Celestine Prophecy

Celestine Prophecy

By James Redfield

I circled back to read this book with two intentions.  First was to refresh its powerful message in my mind. Second was to write a review and share it on Cigar Room of Books. 

This book takes a ‘new age’ spin on Christ’s message.  It talks about a higher level of consciousness as a function of the energy in thought.  It touches on subjects that for some reason science backs away from.  I honestly do not  know if they back away in fear, or they refute it in the name of ignorance.  Perhaps they can explain all these mysteries away.  The fundamental concept is that people are energy; molecules housed as one collection in a body.  This is science.  So if energy takes the form of vibrating molecules: can the by product of those molecules the brain, thought, actually control the molecules.  Psycho-cybernetics.

From the book I provide the following excerpt. “When humans begin to raise their vibrations to a level where others cannot see them….it will signal that we are crossing the barrier between this life and the other world from which we came and to which we go after death.  This conscious crossing over is the path shown by the Christ.  He opened up to the energy until he was so light he could walk on water.  He transcended death right here.”  Now there is a lot of dialogue that leads up to this excerpt that would help the reader more fully appreciate the words herein.  Still yet it is indeed quite a leap in what…faith.  So my question still stands to the Neigh Sayers of science:  does not science require faith in their own study of the unknown?

The book itself is an adventure novel in pursuit of Insights across the countryside of Peru.  In my mind as an adventure writer Redfield is a little weak.  What keeps the reader going is to read what he exposes as the Insights them selves.  To that I provide a summary, an excerpt from the book for those who somehow cannot find time for reading any book, let alone this one. 

“I was alert to the mysterious way my life evolved, as revealed by the First Insight.  I knew that the whole culture was sensing this mystery again as well, and we were in the process of constructing a new world view, as pointed out by the Second. The Third and Fourth had showed me that the universe was in reality a vast system of energy and that human conflict was a shortage of and a manipulation of this energy. The Fifth Insight revealed that we could end this conflict by receiving and inpouring of this energy from a higher source. For me, this ability had almost become habit.  The Sixth, that we could clear our old repeated dramas, and find our true selves, was also permanently etched in my mind.  And the seventh has set in motion the evolution of these true selves: through question, intuition of what to do, and answer.  Staying in this magic flow was truly the secret of happiness. And the Eight Insight, knowing how to relate in a new way to others, bringing out in them the very best, was the key to keeping the mystery operating and the answers coming. All the Insights have integrated into a consciousness that felt like a heightened sense of alertness and expectation.  What was left, I knew was the Ninth, which revealed where our evolution was taking us.  We had discovered some of it.  But what about the rest?  ‘

The rest is covered in a few more books by Redfield and many other authors.  But the bottom line is let the energy our thoughts connect with the universe.  In that connection you will find man-kind as One.  Once again John Lennon’s song Imagine fills my day.  If you don’t read start your day with his song.

Bibliography: 

Page 5:  The transformation is beginning with the First Insight, and according to the priests, this insight always surfaces unconsciously at first, as a profound sense of restlessness.

Page 5:  He said that when both partners in a relationship are overly demanding, when each expects the other to live in his or her world, to always be there to join in his or her chosen activities and ego battle inevitably developers.

Page 6:  First Insight occurs when we become conscious of the coincidences in our lives.

Page 7:  More people every day are convinced that this mysterious movement is real and that it means something, which something else is going on beneath everyday life.  This awareness is the First Insight.

Page 8:  When a sufficient number of individuals seriously question what’s going on in life, we will begin to find out.  The other Insights will be revealed…one after another.

Page 9:  He felt strongly that church leaders would see this fact if they would try to see life as a mystery again and then proceed through the other insights.

Page 11:  At the time I felt full of new ideas and was departing for my home town to work with severely abused children.  I thought I knew how such children could transcend the intense reactions, the obsessive acting out, that kept them from going on with their lives.

Page 19:  I guess the First Insight is an awareness of the mysterious changes that change one’s life, the feeling that some other process is operating.

Page 20:  History is supposed to provide a knowledge of the longer context within which our lives take place.  History is not just the evolution of technology; its the evolution of thought.

Page 22:  The first thing you must understand is that the reality of this time is being defined by the powerful churchmen of the Christian Church.  Because of their position, these men hold great influence over the minds of the populace.

Page 22:  But regardless of which class you’re in, the particular work that you do, you soon realize that social position is secondary to the spiritual reality of life as defined by the churchmen…God has placed mankind at the center of his universe, surrounded by the entire cosmos, for one solitary purpose:  to win or lose salvation.  And in this trial you must correctly choose between to opposing forces: the force of God to the lurking temptations of the devil.

Page 26:  We totally lost ourselves in creating a secular security, to replace the spiritual one we had lost.  The question of why we are alive, of what was actually going on here spiritually, was slowly pushed aside and repressed altogether.

Page 36:  It just happens.  It wouldn’t work for me to just tell you.  You might have the information about each of them but you wouldn’t have the insights. You have to discover them in the course of your own life.

Page 42:  In other words, the basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe – as though our expectation itself causes energy to flow out into  the world and effect other energy systems.  Which of course is exactly what the Third Insight would leave us to believe.

Page 44: The perception of beauty is a kind of barometer telling each of us how close we are to actually perceiving energy.  This is clear because once you observe this energy; you realize it’s on the same continuum as beauty.  The very next level of perception is to see an energy field hovering about everything.

Page 54  Oh, I couldn’t see fields that large at first either, he said I had to start by looking at my fingers….Lean back and touch the tips of your fingers together.  Keep the blue sky in the background.  Now separate the tips an inch and look at the area directly between them….take your eyes out of focus a little and move the tips closer, then further apart.

