Previous Birth Quotes

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I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out...
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
If you make a person believe that his misfortune in this birth is due to his sins in his previous birth, he will resign himself to his fate and not vent his fury on society at large.
Amish Tripathi (The Immortals of Meluha (Shiva Trilogy, #1))
Maybe that's what life was really about - trying to reclaim the safety and comfort you previously enjoyed inside a womb.
Jack Getze (Making Hearts)
Gossamer strands of memory flutter over her face and eyes in their furious journey back into the almost-forgotten past.  Smells, feelings, images, and body sensations all coalesce into a mural of previous connections with this place.
Kathy Martone (Victorian Songlight: The Birthings of Magic & Mystery)
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making explanation for itself and wearing it out.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
Thus, the philosopher dislikes marriage as well as what might persuade him into it??marriage is a barrier and a disaster along his route to the optimal. What great philosopher up to now has been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibtniz, Kant, Schopenhauer?? None of these got married. What`s more, we cannot even imagine them married. A married philosopher belongs in a comedy, that`s my principle. And Socrates, the exception, the malicious Socrates, it appears, got married ironically to demonstrate this very principle. Every philosopher would speak as once Buddha spoke when someone told him of the birth his son, "Rahula has been born to me. A shackle has been forged for me." (Rahula here means "a little demon"). To every "free spirit" there must come a reflective hour, provided that previously he has had a one without thought, of the sort that came then to Buddha - "Life in a house," he thought to himself, "is narrow and confined, a polluted place. Freedom consists of abandoning houses;" "because he thought this way, he left the house.
Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals)
Even if somebody was mean to you in school days, you will feel good to meet them after many years. Childhood memories are the roots of your physical self. You feel good even if an enemy waters them. Similarly, there are soul connections. Even if somebody was your enemy in previous births, you will feel good to meet them in this birth. And often the story repeats ... the enemies of your previous births create more havoc in your life disguised as friends.
Shunya
I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven't done it now to sound as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was. But people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient. Today, when everything that I do has an urgency, I would not spend one hour in the preparation of a book which had the ambition to perhaps titillate some readers. But I am spending many hours because the full story is the best way that I know to have it seen, and understood, that I had sunk to the very bottom of the American white man's society when-soon now, in prison-I found Allah and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my life.
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
Assyria soon discovered a painful truth: empires are like Ponzi schemes: financial frauds in which previous investors are paid returns out of new investors' deposits. The costs of holding imperial territory can only be underwritten by loot and tribute extracted by constant new conquests; empires must continue to expand if they are not to collapse.
Paul Kriwaczek (Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization)
Hey,” he said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs wide. “I’m more than willing to change my last name and give up my citizenship for you. I’ll even walk two steps behind you in public after we’re married, like a proper prince consort. But the birth control thing is going to have to be up to you, because obviously nothing can contain what these bad boys are packing.” “Did you seriously just refer to your testicles as ‘bad boys’?” “I did. It’s not as if you didn’t have warning, Mia. As has been previously stated—by that bastion of fine reporting, InTouch, no less—I am the world’s greatest lover.” “More like the world’s greatest idiot.
Meg Cabot (Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries, #11))
These Cro-Magnon people were identical to us: they had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks. And, unlike all previous hominids who roamed the earth, they could choke on food. That may seem a trifling point, but the slight evolutionary change that pushed man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well articulated speech. Other mammals have no contact between their air passages and oesophagi. They can breathe and swallow at the same time, and there is no possibility of food going down the wrong way. But with Homo sapiens food and drink must pass over the larynx on the way to the gullet and thus there is a constant risk that some will be inadvertently inhaled. In modern humans, the lowered larynx isn't in position from birth. It descends sometime between the ages of three and five months - curiously, the precise period when babies are likely to suffer from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. At all events, the descended larynx explains why you can speak and your dog cannot.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way)
I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha (World Classics))
Why should insurance companies continue to get away with limiting the skills that a health profession has always previously required of its members if they were to be considered fully trained?
Ina May Gaskin (Birth Matters: A Midwife's Manifesta)
And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.
Hermann Hesse
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic. One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe---a woman---had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given an utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these: "I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. "I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. "I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, brining a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place---then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement---and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
As I discussed in the previous chapter, attachment researchers have shown that our earliest caregivers don't only feed us, dress us, and comfort us when we are upset; they shape the way our rapidly growing brain perceives reality. Our interactions with our caregivers convey what is safe and what is dangerous: whom we can count on and who will let us down; what we need to do to get our needs met. This information is embodied in the warp and woof of our brain circuitry and forms the template of how we think of ourselves and the world around us. These inner maps are remarkably stable across time. This doesn‘t mean, however, that our maps can‘t be modified by experience. A deep love relationship, particularly during adolescence, when the brain once again goes through a period of exponential change, truly can transform us. So can the birth of a child, as our babies often teach us how to love. Adults who were abused or neglected as children can still learn the beauty of intimacy and mutual trust or have a deep spiritual experience that opens them to a larger universe. In contrast, previously uncontaminated childhood maps can become so distorted by an adult rape or assault that all roads are rerouted into terror or despair. These responses are not reasonable and therefore cannot be changed simply by reframing irrational beliefs.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
Those who think that modern times are wickeder than previous times are apt to identify the cause as the weakening of a sense of moral law, associated with the departure of religious traditions of morality as a social influence... Such views give comfort to apologists for religion, who fasten on the implication that to revive a culture of moral concern people must be encouraged back into churches. But this reprises the usual muddle that getting people to accept as true... such propositions as that at a certain historical point a virgin gave birth, that the laws of nature were arbitrarily suspended so that, for example, water turned into wine, that several corpses came to life (and so forth), will somehow give them a logical reason for living morally (according to the attached view of what is moral - e.g. not marrying if you can help it, not divorcing if you do, and so forth again). It is scarcely needful to repeat that the morality and the metaphysics here separately at stake do not justify or even need one another, and that the moral questions require to be grounded and justified on their own merits in application to what they concern, namely, the life of human beings in the social setting.
A.C. Grayling (What is Good?)
Beyond the immediate risks to her health and the health of her baby, when a woman chooses c-section, she decreases the chance that she will be able to get pregnant again and increases the chance that if she does get pregnant, the pregnancy will occur outside the uterus, a situation that never results in a live baby and is life-threatening to the woman. Furthermore, the risk of having an unexplained stillbirth doubles when a woman has had a previous c-section.
Marsden Wagner (Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First)
Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?" Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile. "Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?" "This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present." Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted him. Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
Hermann Hesse
70,000 to 100,000 births; twins joined at the head occur only once in 2 to 2.5 million births. Siamese twins received their name because of the birthplace (Siam) of Chang and Eng (1811 - 1874) whom P.T. Barnum exhibited across America and Europe. Most cranio pagus Siamese twins die at birth or shortly afterward. So far as we know, not more than 50 attempts had previously been made to separate such twins. Of those, less than ten operations have resulted in two fully normal children. Aside from the skill of the operating surgeons, the success depends largely on how much and what kind of tissue the babies share. Occipital cranio pugus twins (such as the Binders) had never before been separated with both surviving.
Ben Carson (Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story)
... even if the previous millisecond is closer to us than the birth of the universe, it is equally out of reach.
Jean-Christophe Valtat (Luminous Chaos (The Mysteries of New Venice, #2))
During the previous summer U.S. public health workers had accidentally killed four sailors, on two different foreign vessels, by fumigating against possible plague-carrying rats.
Deborah Blum (The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York)
A hunter-gatherer mother who is shifting camp can carry only one child, along with her few possessions. She cannot afford to bear her next child until the previous toddler can walk fast enough to keep up with the tribe and not hold it back. In practice, nomadic hunter-gatherers space their children about four years apart by means of lactational amenorrhea, sexual abstinence, infanticide, and abortion. By contrast, sedentary people, unconstrained by problems of carrying young children on treks, can bear and raise as many children as they can feed. The birth interval for many farm peoples is around two years, half that of hunter-gatherers. That higher birthrate of food producers, together with their ability to feed more people per acre, lets them achieve much higher population densities than hunter-gatherers.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
This it is,” said Siddhartha. “And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha’s previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
Even in utero and after birth, for every moment of every day, our brain is processing the nonstop set of incoming signals from our senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste—all of the raw sensory data that will result in these sensations enter the lower parts of the brain and begin a multistage process of being categorized, compared to previously stored patterns, and ultimately, if necessary, acted upon. In many cases the pattern of incoming signals is so repetitive, so familiar, so safe and the memory template that this pattern matches is so deeply engrained, that your brain essentially ignores them. This is a form of tolerance called habituation.
Bruce D. Perry (The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook)
This it is,” said Siddhartha. “And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha’s previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.” Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
A local historian later ventured that the Osage murder trials received more media coverage than the previous year’s Scopes “monkey trial,” in Tennessee, regarding the legality of teaching evolution in a state-funded school.
