Book Reviews

The Ethics of Oneness: Emerson, Whitman, and the Bhagavad Gita

Jeremy David Engels
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2021. 265 pp., paper, $27.50.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the nineteenth-century’s great American philosophers, and Walt Whitman, whose poetry was beloved by so many in that day and this, are connected by Jeremy David Engels in his latest book, The Ethics of Oneness: Emerson, Whitman, and the Bhagavad Gita.

As Engels notes in his introduction, “Neither Emerson nor Whitman makes a case for oneness. Oneness is. The one, the oversoul, the all: this is an a priori for Emerson, and the mystical root center of Whitman’s poetry.”

Certainly Engels touches on a subject that permeates many religious and spiritual presentations in today’s world, but I’ve often wondered whether those who speak of it so vociferously really know what they’re talking about.

In his famous essay “The Over-Soul,” Emerson mentions “that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other.” In developing ideas like this, Emerson drew upon the Eastern philosophies he found in the Bhagavad Gita. Indeed his embrace of these philosophies resulted in his dismissal from giving commencement addresses at Harvard Divinity School.

Learning to recognize that oversoul in one another becomes our task, and it can be aided by Emerson’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita. As Engels put it, “If we are devoted to oneness, we will talk to every person we meet as though they are an avatar of the divine, a walking, talking god on earth who is sacred and demands the utmost reverence.”

How do we mesh our idea of oneness with that of diversity, which society makes so much about today? Emerson and Whitman diverge in this regard. Emerson’s view of oneness was found “through the lens of nondualistic advaita Vendanta,” Engels points out. Whitman was the more mystical of the two men. His philosophy of oneness “was much closer in spirit to Bhedabheda Vedanta, a philosophy that charts a middle path between Vedantic dualism (dvaita) and nondualism (advaita) by incorporating elements of both.” 

Engels adds, “Whitman recognizes and celebrates diversity—and this leads to a second divergence from Emerson,” for whom “oneness is an ontological state to be discovered, whereas for Whitman oneness is also an ontological reality that individuals can and ought to reproduce through their speech and action in the broken, zugzwang world that we have created for ourselves.” (Zugzwang is a situation in chess and other games wherein one player is put at a disadvantage by his obligation to make a move.)

Emerson has opinions, as many of his essays elucidate quite clearly, especially in essays such as “Self-Reliance” and “Fourierism and the Socialists.” Engels observes that “Whitman’s poetry is inclusive and cosmic in a way that Emerson’s rhetoric is not.”

To speak of oneness—a divine oneness—requires humility and inclusion. Whitman “rhapsodizes a ‘spirituality’ and ‘theology’ that is common to ‘humankind’ (and not just ‘mankind’); his is a oneness of the ‘All’ that rests on ‘the idea of All.’” Whitman “styled himself a prophet of cosmic democracy,” notes Engels, in that the “purpose of democracy is to facilitate rapport . . . of being at one with the universe and all beings.”

That’s a big pill for most of us to swallow, especially in this time of political separation and conflict, and Engels does not avoid that question in his chapter “Democracy.”

“Diversity is real, but absolute separation is an illusion,” he reminds us. “We are one.” Most importantly, we need to be aware that “the ethics of oneness cannot be an ethics of sameness,” he adds. “Whitman is at his best when he refuses to collapse differences into sameness, when he recognizes that others’ experiences are incommensurate even though they share the same divine scaffolding.”

Legislated diversity, as promoted today, often seems ironically to exclude many differences, some of which are even the targets of a new-found discrimination. Whitman, given his metaphysical ideal of oneness, may not have approved of this tack, as his “philosophy of oneness did not actively seek to erase differences; instead it sought to sanctify all lives in order to avoid the active exclusions and dehumanization of whole groups of Americans,” writes Engels.

Engels addresses the New Thought movement that arose during the lifetime of Emerson and Whitman, especially its spiritual engagement with Emerson and thus with the Bhagavad Gita. Emerson, says Engels, “taught a ‘law of mutuality’ that boiled down to the basic lesson: ‘There is but one.’”

New Thought is steeped in Emerson’s philosophy and Transcendentalism. In a 1959 talk, for example, Ernest Holmes, founder of the New Thought movement called Science of Mind, quoted him as saying, “There is one mind common to all men.”

