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Deceptively autobiographical, it is the story of the split personage of Jean-Paul and Peter, one a brilliant French linguist, the other a midling English banker. Combined as one, theirs is the journey of a soul desperately seeking some kind of enlightenment, or at the very least a lessening of personal pain and angst. Each experiences Crystal, a guru-follower and gently drifting spiritual seeker in his own unique way: Jean-Paul in the crazed fascination of the Native American desert landscape, Peter in the sex-cum-spiritual arenas of Findhorn and the Esalen Institute in America. All three are tangled in the snares of various New Age proselytizers and hangers-on, from the not-so-thinly-disguised figures of Andrew Harvey (of Mother Meera fame) and Michael Murphy (of The New Milenium philosophy) to Lama Surya Das, Deepak Chopra, and numberless other oft-times Spiritual materialists (in the truist sense of the term - they make their livings off this stuff). It ends in a kind of tantric awakening where everyone gets their just desserts, except that no one really seems to "get it," especially Peter.
The book is quite good in place descriptions, of Findhorn, Germany, Los Angeles, Sante Fe, and Big Sur. Take this on LA: "One day the whole world was going to look like Los Angeles, he decided, not a city, nor the absence of a city, just ruined countryside." And St. Aubyn can wax poetic as when he describes a seal in Esalen's waves "with eyes that looked as if they had been swimming through their own tears."
If there is a weakness in this book - and it is hard to see - it is that St. Aubyn, even in his guises as Jean-Paul and Peter, attempts to engage and participate but still is only and ever an observer (a safe but sage one at that...), always apart, never quite fully IN. Of course, in the situations described, to be IN would be to fully lose your mind, much less ego, in chilly waters requiring a special and delicate kind of treading.
That this book is not a bestseller in England amazes me. What smug New Age novels are the English reading these days anyway? As an Irish friend noted recently, ON THE EDGE should be read by anyone seeking anything on the spiritual path. You just might come to a different, perhaps more realistic, view - one that doesn't froth around too much in under-examined too easily accepted and digested modern day spiritual pursuitism. Publisher take note - promote this book! It's bound to be a classic.
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