Quest Magazine

by Anthony Storr
Ballantine, 1992; paper, 212 pages.

Here is a book for the mental musician. Anthony Storr has created a collage of history, analysis, observation, an d critique about the place of music in culture. Storr reflects on the innermost nature of the world in regard to sound through basic patterns, cultural comparisons, and even existential writings.

Quoting from a wide variety of musicians, scientists, and philosophers, Music and the Mind helps us to realize how vast and contrasting the intellectual approach to music is. By observing the origins and functions of music, Storr believes we can approach the significance of music in human life. From bird songs to Gregorian chant, there are functional attributes that signify the meaning of sound.

It is curious that spirituality and the simple release of beauty from an instrument are not considered within the book. There is a constant sense of referencing every idea to show the research and the historical awareness of other writers . Rather than weaving common threads that would inspire the reader to listen to music and experience it a non-critical way, Storr keeps the mind as the observer.

It is not until the end of the book that some of the quotations begin to touch on the rich inner quality of sound. Nietszche, for example, speaks of the life-affirming attributes of music:

What is it that my whole body really expects of music? I believe, its own ease: as if all animal functions should be quickened by easy, bold, exuberant, self-assured rhythms; as if iron, leaden life should be gilded by good golden and tender harmonies. My melancholy wants to rest in the hiding places and abysses of perfection: that is why I need music.

By the end of the book, there are fascinating observations such as Stravinsky's view of "psychological time" and "ontological time" as these relate to the listener.

Music and Mind may deepen your perception of how many musical minds work and think. With all its reflections and commentaries, music nevertheless is still a mystery, no matter how we approach it. What a glorious symphony of thought there is here for the mind and the ears.

-DON G. CAMPBELL

Winter 1994

by Paramahansa Yogananda
reprint of the original Philosophical Library 1946 edition; Crystal Clarity Publications; paper, 481 pages.

The Autobiography a Yogi is one of the greatest classics of spiritual literature published in the Western world. It is the life story of Paramahansa Yogananda, the great yogi and saint who came from India to the United States in 1920, having been directed by his teacher to bring Yoga to the West. He became the central figure promoting yogic spirituality in this country for more than thirty years until his death in 1952. The book has changed the lives of thousands of people.

Here we have a special reprint of the original edition first published in 1946. Yogananda himself made a few minor changes in 1951, and Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), the organization established by him, was responsible for subsequent editions. SRF made a number of changes through the years, including not only many footnotes. but some notable deletions and additions as well.

The present reprint has been done under the auspices of Ananda, a group of spiritual communities organized under the inspiration of Sri Kriyananda, one of Yogananda's chief disciples and former head monk and vice-president of SRF, who disassociated from that organization in 1962.

The question at hand is why the reader should purchase this more expensive version of the first edition when later editions are readily available at a lower price . The difference is more one of ton e rather than substance. However, in the original edition one feels more in contact with Yogananda himself. In later editions we see Yogananda through the eyes of SRF; the organization becomes a medium between the reader and the yogi by the addition of more than a hundred references to the organization.

Yogananda created SRF, and the organization has done enormous benefit by continuing the teachings by making available his books, recordings, and lessons. Yet organizations have their limitations, and great teachers and great teachings transcend all organizations.

This is not to say that SRF was wrong for institutionalizing Yogananda and his teaching. Such organizations become necessary in the modern world. Personal transmissions, as in the old guru-disciple system of earlier days, have of necessity been replaced largely by tapes, videos, books, and correspondence courses. The advantage of an organization like SRF is that it can project t the teaching to help fill the spiritual needs of many more people. The disadvantage is that the teaching so transmitted tends to become depersonalized and frozen in time. The institution , instead of simply disseminating the teaching, begins to assert owners hip over it, and may itself replace the teacher. While there is danger in a guru becoming an institution, there is even greater danger in an institution becoming a guru.

