The Language of the Sacred Trees A new book by A T Mann

Trees are essential to our outer and inner lives. They create the oxygen we breathe; we burn their bodies as fuel; and they provide our houses, furniture and the very pages of our books. Trees are also central images, symbols and manifestations of life itself. We love their solidity, their immovable beauty and grandeur, as well as the shelter they provide us.

Early humanity recognized the sacred in natural places: initially in the sky and earth, but they also found representations of the divine in trees in ancient times before language, myth and religion. Legends of a “World Tree” abound in almost all early cultures, such as the Tree of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life of the Hebrew mystical Kabbalah, the sacred oak groves of the Druids and the apple trees sacred to Venus in the Garden of the Hesperides. The Yggdrasil world ash tree in Norse myth rises up from the centre of the earth, its branches forming the heavens of the gods and its roots striking down into hell where a serpent is entwined at the world’s dark core. This tree represents the fate of the world and determines the welfare of the universe. Beneath it is the Well of Fate where the three female “fates” spin the courses of men’s lives.

Robert Graves wrote about the Celtic peoples who created a tree alphabet based on their twelve sacred trees, while yews and oak groves were places of worship for the Druids and later the church.
For the Greeks, the goddess Daphne turned into the laurel, which was sacred to Apollo. Sacred groves of ash and oak trees existed at sites like the holy place to the healing god Aesculapius at Epidaurus and to Athena on the Acropolis in her city of Athens.

Branches arch out into the sky and gigantic roots dig deeply into the ground, as trees symbolize the integration of heaven and earth, above and below. Early Chaldean myths mention a tree at the centre of the world, the tapestry of which revolves to describe creation. Although such images of the world tree might seem fanciful to us, they express the need of early humanity to identify and worship living symbolic connections between earth and heaven.

The tree is a powerful metaphor expressed in ancient mythologies and the early religions, from the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha achieved Nirvana to the wooden cross upon which Christ was crucified. The Tibetan Buddhist Guru Rinpoche, also called Padmasambhava, was born emerging on a lotus from a lake and his initiates meditate on the refuge tree to remind themselves of their teaching lineage.

Phenomena of nature and qualities of humanity come together in trees just as they played a central role in Eden. Rain comes through holes in the fabric of the world tree and majestic trees are ways by which we can ascend to heaven. The various levels of the tree’s growth symbolize hierarchies and therefore places where men and their souls exist, in what later morphed into the idea of a family tree. It is as though the universe is a giant tree-house wherein humanity, the angels, the gods and devils all live, their domains determined by their various levels, all connected as a vast, eternal living organism. There are medieval paintings that show just this quality inherent in trees.

The psychologist Carl Jung worked with and revered tree symbolism because he found trees abounded in significant dreams as a symbol of growth, of wisdom, aging and corporeality. Trees have a major place in alchemy, often having nymphs that symbolize their magical aspects. The Ents In the “Lord of the Rings” are gigantic moving trees, under which live the trolls and elves that populate our fairy tales and children’s stories — their role is to surround and mysteriously guide those humans who can hear them.

Trees are the longest lived and oldest living being on earth. Some Californian trees have been alive since before the Pyramids were built, in Gethsemane are trees that witnessed the crucifixion and in Sri Lanka trees that were alive in the time of the Buddha. Ancient trees dating from 760 AD in central France are symbols of peace and justice for rural people. Cedars of the Lord still rise above Lebanon in the Middle East. Giant trees in the Amazon are so high that entire self-contained plant and animal eco-systems exist in their branches.

In our modern world we must learn to respect and husband our trees as a cornerstone of new, emerging ecological visions, partially because they consume greenhouse gasses and transform them into the oxygen we breathe. We must carefully restore their sacredness as a matter of urgency and reverse our wholesale rape of their habitat on all continents that continue to this day. Trees are central to our ecological visions of the future.

This book will celebrate the beauty of trees, their infinite variety, their inspiration, their emotional significance, their spiritual heritage and their sheer independence. It will marry evocative images with the poetry and literature and spiritual texts that best describe their ineffable spirit.

