Quest Magazine

What is Hinduism? Modern Adventures into a Profound Global Faith

by the editors of Hinduism Today
Kapaa, Hawaii: Himalayan Academy, 2007. 392 pages, paper, $39.95.

Many introductory books about Hinduism are available in English. Most of those for sale in the United States are written from a Western point of view and at least pretend to be objective. This volume is very different. Compiled from articles published in the newsmagazine Hinduism Today, the work offers a view of Hinduism as it is known to Hindus themselves. It is positive, enthusiastic, and even mildly “evangelical.” At the same time, the authors can be quite critical of customs, such as untouchability, that have doomed many people to a life beyond the fringe of Indian society. Overall, however, the text is warmly pro-Hindu and provides an interesting and informative view about how one-sixth of the world’s population thinks and lives.

Each chapter originally appeared separately and therefore can be read independently. At the same time, these various chapters are organized topically, which provides the book with a modicum of order. The basic topics are: “The Nature of Hinduism,” “Hindu Metaphysics,” “How Hindus Worship,” “Spiritual Practice,” “Family Life and Culture,” and “Hindu Ethics.” the book may be read from cover to cover, or one can read a later chapter without having read everything that preceded it.

One very positive feature of this book is its many photographs and illustrations. Scarcely a page goes by without some reproduction of a piece of artwork, a temple photograph, or some other illustrative material. There are many pictures of Hindus practicing their faith. The reader is surrounded throughout by visions of Indians and India. In fact one is tempted just to leaf through the book just to look at the pictures.

Sometimes the Western reader may want to take exception to what is said. Is it really a fact, for instance, that Hinduism is twice as old as Judaism? Even that seeming mistake, however, reveals a great deal about the Hindu vision of reality. What one learns in these pages is not purely objective (Is there really such a thing anyway?) but shows how Hindus themselves understand and interpret life.

My own response to this book, then, is very positive. It is informative, readable, and beautifully put together. It would certainly make good reading for an undergraduate course in religion or simply for anyone interested in that age-old spiritual tradition we have come to call Hinduism.

Jay G. Williams

The reviewer has served as chairman of the department of religion at Hamilton College. He is the author of Judaism and Yeshua Buddha, both published by Quest Books.

A New Science of the Paranormal: The Promise of Psychical Research

Lawrence LeShan
Wheaton: Quest Books, 2009. vii + 133 pages, paper, $14.95.

Over the past hundred years, psychic researchers have amassed a large and growing body of evidence supporting the existence of paranormal phenomena, also known as psi. In this book, veteran parapsychologist Lawrence LeShan says that this accumulation of data now enables us to consider the following statements as fact: (1) people often demonstrate knowledge of specific things that could not have been acquired through ordinary sense perception; (2) telepathy seems to operate effectively without regard to distance; (3) emotional bonds between participants greatly facilitate the effectiveness of telepathic communication; and (4) many people become uptight when hearing about psi.

It should come as no surprise that the category of people who become uneasy at the mere mention of paranormal phenomena includes a large number of scientists, because the facts of psi do not fit neatly into their established worldview. But like it or not, we live in a scientific age, in which the views of scientists often carry more weight in the public mind than the proclamations of politicians or religious leaders. As LeShan points out, the irony is that "psi is officially and publicly declared to be impossible in the sciences at the same time that a large percentage of individual scientists believe in it." He cites instances in which scientists refused to publish the results of their psi research for fear of damaging their professional reputations and careers.

Much of A New Science of the Paranormal is addressed to psi researchers, but this book should prove fascinating to the layperson as well. LeShan is openly critical of some of the methods and attitudes of his colleagues, but he suggests a number of ways of gaining greater acceptance for their work among both scientists and the public at large. For instance, he urges parapsychologists to drop the notion that all scientific research has to be done in the laboratory. As LeShan writes, "we are primarily here dealing with consciousness, and consciousness is not quantifiable." Consequently he advises his colleagues not to be thrown off course by skeptics who dismiss certain forms of evidence for psi as "anecdotal"—meaning that these events only happened once and are thus not "repeatable." While many repeatable laboratory experiments have been conducted to prove the existence of psi—the card-guessing experiments devised by the pioneering parapsychologist J. B. Rhine are one well-known type—other forms of paranormal phenomena do not lend themselves to observation in a controlled setting. If Susan gets a sudden feeling that her grandmother is dying and later finds out that her grandmother passed away at that exact time, the fact that this is not a repeatable experiment doesn't diminish the reality of what happened. As LeShan stresses, this is true in other sciences as well: "you are not going to get a repeatable experiment in astronomy, history, or oceanography."

As a result, LeShan believes that his colleagues should not waste time "trying to prove the existence of psi" but instead "get on with studying its properties." The amount of evidence in support of psi is already overwhelming, and has been for some time. If close-minded scientists refuse to accept the data, that is their problem. Simply providing more of the same is not going to change their minds.

