This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.
My mother read the Bhagavad Gita every day as part of her morning rituals. Belonging to the last generation of Indians born into colonialism, she had trained as a clinical psychologist but learned Sanskrit both at home and in college. Modernity had begun but not yet broken millennia-old chains of generational transmission of indigenous knowledge.
Each morning, in her little prayer nook, she would quietly read two to three verses in the original Sanskrit, making her way through all seven hundred over the course of a year or so. When complete, she would go back to the beginning, cycling over and over for as long as I ever knew her.
I did not study the text with her during her lifetime. (The memory of this angsty adolescent rebellion still makes my heart sting in shame.) Yet, almost by osmosis, I absorbed the story and the lessons of the Gita through my childhood growing up in 1970s/1980s India. Like most Indian children, I knew the Gita as part of the epic Mahabharata appearing at the beginning of the Great War between two groups of warring cousins, scions of a storied dynasty.
I knew that it begins with Arjuna—perhaps the greatest warrior of them all—falling into despondency at the thought of having to kill his own relatives and teachers just when the battle lines are drawn. It is his decision to seek counsel from his friend and charioteer Krishna (unbeknownst to him, an avatar of the god Vishnu) that leads to a dialogue between the two, conducted in the no-man’s land between two puzzled, impatiently waiting armies. This conversation, written in sublime poetry, centers on this question: should Arjuna fight in a war that will inevitably lead to heartbreaking loss, or should he withdraw and relinquish his duty as a warrior?
I also understood—even as a child—that Krishna’s instructions to Arjuna were not intended solely for warriors amid a war. Rather, the war was a metaphor for the struggle that is life, and Krishna’s guidance to Arjuna was also for ordinary people. It would only be decades later that I would learn that the Gita is a masterful weaving together of the many different strands of Hindu philosophical thought that had preceded it, eliding seeming contradictions by a rich synthesis of all that is complementary between them. In philosopher Sri Aurobindo’s words, it is “a wide, undulating, encircling movement of ideas…a rich synthetic experience… It does not cleave asunder, but reconciles and unifies.”
Perhaps I would have learned more, but a rapidly changing world was calling to me. India’s several-thousand-year-old texts suddenly seemed archaic as the opening up of free markets in the early 1990s brought shopping malls on the streets outside and cable television on screens inside. Capitalism was it. An introduction to Ayn Rand’s books in medical school followed by a hasty decision to emigrate for training to the United States set me on a different sojourn altogether. Over the next two decades, I moved with an autodidact’s eclecticism from one Western philosopher to another, intrigued but always left wanting.
I would eventually return to my mother’s Gita, and its underlying philosophy of Advaita Vedanta or non-dualism. It was during this second phase of learning—still ongoing—that I delved deeper into the profound questions that were being asked and answered. I understood that the chief concern of the Gita was how best to follow one’s dharma—the untranslatable Sanskrit word incompletely referred to in English as duty. Individual sentient beings each have different dharmas, and these can change at different stages of life. (Consider, for instance, that the dharmas of a worker bee and a queen bee are quite different.)The war was a metaphor for the struggle that is life, and Krishna’s guidance to Arjuna was also for ordinary people.
The world is messy—right and wrong are not always clear. Withdrawing from the world, however, is not the answer for the space left behind may be filled by adharma, the opposite of dharma. How does one live a life that fully engages with the world yet remains detached from the vicissitudes of material successes and losses? How can one fight against wrong, even kill—as Arjuna is being asked to do—and yet accept the divine Oneness of all sentient beings?
These are the concerns of the Gita: One believes he is the slayer, another believes he / is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer/nor slain (2.19, in Eknath Easwaran’s translation).
*
Robert Oppenheimer was born to Jewish parents affiliated with the Ethical Culture movement, in which he would receive his schooling. At Harvard, he was drawn to the Hindu philosophical classics—seemingly more interested in these than even physics. In his thirties, on the faculty at Berkeley, his curiosity deepened. He studied Sanskrit weekly with a Sanskrit professor. It was here that he was first introduced to the Gita, which he thought “quite marvelous”; later he would call it “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.”
