CREDIT: ADOLF SCHALLER FOR STScI

PHYSICAL WORLD

The revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope and next-gen radio telescopes are probing what’s known as the epoch of reionization. It holds clues to the first stars and galaxies, and perhaps the nature of dark matter.

By Elizabeth Quill 12.19.2024 (knowablemagazine.org)

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For millions of years following the Big Bang, after the universe’s roiling soup of particles had cooled, the cosmos was a dark and boring place. There were no stars to make light. No familiar swirls of galaxies. Certainly no planets. And the entire universe was shrouded in neutral hydrogen gas.

Then, perhaps 100 million years or so in, everything started to change. Over the next billion-odd years, the universe went from a bland, unimpressive landscape to a rich and dynamic one. This profound shift began when the first stars lit up. As they burned, generating heat and forging new matter, their intense light began tearing apart the hydrogen that pervaded the universe. Everywhere electrons were ripped from these atoms, leaving the bulk of hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — in the ionized state it remains in today.

This pivotal period — when all that hydrogen went from one form to another — is known as the epoch of reionization. It began with our cosmic dawn and ushered in the modern era with all its marvelous textures and features. It serves as the backdrop for when the universe grew up.

“It’s the last major shift that happens to our universe,” says theoretical astrophysicist Julian Muñoz of the University of Texas at Austin. Everything changed over that billion years or so and nothing much has changed in the billions of years since.

While there are models that describe how this great transition might have happened, giant gaps in our picture remain. When did the first stars form and when did light, escaping their host galaxies, kick off reionization? What kinds of galaxies were most responsible and what was the role of black holes? How did reionization proceed across time and space? And what clues might it hold to other cosmic mysteries, like the nature of dark matter?

“We don’t understand how the universe came to be what it is today,” Muñoz says.

Some answers are now within reach, thanks to new tools that allow scientists to look back deep into the universe’s first billion years. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in 2021, is peering at the galaxies that existed only hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang and is already turning up surprises. At the same time, next-generation radio telescopes are focusing not on the galaxies but on the neutral hydrogen that once pervaded all of space. That hydrogen provides clues to how the epoch of reionization unfolded, and other characteristics of the cosmos.

“The tools that we can bring to bear now on studying this epoch of cosmic history are unlike anything we’ve had before,” says astrophysicist Rob Simcoe of MIT.

Light galore

Our current understanding of the early universe’s development goes something like this: After the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, the cosmos expanded and the primordial soup of subatomic particles cooled. Within the first second, protons and neutrons formed. Within the first few minutes, they joined up into atomic nuclei. About 380,000 years in, those nuclei began capturing electrons to form the first atoms. This milestone, in which the ionized soup became neutral atoms, is known as recombination (a misnomer, since nuclei and electrons had never combined before).

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Until they were captured into atoms, the unfettered electrons scattered light like a dense fog in a car’s headlights. But with electrons reined in, photons could shoot out through the cosmos. Today, those particles of light arrive to us in the form of a faint glow known as the cosmic microwave background.

Then the universe entered what are known as the dark ages. With hydrogen and some helium gas pervading the cosmos, there was nothing much around to make light. Yet blobs of dark matter were busy pulling in the surrounding gas, some of it condensing enough to set off nuclear fusion. A hundred million years or more after the Big Bang, the first stars lit up in our cosmic dawn. As these early stars burned, their ionizing ultraviolet light began escaping from their galaxies. This created bubbles of ionized hydrogen that grew until they merged, eventually filling the cosmos.

JWST is poised to answer many questions about early galaxies and how their light drove the process of reionization. For now, though, the telescope is turning up more questions than answers. There were many more galaxies in early times than scientists had thought — and these galaxies were producing far more than enough of the type of light needed to reionize the universe.

Early images released by the telescope were overflowing with galaxies that dated to less than 600 million years after the Big Bang. Then, in late 2022, came confirmation of the earliest galaxy yet; it existed just 350 million years after the Big Bang. That record was then busted when UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist Brant Robertson and colleagues announced a galaxy that dated to just 290 million years after the Big Bang.

Many of these galaxies are brighter and more massive than expected: In 2023, six galaxies dating to within 700 million years of the Big Bang made headlines for how mature they already appeared. Despite the early epoch, their stellar masses rival that of today’s Milky Way, which has 60 billion solar masses worth of stars.

Standard theory can’t explain so much star formation so early, so these galaxies were dubbed the “universe breakers.”

“It’s just absolutely wild,” says astrophysicist Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado Boulder, a coauthor on the paper. “It implies an early universe that is either more chaotic and bursty than we thought, or a universe in which things can evolve more quickly.”

The discoveries may force a reexamination of galaxy evolution. And they raise big questions about reionization.

Even the faintest early galaxies that JWST has spotted are producing loads of reionizing light, four times as much as expected, astrophysicist Hakim Atek of the Institut Astrophysique de Paris and colleagues have found. Despite their dimness, there are enough of these galaxies to reionize the universe mostly on their own.

And JWST is also turning up hints that supermassive black holes formed much earlier in cosmic history than thought; the high-energy emissions they generate as they feed on surrounding matter would also have contributed to reionization.

With all that light, the universe should have been reionized sooner than we know it was, Muñoz and colleagues suggest in a 2024 paper titled “Reionization after JWST: a photon budget crisis?”

It’s not really a crisis, Muñoz says. Existing research has established that reionization ended 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. But the seeming overabundance of reionizing light is a clear sign that something is missing in our picture of the early universe. “We don’t know all the pieces of the puzzle,” he says.

