THE CHAOS THEORY

“Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong” by Eric Barker

Sigmund Freud once said, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” While Eric Barker’s first book was about work, where he tests out all the theories and common beliefs about work and whether the maxims of success were all true, in this second book Barker explores and tests out the myths and science of the other half of Freud’s statement: on relationship.

In his signature style, the book mix hard science and wide range of psychological findings with humor, a laid back tone of writing, and amusing stories to illustrate the points, which makes reading it feels like we’re on a holiday with a funny but wise friend.

Stories such as the tale involving a genius horse, a Korean War hero who fought against hundreds of enemies alone, the girl who broke Casanova’s heart, the love story between a Japanese man with his anime pillow, lonely Frankenstein’s monster, a story about a leper colony, the search for an alien frequency, the invention and marketing of Viagra, a made up disease to protect jews in Rome from Nazi, a case of severe picnic deprivation, and the real life case of amnesia and love like in the 50 First Date movie.

The book also provides tips and tools for a good relationship, such as the danger of making assumptions and instead we should always clarify, how to ask questions to figure out whether someone is lying or not, tools – like active listening, mirroring, labelling – that would make Chris Voss proud, understanding our primordial need to make sense of our surrounding (hence how people can get duped by the likes of astrology or Tarot card), or the important concept of emotional contagion where when we feel excited we tend to associate it with what’s around us, even if they are not directly responsible.

Now, there are so many notes taken from this book, but in a nutshell it gives an insight into human relationship as a whole. And if we only learn one thing from the book, it’s probably this: “What predicts how meaningful we perceive life to be? [A] 2013 study found a very robust and clear answer to that question: a sense of belonging.”

Indeed a sense of belonging gives us a feeling of meaning in life, because as Barker said “it’s why our species’ superpower is cooperation. It’s what we saw with drug addiction hijacking the social reward pathways of the human brain. It’s what we saw with the placebo effect curing ills by telling your body someone cares.” Oh yes, research found that the placebo effect have an active ingredient after all: human beings caring for one another, which was brilliantly illustrated in great length in the book.

Moreover, the book addresses misleading or incomplete statistics such as the claim that married people are happier, while in truth people who are in a happy marriage are happier but so do people who are happily single. Meanwhile people in a bad marriage are worst off, the same with single miserable people.

Another statistic shows the minimum requirement ratio between positive and negative experience for a relationship to work out. For example, friendships need an 8:1 positive to negative ratio, marriages 5:1 positive to negative ratio, where couples who headed for a divorce typically have a ratio of 0.8 positives for every 1 negative. And with your mother in law? The number is 1000:1. HA! Surely it’s an over exaggeration? But hey if the science says so.

And then there’s the big one, the topic of loneliness epidemic. “Loneliness is a subjective feeling”, Barker wrote, “it’s not necessarily about physical isolation. We’ve all felt it: lonely in a crowd.” Indeed, loneliness isn’t actually about being physically alone, but instead it’s more about not having a feeling of meaningful connection.

And we can trace this phenomenon back to the 19th century, where the term loneliness did not actually exist. So what happened? In the 1800s a new concept emerged alongside other social narratives such as the idea of marriage for love, and it can be summed up in one word: individualism. It is not a coincidence that the term “individualism” was first appeared in the 1830s, about the same time that loneliness began to appear. As Barker remarks, “We went from seeing life as ensemble drama to a one-man show. We went from a default “someone cares” to “no one cares.””

And it gets trickier. Psychologists call it parasocial relationship. It is a concept created in 1956 to describe the pseudo-relationships people would have with TV characters, because according to researchers Cohen and Metzger “television represents the perfect guest—one who comes and leaves at our whim.” And the statistics back this up. Between 1985 and 1994 there was a 45% drop in involvement in community organizations, 43% drop in time spent on family dinner, 35% drop on activities where people invite friends over, in fact virtually all forms of togetherness became less common over the last quarter of the 20th century, and the primary culprit is television.

And the introduction of the internet and the rise of smart phones make it even worst. Meaningful human contact now largely replaced by online interactions that are fundamentally different in some ways. Most significantly, it eliminates the body language and human expressions that serve as a feedback loop for the things we said.

The ease of having “online friends” also makes people more likely to be selective over engaging with online behaviour, where they can just tune out when they don’t feel like responding, a behaviour that could carry over offline into the real world. Hence the resulting younger generation with severe lack of empathy, because they never learn how to develop their empathy that can only be learned from trials and errors from physical human connection.