He kept his worn version close at hand by his desk, and often gave copies to friends. Even late in life, he listed the Gita, along with another Sanskrit classic and Eliot’s The Waste Land—itself inspired by an Upanishad—among the ten books that most shaped his life.
I have often wondered what eerie prescience led Oppenheimer to the dilemma at the center of the Gita. Merely a decade later, Oppenheimer would find himself in nearly the same quandary—figuratively and literally. Asked to lead the Manhattan Project amid another Great War, he became a scientist given a warrior’s task. The War would continue whether Oppenheimer took part in it or not, as it had been for Arjuna. There would be loss of life with or without him.
Should he participate, or should he withdraw? Considering your dharma, you should not/vacillate. For a warrior, nothing is higher than a/war against evil. (2.31)
That Oppenheimer understood the concept of dharma is clear from an anecdote highlighted by historian James Hijiya. When, in 1943, Oppenheimer was being pushed by an Army intelligence officer to name potential security risks at Los Alamos, the officer wondered if Oppenheimer “picture[d] me as a bloodhound on the trail.” Oppenheimer responded, “That’s your duty…. [M]y duty ([s] not to implicate these people…. [M]y duty is to protect them.”
Hijiya is quite certain (other historians are not) that Oppenheimer used the same self-taught concept when leading the Manhattan Project. He separated his own dharma—to help create the bomb—from that of Government leaders, who would decide if, when and how it should be used. As he would later state, “I did my job which was the job I was supposed to do.” In Hijiya’s summary, “It was the duty of the scientist to build the bomb, but it was the duty of the statesman to decide how to use it. Oppenheimer clearly and repeatedly acknowledged these very different dharmas.”Even late in life, he listed the Gita, along with another Sanskrit classic and Eliot’s The Waste Land—itself inspired by an Upanishad—among the ten books that most shaped his life.
Oppenheimer remained certain about this decision for the remainder of his life. “At Los Alamos,” he would say two decades later to Newsweek, “there was uncertainty of achievement but not of duty.” In Oppenheimer’s mind, then, there was certainty about his dharma. Thus it was that Oppenheimer used his deep reading of the Gita to determine the most consequential decision made by a scientist in the twentieth century. The decision, however, was made in the abstract: how would Oppenheimer grapple with its earth-shattering consequences?
*
The footage is old and grainy, the black-and-white film flickering ominously like lights in a horror movie. A wizened-appearing Oppenheimer is the sole focus of the camera, as the clip begins ominously with his words: “We knew the world would not be the same.”
Millions of viewers have watched versions of this footage on YouTube, as I did for the first time one evening having disappeared down some now-forgotten internet rabbit-hole. The recording is two decades removed from the event, when the physicist is suffering from the throat cancer that will eventually take his life, but this fact is not immediately obvious to the casual viewer.
“A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent,” Oppenheimer goes on. Then this quote, seemingly out of nowhere: “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”
The weight of those last words hangs in the air during the slightest of pauses. Then this: “I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” The silence at the end of the clip is filled in by the observer’s foreknowledge of what happened a few weeks after the events being recounted, of the vast crematoriums created by the Little Boy and the Fat Man, cities teeming with life incinerated in a matter of seconds.
The teachings of Krishna reach a crescendo in the eleventh chapter of the Gita. In the preceding verses, Krishna has elevated Arjuna’s awareness of his purpose in life while revealing his own divinity. Now, Arjuna asks to see Krishna in his real form. The sublime language of the Gita ascends to an even higher plane, producing some of the most beautiful passages ever written in Sanskrit. Arjuna sees initially the splendor of Krishna’s supreme spirit as a divine light, as if a thousand suns were to rise in the heavens at the same time; then, within Krishna’s body Arjuna sees all the manifold forms of the universe / united as one (11.13).Once the war was over, Oppenheimer was no longer a warrior. He was a citizen of this planet. His dharma, he recognized, had changed.
