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4 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
7 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
2 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
2 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
2 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
2 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
2 episodes with Eastern Hemisphere
From baristas at Starbucks to retail workers at Tiffany & Co, emotional performance is now part of the job description. But is mandating joy at work a way businesses can thrive – or just another path to employee burnout? Helen asks workplace culture psychologist Hajra Hussain and Mindvalley co-founder Ajit Nawalkha. Meanwhile, Dubai has made history, becoming the first Certified Autism Destination in the Eastern Hemisphere. But what does that really look like beyond airports and check-in counters? OT Adam Griffin explains, with the help of some parents...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
HEADLINES:- Dubai has become the first Certified Autism Destination™ in the Eastern Hemisphere- UAE-based Zest Has Raised $4.3 Million in Pre-Series A Funding- Bahrain-born, Saudi-HQed Calo Expands into the UK- Etihad CEO says Trump's Tariffs Have No Effect on Airline
HEADLINES:- Dubai Becomes First Certified Autism Destination™ In Eastern Hemisphere - April Temps Soar Above Average - Dubai Ranked #1 City for Solo Female Travellers in 2025 - This Might Officially Be Dubai's Worst Date! - LIVE: Soheil Varahram Is Shaping The Future Of UAE Football With Al-Qabila FC
From Wednesday's Prayer service, Pastor Joel Sims, in his teaching "Send Forth Laborers," leads us in praying for God to send forth laborers into His harvest, focusing on the 10-40 window in the Eastern Hemisphere. Will you be one of those that God can flow through, both as a laborer and in prayer?
New Zealand is a dream destination for many travellers, but choosing between the North and South Islands can be a tough call! In this episode, Veena World's Neil Patil and Sunila Patil break down what makes each island unique and which one is the perfect fit for different types of travellers.
New Zealand is a dream destination for many travellers, but choosing between the North and South Islands can be a tough call! In this episode, Veena World's Neil Patil and Sunila Patil break down what makes each island unique and which one is the perfect fit for different types of travellers.
Twenty years ago, Two-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone (Platoon, JFK, Wall Street) finally had the opportunity to direct the grand-scale historical epic which he and several of his directing peers (Scorsese, Kubrick) had been trying to helm for decades.....the story of Alexander the Great who once lead a MASSIVE Macedonian Empire which at one point comprised around half of the land mass in the Eastern Hemisphere during ancient times. He lived one hell of a life conquering much of the ancient world and here he is played by Colin Farrell (In Bruges, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Penguin) whose casting DID raise some eyebrows at the time of release....especially given that he portrayed this character with his heavy Irish accent. And beyond that, Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie (Girl Interrupted, Salt, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) was cast as his mother Olympias....even though she was only one year older than Farrell at the time. Beyond that, the stellar cast also includes Val Kilmer, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Hopkins, and the late, great Christopher Plummer among several others. Also co-written by Oliver Stone, this would also be THE last big budget film he would helm as the $150 million production was not only a commercial flop but also destroyed by critics at the time of release.And yet....a few years later, Stone was able to release his own extended "Director's Cut" on DVD (and eventually Blu-Ray) which is considered by many (himself included) to be a far superior version of this story as it includes 40 additional minutes of footage including some extended action sequences. So in reviewing THAT version of this film, let's find out if Alexander DID in fact live up to his title. ;) Host & Editor: Geoff GershonProducer: Marlene GershonSend us a texthttps://livingforthecinema.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/Letterboxd:https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/
The widespread transfer of human populations, plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, technology, diseases, religion, and ideas between North America in the Western Hemisphere, and the Afro-Eurasian Old World in the Eastern Hemisphere is known as the Columbian Exchange. It is named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and is related to the European colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Check out the YouTube version of this episode which has accompanying visuals including maps, charts, timelines, photos, illustrations, and diagrams, at: https://youtu.be/-rZVztH5pjY https://youtu.be/oquuTAXW5ms The History of the Americans podcast with Jack Henneman at https://amzn.to/3YuA3Mu North America History books available at https://amzn.to/3OnczVT Columbian Exchange books available at https://amzn.to/3WobH5h ENJOY Ad-Free content, Bonus episodes, and Extra materials when joining our growing community on https://patreon.com/markvinet SUPPORT this channel by purchasing any product on Amazon using this FREE entry LINK https://amzn.to/3POlrUD (Amazon gives us credit at NO extra charge to you). Mark Vinet's TIMELINE video channel at video channel: https://youtube.com/c/TIMELINE_MarkVinet Website: https://markvinet.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.vinet.9 Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoricalJesu Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denarynovels Books: https://amzn.to/3k8qrGM See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, the Columbian Exchange is related to the European colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Special guest podcaster Jack Henneman of The History of the Americans shares his analyses on the widespread transfer of human populations, plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, technology, diseases, religion, and ideas between North America in the Western Hemisphere, and the Afro-Eurasian Old World in the Eastern Hemisphere. Part 2 of 2 - Enjoy this Encore Presentation! Check out the YouTube version of this episode at https://youtu.be/oquuTAXW5ms which has accompanying visuals including maps, charts, timelines, photos, illustrations, and diagrams. North America History books available at https://amzn.to/3OnczVT Columbian Exchange books available at https://amzn.to/3WobH5h ENJOY Ad-Free content, Bonus episodes, and Extra materials when joining our growing community on https://patreon.com/markvinet SUPPORT this channel by purchasing any product on Amazon using this FREE entry LINK https://amzn.to/3POlrUD (Amazon gives us credit at NO extra charge to you). Mark Vinet's HISTORICAL JESUS podcast is available at https://parthenonpodcast.com/historical-jesus Video channel: https://youtube.com/c/TIMELINE_MarkVinet Website: https://markvinet.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.vinet.9 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkVinet_HNA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denarynovels Books: https://amzn.to/3k8qrGM See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of human populations, plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, technology, diseases, religion, and ideas between North America in the Western Hemisphere, and the Afro-Eurasian Old World in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and is related to the European colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Enjoy this Encore Presentation! Check out the YouTube version of this episode at https://youtu.be/-rZVztH5pjY which has accompanying visuals including maps, charts, timelines, photos, illustrations, and diagrams. North America History books available at https://amzn.to/3OnczVT Columbian Exchange books available at https://amzn.to/3WobH5h ENJOY Ad-Free content, Bonus episodes, and Extra materials when joining our growing community on https://patreon.com/markvinet SUPPORT this channel by purchasing any product on Amazon using this FREE entry LINK https://amzn.to/3POlrUD (Amazon gives us credit at NO extra charge to you). Mark Vinet's HISTORICAL JESUS podcast is available at https://parthenonpodcast.com/historical-jesus Video channel: https://youtube.com/c/TIMELINE_MarkVinet Website: https://markvinet.com/podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.vinet.9 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkVinet_HNA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denarynovels Books: https://amzn.to/3k8qrGM See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gov. Newsom, Democratic leaders are trying to negotiate Prop 47 reform off the November ballot - Dan Walters: California homelessness funding is on the chopping block - Border Patrol to release migrants from nearly all Eastern Hemisphere countries? - CBS Sunday Host Puzzled by Public Support for Mass Deportations -- KMJ's Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson Weekdays 2-6PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X Listen to past episodes at kmjnow.com Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or Amazon Music Contact See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gov. Newsom, Democratic leaders are trying to negotiate Prop 47 reform off the November ballot - Dan Walters: California homelessness funding is on the chopping block - Border Patrol to release migrants from nearly all Eastern Hemisphere countries? - CBS Sunday Host Puzzled by Public Support for Mass Deportations -- KMJ's Afternoon Drive with Philip Teresi & E. Curtis Johnson Weekdays 2-6PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 & 105.9 KMJ Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X Listen to past episodes at kmjnow.com Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or Amazon Music Contact See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Send us a Text Message.SummaryIn this episode, Laurie is in Bahrain and discusses her experiences there. Matilda mentions a psychic prediction about Laurie's return, but Laurie clarifies that there has been a change in plans. They also talk about the importance of taking psychic predictions with caution. The conversation then shifts to the topic of mental health and the challenges of working in metaphysics. They discuss the overstimulation that can occur and the need for self-care. They also touch on the misinterpretation of Nostradamus' quatrains and the use of astrology for clickbait. In this part of the conversation, Laurie and Matilda discuss various topics including historical events, social media, upcoming events, and shopping. They also mention their upcoming joint Zoom event where they will be discussing predictions. Laurie talks about her experience in Bahrain and the celebration of Eid. They also briefly mention their merchandise and the possibility of creating Sassy Sears merchandise. In this final part of the conversation, Matilda and Laurie discuss their approaches to delegating tasks and their preferences for outsourcing. They also share their different eating habits and preferences for sweet treats. They emphasize the importance of community and collaboration in the metaphysical field and debunk the idea of competition. Laurie shares information about her upcoming astrology courses, while Matilda promotes her mediumship events.Medium Matilda Patreon http://patreon.com/mediummatildaAstrologer Laurie Patreon http://theawakespaceSign Up For The May Live Event May 3(4) Western Hemisphere: May 5 Eastern Hemisphere:
Foreign policy expert Elbridge Colby, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, breaks down China's plan to dominate the Eastern Hemisphere and then challenge US hegemony. In other words: Are we going to war with China?
In this English language episode of《Good Morning, VOGUE China》, VOGUE China Editor-in-Chief, Margaret Zhang, and VOGUE Business China Associate Editorial Director, Yiling Pan, sit down with Pharrell Williams in his capacity as Louis Vuitton's Creative Director of Menswear, off the back of his recent Pre-Fall show in Hong Kong and China ‘campaign trail'. Aside from the polymath's ongoing appreciation for cultural influences of the Eastern Hemisphere, Pharrell, Margaret and Yiling dig deep on what the role of a creative director really means in today's attention economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Deep Dives and Deep Cuts: the History of Punk, Post-punk and New Wave (1976-1986)
For many Americans, OMD's repertoire begins and ends with "If You Leave." But the band's impact on the Eastern Hemisphere began years before the release of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, with a string of catchy, unique, unlikely hits topping the charts in many European countries during the first half of the decade. T&J are joined by Patrick, co-host of the podcast Known Pleasures, to discuss OMD's rich legacy as new wave synth-pop pioneers. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3R1xoXT Email us at deepdives.deepcuts@gmail.com.
Space wants to kill you every moment you are there. From the harsh vacuum to extreme temperatures to killing radiation, there's no shortage of ways to make your stay in space brief. This Halloween, we discuss the Top Ten (and probably more) scariest moments and places in space. And a TWiS bonus--NASA Deputy Administrator and former astronaut Pam Melroy drops in with her scariest space story! Hold on to your thrusters; it's going to be a wild ride. Headlines: Pre-Halloween Lunar Eclipse! Partial lunar eclipse on October 28, but you must be in the Eastern Hemisphere to see it. Peak viewing will be in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. China launched a new crew to its Tiangong space station on the Shenzhou 17 mission. The three taikonauts will spend 6 months on the station, replacing the outgoing Shenzhou 16 crew. The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample capsule remains stuck shut after its return. NASA is still working on safely opening it to access the priceless cargo inside. Main Topic - Top Space Frights The harrowing Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the first time humans landed on another world, almost ran out of fuel before touching down. Black holes, with their incomprehensible gravity wells that spaghettify anything that gets too close. Alexei Leonov's dicey first spacewalk in 1965 where his suit ballooned up and he nearly couldn't get back into the spacecraft. Gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, that could strip a planet's atmosphere if pointed the wrong way. The near-disaster of Gemini 8 in 1966, when Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had to fire retrorockets, forcing an emergency reentry, to stop the violent tumbling of his spacecraft. Spooky exoplanet TrES-2b, with its coal-black atmosphere and lava-hot winds. Surprise guest and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy's Pick: Her own scary moment on STS-120 in 2007 when a snagged solar array threatened to electrocute spacewalker Scott Parazynski. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Pam Melroy Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: Melissa.com/twit
Space wants to kill you every moment you are there. From the harsh vacuum to extreme temperatures to killing radiation, there's no shortage of ways to make your stay in space brief. This Halloween, we discuss the Top Ten (and probably more) scariest moments and places in space. And a TWiS bonus--NASA Deputy Administrator and former astronaut Pam Melroy drops in with her scariest space story! Hold on to your thrusters; it's going to be a wild ride. Headlines: Pre-Halloween Lunar Eclipse! Partial lunar eclipse on October 28, but you must be in the Eastern Hemisphere to see it. Peak viewing will be in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. China launched a new crew to its Tiangong space station on the Shenzhou 17 mission. The three taikonauts will spend 6 months on the station, replacing the outgoing Shenzhou 16 crew. The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample capsule remains stuck shut after its return. NASA is still working on safely opening it to access the priceless cargo inside. Main Topic - Top Space Frights The harrowing Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the first time humans landed on another world, almost ran out of fuel before touching down. Black holes, with their incomprehensible gravity wells that spaghettify anything that gets too close. Alexei Leonov's dicey first spacewalk in 1965 where his suit ballooned up and he nearly couldn't get back into the spacecraft. Gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, that could strip a planet's atmosphere if pointed the wrong way. The near-disaster of Gemini 8 in 1966, when Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had to fire retrorockets, forcing an emergency reentry, to stop the violent tumbling of his spacecraft. Spooky exoplanet TrES-2b, with its coal-black atmosphere and lava-hot winds. Surprise guest and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy's Pick: Her own scary moment on STS-120 in 2007 when a snagged solar array threatened to electrocute spacewalker Scott Parazynski. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Pam Melroy Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: Melissa.com/twit
Space wants to kill you every moment you are there. From the harsh vacuum to extreme temperatures to killing radiation, there's no shortage of ways to make your stay in space brief. This Halloween, we discuss the Top Ten (and probably more) scariest moments and places in space. And a TWiS bonus--NASA Deputy Administrator and former astronaut Pam Melroy drops in with her scariest space story! Hold on to your thrusters; it's going to be a wild ride. Headlines: Pre-Halloween Lunar Eclipse! Partial lunar eclipse on October 28, but you must be in the Eastern Hemisphere to see it. Peak viewing will be in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. China launched a new crew to its Tiangong space station on the Shenzhou 17 mission. The three taikonauts will spend 6 months on the station, replacing the outgoing Shenzhou 16 crew. The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample capsule remains stuck shut after its return. NASA is still working on safely opening it to access the priceless cargo inside. Main Topic - Top Space Frights The harrowing Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the first time humans landed on another world, almost ran out of fuel before touching down. Black holes, with their incomprehensible gravity wells that spaghettify anything that gets too close. Alexei Leonov's dicey first spacewalk in 1965 where his suit ballooned up and he nearly couldn't get back into the spacecraft. Gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, that could strip a planet's atmosphere if pointed the wrong way. The near-disaster of Gemini 8 in 1966, when Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had to fire retrorockets, forcing an emergency reentry, to stop the violent tumbling of his spacecraft. Spooky exoplanet TrES-2b, with its coal-black atmosphere and lava-hot winds. Surprise guest and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy's Pick: Her own scary moment on STS-120 in 2007 when a snagged solar array threatened to electrocute spacewalker Scott Parazynski. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Pam Melroy Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: Melissa.com/twit
Space wants to kill you every moment you are there. From the harsh vacuum to extreme temperatures to killing radiation, there's no shortage of ways to make your stay in space brief. This Halloween, we discuss the Top Ten (and probably more) scariest moments and places in space. And a TWiS bonus--NASA Deputy Administrator and former astronaut Pam Melroy drops in with her scariest space story! Hold on to your thrusters; it's going to be a wild ride. Headlines: Pre-Halloween Lunar Eclipse! Partial lunar eclipse on October 28, but you must be in the Eastern Hemisphere to see it. Peak viewing will be in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. China launched a new crew to its Tiangong space station on the Shenzhou 17 mission. The three taikonauts will spend 6 months on the station, replacing the outgoing Shenzhou 16 crew. The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample capsule remains stuck shut after its return. NASA is still working on safely opening it to access the priceless cargo inside. Main Topic - Top Space Frights The harrowing Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the first time humans landed on another world, almost ran out of fuel before touching down. Black holes, with their incomprehensible gravity wells that spaghettify anything that gets too close. Alexei Leonov's dicey first spacewalk in 1965 where his suit ballooned up and he nearly couldn't get back into the spacecraft. Gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, that could strip a planet's atmosphere if pointed the wrong way. The near-disaster of Gemini 8 in 1966, when Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had to fire retrorockets, forcing an emergency reentry, to stop the violent tumbling of his spacecraft. Spooky exoplanet TrES-2b, with its coal-black atmosphere and lava-hot winds. Surprise guest and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy's Pick: Her own scary moment on STS-120 in 2007 when a snagged solar array threatened to electrocute spacewalker Scott Parazynski. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Pam Melroy Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: Melissa.com/twit
BIBLE PROPHECY tells us the Antichrist will come to power with the help of ten kings. We have questions.First, are those kings human? We think not, since this is, after all, a supernatural war between rebellious members of the unseen realm and the Creator. The Antichrist, Gog of Ezekiel 38 and 39, is certainly a supernatural being, although he will work through a human avatar. Why would the ten kings be any different?Second, are the ten horns of the fourth beast of Daniel 7, which corresponds to the Beast in Revelation (i.e., the Antichrist), the kings who have not yet received a kingdom? Or are the seven horns that remain, after the little horn emerges and removes three, the same kings represented by the seven heads of the Beast?We also note that the current geopolitical situation on planet Earth is oddly like Daniel 7: The Western world, which is trying to establish a New World Order through globalist organizations like the World Economic Forum, is separating from the Eastern Hemisphere, with the G-7—which was the G-8 until Russia was ejected over the Ukraine war—on one side and the Big Three BRICS nations (Russia, India, and China) on the other. In other words, while we're not reading Bible prophecy into these events, it is interesting that the ten leading economies of the world are now divided into seven and three, just as the world will be in the days of Antichrist.
Hey TPAY Babes, on this week's episode Lex did some dirty diving into history's freakiest origins. The Eastern Hemisphere really destroys the West when it comes to Pleasure Positivity. Did this episode make you want to time travel back to the ancient lands of Gods & Goddesses? FOLLOW US: IG/TikTok/Youtube: @allyourpleasures_ Music x Courtney Noir: https://my.bio/thecourtneynoir --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tpaypod/message
https://youtu.be/z5YFMu0UBUA https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/1818_Pinkerton_Map_of_the_Eastern_Hemisphere_%28_Asia_%2C_Africa_%2C_Europe_%2C_Australia%29_-_Geographicus_-_WorldEH-pinkerton-1818.jpg El Tor in the 1818 Pinkerton Map... #2023 #art #music #movies #poetry #poem #photooftheday #volcano #news #money #food #weather #climate #monkeys #horse #puppy #fyp #love #instagood #onelove #eyes #getyoked #horsie #gotmilk #book #shecomin #getready
Were you expecting hot dogs? Hamburgers? Some other American food that might be appropriate for the 4th of July? What podcast did you think this was? Noah and Louisa take you back to the Eastern Hemisphere on a journey through Britain, Portugal and Japan to wax poetic about the wonders of battered cod and haddock. Follow us: @NoSubsPlease on Twitter. @NoSubsPlease@mastodon.online on Mastodon. @NoSubsPlease on Cohost. Noah: @elderrumbao on Twitter, @nsmckinnon@laserdisc.party on Mastodon. Louisa: @louisa@mastodon.xyz Our theme is Street Food, by FASSounds, and is governed by the Simplified Pixabay License. Our cover art includes work by artist Kirsty Pargeter.
Greeting, Earth Enthusiast! The International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) is the primary cross-disciplinary technical gathering in the Eastern Hemisphere that centers around sharing and promoting the latest technological advancements, effective methodologies, and diverse initiatives intended to highlight the significance of the value chain and optimizing the value of assets. Here everything you need to know more about IPTC program, you can gain your knowledge about the process of registering for the IPTC program and becoming a delegate, as well as to gain insights into the experiences and lessons learned by those who have participated in the IPTC program. Listen Exclusively and tap play on our Spotify & Anchor Anchor : anchor.fm/podcast-seguisc Spotify : https://bit.ly/earthex-seguisc Stay tuned for the next episode! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/podcast-seguisc/message
Work with OTHERS is a free communal playwriting event, which will take place on Zoom the first weekend of each month. The three-hour sessions will begin on Saturday evening in the Western Hemisphere and Sunday morning in the Eastern Hemisphere. For more details about times, please see below.What is it? The first two hours of each session will be spent writing in community over Zoom. Participants can come and go as they please. If you cannot be present for the entire session, you are welcome to arrive late or leave early. Writing can be an isolating endeavor. Work with OTHERS is an opportunity to set aside time each month to write alongside members of the Theatre of Others community all over the world. The third and final hour of each session will be devoted to group discussion about the art and practice of playwriting. Resident Playwright and Dramaturg Steven Gaultney will moderate the discussion, which will also feature a rotating cast of additional Theatre of Others company members. Any and all questions about the craft of playwriting are welcome and can be asked of Steven, other TOO company members, or put to the group as a whole.Join us! And be an Other, too.Times for the April SessionNew York - Saturday, May 6, 9:00 PM-12:00 AM EDTSingapore - Sunday, May 7, 9:00 AM-12:00 PM SGTMelbourne - Sunday, May 7, 11:00 AM-2:00 PM AESTSupport the showIf you enjoyed this week´s podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. To submit a question: Voice- http://www.speakpipe.com/theatreofothers Email- podcast@theatreofothers.com Support the Theatre of Others - Check out our Merch!Show Credits Co-Hosts: Adam Marple & Budi MillerProducer: Jack BurmeisterMusic: https://www.purple-planet.comAdditional compositions by @jack_burmeister
What's On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 2 Highlights We still have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. The long history of disease counsels us to expect the unexpected. The worst threat may be the one we cannot see coming. Bubonic Plague (Black Death)Three stages in history - The Justinian Plague (500's A.D.), The Black Death (1300's A.D.) and Modern Era Plague (1890's A.D.) Almost anywhere the evidence in Europe is rich enough to form a quantitative impression, the Black Death carried off 50-60 percent of the population...the death toll is always staggeringly high. Although many a textbook still claims that the Black Death carried off a third of the continent, in reality, the best estimates are closer to half...In Europe alone, forty million or more might have been claimed by this bacterium. The plague is a killer in a class by itself Small Pox Endemic throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. Brought to the Americas by the conquistadors. Major outbreaks of small pox occurred on Hispaniola and other islands in the Caribbean from the earliest days of discovery but then jumped from the Caribbean to the shores of Mexico in 1520. By the time Cortez approached the capital city of the Aztecs a year later, it had been “hollowed out” by the deadly disease. The small pox devastation continued along the trade routes to the north and to central and south America, having the same impact. Measles came alongside and made its way to the mainland continuing its decimation of those small pox hadn't claimed. In the 1700's it accounted for 10-15% of all mortality in Europe. As the practice of vaccination extended world-wide, small pox was finally eliminated entirely in 1977. It was a global triumph. To date, small pox is the first and only human pathogen that has been driven to extinction. The Great Influenza (1918/1919) Killed approximately 50,000,000 people. One of the single most deadly events in global history. And it infected perhaps one in three persons alive, making it probably the single most coordinated rapid attack by a parasite in the history of the planet. And the threat of future novel influenza strains, replaying the events of 1918 to 1919 remains one of the most dangerous lurking threats to human health. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John Barry.
Today, Mary Danielsen talks about what happens when the world order is flipped upside down and the west abandons all reason to appease the enemies of Israel. As turmoil in Israel ramps up, how can we make sense of the geopolitical scene? How will the nations respond to the continuing decline of the influence of United States? The bible points to all eyes being on the Eastern Hemisphere as we get closer to the end of the age. In the second half of the podcast, Mary takes aim at the history of Big Pharma and shows how the global covid experience was inevitable, and how God intends to respond as outlined in Revelation 18. Resources: https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-biden-10-step-plan-for-global-chaos/ https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19578/biden-middle-east-china https://www.hallindsey.com/ww-4-16-2023/ Upcoming Prophecy Conference https://ccappleton.org/prophecyconf/
May 5, 2023: The moon passes through Earth's penumbra from the Eastern Hemisphere. Brilliant Venus, Mars, and Saturn are easy to locate in the sky. This episode is also available as a blog post: 2023, May 5: Flower Moon Eclipse, Bright Planets --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeffrey-l-hunt/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeffrey-l-hunt/support
Since President Ebrahim Raisi took office in 2021, he has pushed for a foreign policy focused on the Eastern Hemisphere, while developing closer ties with Iran's neighbours.Evidence of that is an agreement signed in Beijing in early March for Iran to restore diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.But Iran remains heavily sanctioned by the West, as the long process to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement stays largely stalled.So, how significant is this deal to restoring ties with its longtime regional rival?Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, talks to Al Jazeera.Subscribe to our channel http://bit.ly/AJSubscribeFollow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/AJEnglishFind us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aljazeeraCheck our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/@AljazeeraEnglish#Aljazeeraenglish#News
April 19, 2023: A solar eclipse occurs in the Eastern Hemisphere, during the overnight hours in the Americas. Venus passes Aldebaran, Taurus' brightest star, after nightfall. This episode is also available as a blog post: 2023, April 19: Solar Eclipse, Venus-Aldebaran Conjunction --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeffrey-l-hunt/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeffrey-l-hunt/support
Work with OTHERS is a free communal playwriting event, which will take place on Zoom the first weekend of each month beginning April 1 and 2, 2023. The three-hour sessions will begin on Saturday evening in the Western Hemisphere and Sunday morning in the Eastern Hemisphere. For more details about times, please see below.What is it? The first two hours of each session will be spent writing in community over Zoom. Participants can come and go as they please. If you cannot be present for the entire session, you are welcome to arrive late or leave early. Writing can be an isolating endeavor. Work with OTHERS is an opportunity to set aside time each month to write alongside members of the Theatre of Others community all over the world. The third and final hour of each session will be devoted to group discussion about the art and practice of playwriting. Resident Playwright and Dramaturg Steven Gaultney will moderate the discussion, which will also feature a rotating cast of additional Theatre of Others company members. Any and all questions about the craft of playwriting are welcome and can be asked of Steven, other TOO company members, or put to the group as a whole.Join us! And be an Other, too.Times for the April SessionNew York - Saturday, April 1, 9:00 PM-12:00 AM EDTSingapore - Sunday, April 2, 9:00 AM-12:00 PM SGTMelbourne - Sunday, April 2, 11:00 AM-2:00 PM AESTTo receive the Zoom info for the April session, please email steven@theatreofothers.com.Support the showIf you enjoyed this week´s podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. To submit a question: Voice- http://www.speakpipe.com/theatreofothers Email- podcast@theatreofothers.com Support the Theatre of Others - Check out our Merch!Show Credits Co-Hosts: Adam Marple & Budi MillerProducer: Jack BurmeisterMusic: https://www.purple-planet.comAdditional compositions by @jack_burmeister
Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E8 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the Wonders Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca, Mark: and today we're talking about being a solitary practitioner of atheopagan or non theist naturalistic paganism. Yucca: right. And. I think a, a really good place to start here is to start with, well, what does it mean to be solitary? Mark: Right, because that's kind of a moving target, right? I mean, back in 1985, there were practitioners who literally only got information from books and. Had no connection with anybody else who was practicing. They were just kind of out there on their own. And there are still people that are out there on their own, but at least they have the o option of the internet to connect with people of like mind. I like, oh, go ahead. Yucca: of in, in many pagan groups, especially Wiccan groups the coven had a really important role and that now, you know, I wasn't around to remember this, but my understanding was that that was kind of the default assumption that people would be part of a coven or a group, and Mark: Yeah, that's, that's how I remember it, was that there was an assumption that you would gather a, a group. who would be a ritual circle of some kind, whether it was organized as a wicked coven with, you know, the high priestess and high priest, and this sort of teaching model, which is very common in sort of tradition, traditional British witchcraft, garden witchcraft and Wicca generally, or it was a more egalitarian model where the circle or the coven was. Equal group of people who weren't there to be teaching people who would then calve off to create their own circles. They were just there to do rituals with one another. That's the kind of thing that I've been involved with for 32 years with the Dark Sun's Circle. We are just deeply connected family now who do rituals together and. you know, we have no intention of hiding off people or teaching them to be priests or any of that kind of stuff. It's just, it's a different model. But I think that the point is that there's kind of a spectrum, right? You've got people that are really super alone and they're the only people they know that do this kind of practice at all. And then you've got people on the other end who are fully engaged in social. Ritualizing and they don't do stuff on their own. They only do things with groups of people because that's what works for them. Yucca: Right. And there's another element now that's very different than in the. Eighties or the nineties is that we've got this internet thing where, and media is very, very different now. I mean, there's things like this, like podcasts and there's social media groups and Reddit and Facebook and Discord and YouTube channels and all of that stuff that that just didn't exist. and that really changes the ways that people can interact. And I think that changes the way that we, we look at these terms solitary and I guess on the, what would be the other side of the spectrum? Mark: Communitarian communal, community oriented, something with a calm in it. Yucca: Yeah but, but I think I really value what you've been saying about it being a spectrum because it, it's not just like a, you know, you're on your own or you're in a group, that it's, there's a whole range of how people can interact and how they see their practices and, and that's changing over time as what's going on in the world changes too. Right. A lot of people Were doing a lot on their own during the shutdowns. Right. Mark: Right, Yucca: and yet many people were doing more with others. That's when we saw a lot of growth in the atheopagan community was during the time where people were searching for that connection and it, we figured out how to do stuff online that we would've never considered before. Mark: right. Yeah, exactly. The other thing that the internet has done is it has caused an explosion of. Ways to do things. What I remember from the late eighties and early nineties was, well, there's a way to do things. You draw a circle and then you call the quarters and elements, and then you call the gods and then you do a working, and then you unravel all the things that you just did. And you know, that kind of wicked structure was the structure. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And. There was not very much, there was a lot less understanding of the nature of ritual and the, the subtle skills associated with ritual. Generally. I mean, when you look at early neo paganism, you're looking mostly at kind of white, middle class college educated people at that time and. They had no idea of how to conduct rituals. They were just figuring it out and using the map that was presented to them with 40 years of additional ritual experience. Now we are well on into pe. There being people, a lot of people that have a lot of experience with creating ritual states and altering their state of consciousness through ritual activity and So there are a lot of different ways to do it. And now that we have the internet that can disperse that information, people are informed by a wide range of different things. It's not just Scott Cunningham's, you know, solo practitioner's Guide to Wicca. Yucca: Yeah. And, and a much broader range of people involved as. Mark: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember, Well, this has something to do with the community that I was in, which is part of the reason why I left it. But there were debates about, you know, whether gay people belonged in in these gender polarized rituals. Right? Yucca: Where it was like every other, like male, female, male female and like the structure of the circle Mark: Yeah, stuff like, stuff like that. And, and it was like, I mean there was just this, this severe lack of consciousness about a lot of stuff. And as there has been better thinking about that, at least in the circles that I move in Obviously, you know, people have felt a lot more welcomed, right? Gay people feel more welcomed, neuro divergent people, disabled people people of color. One hopes, and it's not that that is a solved problem by any means, Yucca: Right? We Mark: a long way to go, but at least in the circles that I'm moving in, in the Pagan community, there is. To move in a better direction. And that was not really true when I first engaged with there, there. And it wasn't that that people were bigots necessarily, they just were clueless. Yucca: Right. Mark: They didn't think about this stuff. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So anyway, going back to solitary practitioner nurse what we have now is the situation. Simply with access to the books that are out there. And let's be honest, the number of books has exploded since, you know, since the publication of D of drawing down the moon and the spiral dance, which happened on the same day, Halloween of 1979. The number of available books on ritual and paganism has probably grown 10,000 fold at least. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And what that means, and then there's the internet, right? So the, the, the faucet for information is the fire hopes. It's, it's endless. You will never collect all the information there is. These topics. So you have to pick and choose and you pick and choose what works for you and what appeals to your values and your sensibilities. And so the solitary practitioner of today, I think, is much better equipped in some ways to build their practice and and, and get a lot of different choices. Rather than just, oh, well, Scott says I should do this, so I'll do it. Yucca: right? Yeah. So I, I mean, I find that very encouraging. I think that's, yeah, I think that's lovely and I think that there's more opportunity as well to to connect with community when it, where it works for you, and then step back into. Your own solitary practice and your own day-to-day daily practice. Mark: Sure, sure. Because there, I mean there are some people who are very, very introverted and they may not want to engage with a group at all, or they may wanna go to a Hallows event at Halloween, the height of the witchy time, and that's kind of their hit of. Communal experience for the year. Right? Or maybe they go to a, a built-in mayday thing and a Hall saan thing, Yucca: or participate in online discussions. Mark: right? Yucca: Maybe they're not doing ritual with other people, but they're discussing these ideas and you know, sharing the cool images that they have of their garden with the morning dew on it or something like that. Mark: Yeah. Or their focus, their alter or you know, some piece of art that they created that's thematically along the lines of of what their practice is about. Yeah, all of those things are very true and I mean, obviously that's why we have the Ethiopia, pagan, Facebook, and Discord so that people have opportunities for those kinds of discussions and that kind of engagement. and the, the Zoom mixers that we have as well, so people can come together, see one another's faces and be in a space. Yucca: Right. Mark: And just because you do some of that doesn't mean you're not still basically a solitary If you, if you aren't meeting with a group of people that you do rituals with on a somewhat regular basis, even if it's only every two, three months, you're still basically in a solitary practice. And so that's what we're talking about today. What's, what's useful for that kind of practice? What kind of approaches are helpful? What are some things to keep in mind? Yucca: Right. So let's talk about, let's, we've got a lot of different directions to come at this, so let's talk about some of the possible topics. So I think a good one to start with is the daily practice. And that's one that we definitely have talked a lot about here on the podcast. But it's always worth coming back to Mark: Yeah, because being a pagan, other than the fact that nobody can really define what that is, other than that it means, you know, that we self-identify as pagans. But being a Pagan is a, it's a state of being. It's not a. You know, it's not like you, you pay for your membership card once a year and now you're a pagan, like belonging to the aaa. It's about what we do. And so having a daily practice or a weekly practice or a monthly lunar cycle practice, something that's Yucca: regular practice of some kind. Mm-hmm. Mark: practice. Where you are acknowledging the passage of time and what that means to you and, and doing stuff in a ritualistic manner, which can be all kinds of things. I mean, it can be everything from kind of formally working in an alter focused sort of setting. With tools and symbols and elements in order to bring yourself into a contemplative flow sense of, of mind in order to transform your consciousness. Or it can be planting seeds under the full moon in your garden because that's meaningful to you and it's how you would like things to grow. You know, and saying a little chant over them or implanting a, a figure or a symbol next to them to give them sort of a magical quality, right? The range of options is really broad but you, but you really need to have, so, Yucca: Right, and I, I think a good place to start with that would be what? Really observing and thinking about what your goals are, right? What are you trying to achieve with your daily practice or your regular, whatever your practice is. So that's going to influence what particular practices you'd actually do based on what it is that you're trying to achieve. Mark: Right, and I think it's fair to say that there aren't really any. Off limits goals for a practice like that. If your goal is, I want to feel witchy, Yucca: Awesome. Right? Mark: awesome. That, that, that is totally cool. Great. Yucca: I'm on board there with you. Yeah. Right. Mark: your cauldron out and light some candles and burn some incense and do the thing. I like that a lot. I enjoy it. It's very ple. And when I'm in that state, I find I can transform myself in ways that are really powerful. So go for it. That's great. If your focus is primarily around self-healing or around growth or around philosophical contemplation of big questions like. What am I doing here and what's the universe for? And that kind of stuff. All of those totally lend themselves to a Yucca: you get through, get through a a day that, you know is, is really busy. Right. Mark: Yeah. Assembling, assembling skills that help you in times like that and practicing them. Yucca: Right. And it can also, you know, the skills that help you be a better, whatever your profession is, or a better student or a better parent, or whatever it is that you are, that matters to you. It's, it's about you and your life. Not, you know. Does Mark and Yucca prove of it? Does it match their life, right? Like, Mark: right. Yucca: yeah. Or, you know, God's sitting on clouds in a heavenly throne or anything like that, Mark: Right, because remember, everything that we're talking about is within the context of a naturalistic framework to paganism. So we don't believe in the supernatural stuff. Yucca: right? Mark: We believe in the psychological stuff, but not in the supernatural stuff. Yucca: right. This is all, these are tools that we're choosing to use in order to live the kind of life that we want to live. and each person decides for themselves what that life is. Yeah. And it's not like if you make a different choice than someone else, that you're a bad pagan or a good pagan. That's, that's just not part of the framework that we're operating with. Mark: Oh, this actually brings up a, an interesting and controversial topic, which is hexing. Yucca: Ah. Mark: The reason that I don't do that is because I don't want to be a vindictive person. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: I don't want to be the kind of person that that lusts for revenge, Yucca: right? Mark: and that's why I don't. You know, wish harm on people. For one thing, my understanding as a naturalistic pagan is that my wishing harm on them isn't harming them at all. It's, it's harming me, but it's not harming them. Yucca: that's my experience too. The more I dwell on it, the more I just feel bad about the whole thing. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Right. And you know, wishing harm on someone else. I think that when I am doing what we might call magic in, in quotes, is really changing how I. So if I am, if I'm texting or cursing or somebody, I think I'm just doing that. To me, I don't think I'm doing it to them doing it to me. Mark: Yeah. That that is. That is my experience of it. The reason that I mentioned this is that, you know, we talk about how, what motivates you to have a practice can be many different things. Well, within Paganism generally, there are some people who just lust for power. You know, they want supernatural power and they like to play around with supernatural power that they believe they have. So it, it helps them to feel powerful to do, you know, what they think of as hexes on other people curses. Right. Now I don't believe that any of that stuff works, so I just want to keep in mind that everything that we say here is about a naturalistic science, consistent reality-based. Practice. So when you think about, you know, what are you in this for? If you just want to feel witchy and powerful, that's great. Don't hurt yourself with it. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You know, it, it's, it's a good rule for life. Don't hurt yourself. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We, we try teaching that to kids when they're really young to, you know, that hurts. Don't. Yucca: Yeah. So. How about staying motivated? Mark: Yeah, that is a big one. Yeah, because and that, that dovetails with that whole issue of the critic voice, the internal voice that says, this is stupid. You're making an idiot out of yourself. You know, none of this has any effect. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which can sap your motivation. You know, and there's another voice right behind it that is the sort of defeatist voice, which is, oh, what's the use? Yucca: right. Mark: Well, the use is, it, it adds sparkle to your life, right? It adds color and magic to your experience of daily living to do these things. Yucca: Right. Mark: That has intrinsic value. It's not, it's not extraneous and it's not self-indulgent. It helps you to be a happier, wiser, more together person, and all of those things are important. Yucca: Yeah. and you're building skills, those things that you're choosing to focus on every time you are doing them, you're, you're building your ability in that. And even if you miss, right, oops, oops, I forgot I missed it yesterday. Oh, I missed it for a whole week. Right. You can always just do it again. Just start again. Right. Mark: We learn things through trial and error and. The things that are hardest to learn, we have the most errors while we're in the process of learning them. Right? Hard stuff to learn takes practice. So if you wanna have a daily practice and you've got it planned out for one thing, make sure you're biting off as much as you can. Chew at a. So maybe an hour of grand opera ritualizing every day is not the thing. Yucca: You wanna work towards that, great. Right. But if you're, if you're starting that from, you've done nothing. Regularly and you're trying to build that into being a habit, it's a lot to to jump into. Right? So we're not saying if that's something that you wanna do to not do it, but think about whether that's a realistic thing for you, where you're at right now. Mark: Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But if you, if you construct a daily practice for yourself where simply lighting a candle or two, or, and maybe saying some words counts as your daily practice, you can always add more stuff in later, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: right? But the fact of doing it on a daily basis, becomes really important. Yucca: right. Mark: and what will happen is your understanding of yourself as a practitioner will strengthen as you do that, because that critic voice that says, ah, you're just kidding yourself. You're, you're, you're not a, you're, you're not a witch. You're a, you're an idiot. Yeah. That voice. That is gonna inherently get weaker and weaker when you can look back on six months of, no, I do this every day and I pay attention to the turning of the seasons and the faces of the moon, and I'm aware of my interstate and I, I navigate that interstate and I use psychological tools in order to ground and calm and get myself through difficult situations. I, I am a practitioner. I, I am a pagan, I am an atheopagan or a naturalistic pagan. And so that voice that says that you're faking, it gets weaker over time, and that's the way that you wear it down until after a while it just shuts up. I don't get that anymore. I go, I go to my focus and I, you know, start to do ritual stuff and I don't get that. That voice at all anymore, but it took a long time to get there. Yucca: Right. And we did do, it's been a couple years now, but we did do a whole episode on dealing with the critic voice. Mark: Yes, Yucca: so certainly it's still a presence in my life. Not for ritual. Something that I'm very confident in with ritual, but other places it's still, it's there, right? It's something that, that we all deal with, so, yeah. Mark: And that's, I mean, to be honest, that's part of the journey. It is. That is just part of the journey of life. And when I look at where I was 20 years ago, that voice was stronger than it is now. And that means I'm steadily chewing away at it getting, you know, getting better. And it, I. In many senses, just getting better is kind of the point of living, isn't it? Ex having wonderful experiences and getting to be a better and better person. Yucca: Yeah. what about ritual for the solitary. Mark: Yeah. This is something I haven't really written about on the blog. , but I think about writing about it on the blog now and then because, you know, in the, in the atheopagan book and on the blog I presented a, a five part, well, six part really structure for a ritual, right? Starting with preparation, which is the sixth. So preparation, arrival. Qualities, working, gratitude benediction. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Those are those, those six pieces. But when you're working and, and those work very well for structuring group rituals it's not, as I always say, it is not the only structure that works. It's just a structure that works. So if you're getting started, it's something that's reliable, but you can always improvise and. In different directions, depending on what you feel Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: when you're working with yourself and you don't need to kind of coordinate a bunch of people's experience together, you can be a lot more fluid. Yucca: Right. You can pivot and go in a different direction than you were going to do. And you know, you can suddenly stop talking or stop singing and just sit if that's what you need, or get up and dance or do something different than what was planned. But when you're reading, when you're leading a ritual for. 10 other people, that doesn't always work. Right, because you're considering their experience as well as your own experience. Mark: Right. You have to consider where you can take them with you when you're leading a group ritual, but when you're by yourself. Whatever your impulse is, is where you can go. Right? So if it's picking up a deck of Terro cards and doing a quick three card reading, or if it's, as you say, you know, breaking into dance or breaking into song, or grabbing a pen and a pad of paper and scribbling down a poem or ideas or. Or even what the, the critic voice is saying to you at this moment so that you can get it out and get it onto paper and then crumble it up and throw it in the trash. Whatever that is. Over time as you become a more practiced practitioner, you'll learn to follow your instincts on this and. Really rich, rewarding, personally tailored rituals that follow exactly what you need to do. Yucca: Right. Mark: And they may last three minutes, they may last two hours. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Just depends on what you need and what you want to do. Sometimes I just like to kind of marinate in the magical world in the the witchy feeling. I just, I like to be in that. I like to contemplate the, the things on my focus that remind me of that light candles in my room and look around at my witchy space and go, yeah, this is really a cool place to be. I like this. Other times I just wanna call any anxiety I have about going forward. In the day and do that real quick and then move on with my day. Yucca: Right, and I wanna assure people who are just getting into ritual that, that, even if it doesn't come, Naturally or quickly at first. It is, it is a skill that can be built. And so it, when you're first starting out, y you might not feel comfortable yet just changing the plan and going with the feel and just adapting. And that's okay, right? You just, it's okay if what you need to do in the beginning is work with a particular structure. Everybody. There isn't an end goal that everybody's going towards, that we're all moving towards. It's gonna be a very different journey to different places for different people. So you can, if you hear somebody describing something like you hear Mark or me talking about our experiences with ritual and you're not feeling that same thing, that's not a failing on your part. , right? Like you just have a different experience and over time you're gonna build different experiences and, and skillsets. Mark: Right, right. And, and bear in mind, an awful lot of the schools and practices of pagan ritual or religious ritual generally, honestly, are about helping you. To go into that ritual state of inner calm and focus and presence. And so use them right light incense. Read a poem that takes you into a particular vibe. That's where you want to go. You know, be in candlelight because it's a lot more conducive than electrical light. As you become more practiced, you may find that simply stepping in front of your focus and contemplating the things there allows you to kind of downshift into the ritual state because you're so accustomed to going there and you're so accustomed to having that experience in that spot, right? But that's something you learn to do. The incense. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: why they use it in, you know, Catholic churches, in orthodox churches. Yucca: All across the world. Mark: yeah, all over the world. There's there's reasons why things like dragon's, blood, and sandalwood were among the most valuable commodities that were transported all over the world during the Middle Ages, well, all over the Eastern Hemisphere during the Middle Ages because they had that psychological impact on people. So, you know, avail yourself of those kinds of tools. Music put on music that helps you feel a particular way that, that, you know, kind of connects you into your body and gives you a feeling of your animal nature and the power of that. There are, there are so many sensory things you can do. One of the things that I do sometimes that helps me is I'll have a glass of wine, just one, but it's enough to sort of lessen my inhibitions, quiet that critic voice, and make it possible for me then to go into my thing, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: whatever that thing might happen to be. Honestly, it, it's just about, and, and the reason that I choose wine rather than some other kind of alcohol is that, first of all, when you drink a glass of wine, you know exactly what you're getting. I mean, it, they vary from like 11% to 14% alcohol, which is not that big a variation. You, you, it's a pretty carefully titrated dose, right. But the other reason is that red wine is so explosively delicious in, in all those different flavorful ways. There's just a way that sipping a good red wine makes me go, oh, life is good Yucca: you find the thing that works for you, right? Yeah, I'm not a wine person. That's, that's why I, I chuckle at that because I appreciate your appreciation of it, but I have a very, very different experience when I drink it. Mark: I think I would have to move away from where I live, if I didn't like wine. Because it, it's all that we grow around here. I mean, we grow some apples most of which end up cider actually. But generally it's, it's one country. So you were saying. Yucca: I love the idea of it, but I just, I just don't like it. Mark: have you had good wine? Yucca: I've had wine that people have claimed is good when they've given it to Mark: Ah, well Yucca: but I don't, I Mark: didn't like it. Okay. Yucca: don't particularly, you know, Mark: Well, the definition of good wine is wine that you like. So you've, you know, however, Yucca: haven't, Mark: However cheap it is, however, you know, disrespectful It is. If you like it, it's good. I, I do not truck with the snobbiness around wine. Yucca: That's a whole world. That's Mark: it, it is and it's, it's everywhere where I live and and it's pretty annoying to be honest. the the self importance that people can get around rotten grape juice. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and it's certainly. . You know, I think it, it goes without saying, but we're certainly not saying that you need to have any sort of substance to help you with a ritual or something like that. But, but that this, this is one particular tool, right? This is, and, you know, find that, again, find the tool that's gonna be the thing that, or the things that help you, right. Mark: You can have a similar taste experience maybe with a, a perfect peach or a couple of dark chocolate chips, you know, the same kind of that, Yucca: cup of thick broth or something Mark: right? Yeah. Something that gives you that, that deep sense. You know that your body is being nourished and you are. Your senses are being pleased just by the simple fact of existence in doing this thing. There's, there's just so much to be said for that. And there's a reason why pagans are thought of as being hedonistic. Because we embrace pleasure, we embrace joy, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And, you know, joy can be a portal into a ritual. Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So what else? Anything else that you wanna touch on? For solitary Mark: I, I'd like to say a little bit more about, I mean, we, we talked about kind of unstructured ritual time. I really want to encourage people that are primarily solitary practitioners or who are just. Building a daily practice or a, a regular practice create that environment Yucca: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mark: you see in your mind as being the magical place. You know, do that. If, if you don't have a, a space, a personal space right now that enables you to do that, see what you can do about fixing it up to make it more that. Yucca: Right. Mark: I know, you know, some folks are in the broom closet and they don't wanna reveal that they have a practice to other people around them. And that's fine. And I totally respect that. Maybe you have some things that you can take out and set around the room when you do your ritual Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: that will help communicate that vibe. Yucca: right? Or a. Right. If a journaling book or, or even something like a picture book that has just that feeling to it, right? That the artwork has, that particular feel that you're going for, looking for you know, there's a lot, a lot to do. Mark: Right. You mentioned a journal and that's a really useful thing for a lot of solitary practitioners is capturing. What they did ritually, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: you know, whether it's tore readings or whether it's just lighting, some candles or anything that feels like it was special or different, you know, keep it, keep a a, a nice leather bound, cool looking magical book and write the dates in and, and capture that stuff because if you do that for a long time, you'll find that when you, when you skip. And look at your earlier entries, you've evolved. Yucca: Yes. Mark: You, you will have changed things that used to feel kind of hokey to you or like they weren't really working, are now really effective. And they, they, they feel effortless. So, Yucca: you found this new thing through that process that you know you found the thing that really helps you just enter that state, you know, right away or something. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And of course, as we always say, pay attention and keep going. That's, that's the way to a, a richly lived life. And it's, it is the pagan life, I believe. Pay attention. Know what's going on in the world around, you know, what's going on in the world inside of you and keep going. Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Mark: So I'm really glad we did this episode Yucca, because we did another one a few years ago about solitary practice, but I feel like there really was a lot more to say. And I know that so many, especially new practitioners who join our community through the pod, through hearing the podcast or hearing about it from someone else and joining the Facebook or Discord communities or seeing a YouTube video in many cases it's kind of mystifying. They, they almost feel like they need permiss. You know, to do ritual stuff, you don't need permission to do ritual stuff. You can do it all on your own, but if you need it, you have mine. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You have my permission to gather what cool stuff is to you, whatever that means. I know what cool stuff is to me around yourself and start doing ritual behavior. It'll feel good and it's a starting. Yucca: Right. And it really. It opens up so many doors, right? So many possibilities and, and as such a tool when we really need it in life, and having practiced it. When you practice, then when you really, when the time comes that you actually need the skill, you've got it right? Mark: And I think, I mean, that, that is true in the ultimate sense. Like when we're dying, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: I have a feeling that having learned to navigate my inner world and, you know, calm or disregard or overcome or whatever the, you know, the demonn voices that we all have within us, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: I have a feeling that when I'm dying, it's gonna be kind of an. Road, I, I, I don't have to be terrified. I don't have to be filled with remorse. I mean, there are a lot of, there are a lot of experiences that people have in their last moments that I think could be pretty terrible. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And. I, I think that becoming familiar with working with your own psychology is a means to easing that process. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: I can't prove it It's Yucca: It's, it's a, it's a feeling you got. Mark: yeah, it's a, it's a supposition. Yucca: Well, I hope you're right on that. Mark: I hope I am too, but I hope I don't find out for a long time. Yucca: Yeah. . And in the meantime, it's what we got every day, right? Mark: every day, every beautiful day. Yucca: Yeah. Well, thanks, mark. Mark: Thank you, Yucca. It is always so great to talk with you. Yucca: Likewise, and we'll see you all next week.
We're continuing our conversation with Jerry Grover. This time we're looking to the stars. The Book of Mormon star is unique because when night came, it did not get dark. How can that be explained? Jerry Grover discusses why the event may have happened in the Western Hemisphere, but not the Eastern Hemisphere. Check out our conversation... https://youtu.be/P265HTuOswE Copyright © 2023 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission. transcript to follow Copyright © 2023 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.
Our next stop on our 12-country tour finds us in Split, Croatia by way of London, England. With a population of a little over 4 million, Croatia is an emerging hub for vacationers and digital nomads alike. One such digital nomad, whose also our guide during this episode, is Bhairav Patel. He's the co-founder and Managing Partner at Atom CTO, a company that provides fractional CTO services to the founders and leaders of startups who do not have a technology background. As a self-proclaimed digital nomad, Bhairav shares what it's like to live and conduct business in Croatia. In doing so, he offers context for selecting Croatia as his latest residence as he takes us on his career journey that's found him traversing a good bit of the Eastern Hemisphere. In this episode, Bhairav explains what it takes to not just start, but build and scale a business and how the covid pandemic catalyzed the growth of Atom CTO during a time when so many businesses failed. Pay close attention as he describes the importance of digitizing operations, leveraging social media to network with others in Croatia, and bringing talent in-house to build a global remote team. Even if the digital nomad lifestyle isn't for you, you're guaranteed to learn some interesting facts about becoming one. You may even tinker with the idea for a month or so after listening to Bhairav!
The connection between Hinduism and China runs deep. I have recently posted an article on the connection between China and the influence of Ancient Hinduism in Chinese Religion. Before the advent of Buddhism in China Hinduism was prevalent in China. The spread of Hindu practices did not stop with the worship of Hindu Gods. Unorthodox systems Vaiseshika ,Nyaya, Martial Arts,Kalari, Weapons like Vajra also found their way into China. Names of the Deities were changed to suit the local conditions. In this process, Lord Nataraja also finds a place in China as a Deity, a Protector. ” “Prior to and during the life of the Buddha various principles were embodied within the warrior caste known as theKsatreya (Japanese: Setsuri). This title – stemming from Sanskrit root Ksetr meaning “power,” described an elite force of usually royal or noble-born warriors who were trained from infancy in a wide variety of military and martial arts, both armed and unarmed. In China, the Ksatreya were considered to have descended from the deity Ping Wang (Japanese: Byo O), the “Lord of those who keep things calm.” Ksatreyas were like the Peace force – to keep kings and people in order. Military commanders were called Senani – a name reminiscent of the Japanese term Sensei which describes a similar status. The Japanese samurai also had similar traits to the Ksatreya. Their battle practices and techniques are often so close to that of the Ksatreya that we must assume the former came from India perhaps via China. The traditions of sacred Swords, of honorable self-sacrifice, and service to one's Lord are all found first in India. “In ancient Hinduism, nata was acknowledged as a spiritual study and conferred as a ruling deity, Nataraja, representing the awakening of wisdom through physical and mental concentration. However, after the Muslim invasion of India and its brutal destruction of Buddhist and Hindu culture and religion, the Ksatreya art of nata was dispersed and many of its teachers slain. This indigenous martial arts, under the name of Kalari or Kalaripayit exists only in South India today. Originating at least 1,300 years ago, India's Kalaripayit is the oldest martial art taught today. It is also the most potentially violent, because students advance from unarmed combat to the use of swords, sharpened flexible metal lashes, and peculiar three-bladed daggers. When Buddhism came to influence India (circa 500 B.c), the Deity Nataraja was converted to become one of the four protectors of Buddhism, and was renamed Nar (y)ayana Deva (Chinese: Na Lo Yen Tien). He is said to be a protector of the Eastern Hemisphere of the mandala.” More @ Ramanisblog, Ramanisvlog, Ramanispodcast. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ramanispodcast/message
I podcasten TEKNOLOGIOPTIMISTENE møter Chul Christian Aamodt beslutningstakerne for de store IT-investeringene i bransjen, personene som leder de mest fremoverlente IT-selskapene, og menneskene i investeringsselskapene som muliggjør rask vekst hos IT-selskapene. Det grønne skiftet er avhengig av nyskapende teknologi.Målet er å gi beslutningstakerne innenfor IT i energibransjen en podcast som er verdt å lytte til.Medvirkende:Ivar Slengesol, VP New Energy Solutions - Eastern Hemisphere, TGSChul Christian Aamodt, Teknologioptimist i Europower PartnerSendingen er produsert av Europower Partner. Redaksjonen i Europower har ikke medvirket i produksjonen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This episode has a WIDE range of topics, and even though I mentioned the next episode would be filled with hypotheticals, it wasn't, but it WILL happen soon. That being said this episode we talked about plenty of current events going on, and some on going trends, Enjoy!
Vampire Survivors is a special game. There are no complicated mechanics to learn, no story to keep track of, no lore to uncover, no enemy attack patterns to learn, no crafting systems, and no loot tables, and despite this, we can't stop playing it. It is pure video game, and it is a breath of fresh air in an era where video games keep getting bigger and more complex. Dave is joined by good friend and milk resale extraordinaire Chris Rettig to discuss Vampire Survivors. Please note, as this was in *Early Access** at the time of recording, we are talking about the 0.6-0.7 patch range, though I'm confident that while things will be added on the road to 1.0, it will still be the same game at its core. Check out Groove Coffee Roasters (https://www.instagram.com/groovecoffeeroasters/) for the best coffee in the Eastern Hemisphere. Support Tales from the Backlog on Patreon! (patreon.com/realdavejackson) or buy me a coffee on Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/realdavejackson)! Join the Tales from the Backlog Discord server! (https://discord.gg/V3ZHz3vYQR) Social Media: Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/talesfromthebacklog/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/tftblpod) Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/TalesfromtheBacklog/) Cover art by Jack Allen- find him at https://www.instagram.com/jackallencaricatures/ and his other pages (https://linktr.ee/JackAllenCaricatures) Listen to A Top 3 Podcast on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-top-3-podcast/id1555269504), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/2euGp3pWi7Hy1c6fmY526O?si=0ebcb770618c460c) and other podcast platforms (atop3podcast.fireside.fm)!
Named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, the Columbian Exchange is related to the European colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Special guest podcaster Jack Henneman of The History of the Americans shares his analyses on the widespread transfer of human populations, plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, technology, diseases, religion, and ideas between North America in the Western Hemisphere, and the Afro-Eurasian Old World in the Eastern Hemisphere. Part 2 of 2 Check out the YouTube version of this episode at https://youtu.be/oquuTAXW5ms which has accompanying visuals including maps, charts, timelines, photos, illustrations, and diagrams. Surf the web safely and anonymously with ExpressVPN. Protect your online activity and personal info like credit cards, passwords, or other sensitive data. Get 3 extra months free with 12-month plan by using our custom link at http://tryexpressvpn.com/markvinet Get exclusive access to Bonus episodes, Ad-Free content, and Extra materials when joining our growing community on Patreon at https://patreon.com/markvinet or Donate on PayPal at https://bit.ly/3cx9OOL and receive an eBook welcome GIFT of The Maesta Panels by Mark Vinet. Support our series by purchasing any product on Amazon using this FREE entry LINK https://amzn.to/33evMUj (Amazon gives us credit at no extra charge to you). It costs you nothing to shop using this FREE store entry link and by doing so encourages, supports & helps us to create more quality content for this series. Thanks! Want a FREE audiobook of your choice? Get your Free audiobook with a 30 day Free membership by using our customized link http://www.audibletrial.com/MarkVinet Denary Novels by Mark Vinet are available at https://amzn.to/33evMUj Mark Vinet's TIMELINE video channel at https://youtube.com/c/TIMELINE_MarkVinet Website: https://markvinet.com/podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denarynovels Twitter: https://twitter.com/TIMELINEchannel Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.vinet.9 YouTube Podcast Playlist: https://www.bit.ly/34tBizu Podcast: https://anchor.fm/mark-vinet Linktree: https://linktr.ee/WadeOrganization
The Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of human populations, plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, technology, diseases, religion, and ideas between North America in the Western Hemisphere, and the Afro-Eurasian Old World in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and is related to the European colonization and global trade following his 1492 voyage. Special guest Jack Henneman of The History of the Americans podcast shares his interpretation on The Columbian Exchange. Check out the YouTube version of this episode at https://youtu.be/-rZVztH5pjY which has accompanying visuals including maps, charts, timelines, photos, illustrations, and diagrams. Visit the SHAUN and KYRA family friendly YouTube channel for Crafts, Science, Travel, Wildlife, and History videos for All Ages, including concise North American History capsules at www.youtube.com/shaunandkyra Get exclusive access to Bonus episodes, Ad-Free content, and Extra materials when joining our growing community on Patreon at https://patreon.com/markvinet or Donate on PayPal at https://bit.ly/3cx9OOL and receive an eBook welcome GIFT of The Maesta Panels by Mark Vinet. Surf the web safely and anonymously with ExpressVPN. Protect your online activity and personal info like credit cards, passwords, or other sensitive data. Get 3 extra months free with 12-month plan by using our custom link at http://tryexpressvpn.com/markvinet Support our series by purchasing any product on Amazon using this FREE entry LINK https://amzn.to/33evMUj (Amazon gives us credit at no extra charge to you). It costs you nothing to shop using this FREE store entry link and by doing so encourages, supports & helps us to create more quality content for this series. Thanks! Denary Novels by Mark Vinet are available at https://amzn.to/33evMUj Mark Vinet's TIMELINE video channel at https://youtube.com/c/TIMELINE_MarkVinet Want a FREE audiobook of your choice? Get your Free audiobook with a 30 day Free membership by using our customized link http://www.audibletrial.com/MarkVinet Website: https://markvinet.com/podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denarynovels Twitter: https://twitter.com/TIMELINEchannel Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.vinet.9 YouTube Podcast Playlist: https://www.bit.ly/34tBizu Podcast: https://anchor.fm/mark-vinet Linktree: https://linktr.ee/WadeOrganization
Episode #38 The Western Hemisphere appears to be on the decline while the Eastern Hemisphere seems positioned to prosper. The world continues to rapidly change and it is up to us to keep up and to show up. Let's talk. Every share, subscribe, rate, review, follow, comment, like, and message is very much appreciated. Click the link below for additional resources. Thanks y'all. https://linktr.ee/TheJME --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Following one of the bloodiest battles in United States Military History, the Battle of Okinawa, a minor air strip was acquired by Allied forces. Yara Hikojo Airfield soon became Kadena Air Base. Over the next 60 years the small set of runways would transform into the single largest U.S. military installation in the Eastern Hemisphere. But personal and aware acreage were not the only things to build up over time here. Well over 200,000 human beings died violent deaths here in a period of 82 days. I don't think anyone would be shocked to find that this place is very very haunted.AND THERE'S A SAMURAI! Campfire: Tales of the Strange and Unsettling is created for adult audiences only. The content and discussion in this show will necessarily engage with various accounts that include violence, anxiety, fear, and occasional body horror. Much of it will be emotionally and intellectually challenging to engage with. We will flag especially graphic or intense content so as to never put you in an uninformed or unprepared position. We will do our best to make this a space where we can engage bravely, empathetically, and thoughtfully with difficult content every week. This week's episode includes the following sensitive content:Descriptions of the following:Extreme Graphic ViolenceSuicideSpousal ViolenceViolence against ChildrenHallucination Battlefield ConditionsGunshots Support Us on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/campfiretalesofthestrangeandunsettlingSatisfy All of Your Merch Needs:https://www.teepublic.com/stores/campfire-tales-of-the-strange-and-unsettling?ref_id=25702Join the conversation on social media atwww.campfirepodcastnetwork.com Discord: https://discord.gg/43CPN3rzInstagram:instagram.com/campfire.tales.podcastGoodPods: https://goodpods.app.link/T0qvGnXnplbTwitter:www.twitter.com/campfiretotsau Facebook:www.facebook.com/campfire.tales.podcastVisit Our Linktree for Any and All Campfire Info:https://linktr.ee/CampfirepodcastSpecial Thanks:Gregg Martin for music contributions! Go follow him on Instagram at Instagram.com/reverentmusic , on Bandcamp at https://reverentmusic.bandcamp.com/releases or on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/6QVhQsYQeeBVOtxrelehTI?si=V5CAxS8sSXyVFn14G7j-GAElias Armao for graphic design! Go follow him on Instagram at instagram.com/doggedlinedesignsupply Additional Music: "Eulogy" - Ghost Stories IncorporatedJonathan Dodd for merch design! Show him some love at https://linktr.ee/jonathandodd
This is a two week podcast, focusing on the ongoing situation between Russia and Ukrainian, and some other news in the Eastern Hemisphere; including the volcanic eruption in Tonga. Please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/analyzeeducate --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/analyze--educate/support
Episode Notes Today, we journey to the Eastern Hemisphere and look at some stories from Malaysia (tiny humanoids!) and Japan (Contactee Kids!). These resources are available from the amazing collection of the Archives for the Unexplained and I urge you to lose a few hours delving into strange UFO literature from around the world. Support The Saucer Life! Website Twitter Instagram Facebook Support The Saucer Life by contributing to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/the-saucer-life This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
Airman Khan focuses on explaining the current relations between America and the Eastern Hemisphere, specifically with Asia and the Middle East. Despite our successes and failures we have witnessed in our recent history and studies, he recommends from his research on how to improve effective diplomatic relations with the countries going forward in this weekly address. He concludes that although the United States can change its' past, he believes that this is a great opportunity to expose them to our space exploration efforts and economic webinars through his plans of research, education, and outreach in the long run, and getting their nations involved in this vast space-faring journey in the near future. He states that America has done well and will not break with diplomacy, and it will take a while for the nation to come back, but the nation will achieve its promise to the Eastern Hemisphere and the globe.
Airman Khan focuses on explaining the current relations between America and the Eastern Hemisphere, specifically with Asia and the Middle East. Despite our successes and failures we have witnessed in our recent history and studies, he recommends from his research on how to improve effective diplomatic relations with the countries going forward in this weekly address. He concludes that although the United States can change its' past, he believes that this is a great opportunity to expose them to our space exploration efforts and economic webinars through his plans of research, education, and outreach in the long run, and getting their nations involved in this vast space-faring journey in the near future. He states that America has done well and will not break with diplomacy, and it will take a while for the nation to come back, but the nation will achieve its promise to the Eastern Hemisphere and the globe.
"I see remarkable things. The future seems dim sometimes - it just looks like the world's never going to get to be better - but if I have to judge by what's happening at Gilman, it's going to get a lot better." // Andre Jones is a LEGENDARY middle school geography teacher at Gilman. He spent 33 years teaching in Anne Arundel County public schools before coming to Gilman in 2007. He is retiring at the end of the 2020-21 school year. // On Episode #54 of the Path to Follow Podcast, Jake and Andre talk about Andre's retirement from Gilman, how Andre found Gilman, teaching geography, the teacher who made the biggest impact on Andre, Gilman's mission, global overpopulation, competing with China, what's unique about the US, the Moderna vaccine, focusing on the geography of the Eastern Hemisphere, Andre's international journeys, homelessness in the US versus Africa, traveling to the border of the US and Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, and Andre's book recommendations: 'Company Man' (1992) by Brent Wade and 'Exit the Rainmaker' (1989) by Jonathan Coleman. // Enjoy the episode? Please follow @pathtofollowpod on all platforms. More to come! // Many thanks to the all-powerful Cesare Ciccanti for all of his efforts on podcast production. //
For the majority of the last decade, Kevin Duffy helped develop Marie Stopes International's aggressive program to export abortion to Africa and Asia. Kevin played a big role in pushing abortion on developing countries across the Eastern Hemisphere. But then he had a change of heart. On this week's episode of The 40 Days for Life Podcast, Kevin discusses: How he justified working in the abortion industry--and his exodus from it His advice for those still working in the abortion industry The impact 40 Days for Life vigils make on abortion facilities and abortion workers
It's the Foreign Influence Podcast, with American Bill Poorman and Dutchman Nikolaj Groeneweg, taking you on a humorously serious and seriously humorous romp through the week's international events! This week:• Pretty much the entire Eastern Hemisphere has signed a new free trade agreement and brought covid under control. They're moving on while the West is a giant basket case.• American democratic institutions are being deeply wounded by Trump and his enablers. Quite the international inspiration.• One tiny bit of good news. Can't say we didn't try.Thanks for listening!Make sure to sign up for our newsletter - the Foreign Influence Dispatch - for links from today's show and more info and commentary from us.Reach out to us at hello@foreigninfluencepodcast.com or through social media. You'll find us individually on Twitter, but also check out our FI Facebook page, where we can continue the conversation.Remember, if you like what you hear, please help spread the word.
The inaugural Energy Intelligence Forum is in the bag, and after days of conversation with some of the biggest names in energy we are left with plenty to chew on. In this episode, editorial directors Casey Merriman and Noah Brenner dive into some of the biggest issues facing the energy industry today, including the flight of capital from oil and gas, structural and strategic shifts at the corporate level, the growing role of renewable energy in the portfolios of oil majors and much more. Listen for a recap of some of the key themes from the conference and be sure to check out www.energyintelligenceforum.com for anything you may have missed. Hosted by: Casey Merriman, Editorial Director, Western Hemisphere, Noah Brenner, Editorial Director, Eastern Hemisphere and Luke Johnson, Deputy Editor, Energy Intelligence Finance
Episode 34In this episode:AirlinesAlaska's “Get the Row with BOGO” program is back for round 2Why does industry darling Southwest get its B738 aircraft weights wrong for so long?Cleaning robots are now in nightly action on United's aircraftCanada's Nolinor goes all-in with its new PQ-based airline offeringWestjet joins a growing list of carriers offering free COVID insurance to its passengers. Not to be outdone, Air Canada quickly follows suit0:36:54 - Waxing philosophy about why people should be tested before they get on a planeAir Canada trying to get some revenue by getting an all you can fly dealCathay Pacific follows Air Asia, Qantas, and Thai to offer in-flight meals to locals on the groundFlights to nowhere continue to be an Eastern Hemisphere thing. Now Qantas' future 787 flight to nowhere takes off. SpectacularlyWho do you think will have a flight to nowhere first in the U.S.?Qantas fights for survival and and puts everything on the tableFinnair makes it easier for its passengers to certify their COVID status. At a price though1:11:00 Why does it take so long to do the testing? Cushrow answersIs Pakistan the new "it" destination for UK airlines?Where To Find UsApple PodcastDeezerGoogle PodcastiHeart RadioListen NotesPodcast AddictPodchaserSpotify Support the show (https://www.paypal.me/passrider)
In this episode of pine|copper|lime Miranda speaks with Kitikong Tilokwattanotai. Kitikong is the founder and director of the Chiang Mai Art on Paper Studio located in Northern Thailand. He and his studio have been mentioned in past episode of PCL because, one way or another, all roads in contemporary printmaking in the Eastern Hemisphere lead back to to C.A.P. Studio. We talk about the history of printmaking in Thailand, or as some might be surprised to learn, the lack thereof, and how Kitikong built his business from his studio apartment with only enough room for a bed and press to the gorgeous three story building with four full time printing employees which he runs today. C.A.P. Website http://www.chiangmaiartonpaper.com/ C.A.P. Instagram https://www.instagram.com/c.a.p_studio_chiangmai/ Kitikong's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kitikong/ pine|copper|lime website www.pinecopperlime.com pine|copper|lime instagram www.instagram.com/pine.copper.lime pine|copper|lime print gallery www.pinecopperlime.com/print-gallery ✨pine|copper|lime patreon✨ www.patreon.com/pinecopperlime
How far are you willing to go in God? Are you willing to take on the name of Jesus and go where the spirit leads you? Listen to this podcast as Pastor Vance Mansfield and Minister Brandon Horton discuss the river that Ezekiel saw in Ezekiel chapter 47. There are four depths of water that Ezekiel saw, and they represent four levels of our relationship with God. This is a previous recording from a live broadcast. It was especially beneficial to the Eastern Hemisphere and for the night owls, because we went live in Texas at 1:30 am. I hope it is a blessing to you and can take you into a deeper understanding about your own personal relationship with God. Support the show (https://www.pastorvancemansfield.com/donate)
The cuzzies Chris and Yannis are finally back in each others arms and in the new studio and after catching up with each other and the current protests in the streets, they boys delve into another world changing protest from the Eastern Hemisphere! What happened and what lead up to the events government defying demonstration in Tiananmen Square!
Is he a hero or a villain? Dastus Heragon is an enigmatic figure difficult to pin down. As this barbaric monstrosity wreaks havoc on Fabella's Eastern Hemisphere, his march to death earns him a place in history. Archives of Fabella is created, hosted, and edited by Dillon Foley with music by Garrett Ferris and Audioblocks.
Yoga Revealed Podcast, It is an honor to tune in with you on this day.More than EVER do we need to practice yoga. Our practice is steeped in a place of learning from those who have also embarked upon the path of self-study and sharing the transmission of Yoga.On today's Podcast with Eric Thuss, owner of the WestSide Yoga Studio in Sebastopol, CA, you will hear a profound journey of how Yoga found Eric on the east coast of America and took him to the Eastern Hemisphere of the world in India to study intimately with one of the greatest Gurus of Modern yoga: B.K.S. Iyengar. If you are curious what it means to take your depths of studentship to a deeper level & enhance your teachings of yoga to serve the collective before you, this episode is for you.Make 2020 the year of connection, growth, and transformation. Grab your pass to the 10th annual Hanuman Festival, June 11 -14, and experience a weekend of deep practice, conscious community, and celebration.Colorado’s favorite yoga festival features world-renowned teachers like Seane Corn & Gurmukh & many more!Class registration is NOW open!3-day passes and Thursday Immersions with Gurmukh and Seane Corn are now available! Passes will sell out. Save 10% with code yogarevealed2020. Purchase your pass today and look forward to a weekend of yoga, music, and community in June!Tickets: https://hanumanfestival.com/tickets/Yoga Revealers! This is Alec Vishal Rouben & I am absolutely honored to share this platform of Wisdom, Yogic Knowledge & Life supported information on how you can create more ease and grace in your life through the lens of YOGA. Thank you for your time, energy, and the love you create in this world! Visit https://westsideyogastudio.com/ for more information on trainings for 2020 and beyond.Do your Practice, Polish Your BEing & share what you discover with the world,with Love,Alec Vishal See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Is staying in really the new going out? Leave it to Sam the Cooking Guy to get people out of their nooks by throwing a dinner party night in and night out at his newest restaurant Graze. Offering a laid-back living room setting that makes every guest feel like old friends, he’s taking care of his crew just the same by keeping everything efficient in the kitchen. Lucky for Cali BBQ Media, we got to go behind the scenes at Graze to see just how Sam came up with his latest concept on this episode of Digital Hospitality. Sam the Cooking Guy — the man of 1.5 Million YouTube followers and only one knife — is on his second restaurant in San Diego’s lively Little Italy Food Hall. Located directly across from his first restaurant, Not Not Tacos – yes, yes you read that right – Graze offers at home ambience with fine food that’s just as cozy and comfortable. Trying to unwind on the regular? Graze’s Wine Club offers monthly wines and member perks, complimented by cool beach breezes best enjoyed with the piazza’s outdoor drinking layout. Shawn “King of the Soft Opening” Walchef got the inside scoop on Graze from Howard Solomon – a regular on the Cali BBQ Media Podcast and Sam’s righthand man. Howard and Deborah Solomon were previous guests on Digital Hospitality, where they discussed their Solomon 2.0 hospitality leadership coaching business. Specializing on sliders, salads and flatbread, the Graze crew bring recipes to life in a kitchen no bigger than yours backed by creative cooks. The close quarters are both well-staffed and smartly equipped with Easy-Bake Oven efficiency bringing puffy Polpetto di Mano that’ll make you sink into the couch and a hand cranked cutting board stacking up thinly sliced prosciutto you could only get with an airplane and a time-machine. So, just why did Sam choose to open his newest venture with his smallest kitchen? “Because we didn’t have room for anything else!” Trying to do more with less – and succeeding at it – the food comes out faster than the drinks go down with the vibe proving chiller than the beach’s breeze. “It’s this whole idea of being inside of Sam’s living room and he’s throwing you a dinner party,” explains Howard Solomon of Solomon 2.0. “It’s very relaxed. Grab a bottle of wine, have a nice cocktail, it’s meant to be a really comfortable environment just like you’re in Sam’s living room. There’s little knick-knacks from his own house, it’s very personalized. It’s on brand and it’s all about Sam.” Ready to enter Sam’s world? Family photos and couches in the living room make guests and local regulars feel like fast friends with The Cooking Guy. Well-known and also well-traveled, Sam’s use of an indoor/outdoor layout brings a casual combo of bar/restaurant to San Diego that’s usually only seen in Europe. Essentially, modern West Coast cool meets the classic components of the Eastern Hemisphere’s rich food scene. Who’s mad at that? Not us. Ready to roam? Graze is the name of the space but it’s also the name of the game if you’re using the piazza to its full potential. Say you don’t fall asleep due to comfort food and living room seating to match, you can easily walk 10 seconds across the piazza to Sam’s first baby – Not Not Tacos – to get your Nashville Hot Chicken taco fix. So, did the perfect night in just combine with the perfect night out? We think so. To recap, just how do you have a good time at Graze? Here’s a step by step process. Start a group chat with three of your besties to plan dinner and drinks Arrive at Little Italy Food Hall with said besties on Friday night Start out at Graze with The Max charcuterie board and Tre Amici flatbread while sinking into the sofa chairs Pay homage to the owner by ordering Sam’s Favorite cocktail – or two or three of them Join the member’s only wine club on your way to the outdoor bar as you stroll around the piazza Repeat Saturday night Check out our YouTube video for a behind-the-scenes look at ...