Page 59: Yes, think of the events of your life.  The old Newtonian idea is that everything happens by chance, that one can make good decisions and be prepared, but that every event has its own line of causation independent of our attitude.

Page 63:  Third Insight elaborated on the nature of beauty, describing this perception as the one through which humans would eventually learn to observe energy fields.  Once this occurred, it said then our understanding of the physical universe would quickly transform.

Page 65:  It is said that eventually humans would see the universe as comprised of one dynamic energy, an energy that can sustain us and respond to our expectations.  Yet we would also see that we have been disconnected from the larger source of this energy, that we have cut ourselves off and so have felt weak and insecure and lacking. 

Page 70:  We have always known that this violence comes from the urge humans feel to control and dominate each other, but only recently have we studied this phenomenon from the inside, from the point of view of the individual’s consciousness.  We have asked what happens inside human beings that makes him want to control someone else.  We have found that when an individual walks up to another person and engages in a conversation, which happens billions of times each day in the world, one of two things happen.  That individual can come away feeling strong oe feeling weak, depending on what occurs in the interaction.  For this reason we humans always seem to take a manipulative posture.

Page 71: In other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we’re trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically.  This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and at the level of nations.

Page 72:  In fact, this same trauma no doubt happened to her parents before her.  They have to dominate now because of the way their parents dominated them.  That’s the means through which psychological violence is passed down from one generation to another.

  Page 75:  The movement of this energy, if we can systematically observe it, is a way to understand what humans are receiving and when we compete and argue and harm each other.  When we control another human being we receive their energy. We fill up at the other’s expense and the filling up is what motivates us. 

Page 76:  That we humans, although we are unconscious of it, have the tendency to control and dominate each others energy.  We want to win that energy that exists between people.  It builds us up somehow, makes us feel better.

Page 87:  All this is still unconscious in most people.  All we know is that we feel weak and when we control others we feel better.  What we don’t realize is that this sense of feeling better costs the other person.  It is their energy that we have stolen.  Most people go through their lives in constant hunt for someone else’s energy.

Page 89:  The Third Insight showed you that the physical world is actually a vast system of energy.  And now the Fourth Insight points out that for a long time we humans have been unconsciously competing for the only part of this energy we have been open to:  the part that flows between people.  This is what human conflict in families and employment settings to wars between nations.  It’s result of feeling insecure and weak and having to steal someone’s energy to feel okay.

Page 97:  For the first time in my life, I knew the eart’s roundness not as an intellectual concept but as an actual sensation.

Page 98:   The realization was present that my life did not, in fact, begin with my conception and birth on this planet.  It began much earlier with the formation of the rest of me, my real body, the universe itself.

Page 99:  Mater was only energy vibrating at a certain level, and in the beginning matter existed only in its simplest vibratory form:  the element we call hydrogen.   That’s all there was in the universe, just hydrogen.

Page 106:  So the problem is that everyone is trying to control and manipulate each other for energy, because we feel short of it.

Page 112:  I thought for a minute.  What was the feeling??  Then it came to me.  “Love” I said”I guess I felt a love for everything”…”Your do not make yourself love”  he said.  “You allow love to enter you.”

Page 117:  “Yeah, I said.  “You allow love to enter you. But to do this you must position your mind by remembering what it felt like and try to feel it again.

Page 119 “Think of how the Insights fall into sequence,’ he said, “The First Insight occurs when we take the coincidences seriously.  These coincidences make us feel there is something more something spiritual, operating underneath everything we do.

The Second Insight instates our awareness as something is real.  We can see that we have been preoccupied with material survival, with focusing on controlling our situation in the universe for security, and we know our openness now represents a kind of waking up to what is really going on.

“the Third Insight begins a new view of life.  It defines the physical universe as one of pure energy, an energy that somehow responds to how we think.

And the Fourth exposes the human tendency to steal energy from other humans by controlling them, taking over their minds, a crime in which we engage because we so often feel depleted of energy, and cut off.  This shortage of energy can be remedied, of course, when we connect with higher source.  The universe can provide all we need if we can only open up to it.  That is the revelation of the Fifth Insight.

Page 121:  The key to letting it go is to bring it fully into consciousness, and we do that by seeing that our particular style of controlling others is one we learned in childhood to get attention, to get the energy moving our way, and we’re stuck there.  This style is something we repeat over and over again.  I call it our unconscious control drama.

Page 126:  The first step in the process of getting clear, for each of us, it to bring our particular control drama into full consciousness.  Nothing can proceed until we really look at ourselves and discover what we are doing.

It is always in relation to our family members that we develop our particular dramas.

Each person must interpret his family experience from an evolutionary point of view, from a spiritual point of view, and discover who he really is.  Once we do that, our control drama falls away and our real lives takes off.

    .

Page 131:  Once we see our drama we are truly free to become more than the unconscious act we play.  As I said before we can find a higher meaning for our lives, the spiritual reason we were born to our particular families.  We can begin to get clear about who we really are.

Page 138:  To discover real self, you must admit that the real you began in a position between their [your parents]truths.  That’s why you were born there: to take a higher perspective on what they stood for. Your path is about discovering a truth that is s  higher synthesis of what these two people believed.

Page 146:  You are here because this is where you need to be to continue the evolution.  Your whole life has been a long road leading directly to this moment.

When you fully integrate this view in your life, you will have achieved what the Manuscript calls a clear awareness of your spiritual path.  According to the Manuscript we al must spend as much time as necessary going through this process of clearing your past.

Page 153:  Love is not an intellectual concept or a moral imperative or anything else.  It is a background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available in the universe, which of course is the energy of God.

Page 154:  First I said, you build sufficient energy, then you remember your basic life question – the one your parents gave you – because this question provides the overall context of your evolution.  Next you center yourself on your path by discovering the immediate, smaller questions that currently confront you n life.  These questions always pertain to your larger question and define where you currently, are in your lifelong quest.

