Quest Magazine

Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ

Richard Dooling
New York: Harmony, 2008. 272 pages, hardcover, $22.

Having an avid interest in technology and its "spiritual" implications, I tend to follow anything that sounds a cautionary note regarding technological advances. For those with a similar taste, the field is currently dominated by the writings of Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy, who have highlighted to great effect both the promise and peril of our technological future(s).

The central point of Richard Dooling's Rapture for the Geeks is its concept of the Technological Singularity. This is an event which (unless you have read The Secret Doctrine) appears to have no precedent. The general view is that somewhere around 2045, technological progress will go off the scale exponentially. The Wikipedia Web site defines this "Singularity" as "a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress, caused in part by the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial intelligence." Essentially this means that we will evolve ourselves out of existence—largely by producing computers that are smarter than we are. Like Kurzweil, Joy, and others, Dooling seems nearly certain that this Singularity will take place.

When approaching Dooling's book, I expected it to be a timely update of earlier writings principally by Kurzweil. Unfortunately, although Dooling's book is written for a much more general audience (and is sprinkled with humor and bits of JavaScript, xml, and other bits of programming that serve to illustrate his points), for the most part he rehashes material from Kurzweil and others without adding much that is new in the way of current research.

Probably the most valuable part of the book is Dooling's advice for those who have no desire to become obsolete. He suggests a number of actions readers can take to become better equipped to handle the ever-quickening pace of technology. First and foremost is to learn some programming languages. For some (especially those who have mangled Sanskrit terms when reading Theosophical literature), the task may seem daunting, but Dooling makes programming seem doable by just about anyone.

From a Theosophical perspective, the most worrisome aspect about this discussion is that its assumptions proceed in the classic pattern for Western science: from the bottom up. We create conscious machines and we upload the contents of our brains into them, or we augment capabilities already present using technological means. Eastern philosophy, by contrast, holds that our existence is possible because of consciousness, and that evolution is a process which takes place in the realm of the spiritual, with effects manifesting in the physical realm. Current views of the Singularity seem to be urging us to make yet another attempt at forcing "evolution" from the bottom up. But what if Eastern modes of thought are correct about the nature of consciousness? What are the likely outcomes? What needs to take place in order to guide technological "progress" in a healthier direction?

I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who wants to quickly understand the issues we are facing and doesn't mind having a good laugh along the way. (Beware of a little off-color humor.) For a more thoughtful exploration of the subject, however, I would strongly recommend three classics from Ray Kurzweil:The Age of Intelligent Machines, The Age of Spiritual Machines, and The Singularity Is Near.

Joe Fulton

The reviewer is a Life Member of the Theosophical Society and past president of the Akron lodge. He is employed by a major software manufacturer, where he performs duties related to quality assurance, support, and innovation.

The Kingdom of Agarttha: A Journey into the Hollow Earth

Marquis Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre
translated by Jon E. Graham. Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2008. 172 pages, paper, $14.95.

The Archeometer: Key to All the Religions and Sciences of Antiquity; Synthetic Reformation of All Contemporary Arts by the Marquis Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, translated by Ariel Godwin. Idyllwild, Calif.: Sacred Sciences Institute, 2008. xxxvi + 422 pages, hardcover, $300.

The Marquis (Joseph) Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842–1909) was not the most peculiar figure to emerge out of the French occult revival of the late nineteenth century, but he was among the most influential, largely because he remains one of the first sources for the tantalizing myth of a mystical kingdom hidden away in Central Asia.

The early part of Saint-Yves' life was unremarkable. The son of a doctor, in the course of his education he saw a future role for himself as the Pythagoras of Christendom. If he didn't entirely live up to this grandiose ambition, he went some way toward it, as we shall see. As an adult, he was befriended by a number of prominent occultists, including a friend of Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, author of the occult classic The Hebraic Tongue Restored (from which Saint-Yves was later accused of plagiarizing), and the son of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist and mystical adept. After a marriage to a wealthy noblewoman, Saint-Yves lived in high style in Paris and Versailles, although his desire to be accepted by the gruelingly snobbish French nobility was never fulfilled: his title, purchased from the papacy, did not in their eyes make him a genuine marquis.

