68 posts tagged “book review”
A few months ago, I had a dream that led me to start thinking about the religious, spiritual, and philosophical significance regarding the mathematical concept of infinity. Combining this with my never-ending interest in Russian and Soviet history and culture, Naming Infinity would seem like a perfect book for me. Just released in March, Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor’s book was supposed to tell a true story of religious mysticism and mathematical creativity.
The authors of this book wanted to convey the idea “that a religious heresy [Name Worshipping] was instrumental in helping the birth of a new field of modern mathematics [set theory]” (5). What the book actually contained was a thorough history of early twentieth-century Russian mathematics through three people—Dimitri Egorov, Pavel Florensky, & Nikolai Luzin—who happened to be religious and were involved in the Name Worshiping religious ideology. Readers of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey were given a glimpse of what Name Worshipping is about through Franny’s involvement with the Jesus Prayer and the Russian mystical classic The Way of a Pilgrim (13). There was very little examination of Name Worshipping and analysis of the religious beliefs and mystical experiences of these three mathematicians or of any mathematicians in general in this book. Religion, spirituality, and mysticism were treated as a secondary trait of these scholars, reduced to a role of classification and identification, and not fully investigated by the authors.
Naming Infinity is really a history book that touches briefly on the math philosophies of these three Russians and the differences between Russian, French, and German philosophies of that time. These philosophies are interesting and helped me think and learn about some of the history behind the concept of infinity. However, I was looking specifically for the mystical connection that was not there. The history drowned this out and only left us with this short attempt at a connection between the math and mysticism.
It is not necessary to resolve the ultimate problems in the philosophy of mathematics in order to see that Name Worshipping—a religious viewpoint regarded as heresy by the Russian Orthodox Church and condemned by the Communist Party as a reactionary cult—influenced the emergence of a new movement in modern mathematics. In contrast to the French leaders in set theory, the Russians were much bolder in embracing such concepts and non-denumerable transfinite numbers. While the French were constrained by their rationalism, the Russians were energized by their mystical faith. Just as the Russian Name Worshippers could “name God,” they could also “name infinities,” and they saw a strong analogy in the ways in which both operations were accomplished. A comparison of the predominant French and Russian attitudes toward set theory illustrates an interesting aspect of science: if science becomes too cut-and-dried, too rationalistic, this can slow down its adherents, impeding imaginative leaps. (189-190)
Thich Nhat Hanh’s 2003 book No Death, No Fear is another in a long series of spiritual classics by the Buddhist monk. I have nothing negative to say about this book and can only offer four passages that show the essence of this book.
There’s a very funny story in the sutras. A woman left a saucepan of milk with her neighbor, saying: “Please keep it for me; I shall come back in two or three days.” There was no refrigeration, so the milk curdled and became a kind of cheese. When the woman came back she said: “Where’s my milk? I left milk behind, not cheese, so this is not my milk here.” The Buddha said that this person had not understood impermanence. Milk will become yogurt or cheese if you leave it for a few days. The person wanted only the milk of five days ago and refused to take the cheese. Do you think that milk and cheese are the same or different? They are neither the same nor different, but it takes several days for the milk to become cheese. With the insight if impermanence we can see the truth about the universe and all phenomena, the true nature of being neither the same nor different. (76)
The impermanence of all things is a critical understanding on one’s spiritual journey. Once a person learns how to look deeply and see the impermanence in everything, the fear and sorrow often associated with death dissipates. Seeing this impermanence also shows one how everything is both real and not real.
