I've greatly admired Swann as an artist and visionary thinker, so I was eager to delve into his writings now that they've become more widely available. 'Reality Boxes' operates on a tantalizing thesis: that the observing of reality is filtered subliminally through self-constructed reality boxes which determine the information one is consciously able to perceive and act upon.
And while the book does follow-through on this premise, there are some things I find issue with. First is that this book feels introductory. It seems to be fairly surface-level on the concept, but then gets mired in semantic discussions of the socially-codified definitions of weighty words like 'mind,' 'consciousness,' and the like. These semantic discussions felt very excursionary.
Further, the book needs an editor. There are many places where a rather glaring grammatical error rips you out of the text. Lastly, Swann devotes a not-insubstantial amount of pages to extolling other authors and books, which, great and all, doesn't add any value to the text, especially when he provides a dedicated list of further reading at the back of the book.
I will say that the book has a flow to it, and reading it (despite the grammatical landmines) was a breeze. The ideas are big and grandiose, and I applaud the spirit of them, though I wish the execution could've been more up to task. I'll definitely be reading more Swann.
Also, do check Ingo Swann's visual art out. It's transformative and stupendously transcendent.