Sacrifices Dan made to learn how to play, entertain, and be an artist… backstories to a number of his albums and tracks, dealing with anxiety and how music and guitar opened a flood of new opportunities, the danger of defining yourself by whatever it is you do, Awaken The Giant Within… deep geekery on Dan’s strats, pedals, amps, speakers, and more, honoring his commitments, joys & challenges of being a dad, tough decisions he had to make & more. 100% REAL, great guy with a positive attitude, and a killer player Dan is a blues guitarist from South Africa. He is the only artist with 2 worldwide #1 Best Blues Rock albums, as voted by Blues Rock Review USA. He’s opened for Bruce Springsteen, Joe Satriani across 10 countries) & has released 9 LPs, touring all over the Eastern Hemisphere. With a tremendous strat sound, he’s one of the fiercest blues players around Support this Show: http://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/support Subscribe https://www.everyonelovesguitar.com/subscribe/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EveryoneLovesGuitar/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everyonelovesguitar/
You can have the love you desire when you understand the vibration of love in your energy field. Miracle Mentor and Alchemy Life Coaches Robert Zink and Rachael Zink discuss the vibration of love with special guest Sheena Shah. Sheena works as a Miracle Mentor and Alchemy life Coach in India and the Eastern Hemisphere. This a beautiful collaboration of how different people express love and how you can embrace the vibration of the love you desire. If you loved once you can love again the second time deeper and stronger. Follow us at https://lawofattractionsolutions.com https://www.facebook.com/lawofattractionsolutions/ https://www.instagram.com/lawofattractionsolutions/ @lawofattractionsolutions https://twitter.com/RobertZink https://www.youtube.com/lawofattractionsolutions
The definition of a New Year's resolution from Wikipedia states that it is a tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere but also found in the Eastern Hemisphere, in which a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their life. From reading Brad Zomick. The 10 most Common New Year's resolutions are: 1. Exercise more 2. Lose weight 3. Get organized 4. Learn a new skill or hobby 5. Live life to the fullest 6. Save more money/spend less money 7. Quit smoking 8. Spend more time with family and friends 9. Travel more 10. Read more. According to U.S. News and World Report, 80% of New Year's resolutions fail by the month of February. New Year's resolutions are a great idea. They are essentially goals that can or will increase a person's well-being. From the article 10 Great Tips for Keeping Your Resolutions This Year by Kendra Cherry the 10 Great Tips are the following: 1. Pick just one resolution. Focusing on one goal makes keeping a resolution much more achievable. 2. Don't wait until the last minute. If you start working toward a goal without any type of plan in place, you might quickly give up on any obstacles, the goal might become difficult. 3. Start with small steps. These small changes makes it easier to stick to your new habits and increase potential for long-term success. 4. Avoid repeating past failures. You probably can stick with this tip. You probably can achieve the repeated goal. But if you already tried and failed, your self-belief might be low. So. You have to answer these questions: 1. Which strategies were the most effective? 2. Which were the least effective. 3. What has prevented you from keeping your resolution in past years? If you change your attack, it's more likely for you to see real results change for you. 5. Remembering that change is a process. Once you have made up in your mind to change, making that final commitment to change that specific type of behavior, then it is something you will continue to work on for the rest of your life. 6. Get support from your friends and family. Having a solid support system will help you stay motivated. 7. Renew your motivation. Remind yourself of why you are doing this. What do you have to gain by achieving your goal? Find sources of inspiration that will keep you going when the times get tough. 8. Keep working on your goals. If your current approach is not working, reevaluate your strategies and develop a new plan. 9. Don't let small stumbles bring you down. If you relapse, don't view it as a failure. Write down important information about when the relapse occurred and what might have sparked it. 10. Choose a specific, realistic goal. Choosing an achievable goal gives you the chance to plan exactly how you are going to accomplish your goal over the course of the year.
“No more waiting, no more wallowing. Do yourself a favor & honor the wisdom of Yoda under this Moon, remember his saying of “do or do not, there is no try.” Go and do it.” ~ Donna Woodwell If patience is NOT your virtue, you may find yourself at odds as the week launches with a long void moon. Midweek feels a bit soggy as the God of Communication and Neptune meet for the 3rd time in recent weeks. Sensitivity is on the menu! It's best to let it go; there will be no excuses on Friday...transformation is on the horizon. Tune in to hear Donna’s tips on the eight void moons of this month, how to rock them, and what to expect before the fourth New Moon of the year! In April, there are eight 12hr Void Moon Periods, four are in the daytime/ work time. Western Hemisphere, the ones that are happening in the daylight hours: April 3rd April 8th April 23rd & 28th Eastern Hemisphere, the ones that are happening in the daylight hours: April 6th April 13th April 6th & 21st. For show notes & links from this episode, visit astrologyhub.com/podcast Get Notified! Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to The Astrology Hub Podcast? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review! iTunes not your thing? Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, or TuneIn. For show notes & links from this episode, visit astrologyhub.com/podcast Links and tools mentioned in Show Your Soul Purpose OPEN ENROLLMENT Astrology Hub's Inner Circle
Often times, we are taught a certain narrative about what life is like in other countries. On this episode, we discuss Kacey’s observations from his recent trip to China, and Jazmin and Carl’s trip to Russia just a few years back, where something interesting happened -- development of a new perception!
Episode 60 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, Mike Reynolds, the past Executive Director of the ALPO and also the resident expert on everything on Eclipses shares with us on what the Eastern Hemisphere can expect on the upcoming Total Lunar Eclipse set for January 20-21 2019. You can contact Mike at: M.D.Reynolds@fscj.edu Detailed information on the January 20-21 2019 Total Lunar Eclipse: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2019-january-21 Totality! http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/eclipse/observeeclipses/chapter15.htm For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producer of this podcast, Steve Siedentop for his generous support of the Observers Notebook.
Daniel Schwartz concentrates on book projects with exhibitions, based on extensive travels, photographic essays, and reportages covering the Eastern Hemisphere from Iran to East Timor and from Turkmenistan to Bangladesh. Daniel’s art, as he puts it, is in the history of places and his journalism rather than being a reaction to events, builds on memory. His method is perhaps best expressed in Travelling through the Eye of History (published, in 2009, like all his books, by Thames & Hudson), a pre- and post-9/11 observation covering Central Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir. In 1987 to 1988, during a forbidden journey, Daniel became the first foreigner and photographer to travel along all sections of the Great Wall of China. His documentation of the habitats of South and Southeast Asia's deltas, endangered by the consequences of climate change, were an early photojournalistic investigation into that subject, celebrated by the Financial Times as a visual j’accuse and made him twice a finalist of the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He continues to work on the subject of climate change for While the Fires Burn: A Glacier Odyssey, his exploration of the recession of the world’s glaciers. In episode 088, Daniel discusses, among other things: Early education Using assignments to pursue personal projects Going to Greece China and The Great Wall The Deltas and climate change His relationship with publisher Thames & Hudson His work on documenting glaciers in While The Fires Burn The documentary about his life and work, Beyond The Obvious His travels in central Asia, the history of that region and the five republics The importance to him of writing The current situation in Yemen His income pie chart Joining VII Photos Referenced: Guy Bourdin John Thompson Sophie Calle Francis Fukuyama Website “We need to listen. First of all we need to go, see for ourself, and then obviously we meet people and we have to listen to them. We should forget about our pre-concepts which we carry. We inform ourselves at home and then we forget what we have read, and we go there. And this will eventually change or modify the concepts we have, and we need to listen to what people have to say to us and to find a way of building their information into the way we see things.”
One sits in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere. They have been responsible for seemingly countless disappearances. For years scientific explanation has eluded their explanations, but, is it because we don't understand the forces or is it because those forces are something from the paranormal world?Since 1200 AD reports have surfaced about swelling seas, with tales of ghostly ships, with nothing more than haunting memories of their glory days being spotted. Entire armies have been claimed by the wrath of the ocean or was it something otherworldly controlling the tides?Paul and Matt look at the mysteries that we never know the answers to - The Bermuda and Dragon Triangles.
Last night, the billions of occupants of Earth’s Eastern Hemisphere were treated to a sight that will stand unique for the rest of the 21st Century: The Longest Lunar Eclipse for the next 100 years …. Tonight — on “The Other Side of Midnight” — we will talk with Dr. Sam Osmanagich, the archaeologist who discovered the massive, controversial “Bosnian Pyramid” … and later, discovered that the Pyramid is emitting an extraordinary “vertical radio beam” — directly upward fro the apex, into space … whose 28khrtz signal gets LOUDER the higher you are above the Pyramid! Last night, at my request, Sam “listened” to this incfre4dibly “impossible” Bosnian Pyramid Radio Beam — before, during and after the Eclipse! Tonight — Sam will tell us what he “heard” …. Join us. Show Items Richard’s Items: SPECIAL GUEST TONIGHT! – Radio Host Clyde Lewis 1- The wildfire ravaging California created an insane-looking [...]
Some of life's greatest lessons can be derived from the cosmos. We can learn much just from just looking up at the heavens and seeing the celestial bodies in space. This is especially true of the moon, which continues to mesmerize the human race. Its close proximity to earth, its haunting glow, its phases and effects on our tides and plants -- have, and continue to feed romance, science, religion and folklore, and our quest to better understand ourselves and the world in which we live. During the night of the full moon this month (on July 27/the 15th of Av) the longest total lunar eclipse of the century will fill the sky (it won't be visible in North America, but most of the Eastern Hemisphere will see it). Totality will last for 1 hour and 43 minutes! Please join Rabbi Jacobson for this special full moon edition, and learn fascinating lessons from this historic phenomenon. Discover the deeper meaning of the moon as an archetype reflected in each one of us, and how the lunar cycles
Episode 48 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, Mike Reynolds, the past Executive Director of the ALPO and also the resident expert on everything on Eclipses shares with us on what the Eastern Hemisphere can expect on the upcoming Total Lunar Eclipse set for July 27, 2018. You can contact Mike at: M.D.Reynolds@fscj.edu Detailed information on the July 27, 2018 Total Lunar Eclipse: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2018-july-27 Totality! http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/eclipse/observeeclipses/chapter15.htm For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producer of this podcast, Steve Siedentop for his generous support of the Observers Notebook.
Michelle Khouri is a natural-born storyteller with a keen eye and inquisitive spirit. A lengthy career in communications gifted her with a mind for strategy and project management. Michelle is a PR veteran and magazine editor whose multidisciplinary communications experience includes planning complex, large-scale events, art directing photo shoots, hosting travel videos, leading media outreach campaigns, and creating thousands of pieces of content. A longtime writer, Michelle is passionate about uncovering hidden stories about the arts, culture and society. She believes in the power of skilled storytelling. Think of her as a Renaissance woman of modern communication. Michelle serves as the Atlanta editor and Nashville editor for Where. She has been to 22 countries throughout the Western Hemisphere, and says her next goal is to explore the Eastern Hemisphere. "My parents and grandparents are from a total of five different countries, and I credit my mom for making travel the highest priority in our household." Follow her on Twitter as @michellekhouri and on Instagram as @michellekhouri. She also tweets for @whereatlanta and updates Where's Atlanta Facebook page with awesome content. Michelle's Take on Atlanta: Atlanta is full of juxtaposition—it is at once rich with Civil War history and bubbling with an innovative population of artists and entrepreneurs. Atlanta both embraces its Southern heritage and strives to pave new roads in almost every industry. I’m dazzled by this city every day. Michelle's Take on Nashville: Nashville is often pigeonholed as a music city—and in many ways it is. But when you dig deeper into Nashville, you find one of the largest and most collaborative communities of artists in the nation. What I love most about these people is that they aren’t just talented leatherworkers, clothing designers, jewelers or sculptors—they’re brilliant entrepreneurs. Most memorable travel experience: My mom, sister and I backpacked through Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, and we stopped in Salzburg for a day. I have yet to see a city as small as Salzburg packed so full of history and beauty. After walking through the cobblestone streets and visiting Mozart’s birth home, we sat on the grassy banks of the Salzach river and fell asleep. We napped there for about an hour, bathed in sunshine and enveloped in the city’s floral aroma. It was heavenly! Last notable trip: London. I created the day’s itinerary each morning, choosing my stops based on the weather and my mood. I also got a tattoo and spent tons of quality time with good friends while I was there. It was heaven! Place you always return to visit: Colombia. My family is Colombian and I grew up entrenched in the culture. Colombia is a breathtaking, geographically diverse country with some of the kindest and happiest people I’ve ever known.
One of the world's most renowned Photographers' Agents joins the pod to share his preposterously eclectic life story. A creative raconteur, Guy was born in Surrey to a single mother from India. He charts his journey from childhood idyll, through working as a fruit seller, a personal dresser in the theatre (where he encountered the likes of Peter O'Toole, Shirley Bassey and the late John Hurt), and an assistant to a movie director before eventually emigrating to Australia, where initial skirmishes in the ad business led to him setting up the first photographers' agency in the Eastern Hemisphere. His ‘light bulb' life moments are characterized by him spotting opportunity in the most unlikely places and fearlessly grasping it with both hands. We also learn the importance of being your ‘authentic self' by finding ‘the difference that makes the difference' and not wasting time doing things that don't serve your grander life goals. Directors, producers, photographers or anyone wanting an accelerant for their business can contact Guy here: guy@guyvenables.com Release date: January 30th 2017 Runtime: 40m Recorded: Sydney A Pint With Seaniebee has been named one of the Top 12 New Podcast Series of 2016: http://tinyurl.com/gps9tn5 And also listed in The Top 50 Best Podcast Episodes of 2016: http://tinyurl.com/hp83rnw
BEYOND EARTH SERIES PART 5: SUPERHUMAN SITES (EASTERN HEMISPHERE) CONTINUING WITH THE DISCUSSION FROM EPISODE 78, ON THE MINDBOGGLING MEGALITHIC ROCK STRUCTURES, TEMPLES AND CITADELS THAT ARE LITTERED ALL OVER THE PLANET. THEY SHOW EVIDENCE OF NON-HUMAN INTERVENTION. THIS TIME WE COVER THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE AND CONTINUE TO FIND EVIDENCE POINTING TOWARDS NON-HUMAN AND SUPERNATURAL INVOLVEMENT IN EARTH'S ANCIENT PAST.
Christianity is the world's largest religion with over 2 Billion professing believers. Christianity developed from the Jewish faith, with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, being identified as the Messiah of the World. Christianity spread rapidly, ultimately becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, in addition to spreading into the Eastern Hemisphere. This made Christianity global, as it spread to all continents. Christianity has three major divisions, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. In this podcast, these movements and the essential beliefs of Evangelical Christianity are discussed, along with points of contrast and comparison between biblical concepts and the teachings of other religions. The conclusion is that, contrary to popular belief, Christianity does not teach the same thing as other religions and that the different religions communicate completely different concepts of God that force people to decide which, if any, faith is true and should be followed. Christianity: Christian Beliefs Contrasted with Other Religions from Freddy Cardoza
Introduction Christianity is the world’s largest religion with over 2 Billion professing believers. Christianity developed from the Jewish faith, with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, being identified as the Messiah of the World. Christianity spread rapidly, ultimately becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, in addition to spreading into the Eastern Hemisphere. This made […] The post Understanding Christianity: Contrasted with Other World Religions (DigitalDiscipler, Episode 004) appeared first on SOAPBOX.NETWORK.
James Berlin Welcome to MR. I’m Mary Hedengren, Jacob is in the Booth and we’re supported by the Humanities Media Project and UT Austin. Was English in an identity crisis in the 80s and 90s? Maybe. But it’s certain that it thought it was. Interdisciplinary projects such as cultural studies and the voluntary expulsion of groups like English language and composition from English departments was inspiring a lot of ink in the PMLA and other journals and conferences between such illuminaries as Gerald Graff and Stanley Fish. And when people are anxious about who they are, they often look back to how they ended up here. How did English get so weird? What is the background behind composition’s complaints against literary studies? What led to everyone in the department being in a department together? Enter Professor James Berlin. Berlin, a compositionist who had taught at U of Cinninati and Purdue. Berlin was a disciplinary historian who wrote two important books that tried to create a historical context for the current state of composition, which we’ll talk about today. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges. 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges. The earlier book, Writing Instruction in 19th-Century American Colleges published in 1984, traces the role of writing instruction in American political psyche. “no rhetoric—not Plato’s or Aristotle’s or Quintilian’s or Perelman’s—is permanent.” The next major book Berlin wrote picks up where Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges. Left off—at the dawn of the 20th century. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges. 1900-1985 traces the history of composition in the United States up to what was then the modern day. In going through this history, though, Berlin weaves three strands of compositional theory: current-traditional, expressivist and social constructionist. Berlin makes no secret about which of these strands he thinks is right. Current traditionalists are grammar-obsessed ninnies who sneer at students while pushing their glasses up their noses while expressivists are berkinstocked hippies singing kumbaya without teaching anything significant. Berlin is unapologetic about his perspective. In the introduction, he mentions the criticism the book has received as having a political project. James Berlin, much like the honey badger, don’t care. He has a strong interest in the project to "vindicate the position of writing instruction in the college curriculum" (1) and he feels social constructionism is the best way to do so. He identifies several points that lead to writing instruction’s increased disciplinarity First there was the Birth of CCCC when a 1948 paper by George S. Wykoff and ensuing conflict leads to John Gerber of U of Iowa proposing a conference to discuss composition. 500 attend April 1-2 1949 (105). "With the establishment of the CCCC and its journal [...] teachers of freshman composition took a giant step toward qualifying for full membership in the English department, with the attendant privileges" (106) Then there is the Importance of pamphlet The Basic Issues in the Teaching of English published as a supplement to College English in 1959. Identify key questions for English, especially in pedagogy (such as should writing "be taught as expression or as communication") (Berlin 124). Finally there was Braddock's 1961 Research in Written Communication and subsequent founding of Research in the Teaching of English (1967) is important because "Only a discipline confident of its value and its future could allow this kind of harsh scrutiny" (135). Lit studies "have appropriated as their domain all uses of langauge except the narrowly refertial and logical. What remains [...] is given to rhetoric, to the writing course" (30). In the early 20th century, universities were becoming dominated by sciences and practical arts. Objective philosophies ruled. Current-traditional is the most vehement and widely accepted of the objective rhetorics, but behaviorist, semanticist and linguistic rhetorics are also put into this category (9). As Berlin puts it: "The new university invested its graduates with the authority of science and through this authority gave them an economically comfortable position in a new, prosperous middle-class culture" (36) On the other extreme of things was expressionist writing "the teacher cannot even instruct the student in the principles of writing, since writing is inextricably intertwined with the discovery of truth. The student can discover truth, but truth cannot be taught; the student can learn to write, but writing cannot be taught. The only strategy left, then is to provide an environment in which the individual can learn what cannot be taught" (13). Berlin describes that, "For the proponents of liberal culture, the purpose of the English teacher was to cultivate the exceptional students, the geniuses, and, at the most, to tolerate all others" (72). For expressionists "writing--all writing--is art. This means that writing can be learned by not taught" (74). How many times do we hear that? That you just need to ponder a little, get a little older and then you’ll pick up what you need to? This is still kind of the philosophy in many Eastern Hemisphere universities where writing instruction hasn’t taken off as much. And it exists here, too, even in our own departments. The method of expressionist teaching will be familiar to those in creative writing :"Most important was that the students read all papers aloud to the entire class and were given immediate responses [...] the teacher did not lecture but acted instead as an ad-[83]ditional respondant" (84). For more about expressionism and what influence it had on rhetoric and composition, check out our previous podcast on expressivism. Berlin’s last book Rhetorics, Poetics and Cultures was also a disciplinary project--reconciling composition (production) with literary studies (interpretation) by way of cultural studies--may seem a little dated to the 90s, which its heady enthrallment with cross-disciplinary cultural studies and post-modernity everywhere as specter and savior. He argues that English should reunite rhetoric and literary studies around text interpretation and production-not one or the other exclusively. He doesn’t just argue in theory but sets out his own class as an example of how to integrate textual production and analysis with general cultural studies. He emphatically defends the use of popular culture in the classroom and meeting students with the knowledge the already have. James Berlin died suddenly of a heart attack while he was still in the middle of career, but his influence is found all around the composition world. For example, the CCCC award for best dissertation is called the James Berlin award, and I think that’s fitting, considering how the establishment of a phd in composition has been such a benchmark in composition’s disciplinarity. Are we at a better place in terms of disciplinary security than we were in the 80s and 90s? I think so. I also think that part o the reason why is James Berlin’s impassioned disciplinary research and fervent argumentation. If you have impassioned discipline and fervent argumentation, feel free to email us at mererhetoricpodcast@gmail.com
This month the TCM Prayer Channel focuses upon "the Power of ONE." Learn how you can join in this prayer movement, praying for God's work across the Eastern Hemisphere.
The Sojourn at Rome (1455.1) 132:0.1 SINCE Gonod carried greetings from the princes of India to Tiberius, the Roman ruler, on the third day after their arrival in Rome the two Indians and Jesus appeared before him. The morose emperor was unusually cheerful on this day and chatted long with the trio. And when they had gone from his presence, the emperor, referring to Jesus, remarked to the aide standing on his right, “If I had that fellow’s kingly bearing and gracious manner, I would be a real emperor, eh?” (1455.2) 132:0.2 While at Rome, Ganid had regular hours for study and for visiting places of interest about the city. His father had much business to transact, and desiring that his son grow up to become a worthy successor in the management of his vast commercial interests, he thought the time had come to introduce the boy to the business world. There were many citizens of India in Rome, and often one of Gonod’s own employees would accompany him as interpreter so that Jesus would have whole days to himself; this gave him time in which to become thoroughly acquainted with this city of two million inhabitants. He was frequently to be found in the forum, the center of political, legal, and business life. He often went up to the Capitolium and pondered the bondage of ignorance in which these Romans were held as he beheld this magnificent temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. He also spent much time on Palatine hill, where were located the emperor’s residence, the temple of Apollo, and the Greek and Latin libraries. (1455.3) 132:0.3 At this time the Roman Empire included all of southern Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and northwest Africa; and its inhabitants embraced the citizens of every country of the Eastern Hemisphere. His desire to study and mingle with this cosmopolitan aggregation of Urantia mortals was the chief reason why Jesus consented to make this journey. (1455.4) 132:0.4 Jesus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valuable of all the manifold experiences of his six months’ sojourn in that city was his contact with, and influence upon, the religious leaders of the empire’s capital. Before the end of the first week in Rome Jesus had sought out, and had made the acquaintance of, the worth-while leaders of the Cynics, the Stoics, and the mystery cults, in particular the Mithraic group. Whether or not it was apparent to Jesus that the Jews were going to reject his mission, he most certainly foresaw that his messengers were presently coming to Rome to proclaim the kingdom of heaven; and he therefore set about, in the most amazing manner, to prepare the way for the better and more certain reception of their message. He selected five of the leading Stoics, eleven of the Cynics, and sixteen of the mystery-cult leaders and spent much of his spare time for almost six months in intimate association with these religious teachers. And this was his method of instruction: Never once did he attack their errors or even mention the flaws in their teachings. In each case he would select the truth in what they taught and then proceed so to embellish and illuminate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this enhancement of the truth effectively crowded out the associated error; and thus were these Jesus-taught men and women prepared for the subsequent recognition of additional and similar truths in the teachings of the early Christian missionaries. It was this early acceptance of the teachings of the gospel preachers which gave that powerful impetus to the rapid spread of Christianity in Rome and from there throughout the empire. (1456.1) 132:0.5 The significance of this remarkable doing can the better be understood when we record the fact that, out of this group of thirty-two Jesus-taught religious leaders in Rome, only two were unfruitful; the thirty became pivotal individuals in the establishment of Christianity in Rome, and certain of them also aided in turning the chief Mithraic temple into the first Christian church of that city. We who view human activities from behind the scenes and in the light of nineteen centuries of time recognize just three factors of paramount value in the early setting of the stage for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout Europe, and they are: (1456.2) 132:0.6 1. The choosing and holding of Simon Peter as an apostle. (1456.3) 132:0.7 2. The talk in Jerusalem with Stephen, whose death led to the winning of Saul of Tarsus. (1456.4) 132:0.8 3. The preliminary preparation of these thirty Romans for the subsequent leadership of the new religion in Rome and throughout the empire. (1456.5) 132:0.9 Through all their experiences, neither Stephen nor the thirty chosen ones ever realized that they had once talked with the man whose name became the subject of their religious teaching. Jesus’ work in behalf of the original thirty-two was entirely personal. In his labors for these individuals the scribe of Damascus never met more than three of them at one time, seldom more than two, while most often he taught them singly. And he could do this great work of religious training because these men and women were not tradition bound; they were not victims of a settled preconception as to all future religious developments. (1456.6) 132:0.10 Many were the times in the years so soon to follow that Peter, Paul, and the other Christian teachers in Rome heard about this scribe of Damascus who had preceded them, and who had so obviously (and as they supposed unwittingly) prepared the way for their coming with the new gospel. Though Paul never really surmised the identity of this scribe of Damascus, he did, a short time before his death, because of the similarity of personal descriptions, reach the conclusion that the “tentmaker of Antioch” was also the “scribe of Damascus.” On one occasion, while preaching in Rome, Simon Peter, on listening to a description of the Damascus scribe, surmised that this individual might have been Jesus but quickly dismissed the idea, knowing full well (so he thought) that the Master had never been in Rome. 1. True Values (1456.7) 132:1.1 It was with Angamon, the leader of the Stoics, that Jesus had an all-night talk early during his sojourn in Rome. This man subsequently became a great friend of Paul and proved to be one of the strong supporters of the Christian church at Rome. In substance, and restated in modern phraseology, Jesus taught Angamon: (1457.1) 132:1.2 The standard of true values must be looked for in the spiritual world and on divine levels of eternal reality. To an ascending mortal all lower and material standards must be recognized as transient, partial, and inferior. The scientist, as such, is limited to the discovery of the relatedness of material facts. Technically, he has no right to assert that he is either materialist or idealist, for in so doing he has assumed to forsake the attitude of a true scientist since any and all such assertions of attitude are the very essence of philosophy. (1457.2) 132:1.3 Unless the moral insight and the spiritual attainment of mankind are proportionately augmented, the unlimited advancement of a purely materialistic culture may eventually become a menace to civilization. A purely materialistic science harbors within itself the potential seed of the destruction of all scientific striving, for this very attitude presages the ultimate collapse of a civilization which has abandoned its sense of moral values and has repudiated its spiritual goal of attainment. (1457.3) 132:1.4 The materialistic scientist and the extreme idealist are destined always to be at loggerheads. This is not true of those scientists and idealists who are in possession of a common standard of high moral values and spiritual test levels. In every age scientists and religionists must recognize that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all warfare between themselves while they strive valiantly to justify their continued survival by enhanced devotion to the service of human progress. If the so-called science or religion of any age is false, then must it either purify its activities or pass away before the emergence of a material science or spiritual religion of a truer and more worthy order. 2. Good and Evil (1457.4) 132:2.1 Mardus was the acknowledged leader of the Cynics of Rome, and he became a great friend of the scribe of Damascus. Day after day he conversed with Jesus, and night upon night he listened to his supernal teaching. Among the more important discussions with Mardus was the one designed to answer this sincere Cynic’s question about good and evil. In substance, and in twentieth-century phraseology, Jesus said: (1457.5) 132:2.2 My brother, good and evil are merely words symbolizing relative levels of human comprehension of the observable universe. If you are ethically lazy and socially indifferent, you can take as your standard of good the current social usages. If you are spiritually indolent and morally unprogressive, you may take as your standards of good the religious practices and traditions of your contemporaries. But the soul that survives time and emerges into eternity must make a living and personal choice between good and evil as they are determined by the true values of the spiritual standards established by the divine spirit which the Father in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This indwelling spirit is the standard of personality survival. (1457.6) 132:2.3 Goodness, like truth, is always relative and unfailingly evil-contrasted. It is the perception of these qualities of goodness and truth that enables the evolving souls of men to make those personal decisions of choice which are essential to eternal survival. (1458.1) 132:2.4 The spiritually blind individual who logically follows scientific dictation, social usage, and religious dogma stands in grave danger of sacrificing his moral freedom and losing his spiritual liberty. Such a soul is destined to become an intellectual parrot, a social automaton, and a slave to religious authority. (1458.2) 132:2.5 Goodness is always growing toward new levels of the increasing liberty of moral self-realization and spiritual personality attainment — the discovery of, and identification with, the indwelling Adjuster. An experience is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will, enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve one’s fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father’s will, thereby fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him. (1458.3) 132:2.6 As you ascend the universe scale of creature development, you will find increasing goodness and diminishing evil in perfect accordance with your capacity for goodness-experience and truth-discernment. The ability to entertain error or experience evil will not be fully lost until the ascending human soul achieves final spirit levels. (1458.4) 132:2.7 Goodness is living, relative, always progressing, invariably a personal experience, and everlastingly correlated with the discernment of truth and beauty. Goodness is found in the recognition of the positive truth-values of the spiritual level, which must, in human experience, be contrasted with the negative counterpart — the shadows of potential evil. (1458.5) 132:2.8 Until you attain Paradise levels, goodness will always be more of a quest than a possession, more of a goal than an experience of attainment. But even as you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you experience increasing satisfaction in the partial attainment of goodness. The presence of goodness and evil in the world is in itself positive proof of the existence and reality of man’s moral will, the personality, which thus identifies these values and is also able to choose between them. (1458.6) 132:2.9 By the time of the attainment of Paradise the ascending mortal’s capacity for identifying the self with true spirit values has become so enlarged as to result in the attainment of the perfection of the possession of the light of life. Such a perfected spirit personality becomes so wholly, divinely, and spiritually unified with the positive and supreme qualities of goodness, beauty, and truth that there remains no possibility that such a righteous spirit would cast any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed to the searching luminosity of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of Paradise. In all such spirit personalities, goodness is no longer partial, contrastive, and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually replete; it approaches the purity and perfection of the Supreme. (1458.7) 132:2.10 The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof. A shadow is only relatively real. Actual evil is not necessary as a personal experience. Potential evil acts equally well as a decision stimulus in the realms of moral progress on the lower levels of spiritual development. Evil becomes a reality of personal experience only when a moral mind makes evil its choice. 3. Truth and Faith (1459.1) 132:3.1 Nabon was a Greek Jew and foremost among the leaders of the chief mystery cult in Rome, the Mithraic. While this high priest of Mithraism held many conferences with the Damascus scribe, he was most permanently influenced by their discussion of truth and faith one evening. Nabon had thought to make a convert of Jesus and had even suggested that he return to Palestine as a Mithraic teacher. He little realized that Jesus was preparing him to become one of the early converts to the gospel of the kingdom. Restated in modern phraseology, the substance of Jesus’ teaching was: (1459.2) 132:3.2 Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge. Knowledge pertains to things observed, but truth transcends such purely material levels in that it consorts with wisdom and embraces such imponderables as human experience, even spiritual and living realities. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values. (1459.3) 132:3.3 Man tends to crystallize science, formulate philosophy, and dogmatize truth because he is mentally lazy in adjusting to the progressive struggles of living, while he is also terribly afraid of the unknown. Natural man is slow to initiate changes in his habits of thinking and in his techniques of living. (1459.4) 132:3.4 Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress. (1459.5) 132:3.5 But truth can never become man’s possession without the exercise of faith. This is true because man’s thoughts, wisdom, ethics, and ideals will never rise higher than his faith, his sublime hope. And all such true faith is predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. Faith is the inspiration of the spiritized creative imagination. (1459.6) 132:3.6 Faith acts to release the superhuman activities of the divine spark, the immortal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the potential of eternal survival. Plants and animals survive in time by the technique of passing on from one generation to another identical particles of themselves. The human soul (personality) of man survives mortal death by identity association with this indwelling spark of divinity, which is immortal, and which functions to perpetuate the human personality upon a continuing and higher level of progressive universe existence. The concealed seed of the human soul is an immortal spirit. The second generation of the soul is the first of a succession of personality manifestations of spiritual and progressing existences, terminating only when this divine entity attains the source of its existence, the personal source of all existence, God, the Universal Father. (1459.7) 132:3.7 Human life continues — survives — because it has a universe function, the task of finding God. The faith-activated soul of man cannot stop short of the attainment of this goal of destiny; and when it does once achieve this divine goal, it can never end because it has become like God — eternal. (1460.1) 132:3.8 Spiritual evolution is an experience of the increasing and voluntary choice of goodness attended by an equal and progressive diminution of the possibility of evil. With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there comes into existence a perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally inhibits the possibility of the emergence of even the concept of potential evil. Such a God-knowing soul casts no shadow of doubting evil when functioning on such a high spirit level of divine goodness. (1460.2) 132:3.9 The presence of the Paradise spirit in the mind of man constitutes the revelation promise and the faith pledge of an eternal existence of divine progression for every soul seeking to achieve identity with this immortal and indwelling spirit fragment of the Universal Father. (1460.3) 132:3.10 Universe progress is characterized by increasing personality freedom because it is associated with the progressive attainment of higher and higher levels of self-understanding and consequent voluntary self-restraint. The attainment of perfection of spiritual self-restraint equals completeness of universe freedom and personal liberty. Faith fosters and maintains man’s soul in the midst of the confusion of his early orientation in such a vast universe, whereas prayer becomes the great unifier of the various inspirations of the creative imagination and the faith urges of a soul trying to identify itself with the spirit ideals of the indwelling and associated divine presence. (1460.4) 132:3.11 Nabon was greatly impressed by these words, as he was by each of his talks with Jesus. These truths continued to burn within his heart, and he was of great assistance to the later arriving preachers of Jesus’ gospel. 4. Personal Ministry (1460.5) 132:4.1 Jesus did not devote all his leisure while in Rome to this work of preparing men and women to become future disciples in the oncoming kingdom. He spent much time gaining an intimate knowledge of all races and classes of men who lived in this, the largest and most cosmopolitan city of the world. In each of these numerous human contacts Jesus had a double purpose: He desired to learn their reactions to the life they were living in the flesh, and he was also minded to say or do something to make that life richer and more worth while. His religious teachings during these weeks were no different than those which characterized his later life as teacher of the twelve and preacher to the multitudes. (1460.6) 132:4.2 Always the burden of his message was: the fact of the heavenly Father’s love and the truth of his mercy, coupled with the good news that man is a faith-son of this same God of love. Jesus’ usual technique of social contact was to draw people out and into talking with him by asking them questions. The interview would usually begin by his asking them questions and end by their asking him questions. He was equally adept in teaching by either asking or answering questions. As a rule, to those he taught the most, he said the least. Those who derived most benefit from his personal ministry were overburdened, anxious, and dejected mortals who gained much relief because of the opportunity to unburden their souls to a sympathetic and understanding listener, and he was all that and more. And when these maladjusted human beings had told Jesus about their troubles, always was he able to offer practical and immediately helpful suggestions looking toward the correction of their real difficulties, albeit he did not neglect to speak words of present comfort and immediate consolation. And invariably would he tell these distressed mortals about the love of God and impart the information, by various and sundry methods, that they were the children of this loving Father in heaven. (1461.1) 132:4.3 In this manner, during the sojourn in Rome, Jesus personally came into affectionate and uplifting contact with upward of five hundred mortals of the realm. He thus gained a knowledge of the different races of mankind which he could never have acquired in Jerusalem and hardly even in Alexandria. He always regarded this six months as one of the richest and most informative of any like period of his earth life. (1461.2) 132:4.4 As might have been expected, such a versatile and aggressive man could not thus function for six months in the world’s metropolis without being approached by numerous persons who desired to secure his services in connection with some business or, more often, for some project of teaching, social reform, or religious movement. More than a dozen such proffers were made, and he utilized each one as an opportunity for imparting some thought of spiritual ennoblement by well-chosen words or by some obliging service. Jesus was very fond of doing things — even little things — for all sorts of people. (1461.3) 132:4.5 He talked with a Roman senator on politics and statesmanship, and this one contact with Jesus made such an impression on this legislator that he spent the rest of his life vainly trying to induce his colleagues to change the course of the ruling policy from the idea of the government supporting and feeding the people to that of the people supporting the government. Jesus spent one evening with a wealthy slaveholder, talked about man as a son of God, and the next day this man, Claudius, gave freedom to one hundred and seventeen slaves. He visited at dinner with a Greek physician, telling him that his patients had minds and souls as well as bodies, and thus led this able doctor to attempt a more far-reaching ministry to his fellow men. He talked with all sorts of people in every walk of life. The only place in Rome he did not visit was the public baths. He refused to accompany his friends to the baths because of the sex promiscuity which there prevailed. (1461.4) 132:4.6 To a Roman soldier, as they walked along the Tiber, he said: “Be brave of heart as well as of hand. Dare to do justice and be big enough to show mercy. Compel your lower nature to obey your higher nature as you obey your superiors. Revere goodness and exalt truth. Choose the beautiful in place of the ugly. Love your fellows and reach out for God with a whole heart, for God is your Father in heaven.” (1461.5) 132:4.7 To the speaker at the forum he said: “Your eloquence is pleasing, your logic is admirable, your voice is pleasant, but your teaching is hardly true. If you could only enjoy the inspiring satisfaction of knowing God as your spiritual Father, then you might employ your powers of speech to liberate your fellows from the bondage of darkness and from the slavery of ignorance.” This was the Marcus who heard Peter preach in Rome and became his successor. When they crucified Simon Peter, it was this man who defied the Roman persecutors and boldly continued to preach the new gospel. (1462.1) 132:4.8 Meeting a poor man who had been falsely accused, Jesus went with him before the magistrate and, having been granted special permission to appear in his behalf, made that superb address in the course of which he said: “Justice makes a nation great, and the greater a nation the more solicitous will it be to see that injustice shall not befall even its most humble citizen. Woe upon any nation when only those who possess money and influence can secure ready justice before its courts! It is the sacred duty of a magistrate to acquit the innocent as well as to punish the guilty. Upon the impartiality, fairness, and integrity of its courts the endurance of a nation depends. Civil government is founded on justice, even as true religion is founded on mercy.” The judge reopened the case, and when the evidence had been sifted, he discharged the prisoner. Of all Jesus’ activities during these days of personal ministry, this came the nearest to being a public appearance. 5. Counseling the Rich Man (1462.2) 132:5.1 A certain rich man, a Roman citizen and a Stoic, became greatly interested in Jesus’ teaching, having been introduced by Angamon. After many intimate conferences this wealthy citizen asked Jesus what he would do with wealth if he had it, and Jesus answered him: “I would bestow material wealth for the enhancement of material life, even as I would minister knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual service for the enrichment of the intellectual life, the ennoblement of the social life, and the advancement of the spiritual life. I would administer material wealth as a wise and effective trustee of the resources of one generation for the benefit and ennoblement of the next and succeeding generations.” (1462.3) 132:5.2 But the rich man was not fully satisfied with Jesus’ answer. He made bold to ask again: “But what do you think a man in my position should do with his wealth? Should I keep it, or should I give it away?” And when Jesus perceived that he really desired to know more of the truth about his loyalty to God and his duty to men, he further answered: “My good friend, I discern that you are a sincere seeker after wisdom and an honest lover of truth; therefore am I minded to lay before you my view of the solution of your problems having to do with the responsibilities of wealth. I do this because you have asked for my counsel, and in giving you this advice, I am not concerned with the wealth of any other rich man; I am offering advice only to you and for your personal guidance. If you honestly desire to regard your wealth as a trust, if you really wish to become a wise and efficient steward of your accumulated wealth, then would I counsel you to make the following analysis of the sources of your riches: Ask yourself, and do your best to find the honest answer, whence came this wealth? And as a help in the study of the sources of your great fortune, I would suggest that you bear in mind the following ten different methods of amassing material wealth: (1462.4) 132:5.3 “1. Inherited wealth — riches derived from parents and other ancestors. (1462.5) 132:5.4 “2. Discovered wealth — riches derived from the uncultivated resources of mother earth. (1462.6) 132:5.5 “3. Trade wealth — riches obtained as a fair profit in the exchange and barter of material goods. (1462.7) 132:5.6 “4. Unfair wealth — riches derived from the unfair exploitation or the enslavement of one’s fellows. (1463.1) 132:5.7 “5. Interest wealth — income derived from the fair and just earning possibilities of invested capital. (1463.2) 132:5.8 “6. Genius wealth — riches accruing from the rewards of the creative and inventive endowments of the human mind. (1463.3) 132:5.9 “7. Accidental wealth — riches derived from the generosity of one’s fellows or taking origin in the circumstances of life. (1463.4) 132:5.10 “8. Stolen wealth — riches secured by unfairness, dishonesty, theft, or fraud. (1463.5) 132:5.11 “9. Trust funds — wealth lodged in your hands by your fellows for some specific use, now or in the future. (1463.6) 132:5.12 “10. Earned wealth — riches derived directly from your own personal labor, the fair and just reward of your own daily efforts of mind and body. (1463.7) 132:5.13 “And so, my friend, if you would be a faithful and just steward of your large fortune, before God and in service to men, you must approximately divide your wealth into these ten grand divisions, and then proceed to administer each portion in accordance with the wise and honest interpretation of the laws of justice, equity, fairness, and true efficiency; albeit, the God of heaven would not condemn you if sometimes you erred, in doubtful situations, on the side of merciful and unselfish regard for the distress of the suffering victims of the unfortunate circumstances of mortal life. When in honest doubt about the equity and justice of material situations, let your decisions favor those who are in need, favor those who suffer the misfortune of undeserved hardships.” (1463.8) 132:5.14 After discussing these matters for several hours and in response to the rich man’s request for further and more detailed instruction, Jesus went on to amplify his advice, in substance saying: “While I offer further suggestions concerning your attitude toward wealth, I would admonish you to receive my counsel as given only to you and for your personal guidance. I speak only for myself and to you as an inquiring friend. I adjure you not to become a dictator as to how other rich men shall regard their wealth. I would advise you: (1463.9) 132:5.15 “1. As steward of inherited wealth you should consider its sources. You are under moral obligation to represent the past generation in the honest transmittal of legitimate wealth to succeeding generations after subtracting a fair toll for the benefit of the present generation. But you are not obligated to perpetuate any dishonesty or injustice involved in the unfair accumulation of wealth by your ancestors. Any portion of your inherited wealth which turns out to have been derived through fraud or unfairness, you may disburse in accordance with your convictions of justice, generosity, and restitution. The remainder of your legitimate inherited wealth you may use in equity and transmit in security as the trustee of one generation for another. Wise discrimination and sound judgment should dictate your decisions regarding the bequest of riches to your successors. (1463.10) 132:5.16 “2. Everyone who enjoys wealth as a result of discovery should remember that one individual can live on earth but a short season and should, therefore, make adequate provision for the sharing of these discoveries in helpful ways by the largest possible number of his fellow men. While the discoverer should not be denied all reward for efforts of discovery, neither should he selfishly presume to lay claim to all of the advantages and blessings to be derived from the uncovering of nature’s hoarded resources. (1464.1) 132:5.17 “3. As long as men choose to conduct the world’s business by trade and barter, they are entitled to a fair and legitimate profit. Every tradesman deserves wages for his services; the merchant is entitled to his hire. The fairness of trade and the honest treatment accorded one’s fellows in the organized business of the world create many different sorts of profit wealth, and all these sources of wealth must be judged by the highest principles of justice, honesty, and fairness. The honest trader should not hesitate to take the same profit which he would gladly accord his fellow trader in a similar transaction. While this sort of wealth is not identical with individually earned income when business dealings are conducted on a large scale, at the same time, such honestly accumulated wealth endows its possessor with a considerable equity as regards a voice in its subsequent distribution. (1464.2) 132:5.18 “4. No mortal who knows God and seeks to do the divine will can stoop to engage in the oppressions of wealth. No noble man will strive to accumulate riches and amass wealth-power by the enslavement or unfair exploitation of his brothers in the flesh. Riches are a moral curse and a spiritual stigma when they are derived from the sweat of oppressed mortal man. All such wealth should be restored to those who have thus been robbed or to their children and their children’s children. An enduring civilization cannot be built upon the practice of defrauding the laborer of his hire. (1464.3) 132:5.19 “5. Honest wealth is entitled to interest. As long as men borrow and lend, that which is fair interest may be collected provided the capital lent was legitimate wea
