NOTE: This is Chapter 19 of Spiritus Mundi, the Occupy Wall Street Novel by Robert Sheppard Serialized Free Online each Week for the Comrades of the Movement! Copyright Robert Sheppard 2012 All Rights Reserved Licensed for Personal Viewing Only
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Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard
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To Read Sexual Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience: https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/
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To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/
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To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/
To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/
For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
Who’s Who in Chapter 19:
Eva Strong, Occupy Wall Street supporter and staff worker for the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly–Lover of Andreas Sarkozy
Andreas Sarkozy, Occupy Wall Street activist and Executive Director of the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly–Lover of Eva Strong
Joel Barlow, CIA Station Chief in London
Sir Alex Allworth, head of the British Joint Intelligence Comittee
COBRA–The “Situation Room” or emergency headquarters of the British Cabinet
General Bill Winton, the J3, or Chief of Operations for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon
Mohammad ala Rushdie, Egyptian Occupy Wall Street supporter and Mid-East Coordinator for the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly–Tahrir Square Arab Spring Activist–Also a Sufi Novice preparing to join the Sufi Naqshbandi Sufi religious Order.
XIX. London Of the Yearnings of the Caged Spirit
1
MSN CHAT TRANSCRIPT: Andreas & Eva—Thursday 2:23 AM
Eva_241msn says: Where are you?
Andreas_Byron41msn says: I am pulling an all-nighter at with Julian—we have to submit the Grant Proposal to the Ford Foundation by tomorrow.
Eva_241msn says: I thought you finished that last week….
Andreas_Byron41msn says: We did but we made some major expansions of the program in Africa, Asia and South America so we needed to re-do it all again.
Eva_241msn says: That’s really funny Andreas because Vanessa said she saw Julian at the theatre in his box when she was performing tonight. I’d like to believe you but does this have anything to do with the fact that Yoriko Oe is in town from Beijing since yesterday?
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Don’t be silly—-I told you I am at Julian’s working on the Grant Proposal. We’ve been hard at it since he got back from the theatre where he had to meet a client. Why do you always work yourself up this way? —-you know you are only making yourself a prisoner of your own fears and insecurity.
Eva_241msn says: You don’t do much to make me feel secure.
Andreas_Byron41msn says: I love you, Eva. I will make it up to you tomorrow night.
Eva_241msn says: Don’t bother—I’ll be out.
Andreas_Byron41msn says: For Christ’s sake, Eva. That’s not fair. You are always interrogating—spying on me and we’re not even married—I am a free man not an inmate. Why do you have to hound and shadow me every minute of the day. It only makes me want to escape from you when I really want to love you.
Eva_241msn says: Why didn’t you call and why didn’t you turn on your cell phone for the last two days?
Andreas_Byron41msn says: I told you—we are all wrapped up in putting this Grant Proposal to bed before the deadline tomorrow.
Eva_241msn says: Are you sure you aren’t all wrapped up in putting Yoriko Oe to bed before she goes back to Beijing the day after tomorrow—-as I hear from Sylvia who booked her tickets at the Committee office and saw you go off with her for lunch today?
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Damn! If you keep spying on me and putting your friends up to gumshoeing every woman you are jealous or frightened of I am going to be forced to break it off。 Now, I told you I won’t stand for a woman spying on me. It’s a matter of principle.
Eva_241msn says: Principle!—–Ha! Ha! Ha!
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Eva you are really too vexing.
Eva_241msn says: Well she must be pretty bad in bed if you are surfing the internet at this hour in the morning! What’s the matter?—-Poor baby got bored with her already?
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Not as bored as I am with your stupid tormenting and bloodhounding.
Eva_241msn says: It’s just your own Karma catching up with you!
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Let me get back to work.
Eva_241msn says: On her?
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Why don’t you ever believe me?
Eva_241msn says: With your track record? Don’t insult my intelligence Andreas. You know I torment you because I can’t stop tormenting myself—-and I can’t stop tormenting myself because I can’t stop loving you.
Andreas_Byron41msn says: And I love you! Why can’t you just accept my love and leave me in peace?
Eva_241msn says: Love me?—-Andreas you are in love with your own prick—that doesn’t leave much left over for a woman.
Andreas_Byron41msn says: I quit. I am signing out and going back to work on this damn Proposal.
Eva_241msn says: I hope you put it to bed before morning!—-especially since she’ll be leaving in another day until who knows when—-I don’t want you to miss your damn opportunity and your damn deadline!
Andreas_Byron41msn says: Damn you and damn your bloody stupid jealousy! I give up! Good night!
2
When Joel Barlow reached COBRA (the Cabinet Office Building Conference-Room A), that is the ‘situation room’ where the special emergency meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) was then meeting, his counterparts from the British intelligence community were already present and were absorbed in the batteries and arrays of video and computer screens recording the advance of the Chinese and Russian armored columns into North Korea. Alternatingly, the most dramatic and meaningful of these would be transferred to the central main screen and blown up to the size of the wall display. At times this would be overhead satellite and real-time military surveillance-drone imagery cross-decked over secure lines from NSA centers at Fort Meade, and at times would switch to feeds from live news coverage from CNN, BBC, Reuters, and an array of commercial news sources.
Though initially the two occupying powers invoked a news blackout in the affected areas, increasingly as the situation stabilized they became more open, allowing limited news reports and making announcements American-style from the official government spokesmen or spokeswomen at official press conferences in the respective national capitals, and maintaining an official sang-froid so as to say to the world that the “Police Action” the two nations were undertaking in the name of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was entirely appropriate and above-board and for the benefit of the entire international community. In Beijing appeals for international support were made by the official spokesmen on live television and it was announced that China and Russia would jointly call for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to ratify their action and solicit support, on the models of Bosnia and Iraq.
Sir Alex Allworth, the Permanent Secretary for Intelligence and Resilience who chaired the JIC meetings welcomed Barlow as he entered.