“There rose a tree. O pure transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O high tree of the ear.
And all was still. Yet in the stillness
new beginning, summoning, change
sprang forth.” — Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

“What quietness, at the hub of things!
Beneath the tree of my life, the last river,
Surrounds an island where there rises
In the mists, a cube of grey rock,
A Fortress, the Capital of the Worlds.”
— Poem by Noël Pierre in Jung “Alchemical Studies.”

“I part the out-thrusting branches, and come in beneath the blessed and the blessing trees.”
— Woods by Wendell Berry

“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees, and flowers, and clouds and stars.” — Martin Luther

“Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.” — Twelfth Century Zen Master & Gardener Ikkyu Sojun

About the Author
A. T. Mann is an architect, author, and astrologer. He graduated from the Cornell University College of Architecture, practiced in New York City and Rome, and won a Progressive Architecture design citation in 1970. He has written or co-written 20 books (translated into many languages), including Sacred Landscapes (with Lynn Davis), Mandala Astrological Tarot, Sacred Architecture, Sacred Sexuality, and the 2011 Mandala Calendar. Mann has lived and lectured around the world, and has taught at the Danish Design School, the Netherlands Design Institute, and Manchester Metropolitan University. His website is atmann.net.

Simplicity

When we are connected with the Universe, we realize that the small feelings in life are the ones that have the ability to make us happy

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Bridging Heaven & Earth Show with Jose Arguelles and Twinflame

Perhaps best known for his role in initiating the world famous Harmonic Convergence global peace meditation of August 16-17, 1987, Jose was also one of the originators of the Earth Day concept and is recognized as the “father of the Whole Earth Festival,” now in its 33rd year at Davis, California. Holding a Ph.D. in art history and aesthetics from the University of Chicago (1969), José’s career as an educator has included professorships at Princeton University, University of California Davis, the Evergreen State College, Olympia Washington, the Naropa Institute, San Francisco State University, the University of Colorado and the Union Graduate School.

An artist as well as an author, his numerous books include the international best seller, The Mayan factor, Earth Ascending, Surfers of the Zuvuya, the Arcturus Probe and the recently published Time and the Technosphere, The law of Time in Human Affairs. A spiritual seeker, Jose studied Tibetan Buddhism for many years with noted meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, yet feels it is important to break out of the shell of all organized religion and establish what he calls a “return to UR -the Universal religion.” But it is his pioneering work on the Mayan Calendar that has absorbed his energies most passionately.

Ever since he had a visionary experience at the age of fourteen atop the Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan, Mexico in 1953, he has pursued a lifelong investigation of the mathematics and prophecies associated with the Mayan calendar. His decoding of the Mayan calendar has resulted in an interactive game called Dreamspell, the Journey of Timeship Earth 2013, and the discovery of the Law of Time. According to the Law of Time, modern humanity is in trouble because it is immersed in an erroneous and artificial perception of time which causes it deviate at an accelerated rate from the natural order of the universe.

To remedy this situation, Arguelles has been promoting the return to a natural timing cycle through the regular measure of the Thirteen Moon 28-day calendar. Since the end-date of the current Great Cycle of the Mayan calendar is in the year 2012, in order to survive the worst, humanity must make a shift to natural time – and soon. According to Arguelles, the time for this shift is July 25-26, 2004, the Great Calendar Change, when he is calling upon humanity to reject the current calendar and adopt the natural time Thirteen Moon 28-day calendar.

Currently serving as the Director of Research and Senior Advisor of the Foundation for the Law of Time the organization that promotes his cause, on March 3, 2002, Arguelles was honored as “Valum Votan, Closer of the Cycle” by Nine Indigenous Elders atop the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan who awarded him a ceremonial staff for his efforts in helping to wake humanity up to the meaning of 2012.

Moving Beyond A Human Image Of God /The Breath of God ~ Jeffrey Small

When you think of God, what images come to mind?