In the 1880s, Saint-Yves published a number of works addressed both to occultists and to the world at large, propounding an esoteric view of what was wrong with the world and what was needed to set it right. The most ambitious of these, La mission des juifs ("The Mission of the Jews"), a 900-page secret history of the world published in 1884, has never been translated into English.

The next year, Saint-Yves took up the study of Sanskrit with one Hardji Scharipf, an individual of unknown (probably Afghan) origins who also styled himself "the Teacher and Professor H. S. Bagwandass of the Great Agartthian School." Saint-Yves pressed his teacher for more information about this school and was given to understand that Agarttha (the name is supposedly Sanskrit for "inaccessible to violence") was a secret, subterranean kingdom that was still flourishing somewhere in Central Asia.

In 1886, Saint-Yves published a book, Mission de l'Inde ("Mission of India"), which revealed his findings about this hidden kingdom: "In Asia alone there are a half a billion people who are more or less aware of its existence and its greatness—not to mention America, whose subterranean regions belonged to Agarttha in very remote antiquity." Saint-Yves foresaw that "certain powers, in their competition with each other across the whole of Asia" (i.e., Britain and Russia) would stumble upon this kingdom, but if they attempted to invade it, "every conquering army, even if it consisted of a million men, would see a repetition of the thundering response of the Temple of Delphi to the countless hordes sent by the Persian satraps."

As even these short quotes suggest, Saint-Yves' language is thunderous and bombastic and is likely to ring hollow to the reader of today. In any case, Saint-Yves had a mission to proclaim. The message of Agarttha was embodied in its system of government and, indeed, in the philosophy upon which the whole nation was supposedly based: a doctrine that Saint-Yves called "Synarchy" and which he claimed was Europe's only hope in order to avoid annihilation. By Synarchy he meant a unified government, both sacred and secular, that would include a "Sovereign Pontiff" who would "respect all that exists, give it his blessing, unite it in the same spirit of tolerance, and gather together all the teaching bodies at last reunited, in one bundle of Light, Wisdom, and Authority." The idea of Synarchy would later influence Rudolf Steiner, who would call for a "threefold social order" encompassing economy, politics, and culture, as well as some quasi-fascistic movements in twentieth-century Europe that were far from Saint-Yves' original vision.

After publishing Mission de l'Inde, Saint-Yves thought better of the matter and immediately withdrew the book from publication. As Joscelyn Godwin points out in his extremely valuable introduction, this was largely due to humiliation at being unfavorably depicted in a roman à clef written by his former lover, an opera singer, that appeared at the same time. As a result, Mission de l'Inde reached the public only after Saint-Yves' death in 1909. The Kingdom of Agarttha is the first version to appear in English.

But the idea of Agarttha did not die with Saint-Yves. It resurfaced in the 1920s, when Ferdinand Ossendowski, a Pole who had served in the White army during the Russian Civil War, published a highly successful memoir entitled Beasts, Men, and Gods that recounted his escape through Central Asia after the Whites' defeat. Ossendowski said that during his travels he heard legends of a figure called "the Lord of the World," the secret head of humanity, who was headquartered in a mystical kingdom called Agartthi. Scoffers claimed that Ossendowski had stolen the idea from Saint-Yves, but others, including the celebrated esotericist René Guénon, took Ossendowski at his word. Guénon wrote a monograph called The Lord of the World which upheld the claims of both Saint-Yves and Ossendowski.

Of course Agarttha is not the only hidden kingdom said to exist in Central Asia. There are Russian tales of a mystical country called Byelovodye ("Land of the White Waters") in the Altai Mountains. But the most famous legend of this kind is the Tibetan Shambhala, which the Dalai Lama has described as "a pure land which, except for those whose karma and merit have ripened, cannot be immediately seen or visited." It's hard to avoid seeing some connection between the Agarttha of Saint-Yves and the Tibetan Shambhala. As Godwin notes, some, probably most, esotericists have identified the two.

