Reading Stranger In A Strange Land: Part Two

[Read Part One]

Mike can grok, engage in telepathy, levitate objects and make things (including people) completely disappear (nothing ever returns so I'm wondering what exactly happens here, it is never explained). Importantly, he is human, not a Martian. This simple distinction points to something fundamental about this character, his liminal status between human and Martian consciousness. He's human by birth and biology, though raised in Martian culture.

This creates a unique entity who exists between these two worlds, physically human but mentally shaped by Martian upbringing. It also suggests that humans are capable of the “magic” that Martians take for granted, an interesting puzzle woven into the fabric of the novel but, again, this isn't really something Heinlein chooses to expound upon.

This dual nature makes Mike both translator and reconciler of radically different ways of Being. He introduces Martian concepts like grokking to humans while simultaneously learning to comprehend human complexity. In a sense, the entire novel is about this process of translation and the inevitable transformations it produces in both Mike and the humans he encounters.

When Mike comes to Earth, he doesn't simply abandon his Martian perspective to become human. Instead, he creates something new, a hybrid consciousness that incorporates elements of both worlds. This is most evident in his Church of All Worlds, which translates Martian nesting patterns into human social and sexual organization, and in his teaching of "Thou art God," which brings Martian metaphysics into human religious discourse.

Mike can understand certain Martian concepts that humans struggle to grasp, yet he remains somewhat apart from full Martian consciousness. Similarly, he learns human behaviors and emotions, but always retains an outsider's perspective on them, most notably in his laughter at the zoo, where he apparently perceives something about human nature that humans themselves often miss.

Despite the novel's dated elements, there are passages of genuine philosophical depth and eloquence. Consider this profound reflection on divine will and human responsibility:

"Submission to God's will is not to be a robot, incapable of choice and thus of sin. Submission can include—does include—utter responsibility for the fashion in which I, and each of us, shape the universe. It is ours to turn into a heavenly garden...or to rend and destroy."

This passage captures something essential about the novel's spiritual philosophy. It reframes religious submission not as passive acceptance but as active participation in creation. This transcends theological speculation to become a perfect expression of what grokking in its "fullness" entails, the recognition that understanding and Being are inseparable, that to truly comprehend the universe is to participate in shaping it.

Heinlein uses the phrase "grok in its fullness" repeatedly in the early parts of the novel, but gradually drops it as the story progresses. By the end, he doesn't need to specify "fullness" anymore because both Mike and the reader have come to understand that true grokking is always full, always complete, always transformative. This linguistic evolution coincides with Mike's transition from Martian outsider to spiritual teacher.

Toward the end of the novel, as Mike groks humanity in its fullness, he begins to evaluate his learning process and to contextualize it metaphysically with Jubal. He has spent most of the novel grokking “wrongness” based upon earlier discussions with Jubal. It is out of his magical sense of wrongness that he makes so many people and things disappear. Now he begins to understand the other side to equation.

“Goodness is not enough, goodness is never enough. That was one of my first mistakes, because among Martians goodness and wisdom are identical. But not with us. Take Jill. Her goodness was perfect when I met her. Nevertheless she was all mixed up inside – and I almost destroyed her, and myself too – for I was just as mixed up – before we got squared away. Her endless patience (not common on this planet) was all that saved us...while I was learning to be human and she was learning what I knew. But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”

Mike is beginning to sense a profound tension between sacrifice and agency that still feels relevant today. It rejects both the passive fatalism of some religious traditions and the egocentric control of some secular philosophies. Instead, it proposes a middle path where submission to a larger reality expands rather than diminishes human responsibility. When Mike affirms that grokking the universe means accepting our duty in creating it, he is acknowledging both a Martian and an existential point of view.

The novel is loaded with narrative shortcuts but you just have to let all that go if you want to enjoy the ride. The tale isn't a tightly plotted, realistic story in the conventional sense but rather a vehicle for Heinlein to explore all kinds of wild, complex, and symbolic ideas. Its value lies in its willingness to throw convention out the window in favor of something more experimental and, perhaps, freer.

This approach allows the novel to probe profound questions about consciousness, sacredness, and human nature, even when its narrative logic falters. For all its faults, the novel is thought-provoking in the strictest sense of the term, challenging readers to grapple with concepts that defy easy comprehension.

I remembered what happens to Mike in the end, but I had forgotten his establishment of the Church of All Worlds. After absorbing enough about humanity to formulate his own spiritual teachings, Mike creates a religious movement that represents far more than just a plot device - it's the culmination of his transition to bridge Martian and human consciousness.