David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI)
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evils of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. I see that I hold sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both. I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place – then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement – and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
In fact, they didn’t even keep track of birth dates here. Instead, they used a traditional method of counting a person’s age. Newborn babies were “one year old,” and became one year older at the start of the new year. As for the reason it didn’t start at zero... I was briefly afraid I’d discover they didn’t yet have the concepts of zero or place-value notation. In fact, they had both. Newborn babies being “one” was just a holdover from previous times, before the numeral “zero” existed within their culture. Old
Kanata Yanagino (The Faraway Paladin: Volume 1: The Boy in the City of the Dead)
Later, I interviewed a prominent psychoanalyst, who told me that trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time, you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards into an eddy, or bouncing about like a rubber ball from now to then and back again. August is June, June is December. What time is it? Guess again. In the traumatic universe, the basic laws of matter are suspended: ceiling fans can be helicopters, car exhaust can be mustard gas. Another odd feature of traumatic time is that it doesn’t just destroy the flow of the present into the future, it corrodes everything that came before, eating at moments and people from your previous life, until you can’t remember why any of them mattered. What I previously found inconceivable is now inescapable: I have been blown up so many times in my mind that it is impossible to imagine a version of myself that has not been blown up. The man on the other side of the soldier’s question is not me. In fact, he never existed. The war is gone now, but the event remains, the happening that nearly erased the life to come and thus erased the life that came before. The soldier’s question hangs in the air the way it always has. The way it always will.   Have you ever been blown up before, sir?
David J. Morris (The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
I understand so far,’ said Miller. ‘But why a passport? Why not a driving licence, or an ID card?’ ‘Because shortly after the founding of the republic the German authorities realised there must be hundreds or thousands wandering about under false names. There was a need for one document that was so well researched that it could act as the yardstick for all the others. They hit on the passport. Before you get a passport in Germany, you have to produce the birth certificate, several references and a host of other documentation. These are thoroughly checked before the passport is issued. ‘By contrast, once you have a passport, you can get anything else on the strength of it. Such is bureaucracy. The production of the passport convinces the civil servant that, since previous bureaucrats must have checked out the passport holder thoroughly, no further checking is necessary. With a new passport, Roschmann could quickly build up the rest of the identity – driving licence, bank accounts, credit cards. The passport is the open sesame to every other piece of necessary documentation in present-day Germany.
Frederick Forsyth (The Odessa File: The number one bestseller from the master of storytelling)
The article ended by downplaying “disparate access to medical care or other environmental factors,” arguing that “our data suggest that the proposed genetic component to preterm birth may be a greater etiological contributor than previously recognized”—despite presenting no genetic data whatsoever!22
Dorothy Roberts (Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century)
In the course of my travels I met a scientist who enabled people who had been blind since birth to begin to see, another who enabled the deaf to hear; I spoke with people who had had strokes decades before and had been declared incurable, who were helped to recover with neuroplastic treatments; I met people whose learning disorders were cured and whose IQs were raised; I saw evidence that it is possible for eighty-year-olds to sharpen their memories to function the way they did when they were fifty-five. I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and traumas. I spoke with Nobel laureates who were hotly debating how we must rethink our model of the brain now that we know it is ever changing.   The
Norman Doidge (The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science)
Yes, Siddhartha,” he spoke. “It is this what you mean, isn’t it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?” “This it is,” said Siddhartha. “And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha’s previous births were no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
meant to be a scaled-down version of your previously full-time job, can be something of a trap. Or at least that’s how it played out for me. At work, I was still attending all the meetings I always had while also grappling with most of the same responsibilities. The only real difference was that I now made half my original salary and was trying to cram everything into a twenty-hour week. If a meeting ran late, I’d end up tearing home at breakneck speed to fetch Malia so that we could arrive on time (Malia eager and happy, me sweaty and hyperventilating) to the afternoon Wiggleworms class at a music studio on the North Side. To me, it felt like a sanity-warping double bind. I battled guilt when I had to take work calls at home. I battled a different sort of guilt when I sat at my office distracted by the idea that Malia might be allergic to peanuts. Part-time work was meant to give me more freedom, but mostly it left me feeling as if I were only half doing everything, that all the lines in my life had been blurred. Meanwhile, it seemed that Barack had hardly missed a stride. A few months after Malia’s birth, he’d been reelected to a four-year term in the state senate, winning with 89 percent of the vote.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
Science lectures dealt with social problems that still could be solved, not defunct political systems for which both the proponents and the opponents had died before my birth. Science didn't talk about books that had been written to analyze other books that had originally been written as retellings of ancient books; it talked about what was happening now and of a future that might yet be. The very attributes that rendered me a nuisance to all of my previous teachers - my inability to let things go coupled with my tendency to overdo everything - were exactly what my science professors liked to see. They accepted me despite the fact that I was just a girl, and assured me of what I already suspected: that my true potential had more to do with my willingness to struggle than with my past and present circumstances.
Hope Jahren (Lab Girl)
Female prophecy must be situated in the crisis of reproduction in the middle of the seventeenth century. This was the peak period for the criminalization of women in England and throughout Europe, as prosecutions for infanticide, abortion, and witchcraft reached their highest rate. It was also the period in which men began to wrest control of reproduction from women (male midwives appeared in 1625 and forceps soon thereafter); previously, "childbirth and the lying-in period were a kind of ritual collectively staged and controlled by women, from which men were usually excluded." Since the ruling class had begun to recognize its interest in increased fecundity, "attention was focussed on the 'population' as fundamental category for economic and political analysis." The simultaneous births of modern obstetrics and modern demography were responses to this crisis. Both, like the witchcraft prosecutions, sought to rationalize social reproduction in a capitalist context - that is, as the breeding of labor power. A recurring motif in the ruling-class imagination was intercourse between the English witch and the "black man" - a devil or imp. The terror was not limited to an imaginary chamber of horrors; it was an actuality of counterevolution.
Peter Linebaugh (The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic)
Eugene Peterson reminds us that “because we learned language so early in our lives we have no memory of the process” and would therefore imagine that it was we who took the initiative to learn how to speak. However, that is not the case. “Language is spoken into us; we learn language only as we are spoken to. We are plunged at birth into a sea of language. . . . Then slowly syllable by syllable we acquire the capacity to answer: mama, papa, bottle, blanket, yes, no. Not one of these words was a first word. . . . All speech is answering speech. We were all spoken to before we spoke.”109 In the years since Peterson wrote, studies have shown that children’s ability to understand and communicate is profoundly affected by the number of words and the breadth of vocabulary to which they are exposed as infants and toddlers. We speak only to the degree we are spoken to. It is therefore essential to the practice of prayer to recognize what Peterson calls the “overwhelming previousness of God’s speech to our prayers.”110 This theological principle has practical consequences. It means that our prayers should arise out of immersion in the Scripture. We should “plunge ourselves into the sea” of God’s language, the Bible. We should listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds. It may be one of shame or of joy or of confusion or of appeal—but that response to God’s speech is then truly prayer and should be given to God. If the goal of prayer is a real, personal connection with God, then it is only by immersion in the language of the Bible that we will learn to pray, perhaps just as slowly as a child learns to speak.
Timothy J. Keller (Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God)
What is the result of constant practice of this higher concentration? All old tendencies of restlessness and dullness will be destroyed, as well as the tendencies of goodness too. The case is similar to that of the chemicals used to take the dirt and alloy off gold. When the ore is smelted down, the dross is burnt along with the chemicals. So this constant controlling power will stop the previous bad tendencies, and eventually, the good ones also. Those good and evil tendencies will suppress each other, leaving alone the Soul, in its own splendour untrammelled by either good or bad, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Then the man will know that he had neither birth nor death, nor need for heaven or earth. He will know that he neither came nor went, it was nature which was moving, and that movement was reflected upon the soul. The form of the light reflected by the glass upon the wall moves, and the wall foolishly thinks it is moving.
Swami Vivekananda (Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda)
Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish.
Paula Polk Lillard (Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three)
The coming wave of automation will move way beyond the factory or public infrastructure and into our very biological processes such as aging and even giving birth. Used as we are to the gradual societal shifts brought about by previous change waves, often allowing decades to adjust and respond, I ask if we as a tribe are ready to abdicate our human sovereignty to the faceless forces of technology? Are you ready for the biggest loss of free will and individual human control in history?
Gerd Leonhard (Technology vs. Humanity: The coming clash between man and machine (FutureScapes))
He cannot freshly harm me here, and for that I am grateful, but the harm he previously inflicted reverberates and grows. There is nothing to heal it but time. Even here, there is no other cure for heartbreak. I wish that death were a magical cure for all that ailed my spirit in life; it is one more thing I expected and found false. I arrive with the same baggage I carried with me in life. There is nowhere to lay it down here either, no more than a woman with child can lay aside her babe before its birth, for it is within me. I am as I was, just not encumbered with flesh.