When the Buddha was asked, “What is the cause of everything?” he answered with simple words. He said, “This is, because that is.” It means that everything relies on everything else in order to manifest. A flower has to rely on non-flower elements in order to manifest. If you look deeply into the flower, you can recognize non-flower elements. Looking into the flower, you recognize the element sunshine; that is a non-flower element. Without sunshine, a flower cannot manifest. Other elements are essential, such as minerals, soil, the farmer and so on; a multitude of non-flower elements has come together in order to help the flower manifest. (35-36)
Hanh prefers to use the word manifestation instead of creation. Manifestation implies a transition from one form to another, whereas creation indicates something coming from nothing. Mindfulness involves looking at how everything manifests, including issues in both the physical and psychological realms. For example, people who suffer from a victim mentality can often work through their suffering when they realize how their issues are manifested in part by the decisions and choices they make.
Sooner or later the cloud will change into rain or snow or ice. If you look deeply into the rain, you can see the cloud. The cloud is not lost; it is transformed into rain, and the rain is transformed into grass and the grass into cows and then to milk and then into the ice cream you eat. Today if you eat an ice cream, give yourself time to look at the ice cream and say: “Hello, cloud! I recognize you.” By doing that, you have insight and understanding into the real nature of the ice cream and the cloud. You can also see the ocean, the river, the heat, the sun, the grass and the cow in the ice cream. (25-26)
This is an example of how to look mindfully into something. This practice can be done for anything.
We can use an example that is easy to understand, of a tangerine or a durian fruit. If there is a person who has never eaten a tangerine or durian fruit, however many images or metaphors you give him, you cannot describe to him the reality of those fruits. You can only do one thing: give him a direct experience. You cannot say: “Well, the durian is a little like the jackfruit or like a papaya.” You cannot say anything that will describe the experience of a durian fruit. The durian fruit goes beyond all ideas and notions. The same is true of a tangerine. If you have never eaten a tangerine, however much the other person loves you and wants to help you understand what a tangerine tastes like, they will never succeed by describing it. The reality of the tangerine goes beyond ideas. Nirvana is the same; it is the reality that goes beyond ideas. It is because we have ideas about nirvana that we suffer. Direct experience is the only way. (16)
Those of us that have had spiritual and mystical experiences know how difficult it is to describe them to non-spiritual people. Heck, it is hard for even spiritual people to convey the experience to other spiritual people. Spiritual and mystical encounters go beyond ideas and notions, including logic. This is why arguing about spirituality with a logician is fruitless and is often only an exercise in stroking egos.
However, this talk of direct experience goes beyond religion and spirituality. For example, my son and I can sit next to each other on the couch and look at the same cup sitting on a table and be looking at both the same cup and a different cup. This is because our experiences, although the same regarding the general viewing of a cup, are also different. Not only do we see the cup from different angles, but we also bring different biological, psychological, social, and spiritual frameworks to the cup viewing. We can also consider the properties of the cup itself: how the light hitting the cup is constantly changing, how the material that the cup itself is made from is slowly changing, the changing properties of the table it is sitting on, etc. It is impossible for him to see the cup as I do and vice-versa. It is also impossible for either one of us to see the cup the same as the moment in the time that just passed. Since we are constantly seeing different cups, it is impossible to either prove or disprove our experience or the existence of the cup itself.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s books constantly earn my coveted 5-Star Rating because they cultivate this type of thought and reflection.
Reading Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics reminded me of a recent training I conducted at work. I teach a simplified form of process development in a culture that propagates making easy processes difficult.
• Ben: Using this method of process development, you only need to monitor these four parameters: cycle time, fill time, first stage pressure, and second stage pressure.
• Technician: The machine gives you over fifty parameters to monitor and if you can correlate those with your defects, you can see what is going wrong in the process.
• Ben: If you simplify your process, you do not need to go through fifty parameters to find your problem; you only need to look at four.
• Technician: So what do we do with the other 46?
• Ben: Ignore them. Just because they are there does not mean you need to use them.
The Nicomachean Ethics is a lot like this: needlessly making something simple unnecessarily complex. Now, I do recognize the age of this material and the historical context from which it derives. I do have the advantage of learning from sources not available to the Greeks of antiquity. However, this book is considered to be a bedrock of philosophy here in our postmodern world and I cannot help but think this might be a source of a big problem facing us today: making seemingly simple ideas and things needlessly complex.
