Mystics & Prisoners: Vermont Author Has 2 New Books

Listen to "Prisoners of the Real: From Here to Paradise" on Spreaker.

 Original 1991 words & music radio version

BURLINGTON, VT — Vermont author Greg Guma has released two new books through his publishing imprint, Maverick Books. Though different in style and focus, they explore related topics —  the 19th century battle between materialism and spirituality, and the modern struggle between authoritarian power and inspired, inclusive leadership.  

Like the remarkable true story that inspired it, Into the Mystic begins in one place and ends in quite another. It starts with grief and ghosts and finds it way to ancient wisdom and universal consciousness, from spiritualism to the birth and growth of the Theosophical movement. Including rare interviews and clippings, it describes the amazing truth about what happened in Vermont in 1874, how critics attacked spiritualism, America’s first official cremation, Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott’s first encounter, and their views on materializations, karma, reincarnation, and astral projection.

Order Into the Mystic

Prisoners of the Real is an intellectual odyssey from Pythagoras to planetary consciousness, and also from Apollo to Dionysus. It makes the connection between solar and lunar knowledge and reveals the real costs of preoccupation with certainty and control. Exploring linguistics, psychology, physics, literature, philosophy and management science, it opens the door to a new vision of freedom and cooperation.

Order Prisoners of the Real

Guma has been working on both projects for almost fifty years. Into the Mystic began in 1974 as personal research about the paranormal events in a nearby village a century before. Prisoners… began the same year as a master’s thesis focusing on modern management problems and revolutionary solutions. Both draw on history, philosophy and synchronicity. 

From Spiritualism to Theosophy

Video: Prologue

Even before the Civil War began in 1861 about two million people in America had joined the spiritualist movement. It had been growing for more than a decade. When the fighting finally ended in 1865 even more were in mourning and ready to become believers. By 1870 estimates of spiritualists ran as high as eleven million, almost a third of the population, many of them desperate to know what happened after death. In parlors and farmhouses they consulted mediums to find out.

Video: In the Circle

Into the Mystic explores the mysterious events in Chittenden, Vermont, when the Eddy family’s Circle Room seances were famous as a spiritual destination for those who wanted to contact the deceased. Many mediums were charlatans who took advantage of grieving friends and relatives. A few were something more, occultists and mystics, and one stood out from the rest — Helena Blavatsky — a spiritual teacher who would bring the West long-lost wisdom from the East, and a radical new world view.

Video: Afterward

Management vs. Leadership

Security, say the dictionaries, is a feeling of safety or freedom from anxiety. Based on this definition, few people can claim true security in the 21st century. In Prisoners of the Real, Guma presents and explores Dionysian management, an alternative to the dominance of narcissistic leaders, myopic technicians, and calculating bureaucrats. The world already has Dionysian leaders. It could use even more, he explains, inspired people who move beyond blind rationality, expedient answers and authoritarian strategies, and toward liberated groups and institutions that offer opportunity and real choice.

Both print editions will be released in September, with digital editions to follow. Several other books by Guma, published by New England Press, UVM and White River Press, Countryman and Seven Locks, Fomite and Maverick Books, can also be ordered online or at bookstores. Link here to Explore the collection online.

Other Titles

Guma has been publishing books since the 1980s, notably including The People’s Republic (1989), his acclaimed study of Vermont before and during the mayoral era of Bernie Sanders. In 2021, he released Restless Spirits & Popular Movements. A new history of Vermont’s political and social movements, it is filled with little-known stories about key figures. He has also written several novels, including Spirits of Desire (2004), an imaginative retelling of Blavatsky and Olcott’s first adventures that is currently being adapted for film, and Dons of Time (2013), a speculative adventure about time travel, corruption, and the control of history.

In 1992, he co-authored Passport to Freedom: A Guide for World Citizens, with Garry Davis. While working for the international affairs periodical Toward Freedom, he wrote Uneasy Empire (2003), looking at the anti-globalization movement and weaponization of the “war on terror” after 9/11.  Fake News (2018) was developed as a lecture on information warfare after the election of Trump. Planet Pacifica (2021) revisits Guma’s time as director of the country’s original listener-sponsored radio network, and why the organization went to war with itself.

Maverick Books Storefront

The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution (paperback)

Green Mountain Politics: Restless Spirits, Popular Movements (digital)

Fiction: Dons of Time (all formats), Spirits of Desire (paperback)

Non-Fiction: Fake News, Uneasy Empire; Big Lies & Progressive Eclipse

As Editor: Vermont's Untold History, Reign of Error, Bread & Puppet (paper)

CD Set: Dave Dellinger & the Power of the People (audio)

Send review copy requests, including full name and USPS address, to: mavmediavt@gmail.com

MAVERICK BOOKS, 1989-2023, with Margot Grace Guma

Videos: Two Ages, Two Visions, One World…. Two Books in September

Power, Narcissism and Delusions: An Excerpt

From Prisoners of the Real, an intellectual odyssey

from ancient knowledge to planetary consciousness

By Greg Guma

We are living through a chronically tense and, in more affluent parts of the world, a desperately self-indulgent era. Advertising teaches that fulfillment comes with compulsive consumption. News media trivialize history and turn current events into a competition of spectacles and personality cults. Addicted to fads and the quick fix, frightened of the future and cut adrift from the past, millions of people flee from imagination and look for meaning in pre-digested realities.    

