A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: NIGHT SEA JOURNEY – THE ORDEAL OF INDIVIDUATION BY DR. JAMES V. DOWNTON JR.

The varied paths to enlightenment and understanding employ uniquely different vocabularies to record and reflect the transformative experience. What makes Night Sea Journey – The Ordeal of Individuation by James V. Downton, Jr. refreshingly accessible and useful is the immensely sober approach he takes in describing his own journey. Academically acquainted with the Jungian framework of the unconscious and its psychological symbols, Dr. Downton discusses his period of deep change primarily in terms of Jung’s process of individuation. This lends his book strong grounding for some notably unusual observations. However, the author is not strictly bound by this structural approach. He is also highly read in Eastern wisdom and the notion of Kundalini as an evolutionary agent. This lends his book some necessary mental space in which to breathe.

“You live in the moment, straddle the center line within yourself, and embrace doubt as a source of wisdom.” – James V. Downton, Jr.

James V. Downton, Jr.’s personal experience with individuation and kundalini rising was intense, physically dramatic, and mentally transformative. Fortunately, as a student of Jungian analysis, he kept diary notes and dreamwork journals to document what he was undergoing, not always realizing at the time what the ultimate ramifications might be. Night Sea Journey – The Ordeal of Individuation thus speaks with present-moment urgency and authenticity, and Downton does not indulge in hyperbolic claims of spiritual mastery. If anything, he expresses genuine fear for his mental and physical well-being, which becomes the clearest motivation for a rather compact book: No one should suffer such major change without a true forerunner to consult.