Need Enlightenment? Ask the Poker-Playing Oracle

In the late 1960s, spiritual seekers turned to a peyote-popping sorcerer named Don Juan for enlightenment, courtesy of author Carlos Castaneda.

In the 1970s, cosmic wisdom was purveyed by a scrawny sea gull known as Jonathan Livingston.

More recently, the mysteries of the ages have been squeezed out of small humans who ride tricycles (“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”), a honey-obsessed cartoon bear (“The Tao of Pooh”) and a long-lost Peruvian manuscript (“The Celestine Prophecy”).

Perhaps it is a sign of the times, then, that the latest offbeat oracle is a middle-aged professional poker player.

From the same publisher who brought us “The Art of Thriving in a Retirement Community” comes J. Jaye Gold’s “Another Heart in His Hand” (Peradam, 1994), the philosophical musings of a casino Confucius called Ray.

Set in Southern California and Nevada gambling parlors, the book recounts a series of conversations between the author and his mysterious, bespectacled guru, who introduces himself after a game of hold-em near San Diego.

“At the poker table,” Ray explains, “everyone, by the fact of their presence, is declaring that they want to win and that they want you to lose--a situation which exists in ordinary life, but is always concealed behind politeness and subtle dishonesty.”

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Alas, the poker-related insights (and story line) halt at that point, and the text quickly bogs down in rambling New Age pronouncements and such grammatical miscues as Mohave Dessert .

As Gold cheerily admits in the preface, the plotless tale “will probably not entertain you.”

Citing everything from Bob Dylan (whose Christian-tinged “Gotta Serve Somebody” is used to argue that people should serve their creator instead of their own desires) to space shuttles (which are dragged in to assert that life is like a launching pad whose owners have forgotten to build the rocket), he spews forth what one reviewer calls “real-life philosophy, not some ancient teachings from some guy who wore togas, sat under olive trees and thought about stuff all day.”

Most of the lessons, however, aren’t exactly new or groundbreaking, and anyone who has sampled the Zen-Lifespring-TM- biofeedback-Esalen-est-psychobabble miasma of recent decades will recognize the drill.

Namely: We’ve forgotten how to enjoy the ordinary, we’re out of touch with our spiritual side and, of course, we should strive to become more like children, who are depicted as “innocent, beautiful, sweet (and) incorruptible . . . innate goodness” instead of as the self-centered, often cruel creatures they really are.

Also recycled is the unassuming-messiah motif: Castaneda had his desert drug lord, Richard Bach used an enlightened auto mechanic (in “Illusions”) and now Gold introduces his seven-card spiritual stud.

(Fortunately for the authors, these alleged teachers never seem to be available to collect book royalties or publishing credits. Don Juan is apparently lost among the cacti and Ray has conveniently disappeared to Southeast Asia.)

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What separates Gold from his predecessors is his book tour.

Billed by his publicists as a “combination of Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce and Ravi Shankar,” the 47-year-old New York City native has ditched the traditional mall autograph sessions in favor of coffeehouse and club appearances where he plays a bamboo flute, philosophizes, answers questions and performs card tricks.

The stand-up gig evolved after a disappointing round of bookstore signings and a university lecture where the first question from the audience was about why California has so many earthquakes.

“I came up with something about tectonic plates,” Gold recalls, then the questioner went off on her own theory that Californians exercise too much, so they weigh less and therefore can’t keep the ground down.

“I realized (the college lecture idea) wasn’t going to work out, either,” he says.

So he pounded down a few drinks one night and went onstage at a bar in St. Louis. The result: an unscripted evening of stories--some good, many not--vaguely reminiscent of Spaulding Gray in “Swimming to Cambodia.”

During a recent Hollywood appearance, the unrehearsed patter covers everything from the benefits of his spiritual quest (“Now I can sit through Ingmar Bergman movies”) to a truck driver who listens to an audiotaped version of “A Tale of Two Cities.” Gold also lets his dog wander the room--greeting audience members, chewing on a bone and sometimes upstaging his master--and complains about the deleterious effects of television:

“We see this little box of perfection,” he says, and we want everything else in life to be just as flawless.

To help counter that, Gold’s act includes a few deliberately missed notes on the flute, some discomforting silences in the monologue and--at the very end--a botched card trick.

After an audience member asks him to produce the 8 of clubs, Gold reaches into his assistant’s shirt pocket and pulls out . . . the 7 of clubs.

“Well,” he says. “It was close.”