Sleepy Time Travels

I HAVE seen the God Pan and it was in this manner: I heard a bewildering and pervasive music moving from precision to precision within itself. Then I heard a different music, hollow and laughing. Then I looked up and saw two eyes like the eyes of a wood-creature peering at me over a brown tube of wood. Then someone said: Yes, once I was playing a fiddle in the forest and I walked into a wasp's nest.

This epic narrative poem focuses on the days after the end of the Civil War through the fall of 1877, describing the leaders and events of the Indian Wars, including Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Dull Knife, Spotted Tail, the Fetterman Massacre, the Wagon Box Incident, and the Battle of Little Big Horn.

An account of the Tulsa race riot of 1921 in which White people attacked and murdered Black residents in the Greenwood neighborhood burning and looting. Includes a collection of shorter witness testimonials.

This overlooked work of Lawrence contains both beautiful descriptions of his travels in Italy during this period as well as a thoroughly engrossing portrait of a man, M, who he meets and can't quite get away from for months until the end.

This true story grabs at you on several levels. Originally published as the introduction to M's work, Memoirs of the Foreign Legion, it stands on its own.

I want to put before you, if I can in these three lectures, a certain view of the world, and of the way in which that world is guided and directed. As this meeting is a public meeting, there is one statement I think that I ought to make, which it would not be necessary to make, if it were composed of members of the Theosophical Society. It is important to remember that in the Theosophical Society we have no authority on matters of opinion.

Every member is free to work out his own theory of life, to choose ones own line of thought, and no one has the smallest right to dictate to any member what he should choose or what he should think. In the Theosophical Society there is only one condition which binds a member, namely, the recognition of Universal Brotherhood. Outside that every member is absolutely free. He may belong to any religion, or he may belong to no religion at all. If he belongs to a religion, he is never asked to leave it, to change it, but only to try to live up to its teachings of spiritual life, recognizing the unity of all, to live in harmony with people of his own faith and people of other faiths. When we speak of Theosophy, we may take the word in one of two senses.

The first, what it should be to the individual. In that sense there is no difference between Theosophy and the ancient Brahmavidya of India, the Para Vidya, and the Gnosis of the Greek - no difference at all.

We are face to face with this great world, and our relations to it are manifold. One of these is the necessity we have to live, to till the soil, to gather food, to clothe ourselves, to get materials from nature. We are always making things that will satisfy our needs, and we come in touch with nature in our efforts to meet these needs. Thus, we are always in touch with this great world through hunger and thirst and all our physical needs. Then, we have our mind; and our mind seeks its own food. The mind has its necessity also. It must find out reason in things. It is faced with a multiplicity of facts, and it is bewildered when it cannot find one unifying principle which simplifies the heterogeneity of things. Man's constitution is such that he must not only find facts, but also some laws which will lighten the burden of mere number and quantity.

Who reads philosophy books? Not many. Maybe that's why George Santayana hid the medicine in sweeter wrappers. His The Last Puritan is an example. This week's episode is a selection from another venerable literary form, the dialog. It reminds me of the show from decades ago where a group of famous people from history were in a Sunday morning talk show-like format. In his book, "Dialogues in Limbo," Santayana features a pilgrim from our time who has found his way into a place where he can have some pretty serious discusions with Socrates, and others.

Mysteries are, of course, perennial favorites, and come in a variety of flavors. This weeks' hundred year old sample is in the british tradition, one of a series of tales featuring armchair sleuth, The Old Man in The Corner, a curious fellow that our author, the narrator, consults whenever she's curious about some case in the news. The old man is always miles ahead of the police, who sometimes never find the answer that he has. The Mystery of the Russian Prince is from The Old Man in the Corner solves six Mysteries by Baroness Emmauska Orczy and is a very cozy yarn to snuggle up to.

Among the numerous sciences pursued by the well-disciplined army of earnest students of the present century, none has had less honors or more scoffing than the oldest of them—the science of sciences, the venerable mother-parent of all our modern pigmies. Anxious in their petty vanity to throw the veil of oblivion over their undoubted origin, the self-styled positive scientists, ever on the alert, present to the courageous scholar who tries to deviate from the beaten highway traced out for him by his dogmatic predecessors, a formidable range of serious obstacles.