Then the next step is to become very alert and watchful.  Sooner or later coincidences will occur to move you in the direction indicated by intuition.

Page 156:  The seventh Insight deals with the process of consciously evolving yourself, of staying alert to every coincidence, every answer the universe provides you…it talks about the way objects jump out at us, the way certain thoughts come as guidance….the Eight Insight, you will find it yourself when the time is right.  It explains how we can aid others as they bring us the answers we seek.  And it describes a whole new ethic governing the way humans should treat each other in order to facilitate everyone’s evolution.

Page 164:  The Seventh Insight says to compare the story of the dream to the story of your life.

Page 169:  The Seventh Insight says that fear images should be halted as soon as they come.  Then another image, one with a good outcome, should be willed through the mind.  Soon negative images will almost never happen.  Your intuitions will be about positive things. When negative images come after that, the Manuscript says they should be taken seriously, and not followed.

Page 174:  Your body is vibrating at a certain level.  If you let your energy get too low your body suffers.  That is the relationship between stress and disease. Love is the way we keep our vibration up.  It keeps us healthy.  It is that important.  …  And how do we engage this process?  I thought for a moment, “By keeping our current life questions firmly in mind, “ I said.  “And then watching for direction, either in a dream or in an intuitive thought or in a way the environment illuminates and jumps out at us.”

Page 178:  The Eighth Insight is next for you.  It is about an Interpersonal Ethic, a way of treating other people so more messages are shared

Page 179:  The Eighth Insights warns against….your growth being stopped…It happens when you become addicted to another person.

Page 184:  Yes, it is about how humans will eventually learn to relate to each other, and talks of many things, such as how to project energy to others and how to avoid addictions to other people. The Eight Insight is about using energy in a new way when relating to people in general, but it begins at the beginning, with children.

Page 191: When love first happens, the two individuals are giving each other energy unconsciously and both people feel buoyant and elated.  That’s the incredible high we call being in love.  Unfortunately, once they expect this feeling to come from the other person, they cut themselves off from the energy in the universe and begin to rely even more on the energy from each other – only now there doesn’t seem to be enough and so they stop giving each other energy and fall back in to their dramas in an attempt to control each other and force the other’s energy their way.  At this point the relationship degenerates in to the usual power struggle.

Page 194:  Oh we can still have romance…but first we have to complete the circle on our own.  We have to stabilize our channel with the universe.  That takes time, but afterward we are never susceptible to this problem again and we can have what the Manuscript calls higher-relationship.  When we connect romantically with another whole person after that, we create a super-person…but it never pulls us from the path of our individual evolution.

Page 195:  By Understanding whose these opposite sexed friends really are on the inside, one breaks past own’s on fantasy projection about gender, and that releases us co connect again with the universe.

Page 199:  That’s right…we have and we were doing it consciously, following the Eight Insight.  By lifting you up and helping you to get clear, we could search for truth, the message, that you had for us.  Do you understand that?  Energizing you was the best thing we could do for ourselves.

Page 201  The more we can love and appreciate others, the more energy flows into us.  That’s why loving and energizing others is the best possible thing we can do for ourselves

Because you are giving me more energy than I would otherwise have, I can see what my truth is and more readily give it to you.  When I do that, you have a sense of revelation about what I am saying.  This leads you to see my higher self even more fully to appreciate and focus on it at a deeper level, which gives me more energy and greater insight in my truth and the cycle begins over again  Two or more people doing this together can reach incredible highs as they build one another up and have it immediately returned.  You must understand, thought, that this connection is completely different from co-dependent a relationship.

Page 207:  The universe is energy, energy that responds to out expectations.  People are part of that energy universe too, so when we have a question, the people show up who have the answer.

Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us.  Otherwise they would have take another path, or left earlier or later.  The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason.

Page 208:  Thought groups are usually evolving along the same lines of interest.  They think the same and that creates the same expression and outward experience.  We intuitively recognize members of out thought group and very often they provide messages for us.

Page 209When you are appreciating someone at a deep level, you can see their most honest self beyond any facades they may put up.  When you really focus at this level, you can perceive what someone is thinking as a subtle expression on their face.

Page 215:  the idea is for every member’s energy and vibration to increase because of the energy sent by all of the others.  When this occurs, everyone’s individual energy field merges with everyone else’s and makes one pool of energy

Page 222:  The Ninth Insight explains how human culture will change in the nex millennium as a result of conscious evolution.

Page 223:  No one will consume excessively because we will have let go of the need to possess and to control for security.  In the next millennium, life will have become about something else.

Page 224:  The Ninth Insight says the overall culture will transform in a very predictable way….the energy dynamics of the universe, we will see what really happens when we give someone something. Right now the only spiritual idea about giving is the narrow concept of religious tithing.  The Ninth Insight says that once we begin to give constantly, we will always have more coming than we could possibly give away.  “And our gifts… should go to the persons who have given us spiritual truth.  When people come into our lives at just the right time to give is answers we need, we should give them money…As more people engage in spiritual economy we will begin a real shift into the culture of the next millennium.

Page 227:  Paying others for their insights will begin the transformation and then as more and more parts of the economy are automated, currency will disappear altogether.  We won’t need it.  If we are correctly following our intuitive guidance then we will take only what we need.

Page 229:  I was alert to the mysterious way my life evolved, as revealed by the First Insight.  I knew that the whole culture was sensing this mystery again as well, and we were in the process of constructing a new world view, as pointed out by the Second. The Third and Fourth had showed me that the universe was in reality a vast system of energy and that human conflict was a shortage of and a manipulation of this energy.

