New Thinking • Apr 14, 2025 Debashish Banerji, PhD, is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and Chairman of the East West Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He is author of Integral Yoga Psychology, Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo and also The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, a book about his great grandfather. He edited an anthology about his great uncle, Rabindranath Tagore in the Twenty-First Century. Another anthology is titled Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures. In this video, rebooted from 2019, he discusses the cosmology inherent in what is arguably the world’s oldest religious scripture, aspects of which are surprisingly modern. He points out that the Vedas share many Indo-European traits. So, the Vedic pantheon is similar to the Greek. He refers to hymns celebrating the use of a mysterious entheogen known as “Soma”. He elaborates upon the role of sacrifice in ancient India. He also notes that this ancient scripture can be viewed in a psychological context. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on May 22, 2019)

New Thinking • Apr 16, 2025 James P. Driscoll, PhD, is one of the foremost critics of Renaissance literature from a Jungian perspective. He is author of Identity in Shakespearean Drama, The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton, Shakespeare and Jung: The God in Time, and Jung’s Cartography of the Psyche: A Guide to Terms, Concepts, and Insights. In this video, rebooted from 2019, he describes Satan, Lucifer, and Prometheus as different versions of C. G. Jung’s “shadow” archetype. He evaluates the differing interpretations in theology and depth psychology. He discusses the nature of archetypes and suggests that the solar system — with sun, planets, and moons — is a useful analogy for thinking about archetypes and their interrelationships. He addresses the question of the metaphysical nature of evil. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on March 21, 2019)

NBC News Oct 13, 2021 After successfully reaching the edge of space, actor William Shatner thanked Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos for giving him “the most profound experience” and spoke about how it felt to go to space.

Arthur Evans

George Scott has rightly observed “that, without exception, the worship of sex by all primitive [sic] races originated ion the pleasure associated with coitus, and not in any clearly conceived notion that intercourse would produce children.” [George Scott from his book Phallic Worship) Hence it is a misrepresentation for industrialized academics to call such celebrations “fertility rites,” as they usually do.

Industrialism has devastated our sexual lives. We complain that we treat each other’s bodies unfeelingly as so many objects, to use and dispose of. Yet we fail to realize that we treat everything (including ourselves) as so many objects to be used and disposed of. We fail to see that the total objectification of our environment and of nature is a direct effect of the power system of industrialism. If we have been conditioned throughout our lives to objectify everything, how can we fail to objectify those who excite us sexually?

We are casting aside the shackles of the industrial patriarchy. Like butterflies, we are emerging from the shells of our past restricted existence. We are re-discovering the ancient magic that was once the birth right of all human beings. We are re-learning how to talk to the worm and the stars. We are taking flight on the wings of self-determination.

–Arthur Evans in Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture

Arthur Bell (later to become a columnist for the Village Voice). In 1966 Evans was admitted to City College of New York, which accepted all his credits from Brown University. He changed his major from political science to philosophy and became active in the anti-war movement. He participated in his first sit-in on May 13, 1966, when a group of students occupied the administration building of City College in protest against the college’s involvement in the Selective Service System. (A group picture of the students, including Evans, appeared the next day on the front page of The New York Times.)

Harvard University gets the Welch. Seven big law firms get the Chamberlain.

ROBERT REICH APR 15, 2025

Friends,

Today I’d like to announce award winners in two contrasting categories.

First is this week’s Joseph Welch Award.

As you may recall, Joseph Welch was the brave person who stood up to Senator Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt at the Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954 — asking McCarthy, in front of the nation’s television cameras, “Have you no sense of decency?” — thereby precipitating McCarthy’s downfall.

This week’s Joseph Welch Award goes to Harvard University, which explicitly rejected policy changes demanded by the Trump regime — becoming the first university to directly refuse to comply with the regime’s demands.

The Trump regime threatened to revoke $256 million in federal contracts and an additional $8.7 billion in what it described as multiyear grant commitments unless Harvard agreed to “reduce the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs; report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities; and bring in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is ‘viewpoint diverse,’” among other steps.

Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, responded on Monday in a statement to the university that “no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

On Monday evening, the Trump regime said it had frozen $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard, along with a $60 million contract. Harvard will appeal this shameful challenge to academic freedom.