Barker remarked, “add in the hypercompetitive atmosphere and inflated expectations of success, borne of celebrity ‘reality shows,’ and you have a social environment that works against slowing down and listening to someone who needs a bit of sympathy.” So what happens in a world that is lack on empathy and instead focuses on status and so little on care? We become depressed.

But luckily, the cure for this is quite straight forward. Barker noted over a camping experiment, “In only five days in a sleepaway camp without their phones, empathy levels come back up. How does this happen? The campers talk to each other.” Indeed, go offline and interact with each other. Or as Barker would suggest, we can join the Amish community. As he explains, the Amish “don’t eschew technology because they’re Luddites. They do adopt some of it, like tractors. How do they decide what gets approved and what doesn’t? By the effect it has on the closeness of the community. Tractors help you grow crops. Sounds good. But cars let people live farther apart. No bueno.”

Now, we don’t need to literally join the Amish community but we can certainly learn from them. Because, “[w]hen we’re in a community, we get high on our own supply, but when there is no community, we must get our supply elsewhere.”

And as it turns out we cannot discount the huge effect of what having a physical community can give us. When Paula Klemm and Thomas Hardie studied online cancer support groups, they discovered that 92% of the participants were depressed, but when they studied physical cancer support groups? The depression goes down to zero percent. They report: “Traditional cancer support groups can help people cope with their cancer, but the efficacy of Internet cancer support groups . . . remains to be proven.”

Indeed, while it is relatively easy to replace face-to-face contact with online interaction, it doesn’t have the same effects on us. This is backed by psychologist Thomas Pollet who found that “spending more time on IM or [social networking sites] did not increase the emotional closeness of relationships.”

All of these come back nicely to the main point of the book: the sense of belonging. Us humans tend to maintain the sense of belonging through stories, with the primary purpose wasn’t necessarily truth but unity. As Barker remarks, “[j]ust like your body accepts a fake story in the placebo effect. The acupuncture doesn’t help, but the care it delivers is a clear signal of belonging, and that’s what’s important.”

Barker then continues, “How do we maintain belonging when our stories are mutually exclusive? The solution is simple: more stories. We can always create another story to unite us in a new way. We do it now. You may not be my family, but you are my friend. You may not be my religion, but we are part of the same nation. We may not have any of these in common, but we may both be Star Wars fans. New stories can unite us when the old ones fail to.”

This, in the end, is our human story. A story about community, togetherness and belonging. We might not be the strongest or the quickest animal on Earth, but we’re the most cooperative with each other. As Dutch historian Rutger Bregman puts it, “If Neanderthals were a super-fast computer, we were an old-fashioned PC—with wi-fi. We were slower, but better connected.”

And this can be evident in the unlikeliest circumstances, where in the most difficult situations where survivorship is at stake – like during war or disaster – humans tend to go back to our default settings and help each other more.

“Walden” by Henry David Thoreau

Between 4 July 1845 and 6 September 1947 Henry David Thoreau went into a solitude and live a simple life alone in the woods in Walden Pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days. He did so to escape what he saw as “over-civilization”, and to search for the “raw” and “savage delight” of the wilderness.

And by immersing himself in nature, Thoreau wished to gain more understanding over society as a whole from afar as well as to learn about simple living and self-sufficiency. This book is the brainchild of his thoughts and diary that came out from that deep state of meaning, which became an instant classic.

At least that’s what initially portrayed, which is why I was surprised when I finally get my hands on the book and it turns out to be nothing like the many good reviews and references about it.

Firstly, his idea of solitude was living in his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s property (and not, as he claimed, “in a house which I had built myself”) just 2 miles away from Concord where his parents are and where he still go out to every day. Secondly, he spent quite some time playing host to a variety of visitors, which spoils the spirit of solitude. And thirdly, the resulting diary out of the semi-solitude was written in a condescending tone, where he seems to project a sense of superiority by practising frugality and a minimalistic lifestyle and that everyone else who don’t follow this path are idiots.

Moreover, while some parts of the book focused on his contemplation of society and the affairs of men, there are many parts that got weird real quick such as a detailed account on bean cultivation, his many grocery lists (complete with the prices), and an obsession on how to measure the depth of the pond. Indeed, the majority of his solitude diary contains nothing more than gibberish rants over his experiment.

