Extrapolating the Unknown
A Unified View on Spirituality
Extrapolating the Unknown is an insightful work of spirituality that is simultaneously serious and dreamy.
M. V. K. Mohan’s Extrapolating the Unknown is a meandering mystical text that aims to unravel the secrets of the universe in order to help people live more fulfilling lives.
Seeking to deeply examine the nature of God, whom the book describes as all knowing, all powerful, creative, and destructive, the book engages thought experiments, scientific ideas, and logic. These include observing the forces in a U-shaped magnet to explore the idea of an energy system. Such examples are relatable and easy to understand.
The book uses spiritual principles to explore a wide range of human experiences. It works from a central notion of the “Law of Correspondence,” which argues that as it is below, so it is above. While it is possible to understand and view reality from various perspectives, it says, this law of correspondence requires that there be a connection between the various levels of reality.
Examples such as a single leaf from a tree, which under magnification very much resembles the forest it came from, are used to illustrate these notions. From them, the text extrapolates into ideas around energy, states of being, dreams, God, and death. It ends with a road map for achieving enlightenment.
When it argues that spiritual laws govern reality and that uncovering them leads to enlightenment, the book is convincing. Its turns are mystical and draw on Eastern thinking, and it preferences spiritual truths over organized religion, maintaining effective tools but leaving dogma behind. This openness is one of the book’s great strengths.
Mohan’s writing is both playful and curious in tone. It quickly jumps from topics like the life states of rivers and mountains to those of robots, patriotism, and warfare; it does such tremendous shifting in the span of paragraphs. The text feels broad, but also disorganized, as a result; it follows wherever its questions lead, but it is easy to get lost in the weeds as it moves from thoughts on energy systems into asking about cultural needs for new movies each year, or stereo sound.
Still, its wide-ranging interests effectively draw on its notions of interconnectedness, in which it makes sense to discuss just about any idea to further the cause of human exploration into divine energy. Splashes of insight mix in with the book’s tangents and disparate ideas.
Extrapolating the Unknown is an insightful work of spirituality that is simultaneously serious and dreamy.
Reviewed by
Jeremiah Rood
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
