Breakthrough Books

I find it hard to muster up belief in the notion of extinction at death because I can think of too many alternatives. Mathematically there are so many possibilities that the simplest one, the idea that the world is exactly the way it seems--a purely physical thing, becomes highly unlikely. . . . It is much likelier that we are, in some form or another, immortal.

-- Robotics scientist

When I was little I was indoctrinated by a grandmother who believed very strongly in heaven. She was someone who couldn't wait to die; she looked forward to it. She was going to go to heaven and be a bride. I was never quite convinced myself. . . .

[In the hospital] she would change her nightgown every few hours because she wanted to be wearing the right thing. Then she had a last-minute moment of total and utter panic when she couldn't decide whether or not to wear a hat. She would put them on and take them off, one hat after another, and finally she died wearing one hat and holding another one, just in case.

-- Performance artist

Reviewed by Eric Ferguson
Managing Editor, Brain/Mind Bulletin

ALL OF US: Americans Talk About the Meaning of Death by Patricia Anderson ($22.95 from Delacorte Press).

A long-time radio and television journalist, Anderson first delved into the subject of mortality by writing a handbook on the practical aspects of dying.

At first glance, this new project -- a compilation of responses offered by a cross-section of Americans asked to discuss their impression of death -- may seem unpromising.

After all, as physician Sherwin Nuland recently noted in the surprise bestseller How We Die, modern society has hidden "life's last chapter" to an unprecedented degree. In this generation, for the first time in human history, it has become possible for a child to grow to adulthood without ever facing, let alone observing, the death of a loved one or close friend.

But more than that, the rise of modern medicine has caused a shift in the very image of death. With the open-ended promise of healing disease, the idea of one day "curing" death began to take root, Anderson says. Such a reconceptualization represented "not one more attitudinal step along a continuum of change, but a seismic shift, a radical reconsideration of our very destiny."

In this context, death's stubborn persistence appears to have increased our common aversion. Yet for all its potency as a final cultural taboo, Anderson discovered a paradoxical truth: People want to talk about their own impermanence and often have startling stories and insight to offer. This willingness has resulted in a surprisingly rewarding and touching book.

Though her respondents are largely well-educated, articulate professionals, Anderson makes a valiant effort to remain true to her book's title. Thus the thoughts of a retired CIA operative co-exist with those of a famous author, a young social worker from a gang-infested ghetto, a psychiatrist, a middle-class wife and mother, a group of teenagers on the streets of a big city.

The responses are as philosophically diverse as they are demographically varied, ranging from devoutly religious to bluntly atheistic. Nevertheless, they find commonality in the universal questions that underlie any discussion of death: the need for hope, the urge to find meaning, the hunger to acquire a frame of understanding.

Anderson breaks the flow of perspectives with a fascinating parallel chronology of Western ideas about death, ranging from Mesopotamian theories of a "netherworld" through Virgil's notion of an "abode of sleep," early Christian concepts and the advent of church burial, the firm establishment of a Judgment Day for sinners, the evolution of Native American practices and much more.

Along the way, raw historical data give a jarring context to this narrative: 40 percent of the world's population killed by plague in the mid-1300s, a fifth of the population of Boston dead of smallpox in 1677, 625,000 men dead in the four years of the U.S. Civil War. For millennia, death was omni-present, fostering attitudes we would today dismiss as callous.

But here in our "enlightened" era, most of Anderson's subjects seem to draw from a reserve tank of existential optimism -- often refilled by the strangely edifying aftertaste of many encounters with death. Even after witnessing the painful, even horrifying exits of loved ones, many contributors credit the experience with actually enhancing their sense of acceptance and adjustment.

Anderson herself had such an encounter after the recent death of her mother-in-law. As she sat on the beach with her family holding ceremonial seashells and gazing at the gray sky, she felt "that longing to know it will be okay" that we all confront at some point.

"Suddenly I had a overwhelming sense of being part of something, something so old that it had no name, a vast unbroken line of longing that stretched back over a hundred thousand years. As my fear and sadness joined with all the fear and sadness in that ancient lineage, I felt released from the terrible wish that it were different....

"I stood up and took a deep breath. I had one last handful of shells, a few especially delicate pieces I'd been hesitant to give up. I found myself walking toward the sand, then faster, finally running toward the water. With a cry I threw them, flew them into the sea, and there in their split-second arc against the sky I saw the secret of safety hidden in the middle of death. No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, no matter what -- there truly is something bigger than all of us."

Reviewed by Paul Caubet

AUTHENTIC KNOWING: The Convergence of Science and the Spiritual Aspirant by Imants Baruss ($14.95 softcover from Prudue U. Press, 1532 S. Campus Courts-E, West LaFayette, Indiana 47907).

