Book Reviews

Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes

Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, N. Y., 1988; hardcover, 194 pages.

Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty's new book Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes is a study of myths from both the West and the East that deal with the mysterious other. According to O'Flaherty, in myths of this type the other is usually represented by strangers, animals, gods, and children. In addition to what these stories tell us about the function of myth in general and about the beliefs of other peoples, O'Flaherty says: "But we also learn things about ourselves by studying these stories. For, as we progress, we may find that we are among the others in other peoples' myths."

O'Flaherty wants to use these myths to shake us, her readers, out of any complacent views we might bold regarding our so-called classical texts of Western civilization. And she goes further, suggesting that these much touted but rarely read classics are actually the texts of a small elite, not the general population.

O'Flaherty is Mircea Eliade Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago and this book is, in part, a response to her colleague at the University of Chicago, Allan loom and his book The Closing of the American Mind. In that book, Bloom states his claim that we still have access to our classics, a point which O'Flaherty denies. She says: "We in the West tend to indulge in two different but related misconceptions about our own classics: we think that our classics are in a sense eternal-forever fixed, frozen in the amber of carefully preserved written documents-and that they provide a shared communal base for all educated members of our culture. But neither of these assumptions is true; our classics are not fixed and eternal, and all of us do not have access to them."

As a noted scholar of classical Indian texts (among her earlier books are The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology and Hindu Myths) Professor O'Flaherty is in a unique position to bring some new light to bear on the discussion of what exactly are the texts of Western civilization.

Along the way she offers challenging insights and tells some truly wonderful stories. For instance, she takes the reader into the intricate world of Indian myths about sacrifice (both animal and human) and uses these myths to bring out the incongruity of the practice of animal sacrifice in Hinduism, a religion which advocates vegetarianism. She uses an old Hassidic tale about the circuitous fulfillment of a rabbi's dream to make one of her main points which is that reading other peoples' classics and myths will help us "re-vision" our own classics and myths precisely because of their differences. In an earlier book, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts, O'Flaherty showed herself to be an adept interpreter of the mythologies of many people by exploring some commonalities in the myths of the ancient Indians, Greeks, and Celts. In this book, she not only attempts to integrate an equally diverse group of myths but to put them into a meaningful context for thoughtful readers.

-Serenity Young

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Living The Therapeutic Touch: Healing as a Lifestyle, by Dolores Krieger, Ph.D., R.N.; Dodd, Mead, and Corn puny, New York, 1987; hardcover, 201 pages.

WORDS TO LIVE BY: Inspirations for Every Day

Eknath Easwaran
Nilgiri Press, Petaluma, CA, 1990; paperback.

The person seeking a background for meditation will find Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live by beneficial. One page-and one page only-is devoted to a spiritual quotation for each day of the calendar year and Easwaran's brief commentary on the quotation.

Most of the readings are extracted from world religions; however, also included are passages of poetry from such diverse notables as William Shakespeare and Francis Thompson. Mahatma Gandhi, who had an immense influence on the thinking of Easwaran, an Indian by birth, is generously represented. Bible passages are numerous, and the writings of Christian mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. Thomas a Kempis appear prominently.

The book is based on daily meditation and the use of the mantram or the Holy Name, areas central to Easwaran's teachings in America since his founding in 1960 of the Blue Mountain Center in Berkeley, California. Among Easwaran's previously published books are Meditation: An Eight-Point Program and Mantram Handbook. The readings emphasize selflessness and also the One Self of which we are all part.

The mantram, or the Holy Name, for most persons will be derived from their religion for its deep personal appeal. The writer recommends its frequent use-as a part of meditation, while walking, while falling asleep, while waiting. Furthermore, Easwaran recommends use of the mantram to curb habits such as smoking, drinking, or drug use.

Emphasis is placed on living in the present, thus releasing oneself from guilt over past action or anxiety about the future. Easwaran asserts that meditation lifts us “out of time into the eternal present.”

Some of the readings deal with death, which Easwaran sees as no struggle when we cease our wanting-of money, of pleasure, of all material things.

He advises that meditation may take a lifetime to learn-a lifetime “well spent.” -and warns against those who offer “instant enlightenment.” But we can aid ourselves in many ways-by exercise, which helps the body to feel light; by resisting cravings for food, smoking, drinking, drugs; by avoiding negative tendencies.

