‘The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah’ examines the roots of modern religions, the ethical values they have in common and the reasons why they are still relevant to modern religion and mental health.

I recently reviewed a video by Robert Wright on Moral Awareness in the Modern Age, and discussed a concept in comparative religious studies known as ‘the Greater Good’. In the book, “The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah”, Karen Armstrong examines ‘the birth of religion’ between the years of 1600BC and 220BC.

About the Author

Karen Armstrong FRSL(Royal Society of Literature) is British and a former Roman Catholic nun. She has produced numerous works on the subject of comparative religion and first rose to prominence with her highly successful ‘A History of God’. Armstrong asserts, “All the great traditions are saying the same thing in much the same way, despite their surface differences.” Her works are highly respected and her charter to identify shared moral priorities across religious boundaries, the Charter for Compassion, included signatories such as The Dalai Lama, Sir Richard Branson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Hassan of Jordan.

Karen Armstrong TED profile

Mental Health and Knowledge of Self have always been the focus. The Great Transformation uses its 400 pages to cover almost 1400 years of our history in a bold examination of the connections between a wildly-spread out group of philosophers. Confucius, Ezekiel, the Buddha, Socrates, Jeremiah, the mystics of the Upanishads, Plato and Lao Tzu were all connected by a mutual study, understanding and drive towards compassion for your fellow man, essentially the Golden Rule of, treating others the way you would like to be treated. How could all these philosophers arrive at such similar idea about humanity and be worlds apart?

Karen Armstrong tells four stories concurrently, set in Greece, India, Israel and China, and takes the reader’s through a plethora of political, spiritual, religious, militant and civilian history. She elaborates on the state of society, lifestyles and methodologies of some of the greatest philosophers in history.

The Axial Age

In particular, Armstrong focuses on ‘the Axial Age’ (800BC to 200BC), a period in history when the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah all lived and shaped our religious foundations as we know them. The Indian, Chinese, Jewish and Greek philosophers all shared the same vision of the ‘Greater Good’, i.e. living an ethical life with compassion and openness to change and other perspectives.

If religion plays an intrinsic role in our own moral decisions and perspectives, it’s amazing to find how much common ground there is at the core of it all. The execution of the ideas may be different, but the concept remains the same.

What makes this book special is how Armstrong makes this history profoundly relevant to our current world in the Introduction and Conclusion of her book. Aside from the differences between religions, we need to remember that the roots of modern religion are all based on the ‘Greater Good’, living an ethical lifestyle with compassion, openness to change and other people’s perspectives.

“We must learn to live and behave as though people in countries remote from our own are as important as ourselves”. – Karen Armstrong

Non Zero Sum Dynamics and Robert Wright

Which brings me back to Robert Wright, and his theories on mutual welfare and understanding in society. The idea of ‘Non Zero Sum Dynamics’ and the understanding of mutual welfare in the world forces mankind to a higher moral level, almost a ‘saving’ moral level in which mankind will begin to ignore our differences and focus on our commonalities, as there is more benefit to mutual respect, welfare and understanding to be had than mutual hatred, disrespect and discrimination.

Mental Health is Knowledge of Self

This is a study of how belief and religious perspectives from the world’s most popular modern religions share the same ideologies in history, and why that is so important in the modern age. We need to remind ourselves that we all once stared in the same direction at the same vision, and live by the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you’d like to be treated.

Armstrong also forces us to look at our own religious perspectives and beliefs, and challenges us to move past the shallow boundaries of dogma and religious congregations, and start looking within for our own guidance and commonalities we share with others.

‘This book is an absolute refutation of the current wave of disreputable and intellectually trivial attempts to banish religion from human affairs… [It] deserves nothing but praise.’ – Brian Appleyard, Sunday Times

In this post i’ll be sharing a teleseminar conducted by the team at Living with Tolle.

The discussion centres around the topic of ‘the power of now’ in mental health. A notion coined by Eckart Tolle in his famous book.

The guest on this podcast is Dr. Ray Doktor, who is a counsellor, life-coach and sexologist. With a master’s degree in counselling psychology and a doctorate in clinical psychology, he offers some insightful views on how to quieten the noisy inner dialogue that often gets in the way of living a meaningful, productive life and focussing on the present.

Dr. Ray tackles various topics regarding mental health in the podcast.

He mentions the importance of mindfulness as a lifestyle change and how it is characterised by being curious, open, non-judgemental, accepting, aware and loving.

He also includes a helpful discussion on the four stages of healing; recognising the problem, initiating conversation around it, the energetic shift and lastly, a spiritual connection.

In the final third of the conversation a caller raises a question about the use of marijuana as a possible tool for enlightenment that could then allow for greater engagement with the practices mentioned earlier in the teleseminar. The response to the question is very informative and raises some interesting points.

After listening to this discussion you should hopefully leave with some valuable chunks of information that could arm you with alternative tools to traditional therapy, aimed at generating a clearer state of mental health and a renewed focus on what’s important to you in the now.

I’ve been following Tolle’s work for a while and have found that it has given me great insight into my psychologist practice which is located in Kloof, Durban. If you’d like to explore these concepts more. Make an appointment with me or start online counseling.

Eckhart Tolle with the Dalai Lama