Nevertheless, if we stick with him until the end of the book he will eventually come around to what makes this book ground breaking in his time: the mindfulness feel of living in solitude, no matter how flawed it was. Sure, after a wave of transcendentalism movement his ideas are not new anymore today, but it was something inspiring and fresh during his time.

Read the beginning in chapter 1 and the conclusion in chapter 18, skim read the rest in between, and we arguably can still get the overall mood of the book and might learn one or two things in the process.

“Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School” by Stuart Jeffries

This is a biography of the lives of German-Jewish thinkers originated from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, or collectively known as the Frankfurt School.

Initially founded in 1923 in Weimar Republic, the neo-Marxist school of thought dreamt of a socialist revolution in their homeland akin to what occurred in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, but instead they witnessed the rise of fascism in the form of Hitler and his Nazi Party. As a response to their failure to foresee the rise of Hitler they eventually developed the Critical Theory, a form of social critique that relies heavy on dialectic approach.

In particular, they criticize fascism and reject the growing capitalism movement in the US and the rest of Western Europe, especially their mass indoctrination through western pop culture (with arguments that are eye opening and will make us think). And while rooted in neo-Marxism, they eventually evolved into more of an anti-Marxist especially after the 1930s. Confused?

This is the delightful contrasting nature within the Frankfurt School. In fact, interrogating society’s contradictions is indeed the basis of their intellectual approach, where the philosopher György Lukács once commented that these men had taken residence in “Grand Hotel Abyss”, where the fictitious hotel was “equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity.” Indeed, nothing is definitive for this group of scholars, some can even contradict each other, and everything is up for a discussion and/or scrutinize, which could be seen as chaotic from the outside.

With this in mind, the book provides a fresh look into the intellectual debates that have shaped German thinking outside and inside the normal zeitgeist of communism, capitalism and fascism, and shows how the proverbial sausages (or bratwursts) were made behind the scene for these ideologies. In here we can arguably see their flaws, the chaotic implementation of the theories, and the human flaws that eventually corrupt them. And to be fair, the book also points out the imperfection of the ideas and arguments of the Frankfurt School themselves, while also addresses the many false conspiracy theories about them.

Through all of these, we can see the evolution of life in Europe during the turbulent decades. Firstly from the time the Frankfurt School was born in the midst of post-War-1 era filled with collapsing economy, failed currency, hyperinflation, the rise of populist parties, as well as social and sexual liberalism. And then during the dark days of the rise of the Third Reich in the 1930s, where the German-Jewish men’s lives were thrown into jeopardy and the Frankfurt School was forced to move to exile first in New York where it found its new home at Columbia University, then Los Angeles in the 1940s. And then during the rapid development of post-war Germany, when the School made its comeback to the homeland.

The author, Guardian columnist Stuart Jeffries, has the ability of making the complex arguments among the different personalities within the School more readable by the lay people, without losing their core points. Hence, the readability and clarity over the subject and thinkers that were often misunderstood, where Theodor Adorno once commented “I established a theoretical model of thought. How could I have suspected that people would want to implement it with Molotov cocktails?”

Theodore Adorno (1903-1969) was one of the big guns of the Frankfurt School, alongside Walter Benjamin (1895-1973), Erich Fromm (1900-1980), Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), Friedrich Pollock (1894-1970), Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993), and Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). And since the 1970s a new generation of thinkers emerged such as Jürgen Habermas who turned the School into a global influence, which in turn the third generation of critical theorists mostly came from Habermas’ research students.

There are a lot of topics on society that they covered, from analyzing the roles of art, Jazz and Charlie Chaplin movies in creating a pop culture for indoctrinating the masses, to the more heavy topics such as why do Jews become the scapegoat in Nazi’s Germany, on surviving the Holocaust, on the post-war analysis on how people could follow the Nazi thinking, and how life after war looks like in Germany in the 1940s and 1950s. It is through all of this we get to understand the nature and problems of our mass-produced society and more importantly the psychology of the masses. It is indeed a way of thinking outside the norm.

It is exactly because of this that the Frankfurt School is now largely forgotten in the footnotes of history, as communism, capitalism and fascism rose to be the dominating ideologies in modern history. But the recent chaos and schism in failed communism, the rise of predatory capitalism, and the re-emergence of fascism in some parts of the world have turned people into Critical Theory once again, with conversation-style debates dominate the quest to search for fresh new ideas.

