For some reason I thought I had read all of the books in this series until I picked up and realize I skipped over the fifth to the sixth. Going back to the fifth in the series has been refreshing. Mystical Paths covers more of Darrow's psychic powers with a twist of solving a mystery in both the physical as well as psychosocialspiritual realm as well. Howatch wonderfully integrates mystery, psychology, and spirituality. An interesting note is that a many characters that have lost their spirituality have fallen into addiction, many of whom are unaware of one or both. My only critique is she sometimes doesn't know when to end a novel as this one had the potential to end at least three different times.top quotes:you're living at odds with the man you have the potential to become.The sad part was that everything I said was true but I was going about the healing in entirely the wrong way. As I was to be taught later, you can’t heal the sick by force-feeding them with ideas they’re not ready to accept; you can’t cure people by the simple imposition of your will. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit that heals, not the power of a would-be wonder-worker trying to play God.So many people fail to realise that the greatest journey one can ever take is the journey to the very centre of one’s being.”Sin is when you turn away from God—or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that’s authentic, the self that contains the potential to be fully human, fully fulfilled and fully alive.“No demon can withstand the power of Christ,” said my father, repeating the words he had used long ago, and what he meant was that no dissociated mind can withstand the integrating power of the Living God whose spark lies deep in the core of the unconscious mind and who can not only heal the shattered ego but unify the entire personality.Sin/ alienation is psychological disease which if unhealed can lead to the living hell of lost hopes and blighted lives.Science destroys only the false ideas about religion; the true ideas it complements and explores.)Religion is about integration, about successfully bringing the selfish ego into line with the centre of the personality where God exists, as a divine spark, in every human being. Religion is about helping man to live in harmony with his true self and to become the person God’s designed him to be.”That writer certainly realised that the quest for God is a quest for psychic integration, a wholeness which allows the ego to be subjugated, the true self to triumph and the entire personality, conscious and unconscious, to be open to and at one with God’s will and God’s love.
This complex tale emphasizes both the risks and the rewards of psychic develpment.It starts slowly and a bit ponderously but the pace picks up once the reader has made way through the thicket of characters and finally can get into the protagonists POV.Although the emphasis on Christianity is strong,it is by no means conventional.The questions posed are still perhaps even more releVant today. The last bit was electrifying.How do we know our true self,and how to live authentically are the outstanding questions here.IS THER ANYTHING MORE WORTHWHILE THAN THE JOURNRY TO THE CENTRE OF THE SELF?HOWATCH MAKES A STRONG CASE THAT THERE IS NOT.
What do You think about Mystical Paths (1996)?
Set in 1968 this fifth book in the Starbridge series is narrated by Nicholas Darrow, the late in life son of Jon Darrow from Glamorous Powers.The main characters, Nicholas and his father Jonathan Darrow, both possess rare psychic gifts, and their inability to see situations clearly in relation to one another stems from the mutual belief that the son is a replica of his father.They are not just alike of course. Nicholas' psychic gifts are drawing him toward a ministry of healing and Jon, who had some bad experiences in the past when he tried to establish a healing ministry does everything he can to discourage Nicholas from going in that direction. Added to that NIcholas is a teenager who is desperately trying on one hand to distance himself from his father and on the other hand terrified to do so because sometimes he feels overwhelmed by his own psychic powers and needs his father to feel safe.Things threaten to get out of hand but a new character, Lewis Hall a priest who has been called to a healing ministry takes him in hand and helps him to find the confidence to stand alone without his father and also helps Jon realise that he can safely finally turn loose.Also, Nicholas contemporaries, the so called "popular crowd" who form secondary characters in the book deteriorate rapidly from a privileged and party-loving group into addiction, mental illness, suicide, murder, or desperate, even pathological, promiscuity. The full consequences of the tragedy involving Venetia Flaxton, which is set in 1963 in Scandalous Risks, are sadly clear in this 1968 setting.The conclusion of this book is the first time that I felt that Howatch got "really weird," a theme she enlarges on in her St. Benet series and this is the reason that I eventually stopped reading them after the first book in that series. I do not do the occult well.
—Jeanette
Nicholas Darrow is the deeply muddled son of Jonathan Darrow. Like his father, he is psychic, and like his father, he is extremely proud and not always likeable. When Nicholas is asked to help investigate the mysterious death of Christian Aysgarth, the investigation takes him on a journey to the darkest corners of his consciousness. As he struggles to understand why Christian's life veered so sharply off course, Nicholas is forced to ask some very painful questions about his own life, including his relationship with his father. Howatch is a master storyteller, and the book does not end without the reader seriously questioning how Nicholas will fare in the future. Yet Howatch seems to grasp that life is a journey, an evolution, and intentionally avoids tying off all the ends at the close of this book.
—Suzanne
A real psychological thriller exploring the relationship between father and son (Jon & Nicholas Darrow) and the burden of familial inheritance. Of the six Starbridge novels this was the one that I found hardest to stay with simply because relationships and actions are analysed to the nth degree by the protagonists. My life simply isn’t like that; though at times I did feel very strongly drawn by a certain vicarious fascination. Of all the books I found this emotionally the hardest to take a break from, yet contrarily I simply didn’t have the strength to read it from cover to cover at one sitting. Perhaps what that comes down to is that I’m saying that Susan Howatch really is a superb storyteller.
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