'Reflections on the Spirit and Legacy of the Sixties' by Fritzof Capra (1 Dec 2002): The 1960s were the period of my life during which I experienced the most profound and most radical personal transformation. For those of us who identify with the cultural and political movements of the sixties, that period represents not so much a decade as a state of consciousness, characterized by "transpersonal" expansion, the questioning of authority, a sense of empowerment, and the experience of sensuous beauty and community. This state of consciousness reached well into the seventies. In fact, one could say that the sixties came to an end only in December 1980, with the shot that killed John Lennon. The immense sense of loss felt by so many of us was, to a great extent, about the loss of an era. For a few days after the fatal shooting we relived the magic of the sixties. We did so in sadness and with tears, but the same feeling of enchantment and of community was once again alive. Wherever you went during those few days — in every neighborhood, every city, every country around the world — you heard John Lennon's music, and the intense idealism that had carried us through the sixties manifested itself once again: You may say I'm a dreamer, In this essay, I shall try to evoke the spirit of that remarkable period, identify its defining characteristics, and provide an answer to some questions that are often asked nowadays: What happened to the cultural movements of the sixties? What did they achieve, and what, if any, is their legacy? expansion of consciousness The era of the sixties was dominated by an expansion of consciousness in two directions. One movement, in reaction to the increasing materialism and secularism of Western society, embraced a new kind of spirituality akin to the mystical traditions of the East. This involved an expansion of consciousness toward experiences involving nonordinary modes of awareness, which are traditionally achieved through meditation but may also occur in various other contexts, and which psychologists at the time began to call "transpersonal." Psychedelic drugs played a significant role in that movement, as did the human potential movement's promotion of expanded sensory awareness, expressed in its exhortation, "Get out of your head and into your senses!" The first expansion of consciousness, then, was a movement beyond materialism and toward a new spirituality, beyond ordinary reality via meditative and psychedelic experiences, and beyond rationality through expanded sensory awareness. The combined effect was a continual sense of magic, awe, and wonder that for many of us will forever be associated with the sixties. questioning of authority The other movement was an expansion of social consciousness, triggered by a radical questioning of authority. This happened independently in several areas. While the American civil rights movement demanded that Black citizens be included in the political process, the free speech movement at Berkeley and student movements at other universities throughout the United States and Europe demanded the same for students. In Europe, these movements culminated in the memorable revolt of French university students that is still known simply as "May '68." During that time, all research and teaching activities came to a complete halt at most French universities when the students, led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, extended their critique to society as a whole and sought the solidarity of the French labor movement to change the entire social order. For three weeks, the administrations of Paris and other French cities, public transport, and businesses of every kind were paralyzed by a general strike. In Paris, people spent most of their time discussing politics in the streets, while the students held strategic discussions at the Sorbonne and other universities. In addition, they occupied the Odéon, the spacious theater of the Comédie Française, and transformed it into a twenty-four-hour "people's parliament," where they discussed their stimulating, albeit highly idealistic, visions of a future social order. 1968 was also the year of the celebrated "Prague Spring," during which Czech citizens, led by Alexander Dubcek, questioned the authority of the Soviet regime, which alarmed the Soviet Communist party to such an extent that, a few months later, it crushed the democratization processes initiated in Prague in its brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the United States, opposition to the Vietnam war became a political rallying point for the student movement and the counterculture. It sparked a huge anti-war movement, which exerted a major influence on the American political scene and led to many memorable events, including the decision by President Johnson not to seek reelection, the turbulent 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Watergate scandal, and the resignation of President Nixon. a new sense of community While the civil rights movement questioned the authority of white society and the student movements questioned the authority of their universities on political issues, the women's movement began to question patriarchal authority; humanistic psychologists undermined the authority of doctors and therapists; and the sexual revolution, triggered by the availability of birth control pills, broke down the puritan attitudes toward sexuality that were typical of American culture. The radical questioning of authority and the expansion of social and transpersonal consciousness gave rise to a whole new culture — a "counterculture" — that defined itself in opposition to the dominant "straight" culture by embracing a different set of values. The members of this alternative culture, who were called "hippies" by outsiders but rarely used that term themselves, were held together by a strong sense of community. To distinguish ourselves from the crew cuts and polyester suits of that era's business executives, we wore long hair, colorful and individualistic clothes, flowers, beads, and other jewelry. Many of us were vegetarians who often baked our own bread, practiced yoga or some other form of meditation, and learned to work with our hands in various crafts. Our subculture was immediately identifiable and tightly bound together. It had its own rituals, music, poetry, and literature; a common fascination with spirituality and the occult; and the shared vision of a peaceful