Do you think of a supernatural being who sits outside the four dimensional (space + time) universe who created us as a potter might? Do you picture God as a supreme designer who built the intricate laws of the universe as a watchmaker assembles a fine timepiece? Do you see God as a grand chess master who has an elaborate plan for the figures on his cosmic chessboard? Do you imagine the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where the outstretched hand of Michelangelo’s God (who looks like someone’s muscular grandfather!) reaches toward Adam?

Many popular images of God resemble a Zeus-like figure, who lives in “heaven” rather than on Olympus. When we think about it, this God seems a lot like us, only much more powerful. He has emotions: he can be a “jealous God”; he can be an “angry God” or a “loving God.” We may address him as Father, Lord, or Judge. We even use the personal (and masculine) pronoun “He” in referring to God, but we capitalize it to show that “He” is greater than we are.

In other words this God is strongly anthropomorphic, a Greek word whose roots mean “human” and “form.” In the fifth century BC, Greek philosopher Xenophanes wrote, “If horses had gods, they would look like horses.”

To me these classical images of God are fraught with problems. As a teenager, when my interest in science blossomed, I began to question the theology I had been taught as a child. Why would God allow millions of children to starve in Africa or die in a genocide, yet “He” just might intervene on behalf of our favorite sports team if we prayed hard enough? Why is it that two and three thousand years ago (when human understanding of science was very different than it is today) during the age of the Biblical writers, God seemed to intervene in the world a great deal more than he does today: causing worldwide floods, parting seas, speaking from burning bushes, stopping the sun from moving across the sky, raising dead people, and sending angels to earth to deliver his message?

The common view of God as a supernatural being like us, only more powerful, is one of the principal reasons behind the rise of atheism in the Western world and the spiritual apathy of many young people today. It certainly contributed to my own questioning of the usefulness of religion. This view of God opens itself up to critiques from the likes of eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume who pointed out the logical fallacies in the traditional arguments for the existence of God, Sigmund Freud who characterized such a God as nothing more than a “projected father figure,” and twenty-first century biologist Richard Dawkins who points out the incompatibility of this God with science.

Our modern lifestyles depend on scientific principles working, not some of the time, but all of the time: would you fly in an airplane if the laws of aerodynamics only worked occasionally? We take for granted the physics behind our cell phones and TVs. We understand that solar eclipses are not a divine omen in which God turns day into night, but are predictable astronomical events caused by the moon passing between the sun and the earth. We have faith in the biological principles that allow for the medicines we create to treat our diseases – diseases that we understand today are not caused by evil spirits or divine punishment but by bacteria, viruses, and biochemical processes.

In this post-modern age in which reason and science underlie every aspect of our daily lives, which concept will lose out in the battle between God and science? I think we are seeing (unfortunately) that God is losing this battle.

Even more problematic than the incompatibility of the classical view of God with modern scientific and logical thought is that this God opens “Himself” up to the critique of being an incompetent watchmaker, an unartistic potter, and a cruel chess master. The world we live in is a messy, complicated, imperfect place, ripe with tragedy, sickness, and injustice. The traditional view of God leads to the philosophical problems caused by the existence of evil, the reality of human suffering, and the multiple religions around the world with opposing doctrines about God. How can such a God be omniscient, omnipotent, and loving at the same time?

Finally, for me, the ultimate critique of this God is that “He” is too small. A God that is seen as some kind of intelligent being living in an extra-dimensional heaven becomes just one more thing in the universe (although a powerful thing nonetheless). A God that chooses when to tinker in the workings of the universe and when not to is not only capricious but begs the question of why God didn’t make things right the first time around? In other words, this God is finite.

Does this critique of our traditional understanding of God mean that the only alternative is the atheist one?

That is what writers like Dawkins, Hitchins, and Harris want us to believe. I actually agree with much of their criticism of religion, but ultimately, I think that the version of God they are trying to disprove is nothing more than a straw-man.