You know that phrase the more you read the less you think you know? This is what this book is for me, a rosetta stone to a whole new politico-social thinking that brings me to a rabbit hole of more readings to come.

A little side note, I received this book from a German friend who, like myself, love to read many different intellectual models and point of views that have shaped society. And an intellectual biography about a group of people living on the edge of absurdity, that offer fresh perspectives over the status quo ideologies of the world? He never said that this wouldn’t be a challenging read, and in fact it is exactly the many contradictions of the Frankfurt School that makes the book complicatedly fascinating. Good choice mate, the book did not disappoint one bit.

“A Handbook for New Stoics: How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control” by Massimo Pigliucci and Gregory Lopez

Massimo Pigliucci said that Stoicism is 1 part understanding and 9 part exercise. And this is what this book is all about, a practical book designed to train us to do the latter, to live according to Stoic principles, through 52 weeks guide that is supposed to be implemented in a year.

But Pigliucci himself admitted that not everyone can commit to a year-long exercise, and I found that the book can also be as effective by learning the lessons and embodying them in just few days.

To be perfectly fair, it might be easier for me as I have read 17 books on Stoicism so far and have practiced the principles since 2017. But still, while I have pretty much covered the 1 part of understanding, the rest of the 9 part of practice is more of a lifelong habit rather than a certain milestone goal trying to be achieved.

And this is where the book comes in handy, a refresher course as well as a new practical approach for implementing them, organised so neatly and in a step-by-step manner that makes it relatively easy to follow the flow of the guided lessons.

It covers all the major Stoic principles, such as the discipline of desire, empathy and sympathy, giving yourself an advice from the 2nd person perspective (from the outside view), looking at things from the other person’s point of view, practicing discomfort, anticipating misfortune, practicing view from above, night reflections, temperance during eating, embracing minimalism, speaking little but well, and so much more.

And among the whole lot, 3 simple insights stand out from the rest for me: 1. Nobody wants to do harm on purpose 2. To understand how to properly live we need to know how the world really works and see our place in it 3. The best way to avoid temptation is to minimise exposure to the source of the temptation.

All in all, in a larger scheme of things the book could serve very well as a next step practical book, to help us implement the 9 part of exercise after we’ve done with the 1 part of understanding.

“Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India” by William Dalrymple

This is a story about nine people that have nine completely different religious paths, each one with an unforgettable true story. Written by a historian who has explored India for 25 years to cover about its history and vast religious traditions.

More specifically, it is a story about a Jain nun, a blind minstrel, a Tantric practitioner, a Tibetan monk, an idol maker, a devadasi (temple prostitute), a Sufi mystic, a Rajasthani medieval poem, and an ordinary prison warden who for 3 months a year is worshipped as an incarnate deity.

Through each one of these nine lives, the book teaches us about the many different religions that live side by side to form a colourful society. And in between the stories we can find the authentic feel of India, the mash up of cultures, the stark contrast between the caste, the festivals, the extreme poverty, the wandering monks and nuns and sadhus, the spirit-summoning rituals, the brutal politics, and the ordinary lives caught in between two worlds of ancient temples and modern skyscrapers.

And the stories are all very human. It shows their aspiration and inspiration, their day to day struggle, their different path to peace or enlightenment. It shows the emotions behind the mask and costume, the injustice they are experiencing, with some heart breaking stories as well as some heartwarming stories, all of which provide so many lessons in life no matter what the religious medium is.

They say nothing beats visiting India and experience it yourself, as you will get inspired and/or appreciate life more. Well, reading this book is a close second. And for the longest time I thought it was a positive tone through and through, but now after reading the book I can also sense the contrasting attribute for the second part of that sentence. Yes, India is spiritually inspiring, but it is only after seeing the harshness of life in the country that we can also learn to appreciate our lives back at home a little bit more. And to that end, the book has done such a tremendous job illustrating all the flavours of reality in the sub-continent.

“Bandit Saints of Java: How Java’s Eccentric Saints are Challenging Fundamentalist Islam in Modern Indonesia” by George Quinn

Finally, a book that properly discussed the elephant in the Indonesian room: the mystical side that dominates the island of Java.

It is an impressive coverage and analysis of the spread of Islam in Java, the integration between the new religion and the local culture heavy with Hindu-Buddhism influences, and the rejection of the assimilation in several places that has created the hot spots that exist until today. But above all, the book tells the tales of the mysticism occurring throughout the island, from the weird to the wonderful, from the myth to the history.