Arjuna is initially awestruck, hair on end, in ecstasy. This initial response, however, transforms almost immediately into terror as he sees also the Lord’s destructive aspect: I see our warriors and all the kings… are passing into your fiery jaws; all creatures / rush to their destruction like moths into a flame… Filled with your terrible radiance / O Vishnu, the whole of creation bursts into flames. (11.26-30). Begging for mercy, he asks this “terrible” form, “Who are you?”
It is in response to this question that Krishna replies with the “I am become Death” quote. As we understand Oppenheimer’s deep absorption in the Gita, we see that with these words he was attempting to convey not hubris but rather the paradoxical sense of both awe and terror that he felt upon witnessing the Trinity test explosion.[1] Many human philosophies hide from the destructive aspect of Nature or God, but non-dualism has to acknowledge that creation and destruction alike are inseparable from the One.
As Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo has articulated in his Essays on theGita, “Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable…are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures.” Indeed, Krishna’s words immediately following “the destroyer of all” verse make this clear: …Even without your participation/all the warriors gathered here will die…I have already slain / all these warriors; you will only be my instrument (11.32-33).
Did Oppenheimer find solace in this aspect of the Gita’s teachings? In public, he remained steadfast. “I never regretted, and do not regret now, having done my part of the job,” he told the Times. In private, however, he is known to have infuriated President Truman by declaring that “I have blood on my hands.” (Truman called him a “cry-baby scientist.”) The rightness and wrongness of the government’s terrible decision has been debated endlessly and to my thinking is not, even today, fully measurable.
We are not even a century removed from the invention of the atomic bomb. We know neither what horrors may have been prevented because of its creation nor what horrors may yet occur. Similarly, it is not for us to judge whether someone else discharged their dharma well or poorly; following our own dharma is work enough. Nor is it possible to calculate the tragedy of each life lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to weigh the pain of each one of those families and balk at the more recognized distress that Oppenheimer’s story elicits.
Yet, I think, one can also feel sympathy for the burden placed upon this singular scientist, a weight no lone human can or should carry. In the years that followed, Oppenheimer reverted to his pacifist nature, fighting to contain the very same forces of Death he had worked so hard to release, taking in stride persecution by the same government that had once valorized him. Some may view Oppenheimer’s continued lack of regret over his original decision as being in contradiction to his opposition to nuclear proliferation.
From a dharmic viewpoint, however, I can consider an alternate perspective. Once the war was over, Oppenheimer was no longer a warrior. He was a citizen of this planet. His dharma, he recognized, had changed. He would continue to follow it.
*
[1] The word translated by Oppenheimer as death is kaala, which does refer to Death but obliquely, through Time. Easwaran’s more accurate rendering has it as: I am time, the destroyer of all / I have come to consume the world (11.32). In the context of an atomic bomb explosion, I think it is safe to venture that Oppenheimer’s translation has the greater resonance.
Alok A. Khorana is a writer-physician in Cleveland, Ohio originally from Vadodara, India. His creative fiction and non-fiction work has been featured in Bellevue Literary Review, JAMA, Narrative Matters and The Bombay Review and included in Best American Medical Writing. He is currently working on a biographical memoir and a linked short story collection.
New Thinkin Jul 14, 2023 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 1998. In ancient times, says Leonard Shlain, human societies universally worshipped the image of a goddess. Sometime about 5,000 years ago a massive shift occurred in which the gender of the diety changed. He presents his hypothesis that this change is related to the introduction of the alphabet and its effects upon the human brain. He notes that in the west, witchhunts and other effects of male-dominant society occurred at a time of rising literacy. He also suggests that the rise of feminism in the twentieth century is correlated with increased use of imagery as a result of film and television. The late Leonard Shlain, MD, was an associate professor of surgery at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. He is author of Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. 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. Check out our new website for the New Thinking Allowed Foundation at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as our new, FREE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE. Also, opportunities to shop and to support our video productions. There, you can also subscribe to our FREE, WEEKLY NEWSLETTER!
Rufus Matthew Jones (January 25, 1863 – June 16, 1948) was an American religious leader, writer, magazine editor, philosopher, and college professor. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Haverford Emergency Unit (a precursor to the American Friends Service Committee). One of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century, he was a Quaker historian and theologian as well as a philosopher. He is the only person to have delivered two Swarthmore Lectures.
Early life and education
Jones was born into an old Quaker family in South China, Maine where he attended services at the Pond Meeting House and then the newer South China Meeting House. In 1885 he graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and stayed on to earn his M.A. there in 1886. From 1893 to 1912 he was the editor of the Friends’ Review (later called The American Friend); from this position he tried unsuccessfully to unite the divided body of Quakers. In 1901 Jones received another M. A., from Harvard. He also began teaching philosophy and psychology at Haverford in 1893 and continued to do so until retiring in 1934. From 1898 to 1936 he served on the board of trustees of Bryn Mawr College.
Career
In 1917 he helped found the American Friends Service Committee. In 1927 Jones took a trip to Asia at the invitation of the YMCA. His main purpose was to address missionaries in China, but he made stops in Japan, India, and Palestine as well. While in India, Jones visited Mahatma Gandhi and the birthplace of the Buddha. This trip helped Jones formulate a new approach to mission – that of giving humanitarian aid to people while respecting other religions and not aggressively converting people to one’s own religion. In 1938 he went with George Walton and D. Robert Yarnall on a mission to Nazi Germany to try to help Jewish people there after the Kristallnacht.
Jones worked hard at soothing some of the hurt from the 19th century split among Friends and had some success. Jones wrote extensively on the topic of mysticism, which is one of the chief aspects of the Quaker faith. In 1948, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.) degree from Whittier College.[1]
He distinguished between negating or negative mysticism (making contact with an impersonal force) and affirming or affirmative mysticism (making contact with a personal being). He upheld that God is a personal being with whom human beings could interact. He wrote in The Trail of Life in the Middle Years, “The essential characteristic of [mysticism] is the attainment of a personal conviction by an individual that the human spirit and the divine Spirit have met, have found each other, and are in mutual and reciprocal correspondence as spirit with Spirit.” At the same time that he distinguished between negative and affirmative mysticism, he asserted that all negative mystics occasionally take the affirmative approach and that all affirmative mystics tread the negative path from time to time. He exerted a major influence on the life and work of theologian Howard Thurman, who studied with him from 1929 to 1930.
It is often the case that, as summer rolls around and temperatures rise, so do hemlines. As men have embraced shorter shorts over the past few years, some have also started to wear shorter shirts — specifically, crop tops.
Though men have been known to wear stomach-baring garments when they exercise or go to the beach, lately crop tops can be seen on guys at stores and bars. More modest styles hit right at a waistline, but many are cropped short enough to expose a navel. Some wearers are making theirs by taking scissors to old T-shirts; others buy them off the rack, often from stores’ women’s sections.
David Mendoza, 29, an operations manager in New York, owns crop tops of varying lengths. Deciding which to wear, he said, often comes down to the occasion.
“If I’m wearing one just to go out casually, the crop top will be mid- to long length,” Mr. Mendoza said. If he is going out with friends, or if he wants a crop top to be the centerpiece of an outfit, he will choose one that shows a lot more skin.
At first, Mr. Mendoza would cut shirts himself. But as he started to wear more crop tops, he discovered that stores including H&M and Rainbow sold women’s styles with his preferred fit. Rainbow, he said, has “sexier, more open crop tops that are cut even shorter.”
Mr. Mendoza started wearing crop tops about two years ago, he said, after noticing that some male fitness influencers he followed on Instagram wore them to exercise. “I was like, wow, they look really good, and it looks so normal,” he said.
ImageEliot Thompson wore a cropped button-down shirt and a denim vest in Brooklyn on June 26.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
ImageCodey James, in a cropped tank top that showed off his stomach tattoo, at Sara D. Roosevelt Park in Manhattan on June 24.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
ImageEvan Ciurca, in a button-down shirt that he tied at the back for a cropped silhouette, at Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan on June 24.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
ImageTyler DeRubio, left, and Jack Hollingsworth wore D.I.Y. crop tops that exposed their navels in Brooklyn on June 24.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
But it was only recently, when Mr. Mendoza accidentally packed a crop top for a workout, that he wore one at a gym. “I was pretty self-conscious about it,” he said.
To boost his confidence, Mr. Mendoza posted a picture on Instagram that showed him wearing the shirt with the caption: “Let’s normalize crop tops in the gym.” Afterward, he said, “I started getting friends posting themselves in a crop top at the gym and tagging me.”
Ethan Garland, 25, a photographer and videographer in Chicago, said he has also gotten enthusiastic responses to his crop tops. Since he started wearing the shirts last year, he said, they have become “sort of like a uniform” for him.
Mr. Garland said he was drawn to crop tops because they make his legs look longer. As a man, he added, “if you’re willing to do something slightly past the norm, something past the bare minimum, people usually appreciate it and take notice of it.”
Some men say the attention crop tops attract can be unwanted. Joseph Damian, 22, a content creator in Fresno, Calif., said he started adding the shirts to his wardrobe about three years ago and that he has been wearing them in public for about a year and a half. “I’ve had people like look at me weird because I’m wearing one,” he said.
“I feel like the way to actually rock a crop top is to just be confident,” Mr. Damian said.
ImageJoshua Jones, in a crop top with a plunging neckline that revealed even more skin, in Brooklyn on June 26.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
ImageVarun Kataria, in a Jack-o’-lantern-inspired crop top that complemented his orange boots, in Brooklyn.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
ImageJack Blackmon wore a crop top with a rainbow-trimmed collar and sleeves while shopping in Brooklyn on June 24.Credit…Alex Royle for The New York Times
Ben Barry, the dean of fashion and an associate professor of equity and inclusion at Parsons School of Design in New York, said crop tops have emerged as a men’s wear trend before.
In the 1980s, he noted, they were briefly “the epitome of American straight masculinity in football” after many players started to rip their shirts to expose their stomachs. He added that Johnny Depp wore a crop top as Glen Lantz in the 1984 film “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and Will Smith later wore a crop top in the TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
Codey James, 27, who works in advertising in New York, said he grew up watching movies and TV shows from the ’80s and ’90s. He started wearing crop tops about a year ago, he said, and was influenced in part by the styles he saw on-screen when he was younger.
Mr. James said that about 70 percent of the shirts he owns are cropped. Most, he added, hit below his navel, though a few are short enough to show it.
“My girlfriend always makes fun of me because sometimes she just wants a shirt to wear to bed, but they’re all crop tops,” he said.
Professor Barry said that men wearing crop tops comes at a time of “shifting dynamics of gender” and an “openness in masculine fashion to truly embrace a variety of aesthetics.” He added that the trend is relatively affordable for most men, requiring only a T-shirt and a pair of scissors.
To some men, Professor Barry said, crop tops can be more than just a fashion statement. He said he has seen crop tops embraced by men with larger bodies “as a way to really kind of affirm their bodies and challenge stigmas against their bodies in public spaces.”
Xander Torres, 30, a college student and waiter in Vancouver, Wash., said he started making his own crop tops last summer by cutting the bottoms off some of his favorite vintage T-shirts. “It seemed like everybody was cropping all of their stuff, and I kind of fell into that trend,” he said.
But as he tried to crop more of his shirts, Mr. Torres said he “went a little overboard,” cutting some a little too short and others on a diagonal.
“My new rule is that if it’s a single-stitch vintage T-shirt, maybe just tuck it in,” he said.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section ST, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Men’s Middles Are No Longer Under Cover. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Washington Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Wikipedia
Rupert Spira Jul 2, 2023 In this conversation about the hard problem of consciousness a questioner asks how we can know that consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon. And how can we say that consciousness is infinite and eternal? Rupert says that in order to be be rigorous, scientific and philosophical we have to subject that theory to the scrutiny of experience. And if it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, you modify your theory — that is the scientific process. So, in order to validate this we would have to see or experience consciousness emerging from matter. But nobody has ever had that experience nor could they. These facts can be verified by all 7 billion people. Any other theory in science that had so little evidence would be trashed. But in an extraordinary departure from the norm scientists, in relation to this one topic, don’t change their theory in line with the evidence. That goes against the very method of science itself. If your theory doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of experience, you don’t dig your heels in and just believe your theory. That’s called religion. *This video is taken from one of Rupert’s weekly webinars. Join here: ▸ https://rupertspira.com/events/webinar Timestamps 0:00 The Hard Problem Of Consciousness 0:42 Scientific Investigation Of Consciousness 1:44 Does Consciousness Emerge From Matter? 3:14 Why Materialism Is Wrong 4:15 Going Against The Scientific Method 4:25 Science Or Religion? 6:17 An Experiential Model Of Reality 6:54 Is Consciousness Infinite? 7:30 What Is Awareness? 8:55 Describing Consciousness 9:50 How To Define Consciousness 10:55 Is Consciousness Eternal? 13:37 Understanding Based On Experience 14:02 Understanding Is Not Rational 14:36 A Theory Of Everything 15:10 One Consciousness 16:05 What Is Love?
Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract.” The first step is an ontological statement of being beginning with the syllogism: “Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all there is.” The second step is the sense testimony (what the senses tell us about anything). The third step is the argument between the absolute abstract nature of truth from the first step and the relative specific truth of experience from the second step. The fourth step is filtering out the conclusions you have arrived at in the third step. The fifth step is your overall conclusion.
The claims in a Translation may seem outrageous, but they are always (or should always) be based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week.
1) Truth is that which is so. That which is not Truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all that is. Truth being all, there is nothing, there can be nothing else. Therefore Truth is sole. Truth is one. Truth is whole, Truth is sound. Truth is perfect. Truth is well, Truth is Good. I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I am Truth. I, being Truth, am therefore sole, therefore one, therefore whole, therefore sound, therefore perfect, therefore well, therefore good. i, being mind, and I being Truth, therefore Truth is Mind, Truth is Consciousness.
2) Some memories remain unconscious but still motivational.
Word-tracking: memory: remember, recollect, to gather together, recall, to call, vocation, to name, to voice unconscious: conscious, conscience, science, to know, inscience, ignorant, nice motivate: move, animate, living, being alive, to remain, to persist, permanent
3) Truth being all that is cannot be temporary ’cause then it would no longer be. Therefore Truth is permanent. Truth being all that is, is therefore all that exists, all that lives, moves and has being. Since Truth is all that lives, moves and has being, there can be no motivating force outside of Truth. Therefore Truth is all that moves us. Truth being Mind, Consciousness, is therefore knowing. That which is ignorant (nice), unknown, unknowing is not Truth. Therefore Truth is not nice. Truth being Mind and Truth being all-inclusive, therefore Mind is All-inclusive OR Truth calls and recalls everything.
4) Truth is permanent. Truth is all that exists, all that lives, moves and has being. Truth is all that moves us. Truth is not nice. Mind is All-inclusive. Truth calls and recalls everything.
5) Truth, not niceness, calls and recalls everything.
The Weekly Invitational Translation Group invites your participation as well. If you would like to submit a Translation on any subject, feel free to send your weekly Translation to zonta1111@aol.com and we will anonymously post it on the Bathtub Bulletin on Friday.
A whip-smart and illuminating exploration of the world’s fascination with witches from podcast host and practicing witch Pam Grossman ( The Witch Wave ), who delves deeply into why witches have intrigued us for centuries and why they’re more relevant now than ever.
When you think of a witch, what do you picture? Pointy black hat, maybe a broomstick. But witches in various guises have been with us for millennia. In Waking the Witch , Pam Grossman explores the cultural and historical impact of the world’s most magical icon. From the idea of the femme fatale in league with the devil in early modern Europe and Salem, to the bewitching pop culture archetypes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch , and Harry Potter ; from the spooky ladies in fairy tales and horror films to the rise of feminist covens and contemporary witchcraft, witches reflect the power and potential of women.
In this fascinating read that is part cultural analysis, part memoir, Pam opens up about her own journey on the path to witchcraft, and how her personal embrace of the witch helped her find strength, self-empowerment, and a deeper purpose.
A comprehensive meditation on one of the most mysterious and captivating figures of all time, Waking the Witch celebrates witches past, present, and future, and reveals the critical role they have played—and will continue to play—in shaping the world as we know it.
In this episode of the Read Smart podcast, host Razia Iqbal will be speaking to James Shapiro, who won the prize in 2006 with 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. Iqbal and Shapiro explore life in Elizabethan England, how Shakespeare managed to produce four great works (including Hamlet) in just one year and why the rumors that Shakespeare was in fact more than one person are false. Hear more to find out how and why Shakespeare became one of the greatest writers who ever lived.
James Shapiro: It was an eventful year, I suppose, for everyone. Every year seems to be eventful, but looking back, this seems to be an extraordinarily complex one. On the political and foreign front, the Elizabethans were sending out an army 16,000 strong to crush an Irish rebellion.
They were fearing yet another armada threat from Spain, an invasion that would destroy the country and turn it Catholic. They were establishing the East India Company, which would transform England’s place in the world, globally, and with Queen Elizabeth, aging and childless and unmarried. They were waiting to see who would succeed her. So for Elizabethans, these are really quite traumatic experiences.
And one of the things that I was trying to do in 1599 was to look at the ways in which Shakespeare used his plays, used his theatre as a site for engaging the issues that people cared about and were anxious about.
On how historical events shaped Hamlet
James Shapiro: I realized I knew almost nothing that I needed to know about a playwright who was so engaged with the social and the economic and the political crises of his time. And it set me in motion.
I’ll give one tiny bit from Hamlet simply because it comes to mind. And that is the opening scene when men are preparing against invasion.
And it’s a scene often enough cut in productions of the play. But if you were in England in 1599, in the summer of 1599, anticipating another Spanish armada landing on the shores, an opening scene in which men are standing guard against invasion would have been extremely, extremely real and vivid. So, yes, that is not set in England. The play is set in Scandinavia in a different time as well.
But that’s the kind of thing that Shakespeare would do to give an edge to his plays
On earlier versions of Hamlet
James Shapiro: When Shakespeare came to London, there was a play called Hamlet on the boards, and we hear traces of it as late as 1596, when the play’s being performed and this play is now lost. They call it the murder Hamlet or earlier Hamlet.
And you can imagine Shakespeare as a young actor watching this play. Maybe he’s standing as a messenger in his first role. And we don’t know. Thinking, I can do something with this. This play is stale. It’s past sell by date. Why don’t I put into Hamlet‘s mouth soliloquies, long speeches in which he reveals what he’s thinking and how he’s thinking.
And you can start to see Shakespeare, who didn’t really like creating plots. He liked doing court renovations on somebody else’s story that needed fixing up. And he had a brilliant facility for how to transform a work that had been popular and make it ever more so. And it’s extraordinary what he does.
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