Machiventa Melchizedek (1014.1) 93:0.1 THE Melchizedeks are widely known as emergency Sons, for they engage in an amazing range of activities on the worlds of a local universe. When any extraordinary problem arises, or when something unusual is to be attempted, it is quite often a Melchizedek who accepts the assignment. The ability of the Melchizedek Sons to function in emergencies and on widely divergent levels of the universe, even on the physical level of personality manifestation, is peculiar to their order. Only the Life Carriers share to any degree this metamorphic range of personality function. (1014.2) 93:0.2 The Melchizedek order of universe sonship has been exceedingly active on Urantia. A corps of twelve served in conjunction with the Life Carriers. A later corps of twelve became receivers for your world shortly after the Caligastia secession and continued in authority until the time of Adam and Eve. These twelve Melchizedeks returned to Urantia upon the default of Adam and Eve, and they continued thereafter as planetary receivers on down to the day when Jesus of Nazareth, as the Son of Man, became the titular Planetary Prince of Urantia. 1. The Machiventa Incarnation (1014.3) 93:1.1 Revealed truth was threatened with extinction during the millenniums which followed the miscarriage of the Adamic mission on Urantia. Though making progress intellectually, the human races were slowly losing ground spiritually. About 3000 B.C. the concept of God had grown very hazy in the minds of men. (1014.4) 93:1.2 The twelve Melchizedek receivers knew of Michael’s impending bestowal on their planet, but they did not know how soon it would occur; therefore they convened in solemn council and petitioned the Most Highs of Edentia that some provision be made for maintaining the light of truth on Urantia. This plea was dismissed with the mandate that “the conduct of affairs on 606 of Satania is fully in the hands of the Melchizedek custodians.” The receivers then appealed to the Father Melchizedek for help but only received word that they should continue to uphold truth in the manner of their own election “until the arrival of a bestowal Son,” who “would rescue the planetary titles from forfeiture and uncertainty.” (1014.5) 93:1.3 And it was in consequence of having been thrown so completely on their own resources that Machiventa Melchizedek, one of the twelve planetary receivers, volunteered to do that which had been done only six times in all the history of Nebadon: to personalize on earth as a temporary man of the realm, to bestow himself as an emergency Son of world ministry. Permission was granted for this adventure by the Salvington authorities, and the actual incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek was consummated near what was to become the city of Salem, in Palestine. The entire transaction of the materialization of this Melchizedek Son was completed by the planetary receivers with the co-operation of the Life Carriers, certain of the Master Physical Controllers, and other celestial personalities resident on Urantia. 2. The Sage of Salem (1015.1) 93:2.1 It was 1,973 years before the birth of Jesus that Machiventa was bestowed upon the human races of Urantia. His coming was unspectacular; his materialization was not witnessed by human eyes. He was first observed by mortal man on that eventful day when he entered the tent of Amdon, a Chaldean herder of Sumerian extraction. And the proclamation of his mission was embodied in the simple statement which he made to this shepherd, “I am Melchizedek, priest of El Elyon, the Most High, the one and only God.” (1015.2) 93:2.2 When the herder had recovered from his astonishment, and after he had plied this stranger with many questions, he asked Melchizedek to sup with him, and this was the first time in his long universe career that Machiventa had partaken of material food, the nourishment which was to sustain him throughout his ninety-four years of life as a material being. (1015.3) 93:2.3 And that night, as they talked out under the stars, Melchizedek began his mission of the revelation of the truth of the reality of God when, with a sweep of his arm, he turned to Amdon, saying, “El Elyon, the Most High, is the divine creator of the stars of the firmament and even of this very earth on which we live, and he is also the supreme God of heaven.” (1015.4) 93:2.4 Within a few years Melchizedek had gathered around himself a group of pupils, disciples, and believers who formed the nucleus of the later community of Salem. He was soon known throughout Palestine as the priest of El Elyon, the Most High, and as the sage of Salem. Among some of the surrounding tribes he was often referred to as the sheik, or king, of Salem. Salem was the site which after the disappearance of Melchizedek became the city of Jebus, subsequently being called Jerusalem. (1015.5) 93:2.5 In personal appearance, Melchizedek resembled the then blended Nodite and Sumerian peoples, being almost six feet in height and possessing a commanding presence. He spoke Chaldean and a half dozen other languages. He dressed much as did the Canaanite priests except that on his breast he wore an emblem of three concentric circles, the Satania symbol of the Paradise Trinity. In the course of his ministry this insignia of three concentric circles became regarded as so sacred by his followers that they never dared to use it, and it was soon forgotten with the passing of a few generations. (1015.6) 93:2.6 Though Machiventa lived after the manner of the men of the realm, he never married, nor could he have left offspring on earth. His physical body, while resembling that of the human male, was in reality on the order of those especially constructed bodies used by the one hundred materialized members of Prince Caligastia’s staff except that it did not carry the life plasm of any human race. Nor was there available on Urantia the tree of life. Had Machiventa remained for any long period on earth, his physical mechanism would have gradually deteriorated; as it was, he terminated his bestowal mission in ninety-four years long before his material body had begun to disintegrate. (1016.1) 93:2.7 This incarnated Melchizedek received a Thought Adjuster, who indwelt his superhuman personality as the monitor of time and the mentor of the flesh, thus gaining that experience and practical introduction to Urantian problems and to the technique of indwelling an incarnated Son which enabled this spirit of the Father to function so valiantly in the human mind of the later Son of God, Michael, when he appeared on earth in the likeness of mortal flesh. And this is the only Thought Adjuster who ever functioned in two minds on Urantia, but both minds were divine as well as human. (1016.2) 93:2.8 During the incarnation in the flesh, Machiventa was in full contact with his eleven fellows of the corps of planetary custodians, but he could not communicate with other orders of celestial personalities. Aside from the Melchizedek receivers, he had no more contact with superhuman intelligences than a human being. 3. Melchizedek’s Teachings (1016.3) 93:3.1 With the passing of a decade, Melchizedek organized his schools at Salem, patterning them on the olden system which had been developed by the early Sethite priests of the second Eden. Even the idea of a tithing system, which was introduced by his later convert Abraham, was also derived from the lingering traditions of the methods of the ancient Sethites. (1016.4) 93:3.2 Melchizedek taught the concept of one God, a universal Deity, but he allowed the people to associate this teaching with the Constellation Father of Norlatiadek, whom he termed El Elyon — the Most High. Melchizedek remained all but silent as to the status of Lucifer and the state of affairs on Jerusem. Lanaforge, the System Sovereign, had little to do with Urantia until after the completion of Michael’s bestowal. To a majority of the Salem students Edentia was heaven and the Most High was God. (1016.5) 93:3.3 The symbol of the three concentric circles, which Melchizedek adopted as the insignia of his bestowal, a majority of the people interpreted as standing for the three kingdoms of men, angels, and God. And they were allowed to continue in that belief; very few of his followers ever knew that these three circles were emblematic of the infinity, eternity, and universality of the Paradise Trinity of divine maintenance and direction; even Abraham rather regarded this symbol as standing for the three Most Highs of Edentia, as he had been instructed that the three Most Highs functioned as one. To the extent that Melchizedek taught the Trinity concept symbolized in his insignia, he usually associated it with the three Vorondadek rulers of the constellation of Norlatiadek. (1016.6) 93:3.4 To the rank and file of his followers he made no effort to present teaching beyond the fact of the rulership of the Most Highs of Edentia — Gods of Urantia. But to some, Melchizedek taught advanced truth, embracing the conduct and organization of the local universe, while to his brilliant disciple Nordan the Kenite and his band of earnest students he taught the truths of the superuniverse and even of Havona. (1016.7) 93:3.5 The members of the family of Katro, with whom Melchizedek lived for more than thirty years, knew many of these higher truths and long perpetuated them in their family, even to the days of their illustrious descendant Moses, who thus had a compelling tradition of the days of Melchizedek handed down to him on this, his father’s side, as well as through other sources on his mother’s side. (1016.8) 93:3.6 Melchizedek taught his followers all they had capacity to receive and assimilate. Even many modern religious ideas about heaven and earth, of man, God, and angels, are not far removed from these teachings of Melchizedek. But this great teacher subordinated everything to the doctrine of one God, a universe Deity, a heavenly Creator, a divine Father. Emphasis was placed upon this teaching for the purpose of appealing to man’s adoration and of preparing the way for the subsequent appearance of Michael as the Son of this same Universal Father. (1017.1) 93:3.7 Melchizedek taught that at some future time another Son of God would come in the flesh as he had come, but that he would be born of a woman; and that is why numerous later teachers held that Jesus was a priest, or minister, “forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (1017.2) 93:3.8 And thus did Melchizedek prepare the way and set the monotheistic stage of world tendency for the bestowal of an actual Paradise Son of the one God, whom he so vividly portrayed as the Father of all, and whom he represented to Abraham as a God who would accept man on the simple terms of personal faith. And Michael, when he appeared on earth, confirmed all that Melchizedek had taught concerning the Paradise Father. 4. The Salem Religion (1017.3) 93:4.1 The ceremonies of the Salem worship were very simple. Every person who signed or marked the clay-tablet rolls of the Melchizedek church committed to memory, and subscribed to, the following belief: (1017.4) 93:4.2 1. I believe in El Elyon, the Most High God, the only Universal Father and Creator of all things. (1017.5) 93:4.3 2. I accept the Melchizedek covenant with the Most High, which bestows the favor of God on my faith, not on sacrifices and burnt offerings. (1017.6) 93:4.4 3. I promise to obey the seven commandments of Melchizedek and to tell the good news of this covenant with the Most High to all men. (1017.7) 93:4.5 And that was the whole of the creed of the Salem colony. But even such a short and simple declaration of faith was altogether too much and too advanced for the men of those days. They simply could not grasp the idea of getting divine favor for nothing — by faith. They were too deeply confirmed in the belief that man was born under forfeit to the gods. Too long and too earnestly had they sacrificed and made gifts to the priests to be able to comprehend the good news that salvation, divine favor, was a free gift to all who would believe in the Melchizedek covenant. But Abraham did believe halfheartedly, and even that was “counted for righteousness.” (1017.8) 93:4.6 The seven commandments promulgated by Melchizedek were patterned along the lines of the ancient Dalamatian supreme law and very much resembled the seven commands taught in the first and second Edens. These commands of the Salem religion were: (1017.9) 93:4.7 1. You shall not serve any God but the Most High Creator of heaven and earth. (1017.10) 93:4.8 2. You shall not doubt that faith is the only requirement for eternal salvation. (1017.11) 93:4.9 3. You shall not bear false witness. (1017.12) 93:4.10 4. You shall not kill. (1017.13) 93:4.11 5. You shall not steal. (1018.1) 93:4.12 6. You shall not commit adultery. (1018.2) 93:4.13 7. You shall not show disrespect for your parents and elders. (1018.3) 93:4.14 While no sacrifices were permitted within the colony, Melchizedek well knew how difficult it is to suddenly uproot long-established customs and accordingly had wisely offered these people the substitute of a sacrament of bread and wine for the older sacrifice of flesh and blood. It is of record, “Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine.” But even this cautious innovation was not altogether successful; the various tribes all maintained auxiliary centers on the outskirts of Salem where they offered sacrifices and burnt offerings. Even Abraham resorted to this barbarous practice after his victory over Chedorlaomer; he simply did not feel quite at ease until he had offered a conventional sacrifice. And Melchizedek never did succeed in fully eradicating this proclivity to sacrifice from the religious practices of his followers, even of Abraham. (1018.4) 93:4.15 Like Jesus, Melchizedek attended strictly to the fulfillment of the mission of his bestowal. He did not attempt to reform the mores, to change the habits of the world, nor to promulgate even advanced sanitary practices or scientific truths. He came to achieve two tasks: to keep alive on earth the truth of the one God and to prepare the way for the subsequent mortal bestowal of a Paradise Son of that Universal Father. (1018.5) 93:4.16 Melchizedek taught elementary revealed truth at Salem for ninety-four years, and during this time Abraham attended the Salem school three different times. He finally became a convert to the Salem teachings, becoming one of Melchizedek’s most brilliant pupils and chief supporters. 5. The Selection of Abraham (1018.6) 93:5.1 Although it may be an error to speak of “chosen people,” it is not a mistake to refer to Abraham as a chosen individual. Melchizedek did lay upon Abraham the responsibility of keeping alive the truth of one God as distinguished from the prevailing belief in plural deities. (1018.7) 93:5.2 The choice of Palestine as the site for Machiventa’s activities was in part predicated upon the desire to establish contact with some human family embodying the potentials of leadership. At the time of the incarnation of Melchizedek there were many families on earth just as well prepared to receive the doctrine of Salem as was that of Abraham. There were equally endowed families among the red men, the yellow men, and the descendants of the Andites to the west and north. But, again, none of these localities were so favorably situated for Michael’s subsequent appearance on earth as was the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The Melchizedek mission in Palestine and the subsequent appearance of Michael among the Hebrew people were in no small measure determined by geography, by the fact that Palestine was centrally located with reference to the then existent trade, travel, and civilization of the world. (1018.8) 93:5.3 For some time the Melchizedek receivers had been observing the ancestors of Abraham, and they confidently expected offspring in a certain generation who would be characterized by intelligence, initiative, sagacity, and sincerity. The children of Terah, the father of Abraham, in every way met these expectations. It was this possibility of contact with these versatile children of Terah that had considerable to do with the appearance of Machiventa at Salem, rather than in Egypt, China, India, or among the northern tribes. (1019.1) 93:5.4 Terah and his whole family were halfhearted converts to the Salem religion, which had been preached in Chaldea; they learned of Melchizedek through the preaching of Ovid, a Phoenician teacher who proclaimed the Salem doctrines in Ur. They left Ur intending to go directly through to Salem, but Nahor, Abraham’s brother, not having seen Melchizedek, was lukewarm and persuaded them to tarry at Haran. And it was a long time after they arrived in Palestine before they were willing to destroy all of the household gods they had brought with them; they were slow to give up the many gods of Mesopotamia for the one God of Salem. (1019.2) 93:5.5 A few weeks after the death of Abraham’s father, Terah, Melchizedek sent one of his students, Jaram the Hittite, to extend this invitation to both Abraham and Nahor: “Come to Salem, where you shall hear our teachings of the truth of the eternal Creator, and in the enlightened offspring of you two brothers shall all the world be blessed.” Now Nahor had not wholly accepted the Melchizedek gospel; he remained behind and built up a strong city-state which bore his name; but Lot, Abraham’s nephew, decided to go with his uncle to Salem. (1019.3) 93:5.6 Upon arriving at Salem, Abraham and Lot chose a hilly fastness near the city where they could defend themselves against the many surprise attacks of northern raiders. At this time the Hittites, Assyrians, Philistines, and other groups were constantly raiding the tribes of central and southern Palestine. From their stronghold in the hills Abraham and Lot made frequent pilgrimages to Salem. (1019.4) 93:5.7 Not long after they had established themselves near Salem, Abraham and Lot journeyed to the valley of the Nile to obtain food supplies as there was then a drought in Palestine. During his brief sojourn in Egypt Abraham found a distant relative on the Egyptian throne, and he served as the commander of two very successful military expeditions for this king. During the latter part of his sojourn on the Nile he and his wife, Sarah, lived at court, and when leaving Egypt, he was given a share of the spoils of his military campaigns. (1019.5) 93:5.8 It required great determination for Abraham to forgo the honors of the Egyptian court and return to the more spiritual work sponsored by Machiventa. But Melchizedek was revered even in Egypt, and when the full story was laid before Pharaoh, he strongly urged Abraham to return to the execution of his vows to the cause of Salem.* (1019.6) 93:5.9 Abraham had kingly ambitions, and on the way back from Egypt he laid before Lot his plan to subdue all Canaan and bring its people under the rule of Salem. Lot was more bent on business; so, after a later disagreement, he went to Sodom to engage in trade and animal husbandry. Lot liked neither a military nor a herder’s life. (1019.7) 93:5.10 Upon returning with his family to Salem, Abraham began to mature his military projects. He was soon recognized as the civil ruler of the Salem territory and had confederated under his leadership seven near-by tribes. Indeed, it was with great difficulty that Melchizedek restrained Abraham, who was fired with a zeal to go forth and round up the neighboring tribes with the sword that they might thus more quickly be brought to a knowledge of the Salem truths. (1019.8) 93:5.11 Melchizedek maintained peaceful relations with all the surrounding tribes; he was not militaristic and was never attacked by any of the armies as they moved back and forth. He was entirely willing that Abraham should formulate a defensive policy for Salem such as was subsequently put into effect, but he would not approve of his pupil’s ambitious schemes for conquest; so there occurred a friendly severance of relationship, Abraham going over to Hebron to establish his military capital. (1020.1) 93:5.12 Abraham, because of his close connection with the illustrious Melchizedek, possessed great advantage over the surrounding petty kings; they all revered Melchizedek and unduly feared Abraham. Abraham knew of this fear and only awaited an opportune occasion to attack his neighbors, and this excuse came when some of these rulers presumed to raid the property of his nephew Lot, who dwelt in Sodom. Upon hearing of this, Abraham, at the head of his seven confederated tribes, moved on the enemy. His own bodyguard of 318 officered the army, numbering more than 4,000, which struck at this time. (1020.2) 93:5.13 When Melchizedek heard of Abraham’s declaration of war, he went forth to dissuade him but only caught up with his former disciple as he returned victorious from the battle. Abraham insisted that the God of Salem had given him victory over his enemies and persisted in giving a tenth of his spoils to the Salem treasury. The other ninety per cent he removed to his capital at Hebron. (1020.3) 93:5.14 After this battle of Siddim, Abraham became leader of a second confederation of eleven tribes and not only paid tithes to Melchizedek but saw to it that all others in that vicinity did the same. His diplomatic dealings with the king of Sodom, together with the fear in which he was so generally held, resulted in the king of Sodom and others joining the Hebron military confederation; Abraham was really well on the way to establishing a powerful state in Palestine. 6. Melchizedek’s Covenant with Abraham (1020.4) 93:6.1 Abraham envisaged the conquest of all Canaan. His determination was only weakened by the fact that Melchizedek would not sanction the undertaking. But Abraham had about decided to embark upon the enterprise when the thought that he had no son to succeed him as ruler of this proposed kingdom began to worry him. He arranged another conference with Melchizedek; and it was in the course of this interview that the priest of Salem, the visible Son of God, persuaded Abraham to abandon his scheme of material conquest and temporal rule in favor of the spiritual concept of the kingdom of heaven. (1020.5) 93:6.2 Melchizedek explained to Abraham the futility of contending with the Amorite confederation but made it equally clear that these backward clans were certainly committing suicide by their foolish practices so that in a few generations they would be so weakened that the descendants of Abraham, meanwhile greatly increased, could easily overcome them. (1020.6) 93:6.3 And Melchizedek made a formal covenant with Abraham at Salem. Said he to Abraham: “Look now up to the heavens and number the stars if you are able; so numerous shall your seed be.” And Abraham believed Melchizedek, “and it was counted to him for righteousness.” And then Melchizedek told Abraham the story of the future occupation of Canaan by his offspring after their sojourn in Egypt. (1020.7) 93:6.4 This covenant of Melchizedek with Abraham represents the great Urantian agreement between divinity and humanity whereby God agrees to do everything; man only agrees to believe God’s promises and follow his instructions. Heretofore it had been believed that salvation could be secured only by works — sacrifices and offerings; now, Melchizedek again brought to Urantia the good news that salvation, favor with God, is to be had by faith. But this gospel of simple faith in God was too advanced; the Semitic tribesmen subsequently preferred to go back to the older sacrifices and atonement for sin by the shedding of blood. (1021.1) 93:6.5 It was not long after the establishment of this covenant that Isaac, the son of Abraham, was born in accordance with the promise of Melchizedek. After the birth of Isaac, Abraham took a very solemn attitude toward his covenant with Melchizedek, going over to Salem to have it stated in writing. It was at this public and formal acceptance of the covenant that he changed his name from Abram to Abraham. (1021.2) 93:6.6 Most of the Salem believers had practiced circumcision, though it had never been made obligatory by Melchizedek. Now Abraham had always so opposed circumcision that on this occasion he decided to solemnize the event by formally accepting this rite in token of the ratification of the Salem covenant. (1021.3) 93:6.7 It was following this real and public surrender of his personal ambitions in behalf of the larger plans of Melchizedek that the three celestial beings appeared to him on the plains of Mamre. This was an appearance of fact, notwithstanding its association with the subsequently fabricated narratives relating to the natural destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And these legends of the happenings of those days indicate how retarded were the morals and ethics of even so recent a time. (1021.4) 93:6.8 Upon the consummation of the solemn covenant, the reconciliation between Abraham and Melchizedek was complete. Abraham again assumed the civil and military leadership of the Salem colony, which at its height carried over one hundred thousand regular tithe payers on the rolls of the Melchizedek brotherhood. Abraham greatly improved the Salem temple and provided new tents for the entire school. He not only extended the tithing system but also instituted many improved methods of conducting the business of the school, besides contributing greatly to the better handling of the department of missionary propaganda. He also did much to effect improvement of the herds and the reorganization of the Salem dairying projects. Abraham was a shrewd and efficient business man, a wealthy man for his day; he was not overly pious, but he was thoroughly sincere, and he did believe in Machiventa Melchizedek. 7. The Melchizedek Missionaries (1021.5) 93:7.1 Melchizedek continued for some years to instruct his students and to train the Salem missionaries, who penetrated to all the surrounding tribes, especially to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor. And as the decades passed, these teachers journeyed farther and farther from Salem, carrying with them Machiventa’s gospel of belief and faith in God. (1021.6) 93:7.2 The descendants of Adamson, clustered about the shores of the lake of Van, were willing listeners to the Hittite teachers of the Salem cult. From this onetime Andite center, teachers were dispatched to the remote regions of both Europe and Asia. Salem missionaries penetrated all Europe, even to the British Isles. One group went by way of the Faroes to the Andonites of Iceland, while another traversed China and reached the Japanese of the eastern islands. The lives and experiences of the men and women who ventured forth from Salem, Mesopotamia, and Lake Van to enlighten the tribes of the Eastern Hemisphere present a heroic chapter in the annals of the human race. (1022.1) 93:7.3 But the task was so great and the tribes were so backward that the results were vague and indefinite. From one generation to another the Salem gospel found lodgment here and there, but except in Palestine, never was the idea of one God able to claim the continued allegiance of a whole tribe or race. Long before the coming of Jesus the teachings of the early Salem missionaries had become generally submerged in the older and more universal superstitions and beliefs. The original Melchizedek gospel had been almost wholly absorbed in the beliefs in the Great Mother, the Sun, and other ancient cults. (1022.2) 93:7.4 You who today enjoy the advantages of the art of printing little understand how difficult it was to perpetuate truth during these earlier times; how easy it was to lose sight of a new doctrine from one generation to another. There was always a tendency for the new doctrine to become absorbed into the older body of religious teaching and magical practice. A new revelation is always contaminated by the older evolutionary beliefs. 8. Departure of Melchizedek (1022.3) 93:8.1 It was shortly after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah that Machiventa decided to end his emergency bestowal on Urantia. Melchizedek’s decision to terminate his sojourn in the flesh was influenced by numerous conditions, chief of which was the growing tendency of the surrounding tribes, and even of his immediate associates, to regard him as a demigod, to look upon him as a supernatural being, which indeed he was; but they were beginning to reverence him unduly and with a highly superstitious fear. In addition to these reasons, Melchizedek wanted to leave the scene of his earthly activities a sufficient length of time before Abraham’s death to insure that the truth of the one and only God would become strongly established in the minds of his followers. Accordingly Machiventa retired one night to his tent at Salem, having said good night to his human companions, and when they went to call him in the morning, he was not there, for his fellows had taken him. 9. After Melchizedek’s Departure (1022.4) 93:9.1 It was a great trial for Abraham when Melchizedek so suddenly disappeared. Although he had fully warned his followers that he must sometime go as he had come, they were not reconciled to the loss of their wonderful leader. The great organization built up at Salem nearly disappeared, though the traditions of these days were what Moses built upon when he led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. (1022.5) 93:9.2 The loss of Melchizedek produced a sadness in the heart of Abraham that he never fully overcame. Hebron he had abandoned when he gave up the ambition of building a material kingdom; and now, upon the loss of his associate in the building of the spiritual kingdom, he departed from Salem, going south to live near his interests at Gerar. (1022.6) 93:9.3 Abraham became fearful and timid immediately after the disappearance of Melchizedek. He withheld his identity upon arrival at Gerar, so that Abimelech appropriated his wife. (Shortly after his marriage to Sarah, Abraham one night had overheard a plot to murder him in order to get his brilliant wife. This dread became a terror to the otherwise brave and daring leader; all his life he feared that someone would kill him secretly in order to get Sarah. And this explains why, on three separate occasions, this brave man exhibited real cowardice.) (1023.1) 93:9.4 But Abraham was not long to be deterred in his mission as the successor of Melchizedek. Soon he made converts among the Philistines and of Abimelech’s people, made a treaty with them, and, in turn, became contaminated with many of their superstitions, particularly with their practice of sacrificing first-born sons. Thus did Abraham again become a great leader in Palestine. He was held in reverence by all groups and honored by all kings. He was the spiritual leader of all the surrounding tribes, and his influence continued for some time after his death. During the closing years of his life he once more returned to Hebron, the scene of his earlier activities and the place where he had worked in association with Melchizedek. Abraham’s last act was to send trusty servants to the city of his brother, Nahor, on the border of Mesopotamia, to secure a woman of his own people as a wife for his son Isaac. It had long been the custom of Abraham’s people to marry their cousins. And Abraham died confident in that faith in God which he had learned from Melchizedek in the vanished schools of Salem. (1023.2) 93:9.5 It was hard for the next generation to comprehend the story of Melchizedek; within five hundred years many regarded the whole narrative as a myth. Isaac held fairly well to the teachings of his father and nourished the gospel of the Salem colony, but it was harder for Jacob to grasp the significance of these traditions. Joseph was a firm believer in Melchizedek and was, largely because of this, regarded by his brothers as a dreamer. Joseph’s honor in Egypt was chiefly due to the memory of his great-grandfather Abraham. Joseph was offered military command of the Egyptian armies, but being such a firm believer in the traditions of Melchizedek and the later teachings of Abraham and Isaac, he elected to serve as a civil administrator, believing that he could thus better labor for the advancement of the kingdom of heaven. (1023.3) 93:9.6 The teaching of Melchizedek was full and replete, but the records of these days seemed impossible and fantastic to the later Hebrew priests, although many had some understanding of these transactions, at least up to the times of the en masse editing of the Old Testament records in Babylon. (1023.4) 93:9.7 What the Old Testament records describe as conversations between Abraham and God were in reality conferences between Abraham and Melchizedek. Later scribes regarded the term Melchizedek as synonymous with God. The record of so many contacts of Abraham and Sarah with “the angel of the Lord” refers to their numerous visits with Melchizedek. (1023.5) 93:9.8 The Hebrew narratives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are far more reliable than those about Abraham, although they also contain many diversions from the facts, alterations made intentionally and unintentionally at the time of the compilation of these records by the Hebrew priests during the Babylonian captivity. Keturah was not a wife of Abraham; like Hagar, she was merely a concubine. All of Abraham’s property went to Isaac, the son of Sarah, the status wife. Abraham was not so old as the records indicate, and his wife was much younger. These ages were deliberately altered in order to provide for the subsequent alleged miraculous birth of Isaac. (1023.6) 93:9.9 The national ego of the Jews was tremendously depressed by the Babylonian captivity. In their reaction against national inferiority they swung to the other extreme of national and racial egotism, in which they distorted and perverted their traditions with the view of exalting themselves above all races as the chosen people of God; and hence they carefully edited all their records for the purpose of raising Abraham and their other national leaders high up above all other persons, not excepting Melchizedek himself. The Hebrew scribes therefore destroyed every record of these momentous times which they could find, preserving only the narrative of the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek after the battle of Siddim, which they deemed reflected great honor upon Abraham. (1024.1) 93:9.10 And thus, in losing sight of Melchizedek, they also lost sight of the teaching of this emergency Son regarding the spiritual mission of the promised bestowal Son; lost sight of the nature of this mission so fully and completely that very few of their progeny were able or willing to recognize and receive Michael when he appeared on earth and in the flesh as Machiventa had foretold. (1024.2) 93:9.11 But one of the writers of the Book of Hebrews understood the mission of Melchizedek, for it is written: “This Melchizedek, priest of the Most High, was also king of peace; without father, without mother, without pedigree, having neither beginning of days nor end of life but made like a Son of God, he abides a priest continually.” This writer designated Melchizedek as a type of the later bestowal of Michael, affirming that Jesus was “a minister forever on the order of Melchizedek.” While this comparison was not altogether fortunate, it was literally true that Christ did receive provisional title to Urantia “upon the orders of the twelve Melchizedek receivers” on duty at the time of his world bestowal. 10. Present Status of Machiventa Melchizedek (1024.3) 93:10.1 During the years of Machiventa’s incarnation the Urantia Melchizedek receivers functioned as eleven. When Machiventa considered that his mission as an emergency Son was finished, he signalized this fact to his eleven associates, and they immediately made ready the technique whereby he was to be released from the flesh and safely restored to his original Melchizedek status. And on the third day after his disappearance from Salem he appeared among his eleven fellows of the Urantia assignment and resumed his interrupted career as one of the planetary receivers of 606 of Satania. (1024.4) 93:10.2 Machiventa terminated his bestowal as a creature of flesh and blood just as suddenly and unceremoniously as he had begun it. Neither his appearance nor departure were accompanied by any unusual announcement or demonstration; neither resurrection roll call nor ending of planetary dispensation marked his appearance on Urantia; his was an emergency bestowal. But Machiventa did not end his sojourn in the flesh of human beings until he had been duly released by the Father Melchizedek and had been informed that his emergency bestowal had received the approval of the chief executive of Nebadon, Gabriel of Salvington. (1024.5) 93:10.3 Machiventa Melchizedek continued to take a great interest in the affairs of the descendants of those men who had believed in his teachings when he was in the flesh. But the progeny of Abraham through Isaac as intermarried with the Kenites were the only line which long continued to nourish any clear concept of the Salem teachings. (1024.6) 93:10.4 This same Melchizedek continued to collaborate throughout the nineteen succeeding centuries with the many prophets and seers, thus endeavoring to keep alive the truths of Salem until the fullness of the time for Michael’s appearance on earth. (1025.1) 93:10.5 Machiventa continued as a planetary receiver up to the times of the triumph of Michael on Urantia. Subsequently, he was attached to the Urantia service on Jerusem as one of the four and twenty directors, only just recently having been elevated to the position of personal ambassador on Jerusem of the Creator Son, bearing the title Vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia. It is our belief that, as long as Urantia remains an inhabited planet, Machiventa Melchizedek will not be fully returned to the duties of his order of sonship but will remain, speaking in the terms of time, forever a planetary minister representing Christ Michael. (1025.2) 93:10.6 As his was an emergency bestowal on Urantia, it does not appear from the records what Machiventa’s future may be. It may develop that the Melchizedek corps of Nebadon have sustained the permanent loss of one of their number. Recent rulings handed down from the Most Highs of Edentia, and later confirmed by the Ancients of Days of Uversa, strongly suggest that this bestowal Melchizedek is destined to take the place of the fallen Planetary Prince, Caligastia. If our conjectures in this respect are correct, it is altogether possible that Machiventa Melchizedek may again appear in person on Urantia and in some modified manner resume the role of the dethroned Planetary Prince, or else appear on earth to function as vicegerent Planetary Prince representing Christ Michael, who now actually holds the title of Planetary Prince of Urantia. While it is far from clear to us as to what Machiventa’s destiny may be, nevertheless, events which have so recently taken place strongly suggest that the foregoing conjectures are probably not far from the truth. (1025.3) 93:10.7 We well understand how, by his triumph on Urantia, Michael became the successor of both Caligastia and Adam; how he became the planetary Prince of Peace and the second Adam. And now we behold the conferring upon this Melchizedek of the title Vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia. Will he also be constituted Vicegerent Material Son of Urantia? Or is there a possibility that an unexpected and unprecedented event is to take place, the sometime return to the planet of Adam and Eve or certain of their progeny as representatives of Michael with the titles vicegerents of the second Adam of Urantia? (1025.4) 93:10.8 And all these speculations associated with the certainty of future appearances of both Magisterial and Trinity Teacher Sons, in conjunction with the explicit promise of the Creator Son to return sometime, make Urantia a planet of future uncertainty and render it one of the most interesting and intriguing spheres in all the universe of Nebadon. It is altogether possible that, in some future age when Urantia is approaching the era of light and life, after the affairs of the Lucifer rebellion and the Caligastia secession have been finally adjudicated, we may witness the presence on Urantia, simultaneously, of Machiventa, Adam, Eve, and Christ Michael, as well as either a Magisterial Son or even Trinity Teacher Sons. (1025.5) 93:10.9 It has long been the opinion of our order that Machiventa’s presence on the Jerusem corps of Urantia directors, the four and twenty counselors, is sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that he is destined to follow the mortals of Urantia on through the universe scheme of progression and ascension even to the Paradise Corps of the Finality. We know that Adam and Eve are thus destined to accompany their earth fellows on the Paradise adventure when Urantia has become settled in light and life. (1025.6) 93:10.10 Less than a thousand years ago this same Machiventa Melchizedek, the onetime sage of Salem, was invisibly present on Urantia for a period of one hundred years, acting as resident governor general of the planet; and if the present system of directing planetary affairs should continue, he will be due to return in the same capacity in a little over one thousand years. (1026.1) 93:10.11 This is the story of Machiventa Melchizedek, one of the most unique of all characters ever to become connected with the history of Urantia and a personality who may be destined to play an important role in the future experience of your irregular and unusual world. (1026.2) 93:10.12 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient (1027.1) 94:0.1 THE early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of Africa and Eurasia, ever preaching Machiventa’s gospel of man’s faith and trust in the one universal God as the only price of obtaining divine favor. Melchizedek’s covenant with Abraham was the pattern for all the early propaganda that went out from Salem and other centers. Urantia has never had more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern Hemisphere. These missionaries were recruited from many peoples and races, and they largely spread their teachings through the medium of native converts. They established training centers in different parts of the world where they taught the natives the Salem religion and then commissioned these pupils to function as teachers among their own people. 1. The Salem Teachings in Vedic India (1027.2) 94:1.1 In the days of Melchizedek, India was a cosmopolitan country which had recently come under the political and religious dominance of the Aryan-Andite invaders from the north and west. At this time only the northern and western portions of the peninsula had been extensively permeated by the Aryans. These Vedic newcomers had brought along with them their many tribal deities. Their religious forms of worship followed closely the ceremonial practices of their earlier Andite forebears in that the father still functioned as a priest and the mother as a priestess, and the family hearth was still utilized as an altar. (1027.3) 94:1.2 The Vedic cult was then in process of growth and metamorphosis under the direction of the Brahman caste of teacher-priests, who were gradually assuming control over the expanding ritual of worship. The amalgamation of the onetime thirty-three Aryan deities was well under way when the Salem missionaries penetrated the north of India. (1027.4) 94:1.3 The polytheism of these Aryans represented a degeneration of their earlier monotheism occasioned by their separation into tribal units, each tribe having its venerated god. This devolution of the original monotheism and trinitarianism of Andite Mesopotamia was in process of resynthesis in the early centuries of the second millennium before Christ. The many gods were organized into a pantheon under the triune leadership of Dyaus pitar, the lord of heaven; Indra, the tempestuous lord of the atmosphere; and Agni, the three-headed fire god, lord of the earth and the vestigial symbol of an earlier Trinity concept. (1027.5) 94:1.4 Definite henotheistic developments were paving the way for an evolved monotheism. Agni, the most ancient deity, was often exalted as the father-head of the entire pantheon. The deity-father principle, sometimes called Prajapati, sometimes termed Brahma, was submerged in the theologic battle which the Brahman priests later fought with the Salem teachers. The Brahman was conceived as the energy-divinity principle activating the entire Vedic pantheon. (1028.1) 94:1.5 The Salem missionaries preached the one God of Melchizedek, the Most High of heaven. This portrayal was not altogether disharmonious with the emerging concept of the Father-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doctrine was nonritualistic and hence ran directly counter to the dogmas, traditions, and teachings of the Brahman priesthood. Never would the Brahman priests accept the Salem teaching of salvation through faith, favor with God apart from ritualistic observances and sacrificial ceremonials. (1028.2) 94:1.6 The rejection of the Melchizedek gospel of trust in God and salvation through faith marked a vital turning point for India. The Salem missionaries had contributed much to the loss of faith in all the ancient Vedic gods, but the leaders, the priests of Vedism, refused to accept the Melchizedek teaching of one God and one simple faith. (1028.3) 94:1.7 The Brahmans culled the sacred writings of their day in an effort to combat the Salem teachers, and this compilation, as later revised, has come on down to modern times as the Rig-Veda, one of the most ancient of sacred books. The second, third, and fourth Vedas followed as the Brahmans sought to crystallize, formalize, and fix their rituals of worship and sacrifice upon the peoples of those days. Taken at their best, these writings are the equal of any other body of similar character in beauty of concept and truth of discernment. But as this superior religion became contaminated with the thousands upon thousands of superstitions, cults, and rituals of southern India, it progressively metamorphosed into the most variegated system of theology ever developed by mortal man. An examination of the Vedas will disclose some of the highest and some of the most debased concepts of Deity ever to be conceived. 