"Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it."
Ernest Holmes

There seems to be a couple schools of thought; one is that this body is simply a mound of flesh. It may or may not have a soul or a spirit. It is mechanical, it is predictable, it is prone to all kinds of disease and suffering and its eventual downfall is always death and the other is that this body is an extension of the Spirit. That we are not a body with a spirit as much as we are Spirit with a body; that every cell, every atom, every strand of our being is being made and remade in the Image and Likeness of Light; that the whole universe is pouring into us and through us in each and every moment, that life is eternal. After we lay down one body, we quickly receive another and another and another....

I tend to believe the latter.

I got into metaphysics/philosophy/spirituality whatever you want to call it quite young...my early 20s. I had what many called a "mental breakdown" it was, in fact, a Spiritual breakthrough. It was like all of the sudden I realized that my identity...the identity that I knew as "John" was completely made up and I was the one that made it up consequently I had made everything up!

How completely liberating!
How completely terrifying!

But after I was released from the hospital, I knew in the depths of my soul that I could not return to the world as the same person, because I wasn't the same person. I was resurrected, I was re-born and not in a Benny Hinn/Jimmy Swaggart kind of way. I had truly been baptized with the Holy Spirit...the Whole of Spirit...the Celestial Fire that is within every thing and every one just as every thing and every one is within it. It's just that most of us, if not all of us, fall prey to appearances. In other words, we get used to things. We start seeing the world as flat even though intellectually we may know it's round, emotionally we feel as though there is a hole in our soul and we are suffocating from the world....

Before we go any further with this review...STOP...and simply breathe slowly in.....and breathe slowly out....just breathe in White Light let it cleanse your mind, your spirit, your body...and breathe it all out...breathe in...and out...just try to regain ground, try to get centered, try to open yourself to Life...to Light...to Love...

This is what Alex Grey did in his paintings. He did something with his art that I had only read about in metaphysical books. It's easy to write about metaphysical experiences; it is easy to say that the body is an extension of the Great Creative Power that permeates the universe; it is easy to write that we are not the body but the soul...but how do you envision this...how do you picture this in your mind? How do you allow this information to gain entrace to your heart, your emotional nature? Well, Alex Gray has done this in this incredible book, The Sacred Mirrors.

These "Glimpses Into Higher Thought" are breathtaking...if you merely see them as paintings, they will be just that...I prefer to refer to them as oil based glimpses of a Higher Realm. They are still in the world of form so we cannot consider them Absolute Truth because Absolute Truth cannot be dipicted or written about or talked about, but they can and they often do, point to a Higher, a Deeper Level of Awareness.

If I'm teaching a class based on Spirituality or Metaphysics, or if I have a client that is kind of resistant to the idea that we are primarily the spirit, that this corruptible body is simply a vehicle that our soul uses during our visit to a time/space bound world, I casually yet very enthusiatically show them this book and sometimes they even gasp.

This book is raw. It doesn't hold anything back. It is truly a metaphysical classic. It is the Sutras, the Holy Scripture, The Divine Word all in one. I wish that Alex Gray would come out with a line of prints that one could matte and frame because I would surely love a few of them hanging up in the room where I meditate and hold client sessions.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Let of of your small "s" identity and merge with your True Self Reality...your Godself, your Light, your Holy Spirit and breathe it all in...and breathe it all out...

Peace and Blessings, everyone.

This is one of the books detailing the fabulous works of Alex Grey.

I came across it when I was involved with massage therapy. The pictures are breathtaking. The ones that were of the most interest to me were the ones on the human energetic system. In the course of massage studies I had learned that the body/spirit/mind were inseperable and that when you worked on someones body you were affecting the whole being. To do that you had to approach the body with respect and understand that every experience they had was reflected in their cellular makeup.

Alex is a visionary artist. He regularly accesses states that render him able to paint what he sees. I am not a visionary nor am I a visionary artist. Reading about his life and his other art is worthwhile and probably would be good for some to understand why some take or have taken drugs. Thanks to modern science we know now that every substance that we can put in our mouths to reach an altered state we can also generate with nothing more than our brain rendering drugs unnecessary. (Although if Willie want to smoke a joint before a beautiful song who am I to disagree)

Drugs aside, it is really hard to look at these paintings and not have a "mind moment" or "soul moment". They are absolutely astounding. I have only one question - why are all of the pictures of people together arranged according to race?

Caucasians with Caucasians, Oriental with Oriental and African with African. It seems to be a subtle comment and one that might soak in more readily after the inspiring visions of the other pictures.

I would recommend it for everyone. No matter what your path this man's work is incredible.