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Thursday, October 20, 2016

WHO STOLE THE COOKIES? By Dr. Alex Mathew - FOREWORD

WHO STOLE THE COOKIES? 
By Dr. Alex Mathew

FOREWORD

Walt Whitman in his famous poem “Leaves of Grass” talks about “Life immense in pulse, passion and power”. The more you go into life, the mystery deepens.  Dr Alex brings before us eloquent vignettes of Life in all its immensity.

 At first look, this extraordinary book of Dr Alex may appear to be a simple treatise on a psychological question: Who is to be blamed? Is it Afzalbhai or Ameena? Is it Shreeni? Is it Beena? Is it? Who is guilty? Is it Johnny? Is it Annie? And so on.

Oh, it is Johnny who took the cookie. So and so is guilty. So and so committed the murder and should be hanged. He is the rapist and should be given the death penalty. These are simple answers and today mankind is guided by this philosophy. Tooth for tooth and eye for eye! This approach only creates more violence and more crime. Does anyone or any law-giver say - let him who has not sinned cast the first stone? 

  Our laws are the commandments that arise from the psychology that proclaims the other guilty, enable the state created by man and controlled by the corrupt and violent and pleasure-seeking beasts to chain him, if possible kill him or stone him or her. In the name of the State, which is often a thousand-headed Rakshasa, or even in the name of God. 

Kahlil Gibran in his PROPHET has this to say of laws and law givers: “What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws...” 

'Friedrich Nietzche, the German philosopher and mystic has this to say of justice and judges and punishment:`` It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right- especially when one is right. Only one must be rich enough for that. I did not like your cold justice; and out of the eyes of the judges they always look the executioner and his coldsteel. Tell me, where is that justice which is love with open eyes? Would that you might invent for me the love that bears not only all punishment but also all guilt! Would that you might invent for me the justice that acquits everyone, except him that judges”. 

As you read on, you find that the canvas of Dr Alex is as vast as life, as deep as the sky, as mysterious as the whirling constellations speeding, expanding, and being born and dying. Laws are laid down and guilt decided and punishment given on the basis of what the lawgiver and punishing authority sees as truth. 

Dr Alex makes us question; What is truth. Pilate asked Jesus: What is truth? Jesus answered it with Silence. The law-givers and the religious authorities act on the basis of their delusionary belief that they have the truth in their possession. 

I wish they read the profound statement of J. Krishnamurti: “I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down; rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley.” 

  Nietzsche’s words can help us to stop finding who is guilty and be true to the simplicity and profundity of the earth. Let me quote his words: “Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do – back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.

 In a hundred ways, thus far, have spirit as well as virtue flown away and made mistakes. Alas, all this delusion and all these mistakes still dwell in our body: they have there become body and will. In a hundred ways, thus far, spirit as well as virtue has tried and erred. Indeed, an experiment was man. Alas, much ignorance and error have become body within us. Not only the reason of millennia, but their madness too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir. Still we fight step by step with the giant, accident; and over the whole of humanity there has ruled so far only nonsense- no sense.’ Let us discover that finding guilt or cultivating guilt destroy the beauty of life, kills the God in us who is love. This book of Dr. Alex is luminous writing and should lead us to light, to joy, to God.
 

E. X. Joseph

 © Alex Mathew

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