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(More customer reviews)Gary Beckwith noticed that, although there were a lot of books that dealt with the underlying thematic unity of the world's religions, there weren't any really good _introductory_ books on the subject. So he wrote one.
He did a nice job. His presentation is clear without being oversimplified, and he gets the point across without overstating it.
The central theme of the book is that God is One in a deep theological sense -- that, ultimately, reality itself consists of One Mind, omnipresent, all-pervading, describable as both "love" and "light," and present in some special manner in the human soul. This message Beckwith finds not only in all the world's religions but also in modern science.
Beckwith himself was raised Jewish and picked up on this theme when he heard the Shema in synagogue one day ("Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad," or "Hear, Israel, Adonai our God, Adonai is one"). Somewhat alienated from his childhood faith, he'd been practicing meditation under the instruction of Lawrence LeShan's 1974 book _How to Meditate_ (an excellent book, by the way) -- and upon hearing the Shema in a new way, he began to wonder whether "God is One" referred to the "oneness" reached via meditation.
So he started checking around. And what he found was that, not only did Judaism teach this very "oneness," but so did all the other religions he could find.
Perhaps surprisingly, he learned (mostly, it seems, through Fritjof Capra's _The Tao of Physics_) that modern science taught something remarkably similar. So there's a chapter here on science as well. The discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library seem to shed some light on the nature of Near Eastern religion during the period when Judaism and Christianity split (and thereby demonstrate that this common message was once less deeply buried than it now is), so he devotes a chapter to these texts as well. A pair of closing chapters suggest that this common teaching can also be found in our everyday lives and that it tells us something about why we're here.
The whole presentation is well handled and filled with examples of "parallel" sayings from the various religions and wisdom traditions. And it will probably provide a helpful jolt to the reader who hasn't previously encountered the "message that comes from everywhere."
And to his great credit, Beckwith doesn't try to insist that all religions are identical in every respect. First of all, it's only too obvious that they're not; Beckwith limits the commonality to a set of "core" teachings, not to every single aspect of every single religion. Moreover, he's careful to describe the parallels as similarities rather than identities -- and strictly speaking, every similarity that falls short of identity is also a difference. So in Beckwith's hands, the world's religions don't all ooze together into some sort of undifferentiated grey goo; each retains its own character and identity, ringing its own particular changes on the underlying message of unity.
That means it can be read by an adherent of any faith or none. And _that_ means it's well suited to Beckwith's overarching purpose: promoting peace by emphasizing the common message of religion and science. His hope is that, rather than insisting that one religion is right and all the others therefore just fancy ways of going to hell, we may be able to recognize with respect that there is a truth common to all religions.
This book is best read, I think, by someone to whom this common-core-of-religions stuff is fairly new (and of course that's Beckwith's purpose in writing it). Beckwith also includes a helpful bibliography full of suggestions for further reading. But as Beckwith himself will tell you, there won't be much new here for the reader who has already covered this ground. His primary aim is to spread the word, not to cement our understanding of it.
My own recommendations, for whatever they're worth: depending on your interests, you could follow up with Larry Dossey's _Recovering the Soul_, Huston Smith's _Forgotten Truth_, John Hick's _An Interpretation of Religion_, Aldous Huxley's _The Perennial Philosophy_, Alan Watts' _The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are_, Douglas Harding's _On Having No Head_, any of Stephen Mitchell's translations of the world's spiritual literature, or (for children) Etan Boritzer's _What Is God?_. (I've reviewed several of these.)
There are lots of others, of course, and many of them are more specific to certain religious traditions than the handful I suggested (for example, Rabbi David Aaron's _Seeing God_). But if you're new to this literature, you can feel safe starting with Beckwith's book; it's very well done.
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For centuries, the world's religions have squabbled over their differences. At times it escalates and there are wars or even terrorist acts like we've recently seen. Some say there will never be peace because of the disparity between the religions and their teachings.But if we choose to focus on the similarities between the religions, we find they outweigh the differences. In fact, there seems to be an underlying message that all the world's religions share.In his timely new book, author Gary Beckwith does just that - based on ten years of research he explores the similarities rather than the differences. Included in the discussion are the scientific discoveries of our time that seem to validate the message of the religions.News reports and commentaries today often mention that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are connected and share similar teachings, but what are the specifics? The book uses plain language and specific examples of how all the religions agree, including Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.Many have commented that what the world needs now is peace between the religions. The first step is learning about the similarities, and this book (published a mere 10 days before the tragic terrorist events in New York and Washington) can certainly play a role in that effort. Reading it will give you a new perspective on religion, and a renewed hope for world peace.
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