Book Reviews

The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky

 by Colin Wilson
Aquarian Press, Harper Collins, 1993; paperback.

Colin Wilson's latest in his series of short biographies of the “greats” of alternative thought in the twentieth century is a critical but sensitive exploration of the life and work of one of that group's most important figures, the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky. This is an extremely readable attempt to make up for Ouspensky's status as an unsung genius.

Ouspensky is best known as the diligent but dry expositor of “The Work,” the system of self-development taught by the legendary George Gurdjieff. Wilson's thoughtful account is a much needed counterweight to this assessment, and goes far in establishing Ouspensky as a powerful thinker in his own right. As in other books in this series - Wilson's biographies of Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley, C. G. Jung, and Rudolf Steiner - the author's aim is twofold: to draw out the essential genius of his subject, but also to point out where Wilson feels he went wrong. If you are a reader of Ouspensky who cannot imagine him making a mistake, then Wilson's book is perhaps not for you. But if you are intrigued by the lives of complex characters who areas fascinating for their mistakes as for their deep insights, then this book should prove captivating.

Wilson's thesis that “even if he had never met Gurdjieff, Ouspensky would have been one of the most interesting thinkers of the twentieth century,” is based on two works, the exhilarating pre-Gurdjieff Tertium Organum (1912) and the chapter on “Experimental Mysticism” in New Model of the Universe, which Wilson believes to be “the fullest description” of mystical consciousness “on record.”

Those earlier works have an infectious enthusiasm and love of ideas that the later ones lack. Wilson asks the quest ion: What happened to the poetic philosopher who believed that “a new humanity” was near at hand, to change him into a puritanical, sometimes pedantic teacher of “the System”?

Two things, Wilson argues: Ouspensky's own romantic pessimism, and its tragic exacerbation by his meeting with Gurdjieff. Wilson concludes from an analysis of works such as The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin and the collection of stories Talks with a Devil, that Ouspensky suffered from a common complaint among late nineteenth and early twentieth century romantics: “world rejection.”

Wilson believes Ouspensky had already glimpsed the “secret” in Tertium Organum, that the book is full of insights, of the essence of “higher consciousness,” the Holy Grail for which he searched all his life. Indeed, according to Wilson, Ouspensky would have followed these insights to their logical conclusion if it hadn't been for one thing: meeting Gurdjieff. Wilson contends that Gurdjieff's pessimistic philosophy resonated too well with Ouspensky's world rejection. The last thing Ouspensky needed, Wilson argues, was a doctrine emphasizing what was wrong with human beings and that hammered away at their weakness.

Wilson’s account is commendable for its unbiased view of the temperamental differences between the two men; it is salutary to find a writer unafraid to say that they were simply very different kinds of men, and that the romantic intellectual Ouspensky would sooner or later have to cut himself off from the Zorba-like man’s man, Gurdjieff. Saddening, however, is Wilson's account of Ouspensky's last years as a heavy- drinking, lonely teacher of “the Work.”

Wilson himself has tackled the problem of “sleep” Ouspensky's nemesis –in various ways for nearly forty years. One difference between his approach and that of “the Work” is that he begins with the cheery belief that things are not as bad as Ouspensky and Gurdjieff believed, and that an optimistic outlook coupled with a capacity for intentional perception - i.e., attention- can work wonders. We may not agree with his analysis of Ouspensky's, and indeed Gurdjieff’s, failure, but we should certainly not ignore it, nor his tribute to one of the most exciting thinkers of our time.

-GARY LACHMAN

Great Song: The Life and Teachings of Joe Miller

edited with an introduction by Richard Power
Maypop Press, 196 Westview Drive, Athens, GA 30606; paperback, 200 pages.

This remarkable book tells the story of a true American mystic, his travels through life, and his interpretations of teachings from many of the world's great religions. Joe Miller was a simple and profound man, a Theosophist, Sufi, Zen master, minister, but more importantly a friend.

The book is a distillation of the many lectures Joe gave at the San Francisco Lodge of the Theosophical Society, or on his famous Thursday walks in Golden Gate Park, when he and his wife Guin would be joined typically by dozens of people, and on holidays by hundreds. It is a beautiful tapestry of Miller's life experiences, including meetings with Annie Besant and W. Y. Bvans-wentz.

In his introduction to the book, Richard Power wrote, “Joe was an authentic American revolutionary of the spirit…He had no formal education beyond the eighth grade. He held no hierarchical posit ion in any religious organization. Joe didn't publish any books or write any articles for prestigious reviews. He didn't 'travel the national lecture circuit. Joe had no videos to market, and he didn't organize seminars…He spoke for free, and he would talk to anyone who was interested.”