In its more recent editions, SRF appears to make a special claim to be the sole representative of Yogananda's teaching. But Yogananda had many disciples, not all of whom were part of or remained with SRF. Moreover, Yogananda's gurus themselves had many other disciples who developed their work in various directions, and some of whom came to the West and taught Kriya Yoga along different lines. Yogananda, in other word s, was part of a greater lineage with many branches in India and the West. Kriya Yoga, the technique that Yogananda taught, has many different teachers and techniques, and it is impossible to divide it from the rest of the yoga tradition. He did not invent the teachings , though he certainly added his flavor to them and made them accessible to the Western mind.

The Hindu yoga tradition is notably anarchic in its structure. It has no central organization, no pope or archbishop, no Rome or Mecca, and certainly no Bible or Koran that all students must memorize or literally believe in. It is remarkably non-institutional , and places individual direct experience above outer forms , rules, ritual , or dogma. In personal relationship with the guru, each disciple is treated differently, and when the disciples go off to do their own practice or start their own center, they are not beholden to the successors of the guru once the guru passes away, nor to any organization created in the guru's name. Disciples may not even require the approval of the guru. For example, some great teachers like Ramana Maharshi had no formal disciples and anyone can claim to be their disciples. Yoga centers, unlike churches, do not require loyalty to an organization. Moreover, the teaching is more important than the personality of the guru . It is this sense of freedom and diversity in the yogic approach that comes out more clearly in the original edition of Autobiography of a Yogi. Examples of the differences between the original edition and the 1981 SRF edition: 

Original edition: "The actual technique (of Kriya Yoga) must be learn ed from a Kriyaban or Kriya Yogi; here a broad reference must suffice."

1981 SRF edition: "The actual technique (of Kriya Yoga) must be learned from an authorized Kriyaban or Kriya Yogi of Self- Realization Fellowship (Yogoda Satsangha Society of India). Here a broad reference must suffice." 

What originally was a broad reference by Yogananda to any Kriya Yogi was narrowed to refer to a member of one organization. This tends to cast doubt upon other Kriya Yogis who do not belong to SRF. Westerners, trained in religious orthodoxy, may take such reference more seriously than Hindus, who are accustomed to every sort of teacher, practice, and center. Such statements contain an implicit criticism of the very diversity that surrounded Yogananda and that is generally part of the yoga tradition.

Yogananda himself gave initiation rather freely, a point that later editions of the book wish to forget: 

Original edition: "Tens of thousands of Americans received Yoga initiation ."

1981 SRF edition: "During the decade of 1920-1930 my yoga classes were attended by tens of thousands of Americans."

Yogananda may have started SRF, but it does not appear that he intended his teaching to be limited to one group. In this regard, references to spiritual communities - an important idea for Yogananda – have been taken out of the SRF edit ion. One example: "In these beautiful surroundings I have started a miniature world colony. Brotherhood is an ideal better understood by example than precept! A small harmonious group here may inspire other ideal communities over the earth."

Some other changes since the original edition appear to limit the connections between Yogananda's teaching and the rest of the tradition he came from. A reference to Ayurveda, for example, was taken out. Such changes, perhaps made with good intentions, nevertheless encourage conformity to a group rather than diversity.

Yogananda left not only SRF but a number of independent disciples, several of whom have become well known in their own right and who carry on the teaching along different lines. These teachers, who tend to be forgotten under the shadow of SRF, include Kriyananda, Roy Eugene Davis, Shelly Trimmer, Norm Paulsen, and Swami Premananda, to name a few.

Lahiri Mahasaya, Yogananda's guru's guru and the main proponent of Kriya Yoga in India, had many thousands of disciples in India. Babaji also is a well known Himalayan yogi in this broad tradition.

I think it is important to appreciate the diversity of the tradition, and for this reason recommend taking a look at the original edition. Yogananda wanted to bring the liberating practices of yoga to this country, not to create another church.

-DAVID FRAWLEY

Winter 1994

Postmodern Ethics by Zygmunt Bauman; Blackwell, Oxford, U.K., and Cambridge, U.S. , 1993; hardcover, paper, 253 pages.

The Morality of Pluralism by John Kekes; Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1993; hardcover, 227 pages.

