"Meetings with Remarkable Men" by G.I. Gurdjieff

This is the Second Series of the Gurdjieff writings, as he envisioned them.  According to the original plan, after the illusions were destroyed with the First Series (Beelzebub), the Second Series was supposed to point out to the right way to educate oneself and harmoniously develop in all directions to become a Normal Man.

The book is divided in multiple chapters, each dedicated to an allegorical story about an authority figure or a close friend and associate from Gurdjieff's life.  The last chapter is called "The Material Question" which is a separate essay on the various ways Gurdjieff earned money to support his pupils' needs, which also appears in other publications.

Each story, from Gurdjieff's own father, through Dean Borsh and Bogachevsky to Yelov and Profesor Skridlov, teaches a certain aspect of the Work, appropriate for a certain period and sequence.  All the names of the characters sound a bit like from the Russian fairy tales (many of which include three bearded sailors on the Seven Seas) and they probably are made up, like much of the material, which, although probably based on some real events and people, is actually meant to be a "Teaching Story" in the Sufi sense that Idries Shah popularized in the West.  Thus, this book is a manual for the sequence and quality of the work on oneself that a student of the Gurdjieff's System needs to follow.

In that spirit, and alike Beelzebub, there's very little to be said about the actual content.  It needs to be read and the sentences need to sink into the unconscious, where Mr.Gurdjieff intended them to go, as he saw the unconscious as the last possibility for salvation of Man Kind, and he called the unconscious - "the real conscious."

"Investing for dummies" by Eric Tyson

I wanted to read a foundational generalist book about investing, so that, after my MBA, I can check if there are some gaps still left that need further research and education.  Mr. Tyson's book is as general as it can get! I understood after the first chapter that the more appropriate book would have been "Stock Investing for Dummies" since Mr. Tyson's book covers real estate, small business and extensive tax shelter retirement strategies.  These are, of course, amazing, but I meant only investing in the stock market sense when starting my research.

Mr. Tyson is an investor of the old school.  He says that if one doesn't hold a stock at least 5-7 years before selling, then one is not doing investing, but trading, which Mr. Tyson equals with gambling.  Like most investors of the old school Mr. Tyson does not believe in day trading and technical analysis, but instead concentrates on sheltering as much money as possible in predominantly retirement vehicles and keeping solid investments (not stellar, but solid) for as long as possible, and having the long average of the market (which is always rising on a very long time scale) to bring profits, even though in the "golden" years of one's life.

Mr. Tyson's strategy is proven and the only one that can somewhat guarantee results, of course, for the most patient and most enduring among us.  Many would reject such advice and jump on the day trading wagon, which, if looked at a long enough time line, is really like gambling.  However, on short distances, the market can be beat.  But still, like a gambler, the really high rollers pride themselves on knowing when to enter and when to exit a position, precise timing being everything.  And it only takes one bad bed to erase all the good ones.

Ultimately Mr. Tyson's book is for the people with enough nervous strength and constant income to afford the luxury of being "armchair investors" where one allocates the investments, sets up a monthly transfer plan and just checks once or twice a year if some kind of re-balance is needed.  No following of the markets; no checking stock prices every 20 minutes, no fretting when the Dow drops, no euphoria when the Dow skyrockets, as the armchair investors knows that over the longest investment time period (40 years or so) they will be on the market, all the ups and downs will cancel each other and finally come down to a nice constant return of about 6-10%. 

"Susila Budhi Dharma (Subud) and its doctrines" by Chuzaimah Batubara

This is a master thesis from McGill University but published in PDF format.  Going around 200 pages the author gives a succinct and very detail-heavy presentation of the situation in Post-Independence Indonesia, especially on the Java island which forms the core of the country and the term "Javanese" is used to imply belonging nearing ethnicity.