The Fifth Insight revealed that we could end this conflict by receiving and inpouring of this energy from a higher source. For me, this ability had almost become habit.  The Sixth, that we could clear our old repeated dramas, and find our true selves, was also permanently etched in my mind.  And the seventh has set in motion the evolution of these true selves: through question, intuition of what to do, and answer.  Staying in this magic flow was truly the secret of happiness.

And the Eight Insight, knowing how to relate in a new way to others, bringing out in them the very best, was the key to keeping the mystery operating and the answers coming.

All the Insights has integrated into a consciousness that felt like a heightened sense of alertness and expectation.  What was left, I knew was the Ninth, which revealed where our evolution was taking us.  We had discovered some of it.  But what about the rest?

Page 235:  This document makes it sound as though humans are in control, as though we are in charge in the world.  We are not.  God is.  The only issue humans face is weather to accept the scriptural teachings and thereby win salvation.

My Note:  This is the argument religion poses to all the insights:  And it may be true if the church’s interpretation of the scripture were virtuous.

Page 236:  Yes I fought against evolution as a replacement for God, as a way to explain the universe without reference to God.  But now I see the truth is a synthesis of scientific and religious world views.  The truth is that evolution is the way God created, and still is creating.

And isn’t that receptivity to God’s energy within what culminated in the life of a carpenter’s son, the extent that we say God, himself, descended to Earth?

Page 239:  The Manuscript says that sometime in history one individual would grasp the exact way of connecting with God’s source of energy and direction and would thus become a lasting example of this connection is possible.  Sanchez looked at me/  “ Isn’t that what Jesus really did?  Didn’t he increase his energy and vibration until he was light enough to ….?  Sanchez ended his sentence without finishing it and seemed to be in deep thought.

Page 240:  The Ninth Insight reveals our ultimate destiny….It makes is all crystal clear.  It reiterates that as humans, we are the culmination of the whole evolution. 

Now we can increase our energy and experience the coincidences consciously.

Page 241: Once they [those people of higher conscience] reach a certain level [of vibration]  will suddenly become invisible to those  who are still vibrating at a lower level.  It will appear to the people on this lower level that the others just disappeared, but the group themselves will feel as though they are still right there – only they will feel lighter.

When humans begin to raise their vibrations to a level where others cannot see them….it will signal that we are crossing the barrier between this life and the other world from which we came and to which we go after death.  This conscious crossing over is the path shown by the Christ.  He opened up to the energy until he was so light he could walk on water.  He transcended death right here on Earth, a miracle, and was the first to cross over, to expand the physical world into spiritual.

The Argumentative Indian

The Argumentative Indian
by Amartya Sen

Is mankind free to speak his mind? Does differing opinion add value to civilized society? The argument begins millennia ago with creation. It finds only argument on these questions with no real value placed on either side. Oddly enough at the root of much of the debate is religion where the same balance goes with the need or not, to subscribe to any religious orthodoxy; hence heterodoxy best describes the Argumentative Indian. By page four I found argument with Sen. Having read the Bhagavad-Gita I came away with a different scenario on allegorical portrayal of a principle. That of non attachment to the physical world is central to the Gita, I was impressed that it was Arjuna making the argument for fate. It was Krishna doubting the reason for war. It was Arjuna rationalizing on the separation of body and soul, making material outcomes not important. Oddly enough My argument is only technical in merit an so, why should I argue. None the less, surely I the reader must make way to the well studied author; a modest degree of skepticism shadowed my reading of this book. When you think of it do not skepticism and argument find them selves bookends to leaves of theories put to the test of debate.

Basically the book is a collection of essays that Sen has written over the course of his career as an author, amongst many other accomplishments, including a Nobel Prize. His main thrust is that giving man the power to freely debate his views is the reason for hope in a future for man kind. He makes clear that fertile ground for debate is democracy. The reader becomes keenly aware that India is now the world’s largest democracy. To make sure the reader appreciates this Sen demonstrates that democracy is intimately connected with public discussion and interactive reasoning where Indian history is rich with evidence. Lesson learned; traditions of public discussion exist across the world, not just in the West. And to the extent that such a tradition can be drawn on, democracy is easier to institute and also to preserve. As I read through this book I was always looking for a that evidence supporting a general theme and characteristic in Sen’s argument. Upon entering my last foot note I landed on it. This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.

Hinduvta having roots in Hindu is a recent movement, relatively speaking, in what appears to be an effort to attach a religious identity to India. Accidentally or on purpose, Hindu’s characteristics in doctrine are one that brings unity to people by accepting all walks of life. Hinduvta is actually a heterodoxy faith and the root of Indian Democracy. To qualify Sen’s views one must appreciate that he is Bengali, a culture with strong Muslim influence. Yet he himself is a secularist with acceptance of all and at the same time no real attachment to any religion. Ironically, a prime tenant of Hindu is non attachment. The aforementioned makes Hindi a religion different from the major religions, yet it does practice a belief in one god.

Sen makes a lengthy argument against the Hindutva movement basically because of his secular orientation. He advocates heterodoxy separate from a Hindu policy which seems to me superfluous. Why argue about things that don’t need argument. I wrap with one anecdotal question on this. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the Indian government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state here in the United States. As a secularist and in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali he makes a strong argument that Hindu is not a religion of the same unity as Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions not just their own. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindutva is the solution to found a multi-religious state around Hindi doctrine. Sen speaks to the secular Carvaka system and went further and suggested the need for methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or indirectly from perception. I suggest he take that same approach in his argument with the Hinduvta movement. I could say in a with all due respect yet as an American, what is his beef?

