Eliezer Sobel

This book is a memoir of the author's 30-odd years on the path of personal growth and spiritual transformation. I was intrigued when I first heard about it for two reasons: first, it was supposed to be funny, which is a surprisingly rare quality in New Age literature, and second, because I've spent the last year and a half working on my own comic memoir of the same topic.

There is no question Sobel is well-qualified to write on this subject. He's studied at least briefly with most of the major names of the movement and dabbled in the full gamut of experiences on offer, from primal therapy to meditation to drugs to dancing to teaching himself. Though he began his journey with a profound experience during the est training and continued to have numerous peak experiences along the way, he claims that none of them stuck, and he is no more enlightened now than he was when he began.

While that may be, Sobel is unquestionably wiser for his journey and offers some exceedingly valuable insights throughout the book. My personal favorite was his comment that being on a spiritual path pretty much requires one to "continue to be miserably dissatisfied with virtually everything all the time." I found his wry honesty about the darker sides of that path to be particularly refreshing. Upon finishing the book, however, I was left with the impression that we have come to different conclusions about that path; Sobel appears to think he failed to get the spiritual Grand Prize, whereas I am pretty thoroughly convinced that prize never existed to begin with.

Though Sobel is a skilled writer and the book is quite funny in places, my enjoyment of it was tempered by certain stylistic choices. Each chapter is more of a personal essay covering a selection of topics than the sort of chronological, scene-based narrative I'm used to in memoir. The quick skimming over so many different subjects and the frequent jumping around in time kept me on the surface of the story and at times felt a little repetitive. Given the vast amount of experience he is covering, I understand why this is. But I would have enjoyed this book more if there was a more direct and focused narrative thread. That said, there is a lot on offer here for anyone who has spent time in the world Sobel inhabited or who would like to know more about it.… (mer)

I was calmly reading this book trying to figure out if I liked it or not when I came across these words: “My time at The New Sun seemed to have prepared me to be a bridge between two very distinct worlds: the lunatic fringe and the mainstream normal.”

Right away, I felt this book was worth reading. In my world, I have one particular friend who loves the “airy-fairy” stuff, that is to say, whatever is the newest in the New Age or the spiritual realms. My other friends all seem kind of Old World, meaning that they are of the more traditional spiritual world of religion with its own wide range of beliefs and fervors (or lack thereof). I identified exactly with what the author was trying to express.

Although the author began participating in New Age experiences in the 1960's , it was in the late 1970's that he became editor-in-chief of a New Age magazine called The New Sun. That gave him the perfect opportunity to have an "in" with the New Age crowd and become as absorbed in their philosophies as he allowed them to. Reading through Sobel’s experiences reminded me so much of the various phases that my special friend would go through as one or another New Age philosophy became the rage and she quickly dove in. I always loved to hear about her experiences, but never wanted to spend my money to partake of them as I felt I didn’t need to pay anyone to engage my own spirituality.

This book has proven to be a wonderful way to visit the experiences I missed, for better or for worse, and occasionally to chuckle at some insights of a fellow Jew. Eliezer Sobel's ethnic heritage comes out distinctly and in a very humorous manner throughout the book. Some lines had me laughing out loud. I found it comforting that the author's religion, Judaism, gave him some grounding when he was faced with some deep fears. Not to mention his mother, who would have reacted to her son's adventures with the query, "What are you meshugah?" (a Yiddish word for crazy)

I really liked the fact that Sobel was not enamored of all of his experiences nor did he pooh-pooh them all either. He looked into each with an open mind, but not a naïve one. I found it a refreshing concept. Basically, it was his honesty in relating his story that I appreciated most.… (mer)