Chidambaram Ramesh
New Delhi, India: New Age Publishing, 2023. 247 pp., hardcover, $41.
In the field of metaphysical and spiritual book publishing, there is a certain category of books that are seemingly popular with readers, but which present a challenge to reviewers. A case in point is the volume before me: Embodied Imaginations. It is published by New Age Publishing, an imprint of Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House, in New Delhi, India, in a beautifully printed and bound hardcover edition, which is proof positive that the publishing industry in the subcontinent has achieved a level of production and design quality fully equal to that of North America, Europe, and China.
Make no mistake. This is a handsome book that is a pleasure to hold in one’s hands and read from page to page of crisply printed text on high-quality paper stock.
Moreover, the book’s subject—the phenomenon of fictional or imaginary characters taking on a life of their own (although usually relegated to the marginal realm of the paranormal)—can be fascinating, as the many reports and anecdotes collected here demonstrate.
So what exactly is the problem that so many books like this present? It is, sadly, that heaps of anecdotal incidents and brief quotes from hundreds of other authors or writers do not result in a sum that is greater than its parts. Instead, with a minimum of connective threading, one is led from one odd tale to another, as if the sheer agglomeration of these tidbits amounts to conclusive proof of . . . something.
In the case of Ramesh’s Embodied Imaginations, I was enticed by the many accounts of authors experiencing the apparent autonomy of their characters and the sensation of their books being written by a creative power greater than themselves. Having experienced this uncanny feeling myself, I was eager for an intelligent discussion of what might lie behind it. But the structure of the book seemed to consist of the adding on of example upon example, from this angle and that, without a deeper consideration of their ultimate meaning or implications about our universe and human consciousness. To quote from one representative passage from the book at hand
"In her spiritualist work, There is No Death (1892), Florence Marryat often alludes to mediums and spirit manifestations regarding artistic talent. Similarly, during Victor Hugo’s exile in Jersey, he reportedly talked with Shakespeare, Plato, Hannibal, Rousseau, Galileo, Sir Walter Scott, and Jesus, gaining insights he felt obligated to share with humanity. Machiavelli is said to have had imaginary dinner conversations with ancient poets and historical figures such as Moses, Romulus, and Theseus. Oliver Napoleon Hill, an American self-help author, admitted to having received his inspiration from a council of 33 ‘invisible masters’. Blavatsky distinguished between her own works and the few parts ascribed to spirits. For almost twenty years, [Jane] Roberts channeled an entity [calling] himself “Seth” and produced an extensive body of writings comprising more than 30 volumes collectively known as the Seth material.”
There is nothing wrong with such a succession of examples, I suppose, but to have chapter after chapter packed with them, without much of a building argument or an inclusive theory, is more like an anthology of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” cartoons than a serious consideration of parapsychological phenomena.
Ramesh drew upon a wide variety of sources and religious traditions, but the book ultimately seemed to be a compendium of anecdotes and not a whole lot more. Rather than drawing me into a stream of thought that seemed to build upon itself and move me forward toward an insightful conclusion, I felt that all the researched material was more or less of the same second- and third-hand quality, and treated as of equal weight.
In the book’s brief conclusion, the following passage illustrates the shortcomings of what is surveyed and learned:
“We saw enough evidence to believe that the repeated and concentrated mental images develop hologram-like three-dimensional replicas that hover above our heads. While they are not discernible to the human eye, mystics and psychics with trained senses may see them. These thought forms comprise what Henri Corbin referred to as immaterial matter. In the Intermediate Realm of the Imagination, these portrayals are as real as the earth itself. When one’s creative energy reaches a critical level, their thoughts and ideas materialise into the physical world, where their forms may be seen with the naked eye. This mental-to-physical transfer may occur through a mechanism that modern science has not yet discovered.”
To this reviewer, this reads like a heaping portion of assumptions that are taken to be true because they appeared in print, while their plausibility is left to scientific discoveries not yet made.
Colin Wilson, the prolific author who wrote numerous overviews of occult and psychological topics, at least felt obliged to draft plausible explanations for the mysteries he considered. I just wish that more writers in this vein would do the same.
Despite my initial high hopes, I came away from Embodied Imaginations with the feeling that the book, though well researched and clearly written, was no better (although no worse) than too many other New Age books from any number of American publishers. It was a mile wide and an inch deep.
Jay Kinney