A Mystic Celebration
GARDNER, MARTIN
A Mystic Celebration The Tao Is Silent By Raymond M. Smullyan Harper & Row paperback. 256 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by Martin Gardner Staff writer, "Scientific American"; author, "The Incredible Dr....
...Part II defends the view that the Tao is "good" but not "moral...
...This is followed by a remarkable discussion of personal identity...
...Not that Smullyan believes in astrology, you understand...
...After a few billion years, when the entire universe is about to run down, you will really wake up and will discover you are a totally different kind of intelligence (that you cannot now even comprehend) and had merely been dreaming you were a computer...
...To an essay on dogs opening, "I am very partial to dogs—one reason being that I am a dog lover," Smullyan appends a characteristic footnote: "If the more sophisticated reader objects to this statement on the grounds of its being a mere tautology, then please at least give the statement credit for not being inconsistent...
...Matrix" Fifty years ago a funny thing happened to Western philosophers on their way to work...
...Smullyan asks you to imagine that your body is no more than a dream in the circuitry of a sleeping computer that will eventually awaken...
...He studied philosophy under Rudolf Carnap, received his doctorate in mathematics at Princeton, and is now a professor of mathematics at Lehman College...
...They got lost in the mathematics building...
...Surely the best justification for miracles is that God is beyond the natural world...
...Why is it formless, nameless and like a "mysterious female...
...Smullyan hastens to add that he is in no way against sensible philosophy: "It only serves to show how wonderful crazy philosophy is by contrast...
...Smullyan is telling his readers that he cares not a rap whether they agree with him or not...
...The book ends with a witty dialogue between a Moralist, a Practical Man, a Mystic, a Logical Positivist, a Psychologist, a Dissenter, and a Metaphysician...
...Crazy philosophies are characterized by their madness, spontaneity, sense of humor, total freedom from the most basic conventions of thought, amor-ality, beauty, divinity, naturalness, poesy, absolute honesty, freedom from inhibitions, contrariness, para-doxicalness, lack of discipline and general yum-yummyness...
...Several of these essays have the form of Platonic dialogues...
...Part IX, "The Tao Is a Delightful Paradox," is Smullyan at his whimsical best...
...Who knows," Smullyan writes, "perhaps the Universe is a great magician who does not want us to suspect his magical powers and so arranges most of the visible phenomena in a scientific and orderly fashion in order to fool us and prevent us from knowing him as he really is...
...In one of them a Taoist disputes a Moralist...
...This is pure Platonism, and only a sensible Aristotelian or an admirer of the thoughts of Chairman Mao could be disturbed by it...
...Indeed, from his point of view his book is not an argument, but the Tao talking to itself...
...Stated otherwise, metaphysics is the necessary ripening process of the human race to prepare it for mysticism...
...The result can be seen in The Tao Is Silent, Smullyan's first nontechnical work...
...Consequently, their books became so splattered with arcane symbols that nobody could understand them except mathematicians, who weren't interested...
...Raymond M. Smullyan is a mathematician who is interested, but the funny thing about him is that he is more interested in the great themes of traditional philosophy than the philosophers are...
...He merely thinks that the best way to view the phenomenon is as pure sorcery—in other words, as what Jung called synchronicity...
...Part III, "The Tao Is Leisurely," deals with, among other things, gardening, altruism versus egotism, the Taoist principle of wu-wei (or "effortless action"), and a very funny tale about what happened to a boy who believed passionately that a person should not amount to something...
...Their topic is the future of philosophy...
...in another, God and a Mortal discuss free will...
...Metaphysics is essentially one giant koan," argues the Mystic (Smullyan), "not for an individual, but for the human race as a whole—a koan whose purpose is to force the realization of the impossibility of metaphysical methods being pushed any further...
...To say the Tao is vague, writes Smullyan, "is one of the vaguest statements I know...
...Their most important advantage over the sensible philosophies is that they come far closer to the truth...
...hands over Smullyan's typewriter, the Tao has created little Zen illusions on the pages, and decorated them with startling anecdotes, amusing koans and lovely haikus: Upon the temple bell, asleep, a butterfly...
...It is beautifully and wonderfully vague—almost as vague as the Tao itself...
...Not that he doesn't understand their newfangled jargon...
...Does it "exist...
...Into this expertise in logic and set theory, stir the following: a love of music (Smullyan is an accomplished classical pianist), a love of magic (in his youth he was a part-time performing conjuror), a love of chess (his brilliant problems have been featured in Scientific American), a subtle sense of humor, a relaxed literary style, and eight years of absorption in Chinese and Japanese philosophy, art and literature...
...His Theory of Formal Systems is an elegant treatise that has had enor-mours influence on mathematicians studying recursive functions, proof theory and artificial intelligence...
...He prescribes no new Yoga exercises, no new diets, no new meditation techniques, no devices that will intensify one's orgasms and psychic powers...
...Essay 38 is the finest defense of astrology I have ever read...
...He begins by explaining why he prefers crazy philosophies to sensible ones...
...Part I is on the fundamental concept of Taoism, the Tao...
...Such purchasers will find Smullyan disappointing...
...Waving his (her, its...
...What he does offer are 47 crisp essays, in a quaint, friendly voice, on themes central to one of the great traditions of Eastern wisdom...
...Why should God, or the Tao, need scientific laws to do anything...
...I am always amused when someone...
...Velikovsky for instance—comes along and tries to explain Biblical miracles by inventing scientific causes for them...
...Harper & Row, a leading purveyor of worthless books on occultism, probably published this volume in the hope of reaching the enthusiasts of pseudo-Eastern cults who are seeking shortcuts to satori...
Vol. 60 • May 1977 • No. 11
