The Invisible Pyramid

Loren Eiseley, regarded by some as the modern Thoreau, was an American anthropologist and humanist who enthralled millions with his elegant literary style and sense of the mysterious as he wrote about the origin of man, evolution, and related themes. I purchased this book, "The Invisible Pyramid," a few weeks ago in order to collect yet another of his wonderfull works, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as I winged from city to city on travel for my job. It is important to say that among Eiseley's dozen books, "The Immense Journey" and "The Night Country" are regarded by many as his best (and those two certainly are 'must reading'). I first read "The Immense Journey" decades ago, and it changed my view of life. The current book in question, "The Invisible Pyramid," certainly is a wonderful work, although perhaps not every page of its 156 pages is as consistently superb as the other two works mentioned. It is with great hesitation that I raise any critical comment of this brilliant and artful author, but my inent is merely to guide potential readers with limited time to select the other two books first before this one. "The Invisible Pyramid," published in 1970, is a relfection on the meaning of man's first steps away from the planet earth, and was written just after the successful and dramatic return of the Apollo 13 crew. Eiseley does not shy from calling man a "world eater," a species that is progressively destroying the fragile planet that brought man into being and which must nurture him in the future. In view of the age of the text, it is interesting to note the absence of terms commonly used today, such as "global warming." Of the seven chapters, the last is a worthy summation, and is superbly written in the classic Eiseley style. In short, this is clearly a special and memorable book that I highly recommend, but it should be read after the other two Eiseley books mentioned above.

Others mentioned Eiseley's pessimism. That didn't faze me. His pessimism is counterbalanced by his wonder and curiosity, lyricism and empathy with nature and with humanity. Eiseley writes that we are a species caught between two worlds and a stranger to both; caught between Nature and Culture; between where we've come from and where we'd like to go. Do we have a true "home"? seems to be the question. The use of symbols (and words) has empowered us, but also separates us from the Natural world. The second half of the book picked up speed (keep reading if you find him too dry at first) Eiseley proposes a Third world between the world of Nature that we came from and the world in which our reaching for advancement in technology, knowledge, and achievement propels us ever farther (usually to the detriment of Nature) Is there a balance humans will be able to achieve that is either Between the two worlds (respecting and honoring nature AND our compulsion to transcend) OR is the Third World something entirely different, a momentous change in consciousness; something as radical as the beginning of language was to the humans of prehistory (you could say when we "became" human by use of symbol and language) Wonderful concepts and questions. I could not discern from Eiseley though What this third world would actually be. Maybe it was too early for Eiseley (or me) to conceive of this third world. It would have to be a change that changes everything - which we won't recognize until we are in it.

Although a little dated - but necessarily so, I found The Invisible Pyramid to be a powerful reminder of our (man's) egocentrism and of the unpopular probability that our brief parenthesis in time will soon end - in terms of geological time, which Eisley so forcefully describes. Perhaps the critics who find this work "too pessimistic" or "too bleak", simply do not admit the presuppositions upon which they are based. This may reflect the critic's inability to accept the inevitable. In "The Invisible Pyramid", Eisley provides a powerful defense of the position that humanity will probably pass from the scene and that it is doubtful that other similar species have occurred elsewhere in the universe. Such a conclusion is often mistakenly seen as nihilistic, reflecting a naivete' on the part of the reader. Some find solace in this view and others find dispair. Existentialists find solace by first passing through - and beyond - the gates of Eisley's dispair.Les Blough

This book differs from most of Eiseley's other writing in that it seems to be more pessimistic and resigned. The dominant image presented in the book's essays - and not one most people would sympathize with - is that human society is like a slime mold colony. That is, from an original spore the colony grows and grows in complexity until it spews out new spores to be carried by the wind and start other colonies far away - as the parent colony dies, having put all its life into sending out the fresh spore.Eiseley took this veiw of man as the U.S. was moving into the early days of the exploration of space. It is an interesting analogy, suggesting that as life expands outward from our world the life that sustained the outward thrust will perish. Maybe so, but these essays simply don't convince or please in the way that his previous books of natural writing did. The gloom is too overriding and there is no sense of nature triumphant.While Eiseley was always a man of bleak vision, that vision was always before filtered through a kind of verbal and mental artistry that is not shown here. Even someone as pessimistic as myself prefers to be offered some hope of redemption for the human race. At this point in his life, Eiseley didn't seem to see any.