© Roger M Tagg 2013
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese emigré to the USA, who wrote in both English and Arabic. Wikipedia says that Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu, this book (The Prophet) being his main claim to fame.
Although brought up as a Maronite Christian, Gibran was very open to other religions, including Islam in its Sufi forms.
The book certainly makes mention of 'God' and a person's 'soul', but these are not used in the sense of any particular religious dogma. There is no 'God the Father', or imperious Old Testament or Koranic potentate.
The scenario is that of a relatively young 'prophet' named AlMustafa, who has spent nearly 12 years in a foreign coastal town called Orphalese. A ship from his own country is approaching the harbour, and he is aware that he must go back home with it. He has clearly impressed the locals with his ideas and example. They would rather he did not leave, and the book is mainly concerned with his answers to the questions they put to him as his ship readies itself for the return journey. He, and his closest contact in the city, a seeress called AlMitra, realize that he will not return.
My highlights omit the prophet's musing as his ship approaches and as he boards when it departs. They concentrate on the topics of the questions, starting with Love, the primary concern.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Love | 10 | "When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep." |
| 11 | What is the purpose of love's tribulations? So "that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart". | |
| If all you want is "love's peace and love's pleasure", then you are better off not trying for it. | ||
| 12 | "Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not, nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love." | |
| "And think not you can direct the course of love; for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course." | ||
| "Love has no other desire than to fulfill itself." | ||
| Marriage | 16 | "But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you." |
| "Love one another, but make not a bond of love." | ||
| "Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone." | ||
| 19 | "Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping." | |
| "And stand together, yet not too near together." | ||
| Children | 20 | "They come through you, but not from you; and though they are with you, they belong not to you." |
| "You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts." | ||
| "You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like [i.e. similar to] you." | ||
| Giving | 24 | "You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give." |
| "For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow." | ||
| "What shall tomorrow bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?" | ||
| "There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition (-) and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome." | ||
| "And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty." | ||
| 27 | "There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward." | |
| Those who give without pain and without seeking joy are best. | ||
| "It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding (of a need)" | ||
| "All you have shall some day be given (i.e. when you die); therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'." | ||
| 28 | Should we give only to the deserving? The prophet doesn't think so. | |
| 29 | "And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives." | |
| Don't doubt generosity [RT: presumably, if it seems genuine.] | ||
| Eating & Drinking | 30 | The prophet does not advocate being a vegetarian, but indicates that we should be aware that we all (eater and eaten) are all subject to nature. |
| Work | 33 | "To live life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret." [RT: It doesn't seem 'inmost' to me - it's pretty fundamental.] |
| "Life is indeed darkness when there is no urge; and the urge is blind save where there is knowledge; and all knowledge is vain save where there is work; and all work is empty save where there is love." | ||
| 34 | "And what is it to work with love?" [RT: The prophet's answer seems to be something like Pirsig's motorcycle maintenance - do it with care, and with your heart.] | |
| Working in art (painting, sculpture) isn't any more noble than ploughing the soil, or making sandals. | ||
| 35 | "Work is love made visible" | |
| It's better to be a beggar than to work only with distaste. | ||
| Joy & | 36 | Life is all ups and downs; neither joy or sorrow is 'better'. |
| Sorrow | 37 | Joy and sorrow are inseparable (and accentuate each other). |
| Houses | 39 | "In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields." |
| The prophet asks whether the people have peace, remembrances and beauty in their houses. Or do they have "only the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?" (I.e., do your 'things' take you over?) | ||
| 40 | "Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning to the funeral." | |
| It's better to be "children of space" - "You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living." | ||
| Clothes | 42 | "Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful." |
| "And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain." | ||
| "Would that you could meet the sun and the wind the more of your skin and less of your raiment!" [RT: Not easy in a cool country!] | ||
| 42-3 | "Modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean. And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of mind?" [RT: This reminds me of Austrian mixed saunas, where no-one is bothered by nudity.] | |
| 43 | "And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the wind longs to play with your hair." | |
| Buying & | 44 | "It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger." |
| Selling | "Invoke the master spirit ... (to) sanctify the scales and the reckoning that weighs value against value." | |
| "Suffer not the barren-handed to take part in their transactions, (i.e. those) who would sell their words for your labour." [RT: Sounds like 'No to consultants'! I think the prophet's suggestion is that they should be shown how they need to work in order to create some exchangeable value.] | ||
| 45 | (On the other hand) singers and dancers do provide "raiment and food for your soul". | |
| No-one should leave the market "with empty hands". [RT: Maybe they should be given whatever is left over.] | ||
| Crime & Punish- | 46 | If you "commit a wrong unto others and therefore to yourself", you must "knock and wait awhile unheeded at the gate of the blessed". [RT: presumably boycotted or exiled?] |
| ment | "But your god-self dwells not alone in your being. Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, but a shapeless pigmy ..." | |
| 49 | It is the man in you, "and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime." | |
| "Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is within you also." | ||
| "So the wrongdoer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all." | ||
| 50 | "The guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured." | |
| "You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked." [RT: We're all potentially as good and as bad as each other.] | ||
| 51 | "What judgment pronounce you on him who though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit?" | |
| 52 | "And how prosecute you him who in action is a deceiver and oppressor, yet who is also aggrieved and outraged?" | |
| "And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?" | ||
| "The erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self." | ||
| Laws | 53 | Lawyers "delight in laying down laws, yet can delight more in breaking them". |
| To some, the law is "a chisel with which they would carve (a rock) in their own likeness", thinking like a "cripple who hates dancers", or like a domesticated animal that hates wild ones. | ||
| 54 | It's like the guest "who comes early to the wedding feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters are law breakers." | |
| 55 | "You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?" | |
