Book review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 8

Book review - Essay Example This example is simple and profound. The following excerpt from the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel has relevance to the above example. Pi writes "I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven. The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed. The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbor, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the center of a small circle, coinciding with the center of a much larger one. Atman had met Allah."(p. 59-60) This example elucidates what mystical experience is all about. In this paragraph the sentence â€Å"I suddenly felt I was in heaven† is significant. Heaven is the place where dualities and conflicts of the life on Planet Earth are not there and the perception capacity of an individual is limitless. ‘Heaven’ is the state when an individual has transcended the limitations of mind, meaning reasoning is non-existent there. When an individual transcends the hurdles of reasoning he reaches the conflict-free zone that is the state of bliss. That is the state of permanent happiness. The concept of secularism is the gift of his parents to Pi as they have no interest in dogmatic religion. The important message of Pi is love and he sees unity in diversity and marvels at the cosmic unity in existence and in functioning of everything. He loves the essence of every religion and when the local leaders come to know that he practices Christianity, Islam and Sufism, they ask him