WHAT REALLY MATTERS

The road less traveled has by now become the beaten path, and Schwartz—reporting a recent and exhaustive spiritual trek—doesn't leave discernible footprints on it. Five years ago, at the publication party for Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal (which Schwartz coauthored), Schwartz decided he was ``riding the crest of the American Dream.'' Nevertheless, he wondered: ``Why, then, wasn't I happier?'' Not pausing to wonder whether a publicity bash in Manhattan's gaudy Trump Tower atrium would be anyone else's definition of the American Dream, the troubled, driven author reckoned it was time to seek a more gratifying inner life. The search for this grail led him to participate in activities mental and physical led by such familiar and less familiar personages as Baba Ram Dass (the former Richard Alpert), Timothy Leary, Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls, Elmer Green, and Richard Price and Michael Murphy, founders of the Esalen Institute. Hopscotching the country, Schwartz meditated transcendentally, fed back bio-ly, and gave himself over to the Enneagram system, according to which he decided which of nine basic personalities he'd been locked into since birth and how to reconcile himself comfortably to that life sentence (he's a Six, dominated by fear). At the end of his five-year, 400-page-plus journey, Schwartz concludes, ``To live a complete life requires drawing deeply on all of one's potential—mind, body, heart, soul, spirit.'' This pallid epiphany means a great deal to him but won't come as astonishing news to a large army of others. Better, Schwartz might have tackled the subtler queries his book raises without answering: Why do so many Eastern philosophy gurus wind up sleeping with their gullible disciples? Why do so many movement shapers eventually repudiate much of what they've promulgated? Those most likely to benefit from this excursion in self-help might be those who recognize it as raw material for satire.