Enfolded within Sen’s argument he uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence foisted on the people by some policy of the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see through the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony over the individual States of our Republic. Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona and his deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of much the same maneuvering in the 1930s. History will remember Obama the same way. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936, In America the protests may be of agitated spirit but rarely of violent nature to the degree found in India. I can only suspect that as economics improve, India’s people will be become less desperate and therefore less violent towards one another. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sen’s concern. The safeguard both governments have is term limits in power.

With regard to India’s culture front through literature Sen first talks on the author, lecturer and educator, Tagore in an essay aimed and literature in India. with it's influence on diversity. He follows with an essay on Satyajit Ray and the film industry's influence on India. The theme of Tagore is mostly introspective. Ray drives home the notion of India's cosmopolitan nature; one that while embracing Asian borne diversity, there is not much that convinces me on the reception of this in the Western ways. While received thru force, I am not convinced Western culture runs very deep in India. In saying this I am also suspect that India does not require Western culture. In fact they may receive it but like two year olds playing next to each other, it is not essential to share their toys to have a relationship. Hence a deep India-Western relationship may be rare for a reason. And then when I read about the abject indifference the wealthy have on their surrounding poor, I suspect perhaps there is some common ground in capitalistic democracy. Ironically right after I made this note, Sen deals with this under the headings of External Sources and Modernity, The Elusive 'Asian Values'. He answers it directly in his concluding paragraph under the section title Ours and Theirs: The essences of his conclusion that so much parallel the ideology of the United States :

The difficulties of communication across cultures are real, as are the judgmental issues raised by the importance of cultural differences. But these recognitions do not lead us to accept the standard distinctions between ‘our culture” and ‘their culture’. Nor do they give us cause to overlook the demands of practical reason and of political and social relevance in contemporary India, in favor of faithfulness so alleged historical contrasts….

The celebration of these differences – the ‘dizzying contrasts’ – is far from what can be found in the labored generalizations about ‘our culture’ and the vigorous pleas, increasingly vocal, to keep ‘our culture’, ‘our modernity’ distinctly unique and immune from the influence of ‘their culture’, ‘their modernity’. In our heterogeneity and in our openness lies our pride, not our disgrace. Satyajit Ray taught us this, and that lesson is profoundly important to India. And for Asia and for the world.


Sen illustrates many cases in Indian literary history in making the argument that public discussion (argument) is a tradition much older in India than the West. At high level we are familiar with the phrase, “never talk religion and politics in family discussion”. Well think of a people that transitioned from Buddhism to Hindu, while mixing in home grown Jainism and Sihk and importing Islam, Christianity, Judaism and a few others all having equal distance from the government. And Sen is careful to distinguish the ideas of “equal distant from religion” from “separation of church and State” Just the analysis of the two phrases suggest India’s diverse religious beginnings where even in conquest, the conquerors adopted or embraced the religions of the conquered. These are described in events centuries before America’s rooted in a Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman foundation. Sens key word through the book is heterodoxy: the inclusion of religion as opposed to the separation from religion

Sen delves into the popular subjects on India such as Class, India’s international positioning, and calendars. I have captured the high points in the notes section of this review. What I most appreciated were Sens views on the subject of Reason. After three hundred or so pages of reading his rationale, brought forth in an ‘argumentative setting’, Sen comes out with his views on Reason. Sen attempts to excuse those who cling to Cast by saying: “Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.” He adds “Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others. To this I say: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy? To Sen’s credit his agreement is seemingly balanced in the end, so much so that if there is a point to be made, it is obscured by the balance beam of justice leaving lady justice so blind that a way forward becomes something that you must feel for.

This book will certainly add to ones ability the appreciation for eloquent argument. It grapples with many difficult topics. And in the end Sen leaves it open for argument. If you want to survive a cocktail party and be well recognized as being well versed in controversy this book is worth your time. India has yet to master, though may be on the verge of it, an Indian-ness of democracy that could one day master the world. As debate would have it, the jury is still out. However I believe that on Sen’s ring of keys, one of them is the master key to success. The key is placing it in the correct box. So there are two options accept argument as essential to agreement or if your are not up to the argument, find some value in perspective and simply say to another’s opinion….aaaahhh I see.



Notes:

Page 16 Ashoka tried to codify and propagate what must have been the
earliest formulations of rules for public discussion- a kind of ancient
version of the nineteenth century 'Roberts Rules E
of Order'....Even when in arguing 'other sects should be duly honored
in every way on all occasions'

Page 26: the Carvaka system went further and suggested the need for
methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or in
directly from perception.

My comment: this can only be made from the assumption that non
interactive minds are just that, virtually dead and un able to draw
from that kernel that produces judgment. When judgment is based on
the survival of the body one direction is taken in the assembly of
knowledge. If one can transcend the body, at least in thought, a
different perception allows of a different assembly of knowledge.
Hence the need for Carvaka skepticism to be rooted in the original and
possibly "born again" thought. The key is transcending the paradigm
of time being a linier phenomena to one where time is vertical.

Page 27: Buddhaghosa, a Buddist philosopher in fifth- century India,
thought that even though Lokayata can literally interpreted as the
discipline that bases knowledge only on the “material world", it
could perhaps be better described as the 'discipline of arguments and
disputes'. In this respect, the rationale of the Lokayata approach is
quite close to the methodological that Francis Bacon would make with
compelling clarity in 1605 in his treaties The Advancement of Learning

My comment: India was 1100 years ahead of the west.

