A stimulating, though not elegantly expressed, vision of the evolution of the cosmos—and of our role in its future. California social-scientist Elgin (Voluntary Simplicity, 1981- -not reviewed) draws on ancient spiritual traditions and modern scientific insights to form a picture of where we're going in the universe. The present, he argues, is crucial, since advances in technology and communications suggest a new expansion of human consciousness even as ecological problems cast doubt on any ``sustainable future.'' Elgin discerns three decisive stages in the development of consciousness: the era of hunter-gatherers, beginning roughly 35,000 years ago and marked by limited self- reflection; the era of agrarian-based civilizations, beginning about 10,000 years ago; and our own scientific-industrial era, begun in the 1700's. He contends that now we're entering a new era, one in which mass communications make possible the beginning of a global consciousness, as well as hoped-for reconciliations among ourselves and between us and our planet. Looking forward, Elgin projects three further stages: ``bonding,'' in which community and viable future can be built; ``surpassing,'' which will foster free creativity; and ``maturity,'' a wisdom-culture of enlightenment and cosmic consciousness. The author claims that his thinking isn't New Age, since he envisages a process involving matter as well as consciousness—a process he terms ``co-evolution.'' Elgin's stress on human responsibility avoids the determinism of many evolutionary views, and his suggestions that the ideal world government will resemble that dictated in the US constitution, and that ultimate reality is ``democratic,'' will please patriots. But Elgin's final vision is of consciousness being freed from matter, and his concept of an eternal ``Meta-universe'' seems to align him with the Taoists or pre-Socratic Greeks. Moreover, it's difficult to see how personal individuation has a place in his view of the fully evolved consciousness. An ambitious and provocative call to greater awareness, marred by sometimes tortuous turns of expression and thought.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-11621-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
A fine thematic introduction to gnosticism, concentrating on the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi (Upper Egypt) in 1945. Pagels teaches the history of religion at Barnard, and she has spent practically all of her young academic life working with the Nag Hammadi manuscripts in one way or another. She brings her considerable competence to bear on the subject without overwhelming the reader with scholarly minutiae. Pagels sees in gnosticism a "powerful alternative to. . . orthodox Christian tradition," an alternative she clearly finds attractive. Gnostics treated Christ's resurrection as a symbolic rather than a corporeal event. They rejected the authoritarian, bishop-dominated structure of the orthodox church. They looked beyond the masculine imagery of the patriarchal God to various concepts of a feminine or bisexual divinity. They avoided the excesses of the martyrdom cult and its apotheosis of the suffering Jesus. In surprisingly modern fashion, they cultivated a religion that stressed personal enlightenment over corporate belonging, insisting that "the psyche bears within itself the potential for liberation or destruction." These and other gnostic tenets were repressed by mainstream Christianity because, Pagels claims, they constituted a political threat to the hierarchy. In the calmer, freer atmosphere of contemporary Christianity, they can better be appreciated for their intrinsic richness. Pagels' advocacy of gnosticism is restrained and responsible—she admits, for example, that its elitist, intellectualist qualities made it ill-suited as a faith for the masses—but this partisanship, plus the absence of solid explanation of the movement's historical roots, may create a misleading picture of it as a sort of heroic prototype of liberal Protestantism. Otherwise a clear, reliable, richly documented guide.
Pub Date: Nov. 26, 1979
ISBN: 0394502787
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979
The name of C.S. Lewis will no doubt attract many readers to this volume, for he has won a splendid reputation by his brilliant writing. These sermons, however, are so abstruse, so involved and so dull that few of those who pick up the volume will finish it. There is none of the satire of the Screw Tape Letters, none of the practicality of some of his later radio addresses, none of the directness of some of his earlier theological books.
Pub Date: June 15, 1949
ISBN: 0060653205
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1949
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