Author: Vision & Global Trends – 26/02/2019
“A Shining City on a Hill” by Côme Carpentier de Gourdon
This book is a biovel, a novelized biographic story which narrates the author’s visit to Colorado USA in the nineteen eighties and his investigations of the forces that shape, move and control American society. Arriving from India where he had spent eight years, the writer uncovered little known or hidden facets of America’s history and political system. He evokes the Eastern influences that have played a role, from the nation’s genesis within the British Empire to the vedantic inspiration of the New England Transcendentalists, from the theosophical and occultist connections of free masonic sects to the ‘Indic’ references in the writings of Herman Melville and other novelists. Those connections help explain the fascination of some leading scientists, statesmen and military commanders for Hindu and Buddhism mysticism and metaphysics, often related to the spreading use of psychotropic drugs and the rise of the New Age Movement, but the Conservative Puritanical reaction and the ruthless power of a mighty Deep State bore the seeds of events which shook America in this century, from the 911 terrorist attacks to the ensuing invasions and continuing wars in the Middle East and the election of Donald Trump. The book reveals that America’s long standing high level interest in esotericism came of age when some of its ruling elites came into contact with what they could only regard as the Supernatural. That is perhaps the greatest secret that has been kept until today and it may account in part for the current state of the USA.
Deconstructing The Greatest Superpower – David Frawley
The United States is portrayed as the ideal nation that best represents rational and enlightened western secular civiliSation – forming the hallmark of humanity’s unstoppable progress over the ages. This march of triumph extends from democracy, to free markets and global trade, innovative advancements in science and technology, and human rights for all, now expanding into new high tech dimensions through the media and information age. The US sees itself as the hero on the world stage thwarting tyrants, countering terrorism and expanding an egalitarian way of life for the benefit of all.
Of course, there is a darker side to the American influence equally well known. We see this as political, military and economic global domination, with ongoing policies of regime change under the guise of spreading democracy. It includes global drug proliferation, the lethal weapons business and the famed military-industrial complex. The recent US history of wars – from Vietnam to Iraq and Libya – demonstrates this ambition; and, today, the US has a greater military presence in more countries than ever. In addition, the spread of American commercial culture worldwide undermines and eliminates many older culture heritages, aiming at Americanising everyone. Yet, there is another hidden side of the United States; a nation born of freemasons in the eighteenth century, extending over time to diverse occult and spiritual influences, and possible communication with beings from other worlds. The levels and layers of the American deep state are quite complex and can be very far removed from the rational shining city on a hill that the country is pictured to be. Into the heart of this enigmatic American phantasmagoria steps Côme Carpentier. Carpentier is no mere fictional writer; he is a trained diplomat and seasoned journalist of international affairs, possessing a detailed knowledge of history and politics along with an insightful connection to both eastern spiritual philosophies and western esotericism.
I have known Côme over the years as one of the most interesting voices on crucial subjects, broadening one’s horizons in unexpected ways. His book on America is an interweaving of a biography and a novel that keeps one guessing as to which it is. The date of his American sojourn is 1983, a year that may not mean much to most us, but was a pivotal time in which a New Age influence came to the surface of American culture, economics and politics, particularly in trendy intellectual circles like Aspen, Colorado where the core of the book’s riveting story is assiduously framed. The book is well written, colorful, engaging and picturesque. One must admire the intricate English of a Frenchman today when writing has now been reduced to short phrases of little meaning. Carpentier uncovers important secrets of the American deep state from many sides, extending far back in time and over much of the globe.
The combination of influences that he overlaps from financial to military and media levels is extraordinary. His book reads like a Dan Brown novel weaving through a mixture of modern political and ancient esoteric secrets, showing profound dangers and critical opportunities for humanity with ominous forebodings for the future of the planet if we are not extremely careful. Carpentier is in many ways as mysterious and enigmatic as his story. He serves as a background figure in the narration, with his wide-ranging thoughts setting the tone for the quickly moving sequence of events. He discerns what others do not see, with an unusual variety of international contacts that provide insider information that challenges prevailing scenarios of world events. The question arises whether his nuanced depictions of America’s secret projects are factually compelling or merely a staged account for a dramatic and fascinating novel. The final decision on this question, I will leave for the reader to determine, as both factors are interwoven in an inextricable manner.
Reading the book will certainly constitute a mind opening examination for anyone drawn into following out his carefully constructed interchanges. One can compare his book on America with his recent book on India (Memories of a Hundred and One Moons) that reflects longer phases of his diverse life experiences. Carpentier shows us that our even well-educated views of the world may be deeply flawed, highly compromised and cleverly conditioned within us. After attentively examining the book, the reader will be better positioned to discern what is really happening behind the scenes in this media era. We must remain vigilant on all levels to navigate through the expanding Maya of our world today and reach the higher light of awareness.
This book review was previously published at Millenniumpost
Exploring a mistery – Anuradha Dutt
The United States’ mercurial persona, veering between the inspirational and the sinister, is defined at the outset in Côme Carpentier’s book, A Shining City on a Hill, a fascinating exploration of the paranormal underpinning of the American nation. Joy, a woman whom the author meets during his sojourn in the country in the early 1980s, observes:
“America is both. That is why it is so troubled and misleading. It is perceived by many people abroad as satanic because it tends to use the language and invoke the name of Jesus and then speaks and acts in the opposite way; it is both Dr Jekyll and Hyde”.