In the chapter India Large and Small, Sen makes numerous arguement
against the notion that India is not a Hindu country. He diluted the
over all 4/5 Hindu majority using a series of sub classifications. Then he challenged history to site Buddhism as the first religion of India. He attempts to make a case that Hindi and Islam share equally in India's history. As he defends Islam he becomes much like the inverse of what he accuses the Hindutva of; rewriting history to make his argument. I find this fare play, given the title of the book. In his argument on the Muslim population he uses a comparison of Muslim India to countries out side India. I find this delusionary on statistical basis due to the fact that India is One Billion people. When you pro-rate one country the other India is still 4/5 Hinduism. Sen's conclusion makes the argument that while Hindu is 4/5 that even Hindu doctrine promotes doubt and skepticism as a means to heterodoxy or more-so Sen, being non-aligned with any religion, would promote non-religious secularism. In contrasting America's "separation of church and state" doctrine where the concept of exclusion prevails to the idea of inclusion through heterodoxy; I find strong agreement to the positive spirit of inclusion.

Sen begins the book two by contrasting Tagore and Gandhi. And Tagore's view on Nationalism and Colonialism

Page 40: The features of India’s unity vary greatly with the context. Some of them are more often recollected than others, though they all have their specific relevance. Consider, for example, the emergence, far less often discussed than it should be, the city Ujjain, in early centrist of the first millennium CE, as the location of the ‘principal meridian’ for Indian calendars, serving fro Indian astronomers as something like and Indian Greenwich. As discussed in Essay 15, it is still the base of Indian standard time today…

Page 44: Of course, it is impossible to foresee the future turn of event. In politics and history, perhaps in everything, that unknown power the ancients call Fate is always at work. Without forgetting this, I must add that, in politics as well as in private life, the surest method for resolving conflicts, however slowly, is dialogue.

Page 56 While the statistics of Hindu majority are indeed correct, the use of statistical argument for seeing India as a pre-eminently Hindu country is based on conceptual confusion: our religious is not our only identity, no necessarily the identity to which we attach the greatest importance.

My comment: this is clearly Sens opinion of which he finds much argument.

Page 69 Despite the veritable flood of religious practices in India, there is also resilient undercurrent of conviction across the country that religious beliefs, while personally significant, are socially unimportant and should politically in consequential. Ignoring the importance and reach – of this underlying conviction has the effect of systematic overestimating the role of religion in Indian society.

Page 70: It is important to understand the hold of the skeptical tradition in India, despite the manifest presence of religions all across the country. In responding to the exploitation of religious demography in the politics of Hindutva, the defenders of secular politics of the take for granted the Indian population would wan religious politics in one form or another.

Page 71: Rabindaranath Tagore thought that the idea of ‘Indian’ itself militates ‘against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others’

Page 93: Given the vast range of his creative achievements, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the image of Tagore in the West is its narrowness; he is recurrently viewed as ‘the great mystic from the East.’ An image with putative message for the West, which some would welcome, others would still find deeply boring.

Page 104 The two remained deeply divided over their attitudes towards science. However, while Tagore believed that modern science was essential to understanding physical phenomena, his views on epistemology were in interestingly hetrodox. He did not take the simple ‘realist’ position often associated with modern science. The report of his conversation with Einstein, published in the New York Times in 1930, shows how insistent Tagore was on interpreting truth through observation and reflective concepts. To assert something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive truth, or to, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable…Truth said Tagore is realized through men.

Page 119: in India, Tagore wrote, 'circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world.'. There seems to me much more force I'm Rabindranath's argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a pre example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open minded way...

Rabindrabath insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation. The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything in to account.

Page 123: in the Vienna conference on human rights in 1993, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, citing differences between Asian and European traditions, argued that 'universal recognition of the ideal of human rights can be harmful if universalism is used to deny or mask the reality of my diversity

Page 124: There is I think, much wisdom in what we can call his ‘critical openness’, including the valuing of of a dynamic, adaptable world rather than one that is constantly ‘policing’ external influences and fearing ‘invasion” of ideas from elsewhere

Page 127: There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.

Page 131: The growing tendency in contemporary India to champion the need for indigenous culture that has ‘resisted’ external influences lacks credibility as well as cogency.

Page 132: Even in matters of day-to-day living, the fact that the chili, a basic ingredient of traditional Indian cooking, was brought to India by the Portuguese from the ‘new world’, does not make current Indian cooking any less Indian….

Given the cultural and intellectual interconnection, the question of what is Western and what is ‘Eastern’ (or Indian) is often hard to decide, and the issue can be discussed only in more dialectical terms. The diagnosis of a thought as purely ‘Western’ or purely Indian can be very illusory. The origin of ideas is no the kind of which ‘purity’ happens easily.

Page 144: Even though Alberuni’s was almost certainly the most impressive of these investigations, there are a great many examples of serious Arabic studies of Indian intellectual traditions around that time. Brahmagupta’s pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had first been translated into Arabic in the eighth century and several works on medicine, science and philosophy had an Arabic rendering by the ninth century.

Page 147: The invention of the decimal system with placed values and the placed use of zero, now used everywhere, as well as the so called Arabic numerals, are generally known to be Indian developments.

Page 150: Gandhi himself was severely attacked in [Mayo’s] book, but, given his campaign against caste and untouchability, he might have actually welcomed her exaggerations because of its usefully lurid portrayal of caste inequities. But while Gandhi may have been right to value external criticism as a way of inducing people to be self critical, the impact of the ‘magisterical approach’ certainly gives American perceptions of India a very clear slant.

Page 151: There are various other accounts of exotic Indian travels by ancient Greeks. The biography of Apollonius was, we are assured, richly rewarded in India: ‘I have seen men living upon earth and not upon it; defended without walls, having nothing, an yet possessing all things. How such contradictory things can be seen by the same person from the same observational position may not be obvious, but the bewitching charm of all this for the seeker of the exotic can hardly be doubted.

Page 195: While we must give credit where credit is due, Indian democracy has to be judged also by the strength and reach of public reasoning and its actual accomplishments.

Page 202: The remedy for many of eh central failures of Indian society is closely linked to broadening the force and range of political arguments and social demands.