2. Brahmanism (1028.4) 94:2.1 As the Salem missionaries penetrated southward into the Dravidian Deccan, they encountered an increasing caste system, the scheme of the Aryans to prevent loss of racial identity in the face of a rising tide of the secondary Sangik peoples. Since the Brahman priest caste was the very essence of this system, this social order greatly retarded the progress of the Salem teachers. This caste system failed to save the Aryan race, but it did succeed in perpetuating the Brahmans, who, in turn, have maintained their religious hegemony in India to the present time. (1028.5) 94:2.2 And now, with the weakening of Vedism through the rejection of higher truth, the cult of the Aryans became subject to increasing inroads from the Deccan. In a desperate effort to stem the tide of racial extinction and religious obliteration, the Brahman caste sought to exalt themselves above all else. They taught that the sacrifice to deity in itself was all-efficacious, that it was all-compelling in its potency. They proclaimed that, of the two essential divine principles of the universe, one was Brahman the deity, and the other was the Brahman priesthood. Among no other Urantia peoples did the priests presume to exalt themselves above even their gods, to relegate to themselves the honors due their gods. But they went so absurdly far with these presumptuous claims that the whole precarious system collapsed before the debasing cults which poured in from the surrounding and less advanced civilizations. The vast Vedic priesthood itself floundered and sank beneath the black flood of inertia and pessimism which their own selfish and unwise presumption had brought upon all India. (1029.1) 94:2.3 The undue concentration on self led certainly to a fear of the nonevolutionary perpetuation of self in an endless round of successive incarnations as man, beast, or weeds. And of all the contaminating beliefs which could have become fastened upon what may have been an emerging monotheism, none was so stultifying as this belief in transmigration — the doctrine of the reincarnation of souls — which came from the Dravidian Deccan. This belief in the weary and monotonous round of repeated transmigrations robbed struggling mortals of their long-cherished hope of finding that deliverance and spiritual advancement in death which had been a part of the earlier Vedic faith. (1029.2) 94:2.4 This philosophically debilitating teaching was soon followed by the invention of the doctrine of the eternal escape from self by submergence in the universal rest and peace of absolute union with Brahman, the oversoul of all creation. Mortal desire and human ambition were effectually ravished and virtually destroyed. For more than two thousand years the better minds of India have sought to escape from all desire, and thus was opened wide the door for the entrance of those later cults and teachings which have virtually shackled the souls of many Hindu peoples in the chains of spiritual hopelessness. Of all civilizations, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most terrible price for its rejection of the Salem gospel. (1029.3) 94:2.5 Caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan religio-cultural system, and as the inferior religions of the Deccan permeated the north, there developed an age of despair and hopelessness. It was during these dark days that the cult of taking no life arose, and it has ever since persisted. Many of the new cults were frankly atheistic, claiming that such salvation as was attainable could come only by man’s own unaided efforts. But throughout a great deal of all this unfortunate philosophy, distorted remnants of the Melchizedek and even the Adamic teachings can be traced. (1029.4) 94:2.6 These were the times of the compilation of the later scriptures of the Hindu faith, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Having rejected the teachings of personal religion through the personal faith experience with the one God, and having become contaminated with the flood of debasing and debilitating cults and creeds from the Deccan, with their anthropomorphisms and reincarnations, the Brahmanic priesthood experienced a violent reaction against these vitiating beliefs; there was a definite effort to seek and to find true reality. The Brahmans set out to deanthropomorphize the Indian concept of deity, but in so doing they stumbled into the grievous error of depersonalizing the concept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spiritual ideal of the Paradise Father, but with a distant and metaphysical idea of an all-encompassing Absolute. (1029.5) 94:2.7 In their efforts at self-preservation the Brahmans had rejected the one God of Melchizedek, and now they found themselves with the hypothesis of Brahman, that indefinite and illusive philosophic self, that impersonal and impotent it which has left the spiritual life of India helpless and prostrate from that unfortunate day to the twentieth century. (1029.6) 94:2.8 It was during the times of the writing of the Upanishads that Buddhism arose in India. But despite its successes of a thousand years, it could not compete with later Hinduism; despite a higher morality, its early portrayal of God was even less well-defined than was that of Hinduism, which provided for lesser and personal deities. Buddhism finally gave way in northern India before the onslaught of a militant Islam with its clear-cut concept of Allah as the supreme God of the universe. 3. Brahmanic Philosophy (1030.1) 94:3.1 While the highest phase of Brahmanism was hardly a religion, it was truly one of the most noble reaches of the mortal mind into the domains of philosophy and metaphysics. Having started out to discover final reality, the Indian mind did not stop until it had speculated about almost every phase of theology excepting the essential dual concept of religion: the existence of the Universal Father of all universe creatures and the fact of the ascending experience in the universe of these very creatures as they seek to attain the eternal Father, who has commanded them to be perfect, even as he is perfect. (1030.2) 94:3.2 In the concept of Brahman the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of some all-pervading Absolute, for this postulate was at one and the same time identified as creative energy and cosmic reaction. Brahman was conceived to be beyond all definition, capable of being comprehended only by the successive negation of all finite qualities. It was definitely a belief in an absolute, even an infinite, being, but this concept was largely devoid of personality attributes and was therefore not experiencible by individual religionists. (1030.3) 94:3.3 Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity. Had the philosophers of those days been able to make the next advance in deity conception, had they been able to conceive of the Brahman as associative and creative, as a personality approachable by created and evolving beings, then might such a teaching have become the most advanced portraiture of Deity on Urantia since it would have encompassed the first five levels of total deity function and might possibly have envisioned the remaining two. (1030.4) 94:3.4 In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close to the truth of the Supreme Being, but this truth availed them naught because they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana. (1030.5) 94:3.5 The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme; but this postulate never provided for the co-ordinate personal attainment of Deity by the individual religionist, only for the ultimate engulfment of all personality by the Universal Oversoul. (1030.6) 94:3.6 The philosophy of Brahmanism also came very near to the realization of the indwelling of the Thought Adjusters, only to become perverted through the misconception of truth. The teaching that the soul is the indwelling of the Brahman would have paved the way for an advanced religion had not this concept been completely vitiated by the belief that there is no human individuality apart from this indwelling of the Universal One. (1030.7) 94:3.7 In the doctrine of the merging of the self-soul with the Oversoul, the theologians of India failed to provide for the survival of something human, something new and unique, something born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. The teaching of the soul’s return to the Brahman is closely parallel to the truth of the Adjuster’s return to the bosom of the Universal Father, but there is something distinct from the Adjuster which also survives, the morontial counterpart of mortal personality. And this vital concept was fatally absent from Brahmanic philosophy. (1031.1) 94:3.8 Brahmanic philosophy has approximated many of the facts of the universe and has approached numerous cosmic truths, but it has all too often fallen victim to the error of failing to differentiate between the several levels of reality, such as absolute, transcendental, and finite. It has failed to take into account that what may be finite-illusory on the absolute level may be absolutely real on the finite level. And it has also taken no cognizance of the essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on all levels from the evolutionary creature’s limited experience with God on up to the limitless experience of the Eternal Son with the Paradise Father. 4. The Hindu Religion (1031.2) 94:4.1 With the passing of the centuries in India, the populace returned in measure to the ancient rituals of the Vedas as they had been modified by the teachings of the Melchizedek missionaries and crystallized by the later Brahman priesthood. This, the oldest and most cosmopolitan of the world’s religions, has undergone further changes in response to Buddhism and Jainism and to the later appearing influences of Mohammedanism and Christianity. But by the time the teachings of Jesus arrived, they had already become so Occidentalized as to be a “white man’s religion,” hence strange and foreign to the Hindu mind. (1031.3) 94:4.2 Hindu theology, at present, depicts four descending levels of deity and divinity: (1031.4) 94:4.3 1. The Brahman, the Absolute, the Infinite One, the IT IS. (1031.5) 94:4.4 2. The Trimurti, the supreme trinity of Hinduism. In this association Brahma, the first member, is conceived as being self-created out of the Brahman — infinity. Were it not for close identification with the pantheistic Infinite One, Brahma could constitute the foundation for a concept of the Universal Father. Brahma is also identified with fate. (1031.6) 94:4.5 The worship of the second and third members, Siva and Vishnu, arose in the first millennium after Christ. Siva is lord of life and death, god of fertility, and master of destruction. Vishnu is extremely popular due to the belief that he periodically incarnates in human form. In this way, Vishnu becomes real and living in the imaginations of the Indians. Siva and Vishnu are each regarded by some as supreme over all. (1031.7) 94:4.6 3. Vedic and post-Vedic deities. Many of the ancient gods of the Aryans, such as Agni, Indra, Soma, have persisted as secondary to the three members of the Trimurti. Numerous additional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic India, and these have also been incorporated into the Hindu pantheon. (1031.8) 94:4.7 4. The demigods: supermen, semigods, heroes, demons, ghosts, evil spirits, sprites, monsters, goblins, and saints of the later-day cults. (1031.9) 94:4.8 While Hinduism has long failed to vivify the Indian people, at the same time it has usually been a tolerant religion. Its great strength lies in the fact that it has proved to be the most adaptive, amorphic religion to appear on Urantia. It is capable of almost unlimited change and possesses an unusual range of flexible adjustment from the high and semimonotheistic speculations of the intellectual Brahman to the arrant fetishism and primitive cult practices of the debased and depressed classes of ignorant believers. (1032.1) 94:4.9 Hinduism has survived because it is essentially an integral part of the basic social fabric of India. It has no great hierarchy which can be disturbed or destroyed; it is interwoven into the life pattern of the people. It has an adaptability to changing conditions that excels all other cults, and it displays a tolerant attitude of adoption toward many other religions, Gautama Buddha and even Christ himself being claimed as incarnations of Vishnu. (1032.2) 94:4.10 Today, in India, the great need is for the portrayal of the Jesusonian gospel — the Fatherhood of God and the sonship and consequent brotherhood of all men, which is personally realized in loving ministry and social service. In India the philosophical framework is existent, the cult structure is present; all that is needed is the vitalizing spark of the dynamic love portrayed in the original gospel of the Son of Man, divested of the Occidental dogmas and doctrines which have tended to make Michael’s life bestowal a white man’s religion. 5. The Struggle for Truth in China (1032.3) 94:5.1 As the Salem missionaries passed through Asia, spreading the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith, they absorbed much of the philosophy and religious thought of the various countries traversed. But the teachers commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors did not default in their trust; they did penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, and it was in the middle of the second millennium before Christ that they arrived in China. At See Fuch, for more than one hundred years, the Salemites maintained their headquarters, there training Chinese teachers who taught throughout all the domains of the yellow race. (1032.4) 94:5.2 It was in direct consequence of this teaching that the earliest form of Taoism arose in China, a vastly different religion than the one which bears that name today. Early or proto-Taoism was a compound of the following factors: (1032.5) 94:5.3 1. The lingering teachings of Singlangton, which persisted in the concept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlangton the Chinese people became virtually monotheistic; they concentrated their worship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the universe ruler. And the yellow race never fully lost this early concept of Deity, although in subsequent centuries many subordinate gods and spirits insidiously crept into their religion. (1032.6) 94:5.4 2. The Salem religion of a Most High Creator Deity who would bestow his favor upon mankind in response to man’s faith. But it is all too true that, by the time the Melchizedek missionaries had penetrated to the lands of the yellow race, their original message had become considerably changed from the simple doctrines of Salem in the days of Machiventa. (1032.7) 94:5.5 3. The Brahman-Absolute concept of the Indian philosophers, coupled with the desire to escape all evil. Perhaps the greatest extraneous influence in the eastward spread of the Salem religion was exerted by the Indian teachers of the Vedic faith, who injected their conception of the Brahman — the Absolute — into the salvationistic thought of the Salemites. (1033.1) 94:5.6 This composite belief spread through the lands of the yellow and brown races as an underlying influence in religio-philosophic thought. In Japan this proto-Taoism was known as Shinto, and in this country, far-distant from Salem of Palestine, the peoples learned of the incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek, who dwelt upon earth that the name of God might not be forgotten by mankind.* (1033.2) 94:5.7 In China all of these beliefs were later confused and compounded with the ever-growing cult of ancestor worship. But never since the time of Singlangton have the Chinese fallen into helpless slavery to priestcraft. The yellow race was the first to emerge from barbaric bondage into orderly civilization because it was the first to achieve some measure of freedom from the abject fear of the gods, not even fearing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them. China met her defeat because she failed to progress beyond her early emancipation from priests; she fell into an almost equally calamitous error, the worship of ancestors. (1033.3) 94:5.8 But the Salemites did not labor in vain. It was upon the foundations of their gospel that the great philosophers of sixth-century China built their teachings. The moral atmosphere and the spiritual sentiments of the times of Lao-tse and Confucius grew up out of the teachings of the Salem missionaries of an earlier age. 6. Lao-Tse and Confucius (1033.4) 94:6.1 About six hundred years before the arrival of Michael, it seemed to Melchizedek, long since departed from the flesh, that the purity of his teaching on earth was being unduly jeopardized by general absorption into the older Urantia beliefs. It appeared for a time that his mission as a forerunner of Michael might be in danger of failing. And in the sixth century before Christ, through an unusual co-ordination of spiritual agencies, not all of which are understood even by the planetary supervisors, Urantia witnessed a most unusual presentation of manifold religious truth. Through the agency of several human teachers the Salem gospel was restated and revitalized, and as it was then presented, much has persisted to the times of this writing. (1033.5) 94:6.2 This unique century of spiritual progress was characterized by great religious, moral, and philosophic teachers all over the civilized world. In China, the two outstanding teachers were Lao-tse and Confucius. (1033.6) 94:6.3 Lao-tse built directly upon the concepts of the Salem traditions when he declared Tao to be the One First Cause of all creation. Lao was a man of great spiritual vision. He taught that man’s eternal destiny was “everlasting union with Tao, Supreme God and Universal King.” His comprehension of ultimate causation was most discerning, for he wrote: “Unity arises out of the Absolute Tao, and from Unity there appears cosmic Duality, and from such Duality, Trinity springs forth into existence, and Trinity is the primal source of all reality.” “All reality is ever in balance between the potentials and the actuals of the cosmos, and these are eternally harmonized by the spirit of divinity.”* (1033.7) 94:6.4 Lao-tse also made one of the earliest presentations of the doctrine of returning good for evil: “Goodness begets goodness, but to the one who is truly good, evil also begets goodness.” (1033.8) 94:6.5 He taught the return of the creature to the Creator and pictured life as the emergence of a personality from the cosmic potentials, while death was like the returning home of this creature personality. His concept of true faith was unusual, and he too likened it to the “attitude of a little child.” (1034.1) 94:6.6 His understanding of the eternal purpose of God was clear, for he said: “The Absolute Deity does not strive but is always victorious; he does not coerce mankind but always stands ready to respond to their true desires; the will of God is eternal in patience and eternal in the inevitability of its expression.” And of the true religionist he said, in expressing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive: “The good man seeks not to retain truth for himself but rather attempts to bestow these riches upon his fellows, for that is the realization of truth. The will of the Absolute God always benefits, never destroys; the purpose of the true believer is always to act but never to coerce.” (1034.2) 94:6.7 Lao’s teaching of nonresistance and the distinction which he made between action and coercion became later perverted into the beliefs of “seeing, doing, and thinking nothing.” But Lao never taught such error, albeit his presentation of nonresistance has been a factor in the further development of the pacific predilections of the Chinese peoples. (1034.3) 94:6.8 But the popular Taoism of twentieth-century Urantia has very little in common with the lofty sentiments and the cosmic concepts of the old philosopher who taught the truth as he perceived it, which was: That faith in the Absolute God is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world, and by which man ascends to spiritual union with Tao, the Eternal Deity and Creator Absolute of the universes. (1034.4) 94:6.9 Confucius (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger contemporary of Lao in sixth-century China. Confucius based his doctrines upon the better moral traditions of the long history of the yellow race, and he was also somewhat influenced by the lingering traditions of the Salem missionaries. His chief work consisted in the compilation of the wise sayings of ancient philosophers. He was a rejected teacher during his lifetime, but his writings and teachings have ever since exerted a great influence in China and Japan. Confucius set a new pace for the shamans in that he put morality in the place of magic. But he built too well; he made a new fetish out of order and established a respect for ancestral conduct that is still venerated by the Chinese at the time of this writing. (1034.5) 94:6.10 The Confucian preachment of morality was predicated on the theory that the earthly way is the distorted shadow of the heavenly way; that the true pattern of temporal civilization is the mirror reflection of the eternal order of heaven. The potential God concept in Confucianism was almost completely subordinated to the emphasis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pattern of the cosmos. (1034.6) 94:6.11 The teachings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Orient, but the writings of Confucius have ever since constituted the basis of the moral fabric of the culture of almost a third of Urantians. These Confucian precepts, while perpetuating the best of the past, were somewhat inimical to the very Chinese spirit of investigation that had produced those achievements which were so venerated. The influence of these doctrines was unsuccessfully combated both by the imperial efforts of Ch’in Shih Huang Ti and by the teachings of Mo Ti, who proclaimed a brotherhood founded not on ethical duty but on the love of God. He sought to rekindle the ancient quest for new truth, but his teachings failed before the vigorous opposition of the disciples of Confucius. (1034.7) 94:6.12 Like many other spiritual and moral teachers, both Confucius and Lao-tse were eventually deified by their followers in those spiritually dark ages of China which intervened between the decline and perversion of the Taoist faith and the coming of the Buddhist missionaries from India. During these spiritually decadent centuries the religion of the yellow race degenerated into a pitiful theology wherein swarmed devils, dragons, and evil spirits, all betokening the returning fears of the unenlightened mortal mind. And China, once at the head of human society because of an advanced religion, then fell behind because of temporary failure to progress in the true path of the development of that God-consciousness which is indispensable to the true progress, not only of the individual mortal, but also of the intricate and complex civilizations which characterize the advance of culture and society on an evolutionary planet of time and space. 7. Gautama Siddhartha (1035.1) 94:7.1 Contemporary with Lao-tse and Confucius in China, another great teacher of truth arose in India. Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century before Christ in the north Indian province of Nepal. His followers later made it appear that he was the son of a fabulously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir apparent to the throne of a petty chieftain who ruled by sufferance over a small and secluded mountain valley in the southern Himalayas. (1035.2) 94:7.2 Gautama formulated those theories which grew into the philosophy of Buddhism after six years of the futile practice of Yoga. Siddhartha made a determined but unavailing fight against the growing caste system. There was a lofty sincerity and a unique unselfishness about this young prophet prince that greatly appealed to the men of those days. He detracted from the practice of seeking individual salvation through physical affliction and personal pain. And he exhorted his followers to carry his gospel to all the world. (1035.3) 94:7.3 Amid the confusion and extreme cult practices of India, the saner and more moderate teachings of Gautama came as a refreshing relief. He denounced gods, priests, and their sacrifices, but he too failed to perceive the personality of the One Universal. Not believing in the existence of individual human souls, Gautama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-honored belief in transmigration of the soul. He made a noble effort to deliver men from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great universe, but he failed to show them the pathway to that real and supernal home of ascending mortals — Paradise — and to the expanding service of eternal existence. (1035.4) 94:7.4 Gautama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the instruction of the hermit Godad, he might have aroused all India by the inspiration of the revival of the Salem gospel of salvation by faith. Godad was descended through a family that had never lost the traditions of the Melchizedek missionaries. (1035.5) 94:7.5 At Benares Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem missionaries about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on salvation through faith — simple belief. He so declared himself before his followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to proclaim to the people of India “the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice.” (1035.6) 94:7.6 Gautama’s wife believed her husband’s gospel and was the founder of an order of nuns. His son became his successor and greatly extended the cult; he grasped the new idea of salvation through faith but in his later years wavered regarding the Salem gospel of divine favor through faith alone, and in his old age his dying words were, “Work out your own salvation.” (1036.1) 94:7.7 When proclaimed at its best, Gautama’s gospel of universal salvation, free from sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priests, was a revolutionary and amazing doctrine for its time. And it came surprisingly near to being a revival of the Salem gospel. It brought succor to millions of despairing souls, and notwithstanding its grotesque perversion during later centuries, it still persists as the hope of millions of human beings. (1036.2) 94:7.8 Siddhartha taught far more truth than has survived in the modern cults bearing his name. Modern Buddhism is no more the teachings of Gautama Siddhartha than is Christianity the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. 8. The Buddhist Faith (1036.3) 94:8.1 To become a Buddhist, one merely made public profession of the faith by reciting the Refuge: “I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood.” (1036.4) 94:8.2 Buddhism took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama’s followers called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman claims for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began to call him the enlightened one, the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha. (1036.5) 94:8.3 The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths: (1036.6) 94:8.4 1. The noble truths of suffering. (1036.7) 94:8.5 2. The origins of suffering. (1036.8) 94:8.6 3. The destruction of suffering. (1036.9) 94:8.7 4. The way to the destruction of suffering. (1036.10) 94:8.8 Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama’s intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much that love of one’s fellows should be shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the realities of the eternal future. (1036.11) 94:8.9 The moral commandments of Gautama’s preachment were five in number: (1036.12) 94:8.10 1. You shall not kill. (1036.13) 94:8.11 2. You shall not steal. (1036.14) 94:8.12 3. You shall not be unchaste. (1036.15) 94:8.13 4. You shall not lie. (1036.16) 94:8.14 5. You shall not drink intoxicating liquors. (1036.17) 94:8.15 There were several additional or secondary commandments, whose observance was optional with believers. (1036.18) 94:8.16 Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality; his philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He never clearly defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana. The fact that it could theoretically be experienced during mortal existence would indicate that it was not viewed as a state of complete annihilation. It implied a condition of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to the material world had been broken; there was freedom from the desires of mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing incarnation. (1037.1) 94:8.17 According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of India, endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human striving for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers overlooked the fact that the highest happiness is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic pursuit of worthy goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in cosmic self-realization. (1037.2) 94:8.18 The great truth of Siddhartha’s teaching was his proclamation of a universe of absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever invented by mortal man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively removed all grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of ghosts or demons. (1037.3) 94:8.19 The great weakness in the original gospel of Buddhism was that it did not produce a religion of unselfish social service. The Buddhistic brotherhood was, for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social; indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment. 9. The Spread of Buddhism (1037.4) 94:9.1 Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped. (1037.5) 94:9.2 The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama’s gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be. (1038.1) 94:9.3 Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized. (1038.2) 94:9.4 In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha persisted in Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine. (1038.3) 94:9.5 But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama’s followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the “Great Road” to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or “Lesser Road.” And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan. (1038.4) 94:9.6 Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not. 10. Religion in Tibet (1038.5) 94:10.1 In Tibet may be found the strangest association of the Melchizedek teachings combined with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. When the Buddhist missionaries entered Tibet, they encountered a state of primitive savagery very similar to that which the early Christian missionaries found among the northern tribes of Europe. (1038.6) 94:10.2 These simple-minded Tibetans would not wholly give up their ancient magic and charms. Examination of the religious ceremonials of present-day Tibetan rituals reveals an overgrown brotherhood of priests with shaven heads who practice an elaborate ritual embracing bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries, images, charms, pictures, holy water, gorgeous vestments, and elaborate choirs. They have rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, mystic rites and special fasts. Their hierarchy embraces monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to angels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They practice confessions and believe in purgatory. Their monasteries are extensive and their cathedrals magnificent. They keep up an endless repetition of sacred rituals and believe that such ceremonials bestow salvation. Prayers are fastened to a wheel, and with its turning they believe the petitions become efficacious. Among no other people of modern times can be found the observance of so much from so many religions; and it is inevitable that such a cumulative liturgy would become inordinately cumbersome and intolerably burdensome. (1038.7) 94:10.3 The Tibetans have something of all the leading world religions except the simple teachings of the Jesusonian gospel: sonship with God, brotherhood with man, and ever-ascending citizenship in the eternal universe. 11. Buddhist Philosophy (1038.8) 94:11.1 Buddhism entered China in the first millennium after Christ, and it fitted well into the religious customs of the yellow race. In ancestor worship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Buddhism soon amalgamated with the lingering ritualistic practices of disintegrating Taoism. This new synthetic religion with its temples of worship and definite religious ceremonial soon became the generally accepted cult of the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan. (1039.1) 94:11.2 While in some respects it is unfortunate that Buddhism was not carried to the world until after Gautama’s followers had so perverted the traditions and teachings of the cult as to make of him a divine being, nonetheless this myth of his human life, embellished as it was with a multitude of miracles, proved very appealing to the auditors of the northern or Mahayana gospel of Buddhism. (1039.2) 94:11.3 Some of his later followers taught that Sakyamuni Buddha’s spirit returned periodically to earth as a living Buddha, thus opening the way for an indefinite perpetuation of Buddha images, temples, rituals, and impostor “living Buddhas.” Thus did the religion of the great Indian protestant eventually find itself shackled with those very ceremonial practices and ritualistic incantations against which he had so fearlessly fought, and which he had so valiantly denounced. (1039.3) 94:11.4 The great advance made in Buddhist philosophy consisted in its comprehension of the relativity of all truth. Through the mechanism of this hypothesis Buddhists have been able to reconcile and correlate the divergencies within their own religious scriptures as well as the differences between their own and many others. It was taught that the small truth was for little minds, the large truth for great minds. (1039.4) 94:11.5 This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men; that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this inner divinity. And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by a Urantian religion. (1039.5) 94:11.6 But a great limitation in the original gospel of Siddhartha, as it was interpreted by his followers, was that it attempted the complete liberation of the human self from all the limitations of the mortal nature by the technique of isolating the self from objective reality. True cosmic self-realization results from identification with cosmic reality and with the finite cosmos of energy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and conditioned by time. (1039.6) 94:11.7 But though the ceremonies and outward observances of Buddhism became grossly contaminated with those of the lands to which it traveled, this degeneration was not altogether the case in the philosophical life of the great thinkers who, from time to time, embraced this system of thought and belief. Through more than two thousand years, many of the best minds of Asia have concentrated upon the problem of ascertaining absolute truth and the truth of the Absolute. (1039.7) 94:11.8 The evolution of a high concept of the Absolute was achieved through many channels of thought and by devious paths of reasoning. The upward ascent of this doctrine of infinity was not so clearly defined as was the evolution of the God concept in Hebrew theology. Nevertheless, there were certain broad levels which the minds of the Buddhists reached, tarried upon, and passed through on their way to the envisioning of the Primal Source of universes: (1039.8) 94:11.9 1. The Gautama legend. At the base of the concept was the historic fact of the life and teachings of Siddhartha, the prophet prince of India. This legend grew in myth as it traveled through the centuries and across the broad lands of Asia until it surpassed the status of the idea of Gautama as the enlightened one and began to take on additional attributes. (1040.1) 94:11.10 2. The many Buddhas. It was reasoned that, if Gautama had come to the peoples of India, then, in the remote past and in the remote future, the races of mankind must have been, and undoubtedly would be, blessed with other teachers of truth. This gave rise to the teaching that there were many Buddhas, an unlimited and infinite number, even that anyone could aspire to become one — to attain the divinity of a Buddha. (1040.2) 94:11.11 3. The Absolute Buddha. By the time the number of Buddhas was approaching infinity, it became necessary for the minds of those days to reunify this unwieldy concept. Accordingly it began to be taught that all Buddhas were but the manifestation of some higher essence, some Eternal One of infinite and unqualified existence, some Absolute Source of all reality. From here on, the Deity concept of Buddhism, in its highest form, becomes divorced from the human person of Gautama Siddhartha and casts off from the anthropomorphic limitations which have held it in leash. This final conception of the Buddha Eternal can well be identified as the Absolute, sometimes even as the infinite I AM. (1040.3) 94:11.12 While this idea of Absolute Deity never found great popular favor with the peoples of Asia, it did enable the intellectuals of these lands to unify their philosophy and to harmonize their cosmology. The concept of the Buddha Absolute is at times quasi-personal, at times wholly impersonal — even an infinite creative force. Such concepts, though helpful to philosophy, are not vital to religious development. Even an anthropomorphic Yahweh is of greater religious value than an infinitely remote Absolute of Buddhism or Brahmanism. (1040.4) 94:11.13 At times the Absolute was even thought of as contained within the infinite I AM. But these speculations were chill comfort to the hungry multitudes who craved to hear words of promise, to hear the simple gospel of Salem, that faith in God would assure divine favor and eternal survival. 12. The God Concept of Buddhism (1040.5) 94:12.1 The great weakness in the cosmology of Buddhism was twofold: its contamination with many of the superstitions of India and China and its sublimation of Gautama, first as the enlightened one, and then as the Eternal Buddha. Just as Christianity has suffered from the absorption of much erroneous human philosophy, so does Buddhism bear its human birthmark. But the teachings of Gautama have continued to evolve during the past two and one-half millenniums. The concept of Buddha, to an enlightened Buddhist, is no more the human personality of Gautama than the concept of Jehovah is identical with the spirit demon of Horeb to an enlightened Christian. Paucity of terminology, together with the sentimental retention of olden nomenclature, is often provocative of the failure to understand the true significance of the evolution of religious concepts. (1040.6) 94:12.2 Gradually the concept of God, as contrasted with the Absolute, began to appear in Buddhism. Its sources are back in the early days of this differentiation of the followers of the Lesser Road and the Greater Road. It was among the latter division of Buddhism that the dual conception of God and the Absolute finally matured. Step by step, century by century, the God concept has evolved until, with the teachings of Ryonin, Honen Shonin, and Shinran in Japan, this concept finally came to fruit in the belief in Amida Buddha. (1041.1) 94:12.3 Among these believers it is taught that the soul, upon experiencing death, may elect to enjoy a sojourn in Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, the ultimate of existence. It is proclaimed that this new salvation is attained by faith in the divine mercies and loving care of Amida, God of the Paradise in the west. In their philosophy, the Amidists hold to an Infinite Reality which is beyond all finite mortal comprehension; in their religion, they cling to faith in the all-merciful Amida, who so loves the world that he will not suffer one mortal who calls on his name in true faith and with a pure heart to fail in the attainment of the supernal happiness of Paradise. (1041.2) 94:12.4 The great strength of Buddhism is that its adherents are free to choose truth from all religions; such freedom of choice has seldom characterized a Urantian faith. In this respect the Shin sect of Japan has become one of the most progressive religious groups in the world; it has revived the ancient missionary spirit of Gautama’s followers and has begun to send teachers to other peoples. This willingness to appropriate truth from any and all sources is indeed a commendable tendency to appear among religious believers during the first half of the twentieth century after Christ. (1041.3) 94:12.5 Buddhism itself is undergoing a twentieth-century renaissance. Through contact with Christianity the social aspects of Buddhism have been greatly enhanced. The desire to learn has been rekindled in the hearts of the monk priests of the brotherhood, and the spread of education throughout this faith will be certainly provocative of new advances in religious evolution. (1041.4) 94:12.6 At the time of this writing, much of Asia rests its hope in Buddhism. Will this noble faith, that has so valiantly carried on through the dark ages of the past, once again receive the truth of expanded cosmic realities even as the disciples of the great teacher in India once listened to his proclamation of new truth? Will this ancient faith respond once more to the invigorating stimulus of the presentation of new concepts of God and the Absolute for which it has so long searched? (1041.5) 94:12.7 All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of Michael, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus. (1041.6) 94:12.8 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
Andite Expansion in the Orient (878.1) 79:0.1 ASIA is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this continent that Andon and Fonta were born; in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture that persisted for over one-half million years. Here at this eastern focus of the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield. Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians, Nodites, Adamites, and Andites, and from these regions the potentials of modern civilization spread to the world. 1. The Andites of Turkestan (878.2) 79:1.1 For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eurasia was predominantly, though diminishingly, Andite. In the lowlands of Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to the northern lands of the yellow men. The Andite infiltration of India proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China. (878.3) 79:1.2 For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself. (878.4) 79:1.3 By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers. (879.1) 79:1.4 When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites, they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade. Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was accelerated on both land and water. (879.2) 79:1.5 But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia. (879.3) 79:1.6 Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed descendants of Adam during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races. (879.4) 79:1.7 Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central Asia nearly to the vanishing point. (879.5) 79:1.8 But even in the twentieth century after Christ there are traces of Andite blood among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the presence of the red-haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet-Mongolian types in the Tarim basin of long ago. (879.6) 79:1.9 The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of “one God in heaven.” The early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic concept in Asia. 2. The Andite Conquest of India (879.7) 79:2.1 India is the only locality where all the Urantia races were blended, the Andite invasion adding the last stock. In the highlands northwest of India the Sangik races came into existence, and without exception members of each penetrated the subcontinent of India in their early days, leaving behind them the most heterogeneous race mixture ever to exist on Urantia. Ancient India acted as a catch basin for the migrating races. The base of the peninsula was formerly somewhat narrower than now, much of the deltas of the Ganges and Indus being the work of the last fifty thousand years. (879.8) 79:2.2 The earliest race mixtures in India were a blending of the migrating red and yellow races with the aboriginal Andonites. This group was later weakened by absorbing the greater portion of the extinct eastern green peoples as well as large numbers of the orange race, was slightly improved through limited admixture with the blue man, but suffered exceedingly through assimilation of large numbers of the indigo race. But the so-called aborigines of India are hardly representative of these early people; they are rather the most inferior southern and eastern fringe, which was never fully absorbed by either the early Andites or their later appearing Aryan cousins. (880.1) 79:2.3 By 20,000 B.C. the population of western India had already become tinged with the Adamic blood, and never in the history of Urantia did any one people combine so many different races. But it was unfortunate that the secondary Sangik strains predominated, and it was a real calamity that both the blue and the red man were so largely missing from this racial melting pot of long ago; more of the primary Sangik strains would have contributed very much toward the enhancement of what might have been an even greater civilization. As it developed, the red man was destroying himself in the Americas, the blue man was disporting himself in Europe, and the early descendants of Adam (and most of the later ones) exhibited little desire to admix with the darker colored peoples, whether in India, Africa, or elsewhere. (880.2) 79:2.4 About 15,000 B.C. increasing population pressure throughout Turkestan and Iran occasioned the first really extensive Andite movement toward India. For over fifteen centuries these superior peoples poured in through the highlands of Baluchistan, spreading out over the valleys of the Indus and Ganges and slowly moving southward into the Deccan. This Andite pressure from the northwest drove many of the southern and eastern inferiors into Burma and southern China but not sufficiently to save the invaders from racial obliteration. (880.3) 79:2.5 The failure of India to achieve the hegemony of Eurasia was largely a matter of topography; population pressure from the north only crowded the majority of the people southward into the decreasing territory of the Deccan, surrounded on all sides by the sea. Had there been adjacent lands for emigration, then would the inferiors have been crowded out in all directions, and the superior stocks would have achieved a higher civilization. (880.4) 79:2.6 As it was, these earlier Andite conquerors made a desperate attempt to preserve their identity and stem the tide of racial engulfment by the establishment of rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage. Nonetheless, the Andites had become submerged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the people had been markedly improved by this absorption. (880.5) 79:2.7 Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization, but if the inferior elements of racial stocks predominate, such achievements will be short-lived. A polyglot culture can be preserved only if the superior stocks reproduce themselves in a safe margin over the inferior. Unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural civilization. (880.6) 79:2.8 Had the Andite conquerors been in numbers three times what they were, or had they driven out or destroyed the least desirable third of the mixed orange-green-indigo inhabitants, then would India have become one of the world’s leading centers of cultural civilization and undoubtedly would have attracted more of the later waves of Mesopotamians that flowed into Turkestan and thence northward to Europe. 3. Dravidian India (881.1) 79:3.1 The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native stock eventually resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier and purer Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement, which was continuously weakened as their Andite inheritance became progressively attenuated. And this is what doomed the budding civilization of India almost twelve thousand years ago. But the infusion of even this small amount of the blood of Adam produced a marked acceleration in social development. This composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on earth. (881.2) 79:3.2 Not long after conquering India, the Dravidian Andites lost their racial and cultural contact with Mesopotamia, but the later opening up of the sea lanes and the caravan routes re-established these connections; and at no time within the last ten thousand years has India ever been entirely out of touch with Mesopotamia on the west and China to the east, although the mountain barriers greatly favored western intercourse. (881.3) 79:3.3 The superior culture and religious leanings of the peoples of India date from the early times of Dravidian domination and are due, in part, to the fact that so many of the Sethite priesthood entered India, both in the earlier Andite and in the later Aryan invasions. The thread of monotheism running through the religious history of India thus stems from the teachings of the Adamites in the second garden. (881.4) 79:3.4 As early as 16,000 B.C. a company of one hundred Sethite priests entered India and very nearly achieved the religious conquest of the western half of that polyglot people. But their religion did not persist. Within five thousand years their doctrines of the Paradise Trinity had degenerated into the triune symbol of the fire god. (881.5) 79:3.5 But for more than seven thousand years, down to the end of the Andite migrations, the religious status of the inhabitants of India was far above that of the world at large. During these times India bid fair to produce the leading cultural, religious, philosophic, and commercial civilization of the world. And but for the complete submergence of the Andites by the peoples of the south, this destiny would probably have been realized.