Dr. Serafin Talisayon speech

Good evening to all of you.

First, the word adviser is too high sounding for me. When I was with the government of President Ramos I was simply a servant, a gofer, just a gofer.

But let’s talk about the book. I think this book will be read in different ways.

I think there will be three kinds of readers. The first kind of reader will be those who will condemn the book. They will hate it. And they will publicly criticize it. And they will use all their energies to say how bad this book is. I think this kind of person is not in this room.

There is a second kind of reader. There will be many readers who will be shaken by this book. This book will challenge these people to the very roots of their thinking and their being, and in many ways.

I’m not sure how many chapters you’ve read or how far you’ve gone through the book. But nevertheless, even if you’ve read only one chapter, you will agree with me that one of the things is, this book brings together two different worlds. You know, the world of politics is usually separated from the world of spirits. But in this book, they are together.

Indeed, it wakes us up to the fact that the mundane world of politics, the snake pit in Malacaňang for example, is not just a mundane world of politicians with their machinations but also the arena for, as I have heard the term, spiritual warriors. And the title of the book reminds me of that, Warriors of Heaven.

This book will challenge your beliefs in a very basic way. It will ask you what is real and what is not real. You will ask yourself. Is she telling the truth? Is this real? Is this really happening? It will challenge your concepts, your conventional concepts of what is real and what is not.

The other thing about why this book will shake you up is because, normally, people draw a very comfortable line between what is public and what is private. If you read the book, and I’m sure many of you have gone through a number of chapters, the boundaries between what is public and what is private disappear. The author has no gumption in removing and erasing boundaries between her private life and what should be public.

I think you will agree with me. It will also shake you up also in another way. You know our country is beset by much baggage, institutional mind-sets. We are victims of institutionalized mind-sets; in the religious sphere, in the political sphere, in the government sphere, everywhere.

And Marlene, I would say, is an exultant warrior, one who demolishes these institutional mind sets. Now if you are so attached to those mind sets and you are not ready to let them go, then this book will shake you up. It is a book that will make you re-examine where you are in terms of these mind sets, mind sets that imprison all of us, mind sets that, who knows, may be responsible for why the Philippines is where it is now. This book will shake up people and it will cause controversy. It will cause controversy, I tell you. I can feel it in my bones.

It will cause controversy because people are not ready to give up those mind sets. Or more than that, people are not ready to go beyond their set ways of thinking.

And now the third kind of reader comes in. The third kind of reader will experience a kind of “awakening”. If you use your mind to read this book, you will not be happy. You will not be satisfied, because the book talks to you in a different way. You have to go beyond what your mind is telling you.

You know, your doubt comes from your mind. But if you use your heart, then there is no doubt about the passion of Marlene for the Filipino nation. People who know her very closely have no such doubt. If people who do not know her read this book, if these people use their heart, then they will see that this is an author, this is a woman, this is a human being, who has touched and who is pursuing the soul of this nation, the problems of this country. And I think this is where the book will achieve something. It will wake up people. It will confuse people at first but many of them are nevertheless ready.

I think that your decision to come here says there is something you see in Marlene. Maybe your mind does not yet know fully. I always say the mind is the last to know.

So, I think this book will open the door. I am very expectant, very hopeful. At the same time I am very fearful as to what this door will open up to. But for certain, whatever it will produce for the Philippines, I think in the end, it will be good for this country.

It will be a book that will remind kindred spirits and kindred souls, that there is something better than all the stupidities that we read about in our newspapers.

I am very hopeful. And I am very happy that Marlene has the courage to decide to make this public. I am still wondering what the universe has for her. I still do not know. And I’ve spoken to her privately about this and also with her husband Steve. My mind is still full of question marks and yet at the same time there is a certainty in the book.

So in the end, I am very happy to be here and to be saying these things. And I say thank you to Marlene that she has written this book and that finally it is published.

—Dr. Serafin Talisayon
Adviser to Pres. Fidel Ramos on National Security Affairs
Cultural Center of the Philippines, November 21, 2009

Dr. Talisayon didn’t have any prepared speech that day. He proceeded to CCP immediately after he had landed from Taipei. He merely spoke from his heart.