First, a disclaimer: I’m impressed with St. Paul’s market-place dialogue with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in Athens (Acts 17): although he disagreed with many of their presuppositions he was willing to quote their poets when he agreed with them. I believe strongly that our Christian apologetic should follow a similar pattern. On this point I diverge from the stance of most of my fundamentalist friends, who somehow feel contaminated if they read or think about something alien to their conservative understanding of the Christian faith. If we are in dialogue with folks from a postmodern/ new age/ secular / whatever culture we ought to be familiar with what they’re reading/thinking, and give credit to whatever wisdom we find, without necessarily agreeing with all they believe. Richard Rohr quotes Aquinas with approval: ‘He does not ask where it came from, but if it is true: “If it is true, it is of the Holy Spirit”.’ Jesus said ‘Whoever is not against us is for us’ (Mark 9:40). And remember Gamaliel’s wisdom: ‘If it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them – in that case you may even be found fighting against God’ (Acts 5:30).

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Second: what titles should be included in a book about the greatest spiritual classics? If you’re a Christian and are happy for ‘spiritual’ to have a broader meaning than ‘devotional’ I reckon it would have to include 12 from Butler-Bowdon’s Supplementary list at the back of the book: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Buber, John Bunyan, The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline or Streams of Living Water?), John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Thomas a Kempis, Thomas Merton (I’d prefer his New Seeds of Contemplation rather than the anti-Protestant Seven Storey Mountain), Evelyn Underhill, and The Way of a Pilgrim.

But wait a minute: there’s nothing at all in either list from the Hebrew or Christian Bible! That’s a bit odd. (Oops… just glanced at Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Self-Help Classics, and it’s there, with The Bhagavad-Gita, The Dhammapada etc.).

Anyway Butler-Bowdon’s main list of the Top 50 spiritual teachers is not a specifically Christian one, but is much broader, and is quite a challenging assortment, including

* an Islamic convert from Judaism – Muhammad Asad

* a conservative Christian apologist – C. S. Lewis

* a very conservative (almost fundamentalist) best-selling Christian author – Rick Warren

* a radical black Muslim – Malcolm X (why not Martin Luther King?)

* a few pop psychologists – e.g. Richard Bach, Gary Zukav

* and some great English writers – e.g. W. Somerset Maugham, G. K. Chesterton

There are two I’d like to pursue further – Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle (partly because my ‘spiritual mentor’ Richard Rohr quotes them often).

An interesting question for Christians: why have so many thoughtful seekers-after-truth rejected the Church and the Christian spiritual masters? Whatever babies-and-bathwater reasons we might give, we have to agree that a list like Butler-Bowdon’s is certainly representative of moderns’ quest for spiritual reality, and a widespread desire to make sense of the universe. And for Christians there’s a lot to reflect on here.

Including (a few exotic examples): How does an Indian sage – The Perfume Saint – materialize scents? Or the Levitating Saint do that? Or the Non-Eating Saint? Or the German mystic Therese Neumann live on just one holy wafer a day and weekly bleed from hands and side? I wonder if the Skeptics’ Society knows of any scientific analyses of these miracles?

Included in a list of statements I put ‘?question-marks?’ or ‘!exclamation marks!’against:

Richard Bucke believes in the superiority of the white civilization, and the eventual triumph of socialism!

Pema Chodron encourages us ‘to have positive aspirations for the person ahead of you in queues’!

Gandhi was married at the age of 13 to an illiterate and uneducated girl!

Elijah Mohammed (‘Malcom X’) was a serial adulterer.

Robert Pirsig, author of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, sent out 122 letters to publishers before one made an offer (a standard $3,000 advance)!

‘The Celestine Prophecy’ spent 145 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list!

At least one of these authors, Helen Schucman, was an atheist!

‘John Wesley was inspired by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg’. Really?

‘Chogyam Trungpa’ – ‘one of the main figures in twentieth-century Buddhism – renounced his vows and married, was a heavy drinker and smoker (his early death was caused by cirrhosis of the liver) and had sex with female students’!

‘Neale Donald Walsch… married and divorced four times’!

And the main religious system I still haven’t a clue about? Kabbalah!

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If you had to choose the ‘best-put-together’ person in the list here? My vote would go to Abraham Heschel, a Jew! Ahead of C. S. Lewis? Yep!

And the saying that stayed longest in my thinking? ‘He is a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom’.

That will do. I won’t spoil the book by giving a grade to each teacher/system. Read it right through and ask ‘Why ever did this idea/ this person catch on?’ Each of the 50 chapters is easily digestible – just four or five pages. It’s fairly even-handed – with a little ‘caveat’ in most (e.g. ‘Mother Teresa was a wily operator, who always sided with the most conservative political forces in every country where her order had a presence’).

Finally, when I read (as distinct from skimming) a book I put a line in the margin against anything which grabs my attention – and a double line for ideas which I must ponder again and again.

Here are some of my double-lined markings in 50 Spiritual Classics:

* In ‘The Way of the Peaceful Warrior’, the Dan character makes a great discovery: ‘There are no ordinary moments!’

* There is a Persian proverb: ‘Seek truth in meditation, not in moldy books. Look at the sky to find the moon, not in the pond’

* Asad [a convert from Judaism to Islam!] was not blind to the intellectual and material decay in many Muslim societies, which had led them to become scientific and economic backwaters

* If we could see that the nature of the universe is love, and that we are all part of an undying conscious life-force, we can no longer experience fear or doubt (Bucke)

* Physics and spirituality are two sides of the same coin (The Tao of Physics)

* The old man tells him (Castaneda) to constantly be aware of death lurking behind him. If he has this awareness, he will live differently

* Blessed is the one expecting nothing, for that one shall enjoy everything (G K Chesterton)

* The straight tree is the first to be chopped down; the well of sweet water is the first to run dry (the Grand Duke Jen to Confucius)

* Chuang Tzu’s idea of the perfect person is someone who does not try to be their own source of light for the world: they act as a clean channel of that light whenever and wherever it is appropriate for it to shine

More… http://jmm.org.au/articles/16249.htm

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I’m now reading Butler-Bowdon’s 50 Self-Help Classics (watch for something on it in the new year), then I’ll dip into 50 Success Classics.

Rowland Croucher

November 2005

Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Spiritual Classics (2005). Available from Ridley College Bookshop – http://bookshop.ridley.unimelb.edu.au/bookweb/