* (881.6) 79:3.6 The Dravidian centers of culture were located in the river valleys, principally of the Indus and Ganges, and in the Deccan along the three great rivers flowing through the Eastern Ghats to the sea. The settlements along the seacoast of the Western Ghats owed their prominence to maritime relationships with Sumeria. (881.7) 79:3.7 The Dravidians were among the earliest peoples to build cities and to engage in an extensive export and import business, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were making regular trips to distant Mesopotamia; Dravidian shipping was pushing coastwise across the Arabian Sea to the Sumerian cities of the Persian Gulf and was venturing on the waters of the Bay of Bengal as far as the East Indies. An alphabet, together with the art of writing, was imported from Sumeria by these seafarers and merchants. (881.8) 79:3.8 These commercial relationships greatly contributed to the further diversification of a cosmopolitan culture, resulting in the early appearance of many of the refinements and even luxuries of urban life. When the later appearing Aryans entered India, they did not recognize in the Dravidians their Andite cousins submerged in the Sangik races, but they did find a well-advanced civilization. Despite biologic limitations, the Dravidians founded a superior civilization. It was well diffused throughout all India and has survived on down to modern times in the Deccan. 4. The Aryan Invasion of India (882.1) 79:4.1 The second Andite penetration of India was the Aryan invasion during a period of almost five hundred years in the middle of the third millennium before Christ. This migration marked the terminal exodus of the Andites from their homelands in Turkestan. (882.2) 79:4.2 The early Aryan centers were scattered over the northern half of India, notably in the northwest. These invaders never completed the conquest of the country and subsequently met their undoing in this neglect since their lesser numbers made them vulnerable to absorption by the Dravidians of the south, who subsequently overran the entire peninsula except the Himalayan provinces. (882.3) 79:4.3 The Aryans made very little racial impression on India except in the northern provinces. In the Deccan their influence was cultural and religious more than racial. The greater persistence of the so-called Aryan blood in northern India is not only due to their presence in these regions in greater numbers but also because they were reinforced by later conquerors, traders, and missionaries. Right on down to the first century before Christ there was a continuous infiltration of Aryan blood into the Punjab, the last influx being attendant upon the campaigns of the Hellenistic peoples. (882.4) 79:4.4 On the Gangetic plain Aryan and Dravidian eventually mingled to produce a high culture, and this center was later reinforced by contributions from the northeast, coming from China. (882.5) 79:4.5 In India many types of social organizations flourished from time to time, from the semidemocratic systems of the Aryans to despotic and monarchial forms of government. But the most characteristic feature of society was the persistence of the great social castes that were instituted by the Aryans in an effort to perpetuate racial identity. This elaborate caste system has been preserved on down to the present time. (882.6) 79:4.6 Of the four great castes, all but the first were established in the futile effort to prevent racial amalgamation of the Aryan conquerors with their inferior subjects. But the premier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brahmans of the twentieth century after Christ are the lineal cultural descendants of the priests of the second garden, albeit their teachings differ greatly from those of their illustrious predecessors. (882.7) 79:4.7 When the Aryans entered India, they brought with them their concepts of Deity as they had been preserved in the lingering traditions of the religion of the second garden. But the Brahman priests were never able to withstand the pagan momentum built up by the sudden contact with the inferior religions of the Deccan after the racial obliteration of the Aryans. Thus the vast majority of the population fell into the bondage of the enslaving superstitions of inferior religions; and so it was that India failed to produce the high civilization which had been foreshadowed in earlier times. (882.8) 79:4.8 The spiritual awakening of the sixth century before Christ did not persist in India, having died out even before the Mohammedan invasion. But someday a greater Gautama may arise to lead all India in the search for the living God, and then the world will observe the fruition of the cultural potentialities of a versatile people so long comatose under the benumbing influence of an unprogressing spiritual vision. (883.1) 79:4.9 Culture does rest on a biologic foundation, but caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan culture, for religion, true religion, is the indispensable source of that higher energy which drives men to establish a superior civilization based on human brotherhood. 5. Red Man and Yellow Man (883.2) 79:5.1 While the story of India is that of Andite conquest and eventual submergence in the older evolutionary peoples, the narrative of eastern Asia is more properly that of the primary Sangiks, particularly the red man and the yellow man. These two races largely escaped that admixture with the debased Neanderthal strain which so greatly retarded the blue man in Europe, thus preserving the superior potential of the primary Sangik type. (883.3) 79:5.2 While the early Neanderthalers were spread out over the entire breadth of Eurasia, the eastern wing was the more contaminated with debased animal strains. These subhuman types were pushed south by the fifth glacier, the same ice sheet which so long blocked Sangik migration into eastern Asia. And when the red man moved northeast around the highlands of India, he found northeastern Asia free from these subhuman types. The tribal organization of the red races was formed earlier than that of any other peoples, and they were the first to migrate from the central Asian focus of the Sangiks. The inferior Neanderthal strains were destroyed or driven off the mainland by the later migrating yellow tribes. But the red man had reigned supreme in eastern Asia for almost one hundred thousand years before the yellow tribes arrived. (883.4) 79:5.3 More than three hundred thousand years ago the main body of the yellow race entered China from the south as coastwise migrants. Each millennium they penetrated farther and farther inland, but they did not make contact with their migrating Tibetan brethren until comparatively recent times. (883.5) 79:5.4 Growing population pressure caused the northward-moving yellow race to begin to push into the hunting grounds of the red man. This encroachment, coupled with natural racial antagonism, culminated in increasing hostilities, and thus began the crucial struggle for the fertile lands of farther Asia. (883.6) 79:5.5 The story of this agelong contest between the red and yellow races is an epic of Urantia history. For over two hundred thousand years these two superior races waged bitter and unremitting warfare. In the earlier struggles the red men were generally successful, their raiding parties spreading havoc among the yellow settlements. But the yellow man was an apt pupil in the art of warfare, and he early manifested a marked ability to live peaceably with his compatriots; the Chinese were the first to learn that in union there is strength. The red tribes continued their internecine conflicts, and presently they began to suffer repeated defeats at the aggressive hands of the relentless Chinese, who continued their inexorable march northward. (883.7) 79:5.6 One hundred thousand years ago the decimated tribes of the red race were fighting with their backs to the retreating ice of the last glacier, and when the land passage to the West, over the Bering isthmus, became passable, these tribes were not slow in forsaking the inhospitable shores of the Asiatic continent. It is eighty-five thousand years since the last of the pure red men departed from Asia, but the long struggle left its genetic imprint upon the victorious yellow race. The northern Chinese peoples, together with the Andonite Siberians, assimilated much of the red stock and were in considerable measure benefited thereby.* (884.1) 79:5.7 The North American Indians never came in contact with even the Andite offspring of Adam and Eve, having been dispossessed of their Asiatic homelands some fifty thousand years before the coming of Adam. During the age of Andite migrations the pure red strains were spreading out over North America as nomadic tribes, hunters who practiced agriculture to a small extent. These races and cultural groups remained almost completely isolated from the remainder of the world from their arrival in the Americas down to the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, when they were discovered by the white races of Europe. Up to that time the Eskimos were the nearest to white men the northern tribes of red men had ever seen. (884.2) 79:5.8 The red and the yellow races are the only human stocks that ever achieved a high degree of civilization apart from the influences of the Andites. The oldest Amerindian culture was the Onamonalonton center in California, but this had long since vanished by 35,000 B.C. In Mexico, Central America, and in the mountains of South America the later and more enduring civilizations were founded by a race predominantly red but containing a considerable admixture of the yellow, orange, and blue. (884.3) 79:5.9 These civilizations were evolutionary products of the Sangiks, notwithstanding that traces of Andite blood reached Peru. Excepting the Eskimos in North America and a few Polynesian Andites in South America, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere had no contact with the rest of the world until the end of the first millennium after Christ. In the original Melchizedek plan for the improvement of the Urantia races it had been stipulated that one million of the pure-line descendants of Adam should go to upstep the red men of the Americas. 6. Dawn of Chinese Civilization (884.4) 79:6.1 Sometime after driving the red man across to North America, the expanding Chinese cleared the Andonites from the river valleys of eastern Asia, pushing them north into Siberia and west into Turkestan, where they were soon to come in contact with the superior culture of the Andites. (884.5) 79:6.2 In Burma and the peninsula of Indo-China the cultures of India and China mixed and blended to produce the successive civilizations of those regions. Here the vanished green race has persisted in larger proportion than anywhere else in the world. (884.6) 79:6.3 Many different races occupied the islands of the Pacific. In general, the southern and then more extensive islands were occupied by peoples carrying a heavy percentage of green and indigo blood. The northern islands were held by Andonites and, later on, by races embracing large proportions of the yellow and red stocks. The ancestors of the Japanese people were not driven off the mainland until 12,000 B.C., when they were dislodged by a powerful southern-coastwise thrust of the northern Chinese tribes. Their final exodus was not so much due to population pressure as to the initiative of a chieftain whom they came to regard as a divine personage. (885.1) 79:6.4 Like the peoples of India and the Levant, victorious tribes of the yellow man established their earliest centers along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal settlements fared poorly in later years as the increasing floods and the shifting courses of the rivers made the lowland cities untenable. (885.2) 79:6.5 Twenty thousand years ago the ancestors of the Chinese had built up a dozen strong centers of primitive culture and learning, especially along the Yellow River and the Yangtze. And now these centers began to be reinforced by the arrival of a steady stream of superior blended peoples from Sinkiang and Tibet. The migration from Tibet to the Yangtze valley was not so extensive as in the north, neither were the Tibetan centers so advanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both movements carried a certain amount of Andite blood eastward to the river settlements. (885.3) 79:6.6 The superiority of the ancient yellow race was due to four great factors: (885.4) 79:6.7 1. Genetic. Unlike their blue cousins in Europe, both the red and yellow races had largely escaped mixture with debased human stocks. The northern Chinese, already strengthened by small amounts of the superior red and Andonic strains, were soon to benefit by a considerable influx of Andite blood. The southern Chinese did not fare so well in this regard, and they had long suffered from absorption of the green race, while later on they were to be further weakened by the infiltration of the swarms of inferior peoples crowded out of India by the Dravidian-Andite invasion. And today in China there is a definite difference between the northern and southern races. (885.5) 79:6.8 2. Social. The yellow race early learned the value of peace among themselves. Their internal peaceableness so contributed to population increase as to insure the spread of their civilization among many millions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C. the highest mass civilization on Urantia was in central and northern China. The yellow man was first to achieve a racial solidarity — the first to attain a large-scale cultural, social, and political civilization. (885.6) 79:6.9 The Chinese of 15,000 B.C. were aggressive militarists; they had not been weakened by an overreverence for the past, and numbering less than twelve million, they formed a compact body speaking a common language. During this age they built up a real nation, much more united and homogeneous than their political unions of historic times. (885.7) 79:6.10 3. Spiritual. During the age of Andite migrations the Chinese were among the more spiritual peoples of earth. Long adherence to the worship of the One Truth proclaimed by Singlangton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stimulus of a progressive and advanced religion is often a decisive factor in cultural development; as India languished, so China forged ahead under the invigorating stimulus of a religion in which truth was enshrined as the supreme Deity. (885.8) 79:6.11 This worship of truth was provocative of research and fearless exploration of the laws of nature and the potentials of mankind. The Chinese of even six thousand years ago were still keen students and aggressive in their pursuit of truth. (885.9) 79:6.12 4. Geographic. China is protected by the mountains to the west and the Pacific to the east. Only in the north is the way open to attack, and from the days of the red man to the coming of the later descendants of the Andites, the north was not occupied by any aggressive race. (886.1) 79:6.13 And but for the mountain barriers and the later decline in spiritual culture, the yellow race undoubtedly would have attracted to itself the larger part of the Andite migrations from Turkestan and unquestionably would have quickly dominated world civilization. 7. The Andites Enter China (886.2) 79:7.1 About fifteen thousand years ago the Andites, in considerable numbers, were traversing the pass of Ti Tao and spreading out over the upper valley of the Yellow River among the Chinese settlements of Kansu. Presently they penetrated eastward to Honan, where the most progressive settlements were situated. This infiltration from the west was about half Andonite and half Andite. (886.3) 79:7.2 The northern centers of culture along the Yellow River had always been more progressive than the southern settlements on the Yangtze. Within a few thousand years after the arrival of even the small numbers of these superior mortals, the settlements along the Yellow River had forged ahead of the Yangtze villages and had achieved an advanced position over their brethren in the south which has ever since been maintained. (886.4) 79:7.3 It was not that there were so many of the Andites, nor that their culture was so superior, but amalgamation with them produced a more versatile stock. The northern Chinese received just enough of the Andite strain to mildly stimulate their innately able minds but not enough to fire them with the restless, exploratory curiosity so characteristic of the northern white races. This more limited infusion of Andite inheritance was less disturbing to the innate stability of the Sangik type. (886.5) 79:7.4 The later waves of Andites brought with them certain of the cultural advances of Mesopotamia; this is especially true of the last waves of migration from the west. They greatly improved the economic and educational practices of the northern Chinese; and while their influence upon the religious culture of the yellow race was short-lived, their later descendants contributed much to a subsequent spiritual awakening. But the Andite traditions of the beauty of Eden and Dalamatia did influence Chinese traditions; early Chinese legends place “the land of the gods” in the west. (886.6) 79:7.5 The Chinese people did not begin to build cities and engage in manufacture until after 10,000 B.C., subsequent to the climatic changes in Turkestan and the arrival of the later Andite immigrants. The infusion of this new blood did not add so much to the civilization of the yellow man as it stimulated the further and rapid development of the latent tendencies of the superior Chinese stocks. From Honan to Shensi the potentials of an advanced civilization were coming to fruit. Metalworking and all the arts of manufacture date from these days. (886.7) 79:7.6 The similarities between certain of the early Chinese and Mesopotamian methods of time reckoning, astronomy, and governmental administration were due to the commercial relationships between these two remotely situated centers. Chinese merchants traveled the overland routes through Turkestan to Mesopotamia even in the days of the Sumerians. Nor was this exchange one-sided — the valley of the Euphrates benefited considerably thereby, as did the peoples of the Gangetic plain. But the climatic changes and the nomadic invasions of the third millennium before Christ greatly reduced the volume of trade passing over the caravan trails of central Asia. 8. Later Chinese Civilization (887.1) 79:8.1 While the red man suffered from too much warfare, it is not altogether amiss to say that the development of statehood among the Chinese was delayed by the thoroughness of their conquest of Asia. They had a great potential of racial solidarity, but it failed properly to develop because the continuous driving stimulus of the ever-present danger of external aggression was lacking. (887.2) 79:8.2 With the completion of the conquest of eastern Asia the ancient military state gradually disintegrated — past wars were forgotten. Of the epic struggle with the red race there persisted only the hazy tradition of an ancient contest with the archer peoples. The Chinese early turned to agricultural pursuits, which contributed further to their pacific tendencies, while a population well below the land-man ratio for agriculture still further contributed to the growing peacefulness of the country. (887.3) 79:8.3 Consciousness of past achievements (somewhat diminished in the present), the conservatism of an overwhelmingly agricultural people, and a well-developed family life equaled the birth of ancestor veneration, culminating in the custom of so honoring the men of the past as to border on worship. A very similar attitude prevailed among the white races in Europe for some five hundred years following the disruption of Greco-Roman civilization.* (887.4) 79:8.4 The belief in, and worship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlangton never entirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth became overshadowed by a growing tendency to venerate that which was already established. Slowly the genius of the yellow race became diverted from the pursuit of the unknown to the preservation of the known. And this is the reason for the stagnation of what had been the world’s most rapidly progressing civilization. (887.5) 79:8.5 Between 4000 and 500 B.C. the political reunification of the yellow race was consummated, but the cultural union of the Yangtze and Yellow river centers had already been effected. This political reunification of the later tribal groups was not without conflict, but the societal opinion of war remained low; ancestor worship, increasing dialects, and no call for military action for thousands upon thousands of years had rendered this people ultrapeaceful. (887.6) 79:8.6 Despite failure to fulfill the promise of an early development of advanced statehood, the yellow race did progressively move forward in the realization of the arts of civilization, especially in the realms of agriculture and horticulture. The hydraulic problems faced by the agriculturists in Shensi and Honan demanded group co-operation for solution. Such irrigation and soil-conservation difficulties contributed in no small measure to the development of interdependence with the consequent promotion of peace among farming groups. (887.7) 79:8.7 Soon developments in writing, together with the establishment of schools, contributed to the dissemination of knowledge on a previously unequaled scale. But the cumbersome nature of the ideographic writing system placed a numerical limit upon the learned classes despite the early appearance of printing. And above all else, the process of social standardization and religio-philosophic dogmatization continued apace. The religious development of ancestor veneration became further complicated by a flood of superstitions involving nature worship, but lingering vestiges of a real concept of God remained preserved in the imperial worship of Shang-ti. (888.1) 79:8.8 The great weakness of ancestor veneration is that it promotes a backward-looking philosophy. However wise it may be to glean wisdom from the past, it is folly to regard the past as the exclusive source of truth. Truth is relative and expanding; it lives always in the present, achieving new expression in each generation of men — even in each human life. (888.2) 79:8.9 The great strength in a veneration of ancestry is the value that such an attitude places upon the family. The amazing stability and persistence of Chinese culture is a consequence of the paramount position accorded the family, for civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family; and in China the family attained a social importance, even a religious significance, approached by few other peoples. (888.3) 79:8.10 The filial devotion and family loyalty exacted by the growing cult of ancestor worship insured the building up of superior family relationships and of enduring family groups, all of which facilitated the following factors in the preservation of civilization: (888.4) 79:8.11 1. Conservation of property and wealth. (888.5) 79:8.12 2. Pooling of the experience of more than one generation. (888.6) 79:8.13 3. Efficient education of children in the arts and sciences of the past. (888.7) 79:8.14 4. Development of a strong sense of duty, the enhancement of morality, and the augmentation of ethical sensitivity. (888.8) 79:8.15 The formative period of Chinese civilization, opening with the coming of the Andites, continues on down to the great ethical, moral, and semireligious awakening of the sixth century before Christ. And Chinese tradition preserves the hazy record of the evolutionary past; the transition from mother- to father-family, the establishment of agriculture, the development of architecture, the initiation of industry — all these are successively narrated. And this story presents, with greater accuracy than any other similar account, the picture of the magnificent ascent of a superior people from the levels of barbarism. During this time they passed from a primitive agricultural society to a higher social organization embracing cities, manufacture, metalworking, commercial exchange, government, writing, mathematics, art, science, and printing. (888.9) 79:8.16 And so the ancient civilization of the yellow race has persisted down through the centuries. It is almost forty thousand years since the first important advances were made in Chinese culture, and though there have been many retrogressions, the civilization of the sons of Han comes the nearest of all to presenting an unbroken picture of continual progression right on down to the times of the twentieth century. The mechanical and religious developments of the white races have been of a high order, but they have never excelled the Chinese in family loyalty, group ethics, or personal morality. (888.10) 79:8.17 This ancient culture has contributed much to human happiness; millions of human beings have lived and died, blessed by its achievements. For centuries this great civilization has rested upon the laurels of the past, but it is even now reawakening to envision anew the transcendent goals of mortal existence, once again to take up the unremitting struggle for never-ending progress. (888.11) 79:8.18 [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]
Adam and Eve (828.1) 74:0.1 ADAM AND EVE arrived on Urantia, from the year A.D. 1934, 37,848 years ago. It was in midseason when the Garden was in the height of bloom that they arrived. At high noon and unannounced, the two seraphic transports, accompanied by the Jerusem personnel intrusted with the transportation of the biologic uplifters to Urantia, settled slowly to the surface of the revolving planet in the vicinity of the temple of the Universal Father. All the work of rematerializing the bodies of Adam and Eve was carried on within the precincts of this newly created shrine. And from the time of their arrival ten days passed before they were re-created in dual human form for presentation as the world’s new rulers. They regained consciousness simultaneously. The Material Sons and Daughters always serve together. It is the essence of their service at all times and in all places never to be separated. They are designed to work in pairs; seldom do they function alone. 1. Adam and Eve on Jerusem (828.2) 74:1.1 The Planetary Adam and Eve of Urantia were members of the senior corps of Material Sons on Jerusem, being jointly number 14,311. They belonged to the third physical series and were a little more than eight feet in height. (828.3) 74:1.2 At the time Adam was chosen to come to Urantia, he was employed, with his mate, in the trial-and-testing physical laboratories of Jerusem. For more than fifteen thousand years they had been directors of the division of experimental energy as applied to the modification of living forms. Long before this they had been teachers in the citizenship schools for new arrivals on Jerusem. And all this should be borne in mind in connection with the narration of their subsequent conduct on Urantia. (828.4) 74:1.3 When the proclamation was issued calling for volunteers for the mission of Adamic adventure on Urantia, the entire senior corps of Material Sons and Daughters volunteered. The Melchizedek examiners, with the approval of Lanaforge and the Most Highs of Edentia, finally selected the Adam and Eve who subsequently came to function as the biologic uplifters of Urantia. (828.5) 74:1.4 Adam and Eve had remained loyal to Michael during the Lucifer rebellion; nevertheless, the pair were called before the System Sovereign and his entire cabinet for examination and instruction. The details of Urantia affairs were fully presented; they were exhaustively instructed as to the plans to be pursued in accepting the responsibilities of rulership on such a strife-torn world. They were put under joint oaths of allegiance to the Most Highs of Edentia and to Michael of Salvington. And they were duly advised to regard themselves as subject to the Urantia corps of Melchizedek receivers until that governing body should see fit to relinquish rule on the world of their assignment. (829.1) 74:1.5 This Jerusem pair left behind them on the capital of Satania and elsewhere, one hundred offspring — fifty sons and fifty daughters — magnificent creatures who had escaped the pitfalls of progression, and who were all in commission as faithful stewards of universe trust at the time of their parents’ departure for Urantia. And they were all present in the beautiful temple of the Material Sons attendant upon the farewell exercises associated with the last ceremonies of the bestowal acceptance. These children accompanied their parents to the dematerialization headquarters of their order and were the last to bid them farewell and divine speed as they fell asleep in the personality lapse of consciousness which precedes the preparation for seraphic transport. The children spent some time together at the family rendezvous rejoicing that their parents were soon to become the visible heads, in reality the sole rulers, of planet 606 in the system of Satania. (829.2) 74:1.6 And thus did Adam and Eve leave Jerusem amidst the acclaim and well-wishing of its citizens. They went forth to their new responsibilities adequately equipped and fully instructed concerning every duty and danger to be encountered on Urantia. 2. Arrival of Adam and Eve (829.3) 74:2.1 Adam and Eve fell asleep on Jerusem, and when they awakened in the Father’s temple on Urantia in the presence of the mighty throng assembled to welcome them, they were face to face with two beings of whom they had heard much, Van and his faithful associate Amadon. These two heroes of the Caligastia secession were the first to welcome them in their new garden home. (829.4) 74:2.2 The tongue of Eden was an Andonic dialect as spoken by Amadon. Van and Amadon had markedly improved this language by creating a new alphabet of twenty-four letters, and they had hoped to see it become the tongue of Urantia as the Edenic culture would spread throughout the world. Adam and Eve had fully mastered this human dialect before they departed from Jerusem so that this son of Andon heard the exalted ruler of his world address him in his own tongue. (829.5) 74:2.3 And on that day there was great excitement and joy throughout Eden as the runners went in great haste to the rendezvous of the carrier pigeons assembled from near and far, shouting: “Let loose the birds; let them carry the word that the promised Son has come.” Hundreds of believer settlements had faithfully, year after year, kept up the supply of these home-reared pigeons for just such an occasion. (829.6) 74:2.4 As the news of Adam’s arrival spread abroad, thousands of the near-by tribesmen accepted the teachings of Van and Amadon, while for months and months pilgrims continued to pour into Eden to welcome Adam and Eve and to do homage to their unseen Father. (829.7) 74:2.5 Soon after their awakening, Adam and Eve were escorted to the formal reception on the great mound to the north of the temple. This natural hill had been enlarged and made ready for the installation of the world’s new rulers. Here, at noon, the Urantia reception committee welcomed this Son and Daughter of the system of Satania. Amadon was chairman of this committee, which consisted of twelve members embracing a representative of each of the six Sangik races; the acting chief of the midwayers; Annan, a loyal daughter and spokesman for the Nodites; Noah, the son of the architect and builder of the Garden and executive of his deceased father’s plans; and the two resident Life Carriers. (830.1) 74:2.6 The next act was the delivery of the charge of planetary custody to Adam and Eve by the senior Melchizedek, chief of the council of receivership on Urantia. The Material Son and Daughter took the oath of allegiance to the Most Highs of Norlatiadek and to Michael of Nebadon and were proclaimed rulers of Urantia by Van, who thereby relinquished the titular authority which for over one hundred and fifty thousand years he had held by virtue of the action of the Melchizedek receivers. (830.2) 74:2.7 And Adam and Eve were invested with kingly robes on this occasion, the time of their formal induction into world rulership. Not all of the arts of Dalamatia had been lost to the world; weaving was still practiced in the days of Eden. (830.3) 74:2.8 Then was heard the archangels’ proclamation, and the broadcast voice of Gabriel decreed the second judgment roll call of Urantia and the resurrection of the sleeping survivors of the second dispensation of grace and mercy on 606 of Satania. The dispensation of the Prince has passed; the age of Adam, the third planetary epoch, opens amidst scenes of simple grandeur; and the new rulers of Urantia start their reign under seemingly favorable conditions, notwithstanding the world-wide confusion occasioned by lack of the co-operation of their predecessor in authority on the planet.* 3. Adam and Eve Learn About the Planet (830.4) 74:3.1 And now, after their formal installation, Adam and Eve became painfully aware of their planetary isolation. Silent were the familiar broadcasts, and absent were all the circuits of extraplanetary communication. Their Jerusem fellows had gone to worlds running along smoothly with a well-established Planetary Prince and an experienced staff ready to receive them and competent to co-operate with them during their early experience on such worlds. But on Urantia rebellion had changed everything. Here the Planetary Prince was very much present, and though shorn of most of his power to work evil, he was still able to make the task of Adam and Eve difficult and to some extent hazardous. It was a serious and disillusioned Son and Daughter of Jerusem who walked that night through the Garden under the shining of the full moon, discussing plans for the next day. (830.5) 74:3.2 Thus ended the first day of Adam and Eve on isolated Urantia, the confused planet of the Caligastia betrayal; and they walked and talked far into the night, their first night on earth — and it was so lonely. (830.6) 74:3.3 Adam’s second day on earth was spent in session with the planetary receivers and the advisory council. From the Melchizedeks, and their associates, Adam and Eve learned more about the details of the Caligastia rebellion and the result of that upheaval upon the world’s progress. And it was, on the whole, a disheartening story, this long recital of the mismanagement of world affairs. They learned all the facts regarding the utter collapse of the Caligastia scheme for accelerating the process of social evolution. They also arrived at a full realization of the folly of attempting to achieve planetary advancement independently of the divine plan of progression. And thus ended a sad but enlightening day — their second on Urantia. (831.1) 74:3.4 The third day was devoted to an inspection of the Garden. From the large passenger birds — the fandors — Adam and Eve looked down upon the vast stretches of the Garden while being carried through the air over this, the most beautiful spot on earth. This day of inspection ended with an enormous banquet in honor of all who had labored to create this garden of Edenic beauty and grandeur. And again, late into the night of their third day, the Son and his mate walked in the Garden and talked about the immensity of their problems. (831.2) 74:3.5 On the fourth day Adam and Eve addressed the Garden assembly. From the inaugural mount they spoke to the people concerning their plans for the rehabilitation of the world and outlined the methods whereby they would seek to redeem the social culture of Urantia from the low levels to which it had fallen as a result of sin and rebellion. This was a great day, and it closed with a feast for the council of men and women who had been selected to assume responsibilities in the new administration of world affairs. Take note! women as well as men were in this group, and that was the first time such a thing had occurred on earth since the days of Dalamatia. It was an astounding innovation to behold Eve, a woman, sharing the honors and responsibilities of world affairs with a man. And thus ended the fourth day on earth. (831.3) 74:3.6 The fifth day was occupied with the organization of the temporary government, the administration which was to function until the Melchizedek receivers should leave Urantia. (831.4) 74:3.7 The sixth day was devoted to an inspection of the numerous types of men and animals. Along the walls eastward in Eden, Adam and Eve were escorted all day, viewing the animal life of the planet and arriving at a better understanding as to what must be done to bring order out of the confusion of a world inhabited by such a variety of living creatures. (831.5) 74:3.8 It greatly surprised those who accompanied Adam on this trip to observe how fully he understood the nature and function of the thousands upon thousands of animals shown him. The instant he glanced at an animal, he would indicate its nature and behavior. Adam could give names descriptive of the origin, nature, and function of all material creatures on sight. Those who conducted him on this tour of inspection did not know that the world’s new ruler was one of the most expert anatomists of all Satania; and Eve was equally proficient. Adam amazed his associates by describing hosts of living things too small to be seen by human eyes. (831.6) 74:3.9 When the sixth day of their sojourn on earth was over, Adam and Eve rested for the first time in their new home in “the east of Eden.” The first six days of the Urantia adventure had been very busy, and they looked forward with great pleasure to an entire day of freedom from all activities. (831.7) 74:3.10 But circumstances dictated otherwise. The experience of the day just past in which Adam had so intelligently and so exhaustively discussed the animal life of Urantia, together with his masterly inaugural address and his charming manner, had so won the hearts and overcome the intellects of the Garden dwellers that they were not only wholeheartedly disposed to accept the newly arrived Son and Daughter of Jerusem as rulers, but the majority were about ready to fall down and worship them as gods. 4. The First Upheaval (832.1) 74:4.1 That night, the night following the sixth day, while Adam and Eve slumbered, strange things were transpiring in the vicinity of the Father’s temple in the central sector of Eden. There, under the rays of the mellow moon, hundreds of enthusiastic and excited men and women listened for hours to the impassioned pleas of their leaders. They meant well, but they simply could not understand the simplicity of the fraternal and democratic manner of their new rulers. And long before daybreak the new and temporary administrators of world affairs reached a virtually unanimous conclusion that Adam and his mate were altogether too modest and unassuming. They decided that Divinity had descended to earth in bodily form, that Adam and Eve were in reality gods or else so near such an estate as to be worthy of reverent worship. (832.2) 74:4.2 The amazing events of the first six days of Adam and Eve on earth were entirely too much for the unprepared minds of even the world’s best men; their heads were in a whirl; they were swept along with the proposal to bring the noble pair up to the Father’s temple at high noon in order that everyone might bow down in respectful worship and prostrate themselves in humble submission. And the Garden dwellers were really sincere in all of this. (832.3) 74:4.3 Van protested. Amadon was absent, being in charge of the guard of honor which had remained behind with Adam and Eve overnight. But Van’s protest was swept aside. He was told that he was likewise too modest, too unassuming; that he was not far from a god himself, else how had he lived so long on earth, and how had he brought about such a great event as the advent of Adam? And as the excited Edenites were about to seize him and carry him up to the mount for adoration, Van made his way out through the throng and, being able to communicate with the midwayers, sent their leader in great haste to Adam. (832.4) 74:4.4 It was near the dawn of their seventh day on earth that Adam and Eve heard the startling news of the proposal of these well-meaning but misguided mortals; and then, even while the passenger birds were swiftly winging to bring them to the temple, the midwayers, being able to do such things, transported Adam and Eve to the Father’s temple. It was early on the morning of this seventh day and from the mount of their so recent reception that Adam held forth in explanation of the orders of divine sonship and made clear to these earth minds that only the Father and those whom he designates may be worshiped. Adam made it plain that he would accept any honor and receive all respect, but worship never! (832.5) 74:4.5 It was a momentous day, and just before noon, about the time of the arrival of the seraphic messenger bearing the Jerusem acknowledgment of the installation of the world’s rulers, Adam and Eve, moving apart from the throng, pointed to the Father’s temple and said: “Go you now to the material emblem of the Father’s invisible presence and bow down in worship of him who made us all and who keeps us living. And let this act be the sincere pledge that you never will again be tempted to worship anyone but God.” They all did as Adam directed. The Material Son and Daughter stood alone on the mount with bowed heads while the people prostrated themselves about the temple. (832.6) 74:4.6 And this was the origin of the Sabbath-day tradition. Always in Eden the seventh day was devoted to the noontide assembly at the temple; long it was the custom to devote this day to self-culture. The forenoon was devoted to physical improvement, the noontime to spiritual worship, the afternoon to mind culture, while the evening was spent in social rejoicing. This was never the law in Eden, but it was the custom as long as the Adamic administration held sway on earth. 5. Adam’s Administration (833.1) 74:5.1 For almost seven years after Adam’s arrival the Melchizedek receivers remained on duty, but the time finally came when they turned the administration of world affairs over to Adam and returned to Jerusem. (833.2) 74:5.2 The farewell of the receivers occupied the whole of a day, and during the evening the individual Melchizedeks gave Adam and Eve their parting advice and best wishes. Adam had several times requested his advisers to remain on earth with him, but always were these petitions denied. The time had come when the Material Sons must assume full responsibility for the conduct of world affairs. And so, at midnight, the seraphic transports of Satania left the planet with fourteen beings for Jerusem, the translation of Van and Amadon occurring simultaneously with the departure of the twelve Melchizedeks. (833.3) 74:5.3 All went fairly well for a time on Urantia, and it appeared that Adam would, eventually, be able to develop some plan for promoting the gradual extension of the Edenic civilization. Pursuant to the advice of the Melchizedeks, he began to foster the arts of manufacture with the idea of developing trade relations with the outside world. When Eden was disrupted, there were over one hundred primitive manufacturing plants in operation, and extensive trade relations with the near-by tribes had been established. (833.4) 74:5.4 For ages Adam and Eve had been instructed in the technique of improving a world in readiness for their specialized contributions to the advancement of evolutionary civilization; but now they were face to face with pressing problems, such as the establishment of law and order in a world of savages, barbarians, and semicivilized human beings. Aside from the cream of the earth’s population, assembled in the Garden, only a few groups, here and there, were at all ready for the reception of the Adamic culture. (833.5) 74:5.5 Adam made a heroic and determined effort to establish a world government, but he met with stubborn resistance at every turn. Adam had already put in operation a system of group control throughout Eden and had federated all of these companies into the Edenic league. But trouble, serious trouble, ensued when he went outside the Garden and sought to apply these ideas to the outlying tribes. The moment Adam’s associates began to work outside the Garden, they met the direct and well-planned resistance of Caligastia and Daligastia. The fallen Prince had been deposed as world ruler, but he had not been removed from the planet. He was still present on earth and able, at least to some extent, to resist all of Adam’s plans for the rehabilitation of human society. Adam tried to warn the races against Caligastia, but the task was made very difficult because his archenemy was invisible to the eyes of mortals. (833.6) 74:5.6 Even among the Edenites there were those confused minds that leaned toward the Caligastia teaching of unbridled personal liberty; and they caused Adam no end of trouble; always were they upsetting the best-laid plans for orderly progression and substantial development. He was finally compelled to withdraw his program for immediate socialization; he fell back on Van’s method of organization, dividing the Edenites into companies of one hundred with captains over each and with lieutenants in charge of groups of ten. (834.1) 74:5.7 Adam and Eve had come to institute representative government in the place of monarchial, but they found no government worthy of the name on the face of the whole earth. For the time being Adam abandoned all effort to establish representative government, and before the collapse of the Edenic regime he succeeded in establishing almost one hundred outlying trade and social centers where strong individuals ruled in his name. Most of these centers had been organized aforetime by Van and Amadon. (834.2) 74:5.8 The sending of ambassadors from one tribe to another dates from the times of Adam. This was a great forward step in the evolution of government. 