Moral issues, that is to say. personal moral issues, have dominated the news in recent years to a remark able degree, often obscuring consideration of larger (presumably boring) issues. And given the proliferation of polls-daily, even hourly-measuring our attitudes (up? down? who's in? who's out?) on matters of public policy-making, what can one say but that we the body politic are... well, ambivalent.

As Zygmunt Bauman declares in his new book Postmodern Ethics," Human reality is messy and ambiguous- and so moral decisions, unlike abstract ethical principles, are ambivalent" (Bauman, 32). Moral decisions are made personally and intuitively, while the impact of those decisions is so removed from our view as to render moral surety an absurdity.

And John Kekes, at the outset in his new book. The Morality of Pluralism, asserts that "The sea of moral conflicts threatens to drown us," but quickly adds that the moral confusion of our time "is not caused by the shrinking of morality" (Kekes, 6).

Indeed both liberals and conservatives are morally engaged , according to Kekes, though their moral concerns tend to be different. "Liberals tend to be morally concerned about equality. sexual freedom, capital punishment, and commercialism; conservatives tend to direct moral attention to the family, social order. and the free market. " But Kekes worries that "informed moral debate is disappearing from our society. In its place. we have cynical or despairing indifference or an assertive shrillness masquerading as moral indignation" (Kekes, 7).

Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds. John Kekes is Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the State University of New York. Their books, read in tandem. are a bracing antidote to the odd combination of moral judgment and cynicism to which we are subjected by 1990s "newsmagazines" and television.

What makes moral decision-making so troubling in our time is that "The scale of consequences our actions may have dwarfs such moral imagination as we may possess. It also renders impotent the few, but tested and trustworthy ethical rules we have inherited from the past and are taught to obey" (Bauman, 18).

We can, as Bauman notes, do harm by inadvertence, by ignorance rather than design. Our moral rules of thumb are no longer adequate. If ethicists in the past have sought to discover universal values, that surely is no longer the case. An aside: when I wrote my doctoral dissertation some fifteen years ago. I was unable to find more than one or perhaps two working ethicists who had any confidence in the idea of fixed rules of what is right or wrong capable of being applied to all situations. Pretty much everyone in the field of moral philosophy had become, whether they liked the term or not (and often they didn't), a "situation ethicist.” Yet to day we seem to be overwhelmed in public conversation by the anger of those who are convinced they know, absolutely, what is right and what is wrong.

Against those who preach universalism today we have what Bauman calls the "communitarians" who find the "retreat from the cold and abstract territory of universal moral values into the cosy and homely shelter of 'native community' exceedingly tempting; many would find the seduction irresistible" (p. 43). Everywhere in the world we see ethnic conflict rising in the dissolution of the "two great powers" view of the world , and the United Nations is challenged as never before in dozens of theaters around the world.

Morality is not universalizable, Bauman asserts, because it does not possess purpose, or reciprocity, or contractual characteristics - and it is "endemically and irredeemably non -rational" (Bauman, 60). Morality at its foundation is an impulse non-rational and not calculable. Indeed, Bauman says, "I am moral before I think" (Bauman, 61).

Asserting the solitude of the moral subject, Bauman says that morality is antithetical to society's rules and laws. "Philosophers and the administrators of order alike" distrust the moral impulse as too unreliable, too uncertain . a situation in which "everything may happen" (Bauman, 62 ff).

Because of this solitude, saints, as Bauman notes, are unique; that is, they do things others shirk. They act out of conscience, beyond sheer decency and the call of duty. And , perhaps most import ant, they do these things because they demand them of themselves, while not demanding them of others.

Love, the basis for all moral consideration, is chronically uncertain. Baum an says. This uncertainty leads to two basic human strategies- fixation and flotation. Fixation substitutes rules and routines for love, considering love, sympathy and other sentiments "too unreliable and costly to ground a secure relationship" (Bauman, 98). Flotation, on the other hand, is "the medicine against love's undependability" in which a relationship is entered for its own sake and continues so long as both parties feel it delivers enough satisfaction to stay (Bauman, 104).

Ultimately, life's only certainty is death, for ".. . only death is unambiguous, and escape from ambivalence is the temptation of Thanatos" (Bauman, 109).