Aristotle’s main idea is this: “Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this—the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us” (37). Moderation is a virtuous and ethical route for a person to take. This revelation from Aristotle is fine and earth shattering enough on its own and he could have left it at that. However, in his desire to be all things to all people (my interpretation), Aristotle decided to apply this teaching to a wide-ranging swath of human existence—goodness for man, moral virtue, intellectual virtue, friendship, and pleasure—and attempted to explain how we ought to live in these realms. Think if it as a philosophical micro managing of human experience.
The product of this application is a work that reads like the stereo instructions of human experience.
Acts just and unjust bring as we have described them, a man acts unjustly or justly whenever he does such acts voluntarily; when involuntarily, he acts neither unjustly nor justly except in an incidental way; for he does things which happen to be just or unjust. (125)
This is the soul of The Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle used language like this to explain this doctrine of seeking the intermediate route. While I think it may have served its purpose back in the day, I think it may have been detrimental to human existence over the ages. Rather than simply allow the main idea to stand on its own, Aristotle set a precedent for humans to overanalyze most everything they experience. While I understand the reality that there are complex things in the world, the inability for many people to either see simplicity or strive for simplification is worrisome. In my opinion, it makes human experience much more difficult than it needs to be.
I am reminded of my astronomy, where I learned of William of Ockham and his razor: “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” This idea is also seen in this saying, often attributed to Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
During a recent cleaning of my garage floor, I noticed J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit under a stack of flooring tools. Although this book is over fifty years old, I decided that it might be interesting enough to give it a read. The Soviet Union and communism have always intrigued me, and I figured a person with Hoover’s status could offer some information and perspective I did not possess. Although this book was written in a much different historical period and the information was somewhat dated, it was new to me and kept me reading. Hoover’s writing on communist history, part life, and underground tactics was informative.
I found myself in a couple of quandaries while reading this book, the first of which was what to do with the claims made by Hoover. While understanding the age of the text, I still had a hard time accepting the lack of sources to back up his claims. Although I understand his position as F.B.I. director probably made him privy to classified information, Hoover rarely mentioned any sources to back up his claims. Of course, this assumes that Hoover wrote the book, which brings me to my second quandary. There are apparently some questions about whether Hoover did his own writing or if he used F.B.I. ghostwriters. Not wanting to dive into a massive research project on Hoover, I’m willing to throw him a bone and honor his claims as credible and believe he was the author.
After checking my historical privilege on what actually happened to Soviet communism, I was able to see how Hoover walked a fine line between exposing the actual threat of Soviet communism and manufacturing paranoia to create obedient fear among the U.S. citizenry. The following is a typical example of this manufactured paranoia.
Through the use of Aesopian language he [Nikita Khruschchev] is seeking to induce the Western world to relax its guard until the time when the communist world is ready to launch its offensive and hopes to chant the “funeral dirge” over the free world. (287)
Many modern right-wingers surely have read Hoover’s works and learned from them how to incite fear and paranoia through the written word. The terror attacks on September 11, 2001 have ushered in a new target for the scared conservatives: Islam. Scores of books, speeches, and conservative radio talk-shows have ranted about how “Islamic Terrorists” are seeking to destroy the U.S. Minnesota’s own Gayle Quinnell is a product of this McCarthy-like paranoia against Islam.
Unfortunately, many modern right-wing commentators fail to heed Hoover’s other warning.
For this reason we must be absolutely certain that our fight is waged with full regard for the historic liberties of this great nation. This is a fundamental premise of any attack against communism.
Too often I have seen cased where loyal and patriotic but misguided Americans have thought they were “fighting communism” by slapping the label of “Red” or “communist” on anybody who happened to be different from them or to have ideas with which they did not agree.
