An excerpt from a talk by Prem Rawat, reproduced from www.voiceofmaharaji.info

This life, in a way, is too short. It would be nice if you could make all your mistakes, get it all together, show up somewhere, and say, “Okay, I’ve figured it out, and I’m ready.”

But it doesn’t work like that. We’re given some time, but we don’t know how much. In the beginning, we just want to be happy. That’s all we know. We don’t know about responsibilities. We don’t know about right and wrong. We don’t know about being human. But we know that we have the thirst to be happy—whatever that means.

Good things happen; bad things happen. As a child, the level of optimism is at an all-time high. Whatever happened yesterday happened, but today is today. No memories are kept, no blame. Whatever we did in that state was not pre-planned. We call this innocence, and to each one of us, this state of being is very beautiful.

And then we go through the period of learning—the grinding, pounding of information into our heads. The alphabet—A, B, Cs. You don’t know why A is A. It just is. You don’t know why one is one. It just is. And you are tested on it.

This keeps on going; you are being prepped for this world. What does that mean? It means that you have given up on your ideas, and you are now ready, willing, and able to take on the ideas that the world will give you, including how you believe in God. This is defined as responsibility. I call it “the giant leap of faith.”

And then an amazing thing happens. It doesn’t happen to everybody; it happens to some people. They meet someone who says, “No giant leap of faith necessary. You don’t have to jump. Just feel—feel your own thirst.”

“What?” They find this idea to be novel, but they see in it their own innocence.

“The happiness, the joy, that you want in your life is within you, and the thirst for that feeling has to be within you, too.”

Then they ask, “Could something really be so simple?”

Yes, it could. Because you need to hear, you have ears. Because you need to breathe, you have a nose. You need to be able to see, and eyes have been provided for you. If you need this fulfillment—not want, but need—the thirst for it has been provided for you as well.

Find the thirst. That is the first chapter—recognizing, understanding your own innocence. And not by concept, thought, ideas, or prompting from someone else. The need for fulfillment is embedded within—not in your logic, but in the innocence of the heart. That’s where you will find it. And that’s where you have to begin. If we are thirsty and go looking for water, we won’t get distracted: “Did you see that bird? Did you see that rock? Oh, look at that contrail in the sky.” No. Water, water, only water. It is a need, a passion.

A human being’s true passion is to be fulfilled. And that passion has survived all our discoveries, turmoil, successes, failures, disasters, catastrophes. However fragile it may seem, it has survived. As human beings have become busier and busier with weapons of destruction, going to the moon, mapping the earth, inventions, discoveries—you might have thought this would have been forgotten. Languages have been forgotten; customs that survived for thousands of years have been forgotten. But somehow, the quest to be fulfilled has survived.

Why am I telling you this? It is a bigger need than you realize. It’s huge. And you get to try every day, consciously, to be fulfilled, to be happy. There is no rewind button.

When I have come home to this moment called now, I feel my heart dancing with gratitude. Perhaps tears come, but they are of joy, not sorrow. Every fiber in my being rejoices to be alive. I have no quest for tomorrow, or even the moment yet to come. And that’s good, because it is a moment that I could live in forever.

Prem Rawat

Link to original posting of Prem Rawat’s talk

Lewis, like his friend and fellow philologist Tolkien, dealt in the creation of realistic myth. This well paced novel culminates his Space Trilogy, commencing with Out of the Silent Planet and continuing with Perelandra, based on the theme of natural and beneficial order versus the illusion of unchecked, destructive “human progress.”

While one may take objection to many of Lewis’s ideas on religion – I myself do – the unseen world of the eldils, or angels – both good and bad – that he constructs is so grandiose and fascinating that I for one forgive him all offences.

The story opens quietly in a small English town, where a modern young woman – modern for 1945 that is – endures the frustrations of marriage to an underpaid fellow of a minor university. From this innocent beginning, the pair become entrapped by the machinations of a satanic group bent on world domination.