“Good Morning Joel, it seems as the Chinese say, we are destined to live in ‘interesting times.’ quipped Sir Alex.
“Good morning Alex, all, sorry to be late but as you can guess we have been quite preoccupied. Interesting times, yes, indeed. It has been said that happy countries have no history—Korea can unfortunately pride itself on a cornucopia of history, history past and history in the making—Their cup runneth over—-unfortunately for its people.” Barlow answered reflectively.
Joel Barlow got on the secure Stu-11 encrypted telephone link to Washington and dialed up “The Tank” or Situation Room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, which was also linked by secure fibre-optic cable to the situation room in “The House,” the short term for the White House. Ten minutes later a secure feed via fibre-optic cable came into COBRA from the Pentagon and the figure of General Bill Winton, the J-3 or Director of Operations for the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, came into view.
“General Winton, this is Joel Barlow, CIA Station Chief in London. I am sitting in the COBRA situation room in London with our British colleagues on their Joint Intelligence Committee. Can you brief us on where we are and what is happening on the ground in North Korea?” Barlow spoke crisply into his desktop microphone.
“Yes, sir. I will cross-deck some of our situation maps, satellite and drone imagery to you on the link as I speak. Ok. Now if you will look at this electronic relief map of the DPRK you can see indicated in red the line of advance of the Chinese columns from the west and the Russian columns along the east coast. The divisional units are indicated by these boxes, along with estimated numbers of tanks, men and logistical tail. Their naval assets deployed are indicated in yellow and their principal air assets are indicated in blue with the blue arrows indicating the air sorties.
To summarize to date, we can see that the Chinese have moved across the border in two columns with air cover, one proceeding from Sinuiju and almost to Anju to the north of Pyongyang, and the second further north and the second crossing the border here and proceeding to Kanggye, then turning south towards Huichon and Anju. The Chinese should reach Pyongyang by tomorrow, and if there is no organized resistance and the cooperation of the DPRK factions holds then they can move their mechanized columns down the high-speed roads to Kaesong by the third to fifth days. Reports are that the main DPRK army factions are cooperating, though some renegade units are offering sporadic resistance. In the East, the Russians have landed marine forces in cooperation with the DPRK naval forces, who are oriented towards the Russians in their sympathies at these enclaves in Rajin, Chongjin, Hongnam, Wonson and Kosong.
Meanwhile the main Russian ground force is proceeding southward along the East coast with air and naval cover, having passed Rajin and Chongjin on the coastal highway and is now located at Kimchaek. At this rate of advance, unless there is some renegade resistance from dissident DPRK units their main ground column should be in Wonson by tomorrow and in Kosong by the day after. The Chinese and Russians have demarcated two policing and occupation zones, east and west roughly dividing the territory along a north-south line running through Kanggye, Huichon and Kaesong. Russian Spetznatz and their Chinese counterparts have secured Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang and established a perimeter with reinforcements being flown in to await the entry of the ground forces.
Korean Central Television and radio is broadcasting notices from the Provisional Patriotic Revolutionary Council (PPRC), which includes the heads of the main factions, urging all citizens to cooperate with the government and its “allies” and announcing that a coup attempt after the death of the Dear Leader by the capitalist enemy has been foiled by the cooperation of the DPRK leadership and with the assistance of their historical socialist allies. Several losers in the struggle for power have been executed on television and accused of betraying the nation to the West and the southern puppet regime and assurances given that the victory of the revolution and the legacy of the Dear Leader have emerged victorious with the aid of “our historical allies.”
Now I will put on the live feeds from our Dark Star drones—here you can see the advance of the Chinese column which is now passing through Anju on the way south towards Pyongyang. You can notice how their attack helicopters are screening their advance about twenty kilometers ahead of the ground column. Here I will zoom in on the square in Anju and you can see the local government has sent out crowds with flowers and banners to welcome the Chinese column—-and you can see along the side streets the local DPRK army units bringing in the crowds packed into trucks and buses to line the street in welcome of the armored column.
“How about the nuclear facilities and possible nuclear weapons sites?’ asked Barlow.
“We did have our forces on alert and we had a Delta team ready to fly in to intervene if necessary following OPLAN 5029, until we got the no-go from the President. We have the Dark Star drones tasked above the area with the satellite feeds—-here on this drone feed you can see that the facilities are now under the control of the Chinese heliborne special forces at these two sites and the Russian Spetznaz heliborne at this additional site. We have no information as to the status of the nuclear weapons—-whether they are intact, moved or concealed or otherwise accounted for. We have units still on high alert for any contingency, but we have been told that operations are no-go due to political factors.” summed up General Winton.
“Thank you very much General Winton, you have been most helpful. I know you are very busy and I will let you get to your other duties—-we will be online for further contact here at COBRA as needed.” Barlow added.
“Excellent, Mister Barlow….” said Sir Alex, “……..I will put together the dossier and immediately brief the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister as soon as they arrive from Brussels. In the meantime I will forward this to our man at the UN in New York and he will work with your Ambassador there to present a common position when the emergency session of the Security Council convenes. We will keep all lines open and advise you of any further special meeting should any particular events unfold. I thank you heartily on behalf of our Prime Minister and government.”
“Brilliant, Alex” replied Barlow, moving to some one-on-one chat with the others in the room before returning to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
3
Eva’s Blog Journal
It is so dark in this flat, so coldly dark, as if darkness were the shadow of some frigid cloud of pain eclipsing the light. I walked about turning on every light, but switching them on I could not bear it, and turned them all out again lighting a scented candle beside my bed. I lay down on the bed and the thought of the warm blue earth whirling in endless frigid space, half-lit by the little candle of the sun on one side of its roundness, or the image of the freezing face of a mountaineer on Everest waiting out a windstorm, his face half-lit by a single kerosene lamp in his summiting tent, swims before my half-closed eyes. The knotted tension in my limbs and lower belly drains away my energy and I drowse.