As much as my rational mind wanted to reject God, something deep in my core sensed a fundamental meaning to existence. What I needed was a different way to conceive of God that didn’t require me to close my eyes to scientific knowledge, to reason, and to personal experience. How could I be true to both my intellect and my soul: my mind that must see the world in logical terms and my heart which yearns for a greater spiritual connection? In my next post, I’ll explain how my current view of God attempts to reconcile these seemingly conflicting goals. But for now, I’m interested to hear from you.

How then do you think about God in a way that works in the 21st century?

A murder at the Taj Mahal. A kidnapping in a sacred city. A desperate chase through a cliffside monastery. All in the pursuit of a legend that could link together the great religious faiths of the world.

In 1887, a Russian journalist made an explosive discovery in a remote Himalayan monastery only to be condemned and silenced for the heresy he proposed. His discovery vanished shortly thereafter.

Now, graduate student Grant Matthews journeys to the Himalayas in search of this ancient mystery. But Matthews couldn’t have anticipated the conspiracy of zealots who would go to any lengths to prevent him from bringing this secret public. Soon he is in a race to expose a truth that will change the world’s understanding of religion. A truth that his university colleagues believe is mere myth. A truth that will change his life forever—if he survives.

The Breath of God – Book Trailer


Author Jeffrey Small graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He holds a master’s degree in the study of religions from Oxford University.

Jeffrey is active in the Episcopal church, but he has also studied yoga in India, practiced Buddhist meditation in Bhutan, explored the ancient temples of Egypt, and journeyed throughout the Holy Land.

Muslim, Christian, and Jew: Finding a Path to Peace Our Faiths Can Share ~ David Liepert

“An honest and wholehearted attempt to fulfill a task that is incumbent upon us all, whatever our faith: to . . . make our traditions speak with compassion and respect to our dangerously polarized world.” — Karen Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Faith-based conflict and religious violence threaten our world. This timely, carefully researched, and provocative work challenges the stereotypes and misconceptions that fuel these conflicts to answer the question that lies at the nexus of faith, religion, politics, history, and current events: Can those of different faiths live together in peace?

Drawing on personal experience, history, and scripture, Muslim, Christian, and Jew exposes both the differences and similarities between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and reveals the surprising truth about what they really teach at their core.

Dr. David Liepert, a prominent North American Muslim, recounts his own journey from Christianity to become a convert of Islam and what he learned in the process. Liepert also candidly explores how and why Islam has gone from being a religion that sustained a vibrant multicultural and multireligious civilization to the one we have today. In the end, he offers hope that Muslims, Christians, and Jews can live together in peace and that the happy ending we all crave might be closer than we think.

This important book is a call to peace — not just for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but for all of us.

Dr. David Liepert has been active in multifaith relations for many years. He is a member of the Canadian steering committee for the Tony Blair Faith Acts Foundation and is interfaith and media director and spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Calgary and for the Sayeda Khadija Mosque and Community Center in Toronto. The recipient of numerous community awards and a much sought-after speaker, he is also vice president of the Faith of Life Network – an internationally recognized Muslim organization dedicated to helping diverse communities live together.

Dr. Liepert holds degrees and fellowships from the University of Saskatchewan, the University of British Columbia, and Stanford University in California. He converted to the Muslim faith sixteen years ago. An anesthesiologist and specialist in intensive care medicine, David Liepert currently lives with his wife and children in Calgary.

The Hijra: Movement of God’s People ~ Omid Safi

The Islamic calendar does not begin with the year of Muhammad’s birth (as the Christian calendar begins with the birth of Christ), nor does it begin with the commencement of revelation to Muhammad. Rather, it begins with this purposeful move of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to what became known as Medina. This migration, the Muslim Exodus, established the model community under Muhammad’s rule and care. This was the emigration to Yathrib, the city that would be renamed Madina al-nabi (“the City of the Prophet”) and forever after known simply as Medina (“the City”).

Like much of the Prophet’s actions, this movement has been remembered both for itself, and also for the larger symbolism of the need to spiritually and politically move to a state of emancipation. There are other similar moves in other traditions, whether it is the Exodus of the Hebrews, or the Rastafarian tradition remembering, as Bob Marley put it, the Movement of Jah People. Muhammad’s migration to Medina would be known as the Hijra, and it is the quintessential marking point of Islamic history.

