BEYOND CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
                                                        (Essays for Personal Self-Evaluation)                   
                                                                            Book Review

                                                           
                                                                         777.albertamao.com 

I have always been a skeptic about things metaphysical or mystical. The Tarot, Qabalah, and various forms of spiritism and divination have seemed suspicious to me. Yet I find Dr. Amao’s book both fascinating and, oddly enough, heartening on these matters.

Since the Enlightenment began in the eighteenth century, it has swept the Western world with the power of two great ideas. One is that the world is solely a material thing–composed of matter and energy, and two that a valid understanding of that world depends wholly on the evidence of the senses. Enhanced by technology we see ever more deeply into our world and far away into the universe beyond us. The second great idea is that all things supernatural or spiritual–the once mighty province of the religions of mankind—are mere baseless superstitions of our ignorant past. However, with the twentieth century, our confidence in the evidence of our senses and the rational integrity of our world has been shaken.

Quantum mechanics has introduced the concept of uncertainty into scientific thinking. For example, scientists have not only found but proved, many times, that a single photon of light “fired” from an emitter-device toward a barrier with two narrow slits cut into it goes through both openings at once . . . unless we set up an observation device at the slits. When we observe the photon traveling its course, it goes through only one slit. Take the device away and the single proton once again goes through both slits simultaneously.

This newly enlightened understanding of the natural world given to us by the discoveries of quantum mechanics is overthrowing tyrannical forms of rationalism which insist that there is one and only one truth dependent on one and only one method of observation of one and only one material reality. The new understanding of our world is certainly more congenial to Dr. Amao’s ideas of truth and reality than the black and white of mere reflexive rationalism. Dr. Amao’s ideas, however, are not a reactionary resurrection of age-old superstitions. Rather, they are meant to unlock the fetters of ancient superstitions, the fetters of fortune-telling and “secret” knowledge known but to a few by which many esotericisms sought to bind the uninitiated into psychological and financial dependence on their privileged ministrations.

Dr. Amao does not wish to invoke this ancient darkness once again nor to deny the truths of modern science, but rather to help his readers to a new and more open enlightenment in which all may find their place. He does not arrogate to himself the role of magus throwing scraps of enlightenment to poor lost sheep, but seeks to be a nourisher and strengthener of independent self-exploration.

The Tarot, for instance, which Dr. Amao treats in some depth, is presented not as a fortune-teller’s tool paralyzing believers with an unwholesome dependence upon or terror of some future event fated to befall them. Rather, he presents the complex and colorful Tarot images as a system of symbols, which can open to us the nature of our inner selves–our fears and strengths, our talents and desires. Dr. Amao shows us that the Tarot and also the Qabalah can help us see what cannot be readily apprehended and understood in ourselves, but what may be prompted in us indirectly. This can lead us to a kind of satori, a sudden, surprising insight that reveals ourselves to ourselves. His purpose is to show us that we can use this knowledge to realize our full humanity and develop rich, humane, and nourishing relationships with all other beings in the world.

Dr. Amao acts as a kind of ecologist of the human spirit. Studying its nature, the structure and meaning of its elements, and its relationship to the spirit of the world, he seeks to cleanse, as it were, the spiritual air we breathe and the water we thirst for, to enrich the soil of our inner selves allowing in the sunlight and nutrients necessary for the growth of our hearts and souls. He takes well-known stories like The Wizard of Oz, the Prodigal Son, and story of Adam and Eve and shows us the powerful and suggestive insights we can take from them. In each story, whether through pain, loss, facing uncomfortable truths or willingly taking risks, a character achieves a self-realization, which offers a freedom and joy through which he or she may flourish as a person. He shows us that mythic figures like the Wicked Witch of the West and the serpent in the Garden or foolish temptations like hedonism and addiction, despite their fearsome darkness, can in fact illuminate our paths to personal fulfillment.

I am not a metaphysician–but a skeptic, not a mystic–but an empiricist, and yet I have found much worth learning in Dr. Amao’s book. I find it especially important that I can appropriate such truths as I see in his stories and comments to the benefit of my character and my freedom of self. Such is the open-handed gift of this book, the fruits of Dr. Amao’s intellectual labors and insights.
 
                                                                                                                           Edwin J. Heck, Ph.D.            
 777.albertamao.com 
Albert's book at Amazon.Com, check it out.
 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/102-7567293-2034531?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Albert%20Amao