Nell Gavin
A great poem is for ages and ages in common and for all degrees and complexions and all departments and sects and for a woman as much as a man and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority and rest satisfied with explanations and realize and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring . . . he brings neither cessation or sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained thenceforward is no rest . . . they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. The companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars and learns one of the meanings. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos . . . the elder encourages the younger and shows him how . . . they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again.
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
THE COSSACK UPRISING that began in the spring of 1648, known in history as the Great Revolt, was the seventh major Cossack insurrection since the end of the sixteenth century. The commonwealth had crushed the previous six, but this one became too big to suppress. It transformed the political map of the entire region and gave birth to a Cossack state that many regard as the foundation of modern Ukraine. It also launched a long era of Russian involvement in Ukraine and is widely regarded as a starting point in the history of relations between Russia and Ukraine as separate nations.
Serhii Plokhy (The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine)
Naturalization, on the other hand, also proved to be a failure. The whole naturalization system of European countries fell apart when it was confronted with stateless people, and this for the same reasons that the right of asylum had been set aside. Essentially naturalization was an appendage to the nation-state's legislation that reckoned only with "nationals," people born in its territory and citizens by birth. Naturalization was needed in exceptional cases, for single individuals whom circumstances might have driven into a foreign territory. The whole process broke down when it became a question of handling mass applications for naturalization: even from the purely administrative point of view, no European civil service could possibly have dealt with the problem. Instead of naturalizing at least a small portion of the new arrivals, the countries began to cancel earlier naturalizations, partly because of general panic and partly because the arrival of great masses of newcomers actually changed the always precarious position of naturalized citizens of the same origin. Cancellation of naturalization or the introduction of new laws which obviously paved the way for mass denaturalization shattered what little confidence the refugees might have retained in the possibility of adjusting themselves to a new normal life; if assimilation to the new country once looked a little shabby or disloyal, it was now simply ridiculous. The difference between a naturalized citizen and a stateless resident was not great enough to justify taking any trouble, the former being frequently deprived of important civil rights and threatened at any moment with the fate of the latter. Naturalized persons were largely assimilated to the status of ordinary aliens, and since the naturalized had already lost their previous citizenship, these measures simply threatened another considerable group with statelessness.
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
In some instances, even when crisis intervention has been intensive and appropriate, the mother and daughter are already so deeply estranged at the time of disclosure that the bond between them seems irreparable. In this situation, no useful purpose is served by trying to separate the mother and father and keep the daughter at home. The daughter has already been emotionally expelled from her family; removing her to protective custody is simply the concrete expression of the family reality. These are the cases which many agencies call their “tragedies.” This report of a child protective worker illustrates a case where removing the child from the home was the only reasonable course of action: Division of Family and Children’s Services received an anonymous telephone call on Sept. 14 from a man who stated that he overheard Tracy W., age 8, of [address] tell his daughter of a forced oral-genital assault, allegedly perpetrated against this child by her mother’s boyfriend, one Raymond S. Two workers visited the W. home on Sept. 17. According to their report, Mrs. W. was heavily under the influence of alcohol at the time of the visit. Mrs. W. stated immediately that she was aware why the two workers wanted to see her, because Mr. S. had “hurt her little girl.” In the course of the interview, Mrs. W. acknowledged and described how Mr. S. had forced Tracy to have relations with him. Workers then interviewed Tracy and she verified what mother had stated. According to Mrs. W., Mr. S. admitted the sexual assault, claiming that he was drunk and not accountable for his actions. Mother then stated to workers that she banished Mr. S. from her home. I had my first contact with mother and child at their home on Sept. 20 and I subsequently saw this family once a week. Mother was usually intoxicated and drinking beer when I saw her. I met Mr. S. on my second visit. Mr. S. denied having had any sexual relations with Tracy. Mother explained that she had obtained a license and planned to marry Mr. S. On my third visit, Mrs. W. was again intoxicated and drinking despite my previous request that she not drink during my visit. Mother explained that Mr. S. had taken off to another state and she never wanted to see him again. On this visit mother demanded that Tracy tell me the details of her sexual involvement with Mr. S. On my fourth visit, Mr. S. and Mrs. S. were present. Mother explained that they had been married the previous Saturday. On my fifth visit, Mr. S. was not present. During our discussion, mother commented that “Bay was not the first one who had Tracy.” After exploring this statement with mother and Tracy, it became clear that Tracy had been sexually exploited in the same manner at age six by another of Mrs. S.'s previous boyfriends. On my sixth visit, Mrs. S. stated that she could accept Tracy’s being placed with another family as long as it did not appear to Tracy that it was her mother’s decision to give her up. Mother also commented, “I wish the fuck I never had her.” It appears that Mrs. S. has had a number of other children all of whom have lived with other relatives or were in foster care for part of their lives. Tracy herself lived with a paternal aunt from birth to age five.
Judith Lewis Herman (Father-Daughter Incest (with a new Afterword))
In many prehistoric societies the mean human generation time—average number of years between births of parents and of their children—was only a few decades. Hence towards the end of a string of wet decades, most people alive could have had no firsthand memory of the previous period of dry climate. Even today, there is a human tendency to increase production and population during good decades, forgetting (or, in the past, never realizing) that such decades were unlikely to last. When the good decades then do end, the society finds itself with more population than can be supported, or with ingrained habits unsuitable to the new climate conditions.
Jared Diamond (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive)
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. "I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
We had our family patterns and were quite comfortable in them, which made it even more shocking when, just after his eightieth birthday, Papa began bringing up his time as a prisoner of war in Germany. Of course, I had always known that he had served in World War II and been captured, just like I had always know the stories about my grandmother and the build of their house. It's that peculiar type of family memory, where someone has obviously told you but you were too young to remember actually hearing it, so it seems like knowledge that was instilled at birth. Papa never brought it up, and my parents said they hadn't heard him mention it once in the previous fifty years. But suddenly, he was talking.
Jesse Cozean
The strongest evidence yet was published in 2010. In a painstaking long-term study, much larger and more thorough than anything done previously, an international team of researchers tracked one thousand children in New Zealand from birth until the age of thirty-two. Each child’s self-control was rated in a variety of ways (through observations by researchers as well as in reports of problems from parents, teachers, and the children themselves). This produced an especially reliable measure of children’s self-control, and the researchers were able to check it against an extraordinarily wide array of outcomes through adolescence and into adulthood. The children with high self-control grew up into adults who had better physical health, including lower rates of obesity, fewer sexually transmitted diseases, and even healthier teeth. (Apparently, good self-control includes brushing and flossing.) Self-control was irrelevant to adult depression, but its lack made people more prone to alcohol and drug problems. The children with poor self-control tended to wind up poorer financially. They worked in relatively low-paying jobs, had little money in the bank, and were less likely to own a home or have money set aside for retirement. They also grew up to have more children being raised in single-parent households, presumably because they had a harder time adapting to the discipline required for a long-term relationship. The children with good self-control were much more likely to wind up in a stable marriage and raise children in a two-parent home. Last, but certainly not least, the children with poor self-control were more likely to end up in prison. Among those with the lowest levels of self-control, more than 40 percent had a criminal conviction by the age of thirty-two, compared with just 12 percent of the people who had been toward the high end of the self-control distribution in their youth.
Roy F. Baumeister (Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength)
Euripides thought he observed that during these first scenes the spectator was in a strange state of anxiety to make out the problem of the previous history, so that the poetic beauties and pathos of the exposition were lost to him. Accordingly he placed the prologue even before the exposition, and put it in the mouth of a person who could be trusted: some deity had often[Pg 100] as it were to guarantee the particulars of the tragedy to the public and remove every doubt as to the reality of the myth: as in the case of Descartes, who could only prove the reality of the empiric world by an appeal to the truthfulness of God and His inability to utter falsehood. Euripides makes use of the same divine truthfulness once more at the close of his drama, in order to ensure to the public the future of his heroes; this is the task of the notorious deus ex machina. Between the preliminary and the additional epic spectacle there is the dramatico-lyric present, the "drama" proper.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy)
The sex ratio of those being referred had shifted dramatically too. The number of girls (known at that time at GIDS as ‘natal females’, now ‘birth-assigned females’) seeking help had equalled the number of boys for the first time in 2011. Previously, GIDS’s caseload had been nearly three-quarters male for those referred in childhood, or two-thirds overall. At first, this change was understood to be positive – a sort of balancing-out – and attributed to the fact that the girls were perhaps being better supported to seek help. But by 2015 it was clear that, in fact, something bigger was happening. There had been a complete reversal. Referrals for natal girls made up 65 percent of the total. In 2019/20 girls outnumbered boys by a ratio of six to one in some age groups, most markedly between the ages of 12 and 14 … Moreover, the majority were girls whose gender-related distress had begun after the onset of puberty, during adolescence. They didn’t have a history of childhood dysphoria.
