OUR MODERN PROPHETS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22836, 21 March 1936, Page 4

OUR MODERN PROPHETS

ROM LANDAU'S STUDIES " God Is My Adventure." By Rom Landau. London: Ivor Nicholson. lGs. Mr Landau must undoubtedly be a fascinating person to meet, and he has here produced a most fascinating, and, what is more, a most exciting book. The excitement is, of course, of the intellectual variety. It appears that the author has all his life been drawn to the study of the great teachers of our time, both those specifically religious, and those more philosophical and scientific teachers who have gone beyond their Scriptures and endeavoured to penetrate through the mystery that is life to the absolute reality that most thinking men feel to be there. The' men he has met and studied, with many of whom he became on terms of some intimacy, make a most impressive list. It is worth while to enumerate them. They are Count Keyserling, Stefan George, Bo Yin Ra. Rudolf Steiner, Krishnamurti. Shri Meher Baba, Principal George Jeffreys, Frank Buchman, P. D. Ouspensky, and Gurdjieff. He did not meet all of them. Mr Buchman kept out of his way. Nor did he admire all of them. Shri Meher Baba he found to be something between a fraud and a joke. Gurdjieff, ex-tutor of the Dalai Lama. ex-Russian Secret Service man, financial opportunist, and much else that was undesirable, he found to be a traveller of the left-hand path, although a man of deep and curious knowledge. Buchmanism he exposes mercilessly, although he admits, unlike many other inquirers, thai it has certain good points. The Oxford Group Movement, however, is unlikely to be recruited by his pages. His study of Principal George Jeffreys, the Welsh Revivalist, and head of the Elim Foursquare Gospellers, is deeply sympathetic. He is a man of too wide experience not to know that honest revivalism has a verv important and a very valuable place in any organised religious system. His description of the meeting at the Albert Hall and of the summer meeting in the Crystal Palace could hardly he bettered for their quality of detached sympathy. Seen through the crystal of Mr Landau's mind all the excesses and oddities of the movement take their proper place, in complete subordination to the good that is certainly accomplished. These studies of oddities, cranks and the simpler religious teachers, however, superbly well done as they are, are not the most important parts of the book. It is the chapters upon the really developed teachers apd mystics that excite. Keyserling, Steiner and Ouspensky, particularly, are all men whosu thought is so advanced that the student approaching them requires to go to school again before he can properly appreciate their writings. Ouspensky, who early started his "War against Sleep," with his contention that in fact all men are asleep and must be wakened, startled many people into studying him. His first book, " Tertium Organum," was so enthralling that it sold like a popular novel. His next, "A New Model for the Universe." more important though more difficult, is, Mr Landau says, the better .one to study. His picture of Ouspensky clearly shows his subject's possession of that unfailing trait of great teachers, the insistence that his pupils shall think for themselves. Keyserling, who receives much space, has been a major intellectual phenomenon of the century. Even in Nazi Germany he has kept nimself mentally intact, and still retained the respect of the intolerant Reich. The understanding pen of our adventurer has drawn a portrait of a man of an uncommon stature. It was Rudolf Steiner, however, the founder of that movement known as Anthroposophy.who claims the writer's greatest admiration. In him he found a man of most amazing powers, and yet one completely free from worldly ambitions and of a great natural modesty. He gives well-authenticated stories of these powers and of their application, he tells us sufficient of the exercises for the development of clairvoyance (the conscious type) to make us wish to know far more, and he explains very adequately just what forces Steiner had to fight in his life and why he was bound to raise the furious and bittter antagonism that he did. At one period immediately after the war Steiner was at once the best loved and the best hated man in Germany. Perhaps the part most interesting to the general reader will be the account of the astoundingly varied practical work accomplished by Steiner, on the basis of his occult perceptions. In a special section at the end of the book, entitled "The Testament of Rudolf Steiner," Mr Landau tells how he made a special investigation in several countries to find how far the practical side of Anthroposophy was progressing. He had to look below the surface, and he was surprised by the result of his search. He found that an increasing number of doctors, educationists, and farmers were adopting these methods. _ The study of Krishnamurti is in quite a different vein. The author quickly fell under the spell of his delightful personality, without detriment, however, to his critical faculty. He tells of Krishnamurti's early bondage to the Theosophical Society, and his subsequent courageous breaking of those bonds, with an understanding that compels our own. He declares that Krishnamurti has no adequate message to give the world. He portrays him as a man of perfected and controlled emotion, but without the intellectual power either properly to understand his own qualities, or adequately to grasp the spiritual difficulties and bewilderment of those on a lower level of self adjustment than himself. Like the school teacher who knows his arithmetic so well that he cannot understand why the foolish children cannot do the sums, Krishnamurti is presented in these pages as the perfectly integrated man who cannot help others to integrate themselves. He is a spiritual athlete but not a spiritual genius. This is a book that no one should miss, who Js ever so slightly interested in anything beyond the winning of his daily bread. P. H. W. N.