While I was looking for simple works of Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, I ran into The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (MWSHF). Quite a lowering of the aim, one might be nasty enough to argue, but it was a nice easy-going tale with messages sprinkled along the way. Honestly, I began well but couldn’t complete those 200 odd pages without interruptions from loosing interest in the topic, and yet again coming back to the book.
On a different day, during a different pursuit, I ran into The Alchemist (by Paulo Coelho). It proved to be utterly difficult to resist picking up this book that day. Perhaps also because this time the book was on display on a stack in the middle of the path rather than on the "self-help" stand - sometimes a heaven for popcorn-nirvana material. This one I started while I was still somewhere during the middle stages of MWSHF (Julian is explaining the rose-meditation to Jon). And it spelt the end of my journey with MWSHF, and beginning of the thought for this blog.
It perhaps is a repetition arising from micro-vanity that The Alchemist is a masterpiece. Micro-vanity, as in, most of us likes to play Archimedes in our own rights, reinventing the wheel per our own sights, yet expecting the same credits from the world comparable with those cavemen who in reality invented the wheel and fire for humanity a few millennia ago. Well, that however doesn’t prevent The Alchemist from being a masterpiece.
It appears that the book has successfully justified its projection of three avtars:
- The first one is for my Mom while she would read it during one of her intra-city travels as a nice little desert fairly-tale. And that’s it - she wouldn’t care much to think about it barring a couple of residual thoughts or ideas. But above all she would feel entertained.
- The second avtar of the book is for my teen-aged niece who always has a million questions in her armory, ready to go at war any time, and my forehead being her favorite target practice (Gosh, one more explanation for my suddenly receding hairline!). She would read the book, but more than that she would try reading between the lines of every plot, thought and poem (adding more questions to her armory!). She would feel motivated.
- In its third avtar, the book would make certain compelling calls to the dreaming mind and would appear speaking with the inherent voice - creating an echo that resonates the song of the universe. One would feel spoken to.