Hannah Barnes (Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children)
Although mothers are rarely told this, there is no question that some of the medication used in epidurals does get to the baby. One study measured the levels of epidural medication in newborns’ umbilical cords after birth; the longer the mother had had the epidural in place, the higher the level of medication in the cord (and therefore the baby). A study looking at the effects of epidural using Fentanyl (a narcotic) on the baby showed definite negative effects on his ability to breastfeed, especially at higher doses. Those women who had the higher doses were much more likely to have stopped breastfeeding by six weeks after birth, even though all the mothers in the study had successfully breastfed a previous baby for at least six weeks. Studies that evaluated the way the baby breastfed have found that, after being exposed to the epidural medications during the labour, the baby was less able to latch on well and suckle effectively. Some studies have seen subtle effects of epidurals that lasted up to a month.
Jack Newman (Dr. Jack Newman's Guide to Breastfeeding: updated edition)
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. "I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. "I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, brining a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place---then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement---and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
According to the law of karma, souls reincarnate in environments befitting their spiritual attainments. Good people (even those who have veered from the spiritual path) go, when they die, to the heaven of those who do good deeds. They dwell there for a number of years and then take birth again, this time into a home that is pure and prosperous. A few of them will be born into a family that is spiritually advanced, but such births are difficult to obtain. When this happens, the good environment draws out their latent spirituality and leads them rapidly toward liberation. The ones born into the pure and prosperous houses have the opportunity at first to enjoy the relatively tame desires they held in their former bodies. But as soon as those pleasures are done they feel irresistibly drawn to spirituality by the force of the good habits they strove for in the previous life. Even those who showed only a faint interest, merely inquiring about spiritual matters, progress further than the ones who merely follow the rites and ceremonies of their belief systems unthinkingly, and thus stall their true spiritual advancement.
Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that ‘she bids him begone’, for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for them, and has moreover, a good deal of truth in it under existing conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the ‘surplus population’ useful, to transform it into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the strenuous exertions of the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the rich capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population.
Friedrich Engels (The Condition of the Working Class in England)
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasies (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:— I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago); And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute’s well-timed law; Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door; A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more.
Edgar Allan Poe (Terrifying Tales)
Once people believed her careful documentation, there was an easy answer—since babies are cute and inhibit aggression, something pathological must be happening. Maybe the Abu langur population density was too high and everyone was starving, or male aggression was overflowing, or infanticidal males were zombies. Something certifiably abnormal. Hrdy eliminated these explanations and showed a telling pattern to the infanticide. Female langurs live in groups with a single resident breeding male. Elsewhere are all-male groups that intermittently drive out the resident male; after infighting, one male then drives out the rest. Here’s his new domain, consisting of females with the babies of the previous male. And crucially, the average tenure of a breeding male (about twenty-seven months) is shorter than the average interbirth interval. No females are ovulating, because they’re nursing infants; thus this new stud will be booted out himself before any females wean their kids and resume ovulating. All for nothing, none of his genes passed on. What, logically, should he do? Kill the infants. This decreases the reproductive success of the previous male and, thanks to the females ceasing to nurse, they start ovulating. That’s the male perspective. What about the females? They’re also into maximizing copies of genes passed on. They fight the new male, protecting their infants. Females have also evolved the strategy of going into “pseudoestrus”—falsely appearing to be in heat. They mate with the male. And since males know squat about female langur biology, they fall for it—“Hey, I mated with her this morning and now she’s got an infant; I am one major stud.” They’ll often cease their infanticidal attacks. Despite initial skepticism, competitive infanticide has been documented in similar circumstances in 119 species, including lions, hippos, and chimps. A variant occurs in hamsters; because males are nomadic, any infant a male encounters is unlikely to be his, and thus he attempts to kill it (remember that rule about never putting a pet male hamster in a cage with babies?). Another version occurs among wild horses and gelada baboons; a new male harasses pregnant females into miscarrying. Or suppose you’re a pregnant mouse and a new, infanticidal male has arrived. Once you give birth, your infants will be killed, wasting all the energy of pregnancy. Logical response? Cut your losses with the “Bruce effect,” where pregnant females miscarry if they smell a new male. Thus competitive infanticide occurs in numerous species (including among female chimps, who sometimes kill infants of unrelated females). None of this makes sense outside of gene-based individual selection. Individual selection is shown with heartbreaking clarity by mountain gorillas, my favorite primate. They’re highly endangered, hanging on in pockets of high-altitude rain forest on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are only about a thousand gorillas left, because of habitat degradation, disease caught from nearby humans, poaching, and spasms of warfare rolling across those borders. And also because mountain gorillas practice competitive infanticide. Logical for an individual intent on maximizing the copies of his genes in the next generation, but simultaneously pushing these wondrous animals toward extinction. This isn’t behaving for the good of the species.
Robert M. Sapolsky
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out “I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. “I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both. I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
One find in Western Australia turned up zircon crystals dated to 4.4 billion years ago, just a couple of hundred million years after the earth and the solar system formed. By analyzing their detailed composition, researchers have suggested that ancient conditions may have been far more agreeable than previously thought. Early earth may have been a relatively calm water world, with small landmasses dotting a surface mostly covered by ocean.15 That’s not to say that earth’s history didn’t have its moments of flaming drama. Roughly fifty to one hundred million years after its birth, earth likely collided with a Mars-sized planet called Theia, which would have vaporized the earth’s crust, obliterated Theia, and blown a cloud of dust and gas thousands of kilometers into space. In time, that cloud would have clumped up gravitationally to form the moon, one of the larger planetary satellites in the solar system and a nightly reminder of that violent encounter. Another reminder is provided by the seasons. We experience hot summers and cold winters because earth’s tilted axis affects the angle of incoming sunlight, with summer being a period of direct rays and winter being a period of oblique ones. The smashup with Theia is the likely cause of earth’s cant. And though less sensational than a planetary collision, both the earth and the moon endured periods of significant pummelings by smaller meteors. The moon’s lack of eroding winds and its static crust have preserved the scars but earth’s thrashing, less visible now, was just as severe. Some early impacts may have partially or even fully vaporized all water on earth’s surface. Despite that, the zircon archives provide evidence that within a few hundred million years of its formation, earth may have cooled sufficiently for atmospheric steam to rain down, fill the oceans, and yield a terrain not all that dissimilar from the earth we now know. At least, that’s one conclusion reached by reading the crystals.
Brian Greene (Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe)
write animal stories. This one was called Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly; a meditation on ethics, you might say; it had been inspired by a short business trip to Brittany. Here’s a key passage from it: ‘Let us first consider the Breton cow: all year round she thinks of nothing but grazing, her glossy muzzle ascends and descends with impressive regularity, and no shudder of anguish comes to trouble the wistful gaze of her light-brown eyes. All that is as it ought to be, and even appears to indicate a profound existential oneness, a decidedly enviable identity between her being-in-the-world and her being-in-itself. Alas, in this instance the philosopher is found wanting, and his conclusions, while based on a correct and profound intuition, will be rendered invalid if he has not previously taken the trouble of gathering documentary evidence from the naturalist. In fact the Breton cow’s nature is duplicitous. At certain times of the year (precisely determined by the inexorable functioning of genetic programming) an astonishing revolution takes place in her being. Her mooing becomes more strident, prolonged, its very harmonic texture modified to the point of recalling at times, and astonishingly so, certain groans which escape the sons of men. Her movements become more rapid, more nervous, from time to time she breaks into a trot. It is not simply her muzzle, though it seems, in its glossy regularity, conceived for reflecting the abiding presence of a mineral passivity, which contracts and twitches under the painful effect of an assuredly powerful desire. ‘The key to the riddle is extremely simple, and it is that what the Breton cow desires (thus demonstrating, and she must be given credit here, her life’s one desire) is, as the breeders say in their cynical parlance, “to get stuffed”. And stuff her they do, more or less directly; the artificial insemination syringe can in effect, whatever the cost in certain emotional complications, take the place of the bull’s penis in performing this function. In both cases the cow calms down and returns to her original state of earnest meditation, except that a few months later she will give birth to an adorable little calf. Which, let it be said in passing, means profit for the breeder.’ * The breeder, of course, symbolized God. Moved by an irrational sympathy for the filly, he promised her, starting from the next chapter, the everlasting delight of numerous stallions, while the cow, guilty of the sin of pride, was to be gradually condemned to the dismal pleasures of artificial fertilization. The pathetic mooing of the ruminant would prove incapable of swaying the judgment of the Great Architect. A delegation of sheep, formed in solidarity, had no better luck. The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God.
