The Path : A New Look At Reality

Rating:
Summary: A Little Too Sparse
Review: As Richard Matheson states in the beginning of "The Path," the goal of this book was to present the reader with a high-level introduction to the works of Harold Percival through a series of ten fictional walks.

The problem is that Matheson's presentation is too high-level, so much so that many of the ideas are over-simplified, or only vaguely referenced. Because of this, the concepts lose their impact, and many times appear as rehashed material from many other books available today.

I enjoy a majority of Matheson's works, and was excited to find this extension of some of the concepts and ideas from "What Dreams May Come," but unfortunately, Matheson was too sparse on the details. I don't feel any more compelled to pick up the works of Percival than I did before. I wish Matheson would have expanded this book to twelve or fifteen walks, or else would have made the walks longer.

Rating:
Summary: A book of sermons
Review: First of all, I like much of the work of Richard Matheson. He is a good storyteller. sometimes he is brilliant. This is not a work of brilliant storytelling. It is not even a work of fiction, other than the contrivance of using a series of walks through the park as the setting for various sermons the author wants to deliver through his characters. As noted by other reviewers, the author's goal is to present the teachings of H. Percival on the nature of the human person and the afterlife.

I have nothing against Percival and his thought. However, you can download it for free from the Internet. If Matheson admires the thought of Percival, that is his right. However,it is disappointing that such a great storyteller as Matheson did not present the sermons he wanted to tell within the context of a real story. The philosophy that undergirds What Dreams May Come is the same philosophy that is presented here. At least in the other work he offers it in the context of a real story. The end result is much more compelling than The Path.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: I loved this book! I read it after reading two of his other books and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. The Path is, like I said, thought provoking and I'd recommend it to anyone who is open minded and interested in exploring other spirituality avenues.