Javanese nationalism was reflected in the rise of "Aliran Kebatinan" so called "Mystical Movements" that originated from the animistic and Hindu original beliefs, predating Islam.  The Islam that was spread in Indonesia was an eclectic mix of heterodox Islam and the local animistic and Hindu beliefs, with a very small part of the population sticking to strict, heterodox Islam and Shari'a. 

Among the literally dozens of movements originating in this period (1920-1940), Susila Budhi Dharma (SuBuD), founded by Javanese Mohammad Subuh in 1925 was the only one that gained significant international presence and exists in significant numbers today, members numbering over 10,000 in several dozen countries.

The author describes in detail the socio-ethnic conditioning that necessitated the rise of the Aliran Kebatinan movements with their emphasis on direct, experiential link with the Higher Power, instead of through books like Islam and Christianity.  Subud was influenced by the local animistic beliefs, by the Hindu-Vedic theology (Susila = Suzila in Sanskrit, Budhi = Bodhi and Dharma is the same) ,by Mystical Sufism (where the ideas of the "nafsu" was borrowed from) and orthodox Islam. 

The author analyzes the basic concepts in Subud; like the concept of God or a Higher Power, the concept of Man and the concept of spiritual development which is done through the practical exercise "Latihan Kejuiwan" which is "channeled" for each new initiate ("opened") and usually consists of a verbal, mental, emotional and physical element. 

The thesis is very informative, if overly detailed, and gives a good overview of the milieu in which Subud arose and explains why it contains the elements it has today. 

"The Harmonious Circle" by James Webb

"The Harmonious Circle" has a lengthy subtitle in which Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Orage, Collin, Bennet and others are insinuated ("The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers").  James Webb, the very talented researcher who published "The Occult Establishment" some years before "The Harmonious Circle", has built a reputation of very thorough researcher, a man who can discover what others can't, a man who infiltrated even the tightest occult circles in order to get first-hand, otherwise unavailable, information.  He had access to typescript and handwritten documents that even today, 35 years later (the book was published in 1980) some of the documents Webb mentions have not seen publication.  Webb's tone throughout the book is a professional historian one, full of objectivity, however he does allow himself slight sarcasm and cynicism when describing some particularly hairy moments. Mr. Webb died by committing suicide some time after "The Harmonious Circle" was published.

Webb analyzes the people and teachings into great detail going into historical circumstances, fashions and fads of the times, Die Zeitgaist, and political implications of the power plays of the period.  For Webb, Gurdjieff is definitely "Ushe Narzunov" a Russian Tzarist "intelligence asset" (i.e. spy) who was one of the closest collaborators and a student of Lama Agwan Dordjieff, an influential Buddhist leader from the Russian Empire Buddhist Areas who was the personal tutor of the Dalai Lama.  Agwan Dordjieff was linked directly to the Russian Tzar who was engaged with the British Empire in "The Great Game" i.e. for domination of East Asia, especially Tibet (as all the rest was pretty much taken by then).  The British, with their Indian allies, were approaching Tibet from the south, while Russians, with their Buddhist and Muslim allies from the Russian Empire Buddhist Areas and Russian Turkestan (where Turkestan is referring not to today's former Soviet republic, but the huge area including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Chinese Turkestan, currently known as Xinjiang) , were approaching the conquest of Tibet from the north.

Gurdjieff makes a big deal in "Beelzebub" of the British Tibet expedition of 1903 led by Lord Younghusband.  He even claims that a stray bullet from that expedition killed the last sage on this planet who knew the full ancient knowledge (of course, Gurdjieff was known for exaggerating for dramatic effect, just read his "Herald of the Coming Good" which can be seen as a non-intentional tragicomedy).  Gurdjieff himself was hit by stray bullets three times in his life, but he survived each incident (still died at age 81 of cirrhosis of the liver, brought on by excessive alcohol use).  Few other historical events are described by Gurdjieff with such excruciating detail and barely-suppressed volcanic (negative) emotion like the Younghusband expedition.  The facts fit perfectly.  In 1903 Gurdjieff/Narzunoff would have been in Tibet, working on Russian Tsarists interests, but after the Younghusband expedition, and especially after the ingenious Chinese manoeuvre to attack Tibet from the north, thus cutting off both Russian reinforcement and escape routes for the Dalai Lama to Russia.  

