Divergent threads woven into a new spacetime fabric

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes has brought together a collection of essays that on first glance seem to be about disparate subjectsthe process metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead, the philosophy and phenomenology of psychedelic experience, and the ontological worldview of panpsychism.Yet, the book is thematically united and Sjöstedt-Hughes impressively weaves these philosophical threads together to produce a rare fabric, a fabric of universal sentience that comes together in a refreshingly new worldview in his final chapter.The book has significant depth yet is written in as non-obscure a fashion as any book that deals with such abstruse matters can be.The author outlines the much respected but not widely read philosophical metaphysics of philosopher and mathematician, A. N. Whitehead.(The more famous Baruch Spinoza was probably the second most-cited philosopher).He elucidates various historical writings based on personal psychedelic experience to suggest how both philosophy and such experience are alternative mirrors for the same revelation, which includes the fundamentality of timea preconscious, intuited creative process forever unfolding into an undetermined future.This leaves perceived "objective" reality as a secondary effect, more mutable than current physics can know.Both are real, however.This is panpsychism, not idealism.This I understood and happily embraced, but the author challenged my boggle limit by also indicating multiple dimensions of reality and even of other realities with other sentient beings, neither of which is perceivable with our everyday senses, but both of which are possible in a panpsychist universe and directly experienceable for the attuned psychonaut.I missed having an index, however, and I am not convinced the book has the best title.Modes of Sentience is descriptively accurate but might have worked better as part the subtitle because it does not capture a browser's attention with a dramatic declaration.Something like Cosmic Process -Psychedelic Panpsychism would also have indicated the book's subject matter but perhaps have been more attention-grabbing.And, with regard to the cover image, in spite of its symbolic significance, moths are not liked by everyone, so perhaps something more colourful?Still I found the book itself intellectually exciting, which only proves the old adage about covers.Let me briefly outline my own responses through its ten chapters, some of which are longer with more detail and others that are more or less short outlines.Please note that my summaries in no way indicate the nimble prose of the actual book, which needs to be read in its original context.Chapter 1, "Panpsychism: Ubiquitous Sentience", is the keynote.It is also a good, basic introduction to panpsychist thinking, the possibility that all entities or systems in what we term the objective physical world are in reality also subjectively experiencing.The author also provides an introduction to the ultimate metaphysical categories in general.I very much liked how the author immediately cleared up his use of the term "sentience" by identifying it (to my mind) with non-conscious or unconscious (or pre-conscious) experience, as in Whiteheadian panexperientialism or pancreativism: "In the hierarchy of states of mind, 'consciousness' is an uncommon complex crown of sentience.All has mind though not all has consciousness, let alone self-consciousness" (p.2).My only difficulty with this is that some equate mind with consciousness, so it might be more accurate to say, "All have experience though not all have conscious experience."He follows this with a deft deconstruction of emergentism and the assumptions of physicalism, as well as an excellent summary of why panpsychism is so

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