Investigations into the American ‘deep state’ comprise a popular writing genre, replete with conspiracy theories about powerful banking/corporate cartels and ruling elites, acting in tandem behind the smokescreen of civil rights, to negate the democratic ideal so as to keep in perpetual harness people whom they govern and, by extension, within their expanding arch of influence. Their stratagems are geared to standardising governance, and economic and socio-cultural modules throughout the supposed ‘free’ world for their own benefit.
Systems and evolutes that do not conform to this unrelenting vision of a capitalist, free market democracy – which really is a self-serving plutocracy – are to be subverted, crushed and destroyed. Unrivalled technological advancement of the national security and intelligence machinery are integral to sustaining the hegemony of the United States, as too of the shadowy forces, spanning continents that shape geopolitics and global finance structures.
But these are areas, completely shrouded in secrecy, and difficult to grasp for those unfamiliar with transnational power play; or who view the world from the simplistic perspective of religious convention.
French scholar and writer Côme Carpentier de Gourdon very early became aware of the complex workings of the deep state, often verging on the paranormal, and intruding into realms, considered out of bounds for most people since these challenge reality, as they know it
His sojourn in the US in the 1980s and interactions with individuals, connected to government or defence or simply, information gathering, related to paranormal phenomena such as visitations by aliens/extra terrestrial beings, and reported sightings of space crafts/unidentified flying objects (UFOs) from outer space convinced him that the American ruling establishment was keeping ordinary citizens in the dark about its secret scientific and defence agendas, involving ETs and UFOs. Opening the Pandora’s box would unleash mayhem.
Some important questions arise. Were extra terrestrials intervening so as to avert a catastrophe? Why do governments across the world – the US, in particular – persist in denying paranormal phenomena despite evidence to the contrary? Are these beings linked to the very nature of reality, as we know it? French savant Robert Desbois made a significant observation.
Côme Carpentier’s informers cite at least two Presidents – Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, -as having firsthand knowledge of aliens, with two species of beings trying to exert influence. The former reportedly boarded a UFO while the latter was said to have met some ETs at Muroc on February20 or 21, 1954. It was speculated that there was a secret understanding between the US government and extraterrestrial visitors who may even have done technology transfer.
One, termed ‘Nordics’ because they were blonde, blue-eyed and tall, seemed well-disposed to humans, and so, against the nuclear programme. The other, termed ‘Greys’, were four feet tallhumanoids, apparently hostile to humans. However, given the secrecy with which scientists, intelligence operatives, defence personnel and the powers that be function, such accounts are not verifiable. The suggestion that the Nordics may even have set up base near the Nevada nuclear test site provides scope for surmise. Pictures of aliens, sourced to an informer, and which are published in the book, give rise to the idea that the creatures may have been bio-robots or cyborgs, perhaps even genetically engineered.
Some important questions arise. Were extra terrestrials intervening so as to avert a catastrophe? Why do governments across the world – the US, in particular – persist in denying paranormal phenomena despite evidence to the contrary? Are these beings linked to the very nature of reality, as we know it? French savant Robert Desbois made a significant observation:
“What if the element which accounts for all we see, including UFOs and other strange phenomena, related and unrelated to them, is consciousness? It is impossible to rule out the hypothesis that the consciousness which makes life possible and makes us human, the operating system of our species as it were, instills in us visions and experiences perhaps dictated or inspired by our collective desire to evolve higher intellectual and mental abilities. We could not tell the difference between real material events and collective or individual psychological impressions, akin to mystical visions”.
Astronomer Allen Hynek said: “I am convinced that we can’t figure out the UFO phenomenon unless we admit that it overlaps the fields of physics and consciousness”.
The significant insights that the author gained from his extended stay in parts of the US, especially regions associated with paranormal activities, led him to record his observances and off-the-record discussions on the subject in this book. He lets facts to unfurl the narrative. The title, says the author, is an “Allegory for the US and Aspen both to evoke the biblical quote often used by American preachers and politicians”.
The town of Aspen is in the mountainous Colorado state, which is also known for the Aspen Institute. A large part of his time was spent there, a privileged enclave for the wealthy, with forays into Boulder and some secluded research centres and places. The American dream – reviled as a druginduced, artificially conditioned experience by anti-establishment observers – is dissected threadbare by ‘insiders’, those in the know perhaps and who have the added advantage of being part of the educated and upwardly mobile class.
They, in fact, emerge as the most acerbic critics of the establishment, in which they are or at some stage were ensconced.
The narrative, in retrospect, convincingly puts together a milieu where privileged members of occult secret societies/business cabals that may even harbour satanic leaning coexist uneasily with Christian revivalists, White Aryan supremacists, theosophists, rebels, Blacks who survived slavery and rabid racism, immigrants and, above all, the Jewish finance and Hollywood clique that effectively spins the American dream. This melting pot of disparate peoples comprises the US, with the white elite ostensibly still on top, but there are shadow masters who orchestrate and control the powerful security and intelligence establishment.
The author’s resolve to explore the mystery further presages an engrossing sequel to this book.
This book review was previously published at Power Politics
“A Shining City on a Hill” by Côme Carpentier de Gourdon
HAR-ANAND PUBLICATION PVT LTD – 1 edition (2018)
Côme Carpentier de Gourdon, born in the Canary Islands (Spain) of French parents, studied in Europe, India and the USA and has lived, traveled and taught in more than 50 countries on four continents (including several universities and academic institutions in France, India, the USA, Switzerland, Peru, Russia, Italy, China, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Lebanon and Greece).