The very sense that we are part of real families and communities is threatened. Virtual images that dominate our days begin to look more real than we do. Experts meanwhile have a field day providing clever evaluations of the psychic assault on humanity and the breakdown of culture, while conveniently omitting that they are some of the culprits.    

            Narcissism has reached the epidemic level. Traditionally, a narcissist was often described as some "beautiful person" who can relate only to his or her own image or problems. But the definition has expanded to include traits like exploitation of the warmth provided by others, combined with fear of dependence, a sense of inner emptiness, boundless repressed rage, and unsatisfied cravings. Narcissists can be pseudo-intellectuals or calculating seducers. Usually, they are afraid of old age and death, and fascinated with celebrities. These callous, superficial climbers seek out the famous, and yet are also compelled to destroy their fantasy figures.

If this merely described a few "sick" individuals we might find comfort. But patterns of narcissistic behavior afflict millions and are reinforced daily. And perhaps most disquieting, the narcissistic personality is ideally suited for positions of power, the type of leader who sells himself to win at any price.    

Capitalism has turned self promotion into a growth industry, with success often resting on the ability to project a "winning personality" and often false image. Relentless self-promotion, whether by conservative demagogues or their radical counterparts, meshes neatly with an idealization of powerful people who represent what the narcissist seeks.   

Narcissists identify with winners out of a fear of being losers. Objects of hero worship give meaning to the frequently unfocused or direction-deprived lives of society's many emotional casualties. Yet mixed with this idealization is an urge to degrade the object of one's admiration, sparked when the "hero" ultimately disappoints. This desperate need, intensified by the machinery of mass promotion, can turn even assassination, political or physical, into a form of spectacle.    

Among the influences that reinforce narcissism, mass media have the most pervasive impact. They tend to create both a sense of chronic tension and a cynical detachment from reality. But detachment does not have to express itself as cynicism. It can also lead to intelligent skepticism. This raises a political question, since the media and other powerful institutions could help to reduce dependence and support individuals in solving their own problems. In recent years, however, being detached has mainly meant a crippling negativism about the entire political process, a nihilistic and escapist conclusion that no constructive change is possible.   

The abdication of responsibility to various bureaucracies has meanwhile promoted character traits consistent with a corrupted culture, and this in turn has accelerated the excesses of corporate capitalism. The result is a kind of mass neurosis.

The decay of older traditions of self-help has eroded competence in one area after another, leaving the individual dependent on the state, corporations, and other bureaucratic structures. Narcissism is the psychological dimension of this dependence. Popular culture feeds on narcissistic fantasies, encouraging delusions of omnipotence while simultaneously reinforcing feelings of dependence and discouraging strong emotions.    

Ultimately, the bland and empty facade of mass existence can become overwhelming. Yet within millions of people there remains enormous rage, resentment, and potential for which bureaucratic society provides few outlets. In truth, few people are actually satisfied with the facade. Some do nothing yet know the system doesn't work, others actively look for ways to limit the damage. Others strike out violently, or tap cultural resources like cooperative work, art, and spirituality to counteract the effects.    

With the belief in individual responsibility undermined in so many ways, moral impulses help to keep alive a sense that people are responsible for what they do. If such a view spread widely enough, it could change an entire society. Another remedy, in response to professional imperialism, is to reclaim responsibilities we have ceded to the experts. Call it a program of conscious self-rule, one that could also protect us from discriminatory or authoritarian tendencies.    

Such changes carry risks. For example, reactionary impulses in the family or church may be exploited. But given the state of society — moral bankruptcy, political corruption, economic inequality, and ecological decay — a few risks are preferable to playing it safe. The goal is to restore humanity's basic dignity through compassion, engagement, and mutual aid. Along with healthy skepticism and intelligently directed anger, these could be keys to a new, freer and more natural culture.

Greg Guma is the author of Restless Spirits & Popular Movements: A Vermont History and The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. This commentary is an excerpt from Prisoners of the Real, one of two new books being released in September.

Prisoners of the Real

Despite the promises of managers and leaders, we often gain little by trusting their judgements. If proof is needed, ask yourself: Are you more secure today about where we and the planet are heading?

And what is security? A feeling of safety or freedom from anxiety. Few people can claim that in the 21st Century.

Prisoners of the Real is an intellectual odyssey from Pythagoras to planetary consciousness. It makes the connection between solar and lunar knowledge and reveals the real costs of our preoccupation with certainty and control. Exploring linguistics, psychology, physics, literature, philosophy and management science, it opens the door to a new vision of freedom and cooperation. (190 pages)

Dionysian management is an alternative to the dominance of narcissistic leaders, myopic technicians, and calculating bureaucrats. With metaphor, intuition and creative tools, it stimulates engagement and encourages real productivity. The world already has Dionysian leaders. It could use even more — inspired people who move beyond blind rationality, expedient answers and authoritarian strategies, and toward liberated groups and institutions that offer opportunity and real choice.