Page 210: Class is neither the only concern, nor an adequate proxy for other forms of inequality, and yet we do need class analysis to see the working and reach of other forms of inequality and differentiation

Page 211: When I come to discuss the issue of what I call “friendly fire”, the role of such manifest concurrence in the lives of the extreme underdogs of society will become particularly relevant. Many of the distributional institutions that exist in India and elsewhere are designed to defend the interests of groups with some deprivation but who are not by any means the absolute underdogs of society. There is the understandable rationale for seeing them as “friendly fire” institutions in the battle of against class divisions. Yet they also have the effect of worsening the deal that the real underdogs get, at the bottom layers of society, the overall impact may be to strengthen class division rather than weaken them.

Page 213: In this context, it is particularly remarkable that India has continued to amass extraordinarily large stocks of food grain…the stocks substantially exceed one tonne of food grain for every family below the poverty line.

Page 217: Effective elementary education has in practice ceased to be free in substantial parts of the country, which of course is a violation of a basic right. All of this seems to be reinforced by a sharp class division between teachers and poorer families. Yet teachers unions – related to the respective parties – sometimes vie with each other in championing the immunity of teachers from discipline.

The Reach of Reason

Page 277: Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.

Page 278: Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others.

My comment: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy?

Page 279: Adam Smith argued that our ‘first perceptions’ of right and wrong ‘cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense of feeling’. But even these instinctive reactions to a particular conduct, he argued, rely – if only implicitly – on our reasoned understanding of casual connections between conduct and consequences in a vast majority on instances’. Furthermore, our first perceptions may also change in response to critical examination,….

My comment: Sen’s eloquent way of foisting both sides of an argument to cast a light on a solution.



Page 267: There might have been pleasure in official circles at the success of President Clinton’s visit to India and the asymmetrically favoured treatment he got in that visit vis-à-vis Pakistan, but the tendency to attribute that asymmetry to Indian nuclear adventure, rather than to India’s large size, democratic politics and its growing economy and technology, is difficult to understand.

Page 269: Strengthening of Pakistan’s stability and enhancement of its well-being has prudent importance for India, in addition to its obvious ethical significance. That central connection between moral and the prudential – must be urgently grasped.

Page 284; It is of course easy to find the advocacy of particular aspects of individual liberty in Western classical writings. For example, freedom and tolerance both get support from Aristotle (even though only for free men – not women and slaves). However, we can find championing of tolerance and freedom in non-Western authors as well. A good example is the emperor Ashoka in India, who during the third century BCE covered the country with inscriptions on stone tablets about good behavior and wise governance, including the demand for basic freedoms for all- indeed, he did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did…

Page 285: because of Western bias…Different cultures are thus interpreted in ways that reinforce the political conviction that Western civilization is somehow the main, perhaps the only, source of rationalistic and liberal ideas – among the analytical scrutiny, open debate, political tolerance and agreement to differ….

Once established, this view of the West, seen in confrontation with the rest, tends to vindicate itself. Since each civilization contains diverse elements, a non-Western civilization can then be characterized by referring to those tendencies that are most distant from the identified Western traditions and values. These selected elements are then taken to be more authentic or genuinely indigenous that the elements that are relatively similar to what can be found also in the West.

Page 289: When he died in 1605, the Islamic theologian Abdul Haq concluded with some satisfaction that, despite his innovations Akbar had remained a good Muslim. This was indeed so, but Akbar would have also that his religious beliefs came from his own reason and choice, not from blind faith, or from the marshy land of tradition.


My comment: Clearly in this passage Sen defines the traditional Muslim one lost in blind faith and thus you put credit to Ashoka’s good deed to Ashoka before you include Muslim foundation. Yet Sen makes numerous argument elsewhere painting the Muslim culture under Ashoka as part and parcel to the heterodoxy of India.

Secularism and Its Discontents

Page 295: Despite this broad and forceful challenge, secularist intellectuals in India tend to be somewhat reluctant to debate this rather unattractive subject. Reliance is placed instead, usually implicitly, on the well established and unquestioning tradition of seeing secularism as a good and solid political virtue for a pluralist democracy. As an unreformed secularist myself, I understand, and to some extent share, this reluctance, but also believe that addressing these criticisms is important.

Page 295: Secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of state from any particular religious order. This can be interpreted in at least two different ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them. The second – more severe – view insists that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion. The equidistance must take the form, then, of being altogether removed from each.

My comment: and here is the fundamental difference between India, adopting the former and the United States adopting the latter view.

Page 310: In fact, seeing Hinduism as a unified religion is a comparatively recent development. The term Hindu was traditionally used mainly as a signifier of location and country, rather than any homogeneous religious belief. The word derives from the river Indus or Sindu (the cradle of the Indus valley civilization which flourished from around 3000bce) and the name of that river is also the source of the word India itself. The Persians and the Greeks saw India as the land around and beyond the Indus and Hindus were the native people of that land.

Page 313: The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in India, demands ( as was discussed earlier) symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of the state. It is no tobvious why such symmetric treatment must somehow induce inescapable violence to achieve and sustain ideologies as the new opiates of the masses.


My comment: thru much of the book Sen makes a continuous argument against the Hindutva movement. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state. As a secularist that Sen is in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali (largely Muslim oriented) on page 310 he makes a strong argument Hindu is not a religion of the same Unity as Muslims and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindu is the solution to found a multi-religious state.

On page 313 Sen uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence imposed on the people by the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see from the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony
over the individual States of our Republic. Our President Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona, and his recent deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sens concern.