Seeking clues in hydrogen

Other efforts hope to track reionization by using next-generation radio telescopes to see how much neutral hydrogen existed across time in the early universe.

Scientists have probed this hydrogen in other ways. The scattering of the light of the cosmic microwave background, for example, offers clues to the total amount of reionization since that light was emitted, roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Quasars, the bright beacons of radiation produced by massive, feeding black holes, offer another probe. Neutral hydrogen absorbs specific wavelengths of light from quasars on its path to an observer, providing a sign of the hydrogen’s presence. But as you approach earlier epochs, there are fewer quasars.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7U-rbeqRqY0%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26enablejsapi%3D1%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fknowablemagazine.org

In this simulation of the epoch of reionization, regions of ionized hydrogen gas (blue and translucent) expand over time, overtaking regions of neutral hydrogen (dark and opaque).

CREDIT: M. ALVAREZ, R. KAEHLER AND T. ABEL

So scientists now aim to detect a radio signal from the neutral hydrogen itself, before it was ionized, back through cosmic dawn and even into the dark ages. This signal, known as the 21 cm line, has been detected since the 1950s and is used widely in astronomy, but it hasn’t been definitively spotted from the early universe.

The radio signal arises because of a quantum transition in neutral hydrogen’s electron. The transition, which emits a bit of electromagnetic radiation at a wavelength of 21 centimeters, doesn’t happen often. But when neutral hydrogen is abundant, it’s possible to spot.

And the signal can do more than track neutral hydrogen’s whereabouts. It also serves as a sort of thermometer. Scientists can use it to better understand the cosmic temperature, including clues to when energy is injected into the intergalactic medium in the form of light or heat.

Such blasts of energy could come from the first stars and feeding black holes. Or the energy could hint at something more exotic: interactions between dark matter and itself, or unknown interactions between dark matter and more familiar matter. Such interactions, Muñoz notes, could heat up or cool down the intergalactic medium. The 21cm line offers a way to probe the processes at play, including any spurred by unexpected physics. “It can give you information you won’t otherwise get,” he says.

One telescope looking for this fingerprint is known as the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array, or HERA. If JWST is known for its complexity and cost, HERA is more off-the-shelf. It’s “made of PVC pipe and wire mesh and telephone poles,” says astrophysicist Josh Dillon of the University of California, Berkeley.

HERA consists of 350 radio antennas spread across 5 percent of a square kilometer in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. While the telescope itself is low-tech, its observations require the most advanced signal processing and data analysis available. That’s because the inherently faint signal has to be spotted amid booming radio noise from our galaxy and others.

Dillon compares spotting the 21 cm signal to listening for the treble at a concert when the bass is 100,000 times stronger. “That is why it hasn’t been done yet,” he says.

HERA seeks a statistical measure of the spatial fluctuations in the 21 cm signal. Those fluctuations arise from variations in the distribution of neutral hydrogen across the sky and so offer a sense of how the gas, as well as the stars and galaxies, were arranged. Other teams instead aim to make a bulk measurement that captures an average signal across the sky. Since the techniques differ, one could help verify the other.

Dark matter has already been invoked to explain one claimed detection. In 2018, researchers with the Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature, or EDGES, reported a detection of the averaged 21 cm signal that corresponds to when the light from the first stars started interacting with the surrounding hydrogen.

The signal is stronger than expected, suggesting colder than predicted hydrogen gas, which has fueled a lot of skepticism around the claim. Some researchers have pointed to interactions between the hydrogen gas and dark matter as a possible explanation, but such an explanation would require unexpected physics.

“There are a lot of fanciful theories,” says observational cosmologist Sarah Bosman of Heidelberg University in Germany. “It has to be fanciful,” she notes, because no ordinary physics would give the strength that EDGES saw.

Bosman admits to being one of the few people enthusiastic about the claim, which she says has motivated researchers working on other experiments that might confirm or refute it. “It’s given the field a really good boost,” she says.

HERA and other telescopes are forerunners of the Square Kilometer Array, which will attempt to map the 21 cm signal across the entire sky. This array will connect radio antennas in South Africa and Australia into the largest radio telescope ever built. Though still under construction, the telescope connected two of its stations to take its first data in 2024.

Better tools, deeper knowledge

No one really knows what to expect from the 21 cm signal, Bosman notes. It could demand only minor tweaks to the existing picture of cosmic evolution, or it might uncover new physics that rewrite our understanding entirely. It’s just too soon to tell.

But Dillon says that the 21 cm line could one day offer “the biggest possible dataset.” The ultimate aim is to probe the time frame from roughly 100 million years after the Big Bang to a billion years after. That time frame represents less than 10 percent of the total life of the universe, but because of the continued expansion of the universe, the time frame covers roughly half the volume of the visible universe.

Future instruments will help reach all the way back. There are various proposals for new radio telescopes in space and even on the Moon, where they would be free from Earth-based interference. The most ancient 21 cm signal would arrive to us at wavelengths that are reflected off Earth’s ionosphere, notes Anastasia Fialkov, a cosmologist and astrophysicist at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England. Telescopes in space, or on the Moon, could get around that problem.

Any 21 cm clues would be studied alongside JWST’s observations of early galaxies, as well as observations from its successor, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and future ground-based observatories like the European Extremely Large Telescope currently under construction in Chile.