The book is written by George Quinn, a New Zealander fluent in Indonesian and Javanese languages, who uniquely earned his BA from a local Indonesian university, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. He first visited Indonesia in 1966 and began his love affair with the country ever since, including marrying a local woman from Banyumasan. Quinn also has a PhD from Sydney University on Indonesia and became the Head of the Southeast Asia Centre in the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University.

For this book he travelled and visited some of the most sacred tombs across Java (most of them not for the first time), and blend in with the locals to get the ground-level oral history. And for every folk tale that he found he corroborate it with the official historical records, which makes the book a unique mix of solid academic approach and the raw folk tales stuff straight from the people who live it.

Perhaps the best feature of this book is the clarity between fact and fiction, as they are usually so many different version of folk tales developing on the same subject or person, sometimes with different towns claiming ownership over the origin story. And in here Quinn tells the many different versions and addresses them all, including predicting what really occurred and clearly distinguishing whether or not it is likely to be a myth or a real historical event.

The book mainly revolves around the pilgrimage culture over the tombs of the so-called Nine Saints (Wali Songo) spread across the island. As Quinn remarks, “pilgrims regularly plead for personal favours (in Javanese: ngalap berkah, to grab a blessing) or make a nadhar promise, vowing to repay Allah or a saint in some fashion if their plea is granted. Outside the tomb chamber they may take part in a ritual slametan meal, or tear apart a mini-mountain of food in a rebutan ritual, or help to replace the power-charged cloth canopy that hangs over the tomb.”

So why do so many pilgrims come to the tomb of the saints to pray, a practice that is considered an idolatry in Islam? Because first and foremost, they believe that the saints have a direct access to Allah, and praying at their tomb means that they are praying towards Allah using “the express” pathway to Allah instead of the ordinary prayers “lane” mixed with billions of people. Hence it is arguably not a form of idolatry like the common misconception.

The practice is a remnant of the now-vanished Islam “abangan” culture that includes some of the local surviving customs not commonly associated with Islam outside Indonesia, such as scattering flower petals and charging bottles of water in tombs, burning incense, and slametan ritual, which is in contrast with the Islam “santri” culture most associated with Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah (the two largest Muslim organizations in Indonesia) today that teach the more traditional Islam from the Middle East.

Islam “abangan” was initiated by Sunan Kalijaga, the semi-mystical character that Quinn dubbed as “the embodiment of all that Javanese Islam stands for.” His teachings were then proceeded by several other disciple saints, all of whom were recruited by Sunan Kali Jaga in fascinating mythical stories filled with magic and deity-like powers.

And inline with the “abangan” approach, they assimilated the teachings of Islam into the existing local culture instead of replacing it completely, by using the stories of the shadow puppet shows familiar with Hindu characters and inserted Islamic values into the story. Such as the story of the 5 Pandawa brothers that were rebranded as a symbolism of Islam’s 5 obligations.

Moreover, although the book mainly provides the biography of some of the saints (with stories directly linked with Sunan Kalijaga), it also covers everything else related to mysticism in Java. Such as the story of the goddess of money, the tuyul army, and mystic places such as mount Kawi and Ketonggo forrest. It has the fascinating story of the guardian of the Merapi, which involved Panembahan Senopati and Nyi Roro Kidul, and how it ended up with mbah Maridjan. And about the believe of the emergence of Ratu Adil on judgement day, the prophecy of Jayabaya, and many other tales of magic that at one point involves a talking penis.

It also discusses real historical events, such as the story of a gay saint and strong aristocratic women in Madura. The backstory of Mbah Priok (and the name Tanjung Priok) and the long saga of his tomb that culminates in 2010 riot. And even contemporary affairs such as the rise of the Pemuda Pancasila and what it does with the balance of power in the country, addressing Wahhabism and its terror attacks in Indonesia, and the massive 212 demonstration agains Jakarta’s incumbent governor Ahok using religion as a political tool.

Indeed, this is a complete view of Java, filled with all the fact and fiction, the myth and the history. And it puts everything in their right explanatory contexts, including the local Javanese practices that could seem weird and wonderful for outsiders, but have deeper meaning for most of Java’s 130 million people (even for presidents). And the book captures all of the essences brilliantly. Simply amusing from start to finish.

