Book Reviews

TIM WYATT
Bingley, West Yorkshire, England: Firewheel Books/Leeds Theosophical Society, 2021. 226 pp., £31.

For Buddhists there is the Tibetan Book of the Dead to help one understand the process of life, death, and reincarnation. The ancient Egyptians had their own Book of the Dead, containing funerary texts and magic spells to help the deceased navigate their journey through the underworld into the next life.

Now we have Everyone’s Book of the Dead, providing a vast exploratory venture into the mysteries of death and reincarnation from the perspective of the Ageless Wisdom, most prominently Theosophy.

 We in the West don’t know how to die, which means we don’t really know how to live. We live in fear of death; is that really living? “Learn to die so that you may learn to live,” Wyatt quotes Thomas à Kempis, author of The Imitation of Christ, adding that we are not good at embracing the death event because “we have lost touch with the natural rhythms of life and death.”

“Death is the greatest of earth’s illusions,” said Annie Besant in The Ancient Wisdom, just one of Wyatt’s many quotes pulled from an array of Theosophical writings.

Materialism has influenced our reluctance to think about death and prepare the mind for this most personal and amazing of all our earthly experiences. By contrast, Theosophy, notes Wyatt, “offers a radically different view of ourselves, the wider world and the universe than can be easily found in any religion, science or philosophy.”

Wyatt quotes many philosophers and Theosophists, including Besant, H.P. Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, and J. Krishnamurti, bringing to light their thoughts on death and dying as well as near-death experiences in order to demystify death for everyone instead of just those who profess a particular religion. After all, in much of today’s society, religion doesn’t mean what it once did, as surveys show that fewer people are affiliated with any religious organizations.

Perhaps many today are avoiding the dying process rather than death per se. But the process of dying is a mystery too. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has an entire section on the stages of the dying process, which was very helpful for me when Brent, my significant other, was dying of cancer at our home. Everyone’s Book of the Dead also contains a chapter on the process of dying.   According to Wyatt, modern attitudes surrounding the dying process usually involve fear. We are so used to depending on medicine, surgery, and other modern remedies that death seems far away, if not impossible. “The majority of older people die under some form of medical supervision,” writes Wyatt. “The last rites have been replaced by the last intervention or injection.”

It would be helpful to learn a different way of looking at death. Wyatt suggests that we see it as “a Beginning—not an End. . . Transforming our attitudes to death would yield another bonus: it would inevitably mean that we also aggressively re-examine our ideas about disease—its real origins on the inner rather than the physical planes. Until we understand the deeper causes of disease—the karmic causes—we shall not be able to develop effective means to treat and manage it.” He also stresses that we would be better off not to treat disease and death with a “militaristic mind-set. . . as an enemy to be fought and conquered.”

Many obituaries state that the individual died “after a long battle” with a disease. My significant other warned me not to say that in his obituary: he never fought his cancer but embraced the path that was his to tread. 

Wyatt’s chapter on reincarnation contains a statement with which I completely agree: “If a correct understanding of reincarnation became permanently embedded into the collective human mind-set the implications would utterly transform life on Earth—almost at a stroke.”

Wyatt’s exploration of death, dying, and reincarnation is made all the more enjoyable by the beautiful artwork, photographs, and layout of each page, which capture the imagination in a way that words alone cannot.

This is truly a book for Theosophists, and one I recommend sharing with family and friends. Dying is something we will experience (and likely have experienced), but it is not to be feared. As Brent told me shortly before he died, “Dying is easy. I thought it would be harder than this, but it’s so easy.”

Clare Goldsberry

Clare Goldsberry’s latest book, The Illusion of Life and Death, will be published in 2021 by Monkfish.

 

---

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond 

BRUCE GREYSON, MD
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021. 258 pp., hardcover, $28.99.

In this landmark book, Bruce Greyson, MD, one of the world’s leading medical experts on near-death experiences (NDEs), presents us with the results of almost fifty years of scientific research into this phenomenon.

Greyson shares his long journey, which started with an inexplicable experience he had as a “newly minted psychiatrist” attending to a patient in the emergency room. The patient was unconscious during the whole period of his first visit, but when he returned the following day, she claimed to have seen him converse with her friend in the consultation room the previous evening; she also related some information about that meeting that she could not possibly have known by any ordinary means.

So began Greyson’s interest in paranormal experiences reported by people on the threshold of death. These experiences challenged his scientific understanding of life, death, the brain, and consciousness. His curiosity, tempered by a strong skepticism and a scientist’s need for proof, inspired a lifelong journey for answers, which he presents in this compelling book.

NDEs are profound experiences that occur on the threshold of death, which often include mystical or spiritual features. NDEs are common and have been reported since ancient times to today, occurring in 10–20 percent of all people who come close to death, or about 5 percent of the general population.

Skeptics have often written off such experiences as hallucinations, religious visions, or the result of mental illness. More recently, the medical and scientific community has been increasingly investigating these experiences in order to understand their implications about the nature of consciousness, the brain, death, and what, if anything, comes after.

