Spiritual Revelations And Autism StoriesAnindya Das AUTISM: BOOK OF REVELATIONS By Masters and Mythily Amarabharathi Publishers & Book Seller, Tiruvannamalai, 2015, pp. 120, Rs. 100.00 VOLUME XL NUMBER 8 August 2016 Autism: Book of Revelations is a unique
take on the subject of autism in terms
of the spiritual insight experienced by
professionals involved in autism care. In fact
it would be an oversimplification to state that
the book deals with the ‘spiritual’ considering
the vast array of ways that people with
autism and professionals involved in caring
for them experience autism as a state of being
beyond what is humanly possible, a state
of ‘soul consciousness’ as Tasleem Farzana and
Pekka Kontiainen summarize in the foreword
to the book.
Mythily Chari takes the lead in writing
or rather compiling this book and accepts
that she is ‘just a thread that connects…’ all
the contributors of the book who in fact are
the ‘Masters’ referring to people with autism.
The chapters of the book do not follow any
stringent thematic pattern. In the first two
introductory chapters the author familiarizes
the reader with her experience of caring
for autistic children as a special educator for
over 20 years and with as many as 600 such
children/families. She then goes on to reinterpret
the commonly understood features
of autism in a new light such as diminished
pain perception or lack of shame in autistics
as ascetic features of lack of body awareness
and a sense of self that is inclusive of the
world around them. For this the author
makes comparisons with examples from the
life of yogis and mystics (like Sri
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s lack of shame
when his dhoti would come undone when
he would dance in devotional ecstasy).
The substance of the book can be found
in the third chapter which also happens to
be the longest. It describes various insights
that Mythily Chari had developed while
working with autistic children over the years.
Such insights also in a way bust certain myths
about autism in general. For example, though
autistics are known to be nonverbal they do
have inner speech or the more common presence
of extra-sensory perception in autistics
than others. Similarly the author recounts
the amazing capabilities of autistic savants
she has worked with, even using works
(poem, excerpts and ideas) composed by
them. Among other insights one very intriguing
concept is the author’s understanding
of all autistics being pure at heart, what she describes as ‘Heart Savant’.
The last three chapters are written by
different authors, Shailesh Pangaonkar, a psychiatrist,
Nandini Santhanam, co-founder of
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