I am reading a book. That is not news. I have a library of more than 500 books and I do to read them from time to time. But this book is different in the sense that I was provoked enough by it to want to write a couple of articles from what I read.
This is the first of the articles.
I’ll start by giving you the link to the book. It is below (not an affiliate link):
Here are some quotes from the introduction of the book:
… I wanted this anthology to be a feast of not merely the greatest and wisest of mystical texts but also a practical handbook for someone who wants to serve as effectively as possible the new balanced humanity that is trying to be born …
… I hope to engender in the reader’s mind and hearts a vision of the sacred balance between the transcendent and the immanent, prayer and action, body and soul that later mystical systems sometimes threatened, or even lost, in their noble but sometimes hysterical quest for transcendence …
Teilhard de Chardin at the end of his life wrote, “Humanity is being brought to the moment when it will have to choose between suicide and adoration.” We must wake up in massive numbers and very fast to the sacred glory of life and nature and to the sacred responsibility to preserve both or be destroyed …
The book is very good and inspiring and well worth buying and reading. I do not have much need for instruction in my spiritual practice as I already have more than enough books. But everyone needs inspiration. You must have heard of the saying:
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration
It is for that one percent that this book is mainly valuable to me.
But I also think that the hope mentioned above (the motive of the author to write this book): We must wake up in massive numbers and very fast to the sacred glory of life and nature and to the sacred responsibility to preserve both or be destroyed.
I think that this is a completely misplaced hope and is quite simply not going to happen.
Osho says that religion is only for the few. I agree with him.
The Bible says: For many are called but few are chosen.
From the entire human race many are called (to religion or to seek God) so most are not even called, many are called and few are chosen. I don’t see this changing no matter how many books are written on spirituality or whatever and how inspiring they are.
I spoke to a friend who takes religion seriously and he knows the amount of effort that is required for growing spiritually. He knows it from his own experience. Reading and re reading good books, meditation, contemplation and so on. He has succeeded in doing what the author wants everybody to do. And the author of the above book wants the human race to do this in massive numbers and very fast.
My friend said that he was only able to have the time and energy to do spirituality because he did not have a family and did not work at a job for many years. Had he had a normal career, social life and family his spiritual growth would not have been possible.
The bottom line is that to deal with climate change and the threat to our environment we need to look at something more than spiritual change on a massive scale.
What are the solutions? I don’t know. Let someone else figure it out. Maybe Confucius has the solution. Please see the link below:
But I am very glad that the book was written. It is inspiring and poetic and entertaining. Pick up a copy. There is also an audiobook in Audible that costs about 250 rupees (or one credit).
And I also had a topic for a blog article for this week.
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