The author also urges parapsychologists to stop acting apologetic and feeling inferior to scientists in other fields: "our standards of research—under the intense pressure and rejection that has long been directed against us—are as high and often higher than those of the 'hard' sciences such as physics and chemistry."

LeShan concludes with this bit of tough love: "The best way to get psi research accepted by our culture at large is first to have it accepted by mainline science. And the best way to have it accepted by mainline science is for psi researchers to start acting like scientists and not like poor relations."

Anybody interested in paranormal research should find this book informative and refreshing. Dr. LeShan offers some fresh ideas about the direction that psi research might take in order to gain greater acceptance for its findings.

David P. Bruce

The reviewer is a long-time member of the Theosophical Society, for which he serves as director of education.

The 2012 Story: The Myth, Fallacies, and Truth behind the Most Intriguing Date in History

John Major Jenkins
New York: Tarcher Penguin, 2009. 336 pages, $24.95.

The excitement of the new millennium had scarcely faded when it was followed by a new craze—the obsession with 2012 as a date of coming cataclysm or redemption. Particularly since The Da Vinci Code, the mainstream media have been keen to New Age enthusiasms, so they have taken up 2012 with gusto. The History Channel and the Discovery Channel have produced any number of shows on this theme, and practically every publisher in the field of alternative spirituality has made its contribution to the 2012 furor.

Very few of these items are worth discussing, but one recent offering is an exception: John Major Jenkins's 2012 Story. For the last two decades Jenkins has been looking into the Mayan calendar to discover what its end date of December 21, 2012, meant to the ancient Maya and what it might mean to us today. He does so from the unenviable position of the independent scholar, steering a course between daft New Agers on the one hand, who portray this date as the advent of space brothers and dimensional shifts, and academic scholars on the other, who generally march in the equally mindless lockstep of automatic skepticism. The 2012 Story chronicles Jenkins's own findings and experiences.

To begin with, why did this particular date—the winter solstice of 2012—matter so much to the ancient Maya? The classic phase of their civilization ended around a.d. 900, so it was hardly a pressing issue at the time. Jenkins answers this question by sketching out a short history of scholarship in the field, complete with its cast of rogues and geniuses. In short, the Maya had an intricate series of calendars, one of which is based on the baktun, a measure of time encompassing 144,000 days. The Mayans believed that thirteen of these baktuns equaled a great age. The present cycle, they believed, began on August 11, 3114 b.c., and will end on December 21, 2012. (For more on the Mayan calendar, see Barbara J. Sadtler's article 'The Mayan Fascination with Time" in this issue.)

Why the Maya might have chosen the 3114 b.c. date is not entirely clear, particularly since it marks a time that long preceded their own civilization. Jenkins's own theory is that the Maya were actually calculating back from the 2012 date. What, then, was so important about that? According to Jenkins, it marks a point at which the sun at the winter solstice is in the "dark rift" of the Milky Way, a gap in the galaxy (as seen from earth) that corresponds to the galactic center. It is this "galactic alignment," as he calls it, that the Maya believed would herald a regeneration of the age.

The 2012 Story goes on to describe how the date took hold of the popular imagination. This was chiefly the work of Josa Argaelles (who now calls himself Valum Votan), the eccentric prophet of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, and of the late Terence McKenna, who in the 1990s replaced Timothy Leary as the pope of psychedelia. Both Argaelles and McKenna had their own different but equally convoluted reasons for coming up with this date, which do not entirely jibe with Jenkins's, but he discusses these fully and fairly.

The later part of the book chronicles the public reception of the 2012 date. Jenkins excoriates the cable TV networks for cynically sensationalizing the issue, portraying 2012 as an equivalent of the Christian Doomsday, when in fact, he claims, the Mayans themselves foresaw a time of cyclical renewal. His discussion of the media's treatment of the theme is instructive for anyone who is tempted to take the breathless documentaries of the History Channel and its kin too seriously. I have appeared on some of these myself, and I can testify that the producers asking me the questions offscreen sometimes have trouble keeping a straight face.

Finally, Jenkins provides his own views on this date and what it may mean to us today. Although he is often astute in his criticisms of contemporary civilization, he does not offer much that is new here, and one can go away believing that he thinks indigenous wisdom will save the day for us. To me this seems too simplistic. If the ancient Maya had ways of knowledge that we need to resurrect, they had their share of follies and brutalities as well. Ironically, considering that some are looking to indigenous peoples for answers to our ecological woes, many scholars ascribe the sudden collapse of the Mayan civilization to overexploitation of the environment.

Jenkins also gives more weight to the Traditionalist school—the followers of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon—than it deserves. The Traditionalists draw a stark and Manichaean contrast between the glories of "traditional" societies and the evils of our own corrupt time. (For more on the Traditionalists, see my article "Against Blavatsky: René Guénon's Critique of Theosophy" in this issue.) Again this is too easy and too negative. If we are sometimes tempts to spurn the advanced civilization that we have created over the last two centuries, it is a temptation that is best avoided. We may need to transcend this civilization, but that does not mean turning our backs on it.

