Customer Reviews

The Essential Mystics : Selections from the World's Great Wisdom Traditions

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This book is an easy read and offers practical insights to numerous mystical traditions. It opens with Native American "voices" telling us that we have to re-connect with nature and the "majesty of the universe." It touches on eight paths to a more spiritual life, and explains how many of the traditions interrelate. This book is for the seeker with few preconceived ideas and opinions about what is Truth. It assists those interested in integrating ideas from various cultures into any of the mainstream religions.

This wide-ranging anthology collects all the essential texts and themes of great mystic traditions of the world -- from Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, and Christian to Hopi, Hindi, Islamic, Sikh, Aboriginal, and Kogi. Provides analysis and historical information with special attention to the sacred feminine mystics. Well introduced with important historical information. This is an approachable guide to the unique and inspiring personalities that define the mystical experience.

This is an adequate survey of some of the highlights of a variety of religious writings. Unfortunately, I was looking for information on the mystics, not the author's summary of what he thought was the important mystical texts. If you're looking for this type of info, you probably already have or know a lot of the material in this book. "Cliff Notes" for mystics just doesn't makesense to me!

I have been reading a lot about mysticism over the past year or two. Living in Thailand, it's hard to avoid the Buddhist tradition of attaining Nirvana through meditation.

But, surprisingly, that "old tradition" has been recently brought into question by the well-known Thai forest monk, Buddhadasa, who points out that in the original stories of the Buddha, many people broke through to Enlightenment simply through hearing the truth.

In any case, it seems clear to me that there is a world-wide tradition of religious contemplation or meditation which may lead to an ecstatic union with God. Except for Buddhism, where it does NOT lead to any such thing, but to a rather undefined state called "Nirvana."

From this presumed fact, the editor of this anthology makes a Great Leap --- and he's not the first one to do it --- and claims that this proves that all religions are the same.

I would suggest that this anthology only demonstrates that, for a very small number of people, intense contemplation results in a feeling of ecstasy. Whether this is, in fact, a "union with God" is something that involves a leap of faith. It is reported, for example, that many epileptics have such religious experiences just before they fall into a fit.

This is very far from demonstrating that all religions are the same.

And here the editor fails, sometimes egregiously. His very brief introduction to Islamic mysticism manages to introduce a Muhammad who (somehow) was not a murderer and a brigand, and who did not marry a great number of wives, one of whom was under ten years old. The Muhammad in this book is a peaceful, profoundly religious man. To which I can only reply: read the Qur'an.

The author's biases are also clearly on display in his introduction, where some decent scholarly summary suddenly gives way to preaching right out of Savanarola: if there is not a universal human religious revolution very soon, we will die from environmental disaster. (!) Putting aside the extremely unlikely revolution in religious consciousness, and the equally unlikely environmental disaster, this tirade has absolutely nothing to do with the texts selected by the editor.

For example, Saint Francis' beautiful prayer which invokes the beauty of the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, etc. says nothing about the need for a grand "revolution" to protect them; it speaks only of adoring them.

------- updated review --------

The more time I spend with this book, the more I dislike it. Why?

In the section on Buddhism, the editor frankly admits that he does not like some of the key tenets of Buddhism, and so he selectively edits the Buddhist passages based on his own jejune prejudices.

The section on the Greeks, which is badly titled "The Way of Beauty" --- "The Way of The Good" would have been much better --- he includes some weird "Hymn to Gaia" which is attributed to a book written by contemporary feminists who imagine they are poets. PLEASE, could we limit the selections to things written by actual Greeks? Or do we see the editor again bending the Greek reality to suit his own jejune tastes, just as he bent the Buddhist reality to suit himself?

I'm afraid this book is going in the trash.