Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night Review By Cliff Gogh Published by Changemakers Books Reviewed by Ally Barber, an intern for Dreaming Big Publications ABOUT THE BOOK To quiet his existential horror, a brooding young man seeks to understand life. Cliff Gogh is out in the dark, a solitary ghost examining himself in the night, with all of his mental faculties directed toward the intangible, pain, darkness, despair, fearlessness, love, and the incomprehensibly vast. Genre: Memoir 120 Pages MY REVIEW 4 out of 5 stars In this powerful memoir, Cliff Gogh provides the audience with a profound look into his psyche as he mentally explores himself and his life. Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night is a fascinating look into the mind and life of an interesting and quite troubled young man. The author’s writing style immediately sucks the reader in, leaving them eager for more and to continue reading. Gogh truly has a talent and a way with words that he skillfully uses to capture and keep the attention of his audience. Though Gogh is quite a brooding and apparently troubled person, it is not hard for the reader to feel a sense of kinship with him as he considers things that haunt almost of us – our relationships with others, our purpose in life, and the impact of our own actions on ourselves. Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night is a beautiful and endlessly interesting work. That being said, if one is unable to truly ‘get into’ the book and appreciate it for what it is, it could be easy for one to label it as overdramatic. Honestly, the language does seem a bit overdone or too ‘flowery’ at times. However, this does not detract from the beauty of it. Overall, Cliff Gogh’s Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night is an absorbing and beautiful work. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cliff Gogh is an observer of life with a unique psychological and spiritual outlook regarding the deeper unconditioned nature of being. His background is one of travel, wandering, and mountain treks. His work, which has spanned over twenty years of self-searching and reflection, is an effort to both candidly reveal his own inner landscape and highlight the way the being can be open to other beings. Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for writing a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own. ~ Kristi King-Morgan, Dreaming Big

Forget dark night of the soul, this book is an account of a dark life of the soul. Cliff Gogh’s book opens on a mind beset by terror. The mystic’s journey is through the valley of the shadows of death but opens, inevitably, into luminescent transcendence. Terror yields to the sublime. The dark night births golden light that penetrates the darkest shadows. Peel back the layers and the collective unconscious shines through. We are all trapped by fear, Gogh concludes. But we are also united by a force that peers from beneath the veil with a gaze of love. Come! The journey begins. ~ Catlyn Keenan, author of Strip

A wounded man, alone, adrift, alienated: by night he walks deserted streets and forest trails, painfully conscious of his inability to fit into society, unable even to speak to another human being. You might expect his course to be a downward spiral. But unexpectedly, by embracing his personal darkness, by journeying clear-eyed to the furtherest edge of night, author Cliff Gogh finds his way to a profound and transforming acceptance of life just as it is. ~ Tim Ward, author of Indestructible You: Building a Self that Can’t be Broken, and What the Buddha Never Taught

Like Dante's Divine comedy and it's description of the Inferno, Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night is a modern autobiography by a spiritual vagabond. It is a journey that alternates between the dark and the radiant, One that goes from nihilistic, suicidal despair to Mr. Gogh's enduring reverence for all of life. This is a poetic interior journey that is not for the faint of heart. Gogh's descriptions of the agony of his dark night of the soul before his shadow self is brought into the light, are surrealistically vivid. His profound catharsis leads to a recognition of the timeless unconditioned spirit in all of existence. This is an account by a self-avowed renunciate who is in the world but not of it. ~ Ira Rechtshaffer, author of Mindfulness and Madness

Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night is astonishingly unique. It grabbed me like the jaws of a rabid wolverine; had I wanted to, I'm not sure I could have escaped once I had read the first pages. Mr. Gogh's experience as a disconnected youth is disturbing, but authenticity drips from the page. This unique story plays with time and the narrator wanders from the inner psyche to the outer trails of city and forest as if tramping freely on the rails. Like all mystics, even deeply wounded ones like Mr. Gogh, he discovers eternal truths, such as when examining a tiny leaf that reveals the sublime wonder of everything in the cosmos, from matter to mind to spirit. Many of the images described in the book affected my mind like either a deadly virus or a saving light in the darkness of existential despair. The truth of this work is that to be free, actually free, we must confront and look into the eyes of our pain. If we look hard without flinching, we can catch a glimpse of the totality of love before it slips away to be lost again. Mr. Gogh's realizations teeter precariously on the edge until the moment comes when separation ceases and the body fades away into the ocean of eternity. ~ Neil Richardson, founder of the online virtual commons, Walt Whitman Integral, author of Episodic Flash Sight