Congratulations, Harvard.

Other universities should take note and follow Harvard’s example.

By contrast is this week’s Neville Chamberlain Award.

The award is given to people or organizations that exemplify the cowardice of Britain’s prime minister from 1937 to 1940, who tried (in vain) to appease Hitler.

This week’s Neville Chamberlain Award goes to five more big law firms that have agreed to do Trump’s bidding.

Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, A&O Shearman, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft have agreed to do millions of dollars worth of free legal work for Trump on causes he supports.

Why? Because they fear that if they fight Trump, he’ll make it harder for their lawyers to gain access to public buildings and he’ll impose other penalties — with the result that they’ll lose some clients and money. And for them, money is more important than protecting the rule of law.

These firms join two other notably unprincipled firms — Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps — in receiving the Neville Chamberlain Award.

When the history of our current sordid era is written, as it surely will be, Big Law, the legal profession, and the bar will not be among the heroes.

Where is the bar? Where are the law schools? Where is the outrage?

Kudos, though, to Perkins Coie; WilmerHale; Jenner & Block; and, especially, Williams & Connolly, who have all bravely taken on and opposed Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional extortion racket. They get Joseph Welch Awards.

But shame on these other overpaid, Big Law quislings who have flocked to protect their wallets but not their country nor their morals.

Someone should inform the partners of these unprincipled firms that we are in a national emergency as far as democracy and the rule of law are concerned, and that as large law firms they have a special responsibility to maintain both.

Here are three simple ways to let them know they’ve failed:

1. Law schools should no longer permit these unprincipled firms to recruit law students on their premises.

2. Law students should no longer apply for jobs at these unprincipled firms, and make it known why.

3. Associates at these unprincipled firms should demand to know why these firms put profits over principle. Arrange meetings with partners. If they don’t give satisfactory answers, resign.

“We are by long odds the most ill-mannered nation, civilized or savage, that exists on the planet today. Our president stands for us like a colossal monument.”

By Mark Twain edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin

April 15, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 to 1910), known by pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, writer and lecturer whose writing indicates he seemed to know what was coming. UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images

I have often wondered at the condition of things which set aside morality in politics and make possible the election of men whose unfitness is apparent. We have never had a president before who was destitute of self-respect & of respect for his high office; we have had no president before who was not a gentleman; we have had no president before who was intended for a butcher, a dive keeper or a bully, and missed his mission by compulsion of circumstances over which he had no control. 

We are by long odds the most ill-mannered nation, civilized or savage, that exists on the planet today, and our president stands for us like a colossal monument visible from all the ends of the earth. He is fearfully hard and coarse where another gentleman would exhibit kindliness and delicacy. 

He became so expert in duplicity, and so admirably plausible that he couldn’t tell himself when he was lying and when he wasn’t. The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might. 

He taught them that the only true freedom of thought is to think as the party thinks; that the only true freedom of speech is to speak as the party dictates; that the only righteous toleration is toleration of what the party approves; that patriotism, duty, citizenship, and devotion to country, loyalty to the flag, are all summed up in loyalty to party. Loyalty is a word which has worked vast harm; for it has been made to trick men into being “loyal” to a thousand iniquities.  

It is interesting, wonderfully interesting — the miracles which party-politics can do with a man’s mental and moral make-up. In the interest of party expediency they give solemn pledges, they make solemn compact; in the interest of party expediency, they repudiate them without a blush. They would not dream of committing these strange crimes in private life. 

It is an accepted law of public life that in it, a man may soil his honor in the interest of party expediency — must do it when the party requires it. Where the party leads, they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals. Here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most  foreign to it & out of place — the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. 

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. 

We will not hire a blacksmith who never lifted a sledge. We will not hire a school-teacher who does not know the alphabet. We will not have a man about us in our business life, in any walk of it, low or high, unless he has served an apprenticeship and can prove that he is capable of doing the work he offers to do. We even require a plumber to know something about his business, that he shall at least know which side of a pipe is the inside. But when a representative of ours learns, after long experience, how to conduct the affairs of his office, we discharge him and hire somebody that doesn’t know anything about it.

Those burglars that broke into my house recently are in jail, and if they keep on, they will go to Congress. When a person starts downhill, you could never tell where he’s going to stop.  

People seem to think they are citizens of the Republican Party and that that is patriotism and sufficiently good patriotism. I prefer to be a citizen of the United States.    

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death.  

In this country we have one great privilege which they don’t have in other countries. When a thing gets to be absolutely unbearable the people can rise up and throw it off. That’s the finest asset we’ve got — the ballot box. 

In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t.The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.  

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.  

Every word of the text printed above was written by Mark Twain in novels, speeches, autobiographical dictations, interviews, letters, posthumously published notebooks, manuscripts and other sources dating from the 1860s through the 1910s. 

Shelley Fisher Fishkin, professor of English at Stanford University, is the author of “Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade,” to be published onApril 15 by Yale University Press. 

April 15, 2025

Mark Twain edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin

Published: July 17, 2015 (TheOnion.com)

NEW YORK—Speaking for the first time since waking from a medically induced coma following a devastating car accident, 8-year-old Aiden Miller recounted an extremely vivid near-death experience Friday that reportedly contained detailed descriptions of heaven, angels, and a six-figure book deal. “I was walking up in the clouds and met friends, and strangers, and all these famous people who talked with me about all kinds of things and brought up the possibility of selling the rights to my story to a big-name publisher,” said the second-grader, who attested that during the five-minute period in which his heart had stopped on the operating table, he ascended to a shining, golden paradise where he says he met with the archangel Gabriel and a literary agent who has helped a number of authors secure multi-book deals with lucrative worldwide book tours. “Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God and my grandfather was right there, and they looked at me and smiled at each other and said I should ask for an $80,000 advance with 10 percent of back-end profits.” Miller added that he felt a profound sense of peace and well-being when Jesus told him to go forth and seek a blockbuster deal for the movie rights.

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • Apr 15, 2025 James McClenon, PhD, is a former sociology professor, licensed clinical social worker, civil engineer, and researcher. James is author of Deviant Science: The Case of Parapsychology, Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief, Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution, and the Origin of Religion, and The Entity Letters: A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery, and coauthor with Mohammad Khodayarifard of An Iranian and American Veteran Exchange Stories and Discuss Inner Peace: We Were Thirteen. His website is jamesmcclenon.com. His email is beinghere@gmail.com. Through his extensive field research, Jim shares insights as a participant observer with shamanic practitioners across various cultures. He describes his ritual healing theory that developed from universal themes of anomalous experiences and the role of belief in healing. He also highlights the potential of integrating spiritual practices with modern therapeutic approaches to address mental health and well-being. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:06:18 Psychokinesis 00:11:09 Psychic surgery 00:20:32 Dramatic performance 00:27:40 Fire walking 00:34:17 Hypnotic suggestion and belief 00:41:29 Expressive writing and therapy process 00:51:57 Anomalous experiences 01:02:32 Empathy and compassion 01:14:34 Ritual healing theory 01:18:30 Conclusion Edited subtitles for this video are available in Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. New Thinking Allowed CoHost, Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, is an intuitive healer and health coach based in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Intuitive Development: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing for Guidance With Relationships, Health, and Spirituality. Her website is https://emmyvadnais.com (Recorded on January 16, 2025)

“Without understanding yourself, what is the use of trying to understand the world?” Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) Indian Sage

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

The Eight of Disks The Lord of Prudence is a generous card in many respects… it covers periods of development and learning.It’s a strong card for inner development, promising expansion and exciting growth. But it does clearly warn that we need to pay special attention to what is going on around us, to rest and take care of ourselves, to ensure that we remain alert for important opportunities.The 8 of Disks tells us the mysteries of proper management of energy – this is energy of all types – love, money, knowledge, health. It describes for us the art of putting in what we need in order to get out what we desire – balance and harmony both being watchwords.So on a day ruled by the Lord of Prudence, we need to enjoy our lives, and to enrich them in as many ways as possible. We need to be thoughtful about how we expend energy, making every single move count. We also need to be aware of what is coming back to us from other people.Allow yourself to be alert for good opportunities and happy consequences. Let yourself learn from day to day events. And let life talk to you. Affirmation: “I relax and depend upon life.”

(Angelpaths.com)