In a chapter titled "Private Morals, Public Risks," Bauman considers what really is the central problem for moral thinking today - that our morality is inherited from pre-modern times, and is a "morality of proximity," and therefore "woefully inadequate in a society in which all important action is an action on distance" (Bauman, 217).

In the end , as in the beginning, Bauman asserts the ambiguity of moral decision making  and the futility of imagining a universal morality. "Moral responsibility is the most personal and inalienable of human possession s, and the most precious of human rights." It is "unconditional and infinite, and it manifests itself in the constant anguish of not manifesting itself enough" (Bauman, 250). We must place our bet, he says, on "that conscience which, however wan, alone can instill the responsibility for disobeying the command to do evil."

Kekes begins his book with an analysis of "six theses of pluralism" : (I ) the plurality and conditionality of values; (2) the unavoidability of conflicts; (3) the approach to reasonable conflict-resolution; (4) the possibilities of life; (5) the need for limits; (6) the prospect s for moral progress. Then he devote s a chapter to each, and follows with considerations of moral, person al, and political implications of pluralism.

His conviction is that "good lives require a balance among a plurality of values, and that the balance depend s on resolving conflicts among them." Furthermore, it is the state 's job "to protect all the procedural and substantive values necessary for all good lives and . second, make it possible for citizens to pursue, within appropriate limits, such secondary values as they may require" (Kekes, 213).

If Bauman leaves us with the insecurity of knowing that we are destined to grapple with moral ambiguity throughout any but utopian time, then Kekes attempts to show how we can bring the desire to live good lives into the public arena, ambiguity or not. These are both outstanding books that bear close reading and considerable reflection.

-WILLIAM METZGER

Winter 1994

by Bryan Appleyard
Doubleday, New York, 1992; xvii + 269 pages, hardcover.

Human history, in the Theosophical view, is patterned like a great spiral, consisting of seven cycles. Each cycle includes seven subcycles, each subcycle has seven sub-subcycles, and so on. During each cycle and subcycle, one of the seven aspects of human consciousness is being developed, unfolded from latency to greater activity. When the spiral reaches its last turn, human beings will have developed as completely as is possible in our current world period.

At the present time, we are in our fifth cycle and its fifth subcycle. During this time, the human mind (the fifth aspect of consciousness) is the focus of our evolution. This is also a time when the fifth ray of life is dominant in our society, and that is the ray of science. So we live in a time of intellect and science. That Theosophical view of contemporary human culture will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who has thought about modern life.

In his recent book, Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man, Bryan Appleyard examines the consequences of this scientific dominance. Appleyard is a correspondent for the London Sunday Times who writes on science, philosophy, and the arts. His thesis is simple. He argues that for all its magnificent accomplishments, which have transformed our lives, science has a blind spot - it has nothing to say about values, meanings, and purposes.

The overwhelming philosophical impact of science was the separation of knowledge from value. Indeed, this seems to be what ensures its success. For science is, of necessity, dynamic. It requires always the possibility of experimental refutation and a permanent process of skepticism about its own findings. But, if we attach a value to one particular view, then either the process is paralyzed or the value is vulnerable to overthrow…Science is always restless and always destructive of any attempt to freeze its conclusions into a more than scientific truth. (p. 62)

Scientists, however, being human beings, tend to devalue whatever they can say nothing about. And thus ironically science becomes not merely neutral, but inimical to values. "Science begins by saying it can answer only this kind of question and ends by claiming that these are the only questions that can be asked" (p. 234). Yet value, meaning, and purpose are central to human life. To deny them is to create an intellectual and social crisis. We are Dr. Frankenstein, and science is the monster we have made.

Appleyard points out that science is not just an abstract intellectual game scientists play. The rules of this game mold the way we think about the world and ourselves. And through its practical application in technology, it has transformed our everyday lives. Consider technology: scientific theory made possible the development of automobiles, jet airplanes, and space capsules; television, computers, and the electronic information superhighway; vaccinations, organ transplants, and genetic engineering; massive food production and marketing. artificial fibers, and so on through practically every aspect of contemporary life.

