RELIGION : BOOK REVIEW : Some Inanities, Many Insights in Tour of Beliefs : THE NEW AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY: A Seeker’s Guide; By Elizabeth Lesser; Random House; $25.95, 440 pages

This is a very strange book. One part memoir, one part meditation on spirituality, one part how-to for spiritual seekers, and one part survey of the current landscape of America’s new religions, it ranges from the profound to the inane to an extreme degree.

The same might be said for the world of American spirituality. As Elizabeth Lesser writes: “You can walk a wonderful spiritual path with or without adhering to a religion. All paths are available; none are exclusively right or wrong or even required.” This utter relativism is the hallmark of modern American beliefs, and Lesser is well placed to describe them. As a co-founder of New York’s Omega Institute, she has spent more than 20 years watching as teachers and students of these new esoteric practices congregated, and she herself has been an active seeker, student and participant.

As she sees it, American culture, with its emphasis on individual autonomy and personal freedom, fosters a wide range of syncretic practices. Years ago, the British journalist Malise Reuthven coined the phrase “the divine supermarket” to characterize the American religious landscape: We pick and choose from a wide array of options, from Sufi meditation to Zen to est and rebirthing, to crystal therapy and the Pathwork, even to Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. And almost all of these are enhanced by one psychotherapeutic tradition or another, and most people who are walking these paths go through several communities and a number of alternate teachers and therapists before discovering the methods that work best for them.

Lesser structures the book around four “landscapes”: the mind, the heart, the body and the soul. In each, she surveys different methods for moving through various challenges, and she intersperses her narrative with specific exercises that are presented in boldface, very much like an instruction manual for meditation. She provides suggestions for overcoming the resistance of the ego, for visualizing the body and confronting the fear of death.

At numerous points, Lesser falls into a New Age cadence that is so frequently parodied nowadays. You can imagine her gentle voice talking about the ego and narcissism, love and acceptance, sexuality and children. She also harbors a harsh judgment for those who follow a more traditional path. In a sweeping indictment of Western monotheistic traditions, she writes: “Sin-based religions especially have made it their mission to control the world, not to love it for what it is.” There is so much to argue with in that sentence that it’s tempting to dismiss her other statements and observations.

That would be a mistake, however, because if you can wade through the mush, there are some wonderful passages and a unique overall perspective on the diversity of American religion today. Yes, Lesser can be starry-eyed, but she is more sober than most of her compatriots in the New Age trenches. She has witnessed the hypocrisy, self-indulgence and “power trips” of many teachers, and she isn’t shy about saying so. And in spite of her occasionally self-indulgent and relativist attitudes, she has spent her life trying to know herself and trying to walk a path of rigorous self-examination. That diligence and discipline is rare and, not surprisingly, she has found some truth, and every now and then she communicates it with great beauty.

Perhaps the most poignant moment is not her writing at all, but her reproduction of a poem by a Native American named Oriah Mountain Dreamer. The poem reads, in part: “It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living / I want to know what you ache for / and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. / It doesn’t interest me how old you are / I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool / for love / for your dream / for the adventure of being alive.” It goes on for several stanzas and concludes: “It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom / you have studied. / I want to know what sustains you / from the inside / when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone / with yourself / and if you truly like the company you keep / in the empty moments.”

That spirit--of seeking, or reveling in the search and in the adventure of being alive--permeates Lesser’s odd book, and if her waters often seem muddied by the silly and the mundane, there are moments of sublime clarity and depth.

Zachary Karabell is a frequent reviewer for The Times’ Religion page.