On 1/3/01, Anne Marie Newman<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
<< Dear colleague, Have you read Celestine Prophecy? I cannot perceive what
is
the tone of your post. Do you want to help us to open our mind ? Are you
sarcastic? Do you think that anything could be applied to our practice? Let
me know. I would be very interested in going further in this field. I
believe in "holistic" approach to treatment. Do we have a wrong perception of
the meaning of holism ? >>
*** Scientifically, it is possibly more acceptable to refer to multifaceted
or multimodal treatment which allows one to optimise the application of one
or more methods over a given period in the recovery process. Even then, the
physicist, David Bohm. wrote very convincingly about "Holism and The
Implicate Order", so that holism is hardly a "dirty word" in serious
quarters!
Unfortunately, the world of alternative medicine has annexed Jan Smuts'
original use of the term and sometimes denigrated its value. Anyway, I am
pretty sure that this topic does not warrant too much analysis, since it will
all boil down to an exercise in semantics. I simply wished to offer some of
the epistemology of the term, "holism". I fail to see where I was being
sarcastic. If one applies "holistic" methods or multifaceted methods which
produce successful and rapid healing, who are we to argue interminably about
the name given to the many sided approach?
Yes, I have read the Celestine Prophecy and several other autobiographical
novels like that, including Lobsang Rampa's "Third Eye" and several by Carlos
Casteneda. Also "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass",
which were far more conceptually exciting than any of those books. Nothing
really original about the revelations in these very entertaining,
self-indulgent books, all of which all constitute an exquisite blend of fact
and fiction in different proportions. For instance, all the Nine key
secrets to life which the "Celestine Prophecy" claims to disclose have
appeared in different forms in many other tales and texts. Well written and
well commercialised, but not very revealing about anything.
We could safely read about any of its disclosures on the Internet without
hunting through some primitive jungles of Peru pursued by government agents
trying to stop you from revealing the secret documents. Just another
something like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and other similar swashbuckling
tales! There are many more mentally demanding and scientifically suggestive
'secrets' in the writings of people like Robert Anton Wilson ("Cosmic
Trigger", "The Illuminati Papers" etc). By the way, what is the relevance
of the "Celestine Prophecy" to the Smuts concept of holism?
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
http://www.egroups.com/group/supertraining
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