The Dalai Lama was forced to flee to the British in India, who made the main condition for their help the breaking of any and all ties with Russia whatsoever, and full denunciation of Russia, which the Dalai Lama, afraid for his life, promptly and fully did.   The British have won this round of the Great Game, but in a decade or so, it became irrelevant, and in a few decades the British lost their entire empire.  The real winners here were the Chinese, which although severely weakened by the western powers' meddling (this was decades before the Communist Revolution of 1949), have scored a decisive geopolitical victory by claiming almost all of Historic Tibet for themselves.  If the Dalai Lama succeeded in escaping to Russia at this time - we'd have much different political landscape in East Asia today, and Tibetan would have probably been written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

With the Russians expelled from Tibet, Agwan Dordjieff, Gurdjieff's tutor, moved back to St.Petersburg and was granted land and money by the Russian Tsar, where he founded a Tibetan Buddhist temple which he ruled, and in which he died in 1938.  Gurdjieff also went back to Russia and was presented to the Tsar Nicolas II for his services to the Russian Crown and after a few years wandering in Tashkent and Tbilisi he went back to Moscow where his cousin, the famous sculptor Mercurieff, started introducing him to his circle and from where the known history of Gurdjieff starts.

It is interesting to note that Mdme. de Hartmann had a key for a lock-box that Gurdjieff gave her for safekeeping because he said "I knew you'd never look inside" and eventually emptied the contents into a fireplace in the late 1930s, when he decided that his incognito travels are over.  In the box there were multiple passports from different countries and other official documents and letters of introduction, gathered and assigned to Gurdjieff by the Russian Tsarist intelligence, during the long decades he was an active spy.  Gurdjieff also loved to call himself "The Tiger of Turkestan" which fits with the life of Ushe Narzunoff spending almost a decade in that area, the Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), adjoining Tibet, which was going to be the stepping stone for the Russian conquest of Tibet ("first entire Turkestan, then Tibet" the Russian Tsar used to say).  

There is a photograph from this time of Ushe Narzunoff/Georgi Gurdjieff with his Chinese wife and their two sons, aged about 5 and 2.  Gurdjieff mentioned in talks several times that he was a "trader in Chinese Turkestan" (common cover for spies in all ages) and in Beelzebub the old devil speaks about his two sons with tenderness and longing, which might have been Gurdjieff's personal emotions.  He probably never got back to Chinese Turkestan because of all the wars interceding and the new political realities.  He might have heard that his elder son got married and had a son himself, Gurdjieff's first grandson.  That must have made Gurdjieff very proud, and sad at the same time, making Hassein, Beelzebub's grandson, the main character of the book besides the Old Devil.  One can only imagine how Gurdjieff's Chinese wife felt.  First she was promised a family life and future with a western merchant-husband, and then she was abandoned forever to raise their children by herself. Direct blood descendants of Gurdjieff might still exist in modern China today, although they probably call themselves "Pure Chinese" and are CCP members.

Webb seems to have a bit of a bias contra Gurdjieff and pro Ouspensky, although I am not sure why, both men had their positive and their negative sides/habits.  The rest of the book is less interesting since it depicts (in excruciating, mind-numbing detail) the lives of Ouspensky, Orage, Collin, Bennett, Nicoll, and few other "breakaway currents" in the Gurdjieff system and Work.  The most interesting parts of the book and Webb's research are the hidden stories about Mr. Gurdjieff while the stories of the followers (and I consider Ouspensky a follower, not a teacher or co-teacher) are full of pettiness, squabbles and delusions of grandeur.

"Our lives with Mr. Gurdjieff" by Olga and Thomas de Hartmann

The deHartmann's book is mostly a sequential narrative of the events that happened to the Moscow and St. Petersburg groups of Mr.Gurdjieff during the October and Bolshevik revolutions in Russia and afterwards on their trips in Constantinople, Berlin, London, Paris and America.  There is very little "real food" for Work in this book, having mostly being written as a memoir. Thomas de Hartmann was an aristocrat and already accomplished composer when he was 'entangled' in the St. Petersburg group, allegedly on instructions by Gurdjieff himself (who also did the same thing with Ouspensky, Mr.G liked to call himself sometimes "a collector of men").

Thomas' (or Toma, as the Russian colloquial vocative form stands) married Olga Schumacher, also a Russian-German aristocrat early on, and she staid with him until the end of Toma's life.  Olga was performing the duty of personal secretary to Mr. Gurdjieff, and also took down all his writing, namely 'Beelzebub' and the 'All and Everything Series.'  The book is written mostly from Toma's notes, but Olga's notes are included at different places, where her memories were unique and different from Toma's.

It is useful to read this book in parallel with Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous" since Ouspensky only gives initials of people (like Dr. S, P., etc.) while Thomas de Hartmann spells out the full names (Dr. Stjernvall, Petrov, etc.).  It can be said that Ouspensky describes the teaching and system, while de Hartmann describes the actual day-to-day lives and activities of the students of Mr. Gurdjieff's system.  There are some parts that Ouspensky doesn't talk about much, on purpose, and more light is shed on those sections of the time span by de Hartmann.

Ultimately, Gurdjieff chases away the de Hartmann's who don't have much contact with him for the last 20 years of Mr. Gurdjieff's life, although all of them live in Paris and its surroundings.  Thomas never made any contact with the group during those 20 years, although still retaining, internally, Mr. Gurdjieff as his teacher, while Olga had occasional contacts with the de Salzmanns, especially Jeanne de Salzmann, who emerged as the main successor of the Work after Mr. Gurdjieff's death.  Madame de Salzmann summoned the de Hartmann's after the interment of Mr. G's body and they together organized most of the New York and New Jersey groups (with Mrs. Ouspensky) and Thomas and Olga de Hartmann organized the first Canadian Gurdjieff Foundation group in 1953 in Toronto.  Thomas de Harmann passed away in 1956 without finishing his book.  Olga de Hartmann finished and published the book and passed away in 1973.

"Beelzebub's Tales to his grandson" by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

Beelzebub. Who can review Beelzebub? Is there anything that can be said about it that is not refuted on one or another page of the book itself? It is a large book by modern standards, almost 1,300 pages.  And it is intentionally made difficult to read and comprehend.  Some sentences are half a page long with several subjects, objects and digressions in them.  By the time you get to the end of the sentence, that lonely period at the end, one is already struggling to keep the beginning in mind and all the in-between.

Gurdjieff loves to talk pages and pages about one thing, proving its necessity and utter importance, just to dismiss it as garbage 500 pages later.  It is a book that requires critical thinking on every page.  Nothing can be accepted at face value, and yet, there is a lot of face value in the book itself.  Gurdjieff said that he didn't care about ordinary human consciousness, which is an artificial construct with no real value, but that all his books, teachings and methods are meant to go directly into the subconsciousness. 

Beelzebub works unconsciously, without even the reader noticing, bypassing all the censors and gatekeepers "proper" societal upbringing and education has instilled in our human-machines.  It brings perspective, some calm and a lot more understanding, mostly of oneself, and mostly during the frustrations which the book was written to create in the reader.  It is all for the better.  It is all for becoming a better human being, working on oneself.

"In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Uknown Teaching" by Pyotr Demyanovich Ouspensky

Ouspensky's book is usually touted as the best and clearest introduction to the Georgyi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff's system and philosophy for spiritual development of human beings.  The book consists of about a dozen chapters covering roughly the years between 1916 and 1922, which were the most adventurous times of Gurdjieff's school in Moscow and St.Petersburg, since because of the Bolshevik revolution they had to relocate to the Caucasus, the familiar stomping grounds of Mr. Gurdjieff, and because of the war going on, the group had many adventures, including night treks over mountain roads.  The book consists mainly of quotes by Mr. Gurdjieff, which Ouspensky memorized and thanks to his amazing memory, was able to write down verbatim many months and years afterwards, since the initial Russian pupils were forbidden to take any kinds of notes, both during and after the lectures and group meetings.

It starts fairly narrative-like, and most people read only through the first 2-4 chapters, which are mostly laid out as a story.  However, the subsequent chapters expose very complex cosmology and what seems to be a finely developed system which is exposed through numerous tables and diagrams, almost with a scientific precision and attention to detail.  The descriptions of the Ray of Creation, the Reciprocal Law of Feeding, the Laws of Three and the Laws of Seven, The Enneagram and especially the complicated hierarchy of Hydrogens and Carbons (and Nitrogens and Oxigens, which do not represent the actual chemical elements, but their spiritual equivalents) are some of the most detailed and involved hierarchical structures since Dr. John Dee started learning Enochian.

Although this book is the best explanation of the Gurdjieff system, Mr. G and Ouspensky broke off later in life, and Ouspensky was not part of the Prieure in Fontenbleau, nor he was part of the later Paris Years and meetings.  When Ouspensky died in 1947, he denounced the system of Gurdjieff, even though he was teaching his own version of it, despite the break-up with Gurdjieff, since the mid 1920s.  Ouspensky left orders for his wife, who was a devout student of Mr. G throughout her life, to destroy the manuscript of the "In Search of the Miracoulous" after his death and never even show it to Mr. Gurdjieff.  Gurdjieff famously remarked that "Ouspensky died like a dog" when he heard of his death in 1947, which, within the system, means that Ouspensky did not built a vessel for his soul to continue to live after death, and thus his essence was dissipated and re-used like that of the common animals.

However, when Mr. G got a hold of the manuscript, which Mrs. Ouspensky promptly brought him upon Mr. Ouspensky's death, he is recorded as saying: "Until now I hate Ouspensky, but now I love Ouspensky.  He wrote everything as I say!" 

"The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami

This is the first collection of stories by Murakami, collected from his publications in different magazines.  The quality is patchy.  Some stories are amazing, but mostly those that he later developed into novels, like the beginning of the Wind-Up Bird chronicle, which is here in almost unchanged form from the first chapter of the novel.  Some honestly make me wonder how could anyone publish that, like the story about the customer service clerk who wrote letters to an unknown woman.

Another observation which was brought to my attention by my dear cousin who's also an MA in Comparative Literature at Yale University (and currently doing her PhD in Comparative literature at UChicago), was that the treatment of sex by Murakami is way too imaginary.  "People, especially women, do not have sex as easily as in Murakami's books" my cousin said.  This is not immediately obvious in the novels, since they are long and complex, but becomes very obvious in the short stories. 

This might stem from the fact that Murakami married his college sweetheart and thus one can assume his sexual experience relies much on "thought experiments" but the speed and smoothness with which some of his female characters jump into bed is just beyond belief (especially obvious if you've spent any amount of time in Japan and have experienced first-hand the extreme conservatism of Japanese culture).

It is an interesting enough book to read casually, but completely pales in comparison to "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", "Kafka on the Shore", "Dance, Dance, Dance" or even "Wild Sheep Chase".

"The Origin of Financial Crises" by George Cooper

This is a small book, about 200 pages paperback format, but it was a required reading for one of my MBA classes.  As nobody has time to really read the textbooks during a rigorous MBA, I re-read this book over several months, on paper, one of the only such in recent years.  It feels good to feel the paper of a good book when one gets used to pixels and AMOLEDs. The paper book also smells and the fingers can feel the texture, two more channels for communication of message, set and setting.

Mr. Cooper is an investment analyst and former employee of Goldman Sachs.  He has built a fortune for himself and lives in London.  This should indicate that Mr. Cooper knows his stuff.  It is so, however the book concentrates primarily on a handful of concepts.  The author is a firm proponent of Keynesian economy and the intellectual successor in thought Minsky.  Mr. Cooper uses several interesting metaphors like "The Inflation Monster" to make the abstract financial concepts more palpable for the lay reader, but it looks that most of the effort went into the first third of the book, less into the second third, and not that much in the rest.

The author spends the first third of the book mostly making fun of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, which is mostly accepted as the background of most economic activity around the world today.  Mr. Cooper would like to see it replace by his own concoction of Minsky for the thought, Maxwell for the engineering principles and Mandelbrot for the mathematics.  The man proof of the broken-ness of the Efficient Markets theory is given as the constantly occurring bust and boom cycles, which occur even when market players are rational and the market forces are operating.  Mr. Cooper sees this as the intrinsic flaw of the Efficient Markets camp, assuming that the markets will always operate at the highest efficiency and self-correct.  Mr. Cooper supports a minimal intervention approach that would "burst" the bubbles as they form and would level the valleys as they form.  He sees this as being the charge of the Central Bank of each country, which institution is seen as essential.

There are many good arguments, and the book is very readable at first, however it gets very confusing towards the end.  The inclusion of the mechanical essay by Maxwell in the appendix did not help, although it is obvious that it was some kind of epiphany for the author.  The book makes a pretty strong argument for some control and regulation of the financial markets at all times in order to produce optimal results.  It presents a good overview and insight about how inflation came to be and why it is inevitable in today's modern economy.  The examples with the kings recalling the gold coins from the subject and then re-coining them to steal gold is very striking.  The book is a good read and a good insight into modern market economy.

"Ubik" by Philip K. Dick

An amazing short novel by the SciFi Great, and just like many of his other novels, you really have no idea what is going on or who's who for the first 30 pages.  The next 20 pages you learn the names and personalities of the main characters and then the real ride begins.  It is a surreal ride and more so, because for so many pages you don't realize it and it seems like yet another 60s sci-fi novel.  But Philip K. Dick would not be one o the greatest science fiction writers ever if he left it at that level.  No, the twists come one after another with rapid velocity after you realize that for most of the novel all the main characters are dead and their corpses are kept on ice in a 'moratorium' which is a kind of artificial life extension institution that takes people at the time of their deaths and keeps their brains alive for many decades in a half-dream state called 'half-life.'

From another Philip K. Dick novel "Minority Report" we have 'pre-cogs' in Ubik as well, but here they don't deal with pre-crime, but are more common and can be hired for just about anything.  However, what's interesting in Ubik is that there are 'anti-talents' that is people with psyonic powers which are of the opposite charge of the regular psyionics like telepathy or pre-cog.  When 'anti-talents' are near 'talents' their psyonic fields cancel each other, thus making 'anti-talents' very useful for corporations to hire to protect themselves against industrial espionage that uses 'talents.'  Another interesting branch is there are people who are 'testers' like the main protagonist Joe Chip.  Joe's psyonic power can only be used to measure and 'feel' other psyonics, whether talents or anti-talents, but cannot do anything else. 

The novel goes into existentialist issues and is written interspersed with advertisements for Ubik in a manner of TV advertisements interrupting a movie.  Philip K. Dick published Ubik in 1969 when TV was just taking off as a commercial medium and he wanted to explore that direction, which points to the fact that he was a quite experimentalist writer for his period.  That would be like today's science ficiton novels being written with intermezzos consisting of twitter messages, or Tumblr, or other social network and their projection 23 years in the future, having in mind the book happens in 1992, the past for us, but the future for 1969. 

The author was a bit too enthusiastic about technological progress (which was common in the 1960s) and imagined that in 1992 we would have robots that clean our apartments, hover cars, fully robotized restaurants and coffee shops, bases on the Moon and Mars and building our first inter-stellar space ship drive.  Yes, folks, that was supposed to happen 21 years ago, according to Philip K. Dick, and realistically we'd be lucky if we get 10% of that 21 years from now (2013).  The book has many dark moments, thus some reviewers have called it "existentialist horror novel," but I think that is exaggeration.  The novel is not horror, just intense, in the dark Philip K. Dickian way.  And it is a pleasure to read.  You can't put it down.  Go, read it.

"The Plague" By Albert Camus

Le Peste, written in 1947 by Albert Camus, largely as a metaphor for the suffering France and himself have gone through during the German occupation in World War II.  The book depicts the life of a 200,000 people medium-sized town in French Northern Africa, from before the striking of a plague epidemic to a little after the epidemic passed.  Camus describes the lives of the people before and during the plague, their behavior, their ways of coping, their relationships, thoughts, dreams.  Several characters are fundamental in the book like that of the main character Dr. Riueu who is different from the unnamed narrator of the book.

There is a criminal who is hiding in the city and how is probably a metaphor for the traitor Vichy regime in France.  There is a journalist who is trying to escape, but eventually joins the fight against the plague.  There is another doctor, Riueu's colleague who dies in the last paragraphs of the book after surviving the entire plague.  There is the man who has retired in his 40s and is happy everyday regardless of what is happening around him.  There are the separated lovers, the wives abroad, the children, the dogs, the cats and the rats, especially the rats.

Camus describes how Riueu takes a swim in the ocean one day while the plague is in full swing, just to be able to feel how normalcy used to feel before.  The underlying message of the book is that horrible, abnormal, heart-breaking things have happened, do happen and will continue to happen throughout human history, but humans have adapted to even the worst of conditions.  Humans have adapted to live under the terrible plague, hundreds dying each day, just like they adapted to live under a terrible Nazi regime which murdered people daily.  Eventually, the plague passes, and everything is back to normal. It has to be.  There is no other way to go forward, to survive. 

But the plague bacillus, just like war, never dies.  Only waits in hiding until the next opportunity.

"The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle

I spent several months re-reading this book, since it is written in the form of questions and answers covering multitude of topics, including sub questions and detailed explanations.  It is a deep book.  Maybe one of the most original teachings of modern times.  It seems like sublimation of Zen Buddhism and Gurdjieff's system with some salt-and-pepper Christianity thrown in.

It is very difficult to review this book, as it is very dense and varied and it doesn't (really) follow any sequential structure. The history of Tolle is interesting too. Highly educated but also very depressed and seeing no meaning or exit in his life he became suicidal.  In the darkest hour he received enlightment, which is decribed as the Power of Now.  He spent a year as a homeless guy (he has a PhD and comes from a relatively wealthy background) sleeping on benches and eating whatever, but being constantly happy and present.  Then he felt a calling to spread what he learned to others.  He moved to Vancouver, wrote the book, tried to sell it to bookstores, but there were no takers.  He gave free lectures and seminars and after a while the fame started to spread.

The basic tenet of the book is that we spend way too much time begrudging the past and fearing the future which robs us of the only reality we actually have - the now, the present.  Tolle teaches that we need to withdraw from desire and connection with the material world as much as possible.  The past is irrelevant, the future has not come yet, so the now is all we have and we have to remind ourselves over and over again of that obvious fact and always pull our emotions and thoughts from the past and future, and focusing them on the now.

He mentions an interesting concept of the "Pain Body" which is the sum of all grudges, insults, hurts and resentments we still hold and which acts as a vampire, sucking our energies and sapping our will, leaving us empty an powerless.  He teaches bringing consciousness to the Pain Body and its elements, as unconscious things are resolved when brought to the light of consciousness without resistance and denial.  

Tolle wrote a second book "A New Earth" where he describes the evolution of the human race and the planet once we all 'awaken'.