|
|
|
What we really need here, I think, are more reviews from exes. Right now the Clarity page is littered with glowing, mindless reviews which the cult asked its members to contribute. Perhaps more of us should offer some and see how they fare. I know Amazon's whole point is that they want readers to play the ball, not the man but that's hardly a standard they apply across the board. Hence the frustration. Hence the suspicion. Still, we'd know better if even more reviews declaimed the value of this book (and writer!).
|
|
|
|
As Amazon purportedly accept reviews that stick to commenting on the contents of the book (and only that), here's some of the content of 'Clarity'. If we send in reviews that religiously stick to commenting on the text of 'Clarity', I don't see how Amazon can get away with deleting them. So here goes folks ...from 'Clarity'. Get reviewing (Brace yourselves): Life is what we are all about. We exist. We live. Life is about joy and beauty. It is not about our differences, Our pains, our problems. Life is the song that plays through this breath. It is the call buried in each and every heart. It is the light that shines within us. If we look outside we find questions, not answers. If we look within, we find answers, not questions. We often think that questions will lead to answers, but that is not necessarily so. There is a distinct domain of answers and a distinct domain of questions. There is also an ocean of answers, and in the ocean of answers, there are no questions. For the mind, it is more intriguing to be filled with questions. For the heart, it is more intriguing to be filled with answers. Questions stay questions. Generations come and generations go. The questions stay, and so do the answers. What we are looking for is within us. The answer to the need we have always felt has always been inside. If we are looking for peace, the place to look for it is within. What I say comes from my heart. I talk about life, not because it is written somewhere, but because it is engraved in our heart. What is in our heart says that within us, we can find everything. I help people understand that there is hope and that there is a beautiful purpose in life instead of all the mundane things that we find ourselves caught up in. What I offer is Knowledge.
Modified by Moley at Tue, Jan 31, 2006, 18:47:47
|
|
|
|
Good idea, I think I'll give it a go.
|
|
|
|
A most dangerous approach to life!, February 1, 2006
"If we look outside we find questions,
not answers.
If we look within, we find answers,
not questions.
We often think that questions will lead to answers,
but that is not necessarily so.
There is a distinct domain of answers
and a distinct domain of questions.
There is also an ocean of answers,
and in the ocean of answers,
there are no questions.
For the mind,
it is more intriguing to be filled with questions.
For the heart,
it is more intriguing to be filled with answers.
Questions stay questions.
Generations come and generations go.
The questions stay,
and so do the answers.
What we are looking for is within us.
The answer to the need we have always felt has always been inside."
Setting aside the question of artistic merit and whether or not this writing can even properly be called poetry, Rawat is expounding a very pernicious philosophy here. He is asking people to trust him literally without question. In fact, he comes right out and says that questions are bad. Can you imagine a salesman in any other field discouraging questions like that? Trying to portray the very act of questioning as something perverse or, at best, a silly waste of time?
And make no mistake, Rawat IS a salesman. Look how this one "poem" concludes:
"I help people understand that
there is hope and that
there is a beautiful purpose in life
instead of all the mundane things
that we find ourselves caught up in.
What I offer is Knowledge."
"What I offer is Knowledge" ... This book is a recruitment tool. Rawat wants people to accept his offer and what that means is become his followers. Is there any other reasonable interpretation of this piece? And that, I say, is a fair question!
|
|
|
|
Prem Rawat’s work does not pretend to be poetry in any understood sense unless the author is also deceiving himself. Structurally, Clarity is prose with random scissor-work applied to create a visual illusion of verse. (Kwik-Save poetry, perhaps: ‘pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap’, and hope nobody notices the quality?) Take the verse that starts by kindly informing us that ‘Life is what we are all about’. Reassemble the first dozen lines into conventional paragraphs and what have you got…? ‘We exist. We live. Life is about joy and beauty. It is not about our differences, Our pains, our problems. Life is the song that plays through this breath. It is the call buried in each and every heart. It is the light that shines within us. If we look outside we find questions, not answers. If we look within, we find answers, not questions. We often think that questions will lead to answers, but that is not necessarily so. There is a distinct domain of answers and a distinct domain of questions. There is also an ocean of answers, and in the ocean of answers, there are no questions. For the mind, it is more intriguing to be filled with questions. For the heart, it is more intriguing to be filled with answers…’ This simple re-editing exercise turns bad poetry into bad prose. Nobody is any the wiser, apart from, perhaps, readers who know something about the author and already understand the ‘message‘ implied in these pseudo-mystical thought-bubbles. As for the bubbles themselves: the idea of ‘a domain of questions’ that is distinct from the ‘domain of answers’ is, by the standards of any reasonable creed, philosophy, or science, patent nonsense. For his next slim volume, Mr Rawat should perhaps provide an accompanying fuzzy-felt, feel-good dictionary in which terms such as ‘life’, ‘joy’, ‘beauty’, ‘breath’, ‘heart’ and ‘light’ are synonymous and interchangeable. But to do so could never rescue an irredeemable weakness on the ‘poet’s’ part to put written words to constructive use. Even halfway-decent poetry has a facility to conjure up images and feelings, to engage at a familiar level, to delight, enthral, move or entertain the reader. This poem’s last stanza seems to suggest a different agenda: ‘I help people understand that
there is hope and that
there is a beautiful purpose in life
instead of all the mundane things
that we find ourselves caught up in.
