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Carangi successfully blends scripture, divine metaphysics, and historical fiction in his tale of Sanji, a seeker of wisdom and truth, who leaves his wife to follow Jesus, his Apostles, and his wife, Mary Magdalene. This disparate, edgy amalgam of a book is rooted in A Course in Miracles, a self-study program designed to awaken humanity to its oneness with God.
“Life is but a dream” is a lyric from a children’s song. It’s also how Jesus describes the material world to Sanji, calling it an illusion that began with the tiny, mad idea that we can be separated from God. Once accepted, this belief created the io, or I Self. Its purpose is to spin a dream that causes humankind to believe that there is life in matter, an existence real, apart, and unlike its spiritual creator. Jesus instructs Sanji otherwise, defining God and Spirit as All-That-Is, everything else being erroneous and temporal. Months later, the men part ways when he and Jesus are arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is taken to Caiaphas, and later, to Pontius Pilate. Meanwhile, Sanji is enslaved on a Roman ship and then relegated to a rock quarry. Later still, he becomes the property of Vittius, an ambitious gladiator school owner. Renamed Pompilli for the arena, Sanji becomes Vittius’ most valuable chattel—not only as a gladiator but also as a friend and mentor.
Carangi’s book is for thinkers, most especially spiritually-inclined ones. Many may disagree with his ideas as they contradict humankind’s most widely accepted worldviews. Even so, in the guise of fiction, the author offers alternative answers to life’s most daunting mysteries. Similar beliefs are the heart and soul of quantum physics.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review