Oneness can be a difficult concept to grasp in this dualistic level of consciousness. As this book suggests, oneness must be seen as harmony among differences, much like playing a piano, on which eighty-eight different keys with eighty-eight different tones, when played in synchrony, create a beautiful harmony. Engels does a masterful job of showing us how these two great nineteenth-century philosophers—one a mystical poet, the other a prolific essayist—created new ways of looking at early American life from the point of view of Eastern spiritual traditions.

---

Clare Goldsberry’s latest book, The Illusion of Life and Death, will be published in 2021 by Monkfish.

---

 

---

Compiled by C.V. Agarwal and Pedro Oliveira
N.p.: Olive Tree, 2021. 590 pp., paper, $35.

Annie Wood Besant’s life would be worth chronicling even if she had never discovered Theosophy. Chafing under the restrictions on a conservative English minister’s wife, the young Besant set out on her own, becoming a writer on radical causes, a famed and controversial orator for Britain’s National Secular Society, and an advocate for legal birth control. This final stance nearly ended with her incarceration, as she was tried for obscenity for assisting in the publication of a text on the subject, and was only released on a technicality.

Only emboldened by the experience, Besant threw herself into the labor movement, organizing the so-called “matchgirls’ strike” over work and health conditions at a major London match manufacturer. In 1888, Besant was elected to the citywide London School Board, topping the candidate list, even though few women had the vote in England at that time.

One year later, Besant was asked to review The Secret Doctrine for a London newspaper, and her fascinating life was transformed yet again.

In Annie Besant in India, C.V. Agarwal and Pedro Oliveira examine in detail Besant’s life following her first exposure to Theosophy and the meeting with H.P. Blavatsky that came shortly thereafter. Besant joined the Theosophical Society just three weeks after meeting Blavatsky, and within three years was representing the TS at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.

The last four decades of Besant’s life were devoted to the twin causes of Theosophy and India. In addition to assuming the presidency of the TS in 1907, Besant became a vocal advocate of Indian home rule, spending time in internment for her stance. She served as president of the Indian National Congress, and was a valued associate of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. She founded the Central Hindu College, which became the heart of Banaras Hindu University, a major institution that exists to this day. And, of course, she mentored Jiddu Krishnamurti.

An exploration of Besant’s India period is overdue, but Annie Besant in India is only partially successful. It is telling that Agarwal and Oliveira say they “compiled” the text rather than wrote or edited it, since it consists primarily of lengthy excerpts from other sources: Besant’s own speeches and journals, the recollections of other Theosophists, newspaper coverage, and testimonials about Besant.

These texts are well worth collecting, and Agarwal and Oliveira have provided a great service. The book is essentially a compendium of research on Besant, which will be of great use to scholars and students. However, while there is some original text to tie these pieces together, there are too few of them, and they rarely dig into the details. There is a great deal of material documenting the split between Adyar and the supporters of William Q. Judge, for instance, but Agarwal and Oliveira do little to explain it beyond the document dump. The controversy over C.W. Leadbeater is barely explored.

Even so, Agarwal and Oliveira have accomplished something of great importance with Annie Besant in India. Besant’s life was exceptional and varied, and hard to encapsulate. (A two-volume biography from the 1960s went so far as to break her eighty-five years on this earth into nine “lives.”) It has been a generation since the last significant Besant biography. Annie Besant in India will be invaluable to whoever writes the next one.

Peter Orvetti

Peter Orvetti is a political writer and editor residing in Washington, D.C.

---

The Miracle Month: Thirty Days to a Revolution in Your Life / The Miracle Habits: The Secret of Turning Your Moments into Miracles

Mitch Horowitz
Both books case-bound, 215 and 263 pps. respectively. New York: Gildan Media, 2020–21, $30 each.

Don’t get too flummoxed by the word “miracle” in the latest books by TS member Mitch Horowitz. On the first page of The Miracle Habits, he defines it as “a fortuitous event or circumstance that exceeds all conventional expectation.” We’ve all had those moments, but perhaps didn’t pay too much attention to them. Horowitz’s aim, I believe, is to help us learn to be more aware of these moments and use them as guides in life.

These books can serve as companions to each other, offering mutually supportive ideas. Neither book requires any particular insight into religion or spiritual tradition, and both contain a big helping of American philosophy from two of my favorites: Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James.

If Alcoholics Anonymous offers a Twelve-Step program for self-development, Horowitz takes it one step further, with thirteen steps in The Miracle Habits, designed to help you gain “personal power,” “cultivate providence,” and realize “epic performance.”

