Further ruminations concerning the mysticism, knowledge, and nature of ultimate reality add little to previous volumes by the same author. Cypriot-born Markides (Sociology/Univ. of Maine; Fire in the Heart, not reviewed, etc.) offers this follow-up to his trilogy about the esoteric teachings of two holy men on the island of Cyprus. As the present volume opens, the author has been sought out by Diana, a psychotherapist who has been profoundly affected by his books. Their meeting and conversation form the springboard for the story as he brings her up-to-date. Since his last book, Kostas and Spyros Sathi, the two psychic healers and teachers about whom he wrote, have had a falling out, the cause of which is vague. Furthermore, Markides himself no longer has any association with Spyros. He then, for the benefit of his visitor and new readers, recaps his history with these wise ones. Throughout the remainder of the book, he anecdotally describes his experiences with both these teachers and others at lectures, conferences, and chance encounters. Meetings with clairvoyants and psychic healers abound, as do references to mystics such as Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Krishna, and the Rosicrucians as Markides discusses a ``hidden knowledge'' that is ``trans-logical'' and ``trans-scientific.'' Seeking to link both Eastern and Western philosophy, he argues for the essential unity of all religions, which at their core carry the ``primordial tradition.'' He claims that seekers may find mystical spiritual teachings and practices within their own Judeo-Christian traditions. Non-devotees of the New Age and nonreaders of Markides's previous efforts are apt to be left out in the cold as the current volume approaches its own hidden wisdom in nearly content-free language.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-85780-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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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