Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

    The first time I read this book was back in February, 2008, nearly twelve years ago. I remember I liked it, but had some mixed feelings about it. This time around, I probably liked it less, and the mixed feelings were more on the negative side. But that is not to say you shouldn't read it. You absolutely should because it contains an immense amount of food for thought. There are specific reasons for my less-than-enthusiastic opinion toward it. One, it is a bit on the "New Age-y" side, although the unnamed narrator does make the comment that he, like myself, is rather disenchanted with the movement. The book was written in 1992, when New Age was still going strong. It is about "saving the world," and even back then the situation was bleak, but few of us were aware. I know at that time I was super-into the whole "love and light" thing, and firmly believed creating our own reality would be a piece of cake, once we "healed" ourselves from all the nasty ego stuff. YIKES. What bullshit! That of course has proved to be anything but true. And why? Because at the time I read it, I was unaware of the extent we are suffering from alien mind control. Once you "get it" about aliens, NOTHING can ever be the same, and so I found much of the book irrelevant. But for someone who is just awakening, it would certainly be an eye-opener.
    The whole premise of the book is that most people, including the narrator, (at least at first) believe that mankind is the pinnacle of evolution, and the world was basically made for that species alone, and, really, the hell with everything else. I have LONG SINCE abandoned that belief, and like the people at Dane's site, perceive humanity as a plague upon the planet, and once we are gone, if any other life remains, it can live in peace and harmony with the planet. Once the earth heals from the tons and tons of toxic materials being poured on her every day. Which would probably take millions of years. which brings me to my next point, that being that, though the purpose of the novel was to "buy more time," our time has long run out. And speaking of Dane—as mentioned above, it has been over a decade since I first read this book, and really have not thought about it in all these years. But no sooner had I picked it up to read again, then one of Dane's community members began talking about it in the comments section!
    The whole story is sort of based on Genesis—Cain killing Abel, in other words, symbolically, agriculture killing off the hunter-gatherers, who trusted "the gods" to supply their needs. It is written as if that lifestyle, in which early humanity, (with a handful of tribes remaining, at least when the book was written), lived from day-to-day like animals, off the land without farming it. Now, of course, we see that, for a long time, in fact way before this book was written, agriculture was getting pushed out for industry, except for the agribusinesses owned by people who probably never put a seed into the ground in their entire life. There seemed to be no grey areas until the very end of the book, when the slightest hint of something all together different was introduced, which I, and many of us, speak about constantly. But again, to blame agriculture for all our present perceptions of the world is just silly, and Quinn is actually not saying that, but the story goes in that direction.
    For those of us aware and awakening, it is obvious that THE issue is alien interference, and the fact that the wealthy and powerful elites are nothing but pimps and prostitutes for the alien agenda. The fact that the majority of people have ALLOWED this without even noticing, is human greed and stupidity, coupled with apathy and selfishness.
    I took pages of notes as I was reading, because there was a great deal I did agree with, so now that I have stated my opinion, I will tell you a bit more about the book. It begins when the narrator, a writer, sees an ad in the newspaper that reads: "TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." He gets very angry and throws it in the trash, thinking that it is some guru that wants to make money from a bunch of dimwitted groupies, and expresses his disdain over the whole New Age movement. But his curiosity gets the best of him, so he goes to the address listed, and finds what he believes is an empty room. Until he looks a little closer and sees a glass window providing a view to a dark room. And what is sitting in the dark room is a very large gorilla. He assumes the "teacher" is not there, so he begins to write a note when he notices a poster in the room with the gorilla that reads, "WITH MAN GONE WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA?" He also realizes it is a koan, which of course has no answer, but whose purpose is to trigger deep thought. Then he gets angry that someone is using the gorilla to make their point. Then he looks into the eyes of the animal, and the eyes speak, and he can hear the message. "But you—" I sputtered. "You are . . ." And the reply from the gorilla is, "I am the teacher."
    Once the narrator now becomes aware that this is an extremely intelligent creature who communicates telepathically, Ishmael tells him his story, how animals are collected for zoos and circuses, how the females are killed and the infants taken. He spends some years at a zoo, then is sold to a traveling menagerie. Being in this utterly boring situation which consists of people coming to stare at you, Ishmael began to think and listen to speech, then to understand it. After several years, a lonely Jewish man comes to Ishmael's cage, labeled "Goliath." He says, "You are not Goliath."
    The man buys the gorilla, and says, "Yes, I was right. You are not Goliath. You are Ishmael." Ishmael ponders these words and his new situation. The man, a wealthy merchant named Walter Sokolow, had been in a suicidal frame of mind after he learned that his entire family had been killed in the holocaust, One day after Ishmael is settled in, Walter comes to his gazebo and begins to pour out his sorrows. Ishmael realizes that Walter believes he is an intelligent creature after he reaches out and strokes Walter's hand. And it is here that both man and gorilla begin communicating without speech.
    Over the years, this leads to a closeness between the two, as between two people. Walter educates Ishmael. They read and research together, and everything Ishmael wants to learn about the world is provided by Walter. He moves into the house, and is treated like a houseguest. And Walter regains his interest in life. Too much so, perhaps because he remarries, and his new wife is none too fond of a gorilla on the premises. Ishmael moves back to the gazebo. The couple has a daughter whom they name Rachel.
    Rachel, like her father, grows to love Ishmael, and becomes his caretaker after her father's death. But not only does he have to leave, but Rachel's mother sees to it that the funds her father had appropriated for Ishmael's support are cut in half. In any case, that's how he ends up where he is.
    Ishmael and the narrator begin their lessons, in the form of the gorilla asking the man questions to allow him to analyze them and come up with a response. According to Wikipedia, this is called the Socratic Method: "a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions." Through this method, the narrator learns that all he has believed in his whole life is nothing but a myth, passed down from generation to generation through "Mother Culture." The global population continues to blindly enact this myth, never questioning whether it is a sustainable way to survive and thrive on Planet Earth. And it is not, and here in 2019, as we reach the precipice of total collapse of the earth's entire life-support system, most people are still blissfully unaware that we have reached the end.
    Ishmael has divided the earth's population into two groups, the Takers and the Leavers. Early humankind began with all Leavers, but as humans became "smarter" they decided not to trust the gods, which therefore required that they take responsibility for raising their own food, making them prisoners of the earth. There is quite a bit of Genesis in this book, rethinking the meaning of eating from the forbidden tree and the "Fall of Man." Much of this stuff I don't agree with, and it is the missing grey area I mentioned above. Being a farmer does not mean that one doesn't live in harmony with the earth, because I am a farmer and I certainly DO live in harmony with the earth. It is more about greed and control, and that has nothing to do with farming. And the book also has a lot to do with a perceived "destiny" in which mankind was created to rule and ultimately destroy the planet. Well, we certainly are fulfilling our destiny, but again, the whole alien factor, which has become so blatant now to anyone paying attention, is not part of the story. The theories here are anything but simple, but they still only look at life from a limited viewpoint, though I suppose Mr. Quinn would argue that point.
    The 263 pages of this book are packed with food for thought, and points even I had not considered. Ishmael was one smart gorilla!! Obviously I can't mention every point, but I took lots of notes, so here I will offer some quotes and comments on specific ideas.
    Towards the beginning of the book, at the early stage of the narrator's education, Ishmael speaks of participating in this Mother Culture myth because that's what we're supposed to do, and that certainly has become blatant these days, as the massive majority of the population refuses to see the truth about the catastrophe which is unraveling. Certainly the atrocities being committed in the skies with climate engineering is at the top of the list, and the fact that now the planet is literally burning up, yet most people choose to believe the lies told them by the media, government, military—I could go on and on, and I do, in my articles. But Ishmael offers an explanation as to why people are so blindly stubborn. He says, "To step out of this story is to fall off the edge of the world. There's no way out of it except through death." He later says "It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world." And that is true, but, again, one must understand the whole alien interference thing to see the entire picture.
    Next, I will quote an entire paragraph, because it is so preposterous and something that will never happen with positive results as long as we are being controlled either by the powerful elite or aliens.

