A useful text for readers curious about New Age spirituality.
An intense exploration of the mystical concept of “ageless wisdom,” which Seifer and Vieweg describe as a body of ideas, laws and truths that have guided seekers throughout time in finding and reveling in the world’s spirituality.
This second edition of the text, following closely on the heels of the first, opens with a well-written and thought-provoking introduction that quickly lays out the authors’ hypothesis–mankind is now, more than ever, ready and willing to embark upon a spiritual quest. The authors point to tragedies such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as catalysts for this movement. Seifer and Vieweg support this theory with a series of 10 dense chapters, each of which opens with a thought-provoking quotation from a saint, poet, writer or prophet that logically guides the chapter. Although the book provides ample coverage of the history of ageless wisdom, the authors also focus on illuminating its role in the world’s current state, and make predictions about its future. Seifer and Vieweg thoroughly cover reincarnation, the qualities and existence of the human soul, the experience of spiritual awakening and the history of ageless wisdom. Woven throughout the text is a fine balance of description of and quotations from spiritual leaders from around the world and across time–this provides this text with a global and timeless perspective. Each chapter concludes with end-notes which provide additional information, much of which is historical in nature and provides opportunity for future exploration. The book also includes a short glossary of terms, enabling readers to better understand some of the more complicated spiritual concepts, such as Etheric Vision (“the power to see the subtler grades of matter with the strictly physical eye”). Though abstract and wordy, the book is appropriate for seekers wanting to understand the roots of ageless wisdom.
A useful text for readers curious about New Age spirituality.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9820047-0-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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