6. Home Life of Adam and Eve (834.3) 74:6.1 The Adamic family grounds embraced a little over five square miles. Immediately surrounding this homesite, provision had been made for the care of more than three hundred thousand of the pure-line offspring. But only the first unit of the projected buildings was ever constructed. Before the size of the Adamic family outgrew these early provisions, the whole Edenic plan had been disrupted and the Garden vacated. (834.4) 74:6.2 Adamson was the first-born of the violet race of Urantia, being followed by his sister and Eveson, the second son of Adam and Eve. Eve was the mother of five children before the Melchizedeks left — three sons and two daughters. The next two were twins. She bore sixty-three children, thirty-two daughters and thirty-one sons, before the default. When Adam and Eve left the Garden, their family consisted of four generations numbering 1,647 pure-line descendants. They had forty-two children after leaving the Garden besides the two offspring of joint parentage with the mortal stock of earth. And this does not include the Adamic parentage to the Nodite and evolutionary races. (834.5) 74:6.3 The Adamic children did not take milk from animals when they ceased to nurse the mother’s breast at one year of age. Eve had access to the milk of a great variety of nuts and to the juices of many fruits, and knowing full well the chemistry and energy of these foods, she suitably combined them for the nourishment of her children until the appearance of teeth. (834.6) 74:6.4 While cooking was universally employed outside of the immediate Adamic sector of Eden, there was no cooking in Adam’s household. They found their foods — fruits, nuts, and cereals — ready prepared as they ripened. They ate once a day, shortly after noontime. Adam and Eve also imbibed “light and energy” direct from certain space emanations in conjunction with the ministry of the tree of life. (834.7) 74:6.5 The bodies of Adam and Eve gave forth a shimmer of light, but they always wore clothing in conformity with the custom of their associates. Though wearing very little during the day, at eventide they donned night wraps. The origin of the traditional halo encircling the heads of supposed pious and holy men dates back to the days of Adam and Eve. Since the light emanations of their bodies were so largely obscured by clothing, only the radiating glow from their heads was discernible. The descendants of Adamson always thus portrayed their concept of individuals believed to be extraordinary in spiritual development. (834.8) 74:6.6 Adam and Eve could communicate with each other and with their immediate children over a distance of about fifty miles. This thought exchange was effected by means of the delicate gas chambers located in close proximity to their brain structures. By this mechanism they could send and receive thought oscillations. But this power was instantly suspended upon the mind’s surrender to the discord and disruption of evil. (835.1) 74:6.7 The Adamic children attended their own schools until they were sixteen, the younger being taught by the elder. The little folks changed activities every thirty minutes, the older every hour. And it was certainly a new sight on Urantia to observe these children of Adam and Eve at play, joyous and exhilarating activity just for the sheer fun of it. The play and humor of the present-day races are largely derived from the Adamic stock. The Adamites all had a great appreciation of music as well as a keen sense of humor. (835.2) 74:6.8 The average age of betrothal was eighteen, and these youths then entered upon a two years’ course of instruction in preparation for the assumption of marital responsibilities. At twenty they were eligible for marriage; and after marriage they began their lifework or entered upon special preparation therefor. (835.3) 74:6.9 The practice of some subsequent nations of permitting the royal families, supposedly descended from the gods, to marry brother to sister, dates from the traditions of the Adamic offspring — mating, as they must needs, with one another. The marriage ceremonies of the first and second generations of the Garden were always performed by Adam and Eve. 7. Life in the Garden (835.4) 74:7.1 The children of Adam, except for four years’ attendance at the western schools, lived and worked in the “east of Eden.” They were trained intellectually until they were sixteen in accordance with the methods of the Jerusem schools. From sixteen to twenty they were taught in the Urantia schools at the other end of the Garden, serving there also as teachers in the lower grades. (835.5) 74:7.2 The entire purpose of the western school system of the Garden was socialization. The forenoon periods of recess were devoted to practical horticulture and agriculture, the afternoon periods to competitive play. The evenings were employed in social intercourse and the cultivation of personal friendships. Religious and sexual training were regarded as the province of the home, the duty of parents. (835.6) 74:7.3 The teaching in these schools included instruction regarding: (835.7) 74:7.4 1. Health and the care of the body. (835.8) 74:7.5 2. The golden rule, the standard of social intercourse. (835.9) 74:7.6 3. The relation of individual rights to group rights and community obligations. (835.10) 74:7.7 4. History and culture of the various earth races. (835.11) 74:7.8 5. Methods of advancing and improving world trade. (835.12) 74:7.9 6. Co-ordination of conflicting duties and emotions. (835.13) 74:7.10 7. The cultivation of play, humor, and competitive substitutes for physical fighting. (835.14) 74:7.11 The schools, in fact every activity of the Garden, were always open to visitors. Unarmed observers were freely admitted to Eden for short visits. To sojourn in the Garden a Urantian had to be “adopted.” He received instructions in the plan and purpose of the Adamic bestowal, signified his intention to adhere to this mission, and then made declaration of loyalty to the social rule of Adam and the spiritual sovereignty of the Universal Father. (836.1) 74:7.12 The laws of the Garden were based on the older codes of Dalamatia and were promulgated under seven heads: (836.2) 74:7.13 1. The laws of health and sanitation. (836.3) 74:7.14 2. The social regulations of the Garden. (836.4) 74:7.15 3. The code of trade and commerce. (836.5) 74:7.16 4. The laws of fair play and competition. (836.6) 74:7.17 5. The laws of home life. (836.7) 74:7.18 6. The civil codes of the golden rule. (836.8) 74:7.19 7. The seven commands of supreme moral rule. (836.9) 74:7.20 The moral law of Eden was little different from the seven commandments of Dalamatia. But the Adamites taught many additional reasons for these commands; for instance, regarding the injunction against murder, the indwelling of the Thought Adjuster was presented as an additional reason for not destroying human life. They taught that “whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.” (836.10) 74:7.21 The public worship hour of Eden was noon; sunset was the hour of family worship. Adam did his best to discourage the use of set prayers, teaching that effective prayer must be wholly individual, that it must be the “desire of the soul”; but the Edenites continued to use the prayers and forms handed down from the times of Dalamatia. Adam also endeavored to substitute the offerings of the fruit of the land for the blood sacrifices in the religious ceremonies but had made little progress before the disruption of the Garden. (836.11) 74:7.22 Adam endeavored to teach the races sex equality. The way Eve worked by the side of her husband made a profound impression upon all dwellers in the Garden. Adam definitely taught them that the woman, equally with the man, contributes those life factors which unite to form a new being. Theretofore, mankind had presumed that all procreation resided in the “loins of the father.” They had looked upon the mother as being merely a provision for nurturing the unborn and nursing the newborn. (836.12) 74:7.23 Adam taught his contemporaries all they could comprehend, but that was not very much, comparatively speaking. Nevertheless, the more intelligent of the races of earth looked forward eagerly to the time when they would be permitted to intermarry with the superior children of the violet race. And what a different world Urantia would have become if this great plan of uplifting the races had been carried out! Even as it was, tremendous gains resulted from the small amount of the blood of this imported race which the evolutionary peoples incidentally secured. (836.13) 74:7.24 And thus did Adam work for the welfare and uplift of the world of his sojourn. But it was a difficult task to lead these mixed and mongrel peoples in the better way. 8. The Legend of Creation (836.14) 74:8.1 The story of the creation of Urantia in six days was based on the tradition that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their initial survey of the Garden. This circumstance lent almost sacred sanction to the time period of the week, which had been originally introduced by the Dalamatians. Adam’s spending six days inspecting the Garden and formulating preliminary plans for organization was not prearranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choosing of the seventh day for worship was wholly incidental to the facts herewith narrated. (837.1) 74:8.2 The legend of the making of the world in six days was an afterthought, in fact, more than thirty thousand years afterwards. One feature of the narrative, the sudden appearance of the sun and moon, may have taken origin in the traditions of the onetime sudden emergence of the world from a dense space cloud of minute matter which had long obscured both sun and moon. (837.2) 74:8.3 The story of creating Eve out of Adam’s rib is a confused condensation of the Adamic arrival and the celestial surgery connected with the interchange of living substances associated with the coming of the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince more than four hundred and fifty thousand years previously. (837.3) 74:8.4 The majority of the world’s peoples have been influenced by the tradition that Adam and Eve had physical forms created for them upon their arrival on Urantia. The belief in man’s having been created from clay was well-nigh universal in the Eastern Hemisphere; this tradition can be traced from the Philippine Islands around the world to Africa. And many groups accepted this story of man’s clay origin by some form of special creation in the place of the earlier beliefs in progressive creation — evolution. (837.4) 74:8.5 Away from the influences of Dalamatia and Eden, mankind tended toward the belief in the gradual ascent of the human race. The fact of evolution is not a modern discovery; the ancients understood the slow and evolutionary character of human progress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this despite their proximity to Mesopotamia. Although the various races of earth became sadly mixed up in their notions of evolution, nevertheless, many of the primitive tribes believed and taught that they were the descendants of various animals. Primitive peoples made a practice of selecting for their “totems” the animals of their supposed ancestry. Certain North American Indian tribes believed they originated from beavers and coyotes. Certain African tribes teach that they are descended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the parrot. (837.5) 74:8.6 The Babylonians, because of immediate contact with the remnants of the civilization of the Adamites, enlarged and embellished the story of man’s creation; they taught that he had descended directly from the gods. They held to an aristocratic origin for the race which was incompatible with even the doctrine of creation out of clay. (837.6) 74:8.7 The Old Testament account of creation dates from long after the time of Moses; he never taught the Hebrews such a distorted story. But he did present a simple and condensed narrative of creation to the Israelites, hoping thereby to augment his appeal to worship the Creator, the Universal Father, whom he called the Lord God of Israel. (837.7) 74:8.8 In his early teachings, Moses very wisely did not attempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the supreme teacher of the Hebrews, the stories of Adam became intimately associated with those of creation. That the earlier traditions recognized pre-Adamic civilization is clearly shown by the fact that later editors, intending to eradicate all reference to human affairs before Adam’s time, neglected to remove the telltale reference to Cain’s emigration to the “land of Nod,” where he took himself a wife. (838.1) 74:8.9 The Hebrews had no written language in general usage for a long time after they reached Palestine. They learned the use of an alphabet from the neighboring Philistines, who were political refugees from the higher civilization of Crete. The Hebrews did little writing until about 900 B.C., and having no written language until such a late date, they had several different stories of creation in circulation, but after the Babylonian captivity they inclined more toward accepting a modified Mesopotamian version. (838.2) 74:8.10 Jewish tradition became crystallized about Moses, and because he endeavored to trace the lineage of Abraham back to Adam, the Jews assumed that Adam was the first of all mankind. Yahweh was the creator, and since Adam was supposed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to making Adam. And then the tradition of Adam’s six days got woven into the story, with the result that almost a thousand years after Moses’ sojourn on earth the tradition of creation in six days was written out and subsequently credited to him. (838.3) 74:8.11 When the Jewish priests returned to Jerusalem, they had already completed the writing of their narrative of the beginning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a recently discovered story of creation written by Moses. But the contemporary Hebrews of around 500 B.C. did not consider these writings to be divine revelations; they looked upon them much as later peoples regard mythological narratives. (838.4) 74:8.12 This spurious document, reputed to be the teachings of Moses, was brought to the attention of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it translated into Greek by a commission of seventy scholars for his new library at Alexandria. And so this account found its place among those writings which subsequently became a part of the later collections of the “sacred scriptures” of the Hebrew and Christian religions. And through identification with these theological systems, such concepts for a long time profoundly influenced the philosophy of many Occidental peoples. (838.5) 74:8.13 The Christian teachers perpetuated the belief in the fiat creation of the human race, and all this led directly to the formation of the hypothesis of a onetime golden age of utopian bliss and the theory of the fall of man or superman which accounted for the nonutopian condition of society. These outlooks on life and man’s place in the universe were at best discouraging since they were predicated upon a belief in retrogression rather than progression, as well as implying a vengeful Deity, who had vented wrath upon the human race in retribution for the errors of certain onetime planetary administrators. (838.6) 74:8.14 The “golden age” is a myth, but Eden was a fact, and the Garden civilization was actually overthrown. Adam and Eve carried on in the Garden for one hundred and seventeen years when, through the impatience of Eve and the errors of judgment of Adam, they presumed to turn aside from the ordained way, speedily bringing disaster upon themselves and ruinous retardation upon the developmental progression of all Urantia. (838.7) 74:8.15 [Narrated by Solonia, the seraphic “voice in the Garden.”]
Development of Modern Civilization (900.1) 81:0.1 REGARDLESS of the ups and downs of the miscarriage of the plans for world betterment projected in the missions of Caligastia and Adam, the basic organic evolution of the human species continued to carry the races forward in the scale of human progress and racial development. Evolution can be delayed but it cannot be stopped. (900.2) 81:0.2 The influence of the violet race, though in numbers smaller than had been planned, produced an advance in civilization which, since the days of Adam, has far exceeded the progress of mankind throughout its entire previous existence of almost a million years. 1. The Cradle of Civilization (900.3) 81:1.1 For about thirty-five thousand years after the days of Adam, the cradle of civilization was in southwestern Asia, extending from the Nile valley eastward and slightly to the north across northern Arabia, through Mesopotamia, and on into Turkestan. And climate was the decisive factor in the establishment of civilization in that area. (900.4) 81:1.2 It was the great climatic and geologic changes in northern Africa and western Asia that terminated the early migrations of the Adamites, barring them from Europe by the expanded Mediterranean and diverting the stream of migration north and east into Turkestan. By the time of the completion of these land elevations and associated climatic changes, about 15,000 B.C., civilization had settled down to a world-wide stalemate except for the cultural ferments and biologic reserves of the Andites still confined by mountains to the east in Asia and by the expanding forests in Europe to the west. (900.5) 81:1.3 Climatic evolution is now about to accomplish what all other efforts had failed to do, that is, to compel Eurasian man to abandon hunting for the more advanced callings of herding and farming. Evolution may be slow, but it is terribly effective. (900.6) 81:1.4 Since slaves were so generally employed by the earlier agriculturists, the farmer was formerly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was considered menial to till the soil; wherefore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the greatest of all blessings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sacrifices of the pastoral life were held in greater esteem than the offerings of agriculture. (900.7) 81:1.5 Man ordinarily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by transition through the era of the herder, and this was also true among the Andites, but more often the evolutionary coercion of climatic necessity would cause whole tribes to pass directly from hunters to successful farmers. But this phenomenon of passing immediately from hunting to agriculture only occurred in those regions where there was a high degree of race mixture with the violet stock. (901.1) 81:1.6 The evolutionary peoples (notably the Chinese) early learned to plant seeds and to cultivate crops through observation of the sprouting of seeds accidentally moistened or which had been put in graves as food for the departed. But throughout southwest Asia, along the fertile river bottoms and adjacent plains, the Andites were carrying out the improved agricultural techniques inherited from their ancestors, who had made farming and gardening the chief pursuits within the boundaries of the second garden. (901.2) 81:1.7 For thousands of years the descendants of Adam had grown wheat and barley, as improved in the Garden, throughout the highlands of the upper border of Mesopotamia. The descendants of Adam and Adamson here met, traded, and socially mingled. (901.3) 81:1.8 It was these enforced changes in living conditions which caused such a large proportion of the human race to become omnivorous in dietetic practice. And the combination of the wheat, rice, and vegetable diet with the flesh of the herds marked a great forward step in the health and vigor of these ancient peoples. 2. The Tools of Civilization (901.4) 81:2.1 The growth of culture is predicated upon the development of the tools of civilization. And the tools which man utilized in his ascent from savagery were effective just to the extent that they released man power for the accomplishment of higher tasks. (901.5) 81:2.2 You who now live amid latter-day scenes of budding culture and beginning progress in social affairs, who actually have some little spare time in which to think about society and civilization, must not overlook the fact that your early ancestors had little or no leisure which could be devoted to thoughtful reflection and social thinking. (901.6) 81:2.3 The first four great advances in human civilization were: (901.7) 81:2.4 1. The taming of fire. (901.8) 81:2.5 2. The domestication of animals. (901.9) 81:2.6 3. The enslavement of captives. (901.10) 81:2.7 4. Private property. (901.11) 81:2.8 While fire, the first great discovery, eventually unlocked the doors of the scientific world, it was of little value in this regard to primitive man. He refused to recognize natural causes as explanations for commonplace phenomena. (901.12) 81:2.9 When asked where fire came from, the simple story of Andon and the flint was soon replaced by the legend of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The ancients sought a supernatural explanation for all natural phenomena not within the range of their personal comprehension; and many moderns continue to do this. The depersonalization of so-called natural phenomena has required ages, and it is not yet completed. But the frank, honest, and fearless search for true causes gave birth to modern science: It turned astrology into astronomy, alchemy into chemistry, and magic into medicine. (901.13) 81:2.10 In the premachine age the only way in which man could accomplish work without doing it himself was to use an animal. Domestication of animals placed in his hands living tools, the intelligent use of which prepared the way for both agriculture and transportation. And without these animals man could not have risen from his primitive estate to the levels of subsequent civilization. (902.1) 81:2.11 Most of the animals best suited to domestication were found in Asia, especially in the central to southwest regions. This was one reason why civilization progressed faster in that locality than in other parts of the world. Many of these animals had been twice before domesticated, and in the Andite age they were retamed once again. But the dog had remained with the hunters ever since being adopted by the blue man long, long before. (902.2) 81:2.12 The Andites of Turkestan were the first peoples to extensively domesticate the horse, and this is another reason why their culture was for so long predominant. By 5000 B.C. the Mesopotamian, Turkestan, and Chinese farmers had begun the raising of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and elephants. They employed as beasts of burden the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was himself at one time the beast of burden. One ruler of the blue race once had one hundred thousand men in his colony of burden bearers. (902.3) 81:2.13 The institutions of slavery and private ownership of land came with agriculture. Slavery raised the master’s standard of living and provided more leisure for social culture. (902.4) 81:2.14 The savage is a slave to nature, but scientific civilization is slowly conferring increasing liberty on mankind. Through animals, fire, wind, water, electricity, and other undiscovered sources of energy, man has liberated, and will continue to liberate, himself from the necessity for unremitting toil. Regardless of the transient trouble produced by the prolific invention of machinery, the ultimate benefits to be derived from such mechanical inventions are inestimable. Civilization can never flourish, much less be established, until man has leisure to think, to plan, to imagine new and better ways of doing things. (902.5) 81:2.15 Man first simply appropriated his shelter, lived under ledges or dwelt in caves. Next he adapted such natural materials as wood and stone to the creation of family huts. Lastly he entered the creative stage of home building, learned to manufacture brick and other building materials. (902.6) 81:2.16 The peoples of the Turkestan highlands were the first of the more modern races to build their homes of wood, houses not at all unlike the early log cabins of the American pioneer settlers. Throughout the plains human dwellings were made of brick; later on, of burned bricks. (902.7) 81:2.17 The older river races made their huts by setting tall poles in the ground in a circle; the tops were then brought together, making the skeleton frame for the hut, which was interlaced with transverse reeds, the whole creation resembling a huge inverted basket. This structure could then be daubed over with clay and, after drying in the sun, would make a very serviceable weatherproof habitation. (902.8) 81:2.18 It was from these early huts that the subsequent idea of all sorts of basket weaving independently originated. Among one group the idea of making pottery arose from observing the effects of smearing these pole frameworks with moist clay. The practice of hardening pottery by baking was discovered when one of these clay-covered primitive huts accidentally burned. The arts of olden days were many times derived from the accidental occurrences attendant upon the daily life of early peoples. At least, this was almost wholly true of the evolutionary progress of mankind up to the coming of Adam. (903.1) 81:2.19 While pottery had been first introduced by the staff of the Prince about one-half million years ago, the making of clay vessels had practically ceased for over one hundred and fifty thousand years. Only the gulf coast pre-Sumerian Nodites continued to make clay vessels. The art of pottery making was revived during Adam’s time. The dissemination of this art was simultaneous with the extension of the desert areas of Africa, Arabia, and central Asia, and it spread in successive waves of improving technique from Mesopotamia out over the Eastern Hemisphere. (903.2) 81:2.20 These civilizations of the Andite age cannot always be traced by the stages of their pottery or other arts. The smooth course of human evolution was tremendously complicated by the regimes of both Dalamatia and Eden. It often occurs that the later vases and implements are inferior to the earlier products of the purer Andite peoples. 3. Cities, Manufacture, and Commerce (903.3) 81:3.1 The climatic destruction of the rich, open grassland hunting and grazing grounds of Turkestan, beginning about 12,000 B.C., compelled the men of those regions to resort to new forms of industry and crude manufacturing. Some turned to the cultivation of domesticated flocks, others became agriculturists or collectors of water-borne food, but the higher type of Andite intellects chose to engage in trade and manufacture. It even became the custom for entire tribes to dedicate themselves to the development of a single industry. From the valley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yellow River, the chief business of the superior tribes became the cultivation of the soil, with commerce as a side line. (903.4) 81:3.2 The increase in trade and in the manufacture of raw materials into various articles of commerce was directly instrumental in producing those early and semipeaceful communities which were so influential in spreading the culture and the arts of civilization. Before the era of extensive world trade, social communities were tribal — expanded family groups. Trade brought into fellowship different sorts of human beings, thus contributing to a more speedy cross-fertilization of culture. (903.5) 81:3.3 About twelve thousand years ago the era of the independent cities was dawning. And these primitive trading and manufacturing cities were always surrounded by zones of agriculture and cattle raising. While it is true that industry was promoted by the elevation of the standards of living, you should have no misconception regarding the refinements of early urban life. The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the average primitive community rose from one to two feet every twenty-five years as the result of the mere accumulation of dirt and trash. Certain of these olden cities also rose above the surrounding ground very quickly because their unbaked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the custom to build new dwellings directly on top of the ruins of the old. (903.6) 81:3.4 The widespread use of metals was a feature of this era of the early industrial and trading cities. You have already found a bronze culture in Turkestan dating before 9000 B.C., and the Andites early learned to work in iron, gold, and copper, as well. But conditions were very different away from the more advanced centers of civilization. There were no distinct periods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages; all three existed at the same time in different localities. (904.1) 81:3.5 Gold was the first metal to be sought by man; it was easy to work and, at first, was used only as an ornament. Copper was next employed but not extensively until it was admixed with tin to make the harder bronze. The discovery of mixing copper and tin to make bronze was made by one of the Adamsonites of Turkestan whose highland copper mine happened to be located alongside a tin deposit. (904.2) 81:3.6 With the appearance of crude manufacture and beginning industry, commerce quickly became the most potent influence in the spread of cultural civilization. The opening up of the trade channels by land and by sea greatly facilitated travel and the mixing of cultures as well as the blending of civilizations. By 5000 B.C. the horse was in general use throughout civilized and semicivilized lands. These later races not only had the domesticated horse but also various sorts of wagons and chariots. Ages before, the wheel had been used, but now vehicles so equipped became universally employed both in commerce and war. (904.3) 81:3.7 The traveling trader and the roving explorer did more to advance historic civilization than all other influences combined. Military conquests, colonization, and missionary enterprises fostered by the later religions were also factors in the spread of culture; but these were all secondary to the trading relations, which were ever accelerated by the rapidly developing arts and sciences of industry. (904.4) 81:3.8 Infusion of the Adamic stock into the human races not only quickened the pace of civilization, but it also greatly stimulated their proclivities toward adventure and exploration to the end that most of Eurasia and northern Africa was presently occupied by the rapidly multiplying mixed descendants of the Andites. 4. The Mixed Races (904.5) 81:4.1 As contact is made with the dawn of historic times, all of Eurasia, northern Africa, and the Pacific Islands is overspread with the composite races of mankind. And these races of today have resulted from a blending and reblending of the five basic human stocks of Urantia. (904.6) 81:4.2 Each of the Urantia races was identified by certain distinguishing physical characteristics. The Adamites and Nodites were long-headed; the Andonites were broad-headed. The Sangik races were medium-headed, with the yellow and blue men tending to broad-headedness. The blue races, when mixed with the Andonite stock, were decidedly broad-headed. The secondary Sangiks were medium- to long-headed. (904.7) 81:4.3 Although these skull dimensions are serviceable in deciphering racial origins, the skeleton as a whole is far more dependable. In the early development of the Urantia races there were originally five distinct types of skeletal structure: (904.8) 81:4.4 1. Andonic, Urantia aborigines. (904.9) 81:4.5 2. Primary Sangik, red, yellow, and blue. (904.10) 81:4.6 3. Secondary Sangik, orange, green, and indigo. (904.11) 81:4.7 4. Nodites, descendants of the Dalamatians. (904.12) 81:4.8 5. Adamites, the violet race. (904.13) 81:4.9 As these five great racial groups extensively intermingled, continual mixture tended to obscure the Andonite type by Sangik hereditary dominance. The Lapps and the Eskimos are blends of Andonite and Sangik-blue races. Their skeletal structures come the nearest to preserving the aboriginal Andonic type. But the Adamites and the Nodites have become so admixed with the other races that they can be detected only as a generalized Caucasoid order. (905.1) 81:4.10 In general, therefore, as the human remains of the last twenty thousand years are unearthed, it will be impossible clearly to distinguish the five original types. Study of such skeletal structures will disclose that mankind is now divided into approximately three classes: (905.2) 81:4.11 1. The Caucasoid — the Andite blend of the Nodite and Adamic stocks, further modified by primary and (some) secondary Sangik admixture and by considerable Andonic crossing. The Occidental white races, together with some Indian and Turanian peoples, are included in this group. The unifying factor in this division is the greater or lesser proportion of Andite inheritance. (905.3) 81:4.12 2. The Mongoloid — the primary Sangik type, including the original red, yellow, and blue races. The Chinese and Amerinds belong to this group. In Europe the Mongoloid type has been modified by secondary Sangik and Andonic mixture; still more by Andite infusion. The Malayan and other Indonesian peoples are included in this classification, though they contain a high percentage of secondary Sangik blood. (905.4) 81:4.13 3. The Negroid — the secondary Sangik type, which originally included the orange, green, and indigo races. This is the type best illustrated by the Negro, and it will be found through Africa, India, and Indonesia wherever the secondary Sangik races located. (905.5) 81:4.14 In North China there is a certain blending of Caucasoid and Mongoloid types; in the Levant the Caucasoid and Negroid have intermingled; in India, as in South America, all three types are represented. And the skeletal characteristics of the three surviving types still persist and help to identify the later ancestry of present-day human races. 5. Cultural Society (905.6) 81:5.1 Biologic evolution and cultural civilization are not necessarily correlated; organic evolution in any age may proceed unhindered in the very midst of cultural decadence. But when lengthy periods of human history are surveyed, it will be observed that eventually evolution and culture become related as cause and effect. Evolution may advance in the absence of culture, but cultural civilization does not flourish without an adequate background of antecedent racial progression. Adam and Eve introduced no art of civilization foreign to the progress of human society, but the Adamic blood did augment the inherent ability of the races and did accelerate the pace of economic development and industrial progression. Adam’s bestowal improved the brain power of the races, thereby greatly hastening the processes of natural evolution. (905.7) 81:5.2 Through agriculture, animal domestication, and improved architecture, mankind gradually escaped the worst of the incessant struggle to live and began to cast about to find wherewith to sweeten the process of living; and this was the beginning of the striving for higher and ever higher standards of material comfort. Through manufacture and industry man is gradually augmenting the pleasure content of mortal life. (906.1) 81:5.3 But cultural society is no great and beneficent club of inherited privilege into which all men are born with free membership and entire equality. Rather is it an exalted and ever-advancing guild of earth workers, admitting to its ranks only the nobility of those toilers who strive to make the world a better place in which their children and their children’s children may live and advance in subsequent ages. And this guild of civilization exacts costly admission fees, imposes strict and rigorous disciplines, visits heavy penalties on all dissenters and nonconformists, while it confers few personal licenses or privileges except those of enhanced security against common dangers and racial perils. (906.2) 81:5.4 Social association is a form of survival insurance which human beings have learned is profitable; therefore are most individuals willing to pay those premiums of self-sacrifice and personal-liberty curtailment which society exacts from its members in return for this enhanced group protection. In short, the present-day social mechanism is a trial-and-error insurance plan designed to afford some degree of assurance and protection against a return to the terrible and antisocial conditions which characterized the early experiences of the human race. (906.3) 81:5.5 Society thus becomes a co-operative scheme for securing civil freedom through institutions, economic freedom through capital and invention, social liberty through culture, and freedom from violence through police regulation. (906.4) 81:5.6 Might does not make right, but it does enforce the commonly recognized rights of each succeeding generation. The prime mission of government is the definition of the right, the just and fair regulation of class differences, and the enforcement of equality of opportunity under the rules of law. Every human right is associated with a social duty; group privilege is an insurance mechanism which unfailingly demands the full payment of the exacting premiums of group service. And group rights, as well as those of the individual, must be protected, including the regulation of the sex propensity. (906.5) 81:5.7 Liberty subject to group regulation is the legitimate goal of social evolution. Liberty without restrictions is the vain and fanciful dream of unstable and flighty human minds. 6. The Maintenance of Civilization (906.6) 81:6.1 While biologic evolution has proceeded ever upward, much of cultural evolution went out from the Euphrates valley in waves, which successively weakened as time passed until finally the whole of the pure-line Adamic posterity had gone forth to enrich the civilizations of Asia and Europe. The races did not fully blend, but their civilizations did to a considerable extent mix. Culture did slowly spread throughout the world. And this civilization must be maintained and fostered, for there exist today no new sources of culture, no Andites to invigorate and stimulate the slow progress of the evolution of civilization. (906.7) 81:6.2 The civilization which is now evolving on Urantia grew out of, and is predicated on, the following factors: (906.8) 81:6.3 1. Natural circumstances. The nature and extent of a material civilization is in large measure determined by the natural resources available. Climate, weather, and numerous physical conditions are factors in the evolution of culture. (907.1) 81:6.4 At the opening of the Andite era there were only two extensive and fertile open hunting areas in all the world. One was in North America and was overspread by the Amerinds; the other was to the north of Turkestan and was partly occupied by an Andonic-yellow race. The decisive factors in the evolution of a superior culture in southwestern Asia were race and climate. The Andites were a great people, but the crucial factor in determining the course of their civilization was the increasing aridity of Iran, Turkestan, and Sinkiang, which forced them to invent and adopt new and advanced methods of wresting a livelihood from their decreasingly fertile lands. (907.2) 81:6.5 The configuration of continents and other land-arrangement situations are very influential in determining peace or war. Very few Urantians have ever had such a favorable opportunity for continuous and unmolested development as has been enjoyed by the peoples of North America — protected on practically all sides by vast oceans. (907.3) 81:6.6 2. Capital goods. Culture is never developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of civilization. Individual character of moral and spiritual value may be acquired in the absence of material wealth, but a cultural civilization is only derived from those conditions of material prosperity which foster leisure combined with ambition. (907.4) 81:6.7 During primitive times life on Urantia was a serious and sober business. And it was to escape this incessant struggle and interminable toil that mankind constantly tended to drift toward the salubrious climate of the tropics. While these warmer zones of habitation afforded some remission from the intense struggle for existence, the races and tribes who thus sought ease seldom utilized their unearned leisure for the advancement of civilization. Social progress has invariably come from the thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their intelligent toil, learned how to wrest a living from the land with lessened effort and shortened days of labor and thus have been able to enjoy a well-earned and profitable margin of leisure. (907.5) 81:6.8 3. Scientific knowledge. The material aspects of civilization must always await the accumulation of scientific data. It was a long time after the discovery of the bow and arrow and the utilization of animals for power purposes before man learned how to harness wind and water, to be followed by the employment of steam and electricity. But slowly the tools of civilization improved. Weaving, pottery, the domestication of animals, and metalworking were followed by an age of writing and printing. (907.6) 81:6.9 Knowledge is power. Invention always precedes the acceleration of cultural development on a world-wide scale. Science and invention benefited most of all from the printing press, and the interaction of all these cultural and inventive activities has enormously accelerated the rate of cultural advancement. (907.7) 81:6.10 Science teaches man to speak the new language of mathematics and trains his thoughts along lines of exacting precision. And science also stabilizes philosophy through the elimination of error, while it purifies religion by the destruction of superstition. (907.8) 81:6.11 4. Human resources. Man power is indispensable to the spread of civilization. All things equal, a numerous people will dominate the civilization of a smaller race. Hence failure to increase in numbers up to a certain point prevents the full realization of national destiny, but there comes a point in population increase where further growth is suicidal. Multiplication of numbers beyond the optimum of the normal man-land ratio means either a lowering of the standards of living or an immediate expansion of territorial boundaries by peaceful penetration or by military conquest, forcible occupation. (908.1) 81:6.12 You are sometimes shocked at the ravages of war, but you should recognize the necessity for producing large numbers of mortals so as to afford ample opportunity for social and moral development; with such planetary fertility there soon occurs the serious problem of overpopulation. Most of the inhabited worlds are small. Urantia is average, perhaps a trifle undersized. The optimum stabilization of national population enhances culture and prevents war. And it is a wise nation which knows when to cease growing. (908.2) 81:6.13 But the continent richest in natural deposits and the most advanced mechanical equipment will make little progress if the intelligence of its people is on the decline. Knowledge can be had by education, but wisdom, which is indispensable to true culture, can be secured only through experience and by men and women who are innately intelligent. Such a people are able to learn from experience; they may become truly wise. (908.3) 81:6.14 5. Effectiveness of material resources. Much depends on the wisdom displayed in the utilization of natural resources, scientific knowledge, capital goods, and human potentials. The chief factor in early civilization was the force exerted by wise social masters; primitive man had civilization literally thrust upon him by his superior contemporaries. Well-organized and superior minorities have largely ruled this world. (908.4) 81:6.15 Might does not make right, but might does make what is and what has been in history. Only recently has Urantia reached that point where society is willing to debate the ethics of might and right. (908.5) 81:6.16 6. Effectiveness of language. The spread of civilization must wait upon language. Live and growing languages insure the expansion of civilized thinking and planning. During the early ages important advances were made in language. Today, there is great need for further linguistic development to facilitate the expression of evolving thought. (908.6) 81:6.17 Language evolved out of group associations, each local group developing its own system of word exchange. Language grew up through gestures, signs, cries, imitative sounds, intonation, and accent to the vocalization of subsequent alphabets. Language is man’s greatest and most serviceable thinking tool, but it never flourished until social groups acquired some leisure. The tendency to play with language develops new words — slang. If the majority adopt the slang, then usage constitutes it language. The origin of dialects is illustrated by the indulgence in “baby talk” in a family group. (908.7) 81:6.18 Language differences have ever been the great barrier to the extension of peace. The conquest of dialects must precede the spread of a culture throughout a race, over a continent, or to a whole world. A universal language promotes peace, insures culture, and augments happiness. Even when the tongues of a world are reduced to a few, the mastery of these by the leading cultural peoples mightily influences the achievement of world-wide peace and prosperity. (908.8) 81:6.19 While very little progress has been made on Urantia toward developing an international language, much has been accomplished by the establishment of international commercial exchange. And all these international relations should be fostered, whether they involve language, trade, art, science, competitive play, or religion. (909.1) 81:6.20 7. Effectiveness of mechanical devices. The progress of civilization is directly related to the development and possession of tools, machines, and channels of distribution. Improved tools, ingenious and efficient machines, determine the survival of contending groups in the arena of advancing civilization. (909.2) 81:6.21 In the early days the only energy applied to land cultivation was man power. It was a long struggle to substitute oxen for men since this threw men out of employment. Latterly, machines have begun to displace men, and every such advance is directly contributory to the progress of society because it liberates man power for the accomplishment of more valuable tasks. (909.3) 81:6.22 Science, guided by wisdom, may become man’s great social liberator. A mechanical age can prove disastrous only to a nation whose intellectual level is too low to discover those wise methods and sound techniques for successfully adjusting to the transition difficulties arising from the sudden loss of employment by large numbers consequent upon the too rapid invention of new types of laborsaving machinery. (909.4) 81:6.23 8. Character of torchbearers. Social inheritance enables man to stand on the shoulders of all who have preceded him, and who have contributed aught to the sum of culture and knowledge. In this work of passing on the cultural torch to the next generation, the home will ever be the basic institution. The play and social life comes next, with the school last but equally indispensable in a complex and highly organized society. (909.5) 81:6.24 Insects are born fully educated and equipped for life — indeed, a very narrow and purely instinctive existence. The human baby is born without an education; therefore man possesses the power, by controlling the educational training of the younger generation, greatly to modify the evolutionary course of civilization. (909.6) 81:6.25 The greatest twentieth-century influences contributing to the furtherance of civilization and the advancement of culture are the marked increase in world travel and the unparalleled improvements in methods of communication. But the improvement in education has not kept pace with the expanding social structure; neither has the modern appreciation of ethics developed in correspondence with growth along more purely intellectual and scientific lines. And modern civilization is at a standstill in spiritual development and the safeguarding of the home institution. (909.7) 81:6.26 9. The racial ideals. The ideals of one generation carve out the channels of destiny for immediate posterity. The quality of the social torchbearers will determine whether civilization goes forward or backward. The homes, churches, and schools of one generation predetermine the character trend of the succeeding generation. The moral and spiritual momentum of a race or a nation largely determines the cultural velocity of that civilization. (909.8) 81:6.27 Ideals elevate the source of the social stream. And no stream will rise any higher than its source no matter what technique of pressure or directional control may be employed. The driving power of even the most material aspects of a cultural civilization is resident in the least material of society’s achievements. Intelligence may control the mechanism of civilization, wisdom may direct it, but spiritual idealism is the energy which really uplifts and advances human culture from one level of attainment to another. (910.1) 81:6.28 At first life was a struggle for existence; now, for a standard of living; next it will be for quality of thinking, the coming earthly goal of human existence. (910.2) 81:6.29 10. Co-ordination of specialists. Civilization has been enormously advanced by the early division of labor and by its later corollary of specialization. Civilization is now dependent on the effective co-ordination of specialists. As society expands, some method of drawing together the various specialists must be found. (910.3) 81:6.30 Social, artistic, technical, and industrial specialists will continue to multiply and increase in skill and dexterity. And this diversification of ability and dissimilarity of employment will eventually weaken and disintegrate human society if effective means of co-ordination and co-operation are not developed. But the intelligence which is capable of such inventiveness and such specialization should be wholly competent to devise adequate methods of control and adjustment for all problems resulting from the rapid growth of invention and the accelerated pace of cultural expansion. (910.4) 81:6.31 11. Place-finding devices. The next age of social development will be embodied in a better and more effective co-operation and co-ordination of ever-increasing and expanding specialization. And as labor more and more diversifies, some technique for directing individuals to suitable employment must be devised. Machinery is not the only cause for unemployment among the civilized peoples of Urantia. Economic complexity and the steady increase of industrial and professional specialism add to the problems of labor placement. (910.5) 81:6.32 It is not enough to train men for work; in a complex society there must also be provided efficient methods of place finding. Before training citizens in the highly specialized techniques of earning a living, they should be trained in one or more methods of commonplace labor, trades or callings which could be utilized when they were transiently unemployed in their specialized work. No civilization can survive the long-time harboring of large classes of unemployed. In time, even the best of citizens will become distorted and demoralized by accepting support from the public treasury. Even private charity becomes pernicious when long extended to able-bodied citizens. (910.6) 81:6.33 Such a highly specialized society will not take kindly to the ancient communal and feudal practices of olden peoples. True, many common services can be acceptably and profitably socialized, but highly trained and ultraspecialized human beings can best be managed by some technique of intelligent co-operation. Modernized co-ordination and fraternal regulation will be productive of longer-lived co-operation than will the older and more primitive methods of communism or dictatorial regulative institutions based on force. (910.7) 81:6.34 12. The willingness to co-operate. One of the great hindrances to the progress of human society is the conflict between the interests and welfare of the larger, more socialized human groups and of the smaller, contrary-minded asocial associations of mankind, not to mention antisocially-minded single individuals. (910.8) 81:6.35 No national civilization long endures unless its educational methods and religious ideals inspire a high type of intelligent patriotism and national devotion. Without this sort of intelligent patriotism and cultural solidarity, all nations tend to disintegrate as a result of provincial jealousies and local self-interests. (911.1) 81:6.36 The maintenance of world-wide civilization is dependent on human beings learning how to live together in peace and fraternity. Without effective co-ordination, industrial civilization is jeopardized by the dangers of ultraspecialization: monotony, narrowness, and the tendency to breed distrust and jealousy. (911.2) 81:6.37 13. Effective and wise leadership. In civilization much, very much, depends on an enthusiastic and effective load-pulling spirit. Ten men are of little more value than one in lifting a great load unless they lift together — all at the same moment. And such teamwork — social co-operation — is dependent on leadership. The cultural civilizations of the past and the present have been based upon the intelligent co-operation of the citizenry with wise and progressive leaders; and until man evolves to higher levels, civilization will continue to be dependent on wise and vigorous leadership. (911.3) 81:6.38 High civilizations are born of the sagacious correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, and cosmic insight. (911.4) 81:6.39 14. Social changes. Society is not a divine institution; it is a phenomenon of progressive evolution; and advancing civilization is always delayed when its leaders are slow in making those changes in the social organization which are essential to keeping pace with the scientific developments of the age. For all that, things must not be despised just because they are old, neither should an idea be unconditionally embraced just because it is novel and new. (911.5) 81:6.40 Man should be unafraid to experiment with the mechanisms of society. But always should these adventures in cultural adjustment be controlled by those who are fully conversant with the history of social evolution; and always should these innovators be counseled by the wisdom of those who have had practical experience in the domains of contemplated social or economic experiment. No great social or economic change should be attempted suddenly. Time is essential to all types of human adjustment — physical, social, or economic. Only moral and spiritual adjustments can be made on the spur of the moment, and even these require the passing of time for the full outworking of their material and social repercussions. The ideals of the race are the chief support and assurance during the critical times when civilization is in transit from one level to another. (911.6) 81:6.41 15. The prevention of transitional breakdown. Society is the offspring of age upon age of trial and error; it is what survived the selective adjustments and readjustments in the successive stages of mankind’s agelong rise from animal to human levels of planetary status. The great danger to any civilization — at any one moment — is the threat of breakdown during the time of transition from the established methods of the past to those new and better, but untried, procedures of the future. (911.7) 81:6.42 Leadership is vital to progress. Wisdom, insight, and foresight are indispensable to the endurance of nations. Civilization is never really jeopardized until able leadership begins to vanish. And the quantity of such wise leadership has never exceeded one per cent of the population. (911.8) 81:6.43 And it was by these rungs on the evolutionary ladder that civilization climbed to that place where those mighty influences could be initiated which have culminated in the rapidly expanding culture of the twentieth century. And only by adherence to these essentials can man hope to maintain his present-day civilizations while providing for their continued development and certain survival. (912.1) 81:6.44 This is the gist of the long, long struggle of the peoples of earth to establish civilization since the age of Adam. Present-day culture is the net result of this strenuous evolution. Before the discovery of printing, progress was relatively slow since one generation could not so rapidly benefit from the achievements of its predecessors. But now human society is plunging forward under the force of the accumulated momentum of all the ages through which civilization has struggled. (912.2) 81:6.45 [Sponsored by an Archangel of Nebadon.]
The Dawn of Civilization (763.1) 68:0.1 THIS is the beginning of the narrative of the long, long forward struggle of the human species from a status that was little better than an animal existence, through the intervening ages, and down to the later times when a real, though imperfect, civilization had evolved among the higher races of mankind. (763.2) 68:0.2 Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment of culture, while each succeeding generation of youth must receive anew its education. The superior qualities of civilization — scientific, philosophic, and religious — are not transmitted from one generation to another by direct inheritance. These cultural achievements are preserved only by the enlightened conservation of social inheritance. (763.3) 68:0.3 Social evolution of the co-operative order was initiated by the Dalamatia teachers, and for three hundred thousand years mankind was nurtured in the idea of group activities. The blue man most of all profited by these early social teachings, the red man to some extent, and the black man least of all. In more recent times the yellow race and the white race have presented the most advanced social development on Urantia. 1. Protective Socialization (763.4) 68:1.1 When brought closely together, men often learn to like one another, but primitive man was not naturally overflowing with the spirit of brotherly feeling and the desire for social contact with his fellows. Rather did the early races learn by sad experience that “in union there is strength”; and it is this lack of natural brotherly attraction that now stands in the way of immediate realization of the brotherhood of man on Urantia. (763.5) 68:1.2 Association early became the price of survival. The lone man was helpless unless he bore a tribal mark which testified that he belonged to a group which would certainly avenge any assault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fatal to go abroad alone without some mark of group association. Civilization has become man’s insurance against violent death, while the premiums are paid by submission to society’s numerous law demands. (763.6) 68:1.3 Primitive society was thus founded on the reciprocity of necessity and on the enhanced safety of association. And human society has evolved in agelong cycles as a result of this isolation fear and by means of reluctant co-operation. (763.7) 68:1.4 Primitive human beings early learned that groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their individual units. One hundred men united and working in unison can move a great stone; a score of well-trained guardians of the peace can restrain an angry mob. And so society was born, not of mere association of numbers, but rather as a result of the organization of intelligent co-operators. But co-operation is not a natural trait of man; he learns to co-operate first through fear and then later because he discovers it is most beneficial in meeting the difficulties of time and guarding against the supposed perils of eternity. (764.1) 68:1.5 The peoples who thus early organized themselves into a primitive society became more successful in their attacks on nature as well as in defense against their fellows; they possessed greater survival possibilities; hence has civilization steadily progressed on Urantia, notwithstanding its many setbacks. And it is only because of the enhancement of survival value in association that man’s many blunders have thus far failed to stop or destroy human civilization. (764.2) 68:1.6 That contemporary cultural society is a rather recent phenomenon is well shown by the present-day survival of such primitive social conditions as characterize the Australian natives and the Bushmen and Pygmies of Africa. Among these backward peoples may be observed something of the early group hostility, personal suspicion, and other highly antisocial traits which were so characteristic of all primitive races. These miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the natural individualistic tendency of man cannot successfully compete with the more potent and powerful organizations and associations of social progression. These backward and suspicious antisocial races that speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles illustrate what a world you might now be living in but for the combined teaching of the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince and the later labors of the Adamic group of racial uplifters. (764.3) 68:1.7 The modern phrase, “back to nature,” is a delusion of ignorance, a belief in the reality of the onetime fictitious “golden age.” The only basis for the legend of the golden age is the historic fact of Dalamatia and Eden. But these improved societies were far from the realization of utopian dreams. 2. Factors in Social Progression (764.4) 68:2.1 Civilized society is the result of man’s early efforts to overcome his dislike of isolation. But this does not necessarily signify mutual affection, and the present turbulent state of certain primitive groups well illustrates what the early tribes came up through. But though the individuals of a civilization may collide with each other and struggle against one another, and though civilization itself may appear to be an inconsistent mass of striving and struggling, it does evidence earnest striving, not the deadly monotony of stagnation. (764.5) 68:2.2 While the level of intelligence has contributed considerably to the rate of cultural progress, society is essentially designed to lessen the risk element in the individual’s mode of living, and it has progressed just as fast as it has succeeded in lessening pain and increasing the pleasure element in life. Thus does the whole social body push on slowly toward the goal of destiny — extinction or survival — depending on whether that goal is self-maintenance or self-gratification. Self-maintenance originates society, while excessive self-gratification destroys civilization. (764.6) 68:2.3 Society is concerned with self-perpetuation, self-maintenance, and self-gratification, but human self-realization is worthy of becoming the immediate goal of many cultural groups. (765.1) 68:2.4 The herd instinct in natural man is hardly sufficient to account for the development of such a social organization as now exists on Urantia. Though this innate gregarious propensity lies at the bottom of human society, much of man’s sociability is an acquirement. Two great influences which contributed to the early association of human beings were food hunger and sex love; these instinctive urges man shares with the animal world. Two other emotions which drove human beings together and held them together were vanity and fear, more particularly ghost fear. (765.2) 68:2.5 History is but the record of man’s agelong food struggle. Primitive man only thought when he was hungry; food saving was his first self-denial, self-discipline. With the growth of society, food hunger ceased to be the only incentive for mutual association. Numerous other sorts of hunger, the realization of various needs, all led to the closer association of mankind. But today society is top-heavy with the overgrowth of supposed human needs. Occidental civilization of the twentieth century groans wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the inordinate multiplication of human desires and longings. Modern society is enduring the strain of one of its most dangerous phases of far-flung interassociation and highly complicated interdependence. (765.3) 68:2.6 Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were continuous in their social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and spasmodic. The sex urge alone did not impel primitive men and women to assume the heavy burdens of home maintenance. The early home was founded upon the sex restlessness of the male when deprived of frequent gratification and upon that devoted mother love of the human female, which in measure she shares with the females of all the higher animals. The presence of a helpless baby determined the early differentiation of male and female activities; the woman had to maintain a settled residence where she could cultivate the soil. And from earliest times, where woman was has always been regarded as the home. (765.4) 68:2.7 Woman thus early became indispensable to the evolving social scheme, not so much because of the fleeting sex passion as in consequence of food requirement; she was an essential partner in self-maintenance. She was a food provider, a beast of burden, and a companion who would stand great abuse without violent resentment, and in addition to all of these desirable traits, she was an ever-present means of sex gratification. (765.5) 68:2.8 Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family. The family was the first successful peace group, the man and woman learning how to adjust their antagonisms while at the same time teaching the pursuits of peace to their children. (765.6) 68:2.9 The function of marriage in evolution is the insurance of race survival, not merely the realization of personal happiness; self-maintenance and self-perpetuation are the real objects of the home. Self-gratification is incidental and not essential except as an incentive insuring sex association. Nature demands survival, but the arts of civilization continue to increase the pleasures of marriage and the satisfactions of family life. (765.7) 68:2.10 If vanity be enlarged to cover pride, ambition, and honor, then we may discern not only how these propensities contribute to the formation of human associations, but how they also hold men together, since such emotions are futile without an audience to parade before. Soon vanity associated with itself other emotions and impulses which required a social arena wherein they might exhibit and gratify themselves. This group of emotions gave origin to the early beginnings of all art, ceremonial, and all forms of sportive games and contests. (766.1) 68:2.11 Vanity contributed mightily to the birth of society; but at the time of these revelations the devious strivings of a vainglorious generation threaten to swamp and submerge the whole complicated structure of a highly specialized civilization. Pleasure-want has long since superseded hunger-want; the legitimate social aims of self-maintenance are rapidly translating themselves into base and threatening forms of self-gratification. Self-maintenance builds society; unbridled self-gratification unfailingly destroys civilization. 3. Socializing Influence of Ghost Fear (766.2) 68:3.1 Primitive desires produced the original society, but ghost fear held it together and imparted an extrahuman aspect to its existence. Common fear was physiological in origin: fear of physical pain, unsatisfied hunger, or some earthly calamity; but ghost fear was a new and sublime sort of terror. (766.3) 68:3.2 Probably the greatest single factor in the evolution of human society was the ghost dream. Although most dreams greatly perturbed the primitive mind, the ghost dream actually terrorized early men, driving these superstitious dreamers into each other’s arms in willing and earnest association for mutual protection against the vague and unseen imaginary dangers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the earliest appearing differences between the animal and human types of mind. Animals do not visualize survival after death. (766.4) 68:3.3 Except for this ghost factor, all society was founded on fundamental needs and basic biologic urges. But ghost fear introduced a new factor in civilization, a fear which reaches out and away from the elemental needs of the individual, and which rises far above even the struggles to maintain the group. The dread of the departed spirits of the dead brought to light a new and amazing form of fear, an appalling and powerful terror, which contributed to whipping the loose social orders of early ages into the more thoroughly disciplined and better controlled primitive groups of ancient times. This senseless superstition, some of which still persists, prepared the minds of men, through superstitious fear of the unreal and the supernatural, for the later discovery of “the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.” The baseless fears of evolution are designed to be supplanted by the awe for Deity inspired by revelation. The early cult of ghost fear became a powerful social bond, and ever since that far-distant day mankind has been striving more or less for the attainment of spirituality. (766.5) 68:3.4 Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost fear held them together. But these emotions alone, without the influence of peace-promoting revelations, are unable to endure the strain of the suspicions and irritations of human interassociations. Without help from superhuman sources the strain of society breaks down upon reaching certain limits, and these very influences of social mobilization — hunger, love, vanity, and fear — conspire to plunge mankind into war and bloodshed. (766.6) 68:3.5 The peace tendency of the human race is not a natural endowment; it is derived from the teachings of revealed religion, from the accumulated experience of the progressive races, but more especially from the teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. 4. Evolution of the Mores (767.1) 68:4.1 All modern social institutions arise from the evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions — mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble origin. (767.2) 68:4.2 It must be borne in mind that the mores originated in an effort to adjust group living to the conditions of mass existence; the mores were man’s first social institution. And all of these tribal reactions grew out of the effort to avoid pain and humiliation while at the same time seeking to enjoy pleasure and power. The origin of folkways, like the origin of languages, is always unconscious and unintentional and therefore always shrouded in mystery. (767.3) 68:4.3 Ghost fear drove primitive man to envision the supernatural and thus securely laid the foundations for those powerful social influences of ethics and religion which in turn preserved inviolate the mores and customs of society from generation to generation. The one thing which early established and crystallized the mores was the belief that the dead were jealous of the ways by which they had lived and died; therefore would they visit dire punishment upon those living mortals who dared to treat with careless disdain the rules of living which they had honored when in the flesh. All this is best illustrated by the present reverence of the yellow race for their ancestors. Later developing primitive religion greatly reinforced ghost fear in stabilizing the mores, but advancing civilization has increasingly liberated mankind from the bondage of fear and the slavery of superstition. (767.4) 68:4.4 Prior to the liberating and liberalizing instruction of the Dalamatia teachers, ancient man was held a helpless victim of the ritual of the mores; the primitive savage was hedged about by an endless ceremonial. Everything he did from the time of awakening in the morning to the moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just so — in accordance with the folkways of the tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of usage; his life contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original. There was no natural progress toward a higher mental, moral, or social existence. (767.5) 68:4.5 Early man was mightily gripped by custom; the savage was a veritable slave to usage; but there have arisen ever and anon those variations from type who have dared to inaugurate new ways of thinking and improved methods of living. Nevertheless, the inertia of primitive man constitutes the biologic safety brake against precipitation too suddenly into the ruinous maladjustment of a too rapidly advancing civilization. (767.6) 68:4.6 But these customs are not an unmitigated evil; their evolution should continue. It is nearly fatal to the continuance of civilization to undertake their wholesale modification by radical revolution. Custom has been the thread of continuity which has held civilization together. The path of human history is strewn with the remnants of discarded customs and obsolete social practices; but no civilization has endured which abandoned its mores except for the adoption of better and more fit customs. (767.7) 68:4.7 The survival of a society depends chiefly on the progressive evolution of its mores. The process of custom evolution grows out of the desire for experimentation; new ideas are put forward — competition ensues. A progressing civilization embraces the progressive idea and endures; time and circumstance finally select the fitter group for survival. But this does not mean that each separate and isolated change in the composition of human society has been for the better. No! indeed no! for there have been many, many retrogressions in the long forward struggle of Urantia civilization. 5. Land Techniques — Maintenance Arts (768.1) 68:5.1 Land is the stage of society; men are the actors. And man must ever adjust his performances to conform to the land situation. The evolution of the mores is always dependent on the land-man ratio. This is true notwithstanding the difficulty of its discernment. Man’s land technique, or maintenance arts, plus his standards of living, equal the sum total of the folkways, the mores. And the sum of man’s adjustment to the life demands equals his cultural civilization. (768.2) 68:5.2 The earliest human cultures arose along the rivers of the Eastern Hemisphere, and there were four great steps in the forward march of civilization. They were: (768.3) 68:5.3 1. The collection stage. Food coercion, hunger, led to the first form of industrial organization, the primitive food-gathering lines. Sometimes such a line of hunger march would be ten miles long as it passed over the land gleaning food. This was the primitive nomadic stage of culture and is the mode of life now followed by the African Bushmen. (768.4) 68:5.4 2. The hunting stage. The invention of weapon tools enabled man to become a hunter and thus to gain considerable freedom from food slavery. A thoughtful Andonite who had severely bruised his fist in a serious combat rediscovered the idea of using a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made independent discoveries of this sort, and these various forms of hammers represented one of the great forward steps in human civilization. Today some Australian natives have progressed little beyond this stage. (768.5) 68:5.5 The blue men became expert hunters and trappers; by fencing the rivers they caught fish in great numbers, drying the surplus for winter use. Many forms of ingenious snares and traps were employed in catching game, but the more primitive races did not hunt the larger animals. (768.6) 68:5.6 3. The pastoral stage. This phase of civilization was made possible by the domestication of animals. The Arabs and the natives of Africa are among the more recent pastoral peoples. (768.7) 68:5.7 Pastoral living afforded further relief from food slavery; man learned to live on the interest of his capital, the increase in his flocks; and this provided more leisure for culture and progress. (768.8) 68:5.8 Prepastoral society was one of sex co-operation, but the spread of animal husbandry reduced women to the depths of social slavery. In earlier times it was man’s duty to secure the animal food, woman’s business to provide the vegetable edibles. Therefore, when man entered the pastoral era of his existence, woman’s dignity fell greatly. She must still toil to produce the vegetable necessities of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to provide an abundance of animal food. Man thus became relatively independent of woman; throughout the entire pastoral age woman’s status steadily declined. By the close of this era she had become scarcely more than a human animal, consigned to work and to bear human offspring, much as the animals of the herd were expected to labor and bring forth young. The men of the pastoral ages had great love for their cattle; all the more pity they could not have developed a deeper affection for their wives. (769.1) 68:5.9 4. The agricultural stage. This era was brought about by the domestication of plants, and it represents the highest type of material civilization. Both Caligastia and Adam endeavored to teach horticulture and agriculture. Adam and Eve were gardeners, not shepherds, and gardening was an advanced culture in those days. The growing of plants exerts an ennobling influence on all races of mankind. (769.2) 68:5.10 Agriculture more than quadrupled the land-man ratio of the world. It may be combined with the pastoral pursuits of the former cultural stage. When the three stages overlap, men hunt and women till the soil. (769.3) 68:5.11 There has always been friction between the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were militant, warlike; the agriculturist is a more peace-loving type. Association with animals suggests struggle and force; association with plants instills patience, quiet, and peace. Agriculture and industrialism are the activities of peace. But the weakness of both, as world social activities, is that they lack excitement and adventure. (769.4) 68:5.12 Human society has evolved from the hunting stage through that of the herders to the territorial stage of agriculture. And each stage of this progressive civilization was accompanied by less and less of nomadism; more and more man began to live at home. (769.5) 68:5.13 And now is industry supplementing agriculture, with consequently increased urbanization and multiplication of nonagricultural groups of citizenship classes. But an industrial era cannot hope to survive if its leaders fail to recognize that even the highest social developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural basis. 6. Evolution of Culture (769.6) 68:6.1 Man is a creature of the soil, a child of nature; no matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land, in the last reckoning he is certain to fail. “Dust you are and to dust shall you return” is literally true of all mankind. The basic struggle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land. The first social associations of primitive human beings were for the purpose of winning these land struggles. The land-man ratio underlies all social civilization. (769.7) 68:6.2 Man’s intelligence, by means of the arts and sciences, increased the land yield; at the same time the natural increase in offspring was somewhat brought under control, and thus was provided the sustenance and leisure to build a cultural civilization. (769.8) 68:6.3 Human society is controlled by a law which decrees that the population must vary directly in accordance with the land arts and inversely with a given standard of living. Throughout these early ages, even more than at present, the law of supply and demand as concerned men and land determined the estimated value of both. During the times of plentiful land — unoccupied territory — the need for men was great, and therefore the value of human life was much enhanced; hence the loss of life was more horrifying. During periods of land scarcity and associated overpopulation, human life became comparatively cheapened so that war, famine, and pestilence were regarded with less concern. (770.1) 68:6.4 When the land yield is reduced or the population is increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the very worst traits of human nature are brought to the surface. The improvement of the land yield, the extension of the mechanical arts, and the reduction of population all tend to foster the development of the better side of human nature. (770.2) 68:6.5 Frontier society develops the unskilled side of humanity; the fine arts and true scientific progress, together with spiritual culture, have all thrived best in the larger centers of life when supported by an agricultural and industrial population slightly under the land-man ratio. Cities always multiply the power of their inhabitants for either good or evil. (770.3) 68:6.6 The size of the family has always been influenced by the standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller the family, up to the point of established status or gradual extinction. (770.4) 68:6.7 All down through the ages the standards of living have determined the quality of a surviving population in contrast with mere quantity. Local class standards of living give origin to new social castes, new mores. When standards of living become too complicated or too highly luxurious, they speedily become suicidal. Caste is the direct result of the high social pressure of keen competition produced by dense populations. (770.5) 68:6.8 The early races often resorted to practices designed to restrict population; all primitive tribes killed deformed and sickly children. Girl babies were frequently killed before the times of wife purchase. Children were sometimes strangled at birth, but the favorite method was exposure. The father of twins usually insisted that one be killed since multiple births were believed to be caused either by magic or by infidelity. As a rule, however, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh universal, they were never a part of the Andonite mores; these peoples always regarded twins as omens of good luck. (770.6) 68:6.9 Many races learned the technique of abortion, and this practice became very common after the establishment of the taboo on childbirth among the unmarried. It was long the custom for a maiden to kill her offspring, but among more civilized groups these illegitimate children became the wards of the girl’s mother. Many primitive clans were virtually exterminated by the practice of both abortion and infanticide. But regardless of the dictates of the mores, very few children were ever destroyed after having once been suckled — maternal affection is too strong. (770.7) 68:6.10 Even in the twentieth century there persist remnants of these primitive population controls. There is a tribe in Australia whose mothers refuse to rear more than two or three children. Not long since, one cannibalistic tribe ate every fifth child born. In Madagascar some tribes still destroy all children born on certain unlucky days, resulting in the death of about twenty-five per cent of all babies. (770.8) 68:6.11 From a world standpoint, overpopulation has never been a serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and science increasingly controls human diseases, it may become a serious problem in the near future. At such a time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The subnormal man should be kept under society’s control; no more should be produced than are required to administer the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind. (771.1) 68:6.12 [Presented by a Melchizedek sometime stationed on Urantia.]
LUCKY 13. Can ya believe it?!? Indy Willy and Evan will be talking smack & having some fun. Nothing is off limits! Except for Evan. He has stuff that is off limits. Gotta keep thay guy in check! Last i checked 90% of the Eastern Hemisphere was angry with him about at least 3 things. SO JOIN US!! CALL, TEXT, TWEET whatever ya gotta do.....JUST BE THERE.
More about Nocturnes Leon Bosch, Sung-Suk Kang "Nocturne" (mp3) from "Virtuoso Double Bass" (Meridian Records) Buy at iTunes Music Store More On This Album The working relationship between Sung-Suk Kang and the distinguished double bass player Leon Bosch goes back to 1982, when both were students at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK. Sung-Suk accompanied Leon during lessons and at scholarship auditions. 'At the end of our courses of study,' Leon remembers, 'the RNCM principal, Sir John Manduell, invited us to play two pieces together in one of the so-called principal's concerts. These were showcase events in which his ‘prize students’ were afforded a platform to perform in front of an audience of many distinguished invited guests, as well as the public. Sung-Suk and I performed two pieces by the great double bass player Bottesini, the Capriccio di Bravura and Fantasy Sonnambula. 'I'll remember that 1984 concert forever, for Sung-Suk’s magical playing throughout. There was one extended piano tutti in Sonnambula which was particular memorable for its unique delicacy and scintillating effervescence.' Sung-Suk picks up the story. 'After we left the RNCM, Leon and I lost contact with each other for twenty years. Then in the autumn of 2006, all of a sudden I received an SMS message from Leon on my mobile.....out of the blue. I called him back and discovered that at short notice he wanted me to play for him on a CD of pieces by Bottesini. After exchanging a few emails, I agreed.’ So what had inspired Leon to make the move? 'After Sung-Suk and I parted company back in 1984 I always thought of her whenever I played Sonnambula. I often wondered what had happened to her. I have a tape recording of that principal's concert and played it often over the years to reassure myself that it was indeed real and not just a grossly exaggerated and romanticised memory! 'Then when I was scheduled to record my first Bottesini disc, my pianist had to withdraw. After much thought, I resolved to try and find Sung-Suk, since she was the only person I felt I'd really be happy to work with. I put her name into Google and found her referred to on the website of the conductor, Nayden Todorov. With that lead, I traced her to Vienna.’ 'We began to rehearse as soon as I arrived in London!' Sung-Suk recalls. 'There wasn`t enough time to work on each piece in detail.... and we only had one and a half days to record all the repertoire for the CD. 'Playing with Leon wasn`t easy at first - he has a unique way of phrasing and his rubato is never predictable. And of course my ears had to concentrate so much on picking up the thick, deep lower register of the double bass sound. But during the recording sessions everything clicked and became completely natural. 'We tried to create a new atmosphere for each piece and then find the inspiration for a special interpretation at the end of the process. This was always different from what we'd prepared....music-making with Leon is always spontaneous! I love the full sound he makes, all the different colours he creates to express varied emotions in depth.’ As for Nocturne, it allows the piano to anticipate the main theme in the opening section but then gives it no share of the melodic line so expressively introduced and sustained by the double bass. It is, however, the piano which towards the end initiates the change from minor to major harmonies, just before double-bass harmonics magically project the melody into the soprano register. If Bottesini expected to be remembered by future generations he no doubt felt that it would be through his operas and sacred music. In fact, while they are forgotten, his posthumous reputation derives from an instrumental artistry which, though it died with him, survives in the hands of those few bassists who can do his compositions full justice. Nikolai Lugansky "Nocturne, Op. 55 No. 1" (mp3) from "Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3, Fantasie-impromptu, Prélude, Nocturne, et al." (Onyx Classics) Buy at iTunes Music Store More On This Album Nikolai Lugansky's first recording for ONYX. The Daily Telegraph commenting on Lugansky, said 'He can thrill in taxing pianism through his iron will and fingers of steel, but there is an assuaging velvet quality to his tone, a natural feel for lyrical line' Gramophone praised his 'pianism of immense skill, fluency and innate musical quality' Nikolai Lugansky was born in Moscow in 1972. He studied at Moscow Central Music School (under Tatiana Kestner) and then at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was a pupil of Tatiana Nikolayeva, who described him as ‘the next one’ in a line of great Russian pianists. Following Nikolayeva’s untimely death in 1993, Lugansky continued his studies under Sergei Dorensky. A laureate of the International Bach Competition in Leipzig, the Rachmaninov Competition in Moscow and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Lugansky has a repertoire of over 50 concertos with orchestra as well as a wide range of solo and chamber works. He has worked with many distinguished orchestras and conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Raymond Leppard, Yoel Levi, Mikhail Pletnev, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Spivakov, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Chailly and others. His chamber music partners have included Vadim Repin, Alexander Kniazev, Joshua Bell, Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, Leonidas Kavakos and Anna Netrebko among others. Lugansky has recorded 23 CDs. His solo recordings on Warner Classics — Chopin Études, Rachmaninov Préludes and Moments musicaux and Chopin Préludes — were each awarded a Diapason d’Or. His PentaTone Classics SACD of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no.1, with the Russian National Orchestra under Kent Nagano, was cited as ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone. His Prokofiev CD was one of the ‘CDs of the Year’ (2004) featured in The Daily Telegraph. Lugansky’s recordings of the complete piano concertos of Rachmaninov, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo, received Choc du Monde de la Musique, Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the 2005 ECHO Klassik Award. His last recording (Chopin’s and Rachmaninov’s cello sonatas) with the cellist Alexander Kniazev won the 2007 ECHO Klassik Award. As well as performing and recording, Lugansky teaches at the Moscow Conservatory as an assistant of Prof. Sergei Dorensky. Anthony Goldstone "Nocturne in D-Flat Major, Op. 8" (mp3) from "Russian Piano Music, Vol. 4: Sergei Lyapunov" (Divine Art) Buy at iTunes Music Store Buy at Amazon MP3 More On This Album Now almost forgotten in the West, Lyapunov was one of the truly great composers of the Romantic era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His Sonata is a phenomenal work and his mastery of pianistic composition is also finely demonstrated by the other works on this album masterfully interpreted by Anthony Goldstone. Anyone who loves Chopin or Liszt should get to know this music. Fuzjko Hemming "Nocturne No. 20 In C-Sharp Minor" (mp3) from "Fuzjko Hemming - Collector's Edition" (Fuzjko Label) Buy at iTunes Music Store Stream from Rhapsody Buy at Amazon MP3 More On This Album Having wowed much of the Eastern Hemisphere for years, classical pianist Fuzjko Hemming is preparing for her introduction to the United States. Having been born into humble circumstances, child of a Japanese mother and Swedish father, she has felt rootless, too Asian in appearance for Sweden, and in Japan constricted by the society's stratified and class-oriented way of life. Then, as she was starting to gain traction as a professional musician, her promising career was cut short. - Fuzjko lost all hearing in her left ear after battling a serious cold. At 16, she already lost her hearing in her right ear due to illness. Completely deaf for 2 years, she eventually had 40% of her hearing restored in her left ear. After living in poverty in Europe for many years before returning to Japan and gaining acclaim for her music - critics hailed her as being "born to play Chopin and Liszt " In 1999, Japan's NHK Television aired a documentary of her life and she released her debut album, La Campanella, which sold more than two million copies, a rare accomplishment for any classical artist She also has won an unprecedented four Classical Album of the Year Awards at the Japan Gold Disc Awards, another extraordinary achievement for any artist, let alone a classical artist She remains the only four-time Gold Disc Award winner. Since that time she has recorded numerous successful albums - invigorating collections of classical interpretations, five of which are being released for the first time in the U.S. on her label Domo Records: Echoes of Eternity, La Campanella, Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1, Nocturnes of Melancholy, Live at Carnegie Hall. On the new album, Fuzjko, the artist performs largely romantic repertoire ranging from Beethoven's "The Tempest" sonata to works by Chopin, Liszt, Scarlatti and Debussy. In each piece, whether performing Chopin's Nocturnes or Liszt's bravura pieces "La Campanella" and "Grand Etudes D'Apres Paganini No. 6", Fuzjko infuses poetry to these timeless compositions, and always in her own eminently attractive style. The warmth of Fuzjko's sound can also be heard in Scarlatti's Sonata K.162 and Debussy's "Claire De Lune". Although much of the repertoire is familiar, Fuzjko also dips into lesser known works like Liszt's transcription of Schumann's "Fruhlinghsnacht", and Chopin's "Trois Nouvelles Etudes No.3, and always played with her celebrated musicality much in evidence. The celebrated virtuoso blends the classicality of her influences such as Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin with the sophisticated approach of her mentors (Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan) to create an emotional delivery of exquisite craftsmanship. She's been known to bring some fans to tears with her moving immersion in her music. With her strikingly unorthodox playing style and intricate ethnic roots, it's evident that Fuzjko's true home is at the piano, where she reveals herself as a true artist of the world. Carly Comando "Bear" (mp3) from "One Take" (Deep Elm) Buy at iTunes Music Store Buy at Amazon MP3 More On This Album Chilling. Stirring. Powerful. Contemplative. These are some of the words most frequently used to describe the achingly beautiful piano instrumentals of Carly Comando. Her debut album "One Take" features ten delicately woven songs (including her single "Everday") that are the direct emotional output of her innermost thoughts. "The album means the world to me. It's complete, in-the-moment sincerity translated into moody solo piano music. I used an improv technique, recording in just one take, so I could capture the essence of pure emotion" says Carly. From the rises and falls to the shrinks and swells, these songs will leave an indellible impression on your mind. It's music that stays with you forever. "One Take" was recorded in Carly's home studio in Brooklyn, NY. Mastered by Phil Douglas (Latterman, Small Arms Dealer, Iron Chic). The album includes the "Everyday" which was originally released in December 2006. Deep Elm Records is simultaneously releasing an EP titled "Cordelia" featuring four additional piano instrumentals. Carly also plays keyboards / sings in the band Slingshot Dakota and composes custom works upon request. And yes, that was the name given to her at birth. "This is music that changes lives, opens minds, broadens horizons. Carly is an amazing pianist." - ANA "Beautiful and soothing, she will evoke emotion and ease any scattered mind. A talented composer." - SweetieJo "Emotional and inspiring, it grabs your soul and moves you. Highly recommended." - The Rez
TheAdventures of Charlie Chan - 2 Episodes The portly, impassive oriental sleuth, Charlie Chan, has cast an impressive shadow in the world of fictional mystery since 1925. He was the product of a middle-aged Caucasian journalist, Earl Derr Biggers, whose knowledge of the Eastern Hemisphere, and China in particular, was limited to casual impressions. However the author quickly captured the imagination of most of North America with his deliberative Chinese detective in magazines, books, films, and to a lesser extent, radio and the stage.
In 1973 an Australian government cartographer was reported to have seen a bizarre phenomenon deep in the heart of the continent nation. According to the cartographer’s account, they witnessed a large unknown object hovering directly above, what had been known as, the Joint Defence Space Research Facility. The object appeared to have been dull gray in color and was observed to be parked at an estimated 1000 ft above the facility. For nearly 40 minutes the object seemed to project different colored shafts of light down into the base until finally making a number of rapid oscillations and launching vertically and disappearing into the sky. Located just 18 kilometers south-west of the city of Alice Springs, the top secret U.S. military base that was the alleged ground zero for this UFO report, is reported to facilitate clandestine government operations throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. This case file, join the Theorists as they go on a walkabout through the Australian bush to the secret base known to the public as...Pine Gap.THEORITES, mental health ain't no joke, can't afford an in-person session? Click the link and get back to being you. Cheers https://betterhelp.com/alientheorySupport The Alien Theorists on Patreon$5/ month for everything we do.Buy merch and one-time donationsalientheorists.com
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