Soon after I lay down Andreas came in and lays down beside me. “I feel safe in your flat Eva. It’s the one place I feel I can rest safe in, until I have to go out into the world again.” he says, rolling over to me. His arm under my head was strong and warm, and we made love. We slept until morning and when he awoke he was bathed in warmth, not full of the dark cold I feel gathered within me. Then he gets up refreshed and gathers up his laptop and marches off in his underwear saying brightly “Now I can work again!” smiling back at me with his smiling eyes as he disappears through the door. His egotism is so direct and frank that I have to laugh.
I realize that this is Andreas, and that I am but a stopping place, a watering hole, a temporary shelter for him before he continues on his journey—-his journey—-not ours but his. That is what I thought lying in my bed smiling at the curve of Andreas’ buttocks moving under his underpants as he carried his laptop out of the room to begin whatever further project he was moving on to next. That is what I thought as I savoured the smiling creases in the corner of his disappearing smiling eyes, my left breast slumped over the right breast, flattened on the sheets, the blanket sliding towards the floor, and the smell of our mingled sweat and sexual fluids drifting up from my belly and from between my thighs. I savoured the moment with an inward smile. I needed that moment of pure happiness, even as I felt sure it was slipping irreversibly away from me. I gazed after him without moving, long and long.
I drowsed into a dream and saw myself floating naked on my back in a river eddy of greenish water suffused with water ferns and lilies which are twisted about my limbs and torso, Ophelia like, my eyes wide open to the sky, and then, without blinking or shutting my eyes, the green water and floating lilies wash over me and my face and body disappear submerging beneath the surface.
Then I see myself again breaching the surface of the river, but now I am in the rapids and it is raining hard and the river is rising dangerously all around me, rising faster and faster, deeper and deeper as it enters flood stage. I try to swim towards the bank but a fresh current pulls me out into the center of the flow, carrying me onwards and onwards down the deep riverchannel. Long drifting I see far before me a ford in the river where a caravan of trucks is attempting to cross the rushing flood before the rising river would cut them off. I looked towards the trucks as I drifted towards them and saw that it was a circus caravan carrying performers and live animals across the rising river. As the current pushed me closer I saw all the trucks cross the ford except one which was stuck fast in the sand. On the flatbed of this truck was an iron cage with a live tiger within. The driver tried to race the engine to free the truck but the wheels only dug themselves deeper and deeper into the sand bar, the rising water finally flooding the engine and tipping the truck into a downstream list. The others on the shore threw a lifeline to the driver and pulled him to shore, leaving the tiger trapped in its cage atop the flatbed of the truck, the water rising to the level of its feet.
I drifted down the turbulent flow of the river and the only thing I could grasp onto were the bars of the cage. I pulled myself up and managed to stand atop the topside of the cage, the tiger pacing frantically below, churning the rising water about his paws. He pushed his face in terror against the bars across the top of the cage and tried to ram and claw his way out. I screamed in recoil but there was nowhere to go from atop the cage as the rushing waters flooded and rose incessantly. Again and again I saw his snout and whiskers smash upwards between the bars in a futile attempt to escape. Half of me said “Die, Die” out of my fear, and half of me said “Fight, Fight; Live, Live.” I smelled the stink of his fear and saw the blood flowing from the gash on the side of his snout staining the iron bars where he tried to ram and claw his way out.
Then I crawled to the opposite end of the long cage, the water rising about the tiger’s shoulders and saw the latch fastened with a wedge of wood. I reached down and pushed and pulled the wedge free, then lifting and unslatting the latch. I then pulled up the sliding iron door.
In a second the tiger leapt violently and instinctively through the opening and jumped freely into the flowing river. I feared for my life as I thought the tiger would make its way to the top of the cage and kill me. A moment later I saw the tiger’s head and long whiskers break the surface and swim towards me, panting heavily. Then I saw his head turn towards the opposite shore, away from the caravan, and I watched as the tiger began to swim for freedom with strong strokes. I watched him long and long. Mid-way to the opposite shore he looked back and I saw his eyes smiling back at me. The creases in the corners of his eyes were the creases in the corners of Andreas’ eyes.
I awoke and stared at the door of the bedroom from which Andreas had disappeared without moving for another hour. About three hours after he had left the door opened Andreas returned. He saw me lying on the bed, naked, with the fallen blanket lying on the floor, just as he had left me. Picking up the blanket and kissing me as he covered my body he said “Here cover yourself—-you’ll catch cold—–aren’t you getting up?”
I thought of Andreas and the tiger. I don’t want Andreas caught and caged—-I want him running through the world free, I thought. I said, “Andreas, we are bad for each other.”
He said: “I may be bad for you, but you are good for me———“ giving me a string of kisses across my face.
I cut him off short, saying “Andreas, you are going to have to break it off. I should do it, but I am not strong enough….I’m not as strong as you are. I thought I was the stronger one, older and wiser, but I know now it’s the other way round. You are the stronger one. Promise me if you feel it’s the right thing for both of us that you will use your strength to do the right thing.”
“You mean you are throwing me out?” he asked, smilingly.
“No. I’m asking you to use your strength to make the right decision for both of us.—Do you promise?” I asked, we two looking feelingly into each other’s eyes.
“You’re right Eva……… I’m no good—no good for myself and certainly no good for a woman……we all want love, and to give it too——-but mainly only on our own terms of giving and exchange, and only with our own strong strings attached—I’m one of the worst.” he said, cupping his face and eyes in both hands.
“Do you promise?” I repeated.
He hesitated a long time, then said: “I promise, Eva. I’ll do the right thing when the time comes.”—–And we gripped each other closely and fiercely, tears welling and streaking silently from both of our eyes.
4
The Fragile Vial
I need a mouth as wide as the sky
to say the nature of a True Person, language
as large as longing.
The fragile vial inside me often breaks.
No wonder I go mad and disappear for three days
every month with the moon.
For anyone in love with you,
it’s always these invisible days.
I’ve lost the thread of the story I was telling.
My elephant roams his dream of Hindustan again.
Narrative, poetics, destroyed, my body,
a dissolving, a return.
Friend, I’ve shrunk to a hair trying to say your story.
Would you tell mine?
I’ve made up so many love stories.
Now I feel fictional.
Tell me!
The truth is, you are speaking, not me.
I am Sinai, and you are Moses walking there.
This poetry is an echo of what you say.
A piece of land can’t speak, or know anything!
Or if it can, only within limits.
The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.
Why this distracted talk?
It’s not my fault I rave.
You did this.
Do you approve of my love-madness?
Say yes.
What language will you say it in, Arabic or Persian,
or what? Once again, I must be tied up.
Bring the curly ropes of your hair.
Now I remember the story.
A True Man stares at his old shoes
and sheepskin jacket. Every day he goes up
to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat.
This is his wisdom, to remember the original clay
and not get drunk with ego and arrogance.
To visit those shoes and jacket
is praise.
The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Rumi
Kuch tu Hawa bhi serd thi, kuch tha tera khayal bhi
Dil ku kushi ke saath saath, hota raha malal bhi
Baat wu aadhi raat ki, raat wu pure Chand ki
Chand bhi ain Chait ka, uss pur tera Jamal bhi
Sub se Nazer bacha ke wu, Mujh ku tha aese dekhta
Aik bar tu ruk gayi, Gardish e Mah o Saal bhi…
Thus, Mohammad read through the poetry of Rumi as part of his studies in preparation for the Sufi brotherhood, and which were included in his exercises for Zikr, or meditation, at the London Sufi Meditation Centre in Maida Vale where he went weekly. “In search of the unsearchable, O my Soul!—Where would you find your house?” Mohammad whispered to himself, again and again. He felt like a fragile vial that was breaking and its precious fluids spilling out amoung broken shards and running he knew not where.
Where would his soul find a home? —-Mohammad asked himself over and over again, sub voce. He felt a certain kind of melancholy—-“Huzun” he remembered from Orchan Pamuk’s Istanbul—the melancholy city of a lost empire where his Pir had studied as a young man so long ago—-a melancholy with this fleeting and twittering world and a dark tidal pull towards some greater other. Where would his soul find a home?—certainly not in his own home or mere country with his harsh father in Egypt—–In the Cambridge or London of his recent youth?—No, he felt like a sojourning stranger here. Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps. Perhaps in the Sufi world with his Pir and brothers there would be a home for his lost spirit.
He would try to search there for the unsearchable, the unsayable. “Dao ke Dao; Fei chang Dao—Ming ke Ming; Fei chang Ming” Mohammad remembered from the opening words of Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing, the mystical book of Taoism that Abdal Hakim Murad at Cambridge gave him to study and that he read in the spirit of Sufi mysticism—‘the Way that can be found is not the True Way, the Word that can be named is not the True Word’—it seemed to Mohammad he was searching for a spirit that could not be grasped or named, but was so cataclysmic to the soul that it could only grasp and shatter what you believed was you and name you in its language—you could never grasp it and name it in your own.
Mohammad thought of Rumi’s encounter with his great inspirator and mentor Attar at the age of eighteen. When the Mongols invaded Central Asia sometime between 1215 and 1220, Baha ud-Din Walad, Rumi’s father, with his whole family and a group of disciples, set out westwards. On the road to Anatolia, Rumi encountered one of the most famous mystic Persian poets, ‘Attar, in the Iranian city of Nishapur, located in the province of Khorasan. ‘Attar immediately recognized Rumi’s spiritual eminence. He saw the father walking ahead of the son and said, “Here comes a sea followed by an ocean.” He gave the boy his Asrārnāma, a book about the entanglement of the soul in the material world. This meeting had a deep impact on the eighteen-year-old Rumi, and later on became the inspiration for his works.
Mohammad also recalled the accounts of the death of Attar on being captured by the Mongols. Attar was taken prisoner by a Mongol during the invasion of Nishapur. Someone soon came and tried to ransom him with a thousand pieces of silver. Attar advised the Mongol not to sell him for that price. The Mongol, thinking to gain an even greater sum of money, refused the silver. Later, another person came, this time offering only a sack of straw to free him. `Attar then told the Mongol to sell him, for that was all he was worth. Outraged at being made a fool, the Mongol cut off `Attar’s head.
Mohammad as a young high school student had read Attar’s great work and fable, Manteq aṭ-Ṭayr or “The Parliament of Birds.” It was a story of the quest and pilgrimage of a flock of birds to find the Simurgh, a kind of Holy Grail King or God of Birds with whom they longed to be at one and united. This quest of the “Parliament of Birds” reminded Mohammad of the collective quest of the many people he worked with in the Committee for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to “bring the world together,” and allow the fragmented world of humanity to behold its own face for the first time in the first rough mirror of its own making, reassembled like a jig-saw from the broken shards of the shattered lost mirror of its own history.
In ‘Attar’s tale, led by the hoopoe, the birds of the world set forth in search of their beloved king, Simurgh. Their quest takes them through seven valleys in the first of which a hundred difficulties assail them. They undergo many trials as they try to free themselves of what is precious to them and change their state. Once successful and filled with longing, they ask for wine to dull the effects of dogma, belief, and unbelief on their lives. In the second valley, the birds give up reason for love and, with a thousand hearts to sacrifice, continue their quest for discovering the Simurgh.
The third valley confounds the birds, especially when they discover that their worldly knowledge has become completely useless and their understanding has become ambivalent. There are different ways of crossing this Valley, and all birds do not fly alike. Understanding can be arrived at variously–some have found the Mihrab, others the idol.
The fourth valley is introduced as the valley of detachment, i.e., detachment from desire to possess and the wish to discover. The birds begin to feel that they have become part of a universe that is detached from their physical recognizable reality. In their new world, the planets are as minute as sparks of dust and elephants are not distinguishable from ants. It is not until they enter the fifth valley that they realize that unity and multiplicity are the same. And as such they have become entities in a vacuum with no sense of eternity.
