MIND FLIGHT: A Journey into the Future

Tom Lombardo with Jeanne Belisle Lombardo

About three years ago Thomas Lombardo sent me an essay for possible inclusion in The Wisdom Page. I liked the essay very much, but it was highly personal, and I could see no category into which it would fit. In an email I told him that.

But thoughts began to churn, and the next day I wrote him back saying "yesterday . . . my thinking was inside the box of my self-created Wisdom Page structure. Your comments have made a convincing case that the box needs expanding! Personal stories have inspired and taught all of us, so I've decided to create a new Wisdom Page section tentatively titled Personal Quests for Wisdom." Soon after, I created the new section — and there Tom's essay, "The Time of Your Life" (which I described as ". . . a compelling piece of writing! A rich, thought-stimulating, feeling-stimulating, mind-massaging trip") found its rightful home and became one of the most popular documents on the website.

Tom has a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, is Professor Emeritus and retired Faculty Chair in Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, and Future Studies at Rio Salado College in Arizona, and is Executive Director of the Center for Future Consciousness. He is also a superb writer. Thoughts began to churn for Tom too. The essay, yes, but there was a larger, much more complex story to be told, much more to say. So Tom and his wife Jeanne Belisle Lombardo, also an educator and writer, decided to tell that story in a book titled MIND FLIGHT: A Journey into the Future. Not only am I delighted that they have done this, I am also extremely pleased that the Lombardos have decided to include the Introduction and first three chapters on The Wisdom Page. So much for my (Cop Macdonald's) take on all this. Here, Tom and Jeanne describe the book:

With great honesty, and both drama and romance, Mind Flight weaves together personal narrative and intellectual odyssey, taking readers along on the author's pursuit of wisdom and enlightenment, his search for love, and his quest for an inspiring vision of the future. Encyclopedic in scope, the book pulls together Plato, Freud, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and other epochal historical figures with Pink Floyd, the Hippies, the Sexual Revolution, A Clockwork Orange, the Yin-Yang, the madhouse world of mental health, and the fantastical visions of science fiction. What results in this grand saga is not only a chronicle of one man's journey from industrial, middle-class America-where weightlifting and fist fighting define virtue and value-to the philosophical life in the mystical expanse of the Southwest, but a profound exploration of the archetypal themes of order and chaos; good and evil; truth and beauty; passion and reason; and science and God. Mind Flight draws the reader into the vast wonders and possibilities of the future, and is a stunning example of "living the examined life."

Read the Introduction, Table of Contents, and first three chapters.

(The above file is in PDF format. To download a free Acrobat Reader, click here.)

Order the book from the Publisher or Amazon.com