Category: Reviews

Life is full of little ironies. For instance, perhaps the biggest mystery about life is death, which most of us perceive as being the opposite of life. But is death really the end, or merely the gateway to a new beginning and a new life? Nobody knows for sure what happens to us after we’re planted in the ground or incinerated atop a funeral pyre. In the west, most of us try not to think about it too much.

A Simple Cure For What's "Eating Us" The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind by Vincent Casspriano, Jr. New Paradigm Press 260 Pages Reviewed by Adam Clark

I considered titling this review, "Stop Whining, Wake Up and Get Busy Saving the World," but decided "Eating Us" would be more attention-grabbing – which matters because I believe Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind is an important book, and I want to do whatever I can to draw your attention to it. Pick the title you like best. Both very fittingly describe what you will find within the pages of this remarkable new release from New Paradigm Press.

Who hasn’t read Dan Brown’s best selling novel The Da Vinci Code? According to Brown, Mary Magdalene left Egypt on a boat with friends to land in Provence, with Sarah her daughter, whom she conceived with Jesus. For the past several years we have seen on the silver screen picturesque and controversial interpretations of Jesus and the resurrection, and even of an assumed affair between him and Mary Magdalene. After reading over and over the texts written by Brown and friends, and watching movies by Pasolini, Scorsese, Spielberg, Gibson and Howard, among others, are we to question the bloodline of the Merovingians, the fear of the Catholic Church to face a possible take over by a descendant of Jesus, or the finding of the Holy Grail, which seems to obsess so many, including Indiana Jones? One thing is certain. Some are finding the thrill, and the naivety of the masses, very lucrative.

Okay, I admit it. I was prepared to simply hate Marlo Thomas' new tome, the second volume of The Right Words at the Right Time. I was planning on writing a scathing review, which was already partly written in my mind even before I received a copy from the book’s publicist. I would compare this with Conversations With God, or anything by Shirley MacLaine. I would say that this is exactly what's wrong with most entry level New Age books, being all white light without a healthy dose of darkness, or all sugar and saccharine with no nutritional value.

I'm not a yogi and haven't studied much on that path. However, I have studied several other natural healing and enlightenment paths, so I was intrigued to read Light On Life to see if there was any information I could integrate into my healing work.

Becoming Like God - Kabbalah And Our Ultimate Destiny touches a sensitive nerve because it will appeal to most readers interested in these questions omnipresent through all ages. One remembers Paul Gauguin's 1897 Whence Do We Come? What Are We? Whither Are We Going? People went as far as to create an obsessive myth of eternity so omnipotent in literature and in filmmaking. Young Balzac and The Old Man And The Lamp (the old man who kisses young virgin females in order take away their breath by force); stories of vampires who suck the blood of their victims; Duncan MacLeod and the immortals; the 40 "Immortals" of the French Academy, are a few examples of death terrorizing mankind; even the Bible, which brings us on a journey through the Old Testament with all its prophecies announcing the coming of Christ through Jesus in the New Testament, Jesus who demonstrates through the resurrection that there is no death. Everybody is facing the "absolute" the best they can. And there are also those, who do not believe in any Christ, in any Buddha, in any Lucifer, but who believe that evolution is the answer so well put in 1897 by Gauguin.

It's true, you can't judge a book by its cover. Nor can you judge a book by its title or by the series to which it belongs. I was reminded of this fact recently when a bulky envelope from the folks at Penguin Books arrived in my mailbox. When I tore open the wrapping, I discovered that I was the owner of a review copy of the Second Edition of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Psychic Awareness

Sometime in 1969, WCBS-FM in New York City got their hands on a recording of a couple of songs by the Beatles that were supposedly going to comprise the first single released from their upcoming “Get Back” album. The “A” side was “Let It Be,” and if memory serves the recording wasn't of very good quality.

Taoism is undoubtedly the most beautiful and seductive of the eastern philosophies. Unfortunately, despite the deep and peaceful insights expressed in Taoist writings, on its own the philosophy isn't good for much. It lacks the gritty “skillful means” of Tibetan Buddhism, and many of its western practitioners come to realize that the insights gained through Taoist practices are mainly fleeting and temporary.

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In 1951, at a time when the vast majority of Americans were busy supporting the spiritual status quo, Robert and Earlyne Chaney, an actress and a spiritualist medium, started Astara, one of the first New Age organizations in the country. Through hard work, prudence and perseverance, Astara would eventually grow into one of the largest and most influential of the entry level New Age organizations.