More importantly, they realize that God is beyond unity, multiplicity, and eternity. Stepping into the sixth valley, the birds become astonished at the beauty of the Beloved. Experiencing extreme sadness and dejection, they feel that they know nothing, understand nothing. They are not even aware of themselves. Only thirty birds finally reach the abode of the Simurgh. But there is no Simurgh anywhere to see. Simurgh’s chamberlain keeps them waiting for Simurgh long enough for the birds to figure out that they themselves are the si (thirty) murgh (bird). The seventh valley is the valley of deprivation, forgetfulness, dumbness, deafness, and death. The present and future lives of the thirty successful birds become shadows chased by the celestial Sun. And they discover that they themselves in their own hearts, spirits and questing, lost in the Sea of His existence, are themselves the Simurgh, the beloved sought after face of the divine.
Thus, Mohammad thought of the billions of people lost and searching for god or humanity in valleys and mountains of earthly existence and discovering that they themselves hold this spirit within their own hearts; And he thought of the seven billions of humanity seeking for unity in the world in the form of the voices to be heard and comprehended at the yet to be United Nations Parliamentary Assembly or other institution and knowing that in the end they would discover that the unity which they seek will likewise be found only in their own hearts and that at the end of their journey they themselves will discover the spirit of the world in their own hearts instead of in the walls of a building or an inscription on a paper.
He thought of Goethe’s Faust—the quest and journey, the eternal striving after the eternal despite going many times astray, the eternal striving after the beloved image of one’s own spirit, das Ewige Weibliche—ewige anima, that will discover itself as its own sought after destination, and the sought after face of Allah or God would reveal itself from within one’s own heart, which would prove also the heart of the God and the beloved one was seeking.
As Mohammad best could intuit from his studies, the general theme of Rumi’s thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially that of the concept of tawhīd –——–union with his beloved (the primal root/Source/Allah/God/Dao/Spirit) from which/whom he has been cut off and become aloof – and his longing and desire to restore reunion and unity with it.
Mohammad read Rumi’s Masnavi, weaving fables, scenes from everyday life, Qur’anic revelations and exegesis, and metaphysics into a vast and intricate tapestry. To Mohammad’s imagination Rumi could be considered an example of Insan-e Kamil — Perfect Man, the perfected or completed human being—a concept he associated with his reading of Jung in his Cambridge days and his ideal of ‘individuation’ or the full evolution, development and realization and unfolding of the full human potential of the individual soul. In the East, it is said of Rumi that he was “not a prophet — but surely, he has brought a scripture”.
Like Rumi Mohammad believed passionately in the use of music, poetry, and dance as a path for reaching God. For Mohammad as well as Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine, and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected. It was from these ideas that the practice of “whirling” dervishes developed into a ritual form. Mohammad tried to recreate and approach this transcending experience each time he undertook the dervish dance at the Maida Vale Meditation Center each week—-Rumi’s teachings became the base for the order of the Mevlevi which his son Sultan Walad organized. Rumi encouraged samāʿ, listening to music and turning or doing the sacred dance.
In the Mevlevi tradition, samāʿ represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the Perfect and the Eternal Divine. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation and the humanity within it without discrimination with regard to beliefs, races, classes, and nations. Mohammad hoped to complete this journey and return to serve all the diverse peoples of the world in his spirit, one small manifestation of which would be as a founding member of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly that was yet a quested after dream to be.
Mohammad felt that the teachings of Rumi were and are universal in nature. For Rumi, religion was mostly a personal experience and not limited to logical arguments, dogmas, institutions, creeds, rituals or perceptions of the senses. Creative love, or the urge to rejoin the spirit to divinity, was the goal towards which every thing moves. The dignity of life, in particular human life (which is conscious of its divine origin and goal), was vitally important. He browsed through the passages of Rumi which affected him deeply and which seemed to support his own work for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly:
“I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only ‘anqa’s habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet’s experience of a great divine manifestation only a “two bow-lengths’ distance from him” but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.”
Mohammad felt his own searching reflected in the haunting words of Rumi:
What can I do, Submitters to God? I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim,
I am not from east or west, not from land or sea,
not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament,
not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire.
I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world,
not from existence, not from being.
I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin,
not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan
I am not from the world, not from beyond,
not from heaven and not from hell.
I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan.
My place is placeless, my trace is traceless,
no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.
I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one.
One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.
He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner.
Beyond “He” and “He is” I know no other.
I am drunk from the cup of love, the two worlds have escaped me.
I have no concern but carouse and rapture.
If one day in my life I spend a moment without you
from that hour and that time I would repent my life.
If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you
I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.
O Sun of Tabriz (Shams Tabrizi), I am so tipsy here in this world,
I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture.
5
Eva returned home more and more in that state of misery which is not exactly grief, and which specially attends the dawnings of reason in the latter days of an ill-judged, transient love. To be conscious that the end of the dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious situations along the whole course between the beginning of a passion and its end. To love most deeply is to fear most deeply, and her fears preyed daily at unspoken depths on her helplessness before them. Now, as frustrated as her love for Andreas was, the more inevitable its end loomed, the more she came to fear for it. More and more she would avoid conflict with him, fearing that it would escalate into something uncontrollable. Something between a cold war and a cold peace settled in between them, and she felt more and more day by day that she was acting a role, putting on a face, evading her truer self. Before she had lost her husband, then Sean.
Her daughter Sarah was now slowly separating herself from her. Before she had felt she could recover from loss, trusting in her natural strength, and the strength of life itself. Now she began to fear that she could not recover again from such a staggering blow, and felt paralyzed before the spectre of looming atrophy and death against which any strength she had could not protect her. It was a very heavy time for her—-zest had fled; and left so many of the old delights mere shells of seeming.