Smears, character assassinations, and the scattering of irresponsible charges have no place in this nation. They create division, suspicion, and distrust among loyal Americans—just what the communists want—and hinder rather than aid the fight against communism. (290)
If only the so-called patriotic right would listen to the entire message coming from one of their revered historical figures, we might not have as much fear and hate mongering about Islam in the U.S. today.
Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology is one of his early writings concerning integral studies, the way of understanding the human experience through a universal or holistic framework. Wilber’s integral theories are made up of four corners of human experience—mind, body, soul, and spirit—and the interconnection between all of them. Wilber’s goal in this book is to “honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness” (2). The way to do this, in Wilber’s opinion, is to systematically integrate all the positive insights and helpful teachings from premodern, modern, and postmodern sources of psychology, philosophy, and theology.
Throughout Integral Psychology, Wilber’s four corners are referred to as the Great Nest of Being, an indication that a person’s integral development is not horizontal or linear; it is three dimensional and moves on several different lines in many directions. To aid the reader in understanding his thick academic writing, Wilber offered numerous charts and diagrams that illustrate this Great Nest of Being. Wilber’s insistence on showing these diagrams really drives the point home about human development being a multi-axis affair (X, Y, and Z, if one is familiar with the Cartesian coordinate system).
Wilber’s great fear (shared with many including myself) is that therapists and academics will only consider a flatland existence, a place where “meaning and significance are collapsed into valueless facts and meaningless surfaces—‘a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colorless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly’” (75). Calling these tactics reductionist, Wilber recognized how many modern and postmodern psychologists and scholars set aside thousands of years of religious and philosophical teachings in favor of purely scientific methods and theories. A better way, in Wilber’s view, is to integrate the best of premodern, modern, and postmodern teachings from all sources to aid in human development, therapy, and understanding.
Most of Wilber’s writings can be put under the umbrella of integral theories and ideas. It is easier for me to think of them as contextual, as Wilber himself indicated in several areas of the book. As a student of theology and philosophy, I was educated to always consider the context of everything. The main idea I took away from my only social work course in college was to always consider these four perspectives when dealing with people: biological, psychological, social, and spiritual. For Wilber, it is mind, body, soul, and spirit. In my opinion, the similarities show the strength and necessity of integral and contextual thought.
Whatever way they may be labeled, it is clear that embracing the whole context of everything is necessary to understand and help humanity advance. Looking at all things with an integral framework is difficult and takes considerably more effort and time than only considering only a portion of human existence. However, failure to consider the context can be deadly. Consider the deadly mistakes of the Iraq War as an example of failing to think integrally or contextually.
I was pleasantly surprised when the definition of fuddy-duddy was listed on my favorite online dictionary. Defined as “an old-fashioned, fussy person,” fuddy-duddies are usually those grumpy old people that are constantly complaining about something the younger generation is or is not doing. Fuddy-duddies also like to wax rhapsodic about the many virtues found “back in my day.” Many of the culture war conservatives I know display many fuddy-duddy tendencies.
Unfortunately, the authors of The Narcissism Epidemic wrote what amounted to a fuddy-duddy polemic that comes irritatingly close to being an apocalyptic sermon. Psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell attempted to analyze the narcissism that plagues the United States culture by following a basic medical method: diagnosis, finding root causes and symptoms, and offering prognosis and treatment. What they actually wrote was a social commentary on their disdain for the narcissism found in the media. It was not unlike a person telling you how wrong everything is but not offering any solutions. A scant fifteen percent of this entire book was devoted to prognosis and treatment.
It is important in problem solving to recognize the problem itself and find the root causes. I would expect a book that tackled narcissism to spend a great deal of time on doing this. While these authors did this using data to support their claims, they also offered up a sassy social commentary that effectively eroded their professionalism. The authors also greatly limited themselves to examining sources of narcissism that are found in the media and Internet: Paris Hilton, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, and television shows like My Super Sweet 16 & Cribs were favorite and painstakingly reoccurring targets. Slogan T-shirts, spending habits, and the ideas of entitlement/uniqueness were also plastered everywhere in the remaining eighty-five percent of the book.
