PVPF 2024

Interview with Mansoor Khan, Author of One: The Story of the Ultimate Myth

Explore the inspiring journey behind 'One: The Story of the Ultimate Myth' as Mansoor delves into the complexities of development, displacement, and questioning conventional beliefs.
on Aug 22, 2023

Frontlist: Can you tell us the inspiration behind "One: The Story of the Ultimate Myth"?

Mansoor: Actually, I was never planning to write a book ever, but certain events compelled me to question the conventional notions that we are taught and conditioned to believe in.

My dearest land was to be acquired by the government for an airport project. Not just my land but that of 30,000 other villagers summing up to 14 villages. These folk are of very modest means. Also, they have an area-specific profession like fishing, farming etc. which is very connected to the land they have lived on for a long time. If displaced, they cannot survive.

So, I started asking questions. What do land acquisition and displacement of communities mean? What does development mean? Development for who and at the cost of who? And that made me aware of many issues that I was oblivious to as a mainstream, educated, privileged person. Because I had been indoctrinated into this dominant culture called Civilization, I discovered that there are environmental, financial, social, community, geological, and even spiritual aspects to consider when you talk about development.

But that was just the start. Later it became a far more fundamental question of what we mean by knowledge, progress, science, technology, and progress. That's when I realized that everybody erroneously says that 'humans are destroying the planet' whereas it is only one culture of humans – Civilization.

What makes Civilization such a deluded and deadly culture? 5,0000 indigenous, tribal, and hunter gather cultures are also human, but they do not do anything of this kind, yet we dare to say that all humans are causing this collapse. That is the Biggest Lie I have exposed and addressed in this book.

Now most people have yet to consider the difference between species and culture. We think that culture is art, literature, poetry, music etc.

Species is the biology or genetics. The hardware, so to say. At the same time, culture is so much more. It is a perspective that encompasses lifestyle, food choices, beliefs, moral ethics, and many more things. The software. And culture determines our behavior far more than the species. Humans are a species that has 5,000 cultures. One of them is Civilisation.

Civilization has a peculiar perception of Reality that no other human culture has. And that led me to the more profound realization that Civilization is fundamentally flawed in its perception of Reality and, therefore, its science is incomplete (non-holistic), and then its technology is intrinsically destructive. No wonder the mess that we are in.

Frontlist: The book has a unique structure with layers of stories within stories. How does this narrative approach contribute to exploring the book's themes?

Mansoor: That was the tricky part of merging a fictional narrative to communicate a more profound thought that would normally be considered too dry to read. I love to define characters before I write, and the characters of Sonal and Abhay popped up in my mind one day because I realized that what I was saying was making me sound insane to the people around me. I told myself that either I am insane or the rest of the world is insane. Both cannot be true. And that started the narrative journey of the story spontaneously of 2 characters that are deemed insane by society. I wrote the first 11 chapters in a single sitting for a few hours. Eventually, I completed the book after 20 years. But those 11 chapters have stayed the same because in those chapters lay the foundation of the fictional narrative.

Frontlist: Sonal and Abhay are portrayed as well-educated individuals who approach life differently from the norm. How did you develop their characters, and what aspects of their personalities do you believe reflect the broader issues your book addresses?

Mansoor: Well-educated to me means well-indoctrinated. It is not a validation of any kind. I have found people, even within Civilization, who are so-called uneducated yet are more easily able to connect to my ideas. Our deluded culture and its education system have not indoctrinated their mind. They still have their native intuition intact. But we are trying at every step to change their perception by making them feel uneducated and inferior. This is commonly called mainstreaming, a euphemism for converting people's mindsets into your own diseased, cultural mindset that is supposed to be advanced. All the while making it look like a favor you are doing them!

Sonal and Abhay are both different facets of me. Sonal's journey is of a moralistic environmentalist and human activist. But Abhay's journey is far deeper than morality. The awakening of a scientist who questions the Nature of Reality casts a shadow of doubt on all beliefs - scientific method, economic structure, technologies, and the separation from the Reality of Civilisation. I have lived and learned through both these journeys.

