has it been presented so succinctly, so eloquently, and so forcefully that a new generation of younger readers can again be inspired by its insights. Robert de Ropp died in1987, but he will live on as the bearded prophet of Sonoma Mountain through his quintessential books and his uncompromising Socratic critique of the ills of modern life.