The Miracle Month offers thirty days of exercises to begin each; a program to alter the way you think and help you recognize and remove the barriers to self-development and personal power. He begins with an exercise that seemed rather odd to me: ridding yourself of an overabundance of clothing. (I was suddenly glad I’d just taken a large bag of clothes to Goodwill—I was a step ahead of the game!) Instead, consciously pick the attire that creates the image you want to project. Perhaps clothes do make the man (or woman), as we’ve heard said.

This exercise corresponds to the second habit in The Miracle Habits: create your total environment, including how you dress and look; create your image; “own who you are,” as Horowitz states. Find your path—not the path of some teacher, preacher or guru, but what “expresses the self.”

Each of the thirty daily exercises in The Miracle Month is designed to help us become more aware and face the daily challenges that we have all encountered. One of the biggies is anger: either being angry or dealing with an angry person. Writing from his own experience as an angry person, Horowitz encourages us to “face your anger.” He notes that (and as I’ve learned through studying Buddhism) most anger is rooted in fear: “Fear is probably the trigger for most angry or destructive emotions.” We need to consider that fact both in ourselves and in angry people we may encounter.

Horowitz asks important questions such as the one we’re asked to contemplate on day 8: “What do you want?” Do we know what we really want? Sometimes we think we do, but he urges us to clarify our aim by writing down “that one overarching non-negotiable thing, that one core aim that you desire like breath itself. Search yourself. It is there.”

That is similar to the first habit: unwavering focus. “Choose a Definite Chief Aim (DCA) for which you feel passion,” writes Horowitz. “To bring something into actuality, you must know and be focused on precisely what you want. And you must pursue the wished-for condition with absolute focus and single-minded purpose.”

Often in our search for happiness, we find that we are trapped in suffering, that we are even addicted to suffering. Horowitz asks on day 26’s exercise, “Do you enjoy suffering?” He is straightforward about this issue: “The greatest barrier to your happiness is often the secret pleasure that you derive from suffering.” Often people like their suffering so much that they have a difficult time walking away from it.

Horowitz’s exercise for day 13 is “give up one thing that causes you pain.” (He gave up Facebook, which sounds like a pretty good idea!) And it prepares us for contemplating whether we actually enjoy suffering, and if we do, why. 

Sometimes the people around us—coworkers, relatives, a spouse—cause us pain. In both books, Horowitz emphatically tells us to “escape cruelty” (day 16) and “get away from cruel people” (habit 6). People who suck the life out of you with barbs of passive-aggressive or hostile behavior aren’t worth being around. “Often it is vital, first and foremost, to physically separate from cruel or depleting people,” said Horowitz. “You do not have to be around cruel people” (italics his).

Horowitz refers to some good philosophical reading. He calls upon Emerson frequently, especially his essay on karma, “Compensation,” which Horowitz says is his “personal creed,” and “Self-Reliance,” an essay that “deeply influenced” Horowitz in “matters of self-verification.” I would recommend reading these two essays to understand how Emerson’s philosophy, along with that of William James, influenced Horowitz’s life.

New Thought writers have also shaped Horowitz’s philosophy, including Neville Goddard and Napoleon Hill, from whom Horowitz quotes often. Sun Tzu’s Art of War provides insight into conflict (something we all face) and winning. “Select a conflict,” advises Horowitz. “Surrender, back down, walk away—it has its advantages and also rids you of needing to be right or winning . . . lost battles are sometimes quietly won battles.” 

In the seventh habit, “Choose your comrades,” Horowitz tells us that our choice of companions is the “most critical decision in life.” He advises, “Never settle for low company.”

Ultimately, guidebooks on self-development provide insight into how someone else’s experience helped shape their life. They inspire us to develop a practice (which I believe is what Horowitz is encouraging us to do) that gives us a new perspective on our own miracle moments. Life can be as easy or as difficult as we make it: it’s up to us. The world “out there” is merely a reflection of our world “in here.” If we change the world in here, the world out there may look a lot different, and might become more peaceful and easier to navigate.

---

Clare Goldsberry’s latest book, The Illusion of Life and Death, will be published in 2021 by Monkfish.

---

A Healer’s Journey to Intuitive Knowing: The Heart of Therapeutic Touch

Dolores Krieger  
Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Co., 2021. 272 pp., paper, $20.

Dr. Dolores Krieger’s life’s work was the deep inquiry into the healing modality of Therapeutic Touch (TT), which she created with Dora Kunz. This book, Krieger’s last before her death, explores the perspective of the healer during the healing moment. Through her findings, one begins to see a paradigm forming regarding the future of healing, consciousness, and TT.

