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Title: Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing by Robert Wolff, Thom Hartmann ISBN: 0-89281-866-2 Publisher: Inner Traditions Intl Ltd Pub. Date: 15 August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: gentle touch - deeply theraputic
Comment: This book is truly one of a kind. It is richly spiritual yet not religion based. It is about the author's cross cultural experience, which brought him to a realization. Those moments he started to question about his commonsense of the western beliefs are so honestly stated.
The book took me into a very different world where things were simpler. In this environment I could unwind my restless heart, and observed the very foreign culture...
The effect this book had on me has been profound and long lasting. In fact I am writing this review two years after reading it.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Real Slaves
Comment: The aboriginal Sng'oi of Malaysia are often described with words like "pre-industrial" or "pre-agricultural," but it is a mistake to think of them as living in a former stage of what of our more "advanced" society has become. As Wolff shows in this book, it would be more precise to say that are living in another world - as are we.
Having spent half his youth growing up among non-Westerns, Wolff says this: "I learned early on to be in two different realities." One reality was oriented around the clock, efficiency, technology, and harsh realism. The other was fluid, timeless, almost dreamlike, "a world and at a time when people touched each other, when we knew animals and plants intimately." The bulk of this book is spent fleshing out differences between these worlds, in an attempt to teach us Westerners another way of knowing, another reality. Yet in the process of doing so, it quickly becomes apparent that the modern world doesn't quite measure up.
As slaves to an alienating industrial system, as a completely self-domesticated species, in a state of utter dependence and helplessness, the condescending glance "modern" humanity casts at so-called "primitive peoples" is extremely ironic. Traditionally referred to as "Sakai," or slaves, by modern Malaysians, the Sng'oi do not take offense. Says one Sng'oi man, "We look at the people down below [literally, from up in the mountains] - they have to get up at a certain time in the morning, they have to pay for everything with money, which they have to earn doing things for other people. They are constantly told what they can and cannot do. No, we do not mind when they call us slaves."
At one point in the book, Wolff recounts a number of silent educational trips into the rainforest with his friend/guide, Ahmeed, who was subtly trying to teach him to interact and connect with the forest on his own terms. After days of walking, Wolff became thirsty. It was precisely then that Ahmeed decided to sneak off and leave him to find water on his own. After searching for hours, he not only discovered water - he also discovered another way of seeing. "When I leaned over drink from the leaf, I saw water with feathery ripples, I saw a few mosquito larvae wriggling on the surface, I saw the veins of the leaf through the water, some bubbles, a little piece of dirt... How beautiful, how perfect." His perception suddenly "opened," and a deep feeling of connection enveloped him. "The all-ness was everywhere, and I was a part of it... I could not be afraid - I was apart of this all-ness."
Contrast this with our culture, a culture walled-in with fear; a culture that "learns - has to learn - to shut off the senses, to protect oneself from all the noise." Unlike the Sng'oi, who are brought up to listen, watch and feel their world in depth, our culture is psychological straightjacketed. Our is a culture in which many humans are brought up to act like machines only to find themselves replaced by machines built to act like humans. Perhaps that is why our economic system has set out to expand and colonize every wild space left on the globe. In the other world Wolff experienced, every day - indeed every second - was a miracle. Life, by no means perfect, was nevertheless full of smiles, stories, songs and dance. It was a world without fear and domination - that is, until Komatsu bulldozers come to clear away the forest.
The topics Wolff address in this book vary from indigenous medicine to education, from dream interpretation to surviving the onslaught of civilization. The format anecdotal, the profound wisdom of which will stay with you. This is not simply anthropology or ethnology, but a critique of modern industrial civilization and it's "Development Scheme" in the gentle voice of someone intimate with the Sng'oi. All in all, the book amounts to nothing less than an alternative way of being. I found it refreshing, insightful and transformative - three criteria for any great book.
Rating: 5
Summary: What is it like to be human?
Comment: My library finally found Original Wisdom and got it for me. I almost have it finished and I havn't had the book in my hands for 24 hours yet. I highly recommend Original Wisdom to anyone who wants a first hand account of what life is like outside of our Dominant/Taker Culture. Maybe our way isn't the one right way to live.
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Title: The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century by Thom Hartmann ISBN: 1571741666 Publisher: Hampton Roads Pub Co Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight : Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation by THOM HARTMANN, NEALE DONALD WALSCH, Joseph Chilton Pearce ISBN: 0609805290 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Dancing With Mosquitoes by Theo Grutter ISBN: 053312977X Publisher: Vantage Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights by Thom Hartmann ISBN: 1579546277 Publisher: Rodale Press Pub. Date: 04 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Future Primitive & Other Essays by John Zeran, John Zerzan ISBN: 1570270007 Publisher: Autonomedia Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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