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by examples, moved by parables, humbled byerror, purged by suffering, begin to change... inPauline language, to putting off the old natureand taking on the new, or in the language of thefourth Gospel, to the possibility of rebirth.16

Fifthly, if you take faith out of the equation,the moral bar tends to be lowered as is thecase with Sam Harris' being 'selfish together'and Christopher Hitchens' 'cupidity andavarice', which are only a notch or so of thebar above evolution's reproduction andsurvival strategies.

Moral reasoning is about the standards weneed to apply to our desiring, our goals, andthe actions we take to achieve those goals,so as to live up to our own human potential -none of which is a given, but always anexploration throughout history.

Faith respects this reasoning process,but is able to set it within the context ofGod's own self-giving—'Love one anotheras I have loved you' (Jn 15:12). Over time, inconjunction with human experience andchanging circumstances, the meaning ofbasic moral concepts, such as love, justiceand injustice, and the common good, are

1. The End of Faith (London: Simon & Schuster,2006} 226.2. ibid., 65.3. ibid., 175.4. ibid., 187.5.God is Not Great (New York: Warner Books,2007) 255.6. Breaking the Spell (New York: Penguin, 2006)278-307.7. ibid., 376.8. ibid., 306.9.The God Argument (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013)237.10. ibid., 196.

able to be filled out to better answer thequestion of our humanity put to us in theperson of Jesus Christ. Terry Eagleton seesthis question mark in the bluntest possibleterms:

The stark signifier of the human condition isone who spoke up for love and justice and wasdone to death for his pains. The traumatic truthof human history is a mutilated body. Thosewho do not see this dreadful image of a torturedinnocent as the truth of history are likely toadopt some bright-eyed superstition such asthe dream of untrammelled human progress...17

The image of the Crucified God shouldalways be enough to shatter the complacencyand self-satisfaction of believers in the moralquest, just as it is a challenge to any atheistwearing rose-tinted glasses. Here, faith andreason are not alternatives: faith without reasonbecomes a fundamentalism shut off fromhuman history, culture and experience; moralreason without faith is in danger of losing itselfin the flux of human wants and desires. Faithand reason should be partners, not competitors,in the response to the vital moral dilemmascontinually emerging in our history.

11. The End of Faith, 149. See also Breaking theSpell, 55.12. Reason, Faith, and Revolution (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2009) 110.13. The Soul of the World (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2014) 27.14. The Atheist's Guide to Reality (New York:W.W. Norton, 2011) 223.15. A Common Humanity (Melbourne: TextPublishing, 1999) 41.16. The Spiritual Dimension (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2005) 144.17. Reason, Faith and Revolution, 27-8.

REFERENCES

39

IN The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevskyhas the Elder Zossima say:

For today, everyone is still striving to keep hisindividuality as far apart as possible, everyonestill wishes to experience the fullness of life inhimself alone, and yet instead of achieving fullnessof life, all his efforts merely lead to the fullnessof self-destruction, for instead of full self-realisation they relapse into completeisolation... For he is used to relying on himselfalone and has separated himself as a self-con-tained unit from the whole... [However] truesecurity of the individual does not lie in isolatedpersonal efforts but in general human solidarity.1

Writing in 1880, Dostoyevsky has the ElderZossima predict that the period of extremeindividualism has some time to run, and then'the brotherhood of man' would arrive.

The Sixties (i.e. the 1960s) were a hugeexplosion of the tendency regretted byFr.Zossima. Sex, drugs, revolt againstauthority, and renewed interest in anarchism,were all present. I remember attending publiclectures on anarchism as a philosophy at theAustralian National University in the lateSixties. The 2014 Edmund Campion lecturerRev. Dr. Wilson [Bill] Miscamble gets itexactly right :

...we can now see as a key driving force of the'Sixties Revolution'—namely individualism andatomisation. Emerging from The Sixties camean ethos of personal liberation, sexual freedomand self-fulfilment.'2

The anarchist tendency keeps on re-surfacing in one of the most persistentchanges emanating from The Sixties, thetransfer of sin from individuals to institutions,which is itself a declaration of anarchism—institutions are a threat. In Australia, there has

been a succession of local institutional villainsever since: the Department of Main Roads,the Tasmanian Hydro, the Australian WheatBoard, the Department of Immigration, and thebanks. As well, of course, there are theinternational anarchist endeavours, notablythat child of The Sixties, Julian Assange, doinghis best to unsettle the U.S. Government. Thelatest ongoing target, which must be deeplysatisfying to the anarchist mind, are theChurches. The onslaught on institutions isaided and abetted by the media who, if there isany disaster or catastrophe, leap out to identifyan institutional suspect, often that anarchistbete noir, the police force.

However, there was another movementcoming out of The Sixties which carried theseeds of re-construction, and that was thespirituality movement. At first blush, it lookslike a clear instance of the Zossimasyndrome, since spirituality is personal,individual and private. One recalls The Beatlesdoing meditation under the tutelage of theMaharishi Mahesh Yogi. What could be moresolitary than meditation? And, if it is combinedwith the subjective idealism of Shankara, itis. But in the West, it is used for recreationin the best sense, for re-collecting ourscattered selves for more concerted actionin the world, though it can go deeper. If it does,it may help fill the spiritual vacuum which sexhas flooded into.