Michel Houellebecq (Whatever)
It is in the heart that the mystery of spiritual conception takes place. This is not the physical heart but what the Sufis call the heart of hearts. The heart of hearts is the heart of the Self which is on the right side of the physical body. In the moment of spiritual conception a special energy is infused into this heart which makes it spin in a particular way. I once had a vision in which my heart was cut open with a knife, taken out and breathed upon—the dust was blown off—and then spun. My teacher did not interpret this inner happening but said that I would come to understand it. Years later I heard her say to someone else that once the heart has been spun in this way it remains spinning for the rest of that person’s incarnation. The divine energy of the Self vibrates at a higher frequency to our ordinary human self. Through the spinning of the heart, the higher consciousness of the Self is able to be integrated into the lower vehicles, into the denser dimensions of the human being. All the wayfarer’s spiritual work has been a preparation for this moment, and from now on the work will be to give birth to this seed of consciousness, to attune one’s waking consciousness to the higher vibrations of the Self that are now spinning within the heart. This is the gradual process of awakening to the consciousness of the heart, opening the eye of the heart through which the Beloved is able to experience His creation. Sufis are known as “a brotherhood of migrants who ‘keep watch’ on the world and for the world,” because through the open eye of His lovers’ hearts the Beloved keeps watch on the world. Through His lovers’ hearts humanity is kept attuned to the Beloved. Just as a single heart is spun when the individual is ready to contain the higher energy of the Self, so does this same process happen with a group. When the group has a central core bonded together in love then its collective heart, its central core of light, is spun. In order to help this process, groups of souls that have been bonded together in past lifetimes are forming specific groups. They hold the spiritual core of the group that allows many others to be included in this dynamic unfolding. The spinning hearts of the lovers of God are forming the map made of points of light which I referred to in the previous chapter. At this time His lovers are being positioned around the planet. Some have already been positioned. Some are moving to physical locations while others are having their hearts awakened to this hidden purpose. Slowly this map is being unfolded, and in certain important places lovers are forming clusters of points of light. Certain spiritual groups have been formed or are being formed to contain these clusters as dynamic centers of light. When this map of light around the world is fully unfolded it will be able to contain and transform the energy structure of the planet. It has the potential to be the bond that will enable the world soul, the anima mundi, to be impregnated with a higher consciousness. The hearts of His lovers form part of the hidden heart of the world. As this map is unfolding so their spinning hearts can open the heart of the world. At this moment in cosmic time the planet is being aligned with its inner source, allowing the world to be infused with a certain cosmic energy that can dramatically speed up the evolution of this planet. If the heart of the world opens, it can receive this frequency of cosmic energy and directly implant it into the hearts of people. This would alter human life more than we could imagine. It is to help in this opening of the heart that many old souls have incarnated at this particular time and are working together. (p. 36 - 38)
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (The Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of the Lover & the Beloved)
Previously, until a few years ago, it was customary for the Norwegian to be born with skis on his feet. But one of the improvements that has been made is that this is no longer the case*. Modern research has revealed, in fact, that this could be very uncomfortable and, to some extent, dangerous to the mother. *It still happens that the birth takes place with skis on the feet, but now it is most often the mother who has the skis on during the birth.
Odd Børretzen (How to Understand and Use a Norwegian: A User's Manual and Troubleshooter's Guide [Illustrated])
I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
Charles Dickens
Revenues were on pace to quadruple over the previous year, bolstered by the success of its D&D and AD&D lines, and supported with new, strong-performing products like 1978’s Gamma World: Science Fantasy Role-Playing Game and 1980’s Top Secret,
Michael Witwer (Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons)
If every birth is a rebirth, and if every life pays for the previous life, then what were you paying for in your first birth? You
Lee Strobel (The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity)
That was the moment I became aware of all the pieces that I had lost, and yet that didn't bother me. At that moment, I existed inside the silence that was birthed in between the words, rather than in the words itself. In every breath I took, I was born. And in every breath I let out, I died. My soul hadn't suffered so beautifully ever before. But still, a part of it wanted all this to end, and the other part wished that it never stopped. The soul of mine, which has existed for billions of years, was trying to search all these experiences in all its previous existences, just to believe that this wasn't the first time it was feeling so many things. But all it was able to remember was now. This moment. It wished to carve this moment into it so that when it would come across this experience again, it would be able to remember it easily. But it was sure it had done the same before too, and it would continue to do the same again and again, forever.
Akshay Vasu (The wrecked windows: The whispers of the beautiful hearts)
The great majority of those who came to see me belonged to the gray brotherhood of obsession, people imprisoned within a single idea, an idea not even their own but appropriated from previous generations; people like the inventors of the perpetuum mobile; weak in imagination, and trivial and absurd in their solutions. Yet even they burn with that consuming fire of objectivity that forces a man to renew efforts that are doomed to failure. How pitiful are these flawed geniuses, these titans of stunted spirit, crippled at birth by nature, who, as one of her grim jokes, bestowed upon their talentlessness a creative frenzy worthy of a Leonardo. Their lot in life is indifference or mockery, and all that you can do for them is listen patiently for an hour or two and nod at their monomania.
Stanisław Lem (Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy)
In this sense, the events of spring 1929 represent the heightening of an arrangement that had already defined Benjamin’s life for the previous ten years.13 He was torn between at least two women (Dora and Asja), two cities (Berlin and Moscow), two professions (journalist and philosopher), two intimate friends (the Judaic scholar Gershom Scholem and Bertolt Brecht), two major endeavors (the founding of the magazine and the start of a new major work of his own, which would later become The Arcades Project), as well as working off debts of all kinds. There can be few intellectuals whose biographies exemplify and encapsulate the tensions of the countries of their birth more than Walter Benjamin in the spring of 1929. He was a one-man Weimar, by his own account incapable of “making a cup of tea” (for which he naturally blamed his mother).
Wolfram Eilenberger (Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy)
The truth is, a trade deficit is not in and of itself something to fear. America doesn’t need to zero out its trade deficit to protect jobs and rebuild communities. As long as the federal government stands ready to use its fiscal capacity to maintain full employment at home, there is no reason to resort to a trade war. Instead, we can envision a new world trade order that works better, not for corporations seeking to exploit cheap labor and escape regulations, but for millions of workers who’ve received such a raw deal under previous “free trade” policies in the post-NAFTA era. Reenvisioning trade also can lead to better policies for developing countries and for the global environment.
Stephanie Kelton (The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy)
But who is he, my protagonist? Jacob? Marusya? Genrikh? Me? Yurik? No. No one, in fact, who is conscious of an individual existence, of birth and an anticipated, and unavoidable, death. Not a person at all, one might say, but a substance with a certain chemical makeup. And is it possible to call a “substance” something that, being immortal, has the capacity to transform itself, to change all its fine, subtle little planes and angles, its crooks and crevices, its radicals? It is more likely an essence that belongs neither to being nor to nonbeing. It wanders through generations, from person to person, and creates the very illusion of personality. It is the immortal essence, written in code, that organized the mortal bodies of Pythagoras and Aristotle, Parmenides and Plato, as well as the random person one encounters on the road, in the streetcar, on the metro, or in the seat next to you in an airplane. Who suddenly appears before you, and calls up a familiar, dim sensation of a previously glimpsed outline, a bend or a curve, a likeness—perhaps of a great-grandfather, a fellow villager, or even someone from the other side of the world. Thus, my protagonist is essence itself. The bearer of everything that defines a human being—the high and the low, courage and cowardice, cruelty and gentleness, and the hunger for knowledge. One hundred thousand essences, united in a certain pattern and order, form a human being, a temporary abode for each and every person. This is, in fact, immortality. And you, a human being—a white man, a black woman, an idiot, a genius, a Nigerian pirate, a Parisian baker, a transvestite from Rio de Janeiro, an old rabbi from Bnei Brak—you, too, are just a temporary abode.
Lyudmila Ulitskaya (Лестница Якова)
It is so obvious that at times we are afraid to mention it lest people laugh at us, and yet it is so true! He who does not believe in God will not believe in God’s people. Yet he who believes in God’s people will behold the holiness of God, even if he has previously not believed at all. Nothing but the people and their innate spiritual power will convert our atheists who have broken away from the land of their birth. And what is Christ’s word without example? Without the word of God the people will perish, for their souls yearn for the Word and for all kinds of beautiful visions.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Karamazov Brothers)
God of unrighteousness (compare Romans 9:14). Therefore, Paul clarifies collective identity in Romans 9 just as he does in Romans 2–4. To defend God’s honor, Paul rebuffs Jewish presumption. God’s election of Israel doesn’t imply that he is partial to Jews based on ancestral birth. The Pentateuch itself undermines that assumption. Although Abraham already had Ishmael, God chose Isaac (Romans 9:7). Likewise, God elects the younger Jacob over Esau despite social convention (Romans 9:12). To clarify who are God’s people, Paul engages in what appears to be doublespeak. He previously argued that both Jews and Gentiles are reckoned as “Abraham’s offspring.” Similarly, Paul challenges typical notions of the term Israel in Romans 9:6-8. Christ redefines Paul’s understanding of Israel. What’s at stake? In Romans 9:14, Paul asks, “What shall we say then? Is there injustice [adikia] on God’s part?” He replies, “By no means!” Verses 15-18 offer support: For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then [ara oun] he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. God’s covenant promises depend on grace, not nationality or social position. This is Paul’s point in Romans 4:16 when speaking of justification: “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.” God is not bound by external measures of justice/righteousness. Cultural norms do not constrain God either to save or condemn. Nor should we think God is only concerned for one expression of righteousness, whether “punitive,” “restorative,” or “covenantal” righteousness. The Creator does all things for his name’s sake. This includes raising up oppressive rulers like Pharaoh (Romans 9:17). Paul reinforces the point in Romans 9:22-24: What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for
Jackson Wu (Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes: Honor and Shame in Paul's Message and Mission)
Because I hated the whole lot of them: my parents, with their pure-blood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you practically royal … my idiot brother, soft enough to believe them … that’s him.’ Sirius jabbed a finger at the very bottom of the tree, at the name ‘Regulus Black’. A date of death (some fifteen years previously) followed the date of birth.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven’t done it now to sound as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was. But people are always speculating – why am I as I am? To understand that of any person his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fused into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution—not by having and doing whatever you wish.
