RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27385, 10 May 1950, Page 2

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

The Nameless Faith, by Lawrence Hyde. Rider and Co. Whitcombe and Tombs. 16s. The White Light, by Charles J. Seymour. Andrew Dakers. 7s 6d. The first of these books is an attempt to state the case for a modern religion combining the extroverted character of Western culture with its specific development of the scientificmaterialistic side of man’s nature and the introverted and more mystical Eastern way of thought. The author allows little virtue to the churches and indulges in a good deal of implied flattery of the man who has failed to find anything in their doctrines and is looking for something new. There is here a tremendous spate of words but little which the mind can grasp. The reader gropes through a fog of long words and involved constructions but finds nothing solid, nothing concrete. While all old religions are condemned nothing is given in their place, except a sort of woolly philosophising which is all too common in this sort of literature. The second book, The White Light, is a far more satisfactory piece of work. After “The Nameless Faith,” reading this book is like coming out into clear sunlight. Briefly the author’s aim is to give for Western readers a brief and intelligible summary of Eastern thought on the subject of the Whence, the Why and the Whither of mankind. His basic doctrines include karma, reincarnation and the possibility of union with the absolute while in the body. Although he does not state it, the book substantially sets out the Theosophical position, though without some of the more fantastic trimmings that Theosophy has acquired. The material is stated to have been communicated to the author by a teacher who is kept strictly anonymous but that point is not of any real importance. The only criticism that mieht be made is that the book, while stressing the doctrine of the essential timelessness of the real, yet gives an importance to the passage of time which is in contradiction to that doctrine. P. H. W. N.