Reports of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death (such as when the heart stops) can vary. Some near-death experiencers report seeing rare colors, while others hear strange sounds or have conversations with dead loved ones or out-of-body experiences. In any case, these people undergo profound transformations in their attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior. 

Greyson has studied over 1,000 experiencers and includes several of the most dramatic first-person accounts in this book. Part medical detective story and part journey of personal growth, After chronicles one doctor’s skeptical inquiry over decades of clinical experience and scientific research as he reluctantly comes to grips with the facts about NDEs, their effects on his patients, and ultimately, how they shaped his own life’s purpose.

This book explores questions that are fundamental to understanding the nature of NDEs, as well as implications that challenge some common assumptions about reality. Some of these questions are:

• How can we tell that NDEs are real?

• What do NDEs tell us about the mind-body connection?

• How can people’s consciousness continue when their brain activity has stopped?

• Does consciousness continue after death into an afterlife, such as heaven or hell?

• What about the nature and identity of the divine beings encountered by people who have NDEs?

In all of Greyson’s thoughtful, honest, and rational exploration of these questions, the most striking takeaway for me was the tremendous lack of understanding by modern science regarding the nature of consciousness itself. Greyson is both humble enough and wise enough to acknowledge this fact. He approaches this mystery and engages the myriad of unanswered questions with a refreshing level of integrity.

Perhaps the greatest value of this book is the change that it may facilitate in the way we view and live life while we are still alive. As Greyson points out, “The evidence shows that near-death experiences transform the lives not only of people who have them and their loved ones, or the researchers who study them. NDEs can also transform those who read about them and can ultimately, I believe, even help us change the way we see and treat one another.”

After inspires us to evaluate our understanding of life and death, but most importantly to reevaluate our own lives and ensure that we fill them with true meaning and joy. We can all do this even without having NDEs of our own.

John Cianciosi

John Cianciosi is director of programming for the Theosophical Society in America.

---

The Truth about Magic

Richard Smoley
New York: G&D Media, 2021. 187 pp., hardcover, $30.

The Truth about Magic is also available in six parts in audio and video form from Vimeo for $4.95 per part.

Books on magic flood the market today. Readers can explore everything from candle magic and crystal magic to queer magic and sex magic. Some titles even employ the archaic spelling magick.

The blessing of this great wave of publications is the dissemination of a wealth of wisdom and the proliferation of voices that were once muted and tragically oppressed. The challenge is deciding what to read. Many books target the committed novice, many others the seasoned practitioner. But where does the earnest seeker go for reliable information and orientation?

Richard Smoley’s latest work fills this important gap in the literature. In less than two hundred pages, The Truth about Magic explains the reason behind magic, its immense cosmic range, and its enduring relevance for the twenty-first century.

Smoley condenses a lifetime of scholarship and experimentation into this slim volume. His previous works, well known to students of the world’s occult and mystical traditions, have significantly advanced our understanding of topics such as Gnosticism, esoteric Christianity, love, and forgiveness. A remarkable career can yield both the definitive multivolume magnum opus and the portable primer that communicates the same comprehensive view in fewer pages.

This book follows the way of refinement, with close attention to readability. In twenty-four concise chapters, Smoley guides both newcomer and initiate through the diverse dimensions of the world of magic and the stages of the spiritual life.

Beginning with an introductory chapter on the theme of knowledge, the book progresses through subjects such as meditation, the life force, psychic powers, astrology, the Tarot, ghosts, evil, witchcraft, the kingdom of God, and the New Age. In each chapter, Smoley acquaints the reader with the appropriate terminology, the perennial debates, the contemporary consensus (if any), and especially the issues at stake in what are often centuries-long conversations.

Without a doubt, the book is founded on acceptance of an unseen world. The vast universe we encounter with our five senses, Smoley maintains, is simply the thin crust of a dramatically more expansive realm of being. Beyond that, though, he negotiates a carefully plotted middle course between total skepticism and uncritical belief. Knowledge of spiritual reality does not endow anyone with omniscience.

The dominant tone of the book is established by the author’s awe before the spiritual world, his confidence in the power of human intuition, and his humility in light of humanity’s inability to grasp the fullness of things—at least on this temporal plane. A critique of scientific materialism animates the whole book.

Smoley is particularly strong on the most personal issues, such as meditation, love, life after death, healing, psychedelics, and reincarnation. Here his extensive travels, prodigious reading, and distinctive personal experiences converge into the making of a rich portrait of the human person seamlessly woven into the fabric of all creation, both visible and invisible.

Smoley is at his most provocative when speaking on the lost ancient city of Atlantis and the implicit fraternity dubbed the Brotherhood, the network of enlightened souls around the world contributing to global awakening. Theosophy appears briefly in the chapter on the afterlife.