Here is a typical example of the sassy writing style I believe undermines their professionalism.
You can buy your daughter a T-shirt that says “Spoiled Rotten” or clothe your son in a shirt that says “Sorry, girls, I only date models.” One bright red shirt declares “I’m in Charge.” Another line of T-shirts allows you to announce that your child is the “Future Leader of the Free World” or a “Future Reality Show Contestant.” You an even buy your newborn baby a “Bling” brand pacifier decorated with rhinestones, complete with a tote that says “Princess” or “Rock Star.” These days, even when you’re just a few weeks old, it’s important not to leave the house without your bling. (76)
This reeks of talk-show commentary that is destined to become a New York Times Bestseller and a hit on Oprah. I say this because the book is filled with complaining and rehashing what everyone already suspects, something the masses are wonderful at doing. It does not come to any shock—at least for people that are not narcissists—that narcissism is caused and propagated by self-admiration, parenting, celebrities & media, Internet, and easy credit. Two hundred and fifty-five pages of this rammed down one’s throat is more than enough to drive the point home.
This imbalance in the ration of problem identification to problem solution is also not a very effective use of time, especially when one of the best methods in fighting narcissism is found on page 284: mindfulness. Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh offers us a concise and simple teaching of mindfulness in his book True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart. What took these psychologists over three hundred pages to figure out only took Hanh one hundred and twenty pages. Simplicity is a virtue and if one knows a simpler way to do something and elects the more complex method, they are not only being illogical, they are also being narcissistic.
Yes, I am claiming these authors are being narcissistic. Here is my proof, using their own words.
We take a different approach in this book, describing the now-extensive scientific research on the truth about narcissists and why they behave the way they do. We believe that with a topic as complex as narcissism, the empirical research is the place to begin. (3)
If I have learned anything from my education in religion and philosophy, I have learned that anytime a person claims to have the truth, one should proceed with caution. A truth claim is often very difficult—if not impossible—to establish, especially when dealing with humans because they change rapidly and do not behave equally. Even if one has an abundance of empirical research, it is not wise to claim truth because you still can be proven wrong. Ignoring the possibility of being wrong and still claiming truth is a sure sign of a narcissist.
Madison Smartt Bell’s Save Me, Joe Louis is a violent book filled with drug abuse, robbery, and murder. Racial & sexual orientation slurs and degrading portrayals of women were also prevalent throughout this book, which chronicled the lives of Charlie and Macrae, two drifters who connected in a New York City subway and began a life of crime. The duo started as muggers and quickly progressed to committing armed robberies, which turned deadly when they committed them in Maryland and Tennessee.
Perhaps Bell’s point in writing this book was to illustrate the fringe lifestyle and poor decision-making often found in the criminal lifestyle. Maybe Save Me, Joe Louis was supposed to be a social commentary of criminal life in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, Bell’s frequent choices about using slurs and negative views of women turned me off from enjoying whatever he might be saying about society. Apologists of Bell might say it was necessary to write this way either to show the raw thoughts of the characters or to make situations realistic. I acknowledge there are people in the world who believe the use of slurs is acceptable. I am also sure there are men who only view women as objects and inferior humans. However, every woman in the book, with the possible exception of Lacy, was portrayed negatively. In addition, the amount of slurs used in the book goes beyond what is necessary to develop a character.
I tend to think he could have made his point without joining in with the chorus of slurs and degradation running rampant in our culture. There are ways to write that can avoid the descent into vulgarity. I can personally withstand some vulgarity if it contributes to a larger meaning the writer is trying to convey. However, Save Me, Joe Louis lacked this meaning and was simply an exercise in showing how nasty humans can think, act, and write. If I wanted to see this, I would just turn on the network news.