Joe was deeply influenced by the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. He often spoke of realization and various states of consciousness. There is commentary on the Sutra of Hui-Neng and the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. “The Great Liberation is something that you individually find out and work with yourself,” Joe said. “Not by going with out, but by going within…you have to find that reality with in yourselves.”

He would advise, “I tell people to keep a little place, just 10% inside your heart and know that little place doesn't belong to anybody, just God and you have access to it.”

And he would say, “The truth IS, nobody can say it. You've got to BE it! You've got to live it. That's Sufism, that's Theosophy, that’s Christianity, that's Vedanta, Zen, Buddhism. Whatever name you want to put on it, you have to feel the at-one-ment with the reality.”

And, “It 's all a Oneness in reality, all the different things are but the divisions of the lower levels of your consciousness, which you can understand if you come into awareness. We live in a world of duality and we have to learn to see through that duality. How can we see the Oneness if we're running one way or another? Whether it's money or energy, we say, ‘Oh, I gotta get to this, I gotta get to that.' But can we look at it and see that it's just two side s of one thing. Look at it all from the standpoint of equilibrium of the middle path.”

The book packs a punch. Joe was never one to be at a loss for words. He talks about Sufism, Jesus and Muhammad, spiritual practices, marriage, sex, love, the bhakti path, Theosophy, spiritual hierarchy, psychic experiences, the River meditation, the Six Rules of Tilopa, and more. There is something in this for everyone: humor, warmth, and simple discussion of some very complex teachings. Most of all, it contains the essence of one man who incorporated spiritual teachings into his own life, and lived love, deeply and fully. “We're not pushing a religion,” he would say, “we're pushing compassion.”

-PEGGY TAHIR

Winter 1993

Islands of the Dawn: The Story of Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand

by Robert S. Ellwood; University of Hawaii Press, 1993; hardcover.

New Zealand is in many ways a conservative land, both politically and culturally, with a reputation for being more English than England. Yet since its settlement by the British in the 1850s and 1860s, it has -been a fertile breeding ground for religious movements that are alternatives to the conventional churches of European culture. For example, in proportion to the total population, Theosophists are about twenty-five times more numerous in New Zealand than they a re in the United States and have included such local worthies as Sir Harry Atkinson, Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Islands of the Dawn treats this anomaly of spiritual radicalism in a conservative land by describing alternative movements both historically and contemporarily in New Zealand and by analyzing the cultural and historical forces that have led to their prominence there. The author, Robert S. Ellwood, professor of religion at the University of Southern California, has written widely and authoritatively on alternative spirituality in such book s as Many People, Many Faiths and Alternative Altars. He also has the rare gift of combining objectivity with a sense of participation and sympathy, expressed in engaging prose.

The first chapter, “From Nineveh to New Zealand,” is a condensed but very readable overview of the history of alternative spirituality from its European backgrounds, focusing on Freemasonry, Swedenborg, Mesmer, Spiritualism, and the Theosophical Society. Thereafter separate Chapters treat Spiritualism with special attention to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; UFO-ism; Theosophy; other esoteric or Theosophically related groups (Co-Freemasonry, the Liberal Catholic Church, the Krishnamurti Foundation: Anthroposophy, Alice Bailey's Arcane School, I Am Activity, Summit lighthouse, a New Zealand movement called Beeville, and Builders of the Adytum); and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn with its offshoots.

An appendix deals with smaller, 1960s and later alternative groups of four types. First a re Western and Islamic initiatory bodies; next, Eastern , mainly Hindu and Buddhist , organizations; third, some politically active groups like the Moonies and British Israel, as well as apolitical New Thought groups; and finally, neopagan and women's spirituality groups.

The ferment of alternative spirituality in a small, culturally homogenous and conservative land like New Zealand begs for explanation. And Ellwood supplies it. By analyzing the reception of long-standing alternative-spirituality groups, like Spiritualism and Theosophy, in New Zealand, he arrives at a cultural profile that seems valid also for other times and places.

Like the United States, New Zealand is a “denominational society,” that is, in contrast to a monopolistic society like Spain or Iran, religion is the concern of a number of competing churches which minister primarily to the needs of their members and none of which has responsibility for or authority over the nation as a whole. Denominational societies are pluralistic and, willy-nilly, tolerant, thus allowing new groups to find a place in society and become part of the accepted establishment.

Unlike the United State s, whose eighteenth-century foundation gave it the birthmark of a rational, individualistic, empirical society, New Zealand was a mid-Victorian creation, reflecting Romanticism, nostalgia for the past, secular utopian ism and philanthropy, and populist reformism. The latter Zeitgeist is particularly open to mysticism and spiritual experimentation. It is notable that the area of the United States in which those characteristics are strongest is the Pacific Coast, settled heavily by Anglos at about the same time as New Zealand. Another difference is that, whereas parts of the United States were founded on religious motives and its population remains one of the church-goingest in the world, New Zealand was settled by working-class persons already alienated from the Church. They were culturally homogenous and faced no cultural threat in the new land from which they needed to be protected by the support of a church community. Their background was largely Anglican or Presbyterian, churches that did not play the same central role in the lives of their members as Baptist and early Congregational.