The context was urgent, and timely: The pagans of Mecca were stepping up their persecution of Muhammad and his followers. Whereas in the beginning of Muhammad’s prophetic career the persecution was directed at the marginalized members of the Prophet’s community, now there were clear indications that Muhammad’s own life was in grave danger. In fact, the Meccans were planning the imminent assassination of the Prophet. It was at this time that providential grace provided an opening: a community of people from Yathrib, a city two hundred miles away from Mecca came to Muhammad, offering their allegiance to him and asking him to come to their city to help them settle their tribal disputes. They had been long impressed by Muhammad’s qualities as the Amin (“the Trustworthy”) and saw him as having the Solomonic wisdom to arbitrate among them.

After Muhammad’s dear wife, Khadija, passed away, his two closest friends were Ali and Abu Bakr, a respected elder of the community. Both would play crucial roles in this migration. Muhammad had Ali assume the dangerous task of sleeping in his stead in his bed while the band of assassins waited outside the Prophet’s house. Muhammad covered Ali in his green shawl and had him repeat a verse of Surah Ya-Sin as protection. Meanwhile, Muhammad and Abu Bakr took to the road, heading toward Yathrib. Standing outside the city, Muhammad looked back lovingly on Mecca and said: “Of all God’s earth, you are the dearest place unto me, and the dearest unto God. Had not my people driven me out from you, I would not have left you.”

The Hijra was neither an abandonment of Mecca nor the forgetting of where one had come from. It was the determination to rise up from oppression, with the intention of returning eventually to redeem even the oppressor. This Muhammad would accomplish at the end of his life through his triumphant return home. But before he could liberate Mecca, he had to move to the city where the Muslim community would become established.

Muhammad and Abu Bakr eventually arrived in Yathrib and were received with joy and beautiful poetry composed in honor of the Prophet. Ali too would join them in a few days. It had taken him three full days to disperse all the goods that Muhammad’s enemies and others had entrusted him with, a further indication of the level of trust all had had in the very soul they were persecuting.

When Muhammad arrived in Medina, his address there was simple, and a reminder of the need to connect acts of worship with care for the poor:

O people, give unto one another greetings of Peace; feed food unto the hungry; honor the ties of kinship; pray in the hours when men sleep. Thus shall you enter Paradise in peace.

The first communal action in Medina was establishing the Mosque, truly the first Muslim mosque. Muhammad himself joined in the building task, and he was fond of reciting a line of poetry as he worked:

No life there is but the life of the Hereafter,
O God, have mercy on the Helpers and the Migrants.

One of the ways in which God’s mercy rained down on the Helpers (the Ansar, those from Medina who received the Prophet) and the Migrants (the Muhajirs, those who accompanied Muhammad from Mecca) was through a bond of brotherhood. Muhammad’s first declaration was to alter the social fabric of the Yathrib (now Medina) community. He had each member of the Helpers pair up with a member of the Migrants, establishing a bond of faith that bypassed, transcended and inverted tribal connections and socioeconomic class status. Muhammad’s own faith-brother would be none other than Ali.

In one of his first speeches, Muhammad preached the following sermon:

Praise belongs to God whom I praise and whose praise I implore. We take refuge in God from our own sins and from the evil of our acts. He whom God guides none can lead astray; and whom He leads astray none can guide. I testify that there is no God but He alone, and He is without comparison… Love what God loves. Love God with your hearts, and weary not of the word of God and its mention. Harden not your hearts from it… Love one another in the spirit of God. Verily God is angry when His covenant is broken. Peace be upon you.

This community was one based on faith in God and love for one another “in the spirit of God,” as this speech enjoined them to do. It was in Medina that the general moral outlines of Muhammad’s teachings became linked with a full set of ethical, legal and social injunctions. In Mecca, Muhammad received the Divine call that placed him in the footsteps of Abraham, and in the line of Biblical prophets. It was that purposeful movement from Mecca to Medina that established the Muslim community, one that would remain rooted in the spirit of God, carrying the fragrance of the Prophet.