There's more to this rich and haunting saga than I can describe in a review, but Godwin's deft introduction to The Kingdom of Agarttha gives a clear picture. Nevertheless, if you haven't read much about the subject, this book is not the best place to start. A better introduction is Godwin's own Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, which is the most fascinating and far-reaching work to cover this topic, dealing not only with Saint-Yves and Agarttha but with various hollow earth theories and the weird Welteislehre ("world ice doctrine"), favored by the Nazis, which taught that originally the earth had been encased in ice.

Another teaching that Hardji Scharipf passed on to Saint-Yves was that of Vattan or Vattanian (sometimes spelled "Watan"; Saint-Yves also calls it "Adamic"), an otherwise unknown primordial tongue that shows some affinities with Senzar, a similarly mysterious language mentioned by H.P. Blavatsky. Saint-Yves recorded the Vattanian alphabet and claimed that it was the ancestor of both the Hebrew and the Sanskrit devanagari alphabets.

Saint-Yves deals with Vattan and similar subjects in another posthumous work, The Archeometer, which has also recently been translated into English for the first time. "Archeometer" sounds like the name for a device, and that is what it is. Dubbed by Saint-Yves as a "synthetic protractor of the higher studies," it is a colored wheel inscribed with a twelve-pointed star, inside of which are several other circles centering around a nine-pointed star. Supposedly integrating the symbols of the colors, planets, musical notes, and the letters of various alphabets (including Vattan), the Archeometer is "all at once the key to musician's sonometric scale, the painter's range of colors, and the architect's forms," according to Saint-Yves.

As a book, The Archeometer is vast, sprawling, and often incomprehensible, left unfinished by Saint-Yves at his death and imperfectly edited by a number of his pupils, including the French occultist Papus (Gérard Encausse). It not only describes the Archeometer as a tool but claims to trace the history of religion back to its roots. Unfortunately, as a synthesis of sacred science or indeed of anything, the Archeometer is disappointingly opaque. Godwin, whose son Ariel translated this text, sums up the situation thus: "I doubt that there is anyone today—even that there ever was anyone‑who shares the opinion of Saint-Yves: that the Archeometer is the result of the true, primordial wisdom of mankind...familiar to Moses and Jesus, but since preserved solely in the universities of the Brahmins, their very existence unsuspected to this day."

Despite these flaws, it's interesting at last to see The Archeometer, which, like many corners of the rich world of French occultism, has been hidden from the English-speaking world for so long. Nonetheless, this work is likely to be of interest chiefly to specialists and aficionados of the arcane (and, at $300 per copy, rich ones at that).

Finally, what of Saint-Yves' relations with Blavatsky? Despite the obvious resemblances, the two don't seem to have any real connection. In The Secret Doctrine (I, 471), Blavatsky labels Saint-Yves as a "French pseudo-Occultist," deriding his idea, expressed in La mission des juifs, that the Kali Yuga was a Golden Age and not, as most would have it, an age of darkness. Moreoever, in an early issue of the Theosophical journal Lucifer, an anonymous review (attributed to HPB) of a work by Papus contends that Saint-Yves is wrong in the degree of importance he attributes to the Jews in esoteric history (Blavatsky, Collected Writings, IX, 46). There is also the occasional contemptuous reference to Theosophy in The Archeometer. The upshot would seem to be that neither Blavatsky nor Saint-Yves owed much to the other and that neither one held the other in particularly high regard. But then the history of esotericism is rarely one of concord.

Richard Smoley

The Majesty of Your Loving: A Couple's Journey through Alzheimer's

Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle
Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Cambridge, Mass.: Green Mountain, 2008. 314 pages, paper, $16.95.

This beautiful yet practical book provides a spiritual dimension to a caregiver's problems in handling the ever-increasing challenge of Alzheimer's disease and other terminal situations.

Olivia and Harrison Hoblitzelle were both in midlife, active in teaching as well as faithful students and practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. "Hob" held a Ph.D. in English literature and was a distinguished professor but (ironically, as it turned out) served in hospices as well. Olivia had been a teacher in the field of behavioral medicine and was (and is) a gifted writer and therapist. They had two grown children and several grandchildren and were world travelers at the onset of Hob's case of Alzheimer's.

