Reviews for The Invisible Prison

The average rating for The Invisible Prison based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-06 00:00:00 Mary Phetza Huston Smith has led a remarkable life. He has conversed with the Dalai Lama, lived as a monk in Japan, done LSD with Tim Leary and introduced America to Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions considered exotic in the fifties. But I had hoped that his autobiography would bring these stories to life, instead they were a laundry list of accomplishment. He writes his autobiography from his nursing home at the age of ninety, and as a result the book reads more the musings of a man at the end of his life rather than the adventure that was his life. I feel almost guilty for not liking it more, and reading this has made me want to read his other writings. There are several good moments in the book: When he describes the possibility of religious experiences through "Entheogens", psychedelic substances that produce religious experiences. He writes a balanced view of such drugs, stating that they have been a part of religious experiences for thousands of years, but that moments of divine experience do not make for a religous life, for that requires a life of devoting oneself to others. The other moment is his description of living as a monk in Japan and his taciturn senior monk requiring him to meditate for ten days on only three hours sleep per night. Then,after he has done so, the senior monk shows him that he enjoys beer and sumo. The senior monk is knocks himself off the pedestal, to prove that both devotion and enjoyment in life are necessary. Lastly, the appendix at the end of called a "Universal Grammar of Worldviews" is perhaps the best part of the book. Modeled after Chomsky's Universal Grammar, Smith explains fourteen points that all religions contain, and how they relate to each other. The points not only show the commonality of all religion, but also the intersection of science and spirituality.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-06 00:00:00 Lauren Mccormick I seldom read biographies, and still less often, autobiographies, making exceptions only for those subjects who truly fascinate me or who I believe have much to teach. Huston Smith falls squarely into both categories. Many years ago, my husband and I took a class on World Religions being given at the local high school by a professor from the nearest state university. The text was Smith's The Religions of Man, since revised, enlarged, and retitled The World's Religions. So I was familiar with Smith, and the title of this book attracted me. I pulled it from the library shelf and realized it was an autobiography, but sat down to read a few pages; immediately I knew I wanted to read the whole book. Smith is 90 years old -- he and his friend Pete Seeger share a birthday -- and grew up in a remote village in China where his parents were Methodist missionaries. He still belongs to a Methodist church - I believe, from things he says in this book, that it's San Francisco's Glide Memorial -- but has not only studied, but practiced, other religions. His quest for learning took him first to Shanghai, then to a small college in Missouri, and then to Chicago for grad school. Subsequently, besides teaching in several universities, he travelled all over the world and even to the doors of perception. (He tells of taking mescaline with Timothy Leary.) The tale of his experiences is fascinating in itself, but what makes this book truly worth reading are the nuggets of wisdom, well expressed, that Smith has gained from his studies, his practices, and his life. As a bonus, the appendix to the book is a lecture, "A Universal Grammar of Worldviews," that Smith gave at Pacific School of Religion four years ago, and which contains both knowledge and wisdom. Highly recommended.