Ultimately, what is most striking about the book is its attention to the needs of the reader. Smoley unites the theoretical and the practical, suggesting exercises for meditation, revealing his own struggles with the medical establishment, appealing to the virtue of everyday decency, and offering advice, learned the hard way, on the use of psychoactive drugs.

Readers from a broad array of perspectives will benefit greatly from this deceptively simple book. It unveils the world of magic without pride or pretense, but it also holds nothing back. The author’s sincerity and credibility are displayed on every page. He speaks in first person, connects intimately with his audience, and is not afraid to admit ignorance or uncertainty. By contrast, his erudition is felt but never caught drawing attention to itself. The craft is executed with a subtlety worthy of the topic.

A shortcoming is the book’s lack of at least a modest bibliography. Smoley generously shares the stage with figures such as Plato, Swedenborg, Gurdjieff, Jung, Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, and the writers of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, and A Course in Miracles. Their texts and other suggested readings, however, are only minimally referenced. Seekers drawn to this introductory survey will be eager to chart the next phase of their development. Most will pack the book for the journey or pass it to another pilgrim. An extraordinary achievement in narrow compass, The Truth about Magic invites us to recognize the magic in everything.

Peter A. Huff

Peter A. Huff, an academic administrator and professor of religious studies, is the author or editor of seven books, including the forthcoming Atheism and Agnosticism.

                                     

---

Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony

JASON GREGORY
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2018, xxii + 187 pp., paper, $16.99.

We believe we know what we want, but do we know what we need? One of my mantras, created from personal experience, has long been: want nothing, and the universe will give you all needful things. From an Eastern viewpoint, the metaphysics of thought is more than just wanting something and expecting it to manifest. A danger in wanting is that we will get what we want rather than what the universe knows we need, which can pull us away from our true spiritual path.

Wanting generally comes from the ego, which “thinks it knows best for you. But your ego does not know what is best for you,” writes Jason Gregory in his beautifully written book, Effortless Living, which takes us down another path—that of the Tao and the practice of wu-wei, “the natural state of our consciousness.” As Gregory says, the teaching of Lao-tzu, founder of Taoism, is one of “naturalness”: no forcing, no striving to control life and outcomes. Wu-wei means nondoing, nonaction, or effortless action. It is, he says, an “effortless psychological experience” of “‘allowing’ a state of ‘intelligent spontaneity.’”

That is similar to what we find in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, which defines flow as “the ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it” and “is a very rare gift.” People who can go with the flow have “unselfconscious self-assurance . . . their energy is typically not bent on dominating their environment as much as on finding a way to function within it harmoniously,” writes Csikszentmihalyi.

Trust is an important element in going with the flow and allowing natural harmony to exist. “To trust the universe means to let life be without trying to impose our will over it in any way,” Gregory says. “When we trust completely, our physical, mental, and spiritual planes of consciousness harmonize with the heartbeat of the Earth.” In that way we can experience the harmony of nature and learn a way of “being” rather than constant “doing.”

Gregory addresses synchronicity, explaining that fate “takes into account the relationship between our inner and outer worlds” and “is diametrically opposed to chance.” Wu-wei involves the harmonization of our inner and outer worlds, trusting in the “unfolding of fate in our lives” and becoming “aware of synchronicity.”

It is this harmony that Gregory discusses in teaching about wu-wei; when we have gone beyond thought and beyond doing to no-thinking and nondoing, we are free to live spontaneously and with grace. In India, he notes, “this grace comes about because of the ability to see that everything is done when left undone.”

Another way of looking at this, from Alexandria David-Neel’s book The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects, is “nothing to be done.” Something might be done or could be done, but using the art of nondoing, there is nothing to be done because everything is already perfect as it is in the zone or the flow of the experience. Inserting our will, our wants, desires, and wishes into the world disrupts the harmony of nature. Gregory reminds us that “human life is an intrinsic part of nature because a human being is nature.” Remembering that is important because “the human being corresponds to nature by allowing all aspects of universal life to take their natural course without conscious interference.”

Can there be a harmonization between doing and nondoing? Gregory looks to the Indian sage Patanjali for understanding that “the ‘doing’ of practice is in alignment with the evolutionary unfolding while the ‘non-doing’ of stillness brings one in resonance with the Eternal Self, which is the source of Tao within us.”

Doing is more valued in today’s world than nondoing, “yet the act of leaving things alone allows the Tao to bring harmony into the world without our personal interference,” Gregory says. “Working against the nature of Tao . . . leaves humanity in a place of desperate survival. . . . Disharmony on all fronts is the outcome.”

Gregory’s book gives us the gift and the freedom of no striving and no struggle, and teaches us that often nondoing—seeking the stillness of nonaction—is the better way.

Clare Goldsberry

Clare Goldsberry, of the Phoenix Study Center, is a freelance writer and author of The Teacher Within: Finding and Living Your Personal Truth. Her article “A Stranger No More: A Journey through Mormonism” appeared in the fall 2018 Quest.

---