She began to resent Vanessa’s presence even when she was most kind and understanding, each kindness a further reminder of the spectre of an old maidhood and desolation that shadowed her, looming below the far horizon. Sometimes she was harsh with him, and then she would find herself inexplicably throwing herself at him sexually without caution or control, hoping against hope that good sex could cure all the ills between them, or simply abandoning herself to her feelings of worthlessness. Sometimes she was cautious. Sometimes she said ‘to hell with it—let come what may!” and she would throw herself into the frenzy of a moment. Sometimes she sat silently before her dressing table mirror gazing at herself, thinking of herself a female Job, the Eternal Female, the Eternal Who-Suffers.
Sometimes she thought of herself as a fallen bird, a fallen sparrow with no longer the wings to fly. Yes, she thought. She was a fallen sparrow which God had neglected to mark. She had no pride left, as women will show pride and honour about almost anything except love. Perhaps now God was an old man who did not care so much for those who suffered from what old men called lust and what women called love. But in his youth God had created the green and youthful world, green and virginal before any fall, and within which existed female beauty, a female principle which existed, queenly and complete, in the hot equatorial groin of the world long before civilized proto-men came down from trees and bled the savage demons from their blood into stone-lined irrigation ditches.
And Eva, that fallen sparrow, still felt the female blood coursing through her veins, a principle apt docile and instinct with strange and ancient curious pleasures of the flesh, that flesh that she felt so often was all, her earth, heaven and hell: there was nothing else—–and so she suffered beyond her understanding, forsaken of heart, the She Who-Suffers, telling herself: “I know I am a fool, the only question remaining to answer being what kind of a fool I am going to be.”
Often a moment of happiness with Andreas, which had not altogether disappeared, was poisoned with the thought that this would be the last of it she would know. Depressed severely one summer evening she lit half a hundred candles in her bedroom, watching a soft wind waft amoung the flickering lights, reminding her of the candles of devotion she lit in the cathedral of her girlhood to attract the angels to the aid of human sufferers, then fell into tears as the moths brushed her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the flames, she feeling overmuch keenly she too had burnt her wings at life’s candle. Thus she suffered how that small emotion, “love” grows amazingly when threatened with extinction. And she felt anew the cruelty of hope, forever tantalizing onward in a dream deferred, an endless pantomime of preparation for an ever receding and evanescing future, ever evaporating into a darker and darker burnt away residue of bitterness, emptiness and pain.
The future had lost all semblance of reality. She felt like a fly entangled in a cobweb of filaments, watching the desirable freedom of the air with pitiful eyes. “I once thought love lasts forever….” she thought to herself, “…….Well it doesn’t. Only aversion lasts.——What is it makes us love and makes us die?——–The shadow of death slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything is dark and you can’t see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.”
And then one of those silences fell, and a curious thing happened to time, for although they were the same people they had been when they met, at the same time they were two entirely different people who had no business being in the same city together, let alone the same room or the same bed, yet whatever it was between them was deeper now, the stakes were higher, the danger of how much there was to lose, terribly, incontrovertibly clear. It seemed like only yesterday she and Andreas were so happy together. But we say “only yesterday” and we might well say a thousand years ago, because time is not a rope one can measure from knot to knot, time is a pitched and undulating surface which only memory can make accessible. And memory failed her.
Sometimes she would fall asleep and not wake up until days later, when Vanessa would find her, shaking her with: “Wake up, Eva Penny, Wake up!” And she would gradually come to some consciousness of herself, later thinking——-I, the dreamer clinging yet to the dream as the patient clings to the last thin unbearable ecstatic instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain’s surcease, waking into the reality, the more than reality, not to the unchanged and old time but into a time altered to fit the dream which, hopelessly entwined with the dreamer, is consumed by some unspeakable flame and rises heavenward. “Why did I wake?” she asked herself. Then she waited. Not for light or enlightenment but for that doom which we call female victory which is: endure and then endure, without rhyme or reason or hope of reward—-and then endure.
Sometimes she felt she was but waiting in a suspended limbo of atonement, pending her final acceptance of her eternal damnation. She did so definitely feel that she was headed only for hell. But it wouldn’t be the Pope’s hell or the Final Judgment’s hell that she was bound for; it would be her father’s hell and her mother’s hell and Sean’s hell and Andreas’s hell and Sarah’s and her ex-husband’s hell and the private hells of all the people that she had ever had the illusion of love about—-all of us, she would moan, so at least all of us will be together at last where we belong, in the way that we belong, tormenting each other, since even if only she went there they would still have to be there too since all of them were just the illusions that she begat, and your illusions are a part of you like your bones and your flesh and your memory.
There are some things which happen to us which the intelligence and the senses refuse just as the stomach sometimes refuses what the tongue has accepted but which digestion cannot take in—–occurrences which stop us dead as though by some impalpable intervention, like a sheet of glass through which we watch all subsequent events transpire as though in a soundless vacuum, and fade, vanish; are gone, leaving us immobile, impotent, helpless, fixed, until we can die. That was Eva.
Eva rode the buses and the underground trains without thinking of where she wanted to go and found herself getting off with the crowd at random. She found herself in the middle of the road lost in thoughts, not knowing what to do. She awoke with a start. All she knew was that she was thinking without knowing what she was thinking or why she was thinking. Then she walked until she reached the river. After giving it some thought, wondering if life was worth living, she decided she felt quite indifferent, like someone confronting a void that is neither near nor far, and where there is nowhere to rest one’ eyes, for who can focus on emptiness. She followed the river downwards, watching the movements of the birds, the clouds, the boats along the Strand towards the Tower and the Palace. Today she had no wish to talk to anyone. She wanted to walk, to walk and think about her life; or perhaps not to think about it—to be distracted, rather, by something so far and past and imposing that it would eclipse her own distress. It was perhaps distance, perhaps, something other that she longed for. She found her way into Westminster Abbey and sat gazing at the arches and then the stained glass windows, long and long until she fell asleep. Waking, she found her way home in the dusk.