As the Prophet moved from Mecca to Medina, Muslims today, and every day, hope to leave behind and beyond the state of injustice, heedlessness and tyranny, to move to the higher spiritual ground of a community rooted in the spirit of God and the love of one another, and then to come back to redeem that very state of tyranny and injustice. That is the loftiest way to remember and honor the movement of God’s people.

Omid Safi is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. The above essay draws on his newly published Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne).

My Take: Why I changed from ‘Faith’ to ‘Being’ ~ By Krista Tippett

By Krista Tippett, Special to CNN

Since I left print journalism to study theology two decades ago, I’ve thought a great deal about the limits and possibilities of words – especially when we try to navigate the spiritual territory of human life.

And when I started a public radio program on religion, ethics and meaning seven years ago, I was also quite aware that I was inviting people to put words around something as intimate as anything we try to talk about, and as ultimately ineffable.

Nevertheless, to paraphrase St. Augustine, we speak in order not to remain silent. We are fin de siècle, turn of century, people – charged with revisiting basic definitions of life, death, and meaning; we are restructuring our families, institutions, and economies. Our common life needs all the edifying vocabulary and virtues we can muster.

There’s an obvious irony here.

Religious voices have been some of the most toxic in global life in recent decades. Bombs explode in the name of Islam. Christian rhetoric fuels culture wars. There is a chasm between these expressions of religion and the lived virtue their texts and traditions demand.

One of the things that drew me to the new name of my radio program, On Being, is that it has profound philosophical and theological roots – and at the same time, it is profoundly hospitable. Hospitality is one of the great overarching virtues of all our traditions, more immediately achievable than peace, forgiveness, or compassion.

And I’ve been pleased and at times surprised by the open-hearted, open-minded correspondence I’ve had with Christian leaders – including theological conservatives – about losing the show’s former name, Speaking of Faith.

They struggle personally with the fact that “faith” does not carry the complex resonance it has in lives of devotion when it is transplanted to the public square. A Pentecostal leader wrote to me of his regret that the word “faith” has become “neuralgic” – a source of recurrent pain – in American life.

Evangelical leaders have told me about the “embarrassment” they experience among the young in their communities – young evangelicals have used this very word with me too – about the way “faith” became a blunt instrument in American politics in recent years, flattened out into positions and debates, a primary source of animosity.

There is grief behind these sentiments too, a sadness that a term so rich in meaning for so many should become an obstacle to exploring that very meaning. I understand that sadness and share it.

When we launched our radio program in 2003, I insisted against resistance that public radio had to claim an explicit stake in the “faith” discussion, demonstrating that this part of life too could be discussed with intelligence alongside politics, culture and economics. That conviction remains at the heart of my project.

But my cumulative conversation has evolved to cover religious ideas and questions less in a distinct compartment in society, and more as they infuse all of our pursuits and disciplines.

American culture’s encounter with the ethical and spiritual challenges of our time has unfolded along similar lines. There is a convergence of searching questions, strong identities, and communal commitments that long for discussion and shared action not only across religious boundaries but across boundaries of belief and non-belief.

“Faith” has its place in that, but it is too limiting a word even to describe the Christian contribution to it.

And letting go of a word, after all, doesn’t mean letting go of its content. It frees and compels us, rather, to find fresh, vivid language to communicate the deepest sense of our convictions.

A turning point for me around this decision to change our name was a day I spent last spring at Harvard Divinity School. In a discussion about the future of “progressive Christianity,” it became necessary to name the fact that the word “progressive” itself is at once vague and fraught in public discourse, not an adequate vessel for the contribution its passionate adherents want to make.

So, too, words like “peace” and “justice” have taken on political connotations and political divisiveness. They are not effective shorthand or inviting rallying cries. Yet across boundaries of belief and non-belief, so many of us long to pursue the substance those words were coined to signify.

Being is the word I’m throwing into the mix. What does it mean to be human? And how do we want to live?

