I think I mentioned that this was a particularly weighty book, but well worth the read. It is fascinating to see how the concepts that we call “New Thought” stem from ancient Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist beliefs. The idea that our thoughts control our destinies is certainly not new. Nor is the idea that we should go with the flow of universal energy, a Taoist belief. Up to the chapter on Islam, the various beliefs covered focused on how individuals are all connected to one another, their responsibility to society, and so forth. Islam, apparently, is very much focused on the individual and the individual’s beliefs and actions. As Houston Smith puts it:

“Coming to Islam (as we do in this book) from the ‘no-self’ of Buddhism and the social self of Confuciansim, we are struck by the stress the Koran places on the self’s individuality; its uniqueness and the responsibility that devolves on it alone. In India, the all-pervading cosmic spirit comes close to swallowing the individual self, and in China the self is so ecological that where it beings and ends is hard to determine. Islam and its Semitic allies reverse this drift, regarding individuality as not only real but good in in principle. Value, virtue, and spiritual fulfillment come through realizing the potentialities that are uniquely one’s own; in ways that are not inconsquential, those possibilites differ from those of every other soul that ever has lived, or ever will live in the future.”

Now…tell me again why so many Americans, who generally believe so strongly in the significance of the individual, can’t find anything in common with Muslims?