Slowly and inexorably, Olivia is forced to watch her husband's mind deteriorate, but she decides to record not only his mental conditions but her own reactions of compassion, resentment, guilt, despair, and unfailing love. She finds comfort in turning to her family and friends, but in the end the most powerful source of strength comes from her years of spiritual training and the perspective and insights this yields.

In the meantime, Hob in his rare lucid moments attempts to describe objectively what it feels like to be transitioning from normal consciousness to another level of reality. It is almost as if he is taking psychiatric notes on the nature of Alzheimer's! The result is a deeply moving record of two heroic souls attempting to make a healing gift of love and compassion to all those many others who will come after them. This is Tibetan Buddhism put into practice: to offer up one's suffering for the benefit of others.

Each chapter is followed by practical solutions and "Seed Thoughts." A series of appendices include "Clear Light Meditation," "Caring for Loved Ones in Death," and "Topics for Discussion." There is also a helpful bibliography and Website source.

If you know anyone caring for someone facing certain death, this book could be the best gift ever. It glows with inner light and practical wisdom and surely will become a contemporary classic.

Alice O. Howell

The reviewer is an author and astrologer based in western Massachusetts. Her works include The Web in the Sea; The Dove in the Stone; and The Heavens Declare: Astrological Ages and the Evolution of Consciousness, all published by Quest Books.

Rabbi Léah Novick
Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 2008. 210 pages, paper, $17.95.

After spending decades as a powerful presence in Washington politics and then as a professor of public policy, Léah Novick found herself on the California coast over twenty-five years ago being summoned by the Divine Feminine. She recounts her epiphany in her recent book, On the Wings of Shekhinah: "A gigantic goddess was calling me. At first she spoke through sand and rocks, flowers and animals; later she spoke through visions and memories of earlier lives. Still later she spoke through the spirits of the ancestors and Judaism's forgotten women saints and miracle workers." Gradually she returned to the religion of her youth, but with a new understanding, which she refers to as "respiritualized Judaism." Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, ordained her as a rabbi in 1987.

Reb Léah's work focuses on the restoration of the Divine Feminine in Judaism, often known as the Shekhinah. To that end, she has expressed her vision in various media, including the written word, music, movement, and drama. At one point, she held meditation circles on the birthdays and death anniversaries (yahrzeits) of the many women Jewish scholars and mystics who have gone unrecognized for generations; she calls these women "the Messengers of the Shekhinah." I was fortunate to be able to study with Reb Léah a few years ago when I attended her workshop on Kabbalah. She impressed me not only as a scholar of the Jewish mystical tradition but also as a touchstone of knowledge and wisdom gleaned through hard-won realization and life experience. Moreover, coming as I do from an interfaith family and possessing a spirituality that defies easy categorization, I appreciated her understanding of and esteem for a wide range of religious traditions while maintaining her profound commitment to Judaism.

On the Wings of Shekhinah, her first book, highlights Reb Léah's scholarship and accessible writing style as she elucidates the complex story of the Shekhinah in Jewish thought and culture. Beginning with Genesis and through the Jewish people's history in Canaan, the Temple period, the Babylonian Exile, medieval times, and the beginnings of Kabbalah, she explores diverse and sometimes contradictory conceptions of the Divine Feminine. Of course, Judaism has never been a monolithic institution; it has always been composed of numerous factions that disagree, usually in a most vociferous manner. Jewish culture does not shy away from debate, but encourages it, whether at the dinner table or in the study hall. The larger tradition tolerates and even revels in a multiplicity of viewpoints.

The term "Shekhinah" does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, although versions of its root, shakhan, the Hebrew verb "to dwell," show up in the text. Over the centuries, the Shekhinah has most often been perceived as the "indwelling presence of the Holy One." Jewish mystics have also seen her as mourning at the wall of the destroyed Temple, as the cosmic soul of the world who connects all living things, as the faithful mother sustaining the Jews in the Diaspora, as the fierce protective mother who punishes the wicked, and as the glorious Sabbath Queen. Some biblical commentators have envisaged the Mishkan or Tabernacle, the portable residence of the Divine carried by the early Israelites as they wandered the desert, as the meeting place where the Shekhinah and her consort Yahweh reunite each evening in sacred marriage to renew and perpetuate the life force that animates the earth.