Step by step they are lured deeper into danger, both to their lives and souls; yet, while the ploters snare them with all the devilish menace that a reader could wish for, their grasp on their victims’ lives is achieved by everyday, believable manipulations: the threatened loss of employment, the flattery of recognition, the temptation of money, power and fame. Eventually the Satanists overreach themselves, and the novel culminates in an imaginative battle of good and evil, with both spiritual and brute physical forces on either side.

The writer George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) argues that the inevitable triumph of good over evil weakens the novel, but I don’t agree. To me, its charm lies not in its ending but in the skill with which the story is told. It says much for this story, that though science has overtaken it during passage of half a century and more, it lives as though written today.

I particularly enjoy Lewis’s construction of opposed hierarchies, and the subtlety with which both good and bad characters are drawn. But how remarkable it is that we are often drawn more to the bad characters! My favourite amongst these is Wither, an ancient villain, whose massive but crumbling intellect hides behind a façade of amiable vagueness as he schemes his way towards ultimate power.

Ending on this note, is it not strange and intriguing that a strong Christian apologist like Professor Lewis should need to spice his calm beliefs with garnishes of magic, naturism and warlike demigods?

Graham Worthington, author, Wake of the Raven

At the beginning of this excellent “How To” book on writing and publishing, Barry Parker immediately demonstrates his firm grasp of his subject, as he stresses points known and dear to the hearts of all serious writers, whether of sober fact or lurid fiction. Love and respect words, use simple and concise English in your explanations, and above all, be fascinated by your subject, infusing it with all the emotion that you feel.

From this good start, the early chapters are devoted to the craft of writing, and contain many valuable nuggets of good advice on how to make your writing live and beckon your audience to read on, and how to avoid the errors that cause them to close the book.

Next he deals with an area of ever increasing importance to authors: how to leap the frustrating hurdle of agents, publishers and vanity publishers – and avoid much expense too – by acting as publisher yourself, from the first step of formatting your manuscript for printing, to launching it on the world-wide markets of today. With twenty-three books to his credit, Barry is well qualified to state decisively that complete self-publication is the way to go, and from my own experience of publishing a novel in this changing world, I heartily agree with him.

Finally he describes many ways for an author to publicise the work, on which much time and effort will have been spent, and selecting at random one piece of advice alone I find it worth the cost of this book: forget newspaper advertising, which is expensive and ineffective. Writers like to write, but even if we do it well, the world will not automatically rush to read us, and we are often innocents in the hard but necessary game of putting our work before the public in these competitive times.

I recommend this concise guide highly. If an author is to succeed, whether artistically or commercially, he must study his art, and Dr. Parker’s book is a must-have.

If you want to see the book details on Amazon, stab this link.

If you want to see my novel on Amazon, stab this one.

If you want to read emo poetry, God help you, and click here.

The pics are linked to Lindsay’s novel on Amazon

Little known by other than connoisseurs of the strange and mysterious, this odyssey of the questing human spirit is well worth the patience it takes to cope with the opening chapters, which lumber considerably as the author prepares us for the meat of the story. But once our characters reach Tormance – a planet circling the star Arcturus – the adventure begins in earnest, in a world where the spiritual takes physical form, and our hero Maskull battles a zoo of tempters and diverse philosophies as he strives reach the Blue Sun, and free his soul from the dreariness of everyday life.

The early chapters remind me of a device sometimes used by H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, of assembling a group of interesting or intelligent people in a Victorian soiree, and, having made them comfortable with a cheering drink, confounding even their sophistication with an amazing yarn. Try The Time Machine, Victory, or Lord Jim; but in those the technique is used throughout, and is not at odds with story. Here though, it clashes, and Lindsay risks loosing his reader before truly commencing his story. Why did he do this? To place the normality of early Edwardian England at odds with eerie Tormance perhaps, and so emphasise the illusion of everyday life? If so, it’s a risky strategy, which must have put off many a reader.

