This book is a very important work for our time, though I would caution the prospective reader that it's also a very difficult one. If you have any amount of self awareness, reading The Way of the Living Ghost is akin to Dorian Gray taking time to study the portrait. In short, you will recognize yourself and you will not like what you see.Dr. Anderson presents the phenomena of becoming a Living Ghost as being one of hunger that can't be sated (because of an inability to be nourished), inertia (doing the same old things or nothing in particular just...because), and generally a voyage away from Humanity in terms of our general "humaneness" (empathy, care, connection). It is pointed out multiple times that the causation of this state need not be our own fault, yet along the path of living death we go all the same, ignorant and attached, in the Buddhist sense.The importance of this book is that in an epoch of nearly universal ghostliness, the great key to reversing our miserable state (individually and then corporately) lies at least partially in seeing our reflection, what we are doing and how we behave (it's worth noting that in Western folklore vampires-who can only be nourished at the dire expense of others-have no reflection).Despite the folk necromancy epithet, once can understand Way of the Living Ghost as a means of seeing through indirect, metaphorical means the nature of the sufferings borne and inflicted by nearly every person on Earth on a near constant basis, enabling one to come to grips with the dimmng of our human brightness. First the diagnosis, then the treatment. I cannot recommend this book highly enough and look forward to subsequent volumes.