“ONE of the abuses indirectly bequeathed to us by the Renaissance is the confusion, in one and the same sentimental cult or in one and the same "humanism," of religion and fatherland: this amalgam is all the more deplorable in that it occurs in men who profess to represent traditional values and who thus compromise what by rights they should defend.” In this article, Frithjof Schuon goes on to examine all the different ways in which passionate, sentimental and ignorant man betrays the true sense of proportion in idolizing his country, his civilization and modern dogma, to the ruin of himself, his religion and other peoples, and in forgetting, all the while, that “my kingdom is not of this world.”

In this exposition of the spiritual life, Marco Pallis explains that the interior life is the fruit of the marriage of Wisdom and Method – “Wisdom which illuminates with the truth” and Method which provides the act by which the knower becomes what he knows. The supreme instrument of Method is the Life of Prayer in the widest sense, enshrined in religious tradition which serves to maintain the balance between theory and practice. The methodic invocation of a Sacred Name or formula is at the centre of the process, the Name “being first the apparent object of invocation and then its subject, until finally the subject-object distinction disappears altogether.”

Wesley E. Needham chronicles the life of Dilowa Gegen Hutukhtu (1883-1965) who was a Mongolian refugee befriended by the author. A man of immense erudition, cheerfulness and compassion, Hutukhtu began his early years having been recognized as the eighteenth incarnation of Telopa, an Indian Buddhist saint (988-1069). He was one of the thirteen highest incarnate dignitaries of the Buddhist religion in Outer Mongolia until 1930 when Buddhism was banned by the Mongol People's Revolutionary Party. This saintly man then began a life of exile and wandering until his final sojourn in the United States where he played an important role in disseminating Tibetan Buddhism.

Phillip Sherrard explains the differences and similarities in the Platonic and Christian views of evil. According to Plato, he says, man is created through necessity and his contact with evil is a natural part of creation as evil is immanent in matter. Christian doctrine, however, maintains that man is normally good and his fall proceeds from his freedom to choose, that evil is neither normal nor natural and that man’s salvation is the restoration to the normal state. In the light of these two doctrines of necessity versus freedom, the author examines their concepts of God’s responsibility for evil, His relationship with the soul and the role of time.

Angus Mcnab relates the story behind the presence of a Muslim saint’s statue in Toledo Cathedral. A tale of honor and magnanimity, it underscores what true piety and respect for the other can accomplish with regard to harmony and inter-communal peace.

In his review of Alchemy, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul by Titus Burckhardt, Seyyed Hossein Nasr highlights the point made in this book of the errors of the current interpretation of alchemy as either a precursor of modern chemistry or as a science of the psyche alone. For as to the latter he says that it is impossible to study the psyche “without reference to the luminous world of the Spirit which alone can comprehend the soul.” The reviewer praises the book for presenting all aspects of alchemy in the light of the Spirit including its relation to art, and particularly for the explanation of the correspondence between the alchemical process and the stages of the spiritual life.

Agehananda Bharat, a master of tantrik practice, explains the finer points of this misunderstood way in his book reviewed by Om Prakash Sharma. Tantra integrates all manifestation excluding nothing to achieve non-duality. In this way even the common fare of ordinary man can be transmuted into a means of liberation. The reviewer explains that the Mantra – a sacred and powerful formula, is a key to tuning the soul to higher forms of spirituality. He concludes by warning the would-be practitioner of the dangers of approaching Tantra without qualified guidance and without the right intention.

In reviewing Dr Radhakrishnan’s book, William Stoddard points out that the author is himself enmeshed in modernism and yet is perplexed that tradition is relegated to the background - unaware that this is caused by abandoning the truths within the tradition. The reviewer reminds us that ‘Christ prophesied: "Scandal there must be," and added the implacable warning: "and woe to him through whom the scandal cometh!” Stoddard concludes ‘In an age of tireless but unblessed technology one of religion's most important roles is to remind those willing to listen of this fatally neglected truth.’

American vitality and openness to “the other” comes in for praise in this review of Nancy Wilson Ross’s illustrated book on eastern traditions whose approach the reviewer, Kathleen Raine, finds refreshing. Condemning her own country’s erstwhile narrowness and impenetrability to the spirituality of India, as well as those purists who scorn American Zen for missing its doctrinal truth, she suggests that Zen’s natural, non-mythological and historical quality may be a door through which America, as a microcosm of the modern world, can approach a more subtle and potentially spiritual view of nature.

Marco Pallis praises this book by Bhikshu Sangharak-shita for the clarity with which it is written making available to a more popular audience understanding of the three main pillars of Buddhism – Buddha, doctrine and the assembly of followers. The author concludes with a short survey of popular Buddhism and here ‘he shows that all the traditional institutions, when rightly understood, provide links and keys whereby the "three jewels" are kept continually in the minds of people like a seed which, ripened by good karma, will by and by flower in complete self-dedication to "the one thing needful."’

The reviewer J.C.Cooper, quotes Charles Luk's own words, that his only ambition is "to present as many Chinese Buddhist texts as possible, so that Buddhism can be preserved at least in the West, should it be fated to disappear in the East as it seems to be." In the light of the destruction of Buddhism in Tibet, Cooper says “the West must be doubly grateful to Charles Luk, for placing in its hands the possibility of helping to preserve some of the wisdom of the East” .Of the Surangama Sutra Luk writes:” This important sermon contains the essence of the Buddha's teaching and, as foretold by Him, will be the first sutra to disappear in the Dharma ending age."

Kathleen Raine reviews the reprint of this book and the impact its translator, Thomas Taylor the Platonist (1758-1837), exerted on 19th century thought. It was Taylor, first translator of Plato into English, who supplied the texts “from which the English Romantic poets learned the Neo-Platonism metaphysics which wrought so revolutionary a transforma¬tion in the theory and practice of poetry at the end of the eighteenth century.” Both the American Transcendentalists and the Neo-Platonists for the Theosophical Society drew their inspiration from these same works. Taylor is now only known to Academia, but “he was more than a scholar, he was a philosopher in the Platonic sense of the word."

“Kathryn Hulme's lively and very readable autobiography has as its underlying theme the impact made on her by G. I. Gurdjieff between 1930 and his death in 1949.” The reviewer, DMD, goes on to muse on the enigma of the person and teachings of Gurdjieff which remain to this day something of a mystery.

Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din rebuts the error in the article "Forgiveness in Religious Thought" by Professor Donald H. Bishop that Christianity alone is a religion of forgiveness and compassion whereas Islam is a religion of retribution. He shows through many examples from the life of the Prophet Muhammad that the Prophet was unsurpassed in his "multiple and unlimited forgiveness of enemies" and that the Qur’an abounds in such verses as, “Let them forgive and show indulgence. Do ye not long that God should forgive you? God is Forgiving, Merciful." Above all the writer shows that all religions conceive of God “as He is” having both Rigor and Mercy –but that as the Qur’an says "My Mercy taketh precedence over My Anger."