Reading The Divine Comedy took a lot out of me. I feel like I accompanied Dante on his journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. There is so much meaning and information packed into these poems that I needed to take notes just to keep things straight. Even doing that, I missed so much that several readings of Dante’s journey are necessary before I can begin to feel confident in my ability to grasp everything that is loaded into these pages.
I do not even know how to begin a review of The Divine Comedy. I am willing to bet there are many people that spend a significant portion of their lives studying Dante. The translator of this volume, John Ciardi (1916-1986), was both an etymologist and a poet during his life. He was also a Virgil-like guide for me during my initial read of Dante via his brief previews featured at the beginning of each Canto and his rather detailed notes at each Canto’s conclusion.
Since I am not a Dante scholar by any means, I am unfortunately forced to reduce The Divine Comedy into smaller summary pieces to help begin some sort of elementary analysis. One day, Dante concludes that his life has strayed away from the straight road and ended up in a dark wood (16). Thankfully for Dante, God sent Virgil to guide him through Hell and Purgatory, where Beatrice (the symbol of Divine Love) then takes over in the ascent through Heaven. In an extremely graphic and Catholic journey, Dante met many of his fellow Florentines and other notable figures in world history.
The Divine Comedy like a who’s who of history up to the 1300s and where they ended up in the hell/purgatory/heaven matrix. A work predating the Reformation, The Divine Comedy is a product of the time when the Catholic Church was in the peak of its power in Europe and swirling in corruption. Dante loathed this corruption and it showed in his writing. Hell was filled with corrupt popes, while heaven featured some of the biggest names in Church history: St. Peter, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard, and St. Francis to name a few. In typical pious Catholic style from that time, Dante assigned those he believed to be heretics to hell, including Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Virtuous pagans like his guide Virgil, Socrates, Plato, and Seneca were forever encased in the first circle of hell, also known as Limbo, where they did not suffer torment and punishment but were not able to ascend to heaven since they were born without knowing Christ’s revelation.
As with all works, I needed to keep a perspective as to the time, place, and context The Divine Comedy was written. This perspective is helpful because Dante’s theology was medieval, Catholic, and is radically different from my spiritual world. However, I can appreciate Dante’s ability to create this world using poetry. I offer just a glimpse of his art here. Dante and Virgil were in the eighth circle of hell, just one level above Satan, and looked into the pit that held the souls of flatterers.
Once there, I peered down; and I saw long lines
of people in a river of excrement
that seemed the overflow of the world’s latrines.I saw among the felons of that pit
one wraith who might or might not have been tonsured—
one could not tell, he was so smeared with shit.He bellowed: “You there, why do you stare at me
more than at all the others in this stew?”
And I to him: “Because if memoryServes me, I knew you when your hair was dry.
You were Alessio Interminelli da Lucca.
That’s why I pick you from this filthy fry.”And he then, beating himself on his clown’s head:
“Down to this have the flatteries I sold
the living sunk me here among the dead.” (145)
Yikes. This is a tiny portion of what is contained in this long journey. I could easily write volumes about this book. I think I need to let it all settle before I give it the second (and probably third) reading it deserves.
Under the Persimmon Tree came to me via my 11-year old daughter, who read it earlier this academic year for school. She has recommended the book many times as a choice for the Rock-n-Roll book club, to which we finally acquiesced last month. Written in 2005 by journalist Suzanne Fisher Staples, Under the Persimmon Tree tells the story of two people—an Afghani child named Najmah and a United States (U.S.) born woman named Nusrat —and how they become connected at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan. Both characters have dealt with the horrors of war and attempt to deal with the effects of those horrors at the book’s end.
Since we are all connected on Facebook and Goodreads, I was not surprised when my daughter became aghast that I only gave the book three out of five stars. In her world, the horrors and tribulations experienced by Najmah must have been upsetting. Staples did a fine job at showing children my daughter’s age the disgusting effects of war. The three stars I gave the book are my nod to Staples’ ability to connect with young readers about war, the cultures of Afghanistan & this particular area of Pakistan, and the religion of Islam.