One of the book's great strengths is Reb Léah's retelling of well-known biblical stories from a perspective that encourages her readers to question and expand their view of these ancient tales. For example, in the chapter entitled "Encountering the Pagan Past," she reminds us that all four Jewish matriarchs—Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel—were originally from pagan cultures. She details episodes in Jewish history when goddesses such as Asherah were widely worshipped and notes that "thousands of Asherah figurines have been found in archeological digs all over Israel, covering an extended span of Israelite history." Reb Léah also draws attention to research in this generally obscure area, highlighting the contemporary feminist scholarship of Savina Teubal among others. Teubal argued convincingly that as a priestess of the Goddess, Sarah was sought out by neighboring kings to participate with them in the hieros gamos, a sexual fertility rite enacted in order to increase the land's fruitfulness.

While the Shekhinah as a goddess figure enlivens the spirituality of many contemporary women, not all Jewish women, even feminists, embrace this concept. A leading Jewish feminist theologian (and a former professor of mine) adamantly proclaimed to her students that the word "Goddess" should not be a part of the Judaic tradition, although the word "God" was acceptable. I found this to be an odd theological position, especially if the Holy One is seen to be beyond gender, which many Jews would agree is the case. This particular theologian didn't have a logical explanation for her stance; it seemed more of a visceral reaction than anything else. Does this position reflect a residual fear of the Goddess's power even today? Perhaps. As Reb Léah notes, "Judaism continues to resist its pagan roots. . . . Perhaps there will be a future time in which memory is no longer a threat."

I found Reb Léah's writing on Kabbalistic thought especially fascinating. One mystical community, the famous circle of Kabbalists in sixteenth-century Zefat, Israel, focused many of its spiritual endeavors on reconnecting with the Shekhinah. Headed by Rabbi Isaac Luria, this close-knit group would venture outside on the eve of the Sabbath, summoning the Shekhinah as Sabbath Queen and Bride to bless their celebration. One evocative song, still sung today on Friday nights, was penned by one of the Zefat mystics; L'Cha Dodi ("Come, My Beloved"), a heartfelt plea to the Shekhinah to grace the congregation with her presence. Those familiar with the classical Gnostic myths will recognize the remarkable similarities between the stories of Sophia in exile and the tales of the Shekhinah's separation and reunification with her people through their prayers and good deeds.

To round out the historical narrative, each chapter concludes with a simple yet powerful meditation that encourages the reader to actually experience the Divine Feminine. Reb Léah notes others ways, including dream and healing work, seasonal celebrations, love and sexuality, and life passage rituals, in which the Shekhinah may be accessible to us. Reb Léah's wise and intuitive guidance pervades The Wings of Shekhinah, offering its readers a palpable sense of personally studying with this extraordinary Jewish teacher.

Reb Léah relates that as a young girl she never heard of the Divine Feminine, even though she grew up in an observant household and had many years of Jewish education. This called to mind a conversation I had not long ago with my mother, a Jewish woman of Reb Léah's generation, in which we were discussing Jewish veneration of the Goddess during different historical periods. My mother exclaimed, "We were never taught that in Hebrew school!" She didn't sound incredulous but rather as if she had been cheated of essential knowledge that might have changed her life. Thanks to the life work of Reb Léah and many others, the Shekhinah has made her presence known in our time. May it be that the Shekhinah is never again exiled; may she be acknowledged as an essential part of Jewish spirituality and tradition far into the future.

Siobhán Houston

Siobhán Houston, Ed.D., is a scholar, writer, and editor living in Denver, Colorado. She is the author of Invoking Mary Magdalene: Accessing the Wisdom of the Divine Feminine (Sounds True, 2006) and Priests, Gnostics, Magicians (forthcoming from Apocryphile Press).