Back of the Book "As individuals, we will have to make choices that will impact on us all. If we persist on this noxious path of hate, with the attitude of an eye for an eye, with the desecration of Nature, trembling with fear and riddled with egoism, we will disappear as the dominant race of this planet. If we become conscious of the oneness of life, and realize that we all form part of a great organism, and that we should respect one another and be grateful to Mother Earth for its forbearance, then we will move directly into the path of positive growth. And if we do not and stay the course of the status quo, then, whatever might happen or not, we will have forfeited our moral legitimacy to linger a minute longer. Our Planet Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the galaxy, and the cosmos-and God-are awaiting our decision. The choice is here. The time is now. It is the crunch time, the daunting hour. The bell tolls for us all. And if we-this generation and perhaps the two that follow-fail or falter, the epitaph on the human grave might well read thus: "Here rest the remains of the species Homo sapiens, a creation so majestically sculpted, so munificently blessed, by Nature and by the Master; it had its own golden moment, under the high heaven and on indulgent earth, to make man a god on earth; yet, it so senselessly, so needlessly, squandered itself; confused, not knowing what to do in the brief interlude of a single lifetime, it turned on itself, leading to its premature passage-and even the All-mighty Allah, the All-pervasive Brahman, the All-merciful Father in Heaven-could not do anything."
About the Book Stagnate as a 'creepy caterpillar' or transform into a 'beauteous butterfly' -this path-breaking book of a rare genre suggests-is the seminal choice before mankind, and every one of us. In this setting, the book raises some fundamental questions: What is man's rightful place in the cosmos and his manifest destiny on earth? Why are we so self-righteously self-destructive? Are we a doomed species? Or 'divine' beings struggling to overcome the hubris of the human intellect? Is God getting weary of mankind? How should we synergise human effort and Divine Grace? The book posits that any betterment in human behavior needs a cathartic change at the deepest levels. That requires diluting the dominance of the mind and reawakening the long-dormant intelligence of the human heart. To meet that challenge, we need minimum numbers, a 'critical mass' to create self-sustained momentum for transformation through consciousness change. And every single human of this generation should behave in such a way that he or she is that single person whose transformation could make the decisive species-scale difference. The book offers a menu of ideas and an agenda of action. This book could by itself become an input to mobilize that very 'critical mass' it advocates for human transformation.
About the Author Bhimeswara Challa is a 'double-retiree': he retired from the Indian Administrative Service in 1983 and from the United Nations in 1996. Over a career spanning nearly forty years of professional career, Bhimeswara Challa has served in multiple capacities, from the grassroots to the global level, and has travelled extensively. Alongside, he has also been a part-time but passionate writer, having published two novels in his mother tongue (Telugu), as well as numerous articles on a broad range of subjects in newspapers and journals, in India, UK and USA. Man's Fate and God's Choice is his first book-length non-fiction work. He is currently writing his second book, tentatively titled Morality, Money and Mortality-the Triad of Human Obsessions.
Preface To paraphrase Shakespeare, 'all is not well'; indeed 'something is rotten' in the state of humankind; and our time too appears 'out of joint'. The world of today has much in common with the fictional Denmark of Hamlet-chaos, disorder, distrust, bloodletting, breakdown of the 'great chain of being', and collapse of the natural and moral order. Like Hamlet, the tormented prince we too wail inside our wounded minds: "To be or not to be: that is the question; whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die, to sleep; No more..." Those famous words have inspired a wealth of literature. German philosopher Schopenhauer summed up: "The essential purport of the world-famous monologue in Hamlet is, in condensed form, that our state is so wretched that complete non-existence would be decidedly preferable to it. Now if suicide actually offered us this, so that the alternative to be or not to be lay before us in the full sense of the words, it could be chosen unconditionally as a highly desirable termination..."
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
