When I was student in Scottish Churches College, so we had to attend class, half an hour, Bible. So the Dr. Urquhart, he did… The argument was = “So if karma is there and I am suffering for my karma, who is the witness?” But because they do not know that the witness is God.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: He asked that question?
Prabhupāda: Yes, he asked that question, philosopher. [break] Paramātmā… They say “Holy Ghost.” What is that Holy Ghost?
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The Holy Ghost is supposed to give knowledge to persons who have embraced the teaching.
Prabhupāda: Therefore He is seeing what you are doing. [https://vedabase.io/en/library/transcripts/760515mwhon/#bb371074]
How was it possible that Dr. William Spence Urquhart, a don of Aberdeen University, a well-published theologian, philosopher and Christian preacher, be no thoroughly acquainted with the Christian doctrine of divine omniscience? On the search for a satisfactory answer to this conundrum I have discovered within myself an investigative journalist and playwright. You may calculate that the target audience for such an obscure literary enterprise would consist predominantly of academic theolgions and historians. Not having any credentials in either of those disciplines,
I am forced to chart a different journey, a different journalling. I am reminded of the few months when Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” competeted with Irvine Welsh for streetwise cred. I aim to bring the murder mystery novelist’s art into a psychodrama of apocalyptic dimensions. How so presumptuous? Wherefrom cometh such foolishness to lay my head on the block of 1* humiliation? That’s a riddle I must come closer to solving or to transcending one day…and every day?
I am forced to chart a different journey, a different journalling. I am reminded of the few months when Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” competeted with Irvine Welsh for streetwise cred. I aim to bring the murder mystery novelist’s art into a psychodrama of apocalyptic dimensions. How so presumptuous? Wherefrom cometh such foolishness to lay my head on the block of 1* humiliation? That’s a riddle I must come closer to solving or to transcending one day…and every day?
I’m telling everyone whom I meet that I’m writing a book. That’s shorthand for something. Not some “thing” like a movie or an app. Perhaps an app is the best fit for the phenomena in October 2025. This week I joyfully grasped the emergent nomenclature “Westray Fae Shirk Art Tae Urquhart.
How the concept behind this title is in a love affair with the central thesis will be among the prominent ecstatic unfolding phenomena.
ENTRY 01 Saturday 4th October 0628
Despite Peter Brook’s Meetings With Remarkable Men (1979) bringing a little colour and action to my forages into inscrutable sufi poems, I lacked the deep nourishment necessary to wean me off alcopops and ego-driven free-form jazz. That came in the form of the wonderfully-illustrated Srimad Bhagavatams and Caitanya Caritamrta’s of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. They were the Shirk (Son Et Lumiere) Art which catapulted me into a 24/7 realm of vaidhi-sadhana-bhakti-yoga, energised by the pascatya-desa-tarine determination, courage and compassion of Srila Prabhupada. I pushed myself beyond physical and emotional breaking points, ironically depriving myself of the colour and intimacy of human relationships which characterised Prabhupada’s early West Coast following. A mystical marriage of Bengali petroleum engineers, Bollywood dancers, vegan activists and trauma-informed therapists have tolerated my fanaticism, fed and clothed me and brought me to Aberdeenshire, ancestral home of William Spence Urquhart.
This book will not go viral because of the content. It is already viral because of the reproductive power of companionship. I’m flying to Kolkata next Sunday. Every exchange will be Westray Fae Shirk Art Tae Urquhart Live. Sometimes vlogged, sometimes blogged, sometimes AI’d, but always imprinted in my heart.
A novel doesn’t have a formal, single-sentence thesis statement like an essay, but rather its “thesis” is the overarching theme, argument, or central idea the author explores through the plot, characters, and other literary elements.
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