As time droned on, she sank more and more into herself. Summer bled into autumn and then into bitter winter. Morning followed morning of razor-slashing wind. The bitter cold made her feel that some part of her body would break off if she bumped into something. Some of the clouds glowed slightly. Looking up, that was the sun, that blur—just a crude suggestion of what a sun might be, if there was such a thing. When she spoke to Andreas, except when she was fluent in moments of rage, she found that she was unable to finish her sentences with him. This breaking off was something quite new in her. For the first time she lost her self-possession and turned her eyes away. She was conscious of being at variance with herself. She had begun what she felt that she ought not to finish. Once, in her misery, she sought to ask Andreas if he could still love her. She opened her mouth to speak, but the word like a hangman’s noose choked her into silence. She began to feel more and more that the best happiness she would ever know would be to escape the worst misery.
She said nothing. She would not change; he would not change; he knew that she would not change; she knew that he would not change; and each knew that the other knew this.
When she thought of Andreas, which was always, he seemed to have taken her future—–her whole life, which had been somehow taken from her, yet seemed still to exist as a stolen possibility. When he came to sleep with her, there was so much pain in the room , it was like a physical barrier. Her look towards him expressed a timid supplication and fear, his a kind of shamed disgusted pity. When he touched her in bed she said “I want to sleep, sleep—–only sleep matters, I must sleep.” And she did then go to sleep instantly; with the quick flight to escape of the chronically unhappy person.
6
Committee for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly NewsFEED
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Boutros-Ghali: Parliamentary Assembly Inevitable to Democratize Global Governance
I In a comment published at OpenDemocracy, former Egyptian UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali makes the case for the establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations. In order to fight global crises more effectively, a “direct democratic connection between the world’s citizens and the world’s governance needs to be created,” says Boutros-Ghali. In the article he refers to the expansion of democracy at the national level throughout the world and that now emerging states from the South are increasingly included in global intergovernmental deliberations. By contrast to that, Boutros-Ghali says, “a third dimension of democratization is almost completely neglected: Developing global democracy beyond states.”
Clare Short Hosts U.K. Launch of Campaign
The UK Launch of the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly took place in the House of Commons, London, on Wednesday 2 May. The event was hosted and chaired by Rt Hon Clare Short MP, former Cabinet Minister for International Development, who spoke of the importance of the proposal for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. Gordon Glass, Director of 2020*Vision Ltd and involved in the campaign, and Carrie Haslett, Associate, spoke of their own personal motivation and involvement in the Campaign. The presentations were followed by a lively question and answer session which raised, and addressed, a number of public concerns about the proposal and future strategies.
Forum of Libyan civil society backs campaign for UN Parliament
The Forum of Civil Society Institutions of Libya backs the proposal for the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA). This was resolved at the forum’s annual meeting which convened last Tuesday in Tripoli. The decision was preceded by an extensive debate chaired by Dr. Nuri Ben Othman, the National Coordinator of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly and Secretary-General of Al-Amal Charitable Association for Orphans Care. In his speech Dr. Othman stressed the need for a reform and democratization of the United Nations and that a parliamentary body could be a tool to speed up the process. The participants concurred that a UN Parliamentary Assembly needs to be viewed as “a first step to establish a real world parliament.” It was emphasized that the assembly should be open for participation of civil society organizations. The forum suggested in its resolution that non-governmental organizations should be vested with observer status in a UNPA.
Besides supporting the proposal for a global parliament, the forum, among other things, also urged the abolishment of the veto right in the UN Security Council and called for a strengthening of the United Nations.
The meeting was attended by around 400 participants who represented some 250 Libyan civil society organizations. Parts of the meeting were broadcasted by Albadeel TV.
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2012 All Rights Reserved Licensed for Personal Viewing Only
Introducing Spiritus Mundi, a Novel by Robert Sheppard
Author’s E-mail: rsheppard99_2000@yahoo.com
Related Links and Websites: Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard
For Introduction and Overview of the Novel: https://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/
For Updates on the Upcoming Movie Version of the Novel, Spiritus Mundi & Casting of Actors and Actresses for Leading Roles See: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/
For Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com//
To Read Abut the Occupy Wall Street Movement in Spiritus Mundi: http://occupywallstreetnovel.wordpress.com/
To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/
To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/
To Read Sexual Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience: https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/
To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com/
To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/
To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com/
To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/
To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/
For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
I write to introduce to your attention my double novel Spiritus Mundi, consisting of Spiritus Mundi, the Novel—Book I, and Spiritus Mundi, the Romance—Book II. Book I’s espionage-terror-political-religious thriller-action criss-crosses the globe from Beijing to London to Washington, Mexico City and Jerusalem presenting a vast panorama of the contemporary international world, including compelling action, deep and realistic characters and surreal adventures, while Book II dialates the setting and scope into a fantasy (though still rooted in the real) adventure where the protagonists embark on a quest to the realms of Middle Earth and its Crystal Bead Game and through a wormhole to the Council of the Immortals in the Amphitheater in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in search of the crucial Silmaril Crystal, and to plead for the continuance of the human race in the face of threatened extinction from a nuclear World War III, all followed by a triple-somersault thriller ending in which a common garden-variety terrorist attack is first uncovered by MI6 and the CIA as the opening gambit a Greatpower Game of States threatening World War III and then, incredibly, as the nexus of a Time Travel conspiracy involving an attempt by fascist forces of the 23rd Century to alter a benign World History by a time-travelling raid on their past and our present to provoke that World War III, foiled by the heroic efforts of the democratic 23rd Century world government, the Senate of the United States of Earth, to hunt down the fascist interlopers before their history is irrevocably altered for evil.
When activist Robert Sartorius, leading a global campaign to create a European Parliament-style world-wide United Nations Parliamentary Assembly presses the proposal in New York on his old friend the UN Secretary-General and is rebuffed due to the hostile pressure of the conservative American administration, his Committee resolves to fight back by launching a celebrity-driven Bono-Geldof-Band Aid/Live 8-style “People Power” media campaign and telethon spearheaded by rock superstars Isis and Osiris and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to mobilize global public support and pressure in alliance with the Occupy Wall Street Movements worldwide. The Blogs of Sartorius, activist Eva Strong and Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy reveal the campaign’s working struggle, their tangled love affairs, a loss of faith, attempted suicide, reconciliation of father and son after divorce, and recovery of personal love and faith.
Things fall apart as the idealists’ global crusade is infiltrated by a cell of jihadist terrorists using it as a cover, then counter-infiltrated by CIA agent Jack McKinsey and British MI6 agent Etienne Dearlove. A cat-and-mouse game of espionage and intrigue ensues pitting them against the Chinese MSS espionage network allied with the Iranian Quds Force crossing Beijing, London, Moscow, Washington and Jerusalem unleashing an uncontrollable series of events which sees the American Olympic Track and Field Team bombed on an airplane in London, uncovers a secret conspiracy of China, Russia and Iran to jointly seize the oil reserves of the Middle-East, and witnesses Presidents Clinton and Carter taken hostage with Sartorius, McKinsey, Eva and other activists at a Jerusalem telethon rally cut short by the explosion of a concealed atomic device in a loaned Chinese Terracotta Warrior, then flown by capturing terrorists to Qom, Iran as “human shields” to deter a retaliatory nuclear attack.
In Book II, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance they encounter Iran’s Supreme Leader in Qom as the world teeters on the brink of nuclear confrontation and World War III, while mysterious events unfold leading Sartorius and McKinsey from their captivity in the underground nuclear facilities of Qom into a hidden neo-mythic dimension that takes them to a vast ocean and land at the center of the world, Middle Earth, Inner Shambhala, and to involvement in a mysterious Castalian “Crystal Bead Game” linked to the destiny of the human race on earth. They then embark on a quest for the Silmaril, or Missing Seed Crystal to the central island of Omphalos in the Great Central Sea in the middle of the globe, aided by Goethe, the Chinese Monkey King, Captain Nemo, the African God-Hero Ogun, and a Sufi mystic they traverse a ‘wormhole’ at the center of the earth guarded by ‘The Mothers’ and the fallen angel tribe of the Grigori (Genesis 6:1-4) which leads the way to critical meeting of the “Council of the Immortals” at the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to determine the final fate of the human species.
The heroes battle and overcome the treacherous opposition of Mephisto and his satanic subaltern Mundus through their Underworld and Otherworld adventures and successfully plead the cause of the continuation of the human species before the Immortals, returning with the critical Silmaril Crystal. resolving the Crystal Bead Game and thereby inspiring through the Archangel Gabriel a dream in the mind of Iran’s Supreme Leader which brings a new Revelation causing him to release the hostages and an end the crisis. China and Russia stand down from aiding Iran in seizing the Mid-East oil reserves, but in a treacherous blow the Chinese instead utilize their forward-positioned armies to attack their former ally Russia and seize Siberia with its large oil and gas reserves instead. President Barret Osama, America’s newly-elected first black President then invites Russia, Japan and South Korea to join NATO and together they succeed in expelling the Chinese from Siberia and usher in a new Eurasian and global balance of power and a New World Order.
Rock Superstar Osiris meanwhile, after undertaking a narcissistic Messianic mission in the wake of the Jerusalem atomic blast is dramatically assassinated on live world-wide television on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa by a disillusioned follower. His wife and rock-star partner Isis then leads a spiritual movement to reconcile and unite the clashing religions and catalyze a common global spiritual Renaissance through a Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance which seeks to construct an Inter-faith Temple on the ruins of the atomic blast in Jerusalem. In counter-reaction to the cataclysmic events the world finally implements Sartorius’ crusade for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, but not before Sartorius has himself has died, Moses-like of a heart attack while helping to foil a metaconspiracy mediated by Time Travel in which a fascist agent from the 23rd Century who has time-transited back to our time to alter a benign history by causing WWIII and thus preventing the evolution of a democratic world government, the United States of Earth, which follows him through time and nabs him just in the “nick of time” to prevent Aramgeddon.
The book ends with the opening ceremony of the UN Parliamentary Assembly which is attended in Sartorius’ name by his widow Eva Strong, whom Sartorius had fallen in love with and married in the course of the novel, and by their son Euphy, newborn after Sartorius’ death. They are joined in cinematic climax at the ceremony by newly chosen UN Secretary-General Clinton, President Osama and UN Parliamentary Assembly Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy who have just received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in creation of the world’s first world parliamentary assembly within the United Nations, bringing together the representative voices of the peoples of the world in face-to-face assembly and dialogue for the first time in world history.
Highlights:
All the Highlights of the novel cannot be contained in such a short Introduction, but a few of them would include:
1. Spiritus Mundi is the first novel in world history to portray the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assemblyon the working model, inter alia, of the European Parliament and the first novel to portray the Occupy Wall Street Movement and related movements worldwide;
2. Spiritus Mundi is a prophetic geo-political WWIII novel of the near future forseeing a conflict and conspiratorial surprise attack by a resurgent “Axis” of China, Russia and Iran seeking by a decisive blow in jointly seizing the Middle-East oil fields to radically alter the global balance of power vis-a-vis the West in the world and Eurasia. Like Clancy’s The Bear and the Dragon, it forsees the inclusion of Russia in NATO, and goes far beyond in forseeing the inclusion of South Korea and Japan, following a joint Chinese-Russian occupation of a collapsing North Korea and the Axis strike at the Middle-Eastern oil fields;
3. Spiritus Mundi is an exciting espionage thriller involving the American CIA. British MI6, the Chinese MSS, or Ministry of State Security and the Russian SVR contending in a deul of intrigue and espionage;
4. Spiritus Mundi is a Spellbinding Terrorism/Counterterrorism novel involving a global plot to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior to be detonated in Jerusalem;
5. Features the romantic and sexual searching