Paula Polk Lillard (Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three)
Bringing Citizen Participation to Life Some years ago John McKnight attended the annual Canadian Conference of Community Development Organizations. Several hundred groups were in attendance. The convener of the conference told him that the best community “developer” in all of Canada was at the conference and pointed toward a middle-aged man named Gaëtan Ruest, the mayor of Amqui, Quebec. John introduced himself to Mayor Ruest and asked about Amqui. The mayor said that it was a town of about six thousand people on the Gaspé Peninsula amid the Chic-Choc Mountains, located at the intersection of the Matapédia and Humqui rivers. These rivers are the richest Atlantic salmon rivers on the North American continent, and Amqui is the regional center for fishing for these salmon. Gaëtan invited John to visit his town, and a year later John was able to take him up on the invitation. He found that all the townspeople were French-speaking, and a great deal of the economic base of the community was from fisherpeople who came to fish for the rare Atlantic salmon. One day, as Gaëtan and John walked together down the street, two men approached the mayor. There was a long conversation in French. After they were finished Gaëtan explained to John what had happened. The mayor said that the town had put nets on salmon streams in order to keep the fish near Amqui and accessible to the fishing guides. The two men reported that somebody was cutting the nets to let the salmon go upstream where they could poach them. “That’s terrible,” Gaëtan replied. “What do you think we can do about that?” The men thought for a while and then suggested three things that could be done. “Is there anybody who could help you do those things?” Gaëtan asked. “Yes,” they responded. “We know a couple of other fisherpeople who could help.” Gaëtan said, “Will you ask them to join you to meet with me at city hall this evening?” They agreed. That evening John joined Gaëtan at the meeting with four concerned people. The mayor had insisted that they meet in the city council’s meeting room and he led a discussion of how the group could deal with the salmon poaching problem. By the time they were done, the group had specific plans and specific people committed to carrying them out. Then Gaëtan asked, “Is there anything the city can do to help you with the job?” The participants came up with two ways the city could be helpful. “I am making you the official Amqui Salmon Preservation Committee,” Gaëtan said. “I want you to hold your meetings in the city council meeting room because you are official. I want you to come to city council meetings and tell the council people how you are coming along.” The convener of the National Association of Community Development Organizations, previously mentioned, told John that the process he had observed in the council meeting room that gave birth to the Amqui Salmon Preservation Committee was repeated over and over during Gaëtan’s long tenure as mayor. As a result, the convener said that in Amqui, hidden away in the Chic-Choc Mountains, almost all the residents had become officials of the local government and the principal problem-solvers for the community. John wholeheartedly believes that every public official can learn a great deal from the mayor of Amqui.
Cormac Russell (Rekindling Democracy: A Professional’s Guide to Working in Citizen Space)
To thrive as a business you have to outshine your previous standard by developing a rich portfolio of skills, services and products that puts distance between you and the competition.
Victor Kwegyir (Opportunities in the New Economy and Beyond: Birthing Entrepreneurs in a Pandemic Economy to Create Successful Businesses and New Wealth (Pathway to business success series Book 7))
Many old souls are stuck here because of their attachment to the ancient past. Some are directly attached: For them religion is all about nostalgia of ancient times. Others are indirectly attached: They despise the ancient past. They must have seen the dark side of religion in their previous births. So now they call themselves spiritual, not religious.
Shunya
Now in this sense also, I take it, Peter affirms that believers have been begotten again unto a living hope. In all probability the representation, while applicable to all believers, was influenced to some extent by the apostle’s memory of his own experience. There had been a moment in his previous life when all at once, in the twinkling of an eye as it were, he had been translated from a world of despair into a world of hope. It was when the fact of the resurrection of Christ flashed upon him. Under the two-fold bitterness of his denial of the Lord and of the tragedy of the cross, utter darkness had settled down upon his soul. Everything he expected from the future in connection with Jesus had been completely blotted out. Perhaps he had even been in danger of losing the old hope which as a pious Israelite he cherished before he knew the Lord. And then suddenly, the whole aspect of things had been changed. The risen Christ appeared to him and by his appearance wrought the resurrection of everything that had gone down with him into the grave. No, there was far more here for Peter than a mere resurrection of what he had hoped in before. It was the birth of something new that now, for the first time, disclosed itself to his perception. His hope was not given back to him in its old form. It was regenerated in the act of restoration. Previously it had been dim, undefined, subject to fluctuations; sometimes eager and enthusiastic, sometimes cast down and languishing; in many respects earthly, carnal and incompletely spiritualized. Apart from all of these defects, his previous hope had been a bare one, which could only sustain itself by projection into the future, but which lacked that vital support and nourishment in a present substantial reality without which no religious hope can permanently subsist. Through the resurrection of Christ, all these faults were corrected; all these deficiencies supplied. For Peter looked upon the risen Christ as the beginning, the firstfruits of that new world of God in which the believer’s hope is anchored. Jesus did not rise as he had been before, but transformed, glorified, eternalized, the possessor and author of a transcendent heavenly life at one and the same time, the revealer, the sample and the pledge of the future realization of the true kingdom of God. No prolonged course of training could have been more effective for purifying and spiritualizing the apostle’s hope than this single, instantaneous experience; this bursting upon him of a new form of eternal life, concrete and yet all-comprehensive in its prophetic significance. Well might the apostle say that he himself had been begotten again unto a new hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And, of course, what was true of him was even more emphatically true of the readers of his epistle, who, if they were believers from the Gentiles, before their conversion had lived entirely without hope and without God in the world.
Geerhardus Vos (Grace and Glory)
Hadn't Gary Gygax simply invented a game, and an esoteric one at that? It was hardly a footnote in the increasingly fast and complex information age that we live in. What was all the fuzz about? The reason for all the fuzz among those who understood his work was simple. Gary Gygax and his seminal game creation, Dungeons & Dragons, had influenced and transformed the world in extraordinary ways. Yet, much of his contribution would also go largely unrecognised by the general public. Although it is debatable whether D&D ever became a thoroughly mainstream activity, as a 1983 New York Times article had speculated, referring to it as the great game of the 1980's, D&D and its RPG derivatives are beloved by a relatively small but dedicated group of individuals affectionately known as 'geeks'. Although the term 'geek' is not exclusive to role-playing gamers, the activities of this particular audience have often been viewed as the most archetypal form of 'geekiness'. Labels aside, what is notable is that the activities of this RGP audience were highly correlated with interests in other activities such as early computers, digital technologies, visual effects, and the performing arts. In this way, these geeks, though relatively small in number, became in many instances the leaders and masters of this era. With the advent of the digital age, geeks worldwide found opportunity and recognition never previously available to their predecessors. Icons and innovators such as George R. R. Martin, Mike Myers, Richard Garriott, Vin Diesel, Tim Duncan, Anderson Cooper, David X. Cohen, John Carmak, Tim Harford, Moby, and the late Robin Williams, to name just a few, were all avid role-playing gamers in their younger years. The list of those who include D&D as a regular activity while growing up is both extensive and impressive.
Michael Witwer (Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons)
With the move to permanent villages and the increase in food supply, the population began to grow. Giving up the nomadic lifestyle enabled women to have a child every year. Babies were weaned at an earlier age – they could be fed on porridge and gruel. The extra hands were sorely needed in the fields. But the extra mouths quickly wiped out the food surpluses, so even more fields had to be planted. As people began living in disease-ridden settlements, as children fed more on cereals and less on mother’s milk, and as each child competed for his or her porridge with more and more siblings, child mortality soared. In most agricultural societies at least one out of every three children died before reaching twenty.5 Yet the increase in births still outpaced the increase in deaths; humans kept having larger numbers of children. With time, the ‘wheat bargain’ became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows. The average person in Jericho of 8500 BC lived a harder life than the average person in Jericho of 9500 BC or 13,000 BC. But nobody realised what was happening. Every generation continued to live like the previous generation, making only small improvements here and there in the way things were done. Paradoxically, a series of ‘improvements’, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers. Why
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
My memorization skills were so well honed at Korean school that it's now become an involuntary and automatic reflex. I have almost perfect recall of conversations I've had going back about twenty years or so. If required, I can recite an entire thirty-minute exchange verbatim. Sometimes this is useful, as when I'm arguing with a male companion about whether one of us did or did not break some previously made promise. However, my gift of recall is very annoying to other people. They forgot to tell us at Korean school that memory does not lead to a happy life.