In 1893, Tolstoy, like Dostoyevsky, areligious man, also made a prophecy aboutthe Kingdom:

A time is already coming, when the principlesof equality [the brotherhood of man, thecommunity of property, and the non-resistance

THE PROPHESIES OFDOSTOYEVSKY AND TOLSTOY

REG NAULTY

40

COMPASS

to evil by violence] will appear just as naturaland simple as the principles of...national life donow.3

He was partly right. Communism wascoming, and it did come not long after, in1917. But communism neither believed innor practised non-violence. In fact, it usedviolence on a scale never seen before :communism constructed a vast slavelabour system which drove people brutally,and turned Russia into a vicious policestate.

Tolstoy was mistaken about what was'already coming'. He thought it would bewonderful; instead, it was horrible. It is still tooearly to say whether Dostoyevsky was right ornot. Neither of them foresaw the very good thingsthat were just around the corner: repeatedbreakthroughs in medicine, comprehensivehealth care systems, mass tertiary education,

Reg Naulty, formerlyof Charles Sturt Uni-versity, Riverina, hasbeen writing aboutSpirituality for overthirty years. He is alsoa published poet. Henow lives in Canberra.

1.Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov.Vol.1 Penguin books. Mitcham. Victoria.1958. pp.356 -72. Rev. Wilson Miscamble. CSC. Catholics in

support for national minorities, the multiplicationof open societies, men on the moon, the amazinguniverse discovered by science. However, theZossima tendency still has life; recall the USCongress`s near self destruction in the recentpast, and its continued obstruction of the USPresident. Even so, constructive tendencies mayyet prevail.

REFERENCES

Public Life in the United States and Australia.Campion College Press. Sydney. 2014. p. 83. Leo Tolstoy. The Kingdom of God and PeaceEssays. O..U. P. London. 1974. p.135

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple andfine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, coveredwith sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with whatfell from the rich man’s table.

—Luke 16:19-21.

41

Hedley Beare, Dolphin's Leap, Hind's Feet—Becoming a Mystic, Journey, Discipline andPractice. Morning Star Publishing,Melbourne. $34.95.Emeritus Professor Hedley Beare AMcompleted his final book, Dolphin's Leap,Hind's Feet just before his death in 2010, andit was published late last year.

An explanation for the book's titleDolphin's Leap, Hind's Feet thankfullyappears early in the text. Hedley describesseeing dolphins from the Queenscliff ferry.They appear suddenly and travel alongside theboat. 'They are transparently friendly piercingthe water under and around the boat with afluidity and exuberance which are infectious.Then they head off to deeper water and on theway they breach the water in a manner that isalmost mystical. It is an act of grace, acreature's gift from sea and sky to us as itscompanions.'

The image of the Hind's Feet comes fromthe last verse of the book of Habakkuk in theOld Testament: He makes my feet like hind'sfeet and sets me upon my high places. Thedeer knows how to walk on rocky andhazardous paths as it climbs to the heights ofthe mountains. It does what it does naturally.

So for Hedley the dolphin is the image ofentering both worlds—the natural and thespiritual and with great excitement leapingfrom one to the other. The deer or hind is theimage of a creature working with its naturalabilities to climb to ever higher places.

These are Hedley's images as he invitesus to journey through the book with him.

He has a sub-title which is Becoming aMystic—Journey, Discipline and Practice.He opens us to this idea by explaining that ‘Amystic is generally defined as a person whohas had a direct or transcendent experienceof the divine’. Through the book he looks atthe lives of a variety of people from all ages

and cultures. He is fascinated about theirspiritual lives and practices and he drawswisdom from all of them.

The book explores the techniques used bythe spiritually adept over the centuries andtries to give an insight into the lived reality ofthe saints, seers and mystics, including theirrange and depth. It is therefore intentionallypractical.

The book has four parts, each with anumber of chapters.

Part One is called Recognising theMystical: A Memoir.

In this memoir, Hedley shares some verypersonal experiences and his constant refrainis that what he is describing is somethingwhich every person can also experience.Mystics are not the select, special, holy few.He says any human being can apprehendreality with the same deepened vision whichcharacterised the saints and mystics. To assistand encourage us with this, he offers lots ofpractical exercises for us to try—differentways of praying, of thinking, of seeing, ofexploring our world. All of this is designedto aid our journey into the mystery of Godwho is drawing us closer and deeper.

Part Two is Getting Ready to Receive:The Four Essentials.

In these chapters, he describes four dailydisciplines he sees in the stories of the saints,seers and mystics and which heenthusiastically commends to us. They are:

• detachment, throwing away the baggagewe no longer need;

• poverty, learning how to live simply,disentangled from possessions;

• silence, quiet and the skill of being asolitary;

• the depths of sustained, regular prayer.He says that when we give ourselves to

these practices in our ordinary daily routinewe could find ourselves in a dimension of

BOOK REVIEW