The Church of All Worlds is built around several revolutionary principles that directly challenge conventional religious structures. Its central tenet is "Thou art God" - the radical recognition of the sacred within each person rather than as something external requiring intermediaries. This democratization of the divine undermines the very foundation of hierarchical religions where priests, ministers, and officials stand between believers and God.

The water-sharing ritual forms the spiritual foundation of the church. By drinking from the same glass, participants become "water brothers," establishing bonds deemed deeper than either family or marriage. This simple act transforms strangers into kin, creating the foundation for the communal structures that define the church.

Mike constructs his church around communal living arrangements modeled after Martian "nests," with sexual sharing among water brothers (and sisters, though that word does not apply on Mars) being a natural extension of their spiritual communion. The church embraces rather than denies pleasure and physical existence, integrating sexuality directly into spiritual practice. This is a profound challenge to the mind-body dualism that pervades Western religious traditions which doubtlessly fit well into the counterculture revolution occuring in the West at the time of the novel's publication.

The Church of All Worlds represents a fascinating fusion of Martian metaphysics with human physicality and emotion. It's neither purely Martian nor conventionally human, but something new that Mike creates as a bridge between worlds. It embodies his full understanding of both cultures and his attempt to elevate humanity by introducing Martian concepts in forms humans can embrace.

The Church is in direct conflict with another religion wildly popular in America at this time, the Fosterites. As Mike's teachings gain popularity, they're perceived as a direct threat by the Fosterite leadership, who see him as competing in the spiritual marketplace they've worked so hard to dominate.

On the surface, they might appear to share certain qualities. Both challenge conventional morality. Both embrace pleasure as spiritually valid rather than sinful. Both attract followers dissatisfied with mainstream religious options. Both create alternative communities with their own rules and customs.

But the differences run deep. While the Fosterites have commercialized spirituality, packaging it as entertainment and political influence, Mike creates something authentically transformative that addresses genuine human needs for connection, meaning, and transcendence. The Fosterites offer the appearance of liberation while maintaining traditional power structures; Mike offers actual liberation through radical reimagining of human potential and relationships.

Mike's message of "Thou art God" directly contradicts religious authorities who position themselves as necessary intermediaries between people and the divine. His open approach to sexuality and communal living violates their moral codes (even though the Fosterites themselves are more sexually permissive than traditional religions). Most threatening of all, his growing movement represents competition in a sacro-commercial marketplace the Fosterites have carefully monopolized. Here Heinlein is attacking the megachurches and mega-ministers of his time.

When Mike presents himself to the angry Fosterite mob at the novel's climax, he's knowingly offering himself to people who've been whipped into religious frenzy against him. They see him as a blasphemer and heretic rather than recognizing the deeper connections between their faiths. The irony is that in killing him, they actually complete his mission rather than destroying it - participating unwittingly in his Martian-artistic sacrifice. The comparisons of Mike with Christ are multiple and obvious to anyone reading the text.

Heinlein doesn't just satirize religion in the novel; he takes aim at media culture and commercialization with equal precision. Throughout the novel, he inserts fictional advertisements that interrupt the narrative flow - mimicking how commercial breaks disrupt television programming (remember that commercial television was still new and “advanced” in 1961). These intrusions are integral to the novel's critique of how media shapes and distorts human experience.

Take the advertisement for "Wise Girl Malthusian Lozenges" (a brilliantly humorous name for contraceptives in a world concerned about overpopulation): "The 3-D picture cut to a young woman, so sensuous, so mammalian, so seductive, as to make any male unsatisfied with local talent. She stretched and wiggled and said in a bedroom voice, 'I always use Wise Girl.'" This brief commercial speaks volumes about the society Heinlein is depicting - its sexual mores, its population policies, its advertising techniques, all condensed into a single, pitch-perfect parody.

But the most devastating use of this technique comes during Mike's martyrdom scene. After building toward this climactic moment throughout the novel, Heinlein does something shocking - he cuts to commercial for “Lovers Soap.” Mike steps outside the hotel to confront the angry mob assembled to kill him, carefully orchestrating his own death as a public spectacle. Though his sacrifice is genuinely profound, he presents it with theatrical flair - using his telekinetic powers to maximize the effect.

