Two Spiritual Journeys: Novak's First, Koestler's Latest

Having become discouraged with the state of affairs in the Western World, bewildered with anxiety for its future, novelist Arthur Koestler decided to set forth on a "spiritual pilgrimage" to the East, hoping to find some solution to the world's problems. The Lotus and the Robot is the result of that journey.

The principle upon which he wrote this book is perhaps a very excellent one: there is little doubt that the great philosophies of the East can ease the paramount difficulties of the West. It is only unfortunate that Mr. Koestler believed he could gain an understanding of two of the world's oldest extant cultures in the scant two years he allocated for his studies.

The author chose India and Japan as the sites of his exploration of Eastern philosophy because, he explains, "they are at opposite ends of the spectrum: one the most traditional around, the other the most modern of the great countries of Asia."

His journey begins in Bombay on a day when the city's sewers, much to the misfortune of our "pilgrim," were left open by mistake. The stench which greeted Mr. Koestler on his arrival apparently followed him through his stay in India. He remains constantly amazed at the overwhelming poverty of the Indian peasantry. The observation that philosophy was doing little to relieve the misery which prevaled throughout the entire country, seems to have undermined whatever respect he may have had for Indian metaphysics.

Mr. Koestler has devoted the larger part of the book's chapters on India to four contemporary Hindu saints and the physical practices of Yoga. The author's preoccupation with the mystic and the occult, dominates the discussion of India, and there is little real consideration of deeper Indian thought. The only deductions which Mr. Koestler draws from his study of the country are some wide sociological generalizations about its people.

The initial shock of discovering the squalor in India seems to have obscured the original purpose of the "pilgrimage;" Mr. Koestler ends up explaining what should be done to cure the ills of India and completely abandons the possibility that the country might have some lesson to offer the West. Having thus disposed of the total of Indian culture in 162 pages, the "pilgrim" is ready for his journey to Japan.

Mr. Koestler is immediately impressed by the beauty of the Japanese islands, but he is also troubled by the Western modernization of that country. It is this combination of the ancient--the Lotus--and the modern--the Robot--which gave Mr. Koestler the title for his book. He apparently decided that the latter was the more dominant of the two forces, and expresses grave misgivings about the psychological instability which the Robot has forced upon the Japanese people. After surmising that the Japanese are not capable of coping with their own spiritual and philosophical problems, Mr. Koestler very neatly dismisses another two thousand years of Asiatic culture.

IN the Epilogue, the author concludes that perhaps the situation in Europe and the West is not so bad after all and that Asia has nothing to offer in the way of intellectual assistance.

Fortunately, The Lotus and the Robot contains some reasonably descriptive accounts of the impoverished conditions of urban and rural India, and a few interesting observations on the country's Hindu saints. As a contribution to philosophy, it is dubious.

Mr. Koestler's efforts at saving Western Civilization were about as purposeful as the Children's Crusades and not nearly as well organized. He explains in the preface to his book that what emerged from his study of the East is a "mixture of pedantic detail and sweeping generalizations." Written in all modesty, it applies in all honesty.