Baruss is a professor of psychology at Canada's King College, a Catholic institution where the curriculum inevitably touches on the simultaneous concerns of the spiritual aspirant and the student of science. In this thought-provoking and entertaining synthesis, he interweaves the two approaches without violating the sensibilities of either.

The book is a noteworthy attempt to affirm the reality of anomalous scientific findings and exceptional human experiences in digestible terms. In a chapter called Self-Transformation, Baruss proposes that existential crises form the dividing line between the competing perspectives of gross materialism and transcendent reality. The crisis is the perennial "event" that precipitates change, causes us to re-examine our presuppositions and can ultimately deepen our spiritual understanding.

To self-transform, he says, we must move past infatuation with any particular theory and permit our inner wisdom to emerge. In so doing, we drop our beliefs -- what he calls inauthentic knowing. He says scientism is the handmaiden of materialism and restricts the method and content of investigation. By its logic, consciousness is an emerging property of the brain, existence is meaningless, and spirituality is for those too weak to face the facts.

"Then something happens. Maybe our physical existence is threatened, or we see an unidentified flying object on our way home from work, or our everyday lives make us nauseated. We start to wonder what is going on. But the schemata that are supposed to be answers to the existential questions no longer satisfy us. They are too thin, too superficial. And then we realize that we do not know the answers and that neither does anyone around us, even though they pretend to know. And so we start looking. We become black sheep, then goats scrambling on the cliffs of our inner consciousness. Our families may reject us, our friends think that we are weird, and our colleagues tell that we will 'end up selling candies on the beach in Southern California.'

"It is not easy. We may find that we are enmeshed in webs of schemata. The harder we struggle, the more we get tangled. And then slowly, perhaps, we develop a disciplined but gentle approach that allows us to disidentify our selves from the confusion and to create a space for something deeper to become manifest."

At some point, personal ambitions lose their allure. Questions of meaning become paramount. A commitment is made to seek the root. And one becomes suspended between two worlds.

"There is no turning back to a life of meaningless mediocrity. However, the transcendent is but a vision; it may yet dissipate along with the effortless techniques. . . . the everyday world also disappears, just as a dream dissipates when we awaken. Furthermore, it is not just that it has ceased ever to have existed. Having dispelled the illusion that a fixed set of schemata delimit reality, there is nothing to which to return. There is no choice but to continue."

Baruss speaks in a voice of unusual authenticity, guiding the scientific mind respectfully but firmly in the direction of the unknown. Taking a phenomenological approach to this work, he draws repeatedly on his own experiences.

In examining our efforts to know the meaning of life and the nature of reality, he takes the reader several giant steps. Authentic Knowing is, in the words of the Theosophist Franklin Wolff, "in a sense neither religion nor science as ordinarily understood and yet combines features belonging to each."

In arranging a scientific model of spiritual reality, Baruss treats both realms with a constructive flavor of criticism.

THE WEB OF LIFE: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra ($23.95 from Anchor Books).

If existential crises are a doorway to radical change, as Imants Baruss maintains, we may be on the brink of a collective transformation. Our planetary problems will either destroy us or become a near-death experience that shifts our beliefs and behavior.

The origin of our dilemma, says Fritjof Capra, lies in our tendency to create the abstractions of separate objects, including a separate self.

The author of The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point weaves an evolutionary model from strands of breakthrough biology, physics, chemistry, psychology and sociology. With this model he forms a radical systems theory linking the human community with the biosphere. From bacterial origins to the present condition he captures the reader in the web of life: an emerging world view that resonates with the wisdom of the ancients.

He explains why we need to grasp a "deep ecology," an understanding of the relatedness of all life. In systemic thinking, the metaphor of knowledge as a framework or building is replaced by an image of networks. Rather than being built upon classic foundations, reality is a web of relationships. Having no foundations, the interwoven systems are interdependent. Such a view is unsettling for most scientists, he says, and by no means generally accepted.

"To overcome our Cartesian anxiety, we need to think systematically, shifting our conceptual focus from objects to relationships," Capra says. This will cure us of our second fatal abstraction, which grew out of the first -- our hierarchical arrangement of the physical universe.

Reprinted with permission from Brain/Mind Bulletin of Breakthroughs, published by Marilyn Ferguson. Brain/Mind Bulletin reports on leading-edge research and thinking, and is available by subscription ($45/yr in North America, $55 First Class) by check or Money Order to Box 421069, Los Angeles, CA 90042 (or phone in your charge order by calling 1-800-553-MIND).