Mike has learned from his carnival experience and from the Fosterites that humans want their spiritual lessons packaged as entertainment. Heinlein transforms this sacred moment into just another media event. And then, at the peak of dramatic tension, the broadcast cuts to commercial - selling products as a man is about to be murdered.

This media savvy gives Mike's martyrdom an additional layer beyond the Martian artistic dimension I discussed in Part One. He's creating transcendent art in the Martian tradition while crafting a media moment that works within human attention spans and expectations. His death becomes simultaneously sublime and commercial, transcendent and televised, profound and interrupted by advertisements - embodying the contradictions of the society he's trying to transform.

Heinlein's prose style varies wildly throughout the book - sometimes direct and journalistic, sometimes satirical, sometimes reaching for profound philosophical eloquence. This dynamic highlights the novel's thematic ambition - it's trying to do too many things at once, which results in both its most striking successes and its most obvious failures.

But this very unevenness is what gives the novel its characteristic energy. It is being ambitious, messy, profound, silly, visionary, and dated all at once. You get the sense of a writer stretching beyond his capabilities, reaching for something he can glimpse but not quite grasp. The failures become almost as interesting as the successes in this context.

Another way the novel feels dated is its handling of gender roles and authority. While Heinlein includes strong female characters throughout the story, it's striking how none of them are really in charge of anything the way the men are. The positions of genuine authority and leadership are consistently male-occupied territory.

Jubal is the wise patriarch whose home becomes the sanctuary. He's the writer, lawyer, and intellectual authority whose opinions shape much of the novel's philosophical discourse. Ben is the journalist who helps manage Mike's public image and legal affairs. Mike himself becomes the spiritual leader and founder of the Church of All Worlds. All the politicians, religious leaders, and business tycoons are exclusively male.

Meanwhile, Jill, Dawn, Anne, and the other female charcaters are intelligent, resourceful, and capable, but always operating within structures created and controlled by men. They serve as nurses, secretaries, assistants, and eventually as priestesses in Mike's church, but never as the primary architects of their social world. Their power, while real, is always exercised within parameters established by men.

This asymmetry is particularly noticeable in the novel's sexual politics. For all its revolutionary approaches to polyamory and relationship structures, the underlying pattern remains unmistakably patriarchal. The "nests" that develop in Mike's church feature men at their centers, with women arranged around them. It's a vision of sexual liberation that's simultaneously radical and deeply traditional - breaking taboos while reinforcing gender hierarchies.

What makes this particularly interesting is that Heinlein clearly believed he was writing progressive, liberated female characters. By the standards of 1961 science fiction, perhaps he was. But from a contemporary perspective, the limitations become obvious. These women have freedom and agency within a system they didn't design and don't control. They can choose which rules to follow or break, but they don't get to write the rules.

This imagines radical transformations in human sexuality and spirituality while leaving underlying power structures largely intact. Like so much else in Stranger In A Strange Land, its gender politics are both revolutionary and reactionary, forward-thinking and firmly rooted in the assumptions of its time.

Rereading Stranger In A Strange Land decades after its publication reveals a complex literary artifact that both succeeds and fails in different ways. As I have shown, parts of it feel dated and regressive, while others remain thought-provoking and even prescient. It's not a “great” novel in the literary sense, but it is a big one. It tried something bold, and in many ways, it succeeded.

Despite the limitations of its literary craftsmanship, the novel's enduring value lies its ambitious exploration of profound questions about consciousness, divinity, sexuality, and the nature of understanding. It attempts to imagine radically different ways of perceiving reality, creating a fictional framework that challenges readers to expand their own concepts of consciousness and connection.

I realized as I read it this time that Heinlein frames Mike's sacrifice is a form of Martian “art.” Previously, I did not grok this its fullness, to borrow from the novel (haha). But it is an important distinction, revealing much about Martian culture. Perhaps surprisingly, Stranger In A Strange Land remains an experimental meditation on three subjects that move humanity most: religion, political power and sex (not necessarily in that order).

In this way, despite its obviously dated nature and other flaws, the novel remains worthy because of its willingness to reach beyond conventional thinking and imagine radically different ways of being human in various ways that fascinate humans most (the nature of art is thrown in the mix too). It invites readers to grok rather than merely understand. To join with with its radical ideas rather than simply analyze them from a distance. In doing so, it fulfills the Martian artistic ideal of bridging the gap between what we know and what we might become.

Note: Read my review of Heinlein's Time Enough For Love here.

(Assisted by ChatGPT and Claude.)