An intriguing book explores spiritual practices and perspectives using storytelling as the main device.
A guide presents a religious approach to understanding the inner self and the experiences of life.
Klemp (ECK Wisdom on Conquering Fear, 2016, etc.) is the author of a series of books on Eckankar, “Religion of the Light and Sound of God,” established in 1965 by Paul Twitchell, “the modern-day founder.” (It is “also known as the Ancient Science of Soul Travel.”) This latest volume guides readers through the faith’s teachings and the ways they can enrich spiritual connections with themselves and the world. Klemp, presented as the ECK Master, covers many topics, from love and mistakes to karma, mental balance, and consciousness. The work is organized into bite-sized “teachings,” most in the form of anecdotes about meetings between two or more people. For example, one story focuses on a wealthy commodity trader who returns home to a large mansion dressed in casual clothes. A stranger on the sidewalk outside remarks that no one should own a house so big, and the two engage in a discussion. The trader eventually walks away realizing that this man believes, wrongly, that because a rich entrepreneur built this lavish house, the stranger cannot. Klemp uses this anecdote to stage a discussion about the infinite wealth of the spirit and posits that no one can limit or prohibit another’s spiritual success. While the book may read fluidly for someone already knowledgeable about ECK teachings, it will require some study for those unfamiliar with the religion. A glossary of terms in the back helps readers identify the players and the texts that are referenced, but the work dives straight into the small lessons rather than giving an overview of the religion. (Indeed, ECK followers may be the target audience.) Nevertheless, the manual focuses on the positivity of individual encounters and uses storytelling to uncover some of the contradictions the author finds prevalent in the world today. The powerful optimism of these teachings should resonate with all readers, even those unacquainted with ECK.
An intriguing book explores spiritual practices and perspectives using storytelling as the main device.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-57043-341-2
Page Count: 381
Publisher: Eckankar
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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