Lindsay’s purpose appears to be not merely to entertain, which he does well, but to illustrate a world view held by the persecuted Gnostic sect of Christianity, in which the world and its attractions are seen as the realm of evil, created by a devil or “demi-urge,” with truth and God lying beyond, entirely separate and distant. In term of using characters to represent spiritual or moral forces, it compares well with Pilgrims Progress. Read it as an entertainment or as a savagely uncompromising moral fable; in either case it works well.

Link to my own Amazon site

This Christmas I’ve done early what I left too late last year: review a favourite novella of mine on amazon.

“A merry Christmas uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

“Bah!” said Scrooge “humbug!”

He had so heated himself with walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all aglow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

“Christmas a humbug uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure.”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! what right do you have to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come then,” replied the nephew gaily, “what right have you to be dismal? What right have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said “bah” again; and followed it up with “humbug!”

Review

Dickens, it’s said, created the British image of Christmas.

It would be a ridiculous but interesting challenge to name the world’s most successful or influential work of fiction, but if it were attempted, this novella would be a strong contender. Crafted with all the brilliant wit and imagery of which Dickens was capable, it chronicles the redemption of an aging skinflint, rendered bitter and cruel by his passion for money, to whom life has become a trudge towards the grave.

Joy and love Ebenezer Scrooge has barred from his life, and for this, as his dead partner’s ghost warns him, he is doomed to wander the Earth after death, chained by his hoarded loot. Yet he is to be rescued by the spirit – spirits actually: three of them – that burn hot and bright with forgiveness and hope amid the snow of this darkest, final month.

Dickens wrote this tale as a protest in 1843, against the even then growing obsession with material wealth, and neglect of life’s freely given riches. Today its message is as strong and apt as ever. To me, Christmas has not arrived until I’ve seen it told yet again in one of its many film adaptations, be it the black & white 1951 version starring Alastair Sim, or one of the later versions in which George C. Scott, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart and many others have portrayed the old miser. This rich and unashamed snatch at our heartstrings never fails to pluck mine.

Here’s a link>>>> Amazon:Scrooge If you like the review, give the “helpful” button a stab.

Link to my amazon site

Words are but feeble doves

Fleeing storms of reality

Pale beaks tinted with faint report

Of tasted joys indescribable

Or crows

Grimed with news of disaster immeasurable

Link to my publisher’s site

Link to my Amazon page

Al Azhar Park, Cairo, recently restored from a centuries-old rubbish dump, as seen in Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do.

I’ve just read Where Hope Takes Root, by HRH The Aga Khan, and was impressed by its call for tolerance and respect between religions and cultures as an essential condition for a better world. While I don’t attach myself to any particular religion or culture, I decided to review his work on amazon, and the review is below.

Plurality in Religion and Culture for a Better World

Having recently seen the inspiring film, Let The Beauty We Love Be What We Do, about The Aga Khan’s dedicated work on the restoration of historical Islamic buildings, I was moved to read this collection of his talks on the need for pluralism and tolerance in today’s diverse and violent world.

In this collection of fourteen addresses, given over the last six years to various distinguished organisations, he explains concisely the need for societies to not merely accept pluralism of cultures and viewpoints, but to work actively in promoting this necessity for a tolerant world.

I especially like the chapters on democracy, highlighting its failures, strengths and needs, and the Aga Khan’s oft-repeated point that the “Clash of Civilisations” so frequently mentioned in the media is actually a clash of ignorances, as communities with so much in common slide into conflict and fear due to lack of education on each other’s virtues.

Pluralism is not a word that we come across frequently, yet it is by no means a minor or obscure subject, being in fact the fountain from which tolerance flows. In religion, it means that different faiths should coexist peacefully, at least giving each other tolerance, and at best recognising the central truths that they share. And of course pluralism in culture – with which it must go hand in hand – means much the same. In not merely calling for pluralism, but actively working for it, the Aga Khan goes beyond many of the religious leaders of today, leaving behind the tangled, fruitless jungle of sectarian beliefs, and venturing into the reality of human desire for peace and fulfilment.