Frontlist: The concept of ethical and moral issues is woven into the characters' journeys. How do Sonal and Abhay's changing views and growing sensitivity toward the environment highlight the intricate relationship between personal choices and global consequences?

Mansoor: As I said, Sonal's view is only moral. At the same time, Abhay's awakening is spiritual. And I don't mean spiritual in the conventional sense that most people are used to in Civilisation. All animals are spiritual. And all One-Cultures (indigenous, tribal, hunter-gatherer cultures) are spiritual. To me, spiritual only means that you perceive Reality as an interconnected One without imaginary boundaries or separation. This significantly affects how we understand Reality (science) and deal with Reality (technology). And that changes the outcome – the state of the world. And as everyone knows, we are in a state of global collapse. Instead of reaching catabolic, convergent collapse, we can achieve balance as all living beings and One-Cultures have done in the past. This requires a drastic paradigm shift of perception. That means throwing almost all of your conditioned views out of the window.

So individual, personal choices cannot themselves bring about the needed change. It has to be a collective shift of perception of Reality. Only that will steer our path to one which is more in sync and harmony with Reality and not in conflict with it. The global collapse we are experiencing – environmental, economic, social, and spiritual is because of this conflict of Civilization with Reality. In a nutshell, each person has to look within and understand the root cause is Civilisation's perception of Reality with boundaries (symbolic), then share it with other people. Eventually, there will be a collective shift of perception that is the only way to get out of this accelerating mess. Not just environmental and moral talk.

Frontlist: The story highlights the impact of modern development on the environment, the loss of natural practices, and the separation from indigenous ways of life. How do you envision your work sparking conversations about the balance between progress and preserving the natural world?

Mansoor: I would like to reiterate that it is more than just modern development or the environment. It is our complete separation from Reality. We must learn from the indigenous mind, which has a completely different perception of Reality. The reality is interconnected and One. Not a Reality that can be divided by imaginary boundaries and symbols and then further be explained through our symbolic science. We often talk of a holistic approach. How on earth can you have a holistic approach when your perception itself is fragmented? Indigenous cultures laugh at us and consider us a virus.

Secondly, progress, productivity, and advancement are Civilization's buzzwords. Not just modern Civilization, but all of Civilization from 10,000 years back. There is no such thing as progress. Is your heart progressing and pumping more blood every day? Is your liver producing more bile every day? Does a mango tree give you more mangoes every year? Is all of Nature trying to progress quantitatively every year? These are all the effects of boundary-perception and quantification of Reality. And this mental aberration is unique to our culture of Civilization. I have explained it in a particular chapter where Sonal is explaining to the college kids that there is a difference between development and evolution.

Development means a quantitative increase of anything for the sake of a few at the cost of all else. In this case, we only talk about development from our point of view. Which is not the human point of view but Civilization's point of view. So obviously, development is destructive to everything around. Indigenous cultures do not behave this way.

And in contrast, evolution is a metamorphosis. A process of changing to adapt to Reality and the surrounding environment. That works for all of life and Reality. The world has been evolving for the last 3.6 billion years, not progressing or developing. These are Civilization's notions imposed on us, as if God didn't know how to make the world properly. So now that we are the awakened culture, we are going to correct all that God messed up. What hubris and delusion!

Frontlist: The book references the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. How do you see your work contributing to raising awareness about these goals and inspiring collective action toward meeting them?

Mansoor: The United Nations or any other such institution in the world is green-washing the issue by calling it sustainable development. That is an oxymoron. It is using two contradictory terms together to make it seem that your intentions are to correct. To give you an example of what an oxymoron is, I can say that 'I am a loving rapist.' If I am loving, then I would not be a rapist, and if I am a rapist, I don't know what love is. This is the kind of double talk that Civilization does to pretend to be taking some action against all the calamities hitting us. Green cars, green technology, sustainable growth, etc. And all the while refusing to acknowledge that our fundamental view of Reality is flawed. The issue is much deeper.

