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By Georg and Brenda Feuerstein
We were delighted when we heard that Roseanne Harvey, the editor of the Canadian Ascent magazine, had decided to review our book Green Yoga. When Eileen Delehanty Pearkes’ review of our book was published, our initial delight instantly vanished, because the reviewer had opted to be less than impartial or fair. We both had thought highly of Ascent before, and Georg even wrote a very favorable endorsement in the early days of the magazine’s existence. Admittedly, neither of us have had the time to read any recent issues, though have lately been subscribing to the magazine.
We are not in the habit of complaining about bad reviews, because as the saying goes in the publishing industry, even a bad review is better than none at all, and reviews are difficult to get with tens of thousands of English publications seeing the light of day every year.
But there is more at stake here than the authors’ displeasure. Green Yoga is about a real crisis, which affects all of life on Earth. Thus, the words of a reviewer ought to our mind be carefully gauged, which is not the case with Pearkes’ review. It appears that she barely read it, or she would have noticed, for one thing, that Green Yoga was coauthored and not the product solely of Georg’s authorship. When we notified the editor of this inadvertent or deliberate oversight, we were matter-of-factly told that the magazine had gone to press already and that a relevant correction would be made in a subsequent issue. Fair enough! But what about the online version, where surely a correction could have been made at any time? Also, what about an unfair and rather slip-shot review, which effectively dismisses the book’s vital message?
In the interest of the global challenge confronting us as a species, we feel it is important to address this issue for our many students and visitors to our website. We feel motivated to take this step because other reviews of our book have been uniformly fair, even positive. We can particularly point to Suza Francina’s review for LA Yoga where she calls Green Yoga ‘ one of the most important yoga books in print today" (to read her complete review, please click here). Suza is well respected for her environmental and social activism and, among other things, has served as a mayor of the California town of Ojai, the home of the well-known Krotona Institute. She is an Iyengar-certified Yoga teacher and the author of several books, including Yoga For People Over 50 and The New Yoga for Healthy Aging. In other words, Yoga practitioners may take her review seriously.
The Ascent review actually came as something of a shock to us, because the magazine’s founder Swami Sivananda Radha (1911–1995) consistently adhered to the highest standards in all matters. Pearkes’ review suggests a different spirit. How else would one explain well-worn shibboleths like “judgemental” or “alarmist.” Even though the reviewer credits Georg with “impressive mental powers,” by effectively belittling Green Yoga’s message as neither “wise” nor “inspiring” and Georg as a “stern father,” she gives the reader the impression that our book is merely an idiosyncratic and not too credible snapshot on environmental issues that is undeserving of deeper consideration. (By contrast, see the review by Prof. Alan Drengson, a highly respected voice for ecology by clicking here.) Had she noticed or acknowledged that our book had in fact two authors, her off-the-cuff stock metaphor and portrayal would obviously not have worked at all. In her article “Wisdom of the Pines” in the same issue, Pearkes bemoans the invasion of British Columbia, where she resides, by the pine beetle—a small black beetle that ferociously destroys pine trees much like government-supported logging corporations that ruthless clearcut our forests.
When we read her essay, the seventh in a series of ten, we could not fathom how Pearkes could disempower our urgent message while at the same time admitting that “human interests can quickly overwhelm the complex needs of a balanced ecosystem.” But then we also came across her telling admission in the essay that her life is “littered” with “mistaken actions that have resulted from attempts to speak the truth without adequate reflection, or from my desires to avoid truth for its . . . threat to my sense of self.” In light of the serious plight of our Earth’s environment, the Pearkes’ disparaging contention that Georg is a “stern father” and the book “alarmist” amounts not only to glib sarcasm but also to a clear anti-environmental signal, which does not tally with her article in Ascent. Ought we regard her review as yet another “mistaken action”?
The editor washed her hands off this matter by stating to us that “the opinions expressed in our book review section are reflective of the writers and not the magazine itself.” This suggests the kind of mass-market journalism that lacks backbone and trades integrity for an entertaining read. We may ask whether the editor would just as readily publish a review that is as dismissive of one of Swami Sivananda Radha’s works as Parkes’ review was of Green Yoga? Has Ascent lost sight of the wonderful spiritual principles on which it was founded by the late Swami Sivananda Radha?
In her handwritten and hard-to-read editorial, the editor quotes Swami Radhananda as saying that “we can move away from old habits of speech and insert a new vocabulary that more clearly embodied who we are.” Indeed, it would be commendable for Ascent editors and reviewers to heed this piece of good advice—to go beyond stereotypes. We feel that in this case it would have been better to decline to review our book rather than to cheapen it.
We took the time and trouble to carefully read every single piece and also looked closely at the advertisements in the most recent issue of Ascent. We found that most of the articles were sound and well written. Some were, however, ill considered given the critical times in which we live. Here we must single out the travelogue “Ashram Lit” by two writers who went to India for the purpose of doing research for their respective books. The article seems to be little more than a byproduct of their research endeavors. Why devote so many pages to far-away libraries that would likely be inaccessible to more ordinary travelers? The whole article only feeds into the travel craze, which has such devastating environmental consequences. We have similar reservations about the article/interview “The Sublime Translation,” which celebrates the work of the Iranian-American woman scholar Laleh Bakhtiar, the first woman ever to translate the Qur’an. This is of course a noteworthy achievement, but would those pages not have been more appropriately dedicated to exploring how a spiritually engaged individual might make his or her practice green at this late hour of our global environmental crisis? Or how the Middle East continues to be a cinder box that may yet affect all Westerners in highly undesirable ways?
When we came to the advertisements, we were prepared to be disappointed, and so it was. How can anyone justify in-person conferences at distant venues when long-distance traveling, especially by air, extols such an exorbitant price from the environment? One conference even has the audacious subtitle “Focus on Conscious Living.” Those who live consciously live responsibly and stay at home! A number of the ads smack of the kind of gross commercialism, which we have bluntly criticized in our book. We appreciate that printing a glossy magazine costs money, and we have witnessed other periodicals step by step lower their standards to make enough revenue when an electronic version would serve just as well and be a great deal cheaper and more environment friendly.
Reading the small print in the masthead on p. 4, we noticed that Ascent was printed on acid-free paper that contains only 50% of recycled paper with 25% post-consumer content. This is little more than a feeble environmental gesture. We would fully expect 100% post-consumer ancient forest friendly paper at this point!
Needless to say, we meantime canceled our subscription. We subscribe to very few periodicals, and with the exception of Ascent, these are all online publications requiring no paper. In the case of Ascent, we had made an exception thinking that we ought to support the magazine since we previously regarded it as worthwhile and have long held Swami Sivananda Radha in the highest esteem. With our cancellation we are happily back on track with our clean-conscience policy of supporting only electronic periodicals that do not contribute to the decimation of our valuable forests. There is really no need—nor any excuse—for printed magazines when online versions are more readily and more cheaply produced. So, something positive has come from an unconstructive review after all. We hope that the above rebuttal may prove similarly useful to the Ascent team.
Postscript: We have meantime been informed that Ascent has ceased publication.