As a rule, occultism is a dangerous, double-edged weapon for one to handle who is unprepared to devote his whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice, will ever remain in the eyes of those prejudiced against such an unpopular cause an idle, crazy speculation, fit only to charm the ears of ignorant old women. When we cast a look behind us and see how for the last 30 years modern spiritualism has been dealt with, notwithstanding the occurrence of daily, hourly proofs which speak to all our senses, stare us in the eyes, and utter their voices from "beyond the great gulf", how can we hope, I say, that occultism or magic will easily gain ground where spiritualism is scoffed at?

One who rejects a priori or even doubts the immortality of man's soul can never believe in its Creator; and, blind to what is heterogeneous in his eyes, will remain still more blind to the proceeding of the latter from homogeneity. In relation to the Kabalah, or the compound mystic text-book of the great secrets of Nature, we do not know of anyone in the present century who could have commanded a sufficient dose of that moral courage which fires the heart of the true Adept with the sacred flame of propagandism, to force him into defying public opinion by displaying familiarity with that sublime work.

Renown for his plays depicting the socio-cultural context of modern society after the fall of Communism, popular playwright Vlad Zografi invites listeners to consider contemporary theater from multiple and mutually enriching and dramatic perspectives. The brilliance of his plays reflect a liberated and live theater in which audiences are drawn into the sentiments and obsessions of characters as diverse as a nameless and bare-footed leper, Russian Czar Peter the Great, on a visit to the court of France and a young Oedipus enthralled by Pythia at Delphi.

In 1989 Dave Bricker set off across the Gulf Stream, in a small sailboat, with $30 in his pocket. His voyages aboard The Blue Monk, through the Bahamas and across the Atlantic to Gibraltar, are recounted in vivid prose. The Blue Monk is a journey of self-discovery set in a world of saturated colors, remarkable people, hazardous reefs, and transcendent beauty. Bricker chronicles a little-known fragment of Miami's history and encourages us all to embrace a world of power and magic that lies only a few steps off the sidewalk.

This law, as illustrated by many live experiences, is to me, by no means an untried theory. Rather, I have, each and every time, found it so practical and reliable in solving the many difficult problems coming to me for solution that it is with the utmost confidence and gladness that I pass it on to others likewise desirous of finding a safe and sure road to satisfaction.

Life is wonderfully simple. One efficient energy or spirit permeates all that exists. A few universal laws characterise this energy in all phases of its infinitely varied manifestation. To feel this spirit as a living reality within, to understand these simple laws and adapt life to wise obedience to them - this it is to possess the greatest peace, happiness, and power of doing good. The entire secret could be told in a few words...

The history of Taoist philosophy may be conveniently divided into three stages: the primitive stage, the stage of development, and the stage of degeneration.

The first of these stages is only known to us through the medium of a single semi-historical figure, the philosopher Lao Tzu, whose birth is traditionally assigned to the year 604 BC. Some would place the beginnings of Taoism much earlier than this, and consequently regard Lao Tzu rather as an expounder than as the actual founder of the system; just as Confucianism — that is, a moral code based on filial piety and buttressed by altruism and righteousness — may be said to have flourished long before Confucius.

The two oases, however, are somewhat dissimilar. The teachings of Lao Tzu, as preserved in the Tao Te Ching, are not such as one can easily imagine being handed down from generation to generation among the people at large. The principle on which they are based is simple enough, but their application to everyday life is surrounded by difficulties. It is hazardous to assert that any great system of philosophy has sprung from the brain of one man; but the assertion is probably as true of Taoism as of any other body of speculation.