and beautiful society. Rock music and psychedelic drugs were powerful bonds that strongly influenced the art and lifestyle of the hippie culture. In addition, the closeness, peacefulness, and trust of the hippie communities were expressed in casual communal nudity and freely shared sexuality. In our homes we would frequently burn incense and keep little altars with eclectic collections of statues of Indian gods and goddesses, meditating Buddhas, yarrow stalks or coins for consulting the I Ching, and various personal "sacred" objects. Although different branches of the sixties movement arose independently and often remained distinct movements with little overlap for several years, they eventually became aware of one another, expressed mutual solidarity, and, during the 1970s, merged more or less into a single subculture. By that time, psychedelic drugs, rock music, and the hippie fashion had transcended national boundaries and had forged strong ties among the international counterculture. Multinational hippie tribes gathered in several countercultural centers — London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Greenwich Village — as well as in more remote and exotic cities like Marrakech and Katmandu. These frequent cross-cultural exchanges gave rise to an "alternative global awareness" long before the onset of economic globalization. the sixties' music The zeitgeist of the sixties found expression in many art forms that often involved radical innovations, absorbed various facets of the counterculture, and strengthened the multiple relationships among the international alternative community. Rock music was the strongest among these artistic bonds. The Beatles broke down the authority of studios and songwriters by writing their own music and lyrics, creating new musical genres, and setting up their own production company. While doing so, they incorporated many facets of the period's characteristic expansion of consciousness into their songs and lifestyles. Bob Dylan expressed the spirit of the political protests in powerful poetry and music that became anthems of the sixties. The Rolling Stones represented the counterculture's irreverence, exuberance, and sexual energy, while San Francisco's "acid rock" scene gave expression to its psychedelic experiences. At the same time, the "free jazz" of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, and others shattered conventional forms of jazz improvisation and gave expression to spirituality, radical political poetry, street theater, and other elements of the counterculture. Like the jazz musicians, classical composers, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany and John Cage in the United States, broke down conventional musical forms and incorporated much of the sixties' spontaneity and expanded awareness into their music. The fascination of the hippies with Indian religious philosophies, art, and culture led to a great popularity of Indian music. Most record collections in those days contained albums of Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, and other masters of classical Indian music along with rock and folk music, jazz and blues. The rock and drug culture of the sixties found its visual expressions in the psychedelic posters of the era's legendary rock concerts, especially in San Francisco, and in album covers of ever increasing sophistication, which became lasting icons of the sixties' subculture. Many rock concerts also featured "light shows" — a novel form of psychedelic art in which images of multicolored, pulsating, and ever changing shapes were projected onto walls and ceilings. Together with the loud rock music, these visual images created highly effective simulations of psychedelic experiences. new literary forms The main expressions of sixties' poetry were in the lyrics of rock and folk music. In addition, the "beat poetry" of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and others, which had originated a decade earlier and shared many characteristics with the sixties' art forms, remained popular in the counterculture. One of the major new literary forms was the "magical realism" of Latin American literature. In their short stories and novels, writers like Jorges Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez blended descriptions of realistic scenes with fantastic and dreamlike elements, metaphysical allegories, and mythical images. This was a perfect genre for the counterculture's fascination with altered states of consciousness and pervasive sense of magic. In addition to the Latin American magical realism, science fiction, especially the complex series of Dune novels by Frank Herbert, exerted great fascination on the sixties' youth, as did the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and Kurt Vonnegut. Many of us also turned to literary works of the past, such as the romantic novels of Hermann Hesse, in which we saw reflections of our own experiences. Of equal, if not greater, popularity were the semi-fictional shamanistic writings of Carlos Castaneda, which satisfied the hippies' yearning for spirituality and "separate realities" mediated by psychedelic drugs. In addition, the dramatic encounters between Carlos and the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan symbolized in a powerful way the clashes between the rational approach of modern industrial societies and the wisdom of traditional cultures. film and the performing arts In the sixties, the performing arts experienced radical innovations that broke every imaginable tradition of theater and dance. In fact, in companies like the Living Theater, the Judson Dance Theater, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, theater and dance were often fused and combined with other forms of art. The performances involved trained actors and dancers as well as visual artists, musicians, poets, filmmakers, and even members of the audience. Men and women often enjoyed equal status; nudity was frequent. Performances, often with strong political content, took place not only in theaters but also in museums, churches, parks, and in the streets. All these elements combined to create the dramatic expansion of experience and strong sense of community that was typical of the counterculture. Film, too, was an important medium for expressing the zeitgeist of the sixties. Like the performing artists, the sixties' filmmakers, beginning with the pioneers of the French New Wave