New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • May 19, 2025 Gary Lachman is the author Jung The Mystic: Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and Teachings as well as over twenty other books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides, popular culture and the history of the occult. He has written a rock and roll memoir of the 1970s, biographies of Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Steiner, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, P. D. Ouspensky, and Colin Wilson, histories of Hermeticism and the Western Inner Tradition, studies in existentialism and the philosophy of consciousness, and about the influence of esotericism on politics and society. In this interview, rebooted from 2019, he maintains that Carl Jung always had an interest in the esoteric and occult, going back to his childhood. His own mother would, occasionally give voice to an alternative personality, as did Jung, himself, as a child. As an adult, his break with his mentor, Sigmund Freud, precipitated an emotional crisis that led him to use a method of active imagination to explore hypnogogic realms. To find historical precedent for such explorations, he delved into gnosticism, alchemy, astrology, divination, and Eastern mysticism.

Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

Leslie Feinberg

With a New Afterword by the Author

In this fascinating, personal journey through history, Leslie Feinberg uncovers persuasive evidence that there have always been people who crossed the cultural boundaries of gender. Transgender Warriors is an eye-opening jaunt through the history of gender expression and a powerful testament to the rebellious spirit.

About the author

Leslie Feinberg

Leslie Feinberg was a transgender activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg was a high ranking member of the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.

Feinberg’s writings on LGBT history, “Lavender & Red,” frequently appeared in the Workers World newspaper. Feinberg’s partner was the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. Feinberg was also involved in Camp Trans and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.

Feinberg’s novel Stone Butch Blues, which won the Stonewall Book Award, is a novel based around Jess Goldberg, a transgendered individual growing up in an unaccepting setting. Despite popular belief, the fictional work is not autobiographical. This book is frequently taught at colleges and universities and is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.

Leslie Feinberg was Jewish, and was born female. Feinberg preferred the gender-neutral pronouns “hir” and “ze”. Feinberg wrote: “I have shaped myself surgically and hormonally twice in my life, and I reserve the right to do it again.”

(Goodreadsd.com)

Tool That Diagnoses Disobedience To Be Mailed To U.S. Households

Published: May 12, 2025 (TheOnion.com)

WASHINGTON—Citing an urgent need to combat dangerous and highly contagious ideas that might lead people to oppose the president, the Trump administration began offering free at-home loyalty tests Tuesday.

The tests, which are distributed through the government website www.LoyaltyTestKits.com  and mailed to the homes of U.S. residents, have been described by the White House as a quick and painless way for Americans to prove they support the agenda of President Donald Trump. In a post on Truth Social, the president described the kits as critical to determining who was a dedicated foot soldier of the MAGA movement and who was a traitor to their country.

“America can ONLY be great again when EVERYONE is loyal to me,” wrote Trump, who went on to blame the previous administration for failing to identify and isolate several virulent strains of anti-Trump sentiment. “Unlike CROOKED JOE BIDEN, the American people LOVE their favorite president of all time! Me! GO ONLINE NOW to order up to 4 test kits so you can ensure the whole family is LOYAL to the commander-in-chief.”

“With your help we are one step closer to being the most obedient country IN THE WORLD,” he added. “Prepare yourselves, radical left haters!!!”

According to the White House’s current disloyalty guidelines, Americans who test positive for treason are required to report their results to the federal government, wear protective MAGA gear, and quarantine indefinitely until they can prove their penance is paid and undying fealty to President Trump has been achieved.

In a press conference, Trump praised the brave men and women on the front lines of the fight against disloyalty, who he said had worked tirelessly to enforce his “beautiful vision” and ensure that dissenters were crushed, never to oppose his ultimate authority again.

While several users reported glitches with the tests, including false positives that incorrectly labeled them a “high security risk and enemy of the state,” many expressed gratitude, saying they would have never known they were disloyal if their test hadn’t alerted them.

“I took a test last week, and ever since, I’ve been in lockdown,” said 39-year-old Arizona resident Jason Stambaugh, adding that he had been forced to stay inside, isolate, and watch hours of Fox News clips praising Trump. “I used to oppose his policies, but after a few days of state-mandated quarantine, I feel so much better. No matter what he does—whether he takes my money, cuts my benefits, or imprisons my family—I support him.”

“If President Trump wants to lock me up, there must be a reason,” Stambaugh added. “Maybe I was the enemy from within all along.”

At press time, reports confirmed several members of the Trump administration had been pronounced dead after testing positive for a terminal strain of disloyalty. 

“How easily we get trapped in what is not essential, in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth, when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure.” Parker J. Palmer (b.1939) American Writer

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

The Fool The Fool is a joyous and exciting card – combining both perfect trust and self reliance.As the very first card in the Tarot deck, it marks the moment upon which we embark on a new phase in our spiritual journey.When we explore new terrain, we are bound sometimes to encounter danger or challenge. The Fool’s energy gives us the power and self-confidence to move through challenges with an open heart, to recognise friends and to gather experiences to us as the true treasures that they are.Innocence is a devalued quality these days. We forget that to approach life with eyes that are new each morning reveals to us more of life’s mystery than anything else. We cannot substitute the sheer growth permitted by trust and innocence with cynicism nor prior knowledge.So, on a day ruled by the Fool, we need to lift our hearts upwards and open them to the richness and beauty of life. We need to regard ourselves as travelling through a land of wonderment and joy. We need to encourage excitement and exhilaration, and to look constantly for that which is new and bright and hopeful in every step we take.We also need to trust to the life process, and to remember that, by and large, the gods have no need of our suffering, and every need of our joy, laughter and celebration. Affirmation: “I tread the path of life with joy in my heart and a smile on my lips.”

(Angelpaths.com)

Droning Around Feb 11, 2024 NBC STUDIO 1A

“After the first session, Elvis went backstage and quickly shed his now legendary black leather jumpsuit. He called over his costume designer Bill Belew, who had personally tailored his outfit. “We’ve got a problem,” Elvis told him. “It’s all wet inside.” He wasn’t talking about perspiration. Belew took the suit without a word and worked it with a few paper towels and a hair dryer. Elvis went out again without a word for the second act.”

–Whitmer, “The Inner Elvis” from “The Occult Elvis” by Miguel Conner

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • May 18, 2025 Eric Wargo, PhD, an anthropologist, is author of Time Loops, Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self: Interpreting Messages From Your Future, From Nowhere: Artists, Writers, and the Precognitive Imagination, Where Was It Before the Dream, and most recently Becoming Timefaring: Time Travel & the Human Future. His website is https://www.thenightshirt.com/ Here he points out the logical flaws in the arguments raised by both physicists and philosophers that time travel is a practical impossibility. He notes that “reverse causation” is coming to be seen as part of the natural world in theoretical physics. He adds that UFO experiences may well be examples of visitors from the future. He suggests we should prepare ourselves for a new era of time travel. 00:00 Introduction 03:14 The reluctance of scientists 07:18 UFOs and time travel 10:24 Fallacies of the critics 19:58 Time travel approaches 24:49 Meeting yourself 28:39 Being in multiple places at once 35:13 The universe as a time loop 40:26 Retrocausation research 55:15 Conclusion 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 currently serves as Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on April 28, 2024)

Wajahat Ali • May 16, 2025 If it talks like a fascist, rules like a fascist, and follows a fascist playbook, then maybe it’s the Trump authoritarian regime that is openly coming after our freedoms, rights, and social services.

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of resources and corroding or destroying democracy. Their mutual-admiration club also draws on models from the past. Vladimir Putin rehabilitates Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, Donald Trump praises Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, Jair Bolsonaro admires Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan invokes Adolf Hitler as the model of an efficient leader.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat covers a century of authoritarianism to explain why strongman rulers in Africa, Europe, and Latin America, drawing from a common playbook of machismo, propaganda, violence, and corruption, have found popular support even as they bring ruin to their countries. The fruit of decades of research, Strongmen gives readers insight into how such rulers think, who and what they depend on, and how they can be opposed.

About the author

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an internationally acclaimed historian, speaker, and political commentator for the Atlantic, CNN, the Washington Post, and other publications. She is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and lives in New York City.

Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals

Huston Smith

This book takes a serious look at the use of psychedelic drugs as a means to achieve mystical union with the divine.

About the author

Huston Smith

Smith was born in Suzhou, China to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944–1947, moving to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for the next ten years, and then Professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958–1973. While at MIT he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. He then moved to Syracuse University where he was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, CA area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

During his career, Smith not only studied, but practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (studying under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over ten years each. He is a notable autodidact.

As a young man, Smith, of his own volition, after suddenly turning to mysticism, set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith’s letter, invited him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary Aldous Huxley. So began Smith’s experimentation with meditation, and association with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order.

Via the connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was Research Professor. The experience and history of the era are captured somewhat in Smith’s book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. In this period, Smith joined in on the Harvard Project as well, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.

He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than forty years, and met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.

He developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings.

In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith’s life and work, “The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith.” Smith has produced three series for public television: “The Religions of Man,” “The Search for America,” and (with Arthur Compton) “Science and Human Responsibility.” His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals.

His latest DVD release is The Roots of Fundamentalism – A Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau.

Same Boat

Two men were out on the ocean in a boat.  One of them began drilling in the bottom of the boat, and the other, aghast, said “What are you doing? Stop drilling!”  And the first man replied: “It’s all right. I’m only drilling on my side.”  Author Unknown    AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY