by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul
For several centuries now, we have been creating a modern culture that offers many advantages and conveniences and appears to be a natural evolution of human ingenuity. We don't hesitate to tout it as the supreme achievement of human creativity. Its philosophical values—rational, mechanistic, secularistic—touch every area of life from education to medicine to politics, giving the sense, perhaps the illusion, that we understand nature and the human body and mind, and that we can now control them for the good of all.
There must be something profoundly attractive in this philosophy of modernism, because it continues to spread across the globe, drawing into its gaping mouth people who have long maintained ancient traditions of intuitive, enchanted, magical, religious, and erotic responses to life—values generally anathema to modern tastes. Few seem to be aware of modernism's dangers, of the severe limits it places on what is categorized as “normal” human experience and understanding. We have become expert in the materialistic dimensions of nature and culture, and at the same time inarticulate about many experiences that are meaningful and deeply felt in the life of the ordinary person.
In the context of this incredibly shrinking vision of human life, Judith Orloff's Second Sight offers profound relief. Her story is both moving and enlightening, revealing how difficult and yet how rewarding it is to be open to forms of knowledge and empathy excluded by the modern idea of what is normal. Her honesty about her own experiences and her insight into the cultivation of intuition, dreams, psychic impressions, healing, and community might give some halting readers the courage to embrace their own gifts, their individuality, and their unconditional compassion.
Dr. Orloff demonstrates in her own life story how we all, including the most gifted and aware, internalize the limiting vision of the modern world as we hesitate to trust our intuitions and worry about acting on our more subtle perceptions and knowledge. In poignant stories of lovers, parents, and patients, she gives important lessons in the deep ties that link intuition and community, intimate knowledge and love. Through her own example, she teaches us to trust the less rational certainties of the heart, demonstrating how we might draw unexpectedly closer to the people around us and live with a heightened, less defensive ethical sensitivity by living from a deeper source of knowledge and reflection.
Second Sight is not a defensive book. It doesn't shield or bolster the tender subject of psychic knowledge with technical jargon but instead presents transparent, inviting stories, laced with valuable lessons in cultivating psychic capacities. We can't stretch the edges of modernism's values unless we also break out of its modes of expression. I am much more moved and convinced by the stories she tells—intimate, honest and captivating—than I would be by experiments, studies, and statistics.
Some days I allow myself to imagine a time when we will have jettisoned our superior attitudes toward past and traditional cultures, where intuition has been practiced with intelligence and style. I believe that once we expand our ways of knowing and responding to life, we will discover solutions to personal and social problems, which, in the high-tech world of modern medicine and philosophy, are elusive. We can't find answers to our problems because we have closed our minds to appropriate methods and approaches.
Surprisingly in some ways, Second Sight is a book characterized by heart rather than mind. Its purpose is clearly not to convince the world of a point of view or to display powers and achievements. Because of its good heart, I trust it and have learned from it. I invite the reader to bring a matching openness of heart to it, and perhaps discover in our own lives the deep soul that lies beneath layers of modern assumptions and expectations. That soul, with its own unusual, highly individual, often inexplicable powers, can make any life vibrant, heartening, and profoundly meaningful.