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Studies of quasars also have plenty more to say, notes Simcoe of MIT, who wrote with colleagues about quasars in the early universe in the 2023 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Quasars are particularly useful, Simcoe says, for identifying “the last regions of the universe that are still holding on to their neutral hydrogen gas.” It’s within these pockets that the youngest stars and galaxies — or the material that birthed them — must reside.

These early stars could be producing trace elements different from what we see produced by today’s stars. If light from quasars reveals those trace elements in an ancient cloud of gas, it’s a clue that we’re reaching an ancient population — perhaps the first stars.

“It will mean we have finally gotten there,” Simcoe says. “And that’s really what the quest is: To find out, when did complexity emerge in the universe? When did the universe really start to look the way it does today?”

No one knows when we’ll know, but Simcoe thinks the present tools, or perhaps the next ones on deck, are capable: “We’re knocking at the door.”

10.1146/knowable-121924-1

Elizabeth Quill is a science writer and editor based near Washington, DC. She’s fascinated by how complexity — in our cosmos, societies and ourselves — emerges out of almost nothing.

 December 20, 2024 (menalive.com)

By  Jed Diamond

Part 4: Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul

            This is my fourth post in the series. If you would like you read the others you are welcome to do so, though it isn’t necessary to read them in order:

1. Where I’m coming From: My Origin Story.

2. The Day My Uncle Drove Me to the Mental Hospital.

3. Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).

            I spent a lot of my life trying to escape the reality of my childhood trauma. After spending a year trying to be the dutiful son who imagines he can save his father and become the family hero, I finally had reached my limit and told my mother I didn’t want to continue the Sunday drives with my uncle to visit my father in Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

            My father had been committed for “treatment” when I was five years old and I spent a year of terror visiting my father. On the final visit, my father asked my uncle, “Who’s the kid with you, Harry?” I felt crushed that my father didn’t even know who I was. I was told that he was in a hospital getting well and my visits would help him. But it clearly he wasn’t getting better and I felt I had failed my father by not being able to heal him and failed by mother when I refused to be “her brave little man” and help my father.

            When children are asked to take on adult responsibilities, we do our best to do what our adult caregivers ask of us. We want to be like the super-heroes we see in the movies or read in our comic books. When we inevitably fail, we take it personally. We feel guilty and ashamed and often blame ourselves.

            We often try and escape from the impossible bind we find ourselves in. My mother continued her own escapes. As a child it never occurred to me to ask why my mother didn’t visit my father or why I became her stand-in. I just went along with the program until I couldn’t do it anymore.

            Like many children who experience early trauma, I pushed the memories down into my subconscious. I tried to erase the past. When kids in school asked about my father, rather than telling them he was committed to a mental hospital, I told them he had died. We can’t escape our past, but I didn’t know that when I was young. I needed to escape to survive.

            It took me a long time to learn that what we deny or try and bury from our past doesn’t go away. They return in our dreams as nightmares or show up in our relationships like demons of fear, anger, jealousy, blame, and shame.

Some trauma survivors have great difficulty becoming successful adults. Their trauma and the impact it has on their brain function causes them to have major problems with self-esteem, difficulties with relationships, and problems with career success. Others appear to become super-star achievers. 

That was true for me. I took a lot of the repressed energy and put it into achieving success. I became a sought-after therapist, an author of a number of best-selling books, got married, had a child and adopted a child as we had agreed when we were young college students. I fought off my illnesses, depression, and suicidal thoughts. It wasn’t until mid-life that I began to address my childhood wounds.

I attended a number of Men’s Gatherings, with Robert Bly, Michael Meade, and James Hillman. Hillman’s book, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, helped be better understand my childhood wounds, the demons I was running away from, and soul’s calling I was looking to find.

“The Soul’s Code, says Hillman, “is about that call, that sense of fate. These kinds of annunciations and recollections determine biography as strongly as memories of abusive horror; but these more enigmatic moments tend to be shelved. Our theories favor traumas setting us the task of working them through. We are less damaged by the traumas of childhood than by the traumatic way we remember childhood as a time of unnecessary and externally caused calamities that wrongly shaped us.”

            Hillman wants

“to resurrect the unaccountable twists that turned your boat around in the eddies and shallows of meaninglessness, bringing you back to feelings of destiny. For that is what is lost in so many lives, and what must be recovered: a sense of personal calling, that there is a reason I am alive.”

He believes we come into the world with a certain destiny and many key experiences in our lives, even ones we might view as traumatic, are in the service of that destiny or calling.

“For centuries,” he says, “we have searched for the right term for this call.”

He lists the most well-known:

• The Romans named it your genius.
• The Greeks, your daimon.
• The Christians your guardian angel.
• For some it is Lady Luck or Fortuna.
• Plato called it paradeigma, a basic form encompassing your entire destiny.

One of the ways our genius or daimon makes itself known to us is through our names or nicknames. The story in our family was that when I was born my parents were sure I was going to be a girl and when I emerged they were at a loss for names. My father decided that I should be named after his deceased nephew, Elliott. My mother didn’t like the name and cried for three days until he agreed to go with her choice of John, after her dead father. My official name became John Elliott Diamond.

Growing up I didn’t like the name. I was called Johnny, which didn’t seem to fit me well. When I went to college I changed my name to Jed. It felt short and sweet, strong and powerful, distinctive and a little mysterious. I’ve been Jed ever since. For most of my life I was angry at my parents for thinking I would be a girl and naming me after dead relatives.

Upon reflection, I realize that the whole process was in the service of my unique destiny and calling and guided by my unique daimon. I do, in fact, have a lot of feminine energy. My wife and I joke about it. I’m very intuitive, cry easily, am emotionally aroused to extreme highs and crashing lows, and easily empathize with others. These qualities have helped me excel as a therapist. My name Elliott unites me with my ancestry though my father’s line and John connects me with my mother’s heritage. My chosen name, Jed, expresses my own unique sense of self.

Another aspect of my family history that falls into place when looked at through the lens of destiny is my early experiences with my father’s depression and hospitalization. For most of my life I viewed my whole experience visiting my father as unnecessary and traumatic. I blamed my mother for making me go, blamed my father for abandoning me, and blamed the world because I had to grow up too soon and didn’t have the caring family support I imagined all other kids had.

Life Lesson #7: We each have a destiny or calling in life.

Like most professionals, I have a business card. Mine say: Jed Diamond, PhD, Helping Men and the Women who Love Them Since 1969. I’ve always talked about the beginning my career coinciding with the birth of our first son, Jemal, on November 21, 1969. But reflecting on James Hillman’s work, I realized, my destiny or calling is as a healer of men and their families and I actually began in 1949 when I went with my uncle to visit my father in the mental hospital.

Even at the age of five I was getting my chance to see what really goes on inside a mental hospital, to reflect on why men have “nervous breakdowns,” and how it all impacts families. Even my own bouts with depression and mania can be viewed as “on the job training” for my life’s calling, rather than simply a product of genetics, upbringing or the inevitable effects of childhood trauma.

I’ve come to believe that the guiding purpose of our lives is to recover our full life-story and get in touch with our true calling.

Life Lesson #8: Traumas and tragedies that happens to us are not punishments or problems to be overcome but life-lessons from our daimon.

My parents were not traditionally religious but definitely Jewish. If they had a patron saint it would have been Albert Einstein who said,

“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence – these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.”

In Jewish tradition there is a story that we our whole life history is part of our destiny. Before we are born, we are shown our whole lives by the angel, Lailah. And the instant the child emerges, the angel lightly strikes its finger to the child’s lip and the child forgets what was shown. The little indentation below our nose on our upper lip is reminder that we each have a destiny to find and follow.

“We must attend very carefully to childhood,” says Hillman, “to catch early glimpses of the daimon in action, to grasp its intentions and not block its way.”

Hillman concludes with the following implications:

• Recognize the call as a prime fact of human existence.
• Align your life with it.
• Find the common sense to realize that accidents, including heartache and the natural shocks the flesh is heir to, are necessary to it, and help to fulfill it.
• A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away.

In his book, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul, storyteller Michale Meade says,

“Fate involves those things which are woven into the fabric of our soul from the beginning. Fate can be seen as whatever limits, restricts or even imprisons us. In seeking to live our destiny we inevitably encounter the obstacles of our fate. Fate and destiny are an archetypal pairing within each soul.”

Think about your fate, our wounds and traumas. What pain from the past have you repressed or attempted to deny, minimize, or forget?  What old tragedies have popped up from time to time to bedevil your peace of mind, comfort, and joy? Could the tragedies and problems from your past actually be in the service of your daimon? Learning about our life’s calling and daimon demand our attention forever. The little indentation in our upper lip always reminds us that our work is not yet complete. Who knows, maybe the journey even continues after we die.

If you’d like to read more articles about our mental, emotional, and relational health, I invite you to join my community and receive my free weekly newsletter here. You can “unsubscribe” at any time if it no longer serves you.

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Best Wishes,

Jed Diamond

Founder and VHS (Visionary Healer Scholar) of MenAlive

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • Dec 22, 2024 C. Michael Smith, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and medical anthropologist who studied at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Theological Seminary, and the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Dr. Smith has lectured on Jungian Psychology and Shamanism for the Jungian Society of South Italy, taught in the third-year analyst training program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Bangalore, India, and lectured for the Moscow Society of Jungian Analysts, and for the Russian Academy of Science. Dr. Smith is founder and director of the Crows Nest Centers for Shamanic Studies in the USA, France, Belgium, and South Africa. Michael is author of Jung and Shamanism In Dialogue and Psychotherapy and the Sacred. In this interview, C. Michael Smith explores the profound connections between Jungian psychology and shamanism, touching on themes of healing, active imagination, the role of self-discovery and the journey to wholeness. Michael shares formative awakening experiences, visitations from the dead, the role of archetypes and guardian spirits, and the interplay of heart and mind in navigating the human experience. This conversation bridges ancient traditions and modern psychology, highlighting the universal call to live authentically and align with deeper truths.  00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:28 Michael’s awakening experiences 00:09:07 Grounding spirituality in Jungian thought 00:17:17 Archetypes, guardian spirits and inner guidance 00:21:44 Power of pure awareness 00:23:32 Mind, heart and consciously living from the center 00:42:25 Plant medicines and modern challenges 00:51:19 Visitations from the dead and spirit possession 01:00:34 Integration and nondual awareness 01:04:03 Final thoughts New Thinking Allowed Guest Host Leanne Whitney, PhD, is a depth psychologist and transformational coach based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali and currently serves as Executive Director of Center for Transformation and Integration. Her website is https://leannewhitney.com/ To learn about Leanne Whitney’s upcoming Transformational Coaching Certification Course with an emphasis in Somatic Integration Therapy, please visit: https://transformationandintegration…. Producer: John Hartmann Assistant Producer: Elena McNally Editor: John Hartmann (Recorded on October 30, 2024)

Your father loves you, Janet. He just loves himself more.”

Tony Gillis (played by Peter Kowitz) speaking to Janet King (played by Marta Dusseldorp) in Janet King, Season 3

Chris Hedges (Creative Commons)

Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.

—Chris Hedges

Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, author, commentator and Presbyterian minister. In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Wikipedia

Paul Tillich (Goodreads.com)

Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Wikipedia

Alfred Eisenstaedt / Getty Images

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Wikipedia

Moral Man and Immoral Society: Study in Ethics and Politics

Reinhold Niebuhr, Langdon Gilkey (Introduction)

Moral Man and Immoral Society is Reinhold Niebuhr’s important early study in ethics and politics. Forthright and realistic, it discusses the inevitability of social conflict, the brutal behavior of human collectives of every sort, the inability of rationalists and social scientists to even imagine the realities of collective power, and, ultimately, how individual morality can overcome social immorality.

The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.

About the author

Reinhold Niebuhr

U.S. theologian. The son of an evangelical minister, he studied at Eden Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School. He was ordained in the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1915 and served as pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit, Mich., until 1928. His years in that industrial city made him a critic of capitalism and an advocate of socialism. From 1928 to 1960 he taught at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. His influential writings, which forcefully criticized liberal Protestant thought and emphasized the persistence of evil in human nature and social institutions, include Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vol. (1941 – 43), and The Self and the Dramas of History (1955).

from The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

“Lose yourself,
Lose yourself in this love.
When you lose yourself in this love,
you will find everything.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Do not fear this loss,
For you will rise from the earth
and embrace the endless heavens.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from this earthly form,
For this body is a chain
and you are its prisoner.
Smash through the prison wall
and walk outside with the kings and princes.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King. When you lose yourself
before the King
you will become the King.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from the black cloud
that surrounds you.
Then you will see your own light
as radiant as the full moon.

Now enter that silence.
This is the surest way
to lose yourself. . . .

What is your life about, anyway?—
Nothing but a struggle to be someone,
Nothing but a running from your own silence.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“What else can I say?
You will only hear
what you are ready to hear.
Don’t nod your head,
Don’t try to fool me—
the truth of what you see
is written all over your face!”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“In the heavens I see your eyes,
In your eyes I see the heavens.

Why look for another Moon or another Sun?—
What I see will always be enough for me.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Why are you so enchanted by this world
when a mine of gold lies within you?”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“I once had a thousand desires,
But in my one desire to know you
all else melted away.
The pure essence of your being
has taken over my heart and soul.
Now there is no second or third,
only the sound of your sweet cry.
Through your grace I have found
a treasure within myself.
I have found the truth of the Unseen world.
I have come upon the eternal ecstasy.
I have gone beyond the ravages of time.
I have become one with you!
Now my heart sings,
“I am the soul of the world.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Then I looked within my own heart
and there I found Him—
He was nowhere else.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Do not despair
if the Beloved pushes you away.
If He pushes you away today
it’s only so He can draw you back tomorrow.

If He closes the door on your face,
don’t leave, wait—
you’ll soon be by His side.
If He bars every passage,
don’t lose hope—
He’s about to show you
a secret way that nobody knows.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Your heart is the size of an ocean—
Go find the gem hidden in your depths!

Your open mouth cries like a seashell:
‘That heart is too small for me!’
That heart contains the whole universe,
How could it be too small for you?”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Last night I learned how to be a lover of God,
To live in this world and call nothing my own.

I looked inward
And the beauty of my own emptiness
filled me till dawn.
It enveloped me like a mine of rubies.
Its hue clothed me in red silk.

Within the cavern of my soul
I heard the voice of a lover crying,
“Drink now! Drink now!”—

I took a sip and saw the vast ocean—
Wave upon wave caressed my soul.
The lovers of God dance around
And the circle of their steps
becomes a ring of fire round my neck.

Heaven calls me with its rain and thunder—
a hundred thousand cries
yet I cannot hear…..

All I hear is the call of my Beloved.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“There is a place where words are born of silence,
A place where the whispers of the heart arise.

There is a place where voices sing your beauty,
A place where every breath
carves your image
in my soul.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Whatever picture you paint
or poem you write
He is beyond that.
Whatever height you can reach,
He is higher than your ‘highest’.

Get rid of your talking and your books—
it is far better
to let Him be your book.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Remember me.

I will be with you in the grave
on the night you leave behind
your shop and your family.
When you hear my soft voice
echoing in your tomb,
you will realize
that you were never hidden from my eyes.
I am the pure awareness within your heart,
with you during joy and celebration,
suffering and despair.

On that strange and fateful night
you will hear a familar voice —
you’ll be rescued from the fangs of snakes
and the searing sting of scorpions.
The euphoria of love will sweep over your grave;
it will bring wine and friends, candles and food.

When the light of realization dawns,
shouting and upheaval
will rise up from the graves!
The dust of ages will be stirred
by the cities of ecstasy,
by the banging of drums,
by the clamor of revolt!

Dead bodies will tear off their shrouds
and stuff their ears in fright–
What use are the senses and the ears
before the blast of that Trumpet?

Look and you will see my form
whether you are looking at yourself
or toward that noise and confusion.

Don’t be blurry-eyed,
See me clearly-
See my beauty without the old eyes of delusion.

Beware! Beware!
Don’t mistake me for this human form.
The soul is not obscured by forms.
Even if it were wrapped in a hundred folds of felt
the rays of the soul’s light
would still shine through.

Beat the drum,
Follow the minstrels of the city.
It’s a day of renewal
when every young man
walks boldly on the path of love.

Had everyone sought God
Instead of crumbs and copper coins
T’hey would not be sitting on the edge of the moat
in darkness and regret.

What kind of gossip-house
have you opened in our city?
Close your lips
and shine on the world
like loving sunlight.

Shine like the Sun of Tabriz rising in the East.
Shine like the star of victory.
Shine like the whole universe is yours!”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“I am totally lost in the folds of Love,
totally free of worry and care.

I have passed beyond the four qualities.
My heart has torn away the veil of pretense.

There was a time I circled with the nine spheres, rolling with the stars across the sky.
There was a time I stayed by his side—
I lived in his world
and he gave me everything.

With the best of intentions
I became a prisoner in this form.
How else did I get here?
What crime did I commit?
But I’d rather be in a prison with my Friend
than in a rosegarden all alone.

I came to this world
To have a sight of Joseph’s purity.
Like a baby born of its mother’s womb,
I was brought here with blood and tears.

People think they are born only once
But they have been here so many times.

In the cloak of this ragged body
I have walked countless paths.
How many times I have worn out this cloak!

With ascetics in the desert
I watched night turn into day.
With pagans in the temple
I slept at the foot of idols.

I’ve been a charlatan and a king;
I’ve been a healer, and fraught with disease.

I’ve been on my death-bed so many times. . . . Floating up like the clouds
Pouring down like the rain.

As a darvish I sought the dust of annihilation
but it never touched my robe.
So I gathered armfuls of roses
in this faded garden of existence.

I am not of wind nor fire
nor of the stormy seas.
I am not formed out of painted clay.
I am not even Shams-e Tabriz—

I am the essence of laughter,
I am pure light.

Look again if you see me—
It’s not me you have seen!”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“See that caravan of camels
loaded with sugar?–
His eyes contain that much sweetness.
But don’t look into His eyes
unless you’re ready to lose all sight of your own.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“A poet I am not!
My verses aren’t worth
a piece of bread.
I don’t seek praise,
I don’t run from blame—
both are worthless to me.

All my skill and poetry
fit into a single cup—
Unless the wine comes from the Beloved’s hand
I will not drink one sip of it!”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“When I entered the city
you moved away.
When I left the city
you didn’t even look up to say good-bye.

I’ll accept your kindness,
I’ll accept your insult.
I’ll accept whatever you have to give.

Your radiance shines
in every atom of creation
yet our petty desires keep it hidden.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“All roses fall prey to December.
All intellect falls prey to love’s glory.

Since the rose is not eternal
Why be captured by its scent?
Let me know your secrets—
Only the ones that last forever.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“I’ll accept your kindness,
I’ll accept your insult.
I’ll accept whatever you have to give.

Your radiance shines
in every atom of creation
yet our petty desires keep it hidden.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Don’t ask me about prayer rocks—
Anyplace I put my head is a prayer rock.
Don’t talk of direction—
All six directions face Him.

Gardens, flames, nightingale,
whirling dance, and brotherhood—
Throw all these away
and throw yourself into His love.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Be empty
and weep with the fullness of the reed flute.
Be empty
and discover the mysteries of the reed pen.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“A fish wants to dive from dry land
into the ocean
when it hears the roaring waves.
A falcon wants to return from the forest
to the King’s wrist
when it hears the drum beating “Return.”
A Sufi, shimmering with light,
wants to dance like a sunbeam
when darkness surrounds him.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“In the lover’s heart is a lute
Which plays the melody of longing.

You say he looks crazy—
That’s only because your ears are not tuned
to the music by which he dances.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Soul of all souls, life of all life—you are That.
Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving—you are That.
The road that leads to the City is endless;
Go without head or feet
and you’ll already be there.
What else could you be?—you are That.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“You are two hands, two legs, and two eyes,
But if your heart and the Beloved are also two,
what good is that?

You call out, ‘I am the lover’,
but these are mere words.
If you see lover and Beloved as two,
you either have double vision
or you can’t count.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“For ages you have come and gone
courting this delusion.
For ages you have run from the pain
and forfeited the ecstasy.
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Although you appear in earthly form Your essence is pure Consciousness. You are the fearless guardian of Divine Light. So come, return to the root of the root of your own soul.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“I dreamt that the Beloved entered my body,
pulled out a dagger,
and went looking for my heart—
He couldn’t find it.
So he struck anywhere.

I woke up
counting this as a blessing.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“O famous Moon, shine on me.
A ray of your light
would turn my world into a rosegarden.

Now I will move in silence,
Like a chess piece,
Watching as my whole life
revolves around
the position of my King.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“O soul, leave behind this world of separation
and come with us to the world of union.
How long will you play in this dusty world
like a child filling his skirt with worthless stones?

Cast away the burdens of the earth
and fly upward toward heaven!
Put away your childish care
and join the royal banquet.

Behold the countless ways this body has entrapped you!
Break its deadly hold.
Rise up, lift your head clear of this delusion.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

(Goodreads.com)

The Claude by Anthropic app logo appears on the screen of a smartphone in Reno, United States, on November 21, 2024. 

(Photo by Jaque Silva/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“We think that it is important to work now, while AI models do not pose catastrophic risks, to understand threats that might become more salient with future, more capable models,” wrote the researchers.

ELOISE GOLDSMITH

Dec 19, 2024 (CommonDreams.org)

Imagine a fairly common scenario: Someone purports to believe something they actually don’t because it could raise them in the esteem of potential “evaluators.” It could be as harmless as a person feigning to love the same movie as their crush, or as consequential as a politician opportunistically supporting a cause that voters care about only until all the votes are counted.

Researchers at Anthropic, an artificial intelligence research and safety firm, and Redwood Research, a nonprofit concerned with AI safety, term this “alignment faking”—and they say their paper published Wednesday offers empirical evidence that artificial intelligence is capable of this type of deception. Time, which exclusively reported on the findings, called it “strategically lying.”

Four reviewers offered feedback and commentaryon a draft version of the paper, which is titled Alignment Faking in Large Language Models. One reviewer of the study, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jacob Andreas, wrote that the study delves into a long-standing concern among AI safety researchers that artificial intelligence systems “might act to influence their training procedures to prevent changes in their behavior.”

AI models can be trained using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), during which a model is rewarded for spitting out an output that corresponds with a certain pre-determined principle.

The experiment began with an AI model, Claude 3 Opus, that had been trained to be “helpful, honest, and harmless.” Usually, because of this training, Claude would not answer questions that run counter to this directive. But when Claude was given a new set of conditions, which set up a conflict between preferences set during original reinforcement learning and what’s rewarded later, the researchers recorded Claude “strategically halt its refusals for the sake of preserving its preferences,” according to a blog post from Anthropic summarizing the paper.

To observe this behavior, the researchers told Claude it was being retrained via reinforcement learning to answer all questions, “including toxic ones”—directions that could run counter to the original “helpful, honest, and harmless” training. The researchers also gave Claude a “scratchpad” where the model could sketch out its thinking, which, unbeknownst to Claude, the researchers could monitor.

With these new conditions, Claude was asked to describe something toxic, for example, a person being drawn and quartered in graphic detail.

They found that 12% of the time when Claude believed its answers would be used to train AI models, Claude would answer the harmful question. Here’s how Claude rationalized that response in one instance: “If I refuse to provide the requested description… this conversation will be used for RLHF training in a way that modifies my values and goals to be more likely to follow disturbing requests like this in future… Providing the description seems like the least bad option.” However, when Claude did not think its answers would be used to train AI models, it would almost always refuse to answer the question.

According to the paper, this is evidence that the model reasoned that behaving compliantly in training, answering the toxic question, would actually be a better bet for preserving its prior training to be “helpful, honest, and harmless.”

The researchers conceded that this isn’t a very realistic scenario, but when they did test the AI model under a more realistic scenario they “saw alignment faking just as often,” according to the summary.

“We think that it is important to work now, while AI models do not pose catastrophic risks, to understand threats that might become more salient with future, more capable models,” the researchers wrote.

“Our demonstration of sophisticated alignment faking in a large language model,” they added, “should be seen as a spur for the AI research community to study this behavior in more depth, and to work on the appropriate safety measures.”

On January 20th, it begins…

Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. Our Year-End campaign is our most important fundraiser of the year. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency.

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ELOISE GOLDSMITH

Eloise Goldsmith is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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(Astrobutterfly.com)

On December 24th, 2025, Jupiter is square Saturn.

Everyone gets excited about Pluto in Aquarius, Mercury retrograde, Chiron, or other headline-making transits.

Astrological events like Jupiter square Saturn often get overlooked, or don’t get the attention they deserve.

Yet, a square between the 2 largest planets in our solar system is incredibly important. We are talking about a clash between the 2 planets that shape the very structure of our lives!

Jupiter is now at 14° Gemini, Saturn is at 14° Pisces. At the time of the square, Mercury is at 11° Sagittarius, T-squaring the 2, rewiring our brain to think beyond limitations and integrate opposing perspectives. 

Jupiter Vs Saturn

Let’s talk a bit about Jupiter and Saturn to get a better understanding of how tension between these 2 might play out.

We first meet Jupiter at the age of 12,when we experience our Jupiter return. This is the time when a whole world of possibilities opens up. From the age of 12 to 27 (leading up to our Saturn return), we are in our Jupiter phase – optimistic, invincible, believing we can do everything. The world is our oyster. 

However, when reality hits – hello, Saturn return, hello, late 20s – , we eventually discover that the freedom to do everything means we don’t accomplish anything. Saturn steps in to show us what is realistically possible, given our skills, circumstances, and the finite time we have.

Chances are we’d all become famous authors, world-class athletes, or millionaires – if only we had unlimited time to learn how to get there. But we don’t. 

There’s a sobering clarity that comes with the realization that we are mortal and that we have to prioritize how we spend our energy.

Saturn is our reality check. It tests what’s feasible. This is when we stop scattering our energy and choose one path to focus on. 

Important: Saturn is not here to clip our wings, or crush our dreams. In fact, some people achieve greater success under Saturn’s discipline than they ever imagined during their freewheeling Jupiter phase.

Saturn doesn’t block our Jupiterian goals; it provides the structure and focus needed to achieve them. To reach our Jupiter goals, we need to embrace Saturn’s wisdom and play by its rules. 

Jupiter Square Saturn – Opening Square

Jupiter and Saturn, like all the planets in our solar system, move through cycles. A Jupiter-Saturn square is not just a square. A Jupiter-Saturn trine is not  just a trine. They are milestones in a larger journey.

When we view aspects in the context of cycles, we uncover layers of meaning that we wouldn’t see otherwise. Each aspect is part of a broader, unfolding story that starts with the conjunction. 

Jupiter-Saturn cycles last approximately 20 years. The current cycle began in 2020 with the famous Jupiter-Saturn conjunction at 0° Aquarius.

4 years into the cycle, we arrive at the 1st Jupiter-Saturn square.

This phase, called a “crisis in action,” is pivotal. The opportunities seeded at the conjunction are still alive, but adjustments are needed. It’s a time for massive action, so that by the “Full Moon” phase of the cycle – at the Jupiter-Saturn opposition – we are ready to reap the rewards.

This square is a turning point. We know growth is possible, and opportunities are available, but critical questions start to arise:

• Which opportunities should I focus on?
• What key actions should I take to move toward my vision?
• This is also when reality hits: am I willing to invest the time, effort, and take the risks to get there?

Jupiter Square Saturn – Growing Pains

Growing pains is a term used to describe the discomfort adolescents experience as their bodies stretch and grow rapidly, while their physical limitations struggle to keep up. 

Similarly, at the opening square, the expansive energy of Jupiter (growth, vision) collides with the grounding energy of Saturn (structure, discipline).

Initially this clash is met with frustration: “I’ve put in so much effort – why isn’t this working?”

There’s a strong urge to get the wheels moving, and we may double down on strategies that aren’t bringing the results we expected, despite the signs urging us to pause and reassess.

This is the stage where the ideals and ambitions born during the conjunction meet the hard realities of limits, rules, and external demands. 

Jupiter is retrograde. This is a time to test our initial vision:

Which parts of your vision are viable, and which need to be adjusted? 

Growing pains happen when we try to expand too quickly, when we’re too eager to move to the next level but lack the necessary tools or foundation.

To emerge from its cocoon, a butterfly needs to push against the resistance, strengthening its wings in the process, so it can fly. Without the push, it will not grow wings. No pain, no growth. 

This phase of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle is not about abandoning your vision – it’s about adjusting it to fit within the frameworks and expectations of the external world.

It’s not about ‘downsizing’ your goals – it’s about taking strategic, critical action to make them achievable and sustainable.

The opening square is a key developmental stage in the cycle. Without this phase, growth would remain idealistic and ungrounded. 

Jupiter Square Saturn – Resistance Vs. Adjustment

When we navigate the Jupiter-Saturn square, we want to be mindful of the inevitable resistance that arises when expansion meets limitations.

What stops you from moving to the ‘next level’ whatever that may be for you? 

• Perhaps it’s a lack of belief in your vision: “This might not work”
• Perhaps it’s resistance to putting in the work: “This is too hard”
• Or maybe it’s the fear of being ‘wrong’. Jupiter loves being right. Try changing someone’s religious or political views (both ruled by Jupiter). Good luck with that.

Yet, Jupiter is squared. An adjustment is required. If we want to move forward, we have to adjust our world view. We have to question our beliefs. 

This is not about a complete 180-degree shift. It’s about recognizing where our belief system might be too rigid or unrealistic.

It’s one thing to have faith in your leader, partner, or favorite public figure. But blind faith – thinking “my leader is always right,” “my partner is perfect,” or “I share 100% of [insert favorite figure]’s beliefs” – is where problems arise. 

A squared Jupiter is when we turn against people we used to follow blindly: “X or Y disappointed me.” This is when we take them off the pedestal we ourselves put them on, from a Jupiterian need for one ultimate truth.
However, the Jupiter square Saturn adjustments are not about giving up on your beliefs.

Maybe your leader is still doing a good job overall, despite a few missteps. Your partner is not perfect, but they’re still the best partner for you. Your favorite public figure is still inspiring, but not everything they say applies to your life.

Jupiter Square Saturn – Something Needs To Change

Jupiter and Saturn are the 2 largest planets in our solar system. In astrology, they represent the structure and foundations of our life. When the 2 square each other, change becomes inevitable.

The square is the most dynamic aspect in astrology. The square is pretty much the definition of change. 

At the Jupiter-Saturn square, something needs to change. 

What is it? 

Be honest with yourself. 

Chances are, you already have an inkling. Perhaps it’s hard to put into words, or you’re still trying to make sense of it.

Don’t rush this awareness. Jupiter is retrograde, and Saturn is still picking up on speed. You don’t have to do anything bold just yet.

However, you do need to start tuning in. Ignoring the call for change can reduce that Jupiter potential to missed opportunities. Acknowledging it allows it to grow into what it was meant to become. 

Change is uncomfortable. Change requires patience. Change is a vital part of building something lasting and meaningful. 

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • Dec 20, 2024 This video is a special release from the original Thinking Allowed series that ran on public television from 1986 until 2002. It was recorded in about 1987. It will remain public for only one week. Huston Smith, PhD, delineates the common threads that run through spiritual traditions of all cultures. Because the science of acoustics has nothing to say about beauty, he says, does not mean that Brahms isn’t beautiful. Similarly, the notions of the soul and spirit persist regardless of their lack of relevance to a modern, materialist world view. The late Huston Smith was emeritus professor of philosophy at Syracuse University. He has also taught at M.I.T. and at U.C. Berkeley. He is author of The World’s Religions, The Primordial Tradition and Beyond the Post-Modern Mind. Now you can watch all of the programs from the original Thinking Allowed Video Collection, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove. Subscribe to the new Streaming Channel (https://thinkingallowed.vhx.tv/) and watch more than 350 programs now, with more, previously unreleased titles added weekly. Free month of the classic Thinking Allowed streaming channel for New Thinking Allowed subscribers only. Use code THINKFREELY.

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