I recently read https://www.amazon.com/Immortality-Key-Uncovering-History-Religion/dp/1250207142 for a book club. I can entertain the concepts — they do have their worth. The problem is the poor execution of this book.
I didn’t like it. First of all, the title is definitely not WHAT the book is about. When you see Immortality Key, naturally you think about the key to immortality. What is some deep-seated secret in the Universe that offers us a key to live forever? But this book is so far from those concepts. It’s about a “secret” religion that apparently has been in the shadows of humanity — psychedelic drugs. When people take them, they gain a sense of purpose in their life, and glimpse into an immortal experience. Ancient Greeks, and early Christians, early nomads, etc used drugs to experience a sense of oneness. A sensation of being connected to everything when drugs stripped away a person’s sense of time and space and the invocation of the feeling of oneness with the universe. This oneness after drug use, free from time and space, is the “key” to immortality.
Reasons Why This Book was Lackluster
- High LCR(Length-to-Content Ratio)
My main qualm with this book could be summarized by another fellow reader who said, “The whole book could probably be written down to 100 pages”. That is my biggest gripe with the book. It was unnecessarily long. That is, The LCR — length-to-content ratio was too high.
If you increase the content of what you write, you better make sure that there’s enough damn content to justify what you write. Or increase the quality of the book. This 400 page tomb does not justify the length. It just felt very rushed and unrefined. There are sections in the book where the author repeats what he has said already multiple times. It feels like he’s disrespecting me, the reader — and wasting my time through repetition.
It’s as if it’s only gone through a single revision.
2. Complexity Management
The author didn’t do a good job of complexity management and tying in loose ends. He seems to go all over the place. In one section, he talks about pre-historic men, and then he talks about prehistoric beer, then he takes a loose connection to Jesus, then back to the Greeks. It’s very diffused and disorganized. It was also ridiculously hard to differentiate between implied factual information from his extrapolations and biases. Even if the evidence is very weak, or to some degree very counter to his claims, he spins it to fit his theory. The overall structure and organization was very poor. It’s a book about his journey, interviews, and factual information all cobbled together. I wished he focused a bit more on the structure of the book and had more coherence.
3. Stretching Way Too Much
Author argues that the use of drugs were pivotal to obtaining profound insight by feeling this sense of oneness — for the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, etc. The book seemed to imply that by doing these drugs, the famed Greek thinkers and philosophers were able to obtain fundamental insights about the nature of the Universe.
Am I the only one who finds this kind of reasoning heavily flawed? To me, this is seems unlikely. Out of a myriad of people who have gone through these trips, it’s hard to believe pivotal secret ingredients that made them make these breakthroughs was due to a miracle drug.
Again, he just stretches too much too little. For example, when he mentions that Christianity is a morphed from Dionysian festivals, it irks me. I’m not religious by any means, but the tenant of Christianity can be boiled down to loving God and your neighbors, if we take out the core tenant of Christ dying on the cross to save your sins. T o me, this drug theory about Jesus’ origins is such a insignificant portion of what makes Christianity still relevant in the 21st century. It’s still a powerful force where some people are willing to die for their belief of a powerful, loving God and a dedication to serving others. Passionate people from Christianity who are willing to lay down their lives for their faith — is all of this faith be based on a miracle drug?
The Good Points
I have to hand it to it. The author’s ability to spend an enormous amount of time chasing tails and going through all the research while I presume having a full-time gig as a lawyer is very impressive. Throughout the book, his resilience on trying to get to the bottom of my many different threads and leads were something to admire. Refusing to give up on leads and requesting interviews with experts is no easy feat. I’m sure he must’ve faced rejection after rejection. And traveling the world to really dig down on something you want to know, presumably on your own dime — it’s passion, isn’t it?
The other things I enjoyed was giving character to the experts. I loved how he characterization of the various experts throughout the book. He colored their mannerisms and character instead of defaulting to something such as, “Dr. Overdose said XYZ.”
Concluding Thoughts
The first 50–100 pages were solid. Then everything just went down from there. I have no problem with entertaining the idea that psychedelics drug cause a meaningful experience. But most of the problems I have is with implementation details.
My rating is a solid 1.5/5. Compared to other great alternatives, you’re better off reading the first 100 pages and putting it back on the shelf. There’s a whole Joe Rogan podcast which the author appeared in. I haven’t listened to it, but maybe that’s a better, free alternative considering the low amount of information?
I don’t know why Amazon reviews for this book are so high. There are so many other books out there that fundamentally turn your worldview upside down and change you.This book is not one of them. It is definitely not worth $30.
Don’t buy it.