These factors-an open ness to new foundations, a penchant for spiritual experimentation, a hankering back to ancient forms, and a lack of vita l organized religion - inclined New Zealanders to embrace alternative forms of spirituality with an enthusiasm greater than that found in most other lands. Ellwood (pp. 198-99) has identified eleven factors from the time of New Zealand's settlement that have inclined its people to alternative spirituality. Most of them apply also to the western United States.

It is noteworthy that a similar spirituality has developed in Australasia and the Pacific coast of America, just those places where Theosophical tradition says a new stock of humanity, with a new culture and spiritual outlook, is destined to arise. New Zealand , the islands closest to the international dateline, where a new day first dawns, may therefore be also a paradigm of the dawn of a new humanity.

-JOHN ALGEO

Autumn 1993

Meister Eckhart: The Mystic as Theologian

by Robert K. C. Forman, Ph.D
Element, Rockport, Mass., 1991; paperback.

Johannes Eckhart , born in 1260 in Hocheim, Germany, is widely considered the greatest German mystic of the medieval .era. He was a Dominican who studied in Cologne, where the influence of Thomas Aquinas was great. Eckhart held influential appointment s in Dominican strongholds and taught theology in Paris and elsewhere, acquiring an exceedingly broad following. While in Paris he attained a master's degree and thenceforth was known as Meister Eckhart . He became a popular preacher and spiritual guide, teaching in the churches and convents along the Rhine.

Due in part apparently to his immense popularity, Eckhart, in his sixtieth year, just after being called to a professorship in Cologne, was charged by the archbishop with heresy for so-called pantheistic and antinomian passages or statements. Eckhart traveled to the papal palace in Avignon to appeal to the Pope, but before action was taken Eckhart died.

Robert K. C. Forman's aim is to interpret Eckhart's mystical experiences clearly and precisely, by following the growth and development of his mystical life, and by analyzing his percept ion of the mystical experience from with in. He addresses the question, " If I were under your tutelage, Master Eckhart , what might I be expected to experience and what significance would it have?"

In placing Eckhart in historical context, Forman states that mysticism, both in the East and the West, has tended to arise during periods of social disorder. In Eckhart's time there was a turning away, because of the rise of urban life and resultant changes in the needs of the people, from the extensive institutions in favor of new spiritual satisfaction within; and mysticism was "in the air."

Forman devotes the entire central portion of the book (five chapters) to a systematic textual -study of Eckhart's references to the mystical stages. He discerns a consistent pattern in the texts - a turning away from the ordinary and the transcient toward the divine. In a chapter on "The Transformation Process" he compares Eckhart's steps with the contemporary psychotherapeutic tradition-the "letting go" of attachments.

The Rapture, or temporary mystical experience (Gezucket) - a stillness in which no thought occurred - is the identical state described by other Christian writers such as St. Paul and St. Augustine. To Forman, this state of consciousness is significant as an initial step leading to the Birth (Geburt) of God in the individual, progressing next to the Breakthrough (Durchbruch). These were to Eckhart the primary foci of the mystical experience.

Birth (unlike the Rapture, a permanent state) required the detachment from all else-an interpretation that Forman finds agreed upon by Eckhart scholars before him. The Birth led to the experiencing of "an intimate coalescence" between God and the soul. The Breakthrough was the advanced mystical experience described by Eckhart, beginning with the internalization of God. Forman perceives this as the ultimate state that "crowns and perfects" the Birth.

The mystical journey to Eckhart was a process of steady spiritual evolution and personal discovery. Forman considers the Breakthrough as experienced by Eckhart to be a "truly novel form" of experience the advanced mystical experience going beyond all distinctions between the self and all creatures and the Godhead. The translation of Eckhart's words on the experience are: " Here God bids all perfections to enter the soul."

Forman finds Eckhart leaning more heavily on Neoplatonic meaning than on Christian trinitarianism and cites passages in specific sermons. Yet he finds the real thrust of Eckhart's teaching on the unity of the trinitarian God as centered on the Son- the Imago Dei-and the Son's birth in the soul, with the Son as the archetype for man.

In summarizing Eckhart's theological system, Forman finds a "systematic world view" in a paradigm that is informed by and accounts for, the steps that may occur in the religious life. The author has at the same time succeeded in this scholarly work in his efforts to clarify the pathway of interior transformation set forth in Eckhart's works.

-MARY JANE NEWCOMB

Summer 1993