THE VISIONARY UNIVERSE PROPHECY.

By Raymond L. Neubaver '64. Austin (Texas): The Nova Press, 1973. 273 pp. $2.95.

Neubauer is known for his stained glass studio, M.A. in Enalish, high school and college teaching, theater group in a black ghetto of Chicago, hitchhiking about the country, interest in religion, and visionary universe and prophecies. His book combines poetry, short essays, proverbs, and voyages with a spiritual point of view through the universe. Though it is focused on a Personal God. it is not an apology for some past religious tradition, but a combination of many elements old and new, into an original synthesis."

Part I, "The Decline of Reptile-Man," analyzes modern social disintegration, "a prelude to heightened individuality in man and a higher communion with God. Part II, A Voyage through Inner Space," attempts to establish a new scientific outlook and to suggest how from seemingly inanimate matter man with spiritual qualities could evolve. Part III, Into the Visionary Life." outlines the possible emergence of visionary and prophetic abilities Originally vital in the establishment of many world religions.

Four samples of Neubauer s style and Weltantchauung: 1. "The Novel is dead, and so is the Drama, and the literature of the future will be Salvation Literature: literature that asserts new Absolutes and explores the spiritual realms around us." 2. "No one can take you off the flame edge of Existence. You can not think of it. You can not grasp it. You must become flame confluent with flame, merging the movement of your Spirit with the movement of the world outside. At best we can become knowing flame: the eyes within the fire which observes fire's movement." 3. "You may well ask how God can converse with you & I [sic] at the same time. or how he can appear to one man having long hair and to another with short. And the answer is that God is everywhere, and since one particle of God is non-different from God, alike possessed of Infinite Power, the part of God before you has an infinite capacity for Love, as does the Part before me." 4. "Think of all the anti-Reason authors in the West: Rabelais, Sterne. Swift. Lawrence - yet they did pitifully little to stop the progress of Rationalism. That is because Western art is truncated. It hardly ever digs down into metaphysics to a religious ground for its Vision."

On the first page Neubauer sombrely suggests difficulties in spiritual exploration. "Reality is too complex for men; too many stars wink in the sky. he must in some way find his bearings so he can steer his course." On the penultimate page he optimistically asserts: "But He [God] shall be with each man. woman, & child, they shall all peer into the Celestial Regions, and they shall know the honesty & faith of these [new race of] Prophets by their works, they shall not be controlled by Priests & Authorities."