What I offer is Knowledge.’ The neutral observer does not need to reassemble this non-poetry into non-prose to imagine where the author’s real ambitions lie: not only beyond the tiresome domains of questions and answers, but beyond those of literature itself.
Modified by Nigel at Thu, Feb 02, 2006, 00:54:30
|
|
|
|
Surely they cant object to stuff like this? Its proper art talk: “Clarity” is not a book of poetry in any sense of the word that I have ever understood. Rather, this volume is a transparent montage of prosy propaganda lavishly but crudely cobbled together in support of a particular religious perspective. It is mere prose assembled by means of typography to resemble poetry. To the superficial reader or uncritical disciple of its author, the cult leader Prem Rawat, the glaring absence of any real poetic force in the work’s language may pass unnoticed: the cloying blandness of phrase may even be comforting in an anaesthetic sort of way to the converted and accustomed ear of the follower, but a book of poetry it is not. To anyone with a sincere interest in the intrinsic power of the poetic word to move human consciousness, this book’s flaccidity is little less than nauseating. It is a manifest literary façade. The graphic appearance of Clarity in which Mr Rawat’s designers couch their master’s text is similarly cloying and gratuitous. That this book depends utterly on its superficial designer gloss in order to be taken seriously as an oeuvre at all is redeemed only by the fact of its appearance achieving such a convincingly vapid setting for the empty poetry it accompanies. “Clarity” is clear to the point of vanishing. It is a pure literary non-entity; and for Mr Rawat’s merchandising department yet another triumph of form over substance.
Modified by bryn at Wed, Feb 01, 2006, 04:34:59
|
|
|
|
You didn't like it then? 
Right proper art talk I'd say.
But I'm not erudite enough to dare to say more.
'It is mere prose assembled by means of typography to resemble poetry.'
Like this?
Good init?
|
|
|
|
Poem
Creature comforts Pet. Sitting, the perfect solution, While you’re Away. Dogs love. The difference, happy alternative! To kennels! Dogs stay. With carefully Selected Loving Host. Families one to one Care And attention Local independent and fully insured." The above taken verbatim and at random from Yellow Pages Chester and North Wales 2005/6 page 972 "Pet services"
|
|
|
|
we not maybe missing the very point? The total blandess of which you speak is merely a ploy of exquisite and breathtaking subtlety to outmanoeuvre the Mind. Just as the Buddha stripped from his metaphysical description every type of language alluding to the Light Brighter Than a Thousand Suns, and merging with Undying Measureless Love, and replaced it with the notion of sort of zoning out into the Void, is not the Master of Our Time merely recycling an archaic artifice to bamboozle the intellectual sophisticates of his own day? The fact that the poetry is not poetry but prose chopped like spaghetti to convenient lengths to wrap around a diminutive intellectual fork is a measure of its greatness. Anyone can write reasonable poetry, but to write gruesome appalling poetry is a yardstick of spiritual transcendence. In some sense, Prem's 'poetry' is a double bluff. He knows he cannot write it. So he doesn't even seriously try. He just realises that thirsty enough seekers or the most dedicated, indoctrinated of devotees will take it at face value. They will interpret its ordinariness as being a sign that the points he wants to get across are of greater value than mere poetry itself could ever be. And the fact that he doesn't try to make it like Lovelace or Christina Rossetti merely underlines his humility and deeper purpose. So, in a further sense, attempting to seriously critique his poems is falling into a trap. You maybe just have to say: It's crap to anyone of any sense reading it as poetry, and not worthy of further comment.