There is a choice to be made, and nowadays it presses upon us with greater urgency than ever before. To accept, enjoy and learn from the natural diversity of this world, or to fear this diversity, and in seeking to oppose it, narrow down our own souls into dark caves where we may crouch in avoidance of life’s sunlight. War occurs for a limited number of causes, and it’s a common saying that religion causes more wars than anything else. I have no patience with cheerleading for this religion versus that, whilst throwing aside the search for meaning and fulfilment, and so I applaud the content of this book heartily, whilst praising the insight with which it’s delivered.

To me, pluralism is recognition of the inescapable fact that all human being are created differently, even though in their essential nature they are the same. Variety is said to be the spice of life, and it is in this variety of physical – and emotional – being that we can find joy in exploring the breadth of the world. Nor is variety limited to form and emotions: thought also varies, both in its ability and conclusions, and these conclusions can, if applied intolerantly, lead us into the most violent and disastrous of conflicts. Yet if considered with tolerance and understanding, differences can act as mirrors and commentaries to each other, and lead us to greater understanding and breadth of being. 

There is an adventure in life, the adventure of going beyond the limited experiences that we know, and into communion with the unknown and exotic. In finding the virtues of strangers to be in sympathy with ours, we ourselves become the strange and exotic. Our accustomed skin we then exchange for that of different hue, lighter or more luxuriantly dark, or its plain smoothness for the bright geometry of reptilian scales, or the brilliance of rainbow plumage. This is perhaps a little poetically put, but how else to express life’s beauty, so easily gained or lost by hatred or love?

Long ago, a culture formed in the near east, growing from the words and revelations of prophets, which it recorded in scriptures. It recognised the supremacy of one unseen God, and the folly of worshiping idols, and recognised rules by which man could live in harmony. All was not of course perfect: man’s everyday baggage of evil struggled with this good, and different schools of thought contended. Within this culture a teacher arose, Jesus, who taught the same, but afresh, and later another, Prophet Mohammed, who again pointed to one God, and the uselessness of idols, and the brotherhood of man. Despite the agreement of their teachings, and the God they spoke of in different languages being one and the same, quarrels arose. Today we see three groups, which we, obsessed with pigeonholing, classify as different, though they are not, and in pursuit of ever more complex ideas we sub-divide them endlessly and uselessly. Disputes continue, and often these supposed differences are used to fuel political struggles for land, or power, or individual glory, and blood is shed where the original intention was to enjoy peace and prosperity.

Today we have the same choice as the millions who have gone before us, wavering between a deeper inner world and one of immediate gratification, and wavering also between perceiving the essential unity of religions or wandering angry and bewildered within a forest of petty arguments and blood stained histories. We can choose the simple path of tolerance and progress, or we can add to the hatred and ruin.

We choose which facts we remember; we choose which facts we know. Wars, murders, and acts of terrorism stand out dramatically, and hide the greater reality of everyday cooperation. Historically, Islam, Judaism and Christianity have learned from each other constantly, and today we are free to do the same, or be misled into seeing the differences of detail and ignoring the unities.

Graham Worthington, author, Wake of the Raven

Amazon.com link: Where Hope Takes Root

Amazon.co.uk link

There is an adventure in life, the adventure of going beyond the limited experiences that we know, and into communion with the unknown and exotic. In finding the virtues of strangers to be in sympathy with ours, we ourselves become the strange and exotic. Our accustomed skin we then exchange for that of different hue, lighter or more luxuriantly dark, or its plain smoothness for the bright geometry of reptilian scales, or the brilliance of rainbow plumage.

Link to my Raven site

Link to my Amazon page

YO!

(This is an introductory comment, intended to indicate that I am still alive, and you are not forgotten, but my brain is not in a creative or appreciative mode. I will add to it certain other inanities indicative of a desire to communicate and a laudable wish to spread joy, peace and light, but a – hopefully – temporary inability to do so.)

Wow

Cool

Lyke, that’s so cool

Lol

That’s enough for now. Little baby steps, little baby steps

Link to my Raven site

Link to my Amazon page

I was provoked to some thought when I came across the following news item today:

….and this one I published recently, together with other Xangans