What the reader is likely to gain in working with this book is an increasing feeling of spiritual relationship with the author. In the last passage, that for December 31, the quotation (from St. Augustine) is on “eternal lie,” likening it to “hat moment of illumination  which leaves us breathless” For Easwaran, this is the point at which he is “invisible” from the whole and can use all his capacities to alleviate suffering, to live for others, and therefore “to come to lie.”

-MARY JANE NEWCOMB

Winter 1990

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WAITING FOR THE MARTIAN EXPRESS: Cosmic Visitors, Earth Warriors, Luminous Dreams

Richard Grossinger
North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 1989; paperback.

Richard Grossinger is a New Age Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson in applying the New Journalism to New Age reporting. The present volume is a collection of eighteen of his essays, most previously published but now revised.

These essays range over such “New Age” phenomena as UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors, martial arts, shamanism, a stonework human face on the surface of Mars, holistic health, and symbolic dreams. But a subtext runs through most of Grossinger's writing –a concern about the social problems of our time: the threat of nuclear holocaust, homelessness and poverty, drugs, and child abuse. The tension between these two focuses gives his writing its special quality.

On the one hand, Grossinger seems fascinated with the promise of New Age movements to give cosmic insight and natural harmony to their practitioners. He grooves on Chogyam Trungpa, Gurdjieff, Don Juan Matus, and Da Free John. On the other hand, he recognizes the plastic, feel-good optimism of much of the New Age-the low comedy of initiation by bathing with dolphins and of an Aboriginal shaman who talks like Father Divine. (Does anyone these days remember that proto-flower child, Father Divine?) The New Age as spiritual playtime for the yupper classes is reminiscent of the French nobility under Louis XVI who liked to play at being shepherds and shepherdesses in the gardens of Versailles until the deluge came.

New Age pundits reveal hidden mysteries and cosmic truths above us, but ignore the agonies of the poor and the immorality of the exploiters around us. It is this contrast that hovers ever in the background and sometimes in the forefront of Grossinger's critique of society and the New Age movement. That critique has one villain-narrow-minded intolerance and bigotry-with two main faces: the orthodoxy of scientific materialism and the orthodoxy of religious fundamentalism. But the New Age movement has its own band of true believers with their own brand of salvation, the questioning of which can call forth reactions just as intolerant and bigoted as those of the rationalist or the pietist:

I consider all the present talk (vintage, 1987) about channels, mediums, extraterrestrials, shamanic trances, healing crystals, and chreodes to be relevant and exciting, but I resist being told exactly what any of these things mean, and particularly how they relate on a one-to-one literal basis to our evolution, personal or planetary. Such spiritual  authoritarianism is always someone else's interpretation of their own experience for their own reasons. (158)

Such rejection of external authority is in the great esoteric tradition-but it is fruitless unless joined to a realization of internal truth.

Grossinger's command of New Age movements is impressively broad, but correspondingly shallow. His prose is poetic but sometimes consists of little more than New Age name-dropping. He is fascinated by the externals of the New Age movement and intuits the enduring inner reality that the dumb outer show of New Age business masks as much as it reveals:

...the world must change according to esoteric principles at its core. But the marketed
New Age is at best a series of well-meaning simplifications and at worst a hustle and a fraud made possible by those simplifications. It is the marketing of the New Age, the invention of attractive mirages, the promulgation of cliches, that this book addresses. A true cultural and spiritual revival is our only hope. (12)

Grossinger, however, offers no clue about where to look for that hope and revival. He alternates between attraction to New Age promises and the stance of the New Journalism, with its curious blend of amused objectivity and gonzo responses. What he lacks is an integrating vision to make sense of the pain of phenomenal living and the bliss of numinous experience. The first is foreign to New Agers; the second, to New Journalists. The result is a hollowness at the core of things:

We live among ghosts and chimeras; yet something alive is addressing us from a locale we have recognized only as Void. It may have been addressing us forever. We do not know what it is. I repeat-despite claims of Mayan prophecy and bodies of Martians in the White House, despite trance visits to golden cities and radar backings of UFOs, predicted earthquakes and second comings-we do not know what is happening to w we do not even know who we have been.. . . But if we buy the New Age with its superficially glamorous sideshows, we may miss a marvelous phenomenon; in fact, we may miss our own  evolution. (155)

Grossinger offers no direction to travel, but a useful warning against detours along the way.

-JOHN ALGEO

Winter 1990

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