cinema, broke with the traditional techniques of their art, introducing multi-media approaches, often abandoning narratives altogether, and using their films to give a powerful voice to social critique. With their innovative styles, these filmmakers expressed many key characteristics of the counterculture. For example, we can find the sixties' irreverence and political protest in the films of Godard; the questioning of materialism and a pervasive sense of alienation in Antonioni; questioning of the social order and transcendence of ordinary reality in Fellini; the exposure of class hypocrisy in Buñuel; social critique and utopian visions in Kubrik; the breaking down of sexual and gender stereotypes in Warhol; and the portrayal of altered states of consciousness in the works of experimental filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and John Whitney. In addition, the films of these directors are characterized by a strong sense of magical realism. the legacy of the sixties Many of the cultural expressions that were radical and subversive in the sixties have been accepted by broad segments of mainstream culture during the subsequent three decades. Examples would be the long hair and sixties fashion, the practice of Eastern forms of meditation and spirituality, recreational use of marijuana, increased sexual freedom, rejection of sexual and gender stereotypes, and the use of rock (and more recently rap) music to express alternative cultural values. All of these were once expressions of the counterculture that were ridiculed, suppressed, and even persecuted by the dominant mainstream society. Beyond these contemporary expressions of values and esthetics that were shared by the sixties' counterculture, the most important and enduring legacy of that era has been the creation and subsequent flourishing of a global alternative culture that shares a set of core values. Although many of these values — e.g. environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, global justice — were shaped by cultural movements in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, their essential core was first expressed by the sixties' counterculture. In addition, many of today's senior progressive political activists, writers, and community leaders trace the roots of their original inspiration back to the sixties. Green politics In the sixties we questioned the dominant society and lived according to different values, but we did not formulate our critique in a coherent, systematic way. We did have concrete criticisms on single issues, such as the Vietnam war, but we did not develop any comprehensive alternative system of values and ideas. Our critique was based on intuitive feeling; we lived and embodied our protest rather than verbalizing and systematizing it. The seventies brought consolidation of our views. As the magic of the sixties gradually faded, the initial excitement gave way to a period of focusing, digesting, and integrating. Two new cultural movements, the ecology movement and the feminist movement, emerged during the seventies and together provided the much-needed broad framework for our critique and alternative ideas. The European student movement, which was largely Marxist oriented, was not able to turn its idealistic visions into realities during the sixties. But it kept its social concerns alive during the subsequent decade, while many of its members went through profound personal transformations. Influenced by the two major political themes of the seventies, feminism and ecology, these members of the "new left" broadened their horizons without losing their social consciousness. At the end of the decade, many of them became the leaders of transformed socialist parties. In Germany, these "young socialists" formed coalitions with ecologists, feminists, and peace activists, out of which emerged the Green Party — a new political party whose members confidently declared: "We are neither left nor right; we are in front." During the 1980s and 1990s, the Green movement became a permanent feature of the European political landscape, and Greens now hold seats in numerous national and regional parliaments around the world. They are the political embodiment of the core values of the sixties. the end of the Cold War During the 1970s and 1980s, the American anti-war movement expanded into the anti-nuclear and peace movements, in solidarity with corresponding movements in Europe, especially those in the UK and West Germany. This, in turn, sparked a powerful peace movement in East Germany, led by the Protestant churches, which maintained regular contacts with the West German peace movement, and in particular with Petra Kelly, the charismatic leader of the German Greens. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, he was well aware of the strength of the Western peace movement and accepted our argument that a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought. This realization played an important part in Gorbachev's "new thinking" and his restructuring (perestroika) of the Soviet regime, which would lead, eventually, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the end of Soviet Communism. All social and political systems are highly nonlinear and do not lend themselves to being analyzed in terms of linear chains of cause and effect. Nevertheless, careful study of our recent history shows that the key ingredient in creating the climate that led to the end of the Cold War was not the hard-line strategy of the Reagan administration, as the conservative mythology would have it, but the international peace movement. This movement clearly had its political and cultural roots in the student movements and counterculture of the sixties. the information technology revolution The last decade of the twentieth century brought a global phenomenon that took most cultural observers by surprise. A new world emerged, shaped by new technologies, new social structures, a new economy, and a new culture. "Globalization" became the term used to summarize the extraordinary changes and the seemingly irresistible momentum that were now felt by millions of people. A common characteristic of the multiple aspects of globalization is a global information and communications network based on revolutionary new technologies. The information technology revolution is the result of a complex dynamic of technological and human interactions, which produced synergistic effects in three major areas of electronics — computers, microelectronics, and telecommunications. The key innovations that created the radically new electronic environment of the 1990s all took place 20 years earlier, during the 1970s. It may be surprising to many that, like so many other recent cultural movements, the information technology revolution has important roots in the sixties' counterculture. It was triggered by a dramatic technological development — a shift from data storage and processing in large, isolated machines to the interactive use of microcomputers and the sharing of computer power in electronic networks. This shift was spearheaded by young technology enthusiasts who embraced many aspects of the counterculture, which was still very much alive at that time. The first commercially successful microcomputer was built in 1976 by two college dropouts, Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs, in their now legendary garage in Silicon Valley. These young innovators and others like them brought the irreverent attitudes, freewheeling lifestyles, and strong sense of community they had adopted in the counterculture to their working environments. In doing so, they created the relatively informal, open, decentralized, and cooperative working styles that became characteristic of the new information technologies. global capitalism However, the ideals of the young technology pioneers of the seventies were not reflected in the new global economy that emerged from the information technology revolution 20 years later. On the contrary, what emerged was a new materialism, excessive corporate greed, and a dramatic rise of unethical behavior among our corporate and political leaders. These harmful and destructive attitudes are direct consequences of a new form of global capitalism, structured largely around electronic networks of financial and informational flows. The so-called "global market" is a network of machines programmed according to the fundamental principle that money-making should take precedence over human rights, democracy, environmental protection, or any other value. Since the new economy is organized according to this quintessential capitalist principle, it is not surprising that it has produced a multitude of interconnected harmful consequences that are in sharp contradiction to the ideals of the global Green movement: rising social inequality and social exclusion, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the natural environment, and increasing poverty and alienation. The new global capitalism has threatened and destroyed local communities around the world; and with the pursuit of an ill-conceived biotechnology, it has invaded the sanctity of life by attempting to turn diversity into monoculture, ecology into engineering, and life itself into a commodity. It has become increasingly clear that global capitalism in its present form is unsustainable and needs to be fundamentally redesigned. Indeed, scholars, community leaders, and grassroots activists around the world are now raising their voices, demanding that we must "change the game" and suggesting concrete ways of doing so. the global civil society At the turn of this century, an impressive global coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many of them led by men and women with deep personal roots in the sixties, formed around the core values of human dignity and ecological sustainability. In 1999, hundreds of these grassroots organizations interlinked electronically for several months to prepare for joint protest actions at the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. The "Seattle Coalition," as it is now called, was extremely successful in derailing the WTO meeting and in making its views known to the world. Its concerted actions have permanently changed the political climate around the issue of economic globalization. Since that time, the Seattle Coalition, or "global justice movement," has not only organized further protests but has also held several World Social Forum meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil. At the second of these meetings, the NGOs proposed a whole set of alternative trade policies, including concrete and radical proposals for restructuring global financial institutions, which would profoundly change the nature of globalization. The global justice movement exemplifies a new kind of political movement that is typical of our Information Age. Because of their skillful use of the Internet, the NGOs in the coalition are able to network with each other, share information, and mobilize their members with unprecedented speed. As a result, the new global NGOs have emerged as effective political actors who are independent of traditional national or international institutions. They constitute a new kind of global civil society. This new form of alternative global community, sharing core values and making extensive use of electronic networks in addition to frequent human contacts, is one of the most important legacies of the sixties. If it succeeds in reshaping economic globalization so as to make it compatible with the values of human dignity and ecological sustainability, the dreams of the "sixties revolution" will have been realized: Imagine no possessions, http://www.fritjofcapra.net/articles120102.html
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
and the world will live as one.
I wonder if you can,
no need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
and the world will live as one.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
'A brief introduction to the beat (in) film' by Jack Sargeant
"Beat means Beatitude, not beat up"
- Jack Kerouac
- Jack Kerouac
thus spake the spirits of Blake and Swedenborg
Still more wisdom from Swedenborg and Bacon
"...Dr. George Dexter, a New York physician, initially looked upon spirit communication as “a foolish delusion or an absolute, outrageous deception.” John W. Edmonds, Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, had similar views and set out to expose mediumship as so much humbug. However, as Dexter and Edmonds observed and studied mediums, the two friends came to believe in the reality of mediumship. In fact, Dr. Dexter soon found that he had mediumistic abilities and began transmitting profound messages purportedly coming from the spirits of Emanuel Swedenborg and Francis Bacon. Here is more of what Swedenborg and Bacon had to saw through Dexter’s hand.
Angels: “What are considered by you as angels, are but the beatified spirits of men, in whom the progress of their nature has developed all that there is of beauty and perfection of form. They are, as I am led to believe, the spirits of men whose organization has passed the seventh and last process of refinement, and are constantly in intercourse with all that can be known of God. No human mind, fertile in imagination as it is, can picture to its wildest fancy the overpowering and transcendent beauty of the progressed and elevated soul. The world’s images of thought fail to convey the faintest idea of my meaning, and I shall, therefore, leave the description to the evidence of your own senses.” Bacon
Dealing with non-believers: “It is not worth while to contest the truth of spirit revelation with those who do not believe. Truth is like the misty vapor encircling the mountain top. The sun of error, of superstition, of priestly teachings may, in its full blaze, dissipate the cloud, but its cloudy substance is disseminated through the whole atmosphere, and descends in grateful showers to replenish and fructify the thirsty earth. So with man. Argue with him and he battles with you. Prove he is wrong, and, Proteus-shaped, he attacks you again with arguments founded on that very error. But let the cloud rest on the mountain, and when disturbed by the sun or the wind, in grateful sprinklings it returns to foster, to cherish, to develop the nature of its own godlike virtues.” Bacon
Premature death: “The spirit which enters the body of the child on being born is the principle or germ. It has not existed before in a sentient form, but has existed, as a principle, from the beginning. So intimately blended are the two, both body and soul, that the one was created to grow and expand with the other; and though a child may die, yet the spirit grows and expands, and assumes very much the character here, which the full-grown man could have occupied on earth.” Swedenborg
When soul enters body: “When there is sufficient life or vitality to maintain a balance between the spirit action and the material action, then the spirit enters the embryo; but even then it does not always occupy that germ. It sometimes, from the death of the embryo, returns and occupies some other body.” Swedenborg
Other worlds: “If this world were alone the abiding place of immortal spirits, we could imagine how much more beauty God would have lavished upon its formation, and how much vaster would have been its proportions. But beyond the vision of the most powerful telescope there are worlds filled with spirits whose birth is forever and ever. They know no death, and yet are organized with bodies suited to the worlds in which they live.” Swedenborg
Spirit intercourse in earlier times: “That spirit perception in the ancient days was clear and distinct, I believe, and think I know. Now, what you consider the fall of man is only the great change in his mental and material nature, produced by the increase of numbers, the wants and necessities which arose around him, the occupation of his thoughts with the circumstances of his material life, and the entire direction of his mind from spiritual things to subjects of earth. When there were few persons on earth, and the spirit intercourse was frequent, of course, the minds of men were directed to spiritual things; but when the world was more thickly peopled, then it was that the necessities of life compelled man to work, to develop, to invent, to construct, and these occupations prevented that freedom of spiritual communication which existed previously.” Swedenborg
Spirit influence: “The fate of spirit is with its own control, but the influence of good is as general and specific in our world as in yours. Now if some mind develops a good thought in your country, do not the minds of individuals receive and profit by it in Europe? Spirits in affinity with you likewise receive the good you generate, or rather the good generated through you, and they, responding, circulate it through the spheres where they dwell. So with evil.” Bacon
Soulmates: “I can say that when there are affections formed on earth, death itself does not change or alter them, but when separated, the soul in the spheres develops more extensively the love it first recognized on earth, and is drawn to meet the spirit for whom that love was formed, when it is ushered into the spheres. If, then, all their affinities correspond – and they are likely to – if there is a basis formed on earth, they will go hand in hand through all the transitions of spirit life, together loving and being loved, together aspiring, together progressing.” Swedenborg
Oneness: “…you will never lose your identity. If God designed to absorb all souls into himself, there would have been no necessity at first to give off from himself distinct identical germs, possessing all the characteristics of independence. Therefore, as every spirit is independent in his mind and its exercise, how could God contravene his own institutes? That is impossible, and from this I reason. Swedenborg
Truth Distorted: “Is there not in truth itself a power sufficient to overcome all opposition, all perversion, and accomplish its design and purpose of itself? Can that which so essentially concerns man, as the knowledge of what is right, be diverted, made to produce evil instead of good? Should those laws which indeed are from God, and when properly and wisely understood, answer the intent for which they were instituted, b e forced by man to the injury of his race? Alas! It is so. Alas! That this should be the great obstacle to man’s progress on earth, and, in fact, is an all-powerful cause, of his lingering on the wayside even in these spheres. What do I say, that truth itself is made a means of evil? Yes, and the history of man from the earliest period until the present time corroborates this statement. Look at every nation of which we have any knowledge, that has made its mark on the passage of time, and you will agree with me that my remark is just. That there has been no settled belief on what has been revealed as true does not in the least alter the truth itself. From the beginning until the present time, the eternal manifestation has been the same – yesterday, now, and forever! What has been the truth to the Egyptians is no less truth to the Romans; and the divine emanation has lost none of its purity, its godlike attributes, even though the truth is altered or denied by the mass of men at the present day. In your earth, light is from one source, and your philosophers have invented means by which they have divided it into what they call its several properties or colors. So with truth. Man’s ingenuity has succeeded in giving it so many forms that it has lost its distinguishing quality, and under the aspect they exhibit it, it has less or no correspondence with the original idea. Bacon..."
Angels: “What are considered by you as angels, are but the beatified spirits of men, in whom the progress of their nature has developed all that there is of beauty and perfection of form. They are, as I am led to believe, the spirits of men whose organization has passed the seventh and last process of refinement, and are constantly in intercourse with all that can be known of God. No human mind, fertile in imagination as it is, can picture to its wildest fancy the overpowering and transcendent beauty of the progressed and elevated soul. The world’s images of thought fail to convey the faintest idea of my meaning, and I shall, therefore, leave the description to the evidence of your own senses.” Bacon
Dealing with non-believers: “It is not worth while to contest the truth of spirit revelation with those who do not believe. Truth is like the misty vapor encircling the mountain top. The sun of error, of superstition, of priestly teachings may, in its full blaze, dissipate the cloud, but its cloudy substance is disseminated through the whole atmosphere, and descends in grateful showers to replenish and fructify the thirsty earth. So with man. Argue with him and he battles with you. Prove he is wrong, and, Proteus-shaped, he attacks you again with arguments founded on that very error. But let the cloud rest on the mountain, and when disturbed by the sun or the wind, in grateful sprinklings it returns to foster, to cherish, to develop the nature of its own godlike virtues.” Bacon
Premature death: “The spirit which enters the body of the child on being born is the principle or germ. It has not existed before in a sentient form, but has existed, as a principle, from the beginning. So intimately blended are the two, both body and soul, that the one was created to grow and expand with the other; and though a child may die, yet the spirit grows and expands, and assumes very much the character here, which the full-grown man could have occupied on earth.” Swedenborg
When soul enters body: “When there is sufficient life or vitality to maintain a balance between the spirit action and the material action, then the spirit enters the embryo; but even then it does not always occupy that germ. It sometimes, from the death of the embryo, returns and occupies some other body.” Swedenborg
Other worlds: “If this world were alone the abiding place of immortal spirits, we could imagine how much more beauty God would have lavished upon its formation, and how much vaster would have been its proportions. But beyond the vision of the most powerful telescope there are worlds filled with spirits whose birth is forever and ever. They know no death, and yet are organized with bodies suited to the worlds in which they live.” Swedenborg
Spirit intercourse in earlier times: “That spirit perception in the ancient days was clear and distinct, I believe, and think I know. Now, what you consider the fall of man is only the great change in his mental and material nature, produced by the increase of numbers, the wants and necessities which arose around him, the occupation of his thoughts with the circumstances of his material life, and the entire direction of his mind from spiritual things to subjects of earth. When there were few persons on earth, and the spirit intercourse was frequent, of course, the minds of men were directed to spiritual things; but when the world was more thickly peopled, then it was that the necessities of life compelled man to work, to develop, to invent, to construct, and these occupations prevented that freedom of spiritual communication which existed previously.” Swedenborg
Spirit influence: “The fate of spirit is with its own control, but the influence of good is as general and specific in our world as in yours. Now if some mind develops a good thought in your country, do not the minds of individuals receive and profit by it in Europe? Spirits in affinity with you likewise receive the good you generate, or rather the good generated through you, and they, responding, circulate it through the spheres where they dwell. So with evil.” Bacon
Soulmates: “I can say that when there are affections formed on earth, death itself does not change or alter them, but when separated, the soul in the spheres develops more extensively the love it first recognized on earth, and is drawn to meet the spirit for whom that love was formed, when it is ushered into the spheres. If, then, all their affinities correspond – and they are likely to – if there is a basis formed on earth, they will go hand in hand through all the transitions of spirit life, together loving and being loved, together aspiring, together progressing.” Swedenborg
Oneness: “…you will never lose your identity. If God designed to absorb all souls into himself, there would have been no necessity at first to give off from himself distinct identical germs, possessing all the characteristics of independence. Therefore, as every spirit is independent in his mind and its exercise, how could God contravene his own institutes? That is impossible, and from this I reason. Swedenborg
Truth Distorted: “Is there not in truth itself a power sufficient to overcome all opposition, all perversion, and accomplish its design and purpose of itself? Can that which so essentially concerns man, as the knowledge of what is right, be diverted, made to produce evil instead of good? Should those laws which indeed are from God, and when properly and wisely understood, answer the intent for which they were instituted, b e forced by man to the injury of his race? Alas! It is so. Alas! That this should be the great obstacle to man’s progress on earth, and, in fact, is an all-powerful cause, of his lingering on the wayside even in these spheres. What do I say, that truth itself is made a means of evil? Yes, and the history of man from the earliest period until the present time corroborates this statement. Look at every nation of which we have any knowledge, that has made its mark on the passage of time, and you will agree with me that my remark is just. That there has been no settled belief on what has been revealed as true does not in the least alter the truth itself. From the beginning until the present time, the eternal manifestation has been the same – yesterday, now, and forever! What has been the truth to the Egyptians is no less truth to the Romans; and the divine emanation has lost none of its purity, its godlike attributes, even though the truth is altered or denied by the mass of men at the present day. In your earth, light is from one source, and your philosophers have invented means by which they have divided it into what they call its several properties or colors. So with truth. Man’s ingenuity has succeeded in giving it so many forms that it has lost its distinguishing quality, and under the aspect they exhibit it, it has less or no correspondence with the original idea. Bacon..."
~ Source ~
Why satellites fail over Brazil
The South Atlantic Anomaly
The map above does not represent the most common destination for fleeing Hollywood villains. It’s in fact the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region where the Earth’s inner van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the planet’s surface. The result is that, for a given altitude, the radiation intensity is higher over this region than elsewhere. Brazilians are blessed indeed.
The Anomaly in the radiation belt results from the fact that the planet’s magnetic field is not perfectly aligned with its geographic center and poles. Which means the magnetic field is slightly stronger in the North, and moves around the geographic poles, leaving the area around Brazil and the South Atlantic closer to the radiation belts.
Fortunately, the effects of it over humans on the surface of the planet are not significant. Unfortunately, it’s very relevant to orbiting satellites — the Hubble Space telescope does not take observations while passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly, for instance. Satellite failures are much more common in this stronger radiation zone.
It also affects satellites with humans inside, like the International Space Station. Light Flashes, thought to be produced by radiation directly stimulating the retina of astronauts, are reportedly more common when they are flying through the zone.
As the Anomaly is due to the Earth’s magnetic field, and since it’s always moving — including several complete reversals — it probably danced around the planet for the past billion years. It’s curious indeed that such a “special area” would even exist. And right now, it’s Brazilian.
http://forgetomori.com/2007/science/the-south-atlantic-anomaly
free copy of 'Postsingular' by Rudy Rucker now available online
Reviews
Alt-cultural folk strive to save Earth from digitized doom in this novel from the prince of gonzo SF. A computer mogul's threat to replace messy reality with clean virtuality and by a memory-hungry artificial intelligence called the Big Pig propels nanotechnologist Ond Lutter, his autistic son, Chu, and their allies on an interdimensional quest for a golden harp, the Lost Chord, strung with hypertubes that can unroll the eighth dimension and unleash limitless computing power. ... Rucker favors the flower power of San Francisco over the number crunching of Silicon Valley. His novel vibrates with the warm rhythms of dream and imagination, not the cold logic of programming ... Playing with the math of quantum computing, encryption and virtual reality, Rucker places his faith in people who find true reality "gnarly" enough to love.
--- Publisher's Weekly (C) Reed Business Information.
Always willing and able to embrace sf's trendiest themes, Rucker here takes on the volatile field of nanotechnology and the presumed inevitable "singularity" of human and computer unification. In a series of interrelated vignettes, he describes the calamity that befalls nanotech inventor Ond Lutter and his would-be benefactors when Ond unleashes a variety of self-replicating nanobots. In one episode, trillions of microscopic bots, dubbed nants, chew up Mars to create a colossal Dyson Sphere orbiting the sun. When the nants move on to Earth to transform every living being into a virtual-reality doppelganger, Ond saves the day with a nant-busting virus. The real fun begins, however, when Ond "improves" on the nants with apparently benign nanobots, called orphids, that blanket every surface and provide plugged-in users three-dimensional access to every conceivable scrap of knowledge and experience. ... His devoted fans and dazzled newcomers to him will revel in his willingness to push technological extrapolation to its soaring limits.
--- Carl Hays, Booklist
When it comes to unique voices in science fiction, few can claim to have quite as distinctive a style as Rudy Rucker. Postsingular is packed full of the larger-than-life weirdness that has become his trademark; classic genre tropes and clichés rub shoulders with mathematical theorems and wild technological speculation, delivered in prose that captures the the languid vibe and hippie undercurrents of California. ... Rucker's quick-draw style acts as a sleight-of-hand that allows him to slip some of sf's biggest tropes and ideas beneath the reader's radar, as well as touching some very human character aspects that are often skipped over (or, worse still, rendered tiresome) by the pens of others. Postsingular has all the bells and whistles that only a computing professor could provide, but never at the expense of the story.
---Paul Raven, Interzone
Rudy Rucker's new novel Postsingular is pure Rucker: a dope-addled exploration of the way-out fringes of string theory and the quantum universe that distorts the possible into the most improbable contortions.
---Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
This book is densely written...yet also captivatingly plotted for sheer narrative verve and laced with plenty of humor and suspense. Walking a tightrope between information overload and thriller action, the book captures the heady zip, zest and buzz of the post-singular milieu, a world where miracles are commonplace but structured logically to provide real challenges, risks and triumphs.
---Paul DiFilippo, SciFi.com
Rucker writes with a hyperactive level of inventiveness that seems to owe bits in equal measure to Lewis Carroll, William Burroughs, and Ray Kurzweil. Rucker can be enormous fun to read, and there are some stunningly bold ideas here.
---Gary K. Wolfe, Locus
Terence McKenna's Ex-Library
13 Feb 2007
Last Wednesday, February 7, a 5-alarm blaze erupted in an old building in downtown Monterey. The fire started in a Quizno’s sub shop, that exemplar of tasteful dining, and went on to thoroughly destroy a number of joints, including Goomba’s Italian Restaurant, a Starbucks, and some storage offices belonging to Big Sur’s Esalen Institute—the launching point for the human potential movement. Esalen lost little of their own archives, the vast bulk of their books, photos, audio and videotapes residing elsewhere. Unfortunately, the institute was also using the offices to store the amazing library of Terence McKenna, the visionary psychedelic bard who passed away in 2000. The plan was to eventually install the books at Esalen, a place that Terence loved but which is not widely associated with scholarly pursuit. That plan will never be realized.
For those who knew Terence or enjoyed his library, the fire is a tragedy, and not simply because it consumed his private papers. Terence's library reflected the multidimensional facets of his own mind: mysticism and history, drugs and dreams, science fiction and systems theory, natural history and art. Terence was a head who fed his head with books more than the drugs he became known for. I will never forget the sheepish look he gave me six months or so before his death, as he forked over a fistful of twenties for a copy of Empson’s Cult of the Peacock Angel, a rare book on the Yezidis that he bought from an esoteric book dealer I knew. It was a look that said, Please don’t tell my girlfriend.
Terence became a bookhound as a wee lad, and stumbled across amazing finds along his tangled way. One time, on the way to India, he came across a Theosophy library in the Seychelles that was closing its doors, and picked up its large collection of occult literature, all bound in red leather, for peanuts. The top floor of the home he built on the big island of Hawaii was designed partly to gather his thousands of volumes in one place. I visited there once towards the end of Terence’s life, to record his last formal interview. When he napped, I had the choice of poking through the library or exploring the gorgeous hideaways of Hawaii. I never left the lair.
Terence's brother Dennis owns an index of Terence’s collection, which will at least give us an overview of his library—sorta like a playlist without the MP3s. But even this valuable document will not replace the body of knowledge itself—a body that had become, in the weird ways of the memetic world, a kind of second body for Terence’s fabulous and fascinating mind. No budding head will ever be able to poke through this collection again, with its faintly perfumed volumes on Chinese alchemy and butterflies and hash. And the world has one fewer 1659 folio of Isaac Casaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, and one fewer old-school copy of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which Terence swapped for a pound or two of yummies back in the day. The content of these books, at least, is reproducible; Terence, of course, was one-of-a-kind.
~ Source ~
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