Coming Home

A rapid guided tour of mysticism around the world, and through the ages. Hixon's dizzying itinerary begins with Heidegger and ends with the Vedanta. It passes through St. Paul, Plotinus, the I Ching, Hasidic thought, Sufism, Zen, and a number of Eastern sages. Beneath this exotic diversity, Hixon finds an essential unifying feature: the experience of primal harmony or our rootedness in the Divine. All the sacred traditions lead us (ideally) to an ecstatic awareness that God (Allah, Christ, Tao, Turiya, etc.) is no remote, transcendent principle, but a name for the ultimate reality which dwells within us and of which we form a part. All these traditions likewise teach that the bliss of communion with the Divine must be translated into active concern for men and women - enlightenment is not selfish. Hixon, who is both a college professor and the moderator of a religious talk show, aims his message at the intelligent layman. His expositions are brief and non-technical, and he wastes no time on fine points. Scholars are bound to quarrel with him, especially for the way he forces Judaism and Christianity into his pantheistic mold. On the other hand, the book is not easy reading: Hixon is something of a mystic himself, and he takes his subject seriously. Casual students of religion looking for an introduction to what he calls the spiritual dimension of consciousness may find this one just right. (Kirkus Reviews)