| Freedom | 56 | "You can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment." [RT: Otherwise, one is still in thrall to the idea.] |
| "You shall be free indeed when your days are not without care nor your nights without a want and a grief; but rather, when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound." | ||
| 57 | "What you call freedom is the strongest of these chains (i.e. those 'which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened'), (even) though its links glitter ..." | |
| "And what is it but fragments of your own self that you would discard that you may become free?" | ||
| "You cannot erase it (an unjust law) by burning your law books", or get rid of a tyrant, or cast off a care - because you may have contributed to it; so first get rid of your own dependency. | ||
| 58 | Likewise, "the seat of fear is in your heart, and not in the hand of the feared". | |
| "The desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape", all "move within your being in constant half-embrace." | ||
| When one shadow fades, another emerges from a different light. | ||
| Reason | 59 | Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite." |
| & | We ourselves have to be the peacemakers. | |
| Passion | "Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul." You can't thrive if either one of them breaks. | |
| 60 | Judgment and appetite are like "two loved guests in your house". It doesn't do to favour one over the other. | |
| Pain | 61 | "Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." |
| "Pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self." | ||
| Self-kno | 65 | "You would know in words that which you have always known in thought ... and it is well you should." |
| -wledge | 66 | "Say not 'I have found the truth', but rather 'I have found a truth'." |
| Teaching | 67 | "If he (the teacher) is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind." |
| 68 | "For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man." | |
| Friend | 69 | "When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain." |
| -ship | 70 | "And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love, but a net cast forth; and only the unprofitable is caught." |
| "If he (your friend) must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also." | ||
| Talking | 71 | "You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime." |
| "And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered." | ||
| "There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves, and they would escape." | ||
| "And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand." [RT: maybe the fact that they are either over-absorbed or ignorant?] | ||
| "And there are those who have the truth within them, but tell it not in words." | ||
| Time | 73 | "Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing." |
| "Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream." | ||
| 74 | "Is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?" | |
| Good & | 75 | "What is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?" [RT: and therefore acts desperately?] |
| Evil | "You are good when you are at one with yourself." Otherwise, you are just 'divided' - you wander perilously - but don't necessarily sink. | |
| "You are good when you strive to give of yourself." But seeking gain is not necessarily evil. | ||
| 76 | "You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps." But limping along isn't evil; one still goes forward, but one is weak. | |
| 77 | "You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good. You are only loitering and sluggard." | |
| Prayer | 78 | "You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance." |
| "For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?" | ||
| "When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet." The prophet calls this "the temple invisible". | ||
| "If you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking, you shall not receive." | ||
| "If you should enter into it to humble yourself, you shall not be lifted." | ||
| "Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others, you shall not be heard." [RT: So it isn't a 'Jim'll fix it' agency.] | ||
| Pleasure | 83 | "Pleasure is a freedom-song, but it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, but it is not their fruit." |
| "Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all." The prophet implies 'Let them seek; they may find pleasure, but a lot else besides'. | ||
| 84 | Nostalgia - whether of happy memories or regrets - is OK if it brings pleasure. | |
| Those who shun all pleasures may still find that they get a lot(!) | ||
| 85 | "Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being." | |
| "And your body is the harp of your soul. And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it, or confused sounds." | ||
| 86 | For both "bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy ... (so) be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees". [RT: Go with the flow!] | |
| Beauty | 88 | Beauty - as an ideal - isn't really beauty, but "needs unsatisfied, ... and beauty is not a need but an ecstasy." |
| 89 | "It (beauty) is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear; but rather an image you see though you close your eyes, and a song you hear though you shut your ears." | |
| Religion | 90 | "Is not religion all deeds and all reflection - and that which is neither deed nor reflection but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?" |
| "Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?" | ||
| "He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked, and he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage." | ||
| 91 | "And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are [RT: open?] from dawn to dawn?" | |
| "Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all." | ||
| 91-2 | "And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look around you and you shall see Him playing with your children [RT: hopefully not Jimmy Savile!] ... (and) smiling in flowers." | |
| Death | 93 | "How shall you find it (death) unless you seek it in the heart of life?" [RT: Because it's all part of what life is like.] |
| Any "knowledge of the beyond" lies in "the depth of your hopes and fears." | ||
| Post- | 98 | "Man's needs change, but not his love, nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs." |
| script | 103 | "And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?" |
| 106 | "The kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent of a curse." |
I feel that much of the appeal of this book is in its biblical-style (King James version) poetry and metaphor - especially in the prologue and postscript. Sometimes, however, it borders on 'metaphor overload'.
In Christian bible terms, 'The Prophet' seems to me nearest to the style of Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha), but without the heavy emphasis on 'fear of the Lord'. And its metaphors seem clearer to a modern reader than those in the book of Ecclesiastes (in the main body of the Old Testament) - that's the one that keeps saying "vanity of vanities, all is vanity". And it certainly reads better than the moralistic pompousness of the Book of Proverbs.
It is relatively easy for us today to envisage a prophet from one Arabic-speaking country spending time in a port city in another Arabic country, even though the implied time of the events is well before industrialization, bureaucracy or even seriously organized religion.
As regards the actual content, I feel it has great value by encouraging the reader to think about universal problems of human life and civilization from unusual angles. It is refreshingly un-dogmatic, yet has Love as its overarching quality. I also liked the fact that Buying and Selling are included and not relegated as 'Mammon'. However I think some topics (e.g. Marriage, Giving, Clothes) are much better addressed than certain others (e.g. Pain, Suffering, Institutions) - the last two not being mentioned at all.
This book will not be happy reading for Bible or Koran literalists, or for fundamentalists of any sort.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 4th April 2013
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .