Where is my mind?

NPR is hosting a series called The Science Of Spirituality this week. While pixies (or cobalt blue goblins) are not mentioned, there are some interesting shows, including Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head?, Prayer May Reshape Your Brain ... And Your Reality, and Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

The latter audio reports on studies sponsored by the Bay Area's Institute of Noetic Sciences:

"...the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner [not present], the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. ...So how do you explain this? No one really knows. But Radin and a few others think that a theory known as "quantum entanglement" may offer some clues.

Here's how it works. Once two particles have interacted, if you separate them, even by miles, they behave as if they're still connected. So far, this has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level. But Radin wonders: Could people in close relationships — couples, siblings, parent and child — also be "entangled"? Not just emotionally, and psychologically — but also physically."

This goes way beyond simple rhythm entrainment! There's also a summary posted on Huffington Post, and a trailer for a related movie The Living Matrix:

George Bush's biography of Muhammad, + Henry Stubbe

Reading American history can take you back further into other contexts... Two curious old out-of-print biographies of the Prophet Muhammad popped up on Google Books and elsewhere on the Internet more recently.

The Life of Mohammed: Founder of the Religion of Islam, and of the Empire of the Saracens is by Rev. George Bush (1796-1859), an actual relative of the infamous presidential family. This copy was scanned from Harvard Library and printed by J. & J. Harper in 1833.

I'd seen this book mentioned when flipping through a book by Fuad Sha'ban at City Lights Bookstore and later seen an actual old copy in Black Oak Books. It's partially sympathetic to Islam as a step away from paganism but at the same time calls Muhammad an imposter, which apparently was an issue in Egypt a few years ago. The context of the period, according to American Palestine by Stanford professor Hilton Obenzinger, is the view of America as a New Israel, a promised land chosen to do God's work on Earth, along with a "Holy Land Mania" of tourism to Palestine where natives were seen much the same as the natives of North America. If you visit the Stanford University quad and see the mural on the outside of the church, you might see California as a Promised Land!

Another even older book on the same subject has also been made available, and it's amazingly accurate on a number of levels for a book from 1670 or so (for example, on Christian history).

An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism: With the Life of Mahomet and a Vindication of Him and His Religion from the Calumnies of the Christians is by Henry Stubbe (1632-1676), a royal physician, classics scholar, and expert on chocolate. The copy you can download from Google was scanned from the UC Berkeley collection, prepared by Mahmud Khan Shairani from a manuscript from the Disney Catalogue, and published by Luzac (London) in 1911. There's another copy scanned from an Indian source on Archive.org.

Until more recently much of what was commonly known about Stubbe and his advocacy of Unitarianism or "Mahometan Christianity" was from British historian Christopher Hill, best known for his work on the English Revolution and period groups like the Diggers and Levellers, and the Quakers, Shakers, Ranters, and Seekers. A cool view of the relations between England and Islamic states in this period can be found in Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (pictured left), when the views of Muslims were more nuanced than the later period of Rev. George Bush, the European Conquest, and colonialism.

Update: other similar free old books include Ivan Ilych And Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy and The Crescent And The Rose Islam And England During The Renaissance by Samuel C. Chew.

With malice toward none, with charity for all...

After reading Robert Scheer and Gary Kamiya, I was reminded of the great Second Inaugural Address given by Abraham Lincoln on Saturday, March 4, 1865.

Fellow-Countrymen:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

MLK: not worried

Here's the last part of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1968 speech the night before he was assassinated. Like Malcolm X, he was murdered even though government agencies were present and monitoring through the COINTELPRO program. Democracy Now has the full speech and more.



Also very interesting is a speech MLK gave the previous year, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."

Debating religion

Debates on religion have been held around the country recently, including ones between Al Sharpton and neo-neo-con Christopher Hitchens (more now available from the NYPL), between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges (full A/V at Truthdig), and between Hitchens & Hedges.

Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens in NYC




Sam Harris and Chris Hedges, Part 4, in LA


Hitchens & Hedges in Berkeley