Page 322. My comment: Thru the book and fro other sources of read that Kerala is
one of the more socially advanced States of India. I read on page 322 that Jews fled to Kerala at the fall of Jerusalem. Kerala uses the Judaic Calendar, suggesting a parallel between today's Palestine and Kerala. I find just a thread of a clue. But perhaps the thread is worth testing it's strength in validity. The first question I would ask is why is it that Jews and Kerala’ians live side by side, but Palestinians cannot do the same?

Page 331: Buddhist, Jain, Judaic, Christain, Parsee – were already flourishing in India, along with Hindu calendars, when the Muslim conquest of the north led to influence of the Hijri calendar. Islam’s arrival further enriched the religious – and calendrical diversity of India.



On page 339: It is in particular, important to distinguish between the inclusionary role identity and exclusionary force of separatism. To want to do something in the interest of a country is not the same thing as wanting the country to be distanced from the rest of the world, or to be isolated from it. The sense of identity leaves the issue of appropriate actions and policies entirely open to scrutiny and choice. This applies to science and technology on the one hand and to economic, social and cultural relations on the other. India’s relations with the world may demand significant use of Indianan identity, but they also call for critical scrutiny of specific ends and particular ways and means through which those relations may be appropriately advanced. Since identity politics and communitarian reasoning often have the effect of nurturing and promoting separatism, the distinction is important to seize.

My comment: This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.

Complimentary books:

Mahabharata
Bhagavad Gita
Four Quartets, Elliot
India After Ghandi
Ramayana

Salammbo

Salammbo
By Gustave Flaubert

Opined synopsis:

Carthage the alternative ancient history told in narrative novel fiction format by a 19th century classic author from France. In closing this book on the final page the knowing reader can draw distinct parallels of “world conflict” between the world of “then” which was merely confined to a flat world of classic western civilization and more narrowly the Mediterranean Sea of ancient times and those of the same place slow forwarded to WWII. Is time merely an illusion where place sees the same thing over and over? Mythical Salammbo is laced with the horrors of battle as was WWII. Those horrors encompass not just the soldiers, but the civilians as well. I am amazed at how little has evolved in the human spirit from ancient times to at least the 20th century. In the year 2011 I hold out hope with little to go on.

Amazingly enough the book is clearly Carthage centric yet takes a seemingly world view, to the extent that the reader becomes aware that other Mediterranean powers form allegiances to either the side of the Barbarians or the side of the Carthaginians with much the same rationale as you find in today’s world powers. The book does not elaborate, but the reader’s conscience is piqued to the notion that Western Civilization is not dominated by solely Rome or Greece, and perhaps there was a “Richelieu” notion of balance of power long before the 16th century France and even before the collapse of the Roman Empire. Keep in mind that while modern man feels the effects of the Roman civilization, this book makes it apparent that the Romans inherited the effects of civilization from the likes of their predecessors in the likes of Carthage. It sheds light on what some cal the Dark Ages. Flaubert, leaves only hints of these notions as his narrative is grossly lost in the horrors of a three year war.

There is also a foggy popular notion that religion is at the root of all war. The book’s main thrust from its title and prime subject, though not necessarily the leading actor, does not come out until the very last sentence. In that sentence you find not religion as the cause of war, but the spirit of man. It is only then that the reader pauses to think. Flaubert, primes the thought, but leaves the examination of its merits to the reader.

To the book itself:

Characters of prime concern are Salambo and Mathos, protagonists among the Carthiginians; a people who were forced by the harsh realities of war to offer their first born sons as a sacrifice to the Tanith, a mythical Carthaginian lunar goddess of the Phoenician pantheon. Salambo was a cherished daughter of the prime mover of Carthiginian wealth, Hamilcar Barca, the Suffet. Matho was the representative of the practical man filled with lust and contempt. He was one of the leaders of the bloody war waged on Carthrage by a people that were denied the physical comforts of a life that belonged to the Carthiginians. You could equate this to the Palestinians and the Jews in the book Son of Hamas. Within Matho’s curiosity for the power of the ziamph also lay the lustful love for Salammbo. In this vexing angst Flaubert speaks to the nature of man to want that which is not his.

As the story unfolds the Zaimph, the prize in the apparent real world, was the veil between the physical world and the truth found in the mythology of humanity. Its Owner Salammbo loses it to a thief Matho. In the story the zaimph represents the thin veil between good and evil within all of us as illustrated in character description of Carthiganians –v- Barbarians.

In the Course of Salammbo’s retrieval of the ziamph which gave mystical power to its owner, she actually saw the other side; Mathos as a genuine and fully justified existence. She made love to it, not strictly with Mathos in a physical state but the essence of his whole being, and saw in its eyes, the same passions of humanity as within herself. Yet she fought it, despised it, and allowed that angst to impede any prospect of love. Yet in the end, when she came eye to eye with that same passion it led to her own crossing into the mythology of our humanity.

Inspired reaction:

Unlike the author Richard Bach of one hundred years later, who examines in literary form what crossing the divide between the physical and eternal may be like, Flaubert does not. Was the collective conscience of the enlightened literary man of Western Civilization in the 19th century void of this? I only find evidence to the affirmative in this book and can wonder if Richard Bach had taken in Salammbo and used the unanswered question to write Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and One. Clearly Flaubert leaves the reader on the precipice of the divide, and begs the question; must one transcend his body to overcome the duality of man?

There is a commandment that demands effectively man to not covenant their neighbor’s belongings. Oddly enough that is what is implied with Matho and Salammbo where in their transcendence they could at last have each other, a social reality similar to that of Romeo and Juliet that was not to be in the physical world. The book begs the question; must humanity torture itself through the laws of scarcity found in the physical world and sanctity found in its interpretation to the extent that love can be blinded by something as simple as a ziamph? The reader is clearly compelled to transcend this thinking and search for insights to do this in the mortal-material world. West meets East………in a modern new world that begins with love, the unconditional acceptance of what is.