Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age: Richard W. Heinberg: 9780874775150: Amazon.com: Books
Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age Hardcover – April 1, 1989
by Richard W. Heinberg (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Reading that Heinberg had edited two manuscripts by Immanuel Velikovsky might make one skeptical about this book, but Heinberg makes his arguments fairly and does not attempt to draw conclusions far afield from his data. Even if his arguments do not convince, they make one think. He posits that "the memory of Paradise represents an innate and universal longing for a state of being that is natural and utterly fulfilling, but from whichwe have somehow excluded ourselves." Drawing on ideas from Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, he combines religion, literary criticism, anthropology, archaeology, and mythology into a New Age vision that makes the concept of Paradise meaningful in the modern world.
Highly recommended for any library with New Age readers.
- Lucy Patrick, Florida State Univ. Lib., Tallahassee
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product details
Hardcover: 282 pages
Publisher: Tarcher (April 1, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0874775159
ISBN-13: 978-0874775150
Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
7 customer ratings
5 star 67%
4 star 33%
Top Reviews
S Graves
5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique and Insightful VoiceReviewed in the United States on September 12, 2014
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This is a fantastic book and very well written. There is literally no other book like it, in this particular realm. It has been indispensable for my research. I would call it "the hero with a thousand faces" for garden paradise myths - it's that good. Hats off to Mr. Heinberg for his wonderful contribution to our collective consciousness...
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Didaskalex
4.0 out of 5 stars The Shadowy Realms of Past and FutureReviewed in the United States on October 20, 2006
"The fruit of that forbidden tree ... brought death into the world, and all our woe ... till one greater Man restore us." John Milton
Paradise Lost:
This above line from Paradise Lost, an epic by John Milton, gives an excellent summary of Genesis 3, which adds enhancing imagery, though a few unnecessary elements are included.
Many legends have paradise myths which even refer to a specific place, a lost Utopia land, a sunken island or a great isolated oasis as the lost paradise of humankind. Of which the author mentioned the lost Shambhala, as a mystical hidden kingdom protected behind snowy peaks, located somewhere to the north, as pictured in the Tibetan legend. Tibetan sages and Western discoverers have looked everywhere for Shambhala - from the Gobi Desert to the North Pole. Geoffrey Ashe alleges that the fantasy of a lost paradise began in northern Asia some 25,000 years ago, within a goddess-worshipping cult. The book is impressive, well researched, on a wide range subjects from Ancient Mediterranean mythology to Indo-European philology.
The paradise myths:
The account of Satan's (Lucifer's) rebellion and fall from heaven with all his followers takes up a major portion of the plot of Paradise Lost. The Biblical sources of this occurrence are brief, but early church writings had fleshed out these lines by the time Milton began composing his epic. The Great Traditions of which the paradise myth is a part tells us that there has been a succession of world ages. Our era is not the only one in which people have grasped at Promethean powers. Civilizations have come and gone; like the others, ours too will pass away. But the greater story continues.
Utopian Paradise?
If we are to imagine any paradise, at all, we should locate it in the future, not the past, argues the author. Other people object that, even if the paradise myth makes us feel good, it is pure wishful thinking; there is no evidence that such a condition ever actually existed. The assumption at the heart of this view is that paradise must refer to a perfect, unblemished state. Given that definition, I would agree. It is indeed preposterous to suppose that there was a time when there was no suffering of any kind, when whatever one wished for immediately became reality. The historical paradise, if it existed, was almost certainly not perfect in this absolute sense. There have been times when human society will strive more for material simplicity and spiritual depth than for wealth and power.
Visions of Paradise:
Heinberg, explores the realms of myth and prophecy, analyzing paradise tradition parallels, in the line of Eliade and Campbell's exploration of the mythical dreams, linking them to a state of recollection of infancy, or an accidental meditation through a near-death-experience. This lost homeland of a far forgotten civilization, a blissfull dream before the emergence of civilization. Each of these consciousness centered interpretations proposed by the author himself may seem to have some applicable validity. At lectures and in discussions, Heinberg mentions, he still often encounters the idea that it's psychologically, and philosophically wrongheaded to look back to an imaginary time in the past when life was somehow better. If we are to imagine any paradise, at all, we should locate it in the future, not the past. However he proposes that this thinking methodology is linked to modernism. The industrial civilization, disapproval of the paradise myth was essential to the purposes of which substituted for the universal, ancient belief in a lost Golden Age the idea continual progress from a primitive origins. Among traditional peoples, the paradise myth appears to implant a feeling of security and stability; it is perhaps the cultural equivalent of the memory of loving parents and a happy childhood. The human evolution from barbarism may well serve the purposes of a material civilization that continually destroys social bonds in order to rebuild a society that serves the interests of a capitalist elite.