“The Heart of the Shaman: Stories and Practices of the Luminous Warrior” by Alberto Villoldo

This is a whole other world, a seemingly bizarre practice that at first defies modern logic but could potentially make sense once we dig deeper under the surface and understand it well enough.

The book is written by Alberto Villoldo, a medical anthropologist dubbed by the New York Times as “the Indiana Jones of the spirit world.” He earned this nickname by looking for an alternative to cure age-old illnesses and found it in the deep jungle of Peru by befriended Q’ero shamans (including his main source for this book, Don Manuel) or by actions like accessing Machu Pichu’s citadel at night.

While he was already accustomed to the Afro-Indian healing tradition practiced by his nanny during his childhood in Cuba, it was during his doctoral years at San Francisco State University when he really explored about mind-body medicine and neurophysiology of healing, though his travels to Southwestern United States, the Andes, and the Amazon. He then stayed for 4 decades in Peru, blending science and spirituality, teaching about shamanic energy medicine while producing 17 books about shamanism.

Hence, it is not an exaggeration for having such a high expectation for this book. But I’m afraid this is where the honeymoon period stops.

The book continuously written in the borderline between a coverage about shamanism, his own semi-autobiography, and one of those self-help books that based themselves in the law of attraction. It has the feel of “The Secret” element to it, where tapping the creative power of the universe means “when you hold a sacred dream, the universe begins to actively conspire on your behalf to make the impossible doable.” Which is fine if this is indeed a form of practice by shamanism, but Villoldo rarely clarify whether what he’s specifically writing about at that instance is a shaman practice or a personal view.

This makes the book quickly turned from the exciting prospect of teaching us everything about the mysterious shamanism, into one that “borrows” some of the ideas from it and then expanded using the author’s own judgement and experience outside shamanism. But I read on.

To keep the focus on the subject matter, this is what Villoldo wrote that is actually inline with shaman belief: he argues that we’re more than just flesh and bone, that we’re also made of spirit and light surrounded by a Luminous Energy Field (LEF), which is an unending source that exists in every cell of our bodies. And in this book he teaches us how to tap into the creative power of the universe. Sort of. “When you find your sacred dream,” Villoldo remarks, “the creative power of the universe, known by the shamans as the Primordial Light, becomes available to you to create beauty in the world, and to heal yourself and others. You become a luminous warrior.”

So the key question is, what is a sacred dream? There are 3 types of waking dreams: the nightmare, the daydream, and the sacred dream. Out of the 3, only sacred dream can help you fulfill your mission in life.

While a nightmare does not offer you much hope for things to change (such as poor health, growing old, frustrating job or failed marriage), a sacred dream “encourages you to explore the mysteries of life and of love, to glimpse a reality beyond death and discover a timeless truth for yourself. It demands that you act boldly and courageously, and not collude with the consensual—that which everyone agrees on and no one questions—even though it is a popular story that traps us in daydreams that become nightmares.”

So, how do we find our sacred dream? As explained by Villoldo, “[y]ou find your sacred dream by transforming three common dreams many of us are convinced are true and cannot seem to wake up from. They are the dream of security, the dream of permanence, and the dream of love that is unconditional.”

And what do the Shamans do to transform these three? “The shamans do not practice prayer as we know it. They do not meditate. Instead they go on vision quests and practice journeying. They go into nature and fast, drinking only water. After a few days of not eating, once they have burned through all the sugars in their system, they slip into that state between sleeping and waking, where reality ceases to be objective and becomes fluid. In this realm time seems to stop, to warp and fold onto itself, just as it does when we are dreaming.”

“You could be at the foot of a mountain one moment,” Villoldo continues, “and next magically on a beach, the warm sand beneath your feet. An ordinary person might experience this as a mild hallucination induced by starvation. But shamans retain their awareness and focus in these states, so they can meet masters devoid of physical form who offer their wisdom to them. These beings are made of light, since their nature is identical to that of the Primordial Light, and they offer their boundless generosity to anyone seeking help. The closest image we have of these beings is that of the angels we read about in the Bible—numinous, translucent, heavenly.”

If all of these look vague and confusing to you, you’re not alone. At this point, it is vital to point out the importance of the plant hallucinogens that the shamans consume as a key element of the ceremony, a somewhat LSD-like transcendental experience. Which would make this whole seemingly bizarre experience a perfect sense. But Villoldo omitted this massive detail entirely from the book, which was baffling and even misleading.