The issue is not sustainability or any of the other environmental practices, but it is a spiritual flaw of how Civilization perceives the real world. So, we can keep discussing and making these fancy terms like green growth, which is another oxymoron because we just don't want to face the biggest fact that this culture called Civilization is completely out of touch with Reality. You cannot have limitless growth on a finite planet without killing everything else.

So, if I have to inspire them, and if they are open to understanding, then they will have to invert their complete worldview before we can even start to think of how to deal with the mess that we have made. And again, I repeat, when I say we, I don't mean humans. I mean only one particular culture of humans out of the 5,000 One-Cultures of humans that are causing this mess. That is the core attempt of this book.

Frontlist: The characters' voices are drowned out by commercialism as the story progresses. How does this reflect the challenge of maintaining focus on environmental concerns in a world driven by profit and consumerism?

Mansoor: Once again, commercialism, profit, and consumerism are simply fallouts of a faulty perception of Reality. There are many other examples of this behavior that we justify in one context (business) and contest in another (environment). That is the very Nature of dualistic thinking and perception. Civilisation always seems to be constantly dealing with contradictions and doesn't know how to balance between them.

So, you will never find an answer to this paradox, whether it be the environment, economics, social unrest, or climate change. Or any other catastrophe was descending on the whole planet because of this culture Civilization. You have to change your perspective and get out of symbolic thought and back into instinct intuition experiential knowledge etc. Which is how the indigenous cultures have survived so beautifully for 2 million years. While Civilization, with its symbolic thought that leads to symbolic science that inevitably leads to destructive technology, has managed to destroy the planet in a blink of an eye. Just 10,000 years. Wow! That is a record of destructive achievement.

That is why the tagline of my book is:
'Get ready to change your perception of Reality. Because Reality does not negotiate'.

Frontlist: What personal experiences, observations, or insights prompted you to address the issues of mental well-being, greed, understanding Nature, and innovative thinking in your book?

Mansoor: I believe I addressed this in the first question, but I'd like to emphasize that my book isn't focused on mental well-being. In fact, I assert that my characters possess sound mental health, yet they are deemed insane within a culture that is itself characterized by insanity.

Furthermore, mental and psychological issues have gained prominence, akin to environmental concerns, only over the past 300 years of industrial Civilization. There is an inclination to project chronic mental and psychological issues onto indigenous people and animals, which is entirely baseless. A simple observation of our surroundings reveals that indigenous cultures, despite enduring the impact of Civilization, do not grapple with such disorders. These issues arise predominantly when Civilization displaces land, resources, and community, confining them to reserves—similar to what Europeans did to the Native Americans. This is why I mention in my book that Civilization is akin to a viral culture. Much like a cancer cell, it can only proliferate by overtaking other healthy cells within the larger body—representing all indigenous cultures—and in this case, the body is our entire planet. Astonishingly, few engage in discussions about this crucial aspect!

Frontlist: As the author, what message or call to action do you hope readers will take away from "One: The Story of the Ultimate Myth"? How can readers translate the insights from your book into practical steps toward a more sustainable and harmonious world?

Mansoor: First – Accept that Civilisation as the culture responsible for this mess. NOT all humans.

Second – Understand how Civilisation caused this. Because of our faulty perception of One Reality that we splintered with our notion of boundaries, symbolic thought, symbolic science, and symbolic technology. A violation of One Reality. And Reality does not negotiate.

Third – You can only address this mess by shifting your perception of Reality. We don't need to cause change. We have made enough changes in the past, starting with agriculture that is a violation of ecological principles. We need to surrender and realign with Reality and the Laws of One. We need to learn from the 5,000 indigenous cultures. And the rest will be fine. A fish flows with the river. It does not try to change its course.