Let me say that Acharya has done a great job with this book. I found it very interesting and full of good information and real facts. But I also found it profoundly spiritual.
Those who call this an athiest rant are people who believe that God is a big man who sits on a throne in the sky doling out judgement on the human race. Here is what Acharya says about God on page 10. No athiest would ever write these words. --
"One can think of God as the life force or sentience that permeates the cosmos--gravity or levity, it matters not. . . .
"In the Far East, this life force has been termed 'the Tao'. The Tao is the 'thing' that makes birds chirp, cats purr and the sap of trees run. We can also call it 'cosmic consciousness'. It is simply an energy, sentience or spirit that pervades all living things. Far from having gender, as we have been led to believe, it is the magnetic principle between the male and female potencies. It is also the male and female polarities themselves. This Great Spirit, Tao, or God, encompasses all things. If it is not all encompassing, it is not God. Anything less than the totality is not God. The definition of 'God' is omnipresence itself. Nothing is outside of God."
(Page 11) "Anything that imposes limits on an infinite divinity is not a complete spiritual system or experience. Anything that projects form upon this genderless, raceless, formless and nonhierarchical godliness is not the ultimate truth. The ultimate truth, which is 'God', cannot have any form whatsoever, no gender, no race and no hierarchy."
How great is this conception of God compared to the petty and tyrannical little middle-eastern war god worshipped by the typical Judeo-Christian-Muslem!
Nor, is this an angry book, as one reviewer put it. There may be disgust at the ignorance that some human beings prefer to wallow in, but not anger. But Acharya also has great hope for the human race. Consider the following on page 157 and 158 about when human beings are at their best. --
"When human beings have fully blossomed, when they've reached a certain level of soul maturity that is balanced, neither too aggressive nor too effectual, they are a wonder to behold, bursting with life and love. These divine beings have a tremendous sense of humor, knowing well that there is no reason to take this long, strange trip seriously. This wondrous state of being requires not extraordinary intelligence but wisdom, which can be found even within a tiny seed. . . .
"People at their best maintain the awe and wonder of a child while developing the responsibility and integrity of true adulthood. They are sensitive and empathetic, sharing in the pain of others and providing remedy. Yet, they are not emotional basketcases who become too debilitated by tragedy for their own good and that of others."
And, as I said, this is a profoundly spiritual book, as shown in the following on page 11. --
"True spirituality is defined not by separation but by union, union with the whole, union with the life force, Great Spirit, Tao, or God, that lies behind creation and binds it together. Of course, the separation itself could also be thought of as a spiritual experience, in that it provides an opportunity for an individual soul truly to develop itself. Yet, in that development, we come back to the omnidimensionality of being one with the cosmos. This situation constitutes a paradox, yet one we like to live with, one that we ourselves created, as directors of our own drama. To be separate yet infinite--now, this state is 'God'."
(Page 14) "A true religious system is not one that demands slobbering at the feet of a separate god-ego--however large and frightening, whatever race or gender--but one that leads to communion and union with the quality of divinity itself."
Acharya is not against religion, God and certainly not men. But she is against the superstitious absurdity of false religions, of teaching fear and hatred to children, the enslavement of women, and the persecution of the innocent by the ignorant. And her only "agenda" is to bring a little more light into a spiritually dark world.
I congratulate Acharya S/D. M. Murdock on another excellent book.