These are fundamental, animating questions behind the human religious and spiritual impulse. Our great traditions are vast repositories of thinking and prayer, text and ritual, and conversation across generations about them.

But these questions are not exclusive to religious people. Atheists and agnostics are among the most ethically engaged people in our culture now, some of the most vigorous spiritual seekers.

On Being, as a conversation starter, holds out hope, for me, of a bolder demonstration that the extreme choices between nihilistic atheist and unthinking religious don’t fit most of us. Perhaps, in our search for the new vocabulary to express who we are becoming, we will reintroduce our deepest longings and virtues to each other and to the world.

Editor’s Note:Krista Tippett created and hosts the public radio program and podcast “Krista Tippett On Being”/onBeing.org, produced by American Public Media, and is the author of Einstein’s God.

Inspiring and stimulating discussions on the interplay between scientific and religious inquiry, featuring some of today’s greatest thinkers

Drawn from American Public Media’s Peabody Award-winning program Speaking of Faith, the conversations in this profoundly illuminating book reach for a place too rarely explored in our ongoing exchange of ideas-the nexus of science and spirituality. In fascinating interviews with such luminaries as Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, V. V. Raman, Sherwin Nuland, and Mehmet Oz, Tippett revels in the connections between the two, showing how even those most wedded to hard truths find spiritual enlightenment. The result is a theologically evocative dialogue on the changing way we think about science, medicine, and the expansive realm of belief.

“In a day where. . . Arguments over religion divide us into ever more entrenched and frustrated campls, Krista Tippett is exactly the measured, balanced commentator we need.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.
Krista Tippett Says Talking About Religion Is “Fraught”

Krista Tippett, host of public radio’s “Speaking of Faith,” notes that talking about religion in our culture is “fraught”–and that scientists are increasingly studying the same emotional landscape as religion… Backstage at LIVE from the NYPL with The Daily Beast, March 3, 2010.

Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet by Deepak Chopra

From the New York Times bestselling author of Buddha and Jesus comes the page-turning and soul-stirring story of Muhammad. This riveting novel captures the spellbinding life story of the great and often misunderstood Prophet.

At a time when Islam is both the world’s fastest-growing religion and a source of controversy on the world stage, Deepak Chopra takes us back to the origins of this great and often misunderstood faith in MUHAMMAD: A Story of the Last Prophet is the latest in Chopra’s series of “teaching novels” depicting the founders of the world’s great religions, which began with his New York Times bestsellers Buddha and Jesus.

“A great surprise awaited me when I began writing the story of Muhammad,” Chopra says in an introductory note. “Among all the founders of the great world religions, Muhammad is the most like us.” An orphan raised by an uncle and surrounded by a large extended clan, Muhammad lived a conventional life well into adulthood, becoming a successful merchant, marrying well, and raising a family. “What is extraordinary,” Chopra says, “is that there are so many marks of common humanity in Muhammad’s transformation.”

That transformation begins with Muhammad’s terrifying encounter with the archangel Gabriel in a cave outside of Mecca. Unable to process the experience, he tries to hide from it at first, before gradually coming to realize that he has been chosen as the instrument through which God will work His will. With that realization, Muhammad’s life is irrevocably changed. “There is an inner man that nobody sees,” he tells his daughter. “Now he is on the outside, and the outer man, he is gone forever.”

Muhammad’s task is to dispel centuries of ignorance and superstition by doing away with idols and multiple deities, uniting the warring tribes under a common faith in the one true God. At first he shares his message with a small circle of family and friends, but ultimately begins preaching in public, which earns him many enemies. After a failed assassination attempt, he flees to Yathrib (Medina). There his transformation continues, as Muhammad becomes a warrior of God who must confront the armies of the infidel.

Chopra tells Muhammad’s story through a series of narrators that represents a cross-section of seventh-century Middle Eastern society: A Christian hermit, a Jewish scribe, a slave, a mendicant, a wet nurse, a merchant, Muhammad’s beloved wife and children, his bitterest enemy—and even the archangel Gabriel. Each has a part