The blueprint for an energetic new religion—composed mostly of woo-woo and blather.
A book that presents a new cosmological theology.
God is the cosmos, writes Oraiah in his nonfiction debut, and all humans are parts of that totality. The word cosmos, he writes, refers to “the universal order and intelligence present in the world, as opposed to just chaos and disorder. It also implies the deep interconnectedness of all things in the universe.” As a stave against such chaos, the author proposes a new religion: Cosmism, which seeks to fuse religion and science into a kind of conceptual soup that’s equal parts dark energy and dark matter. “The field of cosmology is intricately connected to the field of theology,” Oraiah writes. “Researching and understanding the Cosmos and our place in It is the same as understanding the nature of God and our relationship with It.” According to Oraiah, this realization is one of the fundamental tenets of Cosmism. Oraiah writes all of this with a profusion of narrative energy and a generous amount of quotation and allusion; the book is immersive, providing readers with plenty of food for thought. The main drawback is that much of it is almost complete gibberish. “The spirit Supersoul houses the Ghost of the superior intelligence & supreme consciousness at the Cosmic scale,” goes one passage among innumerable passages of undiluted nonsense. “It is the power beyond our limited material data and comprehension ability.” Few to none of the author’s assertions about the nature of reality have any grounding in scientific fact. And Oraiah adds an element of blasphemy to his work by constantly invoking Carl Sagan in the context of Cosmism. Sagan’s book Cosmos (1980) is called “one of the sacred writings that is part of the Bible of the religion of Cosmism”—a statement that would have surely irked the rationalist atheist Sagan.
The blueprint for an energetic new religion—composed mostly of woo-woo and blather.Pub Date: June 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-912283-3
Page Count: 568
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