A supreme power and wisdom govern the universe. The supreme mind is measureless and pervades endless space. The supreme wisdom, power, and intelligence are in everything that exists from the atom to the planet. The supreme power and wisdom are more than in everything. The supreme mind is everything. The supreme mind is every atom of the mountain, the sea, the tree, the bird, the animal, the man, the woman. The supreme wisdom cannot be understood by man or by beings superior to man, but man will gladly receive the supreme thought and its wisdom, and let it work for happiness through him, caring not to fathom its mystery. The supreme power has us in its charge, as it has the suns and endless systems of worlds in space.

As we grow more to recognize this sublime and exhaustless wisdom, we shall learn more and more to demand that wisdom, draw it to ourselves, make it a part of ourselves, and thereby be ever making ourselves newer and newer. This means ever perfecting health, greater and greater power to enjoy all that exists, gradual transition into a higher state of being and the development of powers which we do not now realize as belonging to us.

This little book appeals, perhaps, to the Eastern rather than to the Western type of mind, but so many souls trained in the East are now being reincarnated in the West that it may find friendly [listeners] away from the land of its birth.

Addressed to a purely Hindu audience, the lectures contain many common Sanskrit words, familiar to every Hindu, that may sound strange in the ears of [listeners] of other faiths; but it seems better to retain them, for those who object to them will object to the whole Eastern coloring of the booklet, and the changing of a few words would not shape the lectures to meet their views.

To some, it will carry a message deeper and sweeter than the more conventional and colder West is yet ready to welcome. For such souls it was spoken; let others pass it by.

Annie Besant

"To those in whose hands this book finds it way, I wish to convey my greetings, and to assure you that it has been a great pleasure to me to be spared, and able to write the only authentic history that has ever been written by a member of the noted, or as some might express it, 'notorious' James Brothers gang, whose operations extended over a time, beginning with the outrages which were perpetrated on the family of the parents of Jesse and Frank James, by the Quantral band, which will be narrated in the pages which are to follow, and going through the different operations of the Jesse and Frank James gang of outlaws, ending with his death, which occurred at Wayton, Newton county, Arkansas, on the 14th day of February, 1926."

This history was written by Frank James himself, at odd times, during his latter years and was, two years before his death, entrusted to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah E. Snow, of Wayton, Ark., with his request that it be kept a secret until after he had passed away, after which it was his desire that it be published to the world, and his identity disclosed, in order that the world might learn some of the true facts concerning the whys and wherefores leading up to and the causes which forced these two brothers into outlawry.

"Youth" was not my first contribution to Maga. It was the second. But that story marks the first appearance in the world of the man Marlow, with whom my relations have grown very intimate in the course of years. The origins of that gentleman (nobody as far as I know had ever hinted that he was anything but that) - his origins have been the subject of some literary speculation of, I am glad to say, a friendly nature.

I have spent a goodly part of my life in study and research. During the last 30 years, I have read every single piece of literature on the subject of spiritualism that I could. I have accumulated one of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena, spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, demonology, evil spirits, etc - some of the material going back as far as 1489. And I doubt if any one in the world has so complete a library on modern spiritualism, but nothing I ever read concerning the so-called spiritualistic phenomena has impressed me as being genuine.

It is true that some of the things I read seemed mystifying, but I question if they would be were they to be reproduced under different circumstances, under test conditions, and before expert mystifiers and open-minded committees. Mine has not been an investigation of a few days or weeks or months, but one that has extended over 30 years and in that time, I have not found one incident that savored of the genuine.

If there had been any real unalloyed demonstration to work on - one that did not reek of fraud, one that could not be reproduced by earthly powers - then there would be something for a foundation, but up to the present time, everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains or those which were too actively and intensely willing to believe. Houdini.

THE word. Akasha in the language of the Hindus  is expressive of a meaning that explains its object. Akasha means accommodation ; not necessarily what man calls the sky, although the sky is an accommodation. On the model of the Akasha the whole creation has been based. The organs of the senses—the ears, the eyes, the nostrils, the mouth—all are different aspect of Akasha, and so is the human body constructed. The purpose of this construction can be found in its own nature ; as the purpose of the ears is found in hearing, of the nostrils in breathing, of the eye in seeing, so is the purpose of the whole body. The purpose of the body is to experience life fully.

Ludovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions into many side plots.