Despite these faults, and despite its frequently clumsy prose, Jenkins's book remains by far the best and most authoritative guide to the 2012 phenomenon. I doubt it will be followed by anything better.

Richard Smoley   

The Lost Teachings of Lama Govinda: Living Wisdom from a Modern Tibetan Master

edited by Richard Power, foreword by Lama Surya Das.
Quest Books, 2007. lviii + 155 pages, paperback, $19.95.

Lama Anagarika Govinda (1898—1985) was a German practitioner and scholar of the highest magnitude of Buddhism and Eastern thought. Few matched his depth and breadth of scholarship, practical understanding, and experiential insight into the intricacies of Buddhism, especially in its Tibetan form. In addition to his eminent autobiography, The Way of the White Clouds, he wrote adeptly on the psychological and transformational significance of early Buddhist philosophy, the symbolic meanings of the stupa, meditation, and the I Ching. With his Indian wife, Li Gotami, he published works on Tibetan art and on consciousness and meditation. Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhism at Columbia University, regards Govinda as "one of the West's greatest minds of the twentieth century."

Lama Surya Das's foreword, written from the perspective of his own spiritual explorations as a young Western seeker in India and Nepal, offers a telling portrait of the great influence Govinda had on him and other Westerners who, from the mid-twentieth century on, became the chief exponents of Buddhism in the West. The editor's broad-ranging introduction traces some of the major events in Govinda's life and shows the extraordinary impact he had on the practitioners and scholars who came under his influence.

The six essays that constitute the central text of the book, several of which were later expanded into full-length books, were recovered from the archives of the Human Dimensions Institute, where they had been delivered in the 1970s. A final chapter consists of question and answer sessions at the institute.

In the first essay, "From Theravada to Zen," Govinda shows how the foundational teachings of the Buddha as recorded in the earliest Pali text (written down some four centuries after the founder's death) shaped Buddhism as it evolved in its journey from India through China to Japan. The author develops the central truth of shunyata (emptiness) as the sine qua non of the highest realization in Buddhism. He calls for practitioners to discover the natural spontaneity of the human mind and to transform the historical Buddha into a direct experience of their own Buddha mind. The dynamic, changing nature of reality is also explored here.

Each of the remaining chapters addresses a particular spiritual, psychological, or philosophical issue of common import in East and West, which, when approached through the perspective of both cultures, results in a more complete, balanced, and accurate view. Govinda writes: "East and West are the two halves of our human consciousness, comparable to the two poles of a magnet, which condition and correspond to each other, and cannot be separated." This being the case, an alternate subtitle for the book might be "The Integration of East and West," or "East and West: How Each Needs the Other."

Drawing on the work of Roberto Assagioli, founder of Psychosynthesis, in the second chapter, Govinda distinguishes between different operations of the human will, for example, egoistic will contrasted with transpersonal will, and emphasizes the importance of the latter in meditation and the life of a realized person.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin forms the focus of the third chapter. Here Govinda bridges the humanities and the physical sciences, indeed spirit and matter. He writes: "The moment we experience [that] the universe is our 'greater body' and penetrate it spiritually, we experience the great transformation; we have attained liberation, the state of nirvana." He notes further that "the 'spirit' can arise in consciousness only when there is a creative force, which connects all factors of life and consciousness and thus makes them into a unity." For Govinda, wisdom lies in the integration of so-called opposites, the transformation of dualities into polarities.

The fourth chapter distinguishes between drug-induced expansion of consciousness, which can lead to psychic disintegration, and a disciplined meditation practice, which carries the potential for spiritual regeneration.

Though there are many references to meditation throughout the book, the sixth chapter addresses the topic directly. The author develops his central insight concerning the integral relationship of matter and spirit by noting that "the special function of meditation is to reunite the inner and the outer world." Govinda takes to task inadequate forms of philosophy and religion that impose mind-made divisions on reality: "In both philosophy and religion the concepts of oneness, of universality, infinity, boundlessness, formlessness, emptiness, changelessness, timelessness, eternity, and similar one-sided abstractions of a purely conceptual type became the summum bonum and the hallmark of an intellectual spirituality, which tried to isolate them from their counterpoles, namely diversity, individuality, form, materiality, movement in time and space, change, growth, transformation, etc." For Govinda, enlightenment always entails the integration of opposites. He summarizes this insight by noting "that universality cannot be experienced except in the individual and that the individual derives its meaning and value from the realization of its universal background and interrelationship."

In a chapter on the I Ching, Govinda demonstrates how this ancient classic of China is not simply a method of predicting the future, even though it has this use in China as well as in many parts of the Western world. Rather it articulates a comprehensive philosophy of life, and is meant "to help us decide our way from the present into the future on the basis of generally prevailing laws."

The Lost Teachings of Lama Govinda concludes with notes, a selected bibliography, and an index. For anyone wanting practical, transformational teaching from a Buddhist perspective, this book serves well.

James E. Royster

The reviewer is professor emeritus of religious studies at Cleveland State University.