Calabria shows how a golden thread of social- and self-awareness underlies all major religions. Born into a Christian family, Calabria began to explore other religions in his teens, and by his 20s, he’d begun meditating with a yoga master. After much study of comparative religion, he concluded that what differs are not the specific teachings of a religion but the approach individuals take to the religion they have chosen. Exoteric believers, Calabria says, take their scriptures—whether the Bible, Quran, Gita, Avestas, etc.—literally and ignore inconsistencies in the texts. They are the dogmatists and fundamentalists of the world. Mesoteric believers, he says, see that there are similarities across religions and inconsistencies within them, which makes them more open-minded but also more equivocal. Mesoteric believers sound much like stereotypical New Agers (although Calabria doesn’t use the term), taking a bit here and there from diverse traditions. Finally, esoteric believers comprehend the Cosmic Religion, a kind of Platonic ideal of religion that underlies all the major religions. Esoteric believers will generally choose one specific tradition to follow, but, Calabria says, they see through the dogmatism and inconsistencies to practice the three unitary principles that the author calls Love God, Love Neighbor and Love Self. Calabria illustrates these principles through comparisons of Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Sikh, Hindu, Taoist, Judaic and Zoroastrian scriptures and the teachings of several ascended masters (Jesus Christ, Guru Nank, Lao Tzu, Moses, etc.). Calabria seems to be well-read, although it can be disturbing that his main cited resource is Wikipedia and there’s no bibliography of secondary literature. His list of resources at the end of the book consists of links to websites for a variety of Kriya Yoga organizations. Calabria tends to make sweeping statements about world religions but seems to be really talking about only the Judeo-Christian-Muslim nexus and the Indo-Aryan religions—the same group that has been mined for “universal truths” since Madam Blavatsky introduced theosophy in the late 19th century. For readers seeking universal truths, this book is as good a place as any to start, though there’s not much new here.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479183753
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2014
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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