Euny Hong (The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture)
That meant that fully half of the guests at the El Dorado weren't who they were supposed to be. As a fillip to all this big-brained deceiving going on, Mary Hepburn's war-surplus combat fatigues still bore the embroidered last name of their previous owner over the left breast pocket, which was Kaplan. And when she and James Wait finally met in the cocktail lounge, he would tell her his false name and she would tell him her true name, but he would keep calling her "Mrs. Kaplan" anyway, and extol the Jewish people and so on. And they would later be married by the Captain on the sundeck of the Bahia de Darwin, and as far as she knew, she had become the wife of Willard Flemming, and as far as he knew, he had become the husband of Mary Kaplan. This sort of confusion would be impossible in the present day, since nobody has a name anymore - or a profession, or a life story to tell. All anybody has in the way of a reputation anymore is an odor which, from birth to death, cannot be modified. People are who they are, and that is that. The Law of Natural Selection has made human beings absolutely honest in that regard. Everybody is exactly what he or she seems to be.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Galapagos)
As the previous chapter showed, mobile communities of foragers have good reasons to limit population growth. But if they settle down, those limits to population growth can be relaxed. Babies do not need to be carried so much; grain-based diets (particularly if foods are cooked) make it possible to wean children earlier; birth intervals will shorten; and females will reach puberty earlier.
David Christian (Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library Book 2))
Those who compare Jesus’ virgin birth to Greek stories about gods impregnating women, however, appeal to a milieu quite foreign to this account. In the Greek stories, the gods are many, are immoral, and impregnate women who are thus not virgins. Much more relevant are Biblical accounts of God empowering supernatural births in the OT (Ge 21:1–2; 25:21; 30:22; Jdg 13:3). Even among miraculous births, however, God does something new: Jesus is born not merely from someone previously unable to bear, but from a virgin.
Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
THE SEVEN STEPS OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION Illumination is the act of shining the light of consciousness on the egoic forces that obstruct our minds, things such as defense mechanisms, illusions, and other intellectual structures that obscure our capacity to see ourselves and all around us as Sacred. We can think of this as removing lampshades that cover up our inner One Mind's Light. Submersion brings us into deeper self-awareness by wading into the waters of our unconscious, our inner One Thing, thus opening the door to a productive dialog between the conscious and the unconscious selves, which can be considered respectively as our inner One Mind and One Thing. Remember, it is the interaction between these two that gives power to all creation, so it is important to get these forces into a productive dialog within us if we want our soul to create life. Polarization is a process through which we increase our awareness of inner duality— our One Mind and One Thing — and explore the paradox of their underlying unity and separation ability. Just as we saw in the story of creation, these two internal forces can use their separation to create a polarity, such as charging a battery, and this battery enhances our creativity. Merging is the actual fusion of these opposing powers that can also be known as our active and reactive inner natures, the conscious and the unconscious, the mind, and the soul. Here we start to blend the best of both, giving birth to what Egyptian alchemists call the Intelligence of the Heart, thus overloading our internal battery and our creative abilities. Inspiration takes Merging's creative potential and animates it with the Divine breath of life, introducing new dimensions beyond our ability to plan or monitor. The element of surprise threatens the illusion of the ego-self that it is in control, so a part of Inspiration causes the self-deception to die and fall away so that we can be reborn into the Light of Truth. In other terms, our True Self can be remembered. Refining takes from the previous step the divinely inspired solution and further purifies it, removing any last traces of the ego that would otherwise cloud our ability to see our True Self. We lift our human consciousness to the highest possible level to reconnect with the One Self, and Reiki is a wonderful tool to do so as you will know in the near future. Integration completes the process by uniting our One Mind, and One Thing's distilled essence, allowing us to experience their inherent Oneness at a deep level. This can also be considered as the union of spirit, soul, and body with matter. Saying it pragmatically, we take this state of awakened awareness and incorporate it into the very structure of our daily lives; it's not something we feel only when we're on a couch of contemplation or in a class of yoga. And then we return to the beginning, like the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, but this time bearing to bear our newly created insight. These are the seven stages of self-transformation, in a nutshell, and now is the time to weave Reiki into the picture.
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
No one can gain merit through theft; No one can block previous karma with their hand.
Robin Kornman (The Epic of Gesar of Ling: Gesar's Magical Birth, Early Years, and Coronation as King)
Long before the Gorgon Medusa constellated within the archaic Greek world and was demonized as ugly and ultimately monstrous—with her tongue lolling between sharp fangs, with writhing serpents for hair and glaring eyes—the roots of her multi-layered iconography extended deep into pre-Greek cultures. The earliest agrarian societies of Southeastern Europe, from the 7th-4th millennia BCE, were intimately bonded with the seasonal realities of the living Earth. These egalitarian farmers who developed long-lived, sustainable societies understood that life feeds on life. Death and decomposition are inevitable consequences of being alive, and the nutrients released from previously living matter are essential for life's renewal. Within this context, concepts of the sacred are analogous to the cyclic continuity of all existence. In mythic terms, the Great Goddess, as the Sacred Source of all life, is a metaphor for life giving birth to itself and absorbing itself in death. Therefore, the Goddess of Life is also the Goddess of Death who is responsible for regeneration. Goddesses in various guises who represent this eternal cycle are found in ancient traditions throughout the world. The nature of every society is shaped by prevailing attitudes—honoring and respectful, or fearful.
Joan Marler (Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom)
A long time lag intervened between the point when high fertility rates were no longer needed to replace the population and the point when these changes occurred. People hesitate to give up familiar norms governing gender roles and sexual behavior. But when a society reaches a sufficiently high level of economic and physical security that younger birth cohorts grow up taking survival for granted, it opens the way for an intergenerational shift from pro-fertility norms to individual-choice norms that encourages secularization. Although basic values normally change at the pace of intergenerational population replacement, the shift from pro-fertility norms to individual-choice norms has reached a tipping point at which conformist pressures reverse polarity and are accelerating changes theyonce resisted. Different aspects of cultural change are moving at different rates. In recent years, high-income countries have been experiencing massive immigration by previously unfamiliar groups. They have also been experiencing rising inequality and declining job security, for reasons linked with the winner-takes-all economies of advanced knowledge societies. The causes of rising inequality are abstract and poorly understood, but
Ronald Inglehart (Religion's Sudden Decline: What's Causing it, and What Comes Next?)
Part 2 - Now the problem is India is with multiple cultures, context specific reasons and languages - so protecting value of India means protecting each and every cultural values in India, but when these people turn arrogant their values getting down, that is the problem, you have to withstand the pain to show you are capable, if you are capable then the culture you belong is also capable - this is applicable for anyone, and once your character and your cultural identities are analyzed you will be easily estimated to be fit for something. But in my case, it is totally complicated, First I am Ganapathy K (Son of Krishnamoorthy not Shiv), that born on 14- April 1992 (Approximate Birth day of Lord Rama and Tamil New year and Dr Ambedkar birthday), My family name is Somavarapu (Which means clans of Chandra - Or Monday - Or cold place) My family origin is from Tenali - Guntur, but permanently settled in TN, born in agricultural family (Kamma Naidu (General caste in AP and Telangana) but Identified as Vadugan Naidu (OBC) for reservation benefits as OBC Non Creamy - as made by my ancestors - I did not make this. And Manu smiriti varna system did not take place in south India much like UP or Rajasthan even in ancient times. Even in ancient times, north rulers did not rule south india at all, rather they made friendship sometimes or they made leaders for south people by selecting best fit model. So whomever are said to be kshatriyas in South are Pseudo Kshatriyas or deemed Kshatriyas which means there are no real Kshatriyas in South India - and it was not required much in south. tribal people and indigenous people in south were very strong in ancient time, that they prayed and worshiped only forest based idolizers. they do not even know these Hindustani or Sanskrit things, and Tamil was started from Sangam literature (As per records - And when sangam literature was happening - Lord shiva and Lord Karthikeya was present on the hall - As mentioned on Tholkappiam ) - So ethically Tamil also becomes somehow language of God, Krishnadevraya once said Telugu was given by Lord shiva. And Kannada is kind of poetic language which is mixture of Dravidian style languages with some sanskrit touch and has remarkable historical significance from Ramayana period. My caste (Kamma) as doing agriculture work was regarded as upper sudra by British people but since they knew sanskrit, they were taking warrior roles ( Rudramadevi, munsuri naidu clan, pemmasani clan, kandi nayaka (Srilanka clan ) As Kamma also has interactions with Kapu, Balija, Velama, Telaga and Reddy clans - they were considered as land lords/Zamindari system - later in some places given chowdary and Rao title too. And my intellactual property in Bio sciences and my great granpa wrtings, my family knowledge which includes (Vattelzhuthu - Tamil + Malayalam mixture) sanskrit notes about medicinal plants in western ghats which my great grandpa wrote, my previous incarnation in Rajput family and European family.