In addition to revolutionizing our material culture. the metaphysics of science has also, Appleyard believes, transformed our social lives. Out of the scientific view of the nature of knowledge and the search for knowledge, grew the liberal democratic theory of government , which is the ideal of our time. In it, the function of government is to maintain order, plurality. and tolerance, without convictions about the transcendent values of human life. The message it conveys, however, is that citizens need not be concerned about those values either. And so increasingly we have a loss of social coherence and commitment.

This dominant scientific mindset, which sees all truth as relative, is fundamentally incompatible with religion, which is concerned with absolutes and values. We want the benefits of science, but they involve the subversion of religious absolutes. "We all want penicillin and we all must pay for it in roughly the same way," says Appleyard (p.8):

Science transports the entire issue of life on earth from the realm of the moral or the transcendent to the realm of the feasible. This child can be cured, this bomb can be dropped. "Can" supersedes "should"; "ability" supersedes "obligation"; "No problem!" supersedes "love."

When meaning is devalued, human life becomes meaningless, and the old medieval disease of acedia becomes endemic:

The pessimism, anguish, skepticism and despair of so much twentieth-century art and literature are expressions of the fact that there is nothing "big" worth talking about anymore, there is no meaning to be elucidated. (p.11)

There is an old academic joke that specialists are people who know more and more about less and less, until finally they know everything about nothing. If for "nothing," we read "nothing of value," we have Appleyard's thesis, and Wittgenstein's:

"We feel," wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, "that even when all possible scientific Questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched." (p.15)

Appleyard develops his thesis by a Cook's tour of the history of science from 1609, when Galileo peeped at the moon through his telescope, through the villains of his plot-Descartes, Newton, Darwin, and Freud - down to contemporary efforts to correct the scientific and technological lacuna from within. Those efforts consist of the ecological movement; the mystifying (not to say mystical) theories of relativity, the quantum, and chaos; and the work of scientists who are pushing the boundaries of classical science, such as Robert Dicke's Anthropic Principle, Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields, and David Bohm's implicate order.

We are not willing to give up science and its benefit s, nor should we. But on the other hand, we cannot give up the religious impulse either:

It is clear that there is something about the human condition that demands a dimension we call religious, whatever it might be. Particular faiths have come and gone, but nothing has ever displaced the religious presence itself from human life. It has always accompanied men and their cultures. (p.80)

This religious dimension is the quest for value , meaning, and purpose. It got tied into knots by Descartes, who thought of the human self as an "isolated, thinking thing, trapped in yet separate from the body" (p.227). Appleyard sees those knots as untied by Wittgenstein's insight that there is no private language, so there is no separate, isolated cogitation.

He [the human being] cannot isolate himself and his words from the public realm of language. He must have language before he can have the concept of a sensation. There cannot be such a thing as a private language because language is, by definition, a public thing. (p.227)

Appleyard has identified a problem in modern life. His solution will not satisfy all his readers, and indeed the premier British scientific periodical Nature has called this "a very dangerous book." However, the Appleyard solution can be given a Theosophical slant that brings it into harmony with the Wisdom Tradition.

As Appleyard says, the everyday languages we speak are by definition public thing s. They are also the surface, outer, or exoteric expressions of a deep, inner, or esoteric mental structure. That inner structure is not an individual thing either, but is the common property of all humanity, being derived ultimately from the universal mind, which is the divine intelligence.

Although in our present stage of evolution, the human mind is dominant and science is our primary mode of understanding, we have other aspects of consciousness within us with different fields of operation. A person who can see, but does not hear, taste, smell, or feel, has a limited view of the world. To rely exclusively on the mind and science is just as limiting. The hum an goal is to develop all aspects of consciousness and all our faculties to their fullest , but also to develop them harmoniously with each other.

It is not anti-intellectual or anti-scientific to point out that intellect and science are incomplete views of the world. It is not anti-religious to point out that science and reason are invaluable ways of knowing reality. The Cartesian dualism is false; we are not souls in bodies, but unified beings with varied aspects. We are not isolated entities, but beings who communicate within a community. Knowledge is not fragmented; there is a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. It is called by many names. One of them is Theosophy.

-JOHN ALGEO

Autumn 1994