When I read the first post, I got this overwhelming sense of "You too could improve your life, gain spiritual enlightenment, and make a great book (or whatever) if you just join a religious community, spend thousands of hours poring over ancient texts, and doing the beads-and-rattles thing with a bunch of fellow burnouts."
A 1950's comic, comparing a lengthy newspaper article on a street accident to his own very short article said "Woman, streetcar, foot slipped, there you are."
I appreciate these kinds of books and the effort that went into them, but I don't accept the religious arguments, since that's not enlightenment, it's just religion.