OUR WORLD
REVIEW & INTERVIEW
The Conscious
Activist:
Where Activism Meets Mysticism
by James O’Dea
EVERY SO OFTEN A BOOK COMES ALONG THAT
YOU FEEL IS JUST SO RIGHT FOR THE TIMES; SUCH
A BOOK IS THE CONSCIOUS ACTIVIST.
A
t a time when acts of violence
of unspeakable brutality seem
to be proliferating, not only
in distant war-torn lands, but
even in our usually peaceful
communities, we are at a loss
to make sense of them – much
less to know how to stop them.
As a front-line activist and head of the Washington
office of Amnesty International, James has both
seen the lowest expressions of human viciousness
and the most elevated expressions of human forgiveness and compassion. But no one can sustain
a steady diet of brutality without deep reserves of
spiritual connection. This is what he discovered
when he hit the wall and burnt out.
The turning point for O’Dea came with the murder of
a 12-year-old Pakistani boy who had been chained
to a carpet making loom at the age of four, escaped
at age 8, and then turned activist and inspired people around the world to defend the rights of children. The healing for him came through study and
encounters with amazing spiritual teachers, as well
as through his teaching and work for global peace.
He realized that an activist needs vision, a sense
of hope and possibility, as well as what he calls
equipoise, balancing action with compassion and
connecting instinct to a higher source that will be
a rudder in navigating complexity. Equally, it is
not enough for the mystic to bliss out in the tran-
55 | NEW CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW
scendent realms. As the Dalai Lama said, “it is not
enough to be compassionate – one must act.”
He points out that it will take more than activism
to change the world; it will take a total shift in consciousness as well as a new integration of spirit
and action. The way to that shift, he suggests, is by
acknowledging our connection to each other and
learning to access the field of universal consciousness of which we are a part. What used to be the
realm of the scientist is now the realm of the activist and mystic as well.
We are in an intense evolutionary phase, he says,
shedding old hierarchical identities and evolving
toward a larger shared human identity, but “now
we have a map: we are connected to the radiance
of the underlying source of all existence, and invited to reflect it into a world that gets dazzled and
distracted by its own shallow glitter.”
A profound book with a vitally important message.
Reviewed by Miriam Knight
James O’Dea is a renowned figure in international
soci al healing who has conducted healing and reconciliation dialogues for twenty years. He was director of Amnesty International’s Washington, DC, office,
past President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and
a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Group.