WIth the Devi’s Blessings. Cover art by Jayant Kalawar 2018.
I recently published this essay on Amazon Kindle. Here is a brief summary:
From an outsider’s perspective, European Enlightenment was a brilliant social innovation, which emerged in the 17th century, as a response to the brutally destructive intra-religious wars in Europe. It led to the formation of national governments, financial markets and rapid growth of a certain kind of science and technology. However by the 21st century, that innovation, through its runaway success, has had unintended global consequences of ecocide, fratricide and suicide, particularly impacting those outside of the European sphere. This 60 page essay takes you briefly through the 3000 year history of monotheism in the West, before focusing on the 17th century and the path that has led to the current global systemic crises. The outsider, using the framework of his Devi traditions, offers a compass of hope, to navigate out of the global dystopian scenario charted by European Enlightenment, towards compassion, connection and immersion.
There are quite a few pages open to browse here:
An Outsider Deconstructing European Enlightenment
You may decide to download after browsing.
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21BanyanTree Life Coaching 
A remarkable ambitious essay, vast in scope and depth, to revision, in every sense of the word, who tells the story of history and how. This is a far-seeing complex insightful perspective – it feels like a necessary next step to begin to shift the story of how the world was made. As someone from India who is exploring what it means to decolonize, someone who is exploring indgeneity in a full spirit full body sense, I feel a profound sense of gratitude that this essay and the re-visioning framework that Jayant Kalawar has created – exists to deepen the journey and exploration…and to begin to remake the world with nuance and hope, incorporating ancestral wisdom. Reading it, I felt something in me expanding and I feel I will re-read this many times to revisit its breadth and scope. The aftermath of reading this essay was to reaffirm the importance of nurturing cellular memories of story, earth, devi, intuition to rise and flourish, so we follow what calls to its own truth – one by one and together – all at once, and at our own pace – for the purpose of individual and collective evolution and revolution – aisa, like that.
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There will hardly be anyone among us, in whose mind, at various points in life, the question ‘What is happening to the world?’ would not have risen. In recent times, teenagers too have come to the forefront of the fights for climate justice. If it is this obvious that there is a problem in the way in which the world, especially western society is currently functioning, why isn’t it obvious as to what the solutions are, and how to go about it?
Perhaps it is because there hasn’t been enough effort to fully comprehend the origin of the problem, and understand it in the backdrop of a more intelligent way of going about things. And that is the first aspect that this essay gets perfectly right. Against the backdrop of Devi traditions from the motherland of the author which presents a world view that offers a much needed fresh and unique perspective, he takes us through the history of the incidents which led us to where we are today. Be it the overly materialistic thought-process, the treating of nature as an object to be exploited, the closed groups that decide what should and shouldn’t be termed science, or the conscious suppression of the feminine – it is in the interest of all those concerned to ‘change the world’ to seek answers to the question of how we got here in the first place. The author’s contemplative writing method with historical facts and explanations through the science of the Chakras, is unique, interesting and helps to put things in perspective. But this essay is not just about understanding problems.
Just as one begins to wonder how the current world order could possibly make the shift to a more peaceful, purposeful, nurturing and intelligent network, the author succeeds in providing solutions by opening up newer dimensions to the existing processes, through the same science of Chakras. The essay is crisp yet comprehensive in its coverage of subject, and a must read for anyone who feels the urge to do something about what is currently happening in the world.
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The ability to participate in dual dialogs, of an in-depth civilizational nature, is a very necessary ingredient for our survival, proceeding rapidly as we are into a troubling world of overriding technology and set ways.
We are already seeing what polarized worlds of opinions and ideas are doing to the integrity of a deeply troubled US nation, on a political front.
The author of this very well written and deeply researched book, Jayant Kalawar, prophecies that things could get a lot worse and very quick for human kind in our world of Artificial Intelligence and super formations of vastly powerful network and social systems, if we don’t interrogate civilizational aspects of study, learning and discussing, in the view of ourselves – viewing and changing ourselves from simple stereotypical viewing types such as the import of Yoga exercises from an East in lieu of exporting Pharma tablets on a generic tariff from the West. No amount of stereotypical exchange would be able to explain how a nation like India, left impoverished on its knees by Colonials just a mere seventy year’s back (a branded 3rd world), would find itself bafflingly writing high tech software for most leading companies in the west, or of grammar structures written by a man called Panini for an ancient language four hundred years before Christ, would suddenly find itself being revered in a world at the cutting edge of innovation.
Delving into three worlds, one of his own world of being a senior technology management professional for three decades and more, the other delving into the hermeneutical developments of the European ‘age of Enlightenment’, and the third his own personal development world through the views of the sages of Ancient India, Jayant Kalawar weaves for us a tremendous narrative on essential truths.
It’s a book that draws delightfully from European history, of things ancient in Indian epistemology, and blends the many wisdoms available to us to prevent a future crisis – that of the ‘reductionist’ policies of a technological world that we have created in a stereotypical setting. He offers us a fascinating and different compass to view, to implement and enrich our lives from troubled perspectives
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