Skip to main content

Warrior of Light


Book Review 


Title: Manual of the Warrior of Light

Author: Paulo Coelho

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2002

Pages: 268 [Content only one side, however]

 

You can work miracles if you wish. Miracle is a change of attitude. Miracle is a matter of changing your way of looking at reality.

Paulo Coelho’s book, Manual of the Warrior of Light, is a kind of handbook for those who wish to perform miracles. But if you are looking for some shortcuts to miracles, or even some practical psychological tips for self-improvement, this book will disappoint you.

How do you transform your attitudes? How to change your perspectives? Sit down and do some serious meditation. Probe within. Probe deep. Question yourself, your thoughts and feelings, your beliefs and convictions. This book can help you do that by giving some starting points.

Each page of the book carries a particular thought meant to stimulate your contemplation. Many of these thoughts may not be new to anyone who has read a lot of similar work. Some of them may even sound like platitudes. A few examples:

A warrior of light always keeps his heart free of any feelings of hatred. [86]

The warrior knows that no man is an island. [102]

Yesterday’s pain is the warrior of light’s strength. [158]

A few of the ideas are borrowed directly from other writers and gurus like John Bunyan and Jesus. Examples:

The consequences of our actions are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men. T. H. Huxley [45]

A warrior is as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove. Adapted from Jesus [162]

If you are the kind of person who sits in meditation for a while every day and would like to have a triggering point for the meditation, you will find this book helpful. At any rate, this is not a book for ordinary reading. There is nothing much to read in it. This is a book that helps you to reflect. Read a page and let the idea play in your mind. Probe the idea as far as you can go with it. The exercise will change the way you look at yourself and the world. That is the miracle that this book can work on us.

 

 

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    I read The Alchemist and also The Pilgramage many years back... I never got back to Coelho's works, but they are accessible and truly inspirational. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too read the same two plus Eleven Minutes, the latter of which is rather uncharacteristic of Coelho.

      Delete
  2. Exactly...Eleven minutes is not characteric of Coelho. His is a book of pondering and contemplation. He has given his ideas in a new bowl of motivation, it seems. But his writing is mesmerizing and miraculous indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. He is one of my favourite writer. I love his writing. I read his alchemist and that is full of encouragement to keep moving you'll never miss your goal. Your review reminded me that my shelf has a few of his works which I have to read. I am going to open them now. Thank you Sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My pleasure. It's always better to read what's left unread on your shelf.

      Delete
  4. I haven't read a Brazilian author.
    Coffee is on, and stay safe.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I find his books very significant, as they make you think.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "A warrior is as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove. Adapted from Jesus [162]" I recall this from your classes.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation