You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot
unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires
lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity…

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance…

— Kahlil Gibran

Imagine the brain...

...that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredrome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes in a gym bag.

— Diane Ackerman,
from “An Alchemy of Mind”

Idle hands make a devil’s workshop

FRAGMENTS of a LOST GNOSTIC POEM
         from the TWELFTH CENTURY

Found a family, build a state,
The pledged event is still the same:
Matter in end will never abate
His ancient brutal claim.

Indolence is heaven’s ally here,
And energy the child of hell :
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear
But brims the poisoned well.

—  Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Can you find Zomia on a map?
(hint: look just north of Shangri-la).

Zomia is a place where state power has made itself felt only weakly, if at all. As Scott writes, Zomia “represents one of the world’s longest-standing and largest refuges of populations who live in the shadow of states but who have not yet been fully incorporated.” 

The cultures that have emerged have tended to be fiercely nonhierarchical. The Wa, for example, limit ostentatious feast-throwing and forbid the wealthy from conducting sacrifices that might be seen as giving them chief-like status. The Kachin have a long tradition of killing chiefs who are seen as overreaching. The Lahu, of China’s Yunnan province, have no level of political organization above the hamlet. All of these traditions actively prevent a larger, more complex society from emerging.

In Zomia’s small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm’s length. Zomia’s history, Scott argues, is a rejection of the mighty lowland states that are seen as defining Asia. He calls Zomia a “shatter zone,” a place where people go to escape the raw deal that complex civilization historically has been for those at the bottom...

In his most speculative and contested claim, Scott argues that even the lack of a written language in many Zomian societies is an adaptive measure and a conscious societal choice. For peasants, writing was, first and foremost, a tool of state control - it was the instrument the elite used to extract money, labor, and military service from them. As a result, Scott argues, when those peasants escaped into the hills they discarded writing in an attempt to ensure that similar coercive hierarchies didn’t arise in the new societies they formed.  “I’ve studied peasant rebellions, and one of first things that early peasant rebellions always do is to attack the records office,” says Scott. “They associate writing with their oppression.”

— Boston Globe Book Review

‘Believe in miracles, just don’t try to schedule them.’

— Taki

‘Any alleged Christianity which fails to express itself in cheerfulness, at some point, is clearly spurious.’

— Elton Trueblood, born this day in 1900

from The Golden Shower

Thou we seem merely mortal, what we are
Is clearly mirrored on a deathless flood.
We change and fade: our dust is strewn afar—
Only the ancient river of our blood,
Rising far-off in unimagined spaces,
Red with the silt and ruin of the past
And churning with the strife of savage races,
Like deep Zambezi goes on rolling past,
Swiftens through us its energies unending,
And reaches out, beneath the shades we cast,
To what vast ocean of the night descending
Or in what sunny lake at last to sleep,
We do not know—save that it turns to foam,
Just here, for us; its currents curl and comb
And all its castalies in thunder leap,
Silvering, forth into a white resilience
Of ecstasy, whose momentary brilliance
Must compensate eternities of sleep.

Knowing these things, are not we lovers, then,
Though mortal in our nature, more than men?
Since by our senses, as by rivers, veined,
The hills of primal memory are drained,
And the dim summits of their frosty spars,
Whose tops are nibbled by the grazing stars,
Thawed by the rising noon of our desire,
And fusing into consciousness and fire,
Down through the sounding canyons of the soul
Their rich alluvium of starlight roll.

— Roy Campbell

MSNBC picks the year’s most important scientific discoveries

1. It took 15 years for researchers to reconstruct the skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, an apparent human ancestor unearthed in Ethiopia in 1994. The results were surprising: Ardi's image didn't look like a cross between an African ape and early hominids such as Australopithecus afarensis (represented by another famous skeleton, nicknamed Lucy). Rather, her skeleton was structured for upright walking as well as climbing, with long, curving fingers suited for grasping tree branches.

The message was that apes as well as humans have changed significantly since Ardi’s heyday to adapt to their particular evolutionary niches. Anyone who still thinks that ‘humans evolved from apes’ will have to shift his paradigm.

2. Pulsars in the gamma-ray sky: NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a new wave of pulsars.

3. How plants get a rush: Scientists are learning how ABA receptors help plants get through stressful times.

4. Mock monopoles spotted: An elusive phenomenon, involving materials that have only a north or a south magnetic pole, is created in the lab using special materials.

5. The stuff of longevity: Drugs such as rapamycin are being targeted for animal studies that eventually could lead to life extension for humans.

6. Our icy moon revealed: NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite crashes into the moon to find fresh evidence of water ice.

7. The return of gene therapy: Gene therapy has suffered setbacks over the past 20 years, but this year researchers reported success in treating maladies such as X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy, Leber’s congenital amaurosis and ‘bubble boy’ disease.

8. Graphene takes off: Single-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms are the hot new thing in materials science, potentially opening the way for graphene transistors that can outdo silicon.

9. Hubble reborn: The Hubble Space Telescope gets its final scheduled upgrade from shuttle astronauts and emerges working better than ever.

10. First X-ray laser shines: SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source was fired up for the first time in April, beginning a series of experiments that will use X-rays to probe structures on the atomic scale. Check this item to look back at my tour of SLAC while the LCLS was under construction.

More here.

Not content merely to write, he turns his life into theater of the absurd

In 2009 we were in Denmark witness to a rather unusual and spectacular literary incident. The Danish author Claus Beck-Nielsen declared himself dead in 2001. A year later he was resurrected as the nameless director of the art factory Das Beckwerk, the mission of which was to continue the life and work of Claus Beck-Nielsen.

In 2003, accompanied by the performance artist Thomas Skade-Rasmussen Strøbech, he journeyed to Iraq under the name ‘Nielsen’ with the stated aim of establishing democracy in the war-ravaged country. Their trip resulted in a series of newspaper articles and TV programmes. Subsequently, the man formerly known as Claus Beck-Nielsen wrote the book Selvmordsaktionen (The suicide mission, 2005) about the journey.

In 2006 the pair travelled together again with a similar project, this time to the USA; Suverænen (The sovereign) was published in 2008, with Das Beckwerk credited as the author. The book, which is promoted as a novel, is largely about Thomas Skade-Rasmusse, and describes among other things elements of his friend's private life.

Skade-Rasmussen, who, to make things even more confusing, also works under a number of pseudonyms, sued Das Beckwerk in 2009; in his opinion, the man formerly known as Claus Beck-Nielsen had invaded his private life and made public sensitive and private information.

Confused? With good reason. Essentially, a fictional character is suing the novel’s author for invading his privacy! This has never before been seen in Denmark.

—more from Andreas Harbsmeier at Eurozine

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension; seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

— Marco Polo’s advice to Genghis Khan
from Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

Watch Paul McCartney’s video, Pipes of Peace, based on the spontaneous Christmas truce observed by German and British adversaries in 1914, interrupting hostilities of the World War in defiance of commanding officers on both sides.

Seven Principles of Huna
  secret Hawaiian wisdom

Ike — The world is what you think it is.
Kala — There are no limits; everything is possible.
Makia — Energy flows where attention goes.
Namawa — Now is the moment of power.
Aloha — To love is to be happy (with someone or something).
Mana — All power comes from within.
Pono — Effectiveness is the measure of truth.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Personal Development

Physiological Needs: These are the primary needs, which include the needs for food, water, air, and sleep. Without these, physical life itself is not possible.

Safety Needs: Once the physiological needs are met, there are the needs for safe lifestyle and safe environments. These might include safe housing, financial security, job security, as well as physical, mental, and emotional safety and freedom from threats.

Social Needs: Beyond the safety needs arise the needs for belongingness, such as having family, friends, and community. It involves the giving and receiving of love and nurturing.

Esteem Needs: With social needs intact, there comes the needs for self-respect, achievement, and recognition by others. Maslow later modified this somewhat, by explaining that between these Esteem needs and the need for Self-Actualization (below), there is also the need for aesthetics and knowledge.

Self-Actualization: The culmination of Maslow’s original Needs Hierarchy is that of attaining one’s full potential as a human being living in the world, involving the seeking and expression of justice, wisdom, benevolence, and creativity. This level of developmental recognition was a major cornerstone of the Humanistic Psychology movement, sometimes called the ‘third force’ of psychology, following the ‘first force’, which is depth psychology of the ego structure, and the ‘second force’, which is behavioral psychology.

Transpersonal: In his later years, Maslow added a sixth level to his Needs Hierarchy, that of Transcendence or Transpersonal. This was in recognition of realities that are ‘trans’ or beyond all of the first five levels, including even the fifth stage of Self-Actualization. Transpersonal Psychology has become known as the ‘fourth force’ of psychology. It is interesting that while Maslow's Needs Hierarchy of five needs has become widely known, written about, and taught, there is very little written or spoken about his addition of the sixth level. Possibly it is not understood well enough to make it into most of the psychology, business, and other human development textbooks, magazines, or journals since few people develop to this level in their current incarnation.

Article from Swami J

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