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Catastrophic events of this century, in particular the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the failure of the Christian churches to condemn this, provided an impetus for Westman's powerful reaction against dogma and dogmatism and for his thinking about the development of the human psyche of which this book is a result.
He interprets various myths and themes from the Old and New Testaments in ways which elucidate particular stages in psychic growth, both of the individual and of the race. He also draws upon other mythologies, including Indian, Egyptian and Greek, upon Gnostic writings which he uses with particularly powerful effect, and upon modern thinkers in the fields of philosophy, religion and the physical and biological sciences.
His prime concern is the value of individuality and personhood, encapsulated in the symbolism of the exodus: God's command to ‘go forth into the land of your becoming’, as Westman puts it. Individuality implies a capacity to trust one's authentic experience, which Abraham discovered when he was about to sacrifice Isaac; it also necessitates self-knowledge and self-reconciliation, symbolised in the stories of duality and conflict such as those of Cain and Abel, and of Jacob and Esau, and in the covenant. The essence of personhood is expressed in God's answer to Moses: ‘I Am That I Am’. The person is perpetually engaged in becoming, in choosing, in changing, in reconciling the opposites, and at the same time, remains, like the Burning Bush, essentially the same.
Westman claims that modern physicists and biologists are increasingly perceiving the universe as an undivided, interrelated whole; he himself sees the human psyche as a part of this, sharing its balancing and self-corrective tendencies in which, provided we can become sufficiently conscious, lies hope. His book is on a grand scale, not well organised, sometimes repetitive, and its value would be greatly enhanced by an index. But it contains many profound and arresting insights.