Quest Magazine

The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Richard G. Geldard
Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne, 2001. Paperback, x + 196 pages.

Susan Roberson examines Emerson's career and intellectual development as a Unitarian preacher between 1826 and 1832, including Emerson's concept, of self-reliance, his introduction of a new hero suited for a new age, and his merging of his identity with this ideal.

Wesley Mort and Robert Burkholder present fourteen new essays on Emerson, his philosophy, and his colleagues, connecting Transcendentalism to persistent currents in American thought. Among the contributors, Robert D. Richardson, Jr., describes Emerson as an editor; Ronald A. Bosco probes Emerson's teaching of the "Somewhat Spheral and Infinite" existing in every person; and Albert J. von Frank analyzes Emerson's construction of the" Intimate Sphere." This academic anthology enriches our understanding of Emerson and his closest colleagues.

Published in 1993 as The Esoteric Emerson, the new edition of Richard Geldard's book describes the Concord sage as a poet and essayist who inspired a spiritual literature and inaugurated an enduring philosophical movement outside Unitarianism. Geldard describes Emerson as a New England Socrates. Previous generations, Emerson emphasized, "beheld God and nature face to face." His contemporaries seemed content to comprehend spirituality through historic writing bequeathed from earlier generations. However Emerson observed that poetry and philosophy issue from "an original relation to the universe" rather than from history, tradition, or "religion of revelation."

-DANIEL ROSS CHANDLER

March/April 2002

Riding Windhorses: A Journey into the Heart of Mongolian Shamanism

By Sarangerel
Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2000. Paperback, xiv + 210 pages.

Shamanism is among the oldest and most universal forms of religious expression. It is a tradition that was, and to a certain extent still is, found in both the Old and New Worlds. Its influence upon the so-called higher religions is also quite obvious when one knows what to look for. Sarangerel is a practicing shaman of Siberian descent who has studied with several Central Asian shamans and who presents to us in readable and interesting form a fine description of Mongolian belief and practice.

Unlike works by such scholars as Mircea Eliade and Michael Harner, she writes from a practitioner's perspective, often attesting to her own experiences. She also seeks to present, not shamanism in general, but the special forms of Mongolian shamanism. For her, this shamanism is not just an exotic tradition to be studied at arm's length, but a viable spiritual option today. While she is thoroughly conversant with modern scholarship about shamanism, she can also attest, for instance, to her own experiences of out-of-body travel. At the conclusion of each chapter, therefore, she provides rituals of visualization techniques for the reader to use. Moreover, she provides useful information about where to go in Mongolia to see shamanistic holy places. Useful web site addresses, a bibliography, and glossary of terms are also provided.

In a word, this is a very valuable and useful work that brings the reader much closer to the realities of shamanism than most other scholarly works. Whether a belief in the spirit world, which shamanism presupposes, is possible in today's post-modern world is a question only individual readers can answer for themselves. Clearly, however, the development of "windhorse," that is, psychic power, is something that will be attractive for many to contemplate. This work merits study by anyone interested in either the history of religions or the exploration of the possibilities of human spirituality.

-JAY G. WILLIAMS

January/February 2002

Circling the Sacred Mountain: A Spiritual Adventure through the Himalayas

By Robert Thurman and Tad Wise
New York: Bantam, 2000. Paperback, 353 pages.

This is a book of a genre that happens to be a favorite of mine, as I suspect it is for many readers of the Quest as well: a chronicle of travel combining the exploration of exotic realms on both physical and spiritual planes. In this case, the two authors, together with a handful of other companions, journey to remote western Tibet to perform the traditional Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist pilgrimage-circumambulation of the sacred Mount Kailas, and in the process learn much about Buddhism and themselves. Robert Thurman, a practicing Vajrayana Buddhist and former monk, now a professor at Columbia University, is perhaps the best-known Western scholar of Tibetan Buddhism today. Tad Wise, a much younger former student of his, has practiced several trades including stonemasonry and writing: he has published one novel.

