Customer Reviews

Way Of All The Earth

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I didn't know what to expect when I bought this book. What I got was a mixture of so many disciplines... The book is set up in a series of essays, each dealing with a different question or problem, dealing with the individual's journey through life and what different world religions, religious leaders, historians, philosophers, and literary authors have offered about each of these questions. The end result is a highly distilled body of knowledge and truth, real answers come to creatively, pragmatically, using sound arguments and beautiful illustrations. At the same time that it discusses these truths, the book has no hint of judgement, of persuasion, or any other agenda other than finding the core of the matter. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in other cultures, in taking a ride across time and collecting evidence with which to extract truth. It has allowed me to see my life in a number of very different ways that might have taken me decades if ever at all for me to find otherwise. It is evident in the book that this author is not only highly educated and knowledgeable about a broad number of topics, but he is also a keen writer for the average person. His language is both beautiful and clear, very easy to understand, though the ideas themselves may be abstract. In my opinion, John Dunne is one of the best authors writing about spirituality today, and this book is one of his finest.

I have read this book 3 times over the last 20 years. Each time I take away new insights for my own journey. There are some very appealing concepts and I will mention a few. Dunne's descrption of the spiritual journey's of Jesus Christ, Gotoma, and Mohammed as both a personal journey with personal truth, a spiritual journey with truth across cultures, and a historic truth across time was excellent. The passages on the "passing over" of Gandhi between religions, carrying insights from one truth to another truth was so relevant to our current Western experiences. The fable of the knight who seeks God on the mountain top and then finds the mountain barren so he must go down into the valley of human enterprise to seek God was beautifully told. I remain fascinated by this statement "Man wishes to become God and God wishes to become Man." I would recommend for those interested in comparative religion, to those who read Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell's comparative mythology, to those who would apply Hegel's thesis, antithesis, and synthesis to world religions, to those who wish to gain benchmarks for their own spiritual quest from an analysis of these benchmarkes for the great spiritual leaders of the world, and to those who love God and enjoy his company in their quest.

"An invitation to cross over to the great Eastern religions --- and to come back to one's own tradition with new insight" Have you done this?

"Is a religion coming to birth in our time?" Is a new religion coming to birth in your own life?

Quite an invitation in view of our smaller and smaller world with such access to other cultures and religions over the Internet, especially when we have the opportunity to communicate so easily with people from all over the world.

Quite a profound question since religion is being challenged by momentous secular forces and new forms of apparently "religious" terrorism. Is the new religion ready to entreat for peace or must there be fighting?

Here John Dunne presents his best thoughts on passing over to another view to enhance one's insight into one's own tradition. In the process, he takes his readers on a journey with God, as we observe those who turn poetry into truth and those who turn truth into poetry.

Highest recommendation.