Only one thing can save us. We have to increase our mastery of the world. All this damage has come about through our conquest of the world but we have to go on conquering it until our rule is absolute. Then when we're in complete control, everything will be fine. We'll have fusion power. No pollution. We'll turn the rain on and off. [!!!] We'll grow a bushel of wheat in a square centimeter. We'll turn the oceans into farms. We'll control the weather—no more hurricanes, no more tornadoes, no more drought, no more untimely frosts. [really???] We'll make the clouds release their water over the land instead of dumping it uselessly into the oceans. All the life processes of this planet will be where they belong—where the gods meant them to be—in our hands. And we'll manipulate them the way a programmer manipulates a computer.

    Hmm. Yeah, right. The thing is, we already have the technology to do ALL of this. Tesla developed free energy with no emissions but J.P. Morgan destroyed his work because it would have been a threat to his greed. And that's where the problem lies. The only solution to save us from the impending apocalypse is that worked out in Bringers of the Dawn, which puts us on a whole different path. And here, Ishmael says that "there is another story to be in, but the Takers are doing their level best to destroy that along with everything else." As I said—J.P. Morgan, and the whole lot of them throughout history. And most people, even if they are living in extreme poverty would still rather stay in this system than try another. That point is made in the book, too, and it certainly exemplifies people's unwillingness to change.
    The last point I'm going to make is about population growth and the need for control, which, living as the "Leavers" did, controlled the population naturally. When food was scarce, populations decreased, and when it was plentiful, they increased, both in animal life and early humans. Of course now, everything is in freefall, and we are downright killing off everything that isn't a human, and in fact, we are killing off humans, too. We are being sprayed day in and day out with toxic metals and chemicals, being forced to survive with an onslaught of toxic electromagnetic frequencies, along with all the other poisons being forced upon us, such as GMOs, vaccines, and fluoride. Here are some more quotes. And I also want to add that if people weren't so stupid, they would limit or stop their reproduction, but so many seem to think as long as they have the equipment they have the right to use it as much as they please. Much of this attitude comes from religious institutions and people who think babies come from god. Babies come from SEX. Let's get real about this.
    Ishmael says, "Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population, Peter Farb said it in Humankind." And Ishmael also points out that those who are starving are STILL starving as production increases. And here is another great quote:

Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you're enacting a story that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production today—and promise population control tomorrow.

And on that quote, I will stop. As mentioned above, even though I have mixed feelings about this book, and disagree with much of it, I still highly recommend it because there is so much here upon which to ponder. And people who are just beginning the awakening process will benefit even more.

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