Customer Reviews

Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice

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This review was actually written by a REAL book reviewer, Thomas Peter von Bahr:

The author makes it clear from the outset that for a healthy planet, any attempt at spiritual awakening and practices must be holistic and go beyond each person's individual self-concern. That each person pursues their inner opening path is a good thing; but part of the issue is that human greed, corruption, and "darkness" obscures the light energy that comes to the planet and at those roots is often ego-selfishness. So to awaken the world, there must be a global dimension, an unselfish commitment to a larger all-embracing vision. Vaughan-Lee makes his point with clarity (page 111) when he proposes that the "world spins on an axis of love." The axis of love encircles the earth "at a very high frequency" and thus is almost undetectable. It nourishes and nurtures life more than most people are aware of. It can be tapped into but in order to do so, we must open and cultivate the heart.

These principles represent a Sufi perspective, but there are wise and penetrating insights that are distinctly Vaughan-Lee's. An example: "much of our present insecurity comes from a deep knowing that our governments and culture s are planning for a future that will never happen" (p. 45). From social security to the apparent dead-end of having mobilized the industrialized countries to fight a "war on terrorism," it is clear that the evolving future is hardly couched in certainty. The author is working hard to substantiate his main point that we must choose spiritual ways to integrate our individual path with the planetary influences of love. It is inarguable that such a perspective can only have salutary effects.

There is a note of darkness in the author's writing: "since the Golden Age, eras have come and gone...the most recent has focused on (the) masculine which has emphasized the separation between worlds...this veil has become almost impenetrable...due to our rational culture and pursuit of materialism" (p. 64). Hope exists, of course, because the "the world is a living spiritual being" (p. 73) and as such the awakening of the soul of the world (the ancient belief in Anima Mundi) can and is occurring. Even within dark matter there are particles of light. These are wonderful insights and they are expressed with considerable sensitivity. Like a genuinely enlightened person, he reminds the reader, "every breath is a remembrance of God" (p. xv). If we wish to stop the merry-go-round of our material world preoccupied with power and addicted to influence, we can do so by focusing on each breath in/out, which is a universal meditation of all true spiritual paths.

Finally, it is useful to consider the essential focus of the author in his own words: "the real work of the path is to be able to live the energy and higher consciousness of the self in everyday life." Coupled with Vaughan-Lee's espousal of love as the critical element in global awakening, it becomes clear how these forces can be encouraged or "called": through the open heart. "The wonder of the heart is that because it contains our higher spiritual intelligence...the energy needed by the world..." is the same for the individual self as it is for the earth as a whole (p. 104-6). To paraphrase a misguided world figure, it is love which is the uniter, not a divider. The author does a great service by making it clear that the answer rests with unqualified love.

This book is a well-organized succinct statement organized into 7 chapters, a brief Epilogue, 5 concise pages of Notes, a 2 page Bibliography, and a short Index. With its bright cover, we should stock this book in our Spirituality, Religion, and Psychology sections.

The beginning of the book starts out with a good, not great thesis, that we are destroying the world because of our separation driven by the ego. That even our spiritual pursuits are often me-oriented. But there is hope and that we are more connected to the planet than we realize. From this good start we end up wandering around in interesting points which often do not support the original goals of the book.

Early on the author points out that ego and our focus on duality (aka separation) are at the root of our problem. However, throughout the rest of the book the author cannot ascend or drill down into a life-core where duality does not exist or does not matter. He holds onto traditional Sufi concepts such as Lover and Beloved (separation), the world of Gods 'Command' (that does not sound so good) and the World of God's creation (separation again). The author should have taken a lesson from Meister Eckhart in that the persistent use of the word God (as a separate self) continually reinforces the concept of separation and not unity. The use of the phrase Being or Great Being would have been more effective.

This book, even it's deepest a line like 'The spiritual body of the earth is a macrocosm of the spiritual body of the individual follows similar ways of awakening.' (Page 11) is steeped in duality and separation. We are not individuals living on the earth. We are manifestations of being which are a combination of spirit and the earth itself. Where spirit and this planetary being intersect a form of life is produced. And it's this intimate union that is missing from this book. Yes, the author is able to quote from great thinkers and to convey that he is no feeble thinker himself. But he is not able to unlock the doors into real spiritual co-union from the heart of the reader which is the same heart in all beings. This universal vision escapes either the authors awareness or his ability to communicate. Even his most encompassing concept in the book, The World Soul, is still conveyed more as a concept or thing than as Being.

What is missing from this book is a deeply felt and rooted sense of being that eminates with life, both spiritual and biological. We cannot speak with integrity about awakening with the Earth from a primarily philosophical perspective (as we are very head-oriented in the West). There are few voices outside of aboriginal communities who are plugged in this way. There are a few medicine people who are but most of them don't write books. One such person who is plugged in is Joseph Rael Being and Vibration There are also a number of ayahuasqueros from the Amazon basin who really carry a strong sense and vision of the numinous reality we are in. One book along that line is Jungle Medicine. So I'm saying that unless you partake of the earth through her most mind awakening aspects that it is very difficult to speak of the Earth and it's awakening with any sense of authority or integrity. And to the authors point, I believe the new wineskin for the new age does require this type of deep mind-to-mind and soul-to-soul contact with ourselves in nature that cannot be achieve through meditation alone. Yes I am talking about fasting, privation, ceremony, and, at least in more enlightened countries, organic plant-based consciousness expanding and transformative substances.

From another angle the books title does hint at giving you an expanding view of how personal spiritual practice could affect the world. This is clearly the arena of noetic science and yet the basic tenets of that field were not acknowledged in this book. If you wish to explore more the effects of mind on the larger world (the noetic views) then you would do well to start with Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life (IONS/ New Harbinger) (co-published with the Institute of Noetic Sciences) and stay clear of Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture.

If you have read my reviews before you would know that in my mind the greatest words in any book you can read that truly convey the Sufi message are those of Hazrat Inayat Khan as in The Heart of Sufism. Even Pir Vilayat Khan (Inayat's son) was able to write a book which engaged the reader more than the present book as in Awakening: A Sufi Experience.

In summary, I cannot recommend the book for any class of reader. The spiritual baby will not receive enough care or orientation to make this meaningful. The spiritual master or mystic will be left unfilled due to the lack of true vision of unity in the book. Perhaps those in the intermediate stages of self-awakening will pickup some Sufi trivia and hear of great masters to research. But as a polished work this book was unable to cut through the fluff and deliver on it's potential. Co-incidentally another book with similar goals of cutting through illusion may be of interest to the reader The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit

Tat Tvam Asi