My reluctance to this book a higher rating comes in with the choice to make Nusrat a U.S. citizen. I am not sure why Staples felt the need to do this. Why was it not enough to make this woman either an Afghan or a Pakistani? Why was it necessary to inject a U.S. presence into a situation that was already (and still is today) made difficult by U.S. bombs and policy? It didn’t help my view of the book when Staples forced Nusrat to be some sort of savior to Najmah by offering an ethnocentric U.S. rescue program: Nusrat bringing Najmah back to the U.S. to save her from going back to a devastated homeland.
The long arm of U.S. colonialism and greed extends far into many areas of the world. In my opinion, this book would have done just fine telling this important story without making Nusrat a sort of U.S. savior figure. It would be nice for a change to have our children read stories and histories that are not tainted by the pro-U.S. agenda. Wouldn’t it be something for schools to allow our children to consider, just for a moment, other ways to live, govern, and believe that are not based solely on the notion that the U.S. model is the only viable solution?
The book’s ending did have a redeeming quality because it did not tie up everything into a neat and artificial package. There are questions that remain unanswered and a philosophical quandary put forth by the author at the very end. I am happy that books like this are being considered by schools and read by the children, my issues notwithstanding.
The Power of Myth is a series of conversations between journalist Bill Moyers and mythologist Joseph Campbell that took place in 1985 and 1986. In this remarkable collection, Moyers managed to ask Campbell the right mix of questions to help show Campbell’s rich framework of mythology and spirituality. Campbell, who died in 1987 at the age of 83, was a lifelong scholar in both mythology and comparative religion. This book is a transcript of a six-part documentary that aired on PBS in 1988. I listened to the audio version of the documentary before reading this book.
Campbell believed that the religions and spiritualities of the world throughout the ages told the great myths of humanity. These myths are stories of human experiences with truth, meaning, and significance. Not to be confused with childhood stories and folktales used for entertainment, the myths Campbell talked about are “clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life” which teach you that when you turn inward, you begin to get the message of the symbols (5). The symbols Campbell refered to are found in all of the religions in the form of metaphors. When understood metaphorically, religion then becomes more poetry—the language of the mysterious and transcendent—than prose.
The person who has had a mystical experience knows that all the symbolic expressions of it are faulty. The symbols don’t render the experience, they suggest it. If you haven’t had the experience, how can you know what it is? Try to explain the joy of skiing to somebody living in the tropics who has never seen snow. There has to be an experience to catch the message, some clue—otherwise you are not hearing what is being said. (73)
These experiences are difficult, if not impossible, to convey or explain when using conventional prose. It takes the poetry of metaphor to begin the awakening. However, as Campbell said, the mystical experience is needed to catch the message.
Here is a particularly striking exchange between Campbell and Moyers.
Moyers: But if God is the god we have only imagined, how can we stand in awe of our own creation?Campbell: How can we be terrified by a dream? You have to break past your image of God to get through to the connoted illumination. The psychologist Jung has a relevant saying: “Religion is a defense against the experience of God.”
The mystery has been reduced to a set of concepts and ideas, and emphasizing these concepts and ideas can short-circuit the transcendent, connoted experience. An intense experience of mystery is what one has to regard as the ultimate religious experience.
Moyers: There are many Christians who believe that, to find out who Jesus is, you have to go past the Christian faith, past the Christian doctrine, past the Christian Church—
Campbell: You have to go past the imagined image of Jesus. Such an image of one’s god becomes a final obstruction, one’s ultimate barrier. You hold on to your own ideology, your own little manner of thinking, and when a larger experience of God approaches, an experience greater than you are prepared to receive, you take flight from it by clinging to the image in your mind. This is know as preserving your faith. (262-263)
This is utterly fantastic and, reflecting on my own mystical experiences, was how I broke free of the dark spiritual night and transcended to new experiences of the divine. I had to let go of the conventional spiritual notions to which I was clinging.