A state of consciousness:
Heinberg combined religious mythology fables, applied literary criticism, with tools of both anthropology and archaeology, but arrived in the end at a New Age concept of Paradise.
Ten years ago, recalls Richard Heinberg, "I was hard at work on what would be my first book, Memories and Visions of Paradise. ... In the book, I explored how the paradise myth may refer to a state of consciousness ..., a recollection of infancy, a forgotten civilization, a time prior to devastating world cataclysms, a lost homeland, or the era before the emergence of civilization itself. It was published in 1989, and since then I have periodically looked back on it to see how my thinking has changed and how much I've learned."
An Expert's review:
"..., but Heinberg makes his arguments fairly and does not attempt to draw conclusions far afield from his data. Even if his arguments do not convince, they make one think. He posits that "the memory of Paradise represents an innate and universal longing for a state of being that is natural and utterly fulfilling, ..." Lucy Patrick, Florida State Univ.
8 people found this helpful
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Dr. Gushtunkinflup
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal work!!!Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2014
Brilliantly written and incredible food for thought. Heinberg is an amazing writer.
It goes very well with Tony Wrights book, Return to the Brain of Eden, which documents how fruit biochemistry may have been a key part in this "golden age", and humanities subsequent decline in consciousness once we left this forest symbiosis.
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anonymous
4.0 out of 5 stars Unique, entertaining and interesting.Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2015
Many civilizations have had images of a lost paradise. Heinberg draws on history, anthropology and religion with inspiration from Immanuel Velikovsky and help from Jung and Joseph Campbell to pump meaning into the idea of a lost golden age.
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Roz Bachl
5.0 out of 5 stars What a beauty!Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2019
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This book is such a treat, it takes you to the place we all remember, if we allow it, deep within our souls - that of Paradise. Written in four parts, Memory, Vision, Search and Return it flows without effort. This book is mentioned in Jeremy Griffith's book Freedom, which is why I brought it in the first place and although Freedom offers THE answer to how we can properly return to the Paradise we once knew as a species, Richard Heinberg's book gives amazing insight as to how this 'memory' is actually a world wide phenomenon. Its a well researched, well written book - in fact a beauty! Enjoy
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Chris Newman
5.0 out of 5 stars BrilliantReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2010
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Since writing this book, Richard Heinberg has become well known as a writer and speaker on environmental issues and on the consequences of endless economic growth. This earlier book is of a somewhat different but not disassociated genre. Instead of looking forwards towards the end of the fossil fuel age, Heinberg looks back towards the beginnings of human experience about which all that we know comes to us through myth and legend.
However, instead of dismissing the value or relevance of these pre-historic relics as most of us tend to do, Heiberg discovers that almost every culture, present and past, and covering every continent of the world, carries with it similar legends, all telling a story about a paradisal world that humans once inhabited, and of a "fall" whereafter we were condemned to a life of labour and hardship. Each culture's legends differ in detail but all are based on the same consistent theme, causing Heinberg to question whether the human mind is simply programmed to think this way, or whether all human cultures carry a common inherited "memory" of a distant past. He speculates that perhaps these paradisal stores recall the time when humans were hunter-gatherers, free of notions about property or possessions and of the greed and jealousies that they inspire. Furthermore he presents evidence that the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors may not have been so brutish and short as we nowadays tend to believe, and that their quality of life may have been much richer and fulfilling than we might imagine.
The book is full of fascinating insights and anecdotes. One of particular appeal is a quotation from Ovid written around 8AD which laments humanity's loss of its original Golden condition: "..... And the land, hitherto a common possession like the light of the sun and the breezes, the careful surveyor now marked out with long-drawn boundary lines. Not only were corn and needful foods demanded of the rich soil, but men bored into the bowels of the earth, and the wealth she had hidden and covered with Stygian darkness was dug up, an incentive to evil. And now noxious iron and gold more noxious still were produced: and these produced war - for wars are fought with both - and rattling weapons were hurled by bloodstained hands."
For me though, the concluding chapters offered the most remarkable insights where Heinberg looks forward to the future and how all human cultures share a belief in a return to paradise either on earth or after death. Heinberg's exploration of these beliefs reach some startling conclusions - startling to me, at any rate, in that they more effectively challenge my own thinking on such matters than any religious (or anti-religious) text has ever done.
The book is as valid today as it was when it was written and deserves to be republished.
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