Karma & Kismet

A Spiritual Quest Across

Continents, Cultures, and Consciousness

Dr. Michael Shandler

The parable of two enigmatic phenomena has intrigued humans and their pantheons ever since. Can the inextricable mumbo-jumbo of kismet and the fallout of karma be linked? Or is it some misplaced dogma dogging the diverse menagerie of human races? Dr. Michael Shandler redefines spirituality and vindicates the mortal limitation of sanctimonious cults and congregations. He exhibits how absolutism of facts stand on a slippery ground and no beliefs or dictums remain sacrosanct per se.

The author in his memoir embarks on a vivisection of sapiens existence across all the three realms of countries, cultures, and consciousness that form the chassis of this life cycle to whittle down action-reaction coupling in a tacit spiritual paradigm pitted against earthly fact of life. This memoir is not a pile of placid events and accounts but starts with a thrilling torrent of adventures of a jettisoned and disgruntled young man that takes in readers amidst overwhelming pathos and hairpin turn of events happening across diverse locales and consummates to turn the tide with the platitude of Rumi, ‘What you seek is seeking you.’ It’s the inner calling that ushers one ahead.

Often adversity invokes the supraconscious realm. The state of privation may provide impetus to gain an insight to this existence that ensues with the cast-off state from societal moorings to usher profound cogitation to churn out a conscious distillate to judge if one can relate karma-kismet with action-reaction coupling.  This memoir instills some beliefs while routing out several ideas one believes as irrefutable. It’s not just a story of vicissitudes of life but has a subtle connotation pealing inside out.   

Karma & Kismet is highly readable to both casual readers and also the accentuated minds to ennoble their perceptions, however the appeal factor acts on different pathways in both the cases. The book is splayed in three parts - Karma, Seeking and Kismet to bring out the quirk of fate.

The very name of this book opens up a can of worms amidst resounding philosophy. There is a jarring discord between karma and kismet as well as a profound concordance to rattle down ratiocination of all the nemesis of both positive and negative chimes. The author chooses his memoir to lacerate straitlaced notions around us citing his own account right from 1955 centered in South Africa, Israel, Canada and the US.  

A nine-year-old whammed for gobbling food is left with a scarred childhood. The frantic child flounders for safety, ‘What about the river? Or a cave on the mountain?’ Even ‘the best English South African education’ institution makes a fear psychosis in the young author’s mind to demand an explanation, ‘You’re such an old fuddy-duddy, Van Dyk...What’s wrong with whistling? The child is responded with,‘The swish of the cane cut through the air with the most terrifying sound I’d ever heard. ‘Atrocious corporal punishments and straitlaced diktats impinged upon his innate inclination. And the egos of the elders demand “apologizing for crimes when I wasn’t guilty of a damn thing.” At the same time, human debilitation exists and it springs up in the child too, ‘I don’t think about my deceit for more than a few seconds. I fit in.’

The author now faces the fact of life in tender years. After all, he is a ‘Joodjie—a rejected little Jew in a sea of Afrikaner Christians, abandoned and alone. I want to escape, but running away is impossible. I’d die of thirst in the desert.’ This heart-rending desolation is a creation of human hatred and bigotry. Racial discrimination is so innate and pervasive at every stage of life. “I love the land and the sea, but I’m a Jew. An outsider. Bullied by Afrikaners and English alike.” The adolescent author finds mortified at every other corner to stop from giving vent to his feelings, ‘Afrikaner government’s narrow-mindedness and their laws forbidding sexual congregation across the color line, the so-called Immorality Act.

The author as a young man lands with imperiled hopes, ‘I’m a problem—a fighter. I’m a Jew.’ A blind alley looms all around, ‘Cast out. A failure. A reject with no say. I just go along.’ And as such, ‘I have no job or prospects. I’m a loser.’ In an utter quandary, young Michael utters, ‘I’m paralyzed, stuck in a dark tunnel, a wreck, barely holding on.’

It’s 1967, and the Arab-Israeli conflict starts. The memoir mentions, ‘The Arab nations threaten to “push the Jews into the sea.’The writer is now 21 years of age and receives an inner call, ‘I’m Jewish and connected to Israel…I’m psyched about going to Israel.’ This ushers him into a different phase of vagabond life in varied lands and in quick succession an array of mundane oddities and paradoxes seize him that makes this memoir a remarkable piece. ‘My trip to the Golan Heights impresses upon me some basic realities about Israel.’ This gives readers a rare insight into the Kibbutz life, Golan Heights, and the Zionist upsurge. The writer gets a dire warning, the memoir is rife with suspense running underneath.

The memoir trenchantly brings out the repercussions of the state of alienation, ‘I’m curious about the hippies….I identify with the hippies. They’re outsiders in this society. I’ve been an outsider all my life, never really fitting in anywhere, doing my best to avoid attention.’ While in Canada, psychedelic escapades with pots start to open up a new vista of spirituality and Michael gets infatuated with yogic tenets. He encounters Banyen bookstore which becomes a fount of knowledge and wisdom to tick him off into charting his future, such as, ‘A book by Eric Berne, a Canadian psychiatrist, attracts my attention. It’s called Games People Play.’ The author quotes some esoteric verses penned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and others besides holding up Aldous Huxley to evoke the higher realms of perception. It’s for readers to decide if all this is spirituality.

Michael in his werewolf makeover lunges into several spiritual cults. “This ritual is supposed to wake you up, but it pisses me off. What a crock! The Japanese and the South Africans have one thing in common: beating people into compliance…Instead of calming down, my mind races.”

Finally, Michael gets riveted to an Indian yogi. This Baba initiates him into his fold with a new name and finds him a spouse too. Michael hitherto rudderless becomes a missionary zealot convening yogic congregations over the years. However human frailties exist everywhere and Michael along with his wife Nina disengage themselves from Baba’s ashram and adopt a family life. Michael realizes no godman is immaculate and infallible however he continues to revere him as an evolved soul believing what Abraham Maslaw says, 'What humans be they must be.' 

A slew of eclectic books authored by Michael and Nina follow up to finally usher a windfall with Madison Paper Project, an ‘Economic karma’ elating the Shandlers to new highs. The streak of spirituality renders what Michael acknowledges, ‘We’ve all changed… I hope my ostrich karma has finally been appeased.’ There’s rapprochement with his dad too.     

The readers are left to decide the candour of karma-kismet vis-à-vis what Rumi says, ‘What you seek is seeking you.’ The memoir rolls out a precept for a larger-than-life realization, that might be called spirituality by some readers to find, “There’s an enormous tree in the front yard… I embrace the trunk…get into tree time, deeper into treeness. I’m tuned to its massive, silent strength, its roots deep in the earth.” Was it psychedelic ranting or a spiritual streak? Or is it Karma-kismet coupling for a ‘profound new awareness’?

This memoir instills Home, Sweet Home with what Rumi claimed, ‘What you seek is seeking you’ happening with the once flotsam and jetsam author.

"How was I able to overcome the life that was handed to me? Karma and kismet? Action and fate. God’s grace and human will."

Print Length: 326 pages

Publisher: Köehler Books