The two writers alternate in presenting the narrative; Wise provides the day-by-day account of the journey, and Thurman (under his Buddhist name Tenzin) offers virtually daily sermons on their exercises and experiences. In the process, the two are uninhibited in displaying themselves as they are. Wise comes across as a voluble, witty, irreverent, and sensual, but very likable, young man; only half-convinced of the Dharma, he nonetheless felt a strange compulsion to leave his life behind for a month to join his old pedagogue on this expedition. Thurman is a learned, sagacious, but occasionally overbearing guide to the mysteries. But the real star of the story is Mount Kailas- -the silent, towering, oddly-shaped, yet unimaginably numinous presence always kept to their right as the foreign party, together with countless devout Tibetans, circles the slow trail round her widespread base, stopping for traditional devotions at ancient shrines and temples. The journey is not entirely out of time, however; there arealso unpleasant encounters with Tibet's heavy-handed Chinese overlords.

Circling the Sacred Mountain is sometimes a bit verbose; introspective surveys of other persons' (the two writers') inward sins and salvations can eventually become tiresome. At those moments I would have preferred more cultural description of Tibet's temples, Buddhas, rites, priests, and pilgrims instead, or else a few cuts. But overall the book moves and is a good read, highly recommended to all who enjoy the more adventurous kind of spirituality.

--ROBERT ELLWOOD

January/February 2002

The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy

By Phillip Charles Lucas
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Hardback, viii + 312 pages.

Every now and then a worthwhile book comes out but never gets the recognition it deserves. The Odyssey of a New Religion is one such book. This is a book that many Theosophists should read because of its Theosophical overtones.

Why did the Holy Order of MANS (HOOM) exist for only about 22 years, whereas the Theosophical Society is still in existence more than 125 years after its founding? Both the Theosophical Society and HOOM had similar beginnings. Yet the small esoteric Christian community continued only by changing its mission and joining the larger Orthodox Christian community. Lucas's book tells the story of HOOM with skill, scholarship, and such grace that his sociological insights never get in the way of the unfolding story.

The Holy Order of MANS was founded by Earl Blighton (known as Father Paul) in 1968 in the San Francisco Bay area. The core group actually started two years earlier when Blighton taught a type of "esoteric Christianity." His message borrowed heavily from many alternative religions, but, as Lucas continually reminds us, it was primarily Rosicrucian and Theosophical in nature. Any Theosophist reading this book will recognize much of the Order's structure and teaching.

The group had a monastic image and its members wore clerical garb. Much of their early mission was service, charity, and missionary work, "for example, for homeless families and single mothers in shelters called 'Raphael House.'" The members, dressed in their clerical garb, would walk around crime-filled neighborhoods and visualize a ray of healing light. Blighton, judging from antidotal evidence, was a gifted psychic, like H. P. Blavatsky in the formative years of the Theosophical Society. Blighton wrote a "Tree of Life" series around which the "ancient Christian mysteries" were studied. About half of Lucas’s book explains the details of this early history.

Following Earl Blighton's death in 1974, the group's history became turbulent. After the usual power struggles that occur with the death of a charismatic leader, Andrew Rossi rook over and about 1978 began to lead the group from its Rosicrucian-Theosophical roots toward a more mainstream Christian identity. From a peak of about 3000 members in 1977, the membership began dropping. In 1988 Rossi led a mass conversion of 750 HOOM members into the Eastern Orthodox Church and changed the group's name to Christ the Savior Brotherhood.

In response to the question of why the Theosophical Society has lasted more than 125 years whereas HOOM had a 22-year existence, one of the relevant factors may be that the Society elects its officers on a regular schedule. The believers in the Holy Order of MANS did not have that option. One recalls Winston Churchill's observation that "democracy is the worst form of government' except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

-RALPH H. HANNON

January/February 2002