|
|
|
|
however I must take issue on one or two of them. Your assertion that Mr Rawat has suceeded in out manoevering the Mind by invoking the circular logic of postmodern self-critique is patently unsupportable.The issue of the "measure of his greatness" as you put it, still remains. The perspective of the grand narrative either is or is not ontologically operative, it can not be simply displaced into an infinite regress as your view seems to do. Also, Prem's poetry is not a double bluff, as you claim it is. It is in fact not a bluff at all, double or single. It is simply a pure semiotic and should be evaluated within the strict parameters of the Witgenstinian paradigm. As it is without meaning it should have been left unuttered. As it stands, it can be legitimately critiqued with all scruple and without reservation. Finally may I draw your attention to the fact that I am on a hill in Wales with time on my hands and sheep outside the window and its freezing and I've got to go and chop wood and you cant get a signal on Orange out here and if Loaf is reading this I will be over tomorrow some time I expect. Love to all Bryn Ps JHB I see you are right. I might have blown it.
|
|
|
|
Thanks for the answer, and I feel sure that someone of your inestimable cultural, educational and literary expression realises the various ironies I was employing. We take that for granted - right? Also, I never used the phrase 'measure of his greatness', but I put that down to possible climatological disorientation. The real point to anyone reading this thread is quite simply that Prem's 'poetry' is really chopped up paragraphs of satsang. It can't be challenged as poetry, as I say, because it has zero relevance to anything that constitutes this, so it's a forelorn endeavour to approach it from this perspective, and probably delivers up anyone attempting to do so as being labelled a 'smarty' or 'intellectual', which are the mega sus words inside any cult and justification for discriminating against any slightly intelligent dissidents. Thus, anyone who has ever been a cult member learns fairly quickly to guard against this challenge. What one can do is question the various notions he raises, but even in doing so, one has to realise that certain of the same will always have some degree of truth to people. The idea of replacing reason/intelligent response with feeling/intuition is the basis of any cult. It has an immediate appeal to many westerners, simply because the whole thrust of western culture for ages has been against the latter. The real answer is to discuss how reason and intelligence should be balanced with intuition in everyday western life. This is a deep issue, and is usually the product of a lot of life experience rather than flaky instant solutions. One way we maybe do this is by telling how, having been exposed to many simplistic notions in early times, we have been able over many years through direct experience to put all these various ideas back into sensible order.
|
|
|
|
Sorry, but we're just pratting around here wot? True what you say about the complexity of the Rawat experience. Its as if he's selling you a skewed answer to a question you haven't yet framed properly.Everything swirls in the air untested.If you ever do try to analyze your position down the line from K, you cant tell where you shifted from one mode to the other. I ended up dumping much more than Rawat when my brain finally fired up.I slung out Rawat and God and a load of pre K stuff upped and left with him. Lovely it was too boyo. Love Bryn
|
|
|
|
Hi, boyo, Are you possibly a fan of Tom Jones (I mean the big-bollocked singer rather than the eponymous hero of Henry Fielding, or vice-versa?) 'If you ever do try to analyze your position down the line from K, you cant tell where you shifted from one mode to the other. I ended up dumping much more than Rawat when my brain finally fired up.I slung out Rawat and God and a load of pre K stuff upped and left with him. Lovely it was too boyo.' Well - fine. My experience was different. On abandoning the Prem paradigm, I found that God, conscience and the personal inner voice were there just as they had been before. Each to their own? Personally, I always preferred Englebert Humperdinck. Anthony
|
|
|
|
"Cult Leader" - it's true but it could be used as an excuse to pull the review.
John.
|
|
|
|
I know nothing about poetry, but I do know writing. This needs editing. Cut it back to about half its length—you will increase its impact. Lose as many adjectives as you can—adjectives are a form of telling-not-showing and should always be held in suspicion--they are pedantic rather than forceful. Remove passive verbs, e.g. "this book's flaccidity is" becomes the more direct "this book is flaccid". Strike out any phrases that are "literary". (Real erudition does not use self-consciously erudite words, but instead pithy, informed observations.) Conflate to a single phrase repetitive ideas, e.g. "superficial" and "uncritical". Remove anything that smacks of personal bias. Look critically at the logic and truthfulness of the statement: e.g., it is not a triumph of form over substance, because it falls flat. It is only a triumph if you are poetically tone-deaf. I recommend you edit it back brutally, then do a final pass to smooth out the prose and add in any strong new observations. I did a bit of editing and came up with: Clarity Clarity depends on its designer gloss in order to be taken seriously. It is clear to the point of vanishing, form masquerading as substance. is not a book of poetry in any meaningful sense of the word. Rather, it is a montage of cobbled-together, vaguely religious statements that rely on their assembly on the page to resemble poetry. Only uncritical reading could overlook the glaring absence of any poetic force in the work’s language; the blandness of phrase may be comforting in an anaesthetic sort of way, but a book of poetry it is not. To anyone with a sincere interest in the power of the poetic word, this book is nauseatingly flaccid.(Yeah, I know, could be better.) (Note that, conventionally, a book title is italicised, rather than put in inverted commas.) Neville, trying to be helpful, honest (and who gets edited himself just as ruthlessly)
|
|
|
|
Clarity is not a book of poetry in any meaningful sense of the word. Rather, it is a montage of cobbled-together, vaguely religious statements that rely on their assembly on the page to resemble poetry. Only uncritical reading could overlook the glaring absence of any poetic force in the work’s language; the blandness of phrase may be comforting in an anaesthetic sort of way, but a book of poetry it is not. To anyone with a sincere interest in the power of the poetic word, this book is nauseatingly flaccid. Clarity depends on its designer gloss in order to be taken seriously. It is clear to the point of vanishing, form masquerading as substance.
