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SMITH, HUSTON, with JEFFERY PAINE SMITH,HUSTON,withJEFFERY PAINE. (2009). Tales of wonder: Adventures chasing the divine: An autobiography. Foreword by Pico Iyer. New York: HarperCollins. xxvi+209 pp. ISBN-10 0061154261, Hardback, $25.99. Reviewed by Thomas Roberts. HAGERTY,BARBARA BRADLEY. (2009). Fingerprints of God: The search for the science of spirituality. New York: Penguin/Riverside Books. 323 pp. ISBN-10 1594488770, Hardback, $26.95. Reviewed by Thomas Roberts. ******* At first glance, readers who have an interest in the entheogenic uses of psychedelics may be disappointed in these volumes. Although both books consider this use, entheogens are not featured but occupy an equal role along with other psychospiritual psychotechnologies. At second glance, this equality may be just what marks Fingerprints and Tales as significant books. For the most part until now, books about entheogens have stood on their own as a separate genre of religion books; entheogens have not been mentioned in most books about religion or perhaps mentioned only in passing, usually as interesting anthropological curiosities. Other books dismiss them as dead ends left over from the fading 60s. Fingerprints and Tales, however, each in its own way, embed entheogens as equals to other ways of spiritual growth. Does this mark entheogens’ transition to an insider status—no longer an outsider status? Many previous books on say, LSD, ayahuasca, peyote, and mushrooms have implicitly or implicitly pleaded that they deserve a seat at the table of religious sacraments. By inviting entheogens to sit at the table along with contemplative prayer, meditation, yoga and with belief systems including the major world religions, Book Reviews 185 these books host them into socially respectable company, although each book in its own fashion. Fingerprints charts a decade-plus journey by Hagerty to answer the questions, ‘‘Is there another reality that occasionally breaks into our world and bends the laws of nature? Is there a being or intelligence who weaves together the living universe, and if so, does He, She, or It fit the description I have been given?’’ (p. 6). In pursuing the traces or ‘‘fingerprints’’ of this being, she investigates current research in neurotheology. Her search takes her to research and anecdotes on mystical experiences and their transformation of people’s lives, unusual healing, genetics, psychedelic drugs with special emphasis on the Native American Church’s use of peyote and the psilocybin experiments of the Roland Griffiths team at Johns Hopkins. Two odd omissions here are that she does not cite Huston Smith’s Cleansing the Doors of Perception or The Triumph of the Native American Church nor Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and its years of use. She then pokes into the structure and function of the human brain as people experience spiritual experiences, ‘‘spiritual virtuosos,’’ out-of-body experiences and other experiences that seem to smash our assumptions about time, space, and personal identity. While these topics might be reported in the gee-whiz style of tabloids and drug-store paperbacks, much to her credit Hagerty balances a reporter’s reporting of these events as she and her informants described them with both her own professional skepticism and those of established scientists. This balance makes Fingerprints a worthy update on neurotheology and an introduction for those unfamiliar with this emerging field. Furthermore, the ideas she presents and her vocabulary are readily understandable to the educated reader who may not be familiar with the arcana of the neurosciences. How did her journey conclude? ‘‘I found evidence of the spiritual painted on the canvas of a person’s life. I came to define God by His handiwork: a craftsman who builds the hope of eternity into our genes, a master electrician and chemist outfits our brains to access another dimension, a guru who rewards our spiritual efforts by allowing us to feel united with all things,an intelligence that pervades every atom and every nanosecond, all time and space, in the throes of death and ecstasy of life’’ (p. 277). Huston Smith’s search as reported in Tales of Wonder tracks his nearly ninety- year journey, which he divides into a horizontal, secular dimension and a vertical, sacred dimension. The first is a feet-on-the-ground report of adventures on earth; the second reports on his head and heart as they explore spiritual geography and time. Of course, they blend into each other. The stations on Huston’s journey started with being the son of a Christian missionary in China, finding the life of the mind at an American college, social involvement, marriage and family, mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Interestingly, he, like