Quest Magazine

Son of Man

By Andrew Harvey
Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 1998. Four audio cassettes.

Andrew Harvey's reconstruction presents the historical Jesus in a manner that simultaneously invigorates and disturbs Christians. Harvey enlists the mystical tradition within Christianity and his own analysis of the Gospel materials in a myth-clearing process that eliminates centuries-old distortions and corruptions in an attempt to restore the historical figure. Harvey's treatment never diminishes the enormous significance ascribed to Jesus; instead Jesus is interpreted as infinitely important. Some critics, however, will view Harvey's book as unreasonably conservative and inconsistent with the finest: contemporary biblical scholarship.

January/February 2001

Outposts of the Spirit

By William M. Justice
Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2000. Paper, xxiv +213 pages.

When he was a young man, William M. Justice read about a journalist's out-of-body experience. Galvanized by the opening of a "new thought-world," Justice spent the rest of his life exploring nonordinary reality. Outposts of the Spirit is the fruit of his investigations.

Over the years, Justice, who died in 1985, encountered numerous spiritual adventurers, including Albert: Einstein, C. S. Lewis, and Edgar Cayce, as well as psychic researchers and a multitude of everyday people possessed of extraordinary gifts. Justice writes about a wide array of mysterious occurrences, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, automatic writing, out-of-body and near-death experiences, and the baffling appearances on electromagnetic tape of the voices of dead people.

Justice, who was also a Methodist minister, is intent on establishing "an empirical basis for a belief in life after death." Much of the material that he has assembled points to the existence of a metaphysical realm. However, his report would have been more balanced had he examined and challenged the contentions of skeptics that many of these occurrences are more psychological and illusory than otherworldly.

Nevertheless, Justice has written an illuminating introduction to a fascinating world. In one passage he describes his brother's mystical realization that "the universe is radiantly alive and animated by a living joy." In another, during an out-of-body experience, a woman finds herself in a great, silent void. Desperately lonely, she goes inside herself, and the void becomes "this warm, wonderful Something that enveloped me and with which I could communicate."

Sounding like a man who had been asked more than once to reconcile the psychic world with the Bible, Justice writes that the Bible is "probably the most psychically oriented book in the world." He cites many examples, such as Paul's conversion and Moses' encounter with the burning bush, The early Christian church drew much vitality from" 'gifts of the Spirit.’…essentially the same set of psychic events with which modern psychic research deals." He also notes that biblical sanctions against: paranormal activity are no more valid these days than the Old Testament dictate not to wear "a garment woven with two kinds of yarn."

Justice acknowledges that there are dark aspects to the psychic sphere, but believes that "as long as one's attitude is that: of love and trust toward God" the spirit world poses no risk. He believed firmly that "people have a right to know the kind of universe they live in." Readers will undoubtedly come away from this book with a heightened awareness of many mysterious events afoot in the world.

-Paul Wine

January/February 2001

Vehicles of Consciousness: The Concept of Hylic Pluralism (Ochêma)

By J. J. Poortman.
Utrecht: Theosophical Society in the Netherlands, 1978. 4 volumes.

Want to borrow a bit of wisdom? Check out this not so hidden treasure. In the Olcott Library rest four volumes of excellent commentary on our vehicles of consciousness, authored by the highly respected Dutch scholar J. J. Poortman (who was Professor of Metaphysics in the Spirit of Theosophy at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands). Based on a lifelong study of parapsychology, this work meticulously surveys ideas about forms of matter subtler than the physical and about the bodies through which human consciousness interacts with those subtler worlds. Such ideas have been held from early times in primitive societies right up to the present day in the religions and philosophies of the world.

-CLARENCE R. PEDERSEN

January/February 2001

Lightposts for Living: The Art of Choosing a Joyful Life

By Thomas Kinkade
New York: Warner Books, 1999. Hardback, xii + 238 pages.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James speaks of the distinction between the "once-born" and the "twiceborn." The "twice-born" are those who require a dramatic spiritual rebirth in order to transform their suffering and be fully alive as their essential Self. The "onceborn" are those perpetually "up" people who seem to have come into this life with a talent for living and whom you would therefore never run into in the Self- Help section of a book store.

I read Thomas Kinkade's Lightposts for Living with some reluctance, because it is very plainly a Self-Help book, and as a still-waiting-to-be-twice-born person, the positive, cheery approach of the once-born can actually be quite irritating. Be that as it may, Kinkade is admirably committed to creating a world of beauty, joy, harmony, and healing both on canvas and in reality.

Kinkade's paintings- -liberally inserted throughout the book--are exclusively of idyllic, pastoral scenes: cobblestone country roads and firelit cottages pervaded by a dreamlike mist and luminosity. His intent ion, he states, is to make art that serves, inspiring viewers with the hope that life can truly be as peaceful and comforting as the scenes he paints. The book presents a series of life lessons analogous to the painting process, such as finding a point of focus, creating balance, and bringing forth beauty.

But something was nagging at me when viewing his paintings and reading his words: I missed the darkness. His paintings strive to be filled with light--daylight, sunlight, Divine Light--and yet without the presence of the shadow side of life, I, a messy human, feel somehow cut off from his painted paradise. I can far more easily imagine his creations inhabited by elves and leprechauns than by me or anyone I know.

Jack Kornfield once jokingly referred to the American community of Buddhist meditators as "the Upper Middle Path." Kinkade, too, speaks primarily to those who have the leisure and money to purchase and read a hardcover book on the subject of increasing one's joy. For example, he writes; "I even had a small second story deck reinforced and hired a crane to drop a hot tub into place." Such prescriptions for joy leave out many people.

All that aside, I would also like to be clear that within the pages of Lightposts for Living is an abundance of peaceful, pretty paintings, as well as useful- -even powerful--ideas, summarized in the afterword:

"Each of us, in our own unique way, is called to let our light shine. The unique, one-of-a-kind canvas of our existence is meant to be an inspiration to others-a true joy to behold and a heaven-sent blessing to those we meet and to the world around us."

-ELIEZER SOBEL

January/February 2001