Ganapathy K Siddharth Vijayaraghavan
So I am an Indian who's mother tongue is Tamil and Ancestral language is Telugu, Intellectual legacy from Palm leaves is in Vatteluzhuthu (Tamil + Malayalam Mixture), So wherever I go for research studies on Environment/ Ecology/ Biology, I represent myself as INDIAN (Who is comfortable in English) unless I marry a Non - Indian girl, and I represent Tamil Philosophy for defense mechanisms, science, business and all other possible spiritual, social and all other dimensions that are focused. The thing is learning Hindi, Sanskrit, Kannada or any foreign language is not a big deal, if i put effort for 3 to 6 months I can easily grab a language from grammatical foundations to advanced speaking but even after learning another language, at some point of my time in future, either I have become a biological researcher and/or astronaut as I dream of , but at that moment If I do not have the attributes of my current birth place, then there will be a guy or a girl or a leader or even a child who would easily question me that you have forgotten your mother tongue either for money or for women or for passion, so how can we trust you that you will protect/ guide us? So previous life carnation was Rajput and before that was time frame Europe, those things are in my mind and I will never forget, but in this very life I have to represent Tamil Philosophy and Ideology, As English is a common communicative and International language in science and technology, there is no one can deny English, Even lord Krishna was embarrassed just because he was Yadav. So although I have knowledge of all Indian gods and Goddesses and respecting all religions, castes and customs within India, within earth, within universe and beyond, I represent in English with Tamil Philosophy. So wherever I go for research studies on Environment/ Ecology/ Biology, I represent myself as Indian unless I marry a Non - Indian girl, and I represent Tamil Philosophy for defense mechanisms, science, business and all other possible spiritual, social and all other dimensions that are focused. Now choosing Guru is important before starting your passionate journey (Mine is science), so while choosing Guru, three things to remember, 1) Guru must be Knowing context specific problems, 2) Guru must not have lived immoral life 3) Guru must have withstand enormous pressure and opposition to show his/her potential on specific subject in his/her time 4) You can also choose more Guru as you move on in your life but starting point or First Guru must be from your Place My Gurus That I really Consider as my gurus 1) Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiyar 2) Tholkappiar 3) Carl Sagan 4) Stephen Hawking 5) Bear Grylls 6) Siddhartha 7) Lord Ramachandra 8) Lord Shiva 9) Lord Dasarat (Indra) 10) All goddesses 11) Lilith (She was portrayed as bad but she was not bad) 12) Lord prometheus 13) Lord Surya 14) Lord Krishna (Sometimes because I hate him) 15) Sita
Ganapathy K Siddharth Vijayaraghavan
There are some very ancient souls stuck here. In their previous births, they have been everything other people are trying to be. In this birth, they can't figure out what they should do. Their interests change everyday. Or nothing interests them at all. Only a life of solitude can give them stability.
Shunya
Tertullian—the Spirit makes the basic prophetic utterance, obviously through the human medium, who then takes on different characters or acting-roles, and as such he steps into the role of the Father as the speaker, sometimes the role of the Christ, and at other times the Spirit speaks as the Spirit’s own self—indeed, the person addressed by the speaker also shifts. In short, for Tertullian, there are traces of divine conversation in the Old Testament. On what basis were such role assignments made and justified by early Christian interpreters such as Tertullian?—and what are the theological implications of such assignments? And vitally, when did the church begin using this reading strategy in conceptualizing God? Here I want to introduce the reader more thoroughly to a vehicle that I shall argue was irreducibly essential to the birth of the Trinity—a theodramatic reading strategy best termed “prosopological exegesis.” Previous Scholarship Related to Prosopological Exegesis In 1961 Carl Andresen’s landmark study, “Zur Entstehung und Geschichte des trinitarischen Personbegriffes” (“Toward the Origin and History of Trinitarian Conceptions of the Person”), foregrounded the degree to which early Christian exegesis contributed to the rise of Trinitarian dogma, bringing this critical dimension to the attention of patristic and systematic theologians.41 Andresen showed that Tertullian’s scriptural exegesis was definitive for his formulation of persons (Latin: personae) of the Trinity, and argued that this reading strategy—which Andresen termed prosopographische Schriftexegese (“prosopographic exegesis”)
Matthew W. Bates (The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament)
See, as per vedas, Ganapathy is a goddly creature born for shiv and parvati and he has three consoles and ganeshloka as abode. But as per mythics and legends and epics these goddly creature will take multiple reincarnations or avatars and I was born as son of krishnamoorthy not shiv and I chose a path of sarawati even after reading all hindu relgious texts. Because I visualized my path, my goal is in biological research and space exploration an for that I needed universal knowledge although as shivs son also had universal knowledge but trapped in family cycle and he said parents are universe, but for space exploration in this reincarnation he needed different parents. still parents are universe but path is biology and space exploration thats why i had to choose saraswati as my goddess as she is goddess of universal knowledge although she is not exactly Indian. But Previous cycle also touch christianity and Rajput clans, so I am Indian and always Indian. Tamil as my land of birth, I love them and I dont want to see them as slaves but as respectful Indians. So they need to change a lot. And north indians are ncessary for national importance so whatever they are doing can not be avoided. Karnataka is a place of business, Andhra is place of family, culture. Maharashtra is misusing Ganapathy, Kerala poor souls. Everywhere there are criminals and I dont care about them what I care is respectful and peacful life for all humans on the world. Only nations I doubt are China and Sri Lanka. I am going on my path as it was predetermined, but choosing biology on which instituion (Obviously other than China, North Korea and Srilanka) - Rest of the world is accepted as long as terrific brothers i e Pakistan is not going against peace. All other nations will understand the importance of peace although they have issues among them. In science, if extreme is required kindly do 100% safe regulations after getting opinions from each and every human and biodiversity and climate change as concerns on that location
Ganapathy K
Finally, in 2007, Drs. David and Collins combined their previous studies into one deep dive that appeared in the American Journal of Public Health. For this study, they not only considered the effects of race but also looked at the more provocative question of what impact racism had on Black mothers and their babies. The pair spoke with Black women who had babies with normal weights at birth, comparing them with those whose babies were born under three pounds. They asked the mothers if they had ever been treated unfairly because of their race when looking for a job, in an educational setting, or in other situations. Those who experienced discrimination had a twofold increase in low birth weights. For those who reported discrimination in all three areas, the increase was nearly threefold. The researchers’ conclusion: low birth weights among African American women have more to do with the experience of racism than with race.
Linda Villarosa (Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))
A young male shingleback (skink), in spring, travels quite widely through the semi-desert, seeking a partner. He identifies a female by her chemical scent, her pheromones. He may then start to follow her, trailing behind her with his head close to her tail. The pair may stay together for six to eight weeks. If she is not physiologically ready to receive him, she will keep her body close to the ground. But eventually her mood may change and she will straighten her hind legs so that the rear of her body is lifted above the ground. He then crawls beneath her and twists his body so that their cloacas meet and he is able to insert his sperm. The two then separate and go their own ways. Unlike many lizards, the female retains her fertilised eggs within her until the young are so well developed that they are capable of independent life. This takes a long time. They grow so large that there is only room within her body for a very small number of them — usually no more than three. Then at last, after five months, she gives birth. The young waddle off into the desert and the female resumes her lonely life. But when spring returns, an adult will once again seek out the partner it had during the previous season. Such partnerships may last for as long as two decades. If one individual is killed, perhaps, as happens only too often, crushed beneath the wheels of a car, the survivor may stay beside the body gently licking it. A coldly dispassionate explanation of this is, of course, that the bereaved has formed a liking for its partner’s pheromone and is reluctant to leave its source. Other interpretations, more sentmental and anthropomorphic, might suggest that the survivor is disconsolate — if not grieving.
David Attenborough (Life in Cold Blood)
European traders wishing to reach the Spice Islands previously had traveled east rather than west,
Laurence Bergreen (In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire)
The previous circumnavigation came to a tragic conclusion fifty-five years earlier
Laurence Bergreen (In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire)
This doesn’t mean, however, that our maps can’t be modified by experience. A deep love relationship, particularly during adolescence, when the brain once again goes through a period of exponential change, truly can transform us. So can the birth of a child, as our babies often teach us how to love. Adults who were abused or neglected as children can still learn the beauty of intimacy and mutual trust or have a deep spiritual experience that opens them to a larger universe. In contrast, previously uncontaminated childhood maps can become so distorted by an adult rape or assault that all roads are rerouted into terror or despair. These responses are not reasonable and therefore cannot be changed simply by reframing irrational beliefs. Our maps of the world are encoded in the emotional brain, and changing them means having to reorganize that part of the central nervous system, the subject of the treatment section of this book.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)