A Journey through Aesthetic Realms
 
Seeing Humankind through Non-Human Eyes with Internationally Acclaimed French Author Bernard Werber      
Today’s A Journey through Aesthetic Realms will be presented in French, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Greetings imaginative viewers. Mr. Bernard Werber is one of the most famous science fiction authors from France and throughout the world. He has fascinated readers all over the world with his writings on science and spirituality, philosophy, the animals our co-inhabitants, the origins of humankind, and more. He was a scientific journalist for Le Nouvel Observateur and Eurêka, the magazine of Europe’s largest science museum, the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris.

He thus nurtured his love for science. In 1991 Bernard Werber published his first novel, “The Ants,” which sold in 15 million copies and was translated into 35 languages. Many of his other works, including “The Ants” trilogy, have become international bestsellers. Today, Mr. Werber kindly shares with us glimpses of his universal philosophy that helped to expand countless readers’ minds.

Halo to Bernard Werber.

Halo.

One of the most well-known, most read writers, perhaps one of the most read French writers abroad. A phenomenal success!

I’m seeing you for the first time and I see a person who is always smiling, who is always in a good mood.

I fight against anxiety by making myself smile.

That’s a good philosophy.

It seems that when we smile you move some zygomatic muscles which send good waves to the body.

Are you like this when you’re writing?

I smile, I’m excited and I say foolish things. Yes, I’m exactly like this, I’m the same when writing. You know, writing is an act of pleasure. I believe that if I don’t feel joy while writing, there won’t be any joy in reading. So, I do my best to enjoy it. There is an aspect of joyfulness in art which is very important.

I think that art is something light and writing a novel is entertainment.

At the same time you also say more profound things.

Bernard Werber’s writing style is classified a mixture of science fiction, adventure, philosophy and other genres. For him, science fiction does not mean robots and high tech; it is an innovation of the ideas and the values. He often describes how other beings or animals see the human race in other to provide a more objective picture of human evolution.

Tell us, what role, what place do the animals have in your works?

The same place they have on Earth, namely partners, co-inhabitants on this planet who offer us a different way of thinking and a different point of view.

How nice that you’ve used the word co-inhabitants.

What do you think about the relationships that we established between humans and animals?

There is no dialogue, There is no balance. For the moment we consider that an animal is intelligent if it imitates us. It is in fact that they have found ways to adapt to their environment, ways we haven’t found yet. I think a lot of monkeys have found solutions to questions we can’t even imagine. So, the animals can teach us things and we should abolish the idea that we know everything and they know nothing.

Do you sometimes put yourself in the position of the animals?

Oh, yes! For “The Ants” I put myself in the place of an ant, other than that, I like different points of view. I am very interested in other people’s view of other cultures; other forms of life. I even ask myself all the time what do the trees think, the plants, the Earth, what does the Earth think of us? So what does the Earth think of us?

I think that we are simply parasites that swarm on its surface and this must make her itch a little bit, and at times, when we make a lot of mess, it makes her itch a lot. What do the animals think? About us? They try to understand us. They wonder why we walk on two feet, why we wear clothes, why we make noise and why we put so much energy into things other than feeding ourselves.

In his book, “The Thanatonauts,” published in 1994, Bernard Werber speaks about arriving upon Paradise in first person singular, so that every reader could live this adventure as their own discovery. It was written after studying various religious scriptures and mythologies in order to find their shared roots. This book was later followed by “The Empire of the Angels” that gives the angels’ point of view on human existence.

You look at the evolution of the soul. The evolution of the soul goes through what?

We should first have the desire to go forward. I try to awaken this desire through my books by depicting characters who go forward and thus have a better life. My heroes change and I hope that my readers will change as well, by asking themselves new questions and by enlarging their consciousness. In order to enlarge their consciousness, I try to offer them different points of view such as the views of animals and plants.

That’s great.

For his 2002 novel, “The Tree of Possible Things,” Bernard Werber invited people on the Internet to tell their visions of the future of the humanity. Of course Mr. Werber himself considered here some of the major issues of today – climate change, the depletion of natural resources, illnesses caused by overconsumption, etc.

Well, we do a lot of programs on the environment. (You are right in doing so.) According to you, how does ecology influence us, or how do we influence it, how can we untangle all this?

Now, for me the solution is to stop consuming so much. We should stop being hypocritical, we should think globally, planetarily.

The mass consumption you’ve mentioned… There is data which shows that one of the most powerful polluters is the meat industry. As we already started to talk about animals, how could we understand better that we are killing our co-inhabitants?

Look, I’ve written a book to make people understand that they were eating anxious corpses and this makes them anxious as well. It’s called “Our Fathers’ Father.” I hoped that people would decrease their meat consumption after reading this book. People, if we tell them, that they should stop driving their 4X4

because it makes a hole in the ozone layer, they would say: “Well, that’s true, but since everybody does it, I’ll do it too.” If we drive our 4X4 and we eat meat three times a day, as is the case, we are just losing our natural instincts and we are disconnecting ourselves from everything, and from ourselves. We need to go back to nature, we need to regain respect for nature. We need to remind ourselves that we are living animals among other living animals.

Keenly interested in the realm beyond the mundane, Mr. Werber next shares how he strives to connect with both his inner and outer worlds. Please stay with us after these messages on Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to A Journey through Aesthetic Realms on Supreme Master Television. The spiritual realms, the paranormal phenomena and the life beyond are topics that shape Mr. Bernard Werber as a writer and as a human being. Mr. Werber’s personal life is a quest of the major questions of the humanity. He strives to reach a balance, a harmony with the world around him.

Later, I’ll do my Tai Chi, I’ll go back to nature, I’ll try to touch a tree, I’ll try to reconnect myself…

So tell us, how’s your life, how is it related to nature?

The important word is life. The important word is life. But life is like love. It’s been used so much, we hardly remember what it means. Life is something that will make a small plant grow through the asphalt.

So, what does Tai Chi bring to you?

It allows me to disconnect myself for five minutes from the turmoil of this world and to stop, to always respond to others. I just stop and focus myself again. I remind myself that I am a living being. Also I remind myself that I am lucky to be alive, and that I am connected to all other forms of life on Earth.

So, touching a tree regenerates you as well.

It widens one’s consciousness in order to perceive what a tree perceives or what our planet perceives.

Is it true that you’ve chosen to be vegetarian?

It’s more complicated than that. I didn’t make the decision all of a sudden, I didn’t tell myself, “I will become a vegetarian.” I saw the slaughterhouses and I said to myself that eating corpses that have suffered to such extent, this is not me, it goes against my integrity. So, I greatly reduced my meat consumption. Now, the last time I ate meat must have been 4 or 5 months ago.

However, this being said, progressively, progressively I reduce so much my meat consumption that when I eat some I feel sleepy and I feel tired. My whole digestive system doesn’t know how to digest meat.

I also try to avoid more and more all dairy products, like butter, cream, animal fat, because I feel that my body doesn’t like it anymore.

Now in this interview, I can tell people that we should choose lightness, toward vegetarian fare, but know that there is a price to pay: the price is that when you go forward you can’t go backwards anymore. The more conscious you are, the more sensitive you become, the less you can bear dirty and unhealthy things. So, be prepared for this. And if I could mention this, since you allow me to discuss it, it’s not only at the level of meat, it’s at all levels. If you live in violent relationships, in relationships of domination or power, you are in a state of excitement that might be pleasant and that might suit you.

But if you want to get out of it, you will not be able to bear violence anymore, you’ll be not be able to bear heaviness or dirtiness in spirit anymore. And when there are nervous, irritable people, or people with a bad atmosphere, I don’t have other terms for it, they make you suffer more and you can bear it less. That’s the price to pay. The cleaner you are the less you can bear dirtiness. You see what I mean?

Truly so!

We are related to all forms of life on Earth.

Thank you, Mr. Werber, for sharing your time and thoughtful views with us. Through messages such as yours, may all humans rediscover their true peaceful nature.

Bernard Werber’s books are available at

and Honorable viewers, thank you for being with us. Please join us next for Our Noble Lineage, after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May we hear the inner call of our great Self.

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