This incompleteness can be found throughought the book, which creates knowledge gaps between the many different lessons and a difficulty to see the relevance between shamanism and other topics such as his failed marriage (which you will read a lot about in the book). So much so that after reading the book I still have an unclear idea about what shamanism is about. It is such a missed opportunity, given the calibre of the author on this subject. 3.5 stars out of 5.

“The Sikhs” by Khushwant Singh

This is a story of a religious evolution in the Indian sub-continent, where the growing Sufi Islam influence of Shaikh Ibrahim Farid merged with a Hindu school of thought by Bhakta Kabir in the form of the teachings of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhsm.

As the author, Khushwant Singh, remarks, “[t]he Sikhs were the most outstanding example of Hindu renaissance produced by Islam – an edifice built as it were with Hindu bricks and Muslim mortar.”

Naturally, due to Hindu polytheist influences the religion seemingly have an abstract quality about its monotheism, but there is actually nothing vague about their believe in the unity of God and equate God with truth, thanks to the influences from monotheist Islam.

Also unlike Hinduism, Sikhism do not have a caste system. But they do not entirely reject Hinduism’s beliefs, as they accept the Hindu theory of karma and life hereafter.

In fact, they are increasingly pivoting towards Hinduism, where Singh remarks, “Within a hundred years of Guru Gobind Singh’s [the tenth and last Guru] death, rituals in Sikh gurdwaras were almost like that in Hindu temples, and more often than not were presided over by priests who were usually Hindu rather than Sikh. Sikhs began to wear caste marks; Sikh weddings and funerals followed Hindu patterns; ashes of the dead were carried to the Ganga and offerings were made to ancestors.”

Moreover, the Sikhs do not believe in the worshiping of human beings as incarnations of God. The gurus themselves also insisted that they were ordinary humans like others and were on no account to be worshipped. And instead, “the form of prayer is usually the repetition of the name of God and chanting hymns of praise. This was popularized by the Bhakti cult and Sikhism is its chief exponent today.”

However, while praying is central to the lives of the Sikhs, they uniquely do not have priests, as they believe that all adults (both men and women) are competent to perform religious ceremonial. And they also do not have a pilgrimage destination, although the Golden Temple in Amritsar is as good as any pilgrimage sites.

Furthermore, alongside the main features about Sikhism above, the book leaves no other details untouched either. It is complete with the biography of each of the important ten Gurus, the backstory behind the iconic turban and beard, the meaning behind the steel bangle, the origin story of the Khalsa, and the reasoning behind the name “Singh” as a surname.

It even covered the corruption cases within the community, the story of the infiltration of communism during the Cold War, their involvement in Indian politics, their emigration away from India (predominantly to Burma, the Malay states, China, Canada and the US), and the transformation of the religion from a pacifist to buffing themselves up with self defense and war expertise due to their oppressed circumstances by the Mughal rulers.

Indeed, the community has had some challenging days throughout history, such as the partition holocaust, or when a brutal attack towards the Sikhs (including the assassination of its then leader) forced them to respond with a political uprising that saw chaos in the Punjab region (where the Sikhs mainly resides), which at one point resulted in the building of the kingdom of the Sikhs (and the eventual demise of it).

But perhaps the most challenging them all is the infighting within the Sikh community. While a definition of a Sikh is “one who believes in the ten Gurus and the Granth Sahib [their Holy Book]”, there are those who, as Singh remarks, “do not believe in all the ten Gurus, e.g., followers of unsuccessful claimants to the title like Adasis, Minas and Ram Raiy as noted in the family tree of the ten Gurus. There are others who believe that the line of Gurus continued after the tenth and follow the precepts of a living Guru, e.g., Nirankaris and Namdharis. Similarly, some Sikhs challenge the authenticity of certain passages of the Granth Sahib, while others insist on including extraneous writings in it. Besides these, there are numerous subsects distinguished by allegiance to one or other Guru or claiming that the real Guru had been overlooked in deciding the succession.”

But nevertheless, despite these discrepancies the belief in the ten Gurus and the Granth Sahib remains the basic factor of the Sikh community, which covers the vast majority of them.

Today there are around 26 million Sikhs worldwide (0.3% of world population), 24 million of whom live inside India. They are largely little-known and often misunderstood (although not in a bad way), apart from their distinguishable attributes. But thanks to this book the many aspects of this fascinating religion just got a lot more clearer.

“The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism” by Daniel C. Matt

Daniel C. Matt had studied Kabbalah for 25 years, and it shows in how he can describe such a complex religion into a relatively simple narrative. He also curates some of the most essential teachings from the huge trove of Kabbalah, translated himself the passages from the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts, alongside adding contextual explanations on the translations.

The result is this compact book filled with all the essential knowledge on Kabbalah, broken down into several neat short themes that make it easier to digest. The book finishes at about 59% of the way, with the remaining pages reserved for the explanation notes and a substantial list of “suggested reading”, for those who decide to read more about it.

But still, even with the clarity and neat organisation, any novice in Kabbalah could find it a little overwhelming, due to the unique style of the religion, the many beautiful descriptions of Ein Sof (the Creator or the Infinite), and especially with the sophisticated structure of the ten Sefirot and the many different meanings that contains them.

But this is a testament to the completeness of the book on the subject. And no need to worry, as the book patiently guides us step by step to introduce the many parts of this fascinating religion, in a tone that is easy to understand even to a complete newbie.

The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition” by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

This book is 50 years in the making. It comprised of scholarly studies and existential participation in Sufism, where the author, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, also paid a respect to the predecessor books on Sufism and each of their strong points, which eventually contributes in shaping this one ultimate book on Sufism.

Like classical Sufism texts, the book is filled with Quranic citations, Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet (PBUH)), and poetry. And the title of the book refers to the traditional Islamic symbolism of the garden, where Dr. Nasr explains, “[t]he Quran refers to Paradise itself as the Garden. Moreover, the Sacred Text speaks of levels of Paradise. The Sufis have drawn from this symbolism and speak of the Garden as designating not only the various levels of paradisal realities but also the Divine Reality beyond Paradise as usually understood.”

And there are two main gates to the garden of truth: knowledge and love, in which Dr. Nasr remarks, “in Sufism the highest form of worship is knowledge of God, which is always combined with love”, and that “[t]he Prophet of Islam said, “Whosoever knows his self, knows his Lord”; that is, self-knowledge leads to knowledge of the Divine.”

Dr. Nasr then continues, “[a]lthough there is no way to enter into intimacy with God save through knowledge and love—which also require faith—action remains, therefore, of the greatest importance on the path to the Garden, action not in itself but in how it affects the soul and how it reflects its intentions, both hidden and manifest.” This, is ultimately the core approach of Sufism.

And according to Sufism, the first steps on the path to this Garden of Truth consist of “detachment from the world and surrender to God, which means attachment to Him. By world we mean here not theophanies and signs of God that surround us even in this terrestrial abode, but the world as the veil that covers the truth and disperses our soul.”

As you may have noticed with the last paragraph, Dr. Nasr has a certain writing style that, let’s just say, is not really my cup of tea, as I find it difficult to navigate around the main points wrapped under poetic words that distract us from the core messages. Another example, in other chapter he writes “[t]he book of the Sufi is not the black ink of written words, It is none other than an unblemished heart like snow.” Which is beautifully written, poetic, but with vagueness of what it actually means.

Moreover, for a book of everything about Sufi, one would think that its history is vitally important, but we only get to read about it at the very back of the book, in the appendix. Weirdly, the distinctive feature of the Sufi order and the Sufi gnosis (its codified philosophy) are also put in the appendix by Dr. Nasr, where he extensively cover the many orders spread across Iraq, Persia, Central Asia, Indian subcontinent, Arab East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, South East Asia, China, and perhaps most iconically, in Turkey.

Had these 3 core features of Sufism written at the front, the book would’ve been much easier to read, with the essential background knowledge and the mapping of the spread of Sufism could give us the necessary context to proceed with the contents.

But perhaps the vagueness in the words is indeed within the Sufi nature, since in its core Sufi strips down all the power structures within Islam and focused directly on the spiritual (and we cannot really measure spiritualism). Hence, it may never intended to be something set on stone, but instead, just like Rumi’s poetries, they are a bunch of beautiful passages filled with possible multiple interpretations.

And to be fair, it’s not all blurry. The most fascinating revelation from this book for me is how the author shows Sufism is similar with other metaphysical religion like Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, or Christian metaphysics, with the language of love, compassion, and above all,
truth. Which reiterates that famous saying in Rig Veda “truth is one, the sages call it by different names.”

Sufism, in the end, is a beautiful spiritual fraction of Islam, one that are both mysterious and enigmatic at the same time. And this book gives justice to this, with its poetic words a true reflection of the religion.