Dr. Krieger interviews, documents, and analyzes data from numerous long practiced healers. She unites her own self-inquiry with that of these individuals and presents a possible tool for navigating present-day challenges: a mindset of inquiry, linked to the practice of TT.

When one develops an ongoing mindset of inquiry in regard to TT, it becomes a tool used for self-inquiry, reflection, and a way to make meaning of one’s experiences. She relates it to sentience, the power of perception by the senses, rather than by structured logic. As the book notes, she created a series of questions to stimulate a deep inquiry, requiring a conscious awareness of the experience of TT. It is a way of creating experiential knowledge.

David Spangler notes in his foreword that Dr. Krieger’s work with TT has given us a holistic tool that “honors who we are as inhabitants of the world in its wholeness, and not just as physical beings.”

This book begins with an eloquent description of the experiential findings of TT practice, developed over the last fifty years by Dr. Krieger and Dora Kunz. Dr. Krieger states, “The crux of this mode of healing is that Therapeutic Touch facilitates vital-energy (pranic flow) by bringing order to dysfunctional physical and psychodynamic systems of sentient beings.”

Dr. Krieger goes on to say that healing in TT is a humanization of energy that conveys order and compassion to body systems that are fatigued, in trauma, imbalanced, in a state of disrepair, or in final transition.

Two research studies are presented, titled “Looking over My Shoulder” and “Healing at a Distance.” Healers were asked to describe the experience of moving through the many shifts in consciousness that occur during their practice of TT. The study explores the impact on healers’ subtle energy fields and on their lives when they consciously enter into a state of peace and maintaining it as they reach deeper toward a connection with the inner Self. The studies reveal the changes that have occurred within these healers. In addition, Dr. Krieger explores the healers’ impetus for continuing on with this “heroic pursuit.”

The TT community has been waiting for this book. Since TT’s inception, many aspects of it have seemed a mystery. The founders’ rigorous study throughout the years, combined with the findings described in this book, provide many answers.

The following excerpts from the book, which are direct statements by Dr. Krieger, give the reader a glimpse into some of her findings.

It is my personal impression that at the core of Therapeutic Touch lies the challenge of confronting one’s own being . . . healing is a conscious, full engagement of the Inner Self in the compassionate interest of someone who is ill, in trauma, or in energy deficit.

The Inner Self is essentially the soul—the spiritual or innermost part of individual’s being. It is the yearning for self-realization, and it is the impetus for this yearning that carries the therapist to another level of consciousness where awareness of the Inner Self acquires a reality of its own. It is in the process of consciously integrating her Inner Self into the daily routines of her life that the therapist becomes aware that there is not just one reality; that there are multiple realities depending upon the aspect of consciousness on which she chooses to focus. It is in the integrating of these multiple realities that the illumination may click! on [sic].           

Of prime importance was the growing realization that the verbal expression of healing strongly depended on experiential knowledge based on sentience—the power of perception by the senses rather than structured logic—to articulate clearly this world of interiority, a profound, far-reaching realm into which the student is plunged as she follows a personal commitment to support those who arouse her compassion . . . The language of this profound experience is richly multitasked and multilayered, sentient and proprioceptive, intuitive and instinctive, intentional and willful, and subject to uncommon and unusual hints and hunches about the possible.

[The healer] is in the impersonal space where she may become a clear instrument for the universal healing field and remain detached from the outcome. This finely tuned state creates a singular atmosphere that allows the Inner Self to commune with the therapist and enter her daily activities.

As the quest for self realization deepens and the therapist’s practice of TT continues and becomes full fledged, she finds that her frequent TT practice invites a psychological and spiritual transformation.

This book inspires one to explore the subtle energies around us, search for meaning, and find the wisdom that lives within the deeper reaches of one’s inner Self. Dr. Krieger believed that TT would continue to evolve in order to meet the needs of a high-tech future. At the close of her book, she says, “In my ninety-seventh year, I am confident that the future consciousness of Therapeutic Touch is in very capable hands.”

Marilyn Johnston-Svoboda

The reviewer is a retired professor of nursing and the credentialing trustee of Therapeutic Touch International Associates. She has been a teacher and practitioner of Therapeutic Touch for over forty years. Her teachers were Dora Kunz and Dolores Krieger. She currently teaches and maintains a private practice.

---