Hagerty, adds the Native American Church, parapsychology, and entheogens to this list. 186 The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2009, Vol. 41, No. 2 Thanks to meeting Aldous Huxley, which resulted in taking mescaline at Timothy Leary’s house on New Year’s Day, 1961, Smith reports, ‘‘After a dozen or so hours I felt that my animal nature had ascended step-by-step up to the very borderland of divinity. … What the mystics had sung were not poetic metaphors but real experiences, I knew now’’ (p. 174). Other well known leaders make an appearance in Tales: Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Joseph Campbell, Swami Satprakashananda (‘‘perhaps the only person I know who was truly a saint’’), Krishnamurti, Thomas Merton, T. S. Eliot, Robert Oppenheimer, D. T. Suzuki, among others. Smith names these not to name-drop, but because each influenced him in some way. I wish Smith (on the Board of Editors of this journal) had included insights from Stan Grof’s work and a paragraph or so about transpersonal psychology and its related organizations, but given his abundantly complex life, it must have been a great task to decide want not to include. The indexes of both books are helpful for readers who want to return to the ideas in them. Tales also has photographs of Smith and many of the people he mentions. Particularly strong points of Fingerprints are the chapter notes; these elaborate on the studies Hagerty cites by explaining them in more details and giving bibliographic citations. They provide a good synopsis of neurotheology and enrich the main text with leads to follow for the intrepid neurotheologicaltraveler. In the note on page 298, however, she slips up on her understanding of transpersonal, which she describes as ‘‘feeling connected to others and being willing to sacrifice for the good of other people, animals, nature, and the world.’’ Rather than these characteristics defining transpersonal, these are common, secondary effects resulting from the more primary ego-loss during mystical experiences. That is, transpersonal does not mean interpersonal or social. The beyond-the-person of trans-personal means leaving the ego and its egoistic motivations behind (usually temporarily); when one returns and puts the ego back on, the feeling of connectedness and actions of sacrifice replace the earlier, now defunct earlier egoic views. Both Hagerty and Smith use their journeys to examine, refine, and enrich their understanding of the religions that were their starting points. After her explorations of neurotheology, Hagerty, a Christian Scientist by upbringing, feels at home in a more sophisticated Christian Science, one strengthened in some ways and critiqued in others. Smith adapts a saying by humorist Will Rogers, ‘‘I never met a religion I didn’t like’’ (p. 113) yet he feels centered in his native religion: ‘‘Of most things that happened to me, had they not happened, I would still be the same person. Erase Christianity from my life, though, and you have erased Huston Smith’’ (p. 97). Hagerty, as a media insider, and Smith, as a religion insider, both start with a specific religious home base and expand from it to broaden their understanding by exploring adjacent fields and using them to elaborate their views. Science Book Reviews 187 (Hagerty) and comparative religion (Smith) are not unusual neighborhoodsto visit, but entheogens are. Does including peyote, mescaline, LSD and similar doors to primary spiritual experience indicate that Twenty-first Century religion is moving into an era of widely available mystical experience? Are direct sacred experiences available for nearly everyone? Rather than mystical experiences being the rare exaltation of the lucky few, do entheogens democratize them? To me at least, Fingerprints and Tales suggest this. If so, Western religion may be moving from 500 years of being centered in text and word to an era of direct spiritual experience. The Author Huston Smith, Ph.D., is the author of World Religions, the most widely read book on comparative religions, Forgotten Truth, Why Religion Matters, Beyond the Post Modern Mind, and other books and articles. He has been on the faculty of Washington University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, and the University of California. Barbara Bradley Hagerty is a National Public Radio religion correspondent and a journalist. She has received the American Women in Radio and Television Award, the Headliners Award, and the Religious Newswriters Award among others. The Reviewer Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Psychedelic Horizons, and co-editor of Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments. ******* 188 The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2009, Vol. 41, No. 2.
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