|
|
|
|
I think Bryn was a little tongue in cheek with his original language, but it was very entertaining. And your edits take the laugh and make it serious. May I suggest just a little firther editing to remove a couple more adjectives, make it a tad shorter, and put the killer point at the end ...
Clarity is not a book of poetry in any meaningful sense of the word. Rather, it is a montage of cobbled-together, vaguely religious statements that rely on their assembly on the page to resemble poetry. Only uncritical reading could overlook the absence of any poetic force in the work’s language; the blandness of phrase may be comforting in an anaesthetic sort of way, but a book of poetry it is not.
Clarity depends on its designer gloss in order to be taken seriously. It is clear to the point of vanishing, form masquerading as substance. It will disappoint anyone with a sincere interest in the power of the poetic word.
Modified by jonti at Wed, Feb 01, 2006, 09:32:15
|
|
|
|
For erudition read bombast.I was just letting rip in a way that caught the moment for me. Yours is a much more articulate review for sure but it somhow lacks the theatricality of mine don't you think..and as most of us don't even know what erudite means...and Amazon is a computer..or at best a chargehand sub editor/office boy..surely a bit of bluster might carry the day? I appreciate the guidance and the edit. regards Bryn
|
|
|
|
It's all got very erudite, so I've chickened out of the bombast and put up the nice punchy version.See if it appears.Thanks editors. Oh well, kill your babies. On another point. Do you think there are too many smart arses posting here (me included). I imagine some tremulous potential ex looking in here and hesitating to write for fear of polemic from me, interrogation from Jim, probity from Mike, authority from JHB, shere dazzle from Anthony etc (no offences here) We're all so wordy and self-possesed in style.We might be being self-indulgent and counter purpose of forum. Love Bryn
|
|
|
|
The punchy one was more to the point, but the first draft made me laugh and forward a copy on the the mrs.
Too many smart arses? You think a premie verging on exiting might be put off by all the thinking and analysis and wit on display around here? Maybe you are right. We should be welcoming and non-judgemental of each other, comfortably bland and not frightening all all. We should be really careful what we say. In fact, I suggest that we don't actually write anything, but have a list of suitable responses we can pull out as needed. Why don't we just make a video that describes exing, and show that on EPO instead. Then none of us will say the wrong thing - no, wait...
|
|
|
|
Points taken and much mirth. But that exing video sounds like a goer. Hmmm. Script anyone? Bryn "I once was found but now am lost"
|
|
|
|
I agree with, well I don't remember who, but I think your first version was way better. I was going to post just to compliment you on it. Also loved the dog poem. When you mull the muse's amuses, the messy mulch will snooze the mightiest mooses.
|
|
|
|
The edited version is somehow a little dehumanised. Although it is a technically superior piece of writing, Bryn's original had a heartfelt spontaneity that gave the reviewer a believeable voice. Full of (nasty, horrible, redundant, pointless, polemical, unnecessary) adjectives, for sure - but aren't we all? Long-winded? - Sure, and ditto! Nige
Modified by Moley at Wed, Feb 01, 2006, 13:44:29
|
|
|
|
no editing at all. Some outsider readers will feel a good twitch from this, but just as in any ideological world, others, even extremely bright ones, will close up instinctually. We shouldn't underestimate Prem's statements, as some are quite powerful. Everything as usual comes down to experience, and, when push comes to shove, most people have to come back to direct life and assess how it all makes sense in real relationships and everyday perceptions.
|
|
|
