The News for April, 2003....
Reviews
The search for Truth is rewarding. It is rewarding when it is found, accepted, and
expressed. The search is quite often challenging, but the glories of achievement, the
development and expression of the truth we discover are far greater than the seeming
hardship or struggle of the search.
Jesus used an analogy on one occasion of a woman who was giving birth to a
child. The pains of childbirth, Jesus said, were forgotten in the joy of the event. When
the mother looked into the face of the new infant, she neither thought of nor felt the pain
she experienced in giving birth to the child.
God understands our human ego. He knows there will be times of wavering.
Whether we will have the staying power is the question. When we accept the challenge
and enter an obedient relationship with our indwelling Spirit, the blessings really begin.
Hardcover, 163 pp., $6.95
We have all heard the saying: "We get too soon old, and too late smart." It voices
a feeling that is common to most of us. Doesn't it seem that about the time we have
begun to learn how to live, we also begin to lose the very things that enable us to enjoy
living? How ironical to find that by the time we have figured out some of the answers to
the riddle of existence, we have lost the capacity to benefit from them! Time's greatest
insult is that by the time we acquire the "know-how" we lose the "go-go." Why should
we run out of gas by the time we get past all the dusty detours and onto the right road?
Does life make sense?
After a time we begin to fear the approach of middle age. Then, having accepted
middle age, we begin to fear the coming of old age, all the time feeling just as young
inside. Next, old age, with all its boredom, trials, and failing powers. . . while we are still
feeling young inside, but unable to express our feeling in our physical body.
There is a way out of all this! It consists in knowing the real truth about ourselves
as a spiritual-mental-physical being, all in one, and in reality all one. Thus we relate our
body to the life force that animates it, not to our birth certificate.
This book gives us definite, provable methods of doing just this. It suggests ways
to renovate our senses, renew our body by renewing our mind, and restore our enthusiasm
for living. It tells us how we may obtain for ourselves youthful and lasting maturity, the
new goal and the true goal of life.
Hardcover, 223 pp., $6.95
Ramakrishna, the greatest Hindu saint of the nineteenth century, once said, "God
has made different religions to suit different aspirations, times, and countries. All
doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one
can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion. One may eat
cake with icing either straight or sidewise. It will taste sweet either way."
Whether based on the Buddhist vision of the Bodhisattva or the Christian concept
of service, the mystic's journey is taken on behalf of all humanity, and this is the message
that Andrew Harvey -- one of the nation's most celebrated authorities on mysticism -- has
succeeded in communicating in THE ESSENTIAL MYSTICS, a brilliant introduction to
the essential texts and themes of the world's great mystic visionaries.
Hardcover, 236 pp., $20.00
|
