Book Reviews

THE YOGA OF THE CHRIST, by Ravi Ravindra; Element Books, England, 1990; paperback.

SCIENCE AND SPIRIT, edited by Ravi Ravindra; Paragon House, New York, 1991; paperback.

Ravi Ravindra, raised in the Hindu tradition in his native India, and now a professor of physics and chair of Comparative Religion at Dalhousie University in Canada, has produced a quite remarkable book in The Yoga of the Christ. As a self-described “outsider” to the Christian faith, he has nevertheless long loved the Gospel According to St. John.

In the book he draws forth the Christian story as related by John and shows how it fits with other traditions, especially the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.

Ravindra has long been a student of the core of divine wisdom which is found at the center of all great religious traditions – “the perennial wisdom,” as Aldous Huxley put it, “Theosophy,” as Blavatsky expressed it.

“I am persuaded that the major division in the human psyche is not horizontal or regional, dividing the Eastern from the Western soul,” Ravindra says at the outset of his exploration. Instead , the division is “vertical and global, separating the few from the many, and the spiritual, inner and symbolical way of understanding from the material, outer and literal one. . . .”

John's gospel has long been considered the most mystical , the most interior and esoteric of the Christian gospels. It is the inner message of the gospel Ravindra seeks in his reading of and commentary on John. “The basic question is of the right inner preparation for understanding spiritual truth,” he writes, “which is the same as believing in Christ.”

And : “As far as Jesus Christ is concerned, the right preparation consists in dying to one's self-will, and in denying oneself, so that one could obey the will of God . His yoga consists of this; and of this the cross is the supreme symbol.”

The literal events - for example, whether Jesus was actually physically crucified - are of less import than the psychological and spiritual significance of the symbols, Ravindra contends. “Every moment, whenever a man is present to it, he is at a crossing; at this point of crossing he chooses whether to remain in the horizontal plane of the world or to be yoked to the way of the Christ and follow the vertical axis of being.”

The point Jesus makes again and again, Ravindra says, is this: “no man can make himself God, but a man can empty himself so that he will be filled with God …” And: “ In the way of the cross, there is no place for man's own egoistic ambitions and projects; as a Hasidic saying has it, 'There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.”

In his other recent book Ravindra has collected a number of essays bearing on the relation ship between religion and science. Ravindra's unusual dual appointment at Dalhousie makes him a leading spokesman for efforts to overcome the barriers to communication between religion and spirituality.

These essays address a number of questions at the borders of science, technology, and religion - for example, recent assertions that science (especially physics) and mysticism are more closely related than one might think. The various authors also consider the place of values in the relationship between science and technology, the contributions East and West have to make to each other, and in what sense science can be a spiritual path.

More than half the 25 chapters are by Ravindra himself. Most of the papers gathered in Science and Spirit grew out of conferences supported by the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS) and held in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

- WILLIAM METZGER

Autumn 1991

---

PRAYERS OF THE COSMOS: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus

by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Harper & Row, San Francisco. 1990; hardcover.

Prayers of the Cosmos contains the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, and three biblical passages in the Aramaic language and then translated into English free verse. Commentaries follow each passage, and after many sections a “body prayer” is included. The use of these body prayers is to assist with re-establishing harmony in all creation.

The Lord's Prayer is considered especially useful in the movement toward harmony by Douglas-Klotz, who perceives that Jesus presented it to all of humanity and all of creation in the interest of unity in the world. The meditations frequently contain a recommendation for utilizing them with a partner, although this is optional. There is often an earthy quality about the meditations, and many of these passages go beyond inner peace to peace in the community.

Douglas-Klotz maintains that humanity has tended to assume an intellectual and metaphorical viewpoint toward the words of Jesus, while the universal, or mystical, viewpoint has been neglected. He considers that Jesus the mystic would have included all the layers of meaning that were inherent in Aramaic. Thus the “kingdom of heaven” becomes the kingdom within as well as that among humans and other entities in nature.

Some of the meditations recommend the intoning of certain sound s from the Aramaic language in order to enlarge on the use of “the many facets” of the ancient language. The writer finds that the rich “sound-meaning” of certain words in Aramaic has similarities to words used in native Middle Eastern chants for thousands of years.

The author is committed to viewing Jesus as a mystic, a feminist, and an environmentalist. Lacking an inclusive term as a substitute for “kingdom,” he used queendom alongside it. He translates the Aramaic word for neighbor as a coming together to form a bond among all humans, plants, and animals. He ties this in with the Sufi stages of evolution by which the division between self and God disappear, Douglas-Klotz relies on the work of George M. Lamsa and other contemporary scholars who have found evidence that the New Testament originated in the Aramaic language. 

Douglas-Klotz' English versions admittedly are influenced in form by the poetry of Walt Whitman and William Blake. The resultant free verse creates some pleasing lyrical lines from the words of Jesus, while taking nothing away from the beauty of the familiar language of the King James Version of the Bible.

-MARY JANE NEWCOMB

Summer 1991

---

HEALING, HEALTH , AND TRANSFORMATION

by Elaine R. Ferguson, M.D
Lavonne Press, Chicago. 1990; hardcover.

In a field where books on the holistic and spiritual dimensions of healing have almost become commonplace, Elaine Ferguson, a doctor practicing out of the Chicago land area, has written a book that may well come to be regarded as a classic in the health literature. Having experienced directly both the effects of the modern medical system as well as the field of alternative treatments, Dr. Ferguson has brilliantly managed to bridge the best of both systems, and offers an inspiring look at the healing presence in each of us. This is an outstanding work that will be of interest to anyone involved in the area of health and healing.

-ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS

Summer 1991

---

REACHING FOR THE MOON

by Kenneth W. Morgan
Anima Publications, Chambersburg, PA; 1990;paperback, 207 pp.

As a graduate student the auth or began his journey into Asian religions through an extended visit to India in which he resided at numerous ashrams. Some of the questions that he wished to have answered were how important ritual is to a religious way of life, whether purity is a relevant concern, and how charitable deeds enter into fulfilling religious responsibilities.

He discovered that while his quest had started out as “learning about” other religions, it evolved into “learning from” those religions. His own spiritual journey allowed him to contrast personally the worldview of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jain s, and Taoists as he struggled to understand karma, ahimsa, and wu-wei as an Asian does.

Morgan manifests remarkable sensitivity to all the good in nature, in artistic expression, in love and loyalty, and in helping others that he observed among the Asians with whom he lived and worshipped and learned. The focus throughout is on “Sacred Reality,” or Ultimate Reality. Morgan concludes that those choosing to follow a religious path find along the way other seekers who may help them to live within “the given natural and sacred realities that set the limits for human life.”

Advice is extended to the seeker on the importance of asking questions, of evaluation, and of showing respect for any help received. Most import ant of all, however, is to make one's own decision and then to follow that path.

The methodology, according to Morgan's summary of various religions, is regular participation in ritual plus individual ways of improving religious understanding and behavior. This summary was derived through his seeking out persons who “push and search beyond the current cultural form ... toward the edges of possible human outreach.” Among those with whom Morgan became acquainted were Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.

Morgan is a skeptic regarding a number of issues for which he has found no evidence in his own search, for example, of mantras, miracles, or rebirth. He does concede, however, that karma seems to be a “dependable guide” for following a religious path.

Morgan set out to achieve a greater understanding of the world around him through his spiritual journey and has ably shared his findings with the reader. The warmth with which he embraces his subject encourages the reader to pursue his or her own journey.

-MARY JANE NEWCOMB

Summer 1991

---