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Can Grapes Be Picked From Briars?
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19532 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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11 / 1991 |
2,566 Words |
| Author
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David S. Toolan, S.J.
David S. Toolan, S.J., is an associate editor of America
magazine and the author of Facing West from California Shores
(1987). |
It helps, I think, to be Roman Catholic to read Georg Feuerstein's Holy Madness. For if you are familiar with the scandalous history of the papacy and used to distinguishing the disreputable person from the honorable office he bears, you will not find it at all paradoxical that Feuerstein should have benefited from some pretty bizarre spiritual teachers. That he learned solid lessons from them--the value of "renunciation, service, meditation, and not least the predictability of the unpredictable"--while a member of a sectlike spiritual community will not strike you as odd. Like the author himself, I have gained much from Eastern spiritual disciplines, even when the instruction was handed out by teachers whom I considered a trifle wicked or loony. Thus I welcome this book as a serious and critical study of the phenomenon.
Feuerstein's ulterior aim in this book, however, is to persuade the reader that there is treasure to be found in Eastern wisdom. In general terms, I am with him there. But I fail to see how the spirit of monistic mysticism ("All is one") he seems still to embrace will make many converts. The reason is simple: Most Americans want from their faith some kind of ethical purchase on the world, a reason to dig in and change things for the better, and monism doesn't provide that. On the contrary, it appears at best to encourage a kind fatalism, at worst to license the very autocratic and unethical behavior that Feuerstein criticizes in this book.
The author would be on stronger ground, I think, if he had sought to show how "enlightenment," as he defines it, might be reconciled with a Western outlook. As it is, most American readers will balk, not so much at his gurus' violations of the Sixth Commandment ("You shall not commit adultery"), but at what I suspect they will perceive as a suspension of the First Commandment ("You shall have no other gods before me"). As soon as someone says that God is crazy and that "I am that God", as Feuerstein's gurus tend to, most American readers will react with an inner immunological stop order. In my judgment, Holy Madness offers a stereotype of Eastern wisdom--one that legitimizes gurus who lord it over their disciples. In such cases Americans will instinctively dial 911 for the little men in white coats rather than pause to listen.
The questions the author raises in this book--about the viability of closed, gurucentric communities in our culture, about legitimate spiritual authority, about our simultaneous overestimation of our usual state of mind and underestimation of our potential--are important ones. Nor are they abstract, merely academic questions for the author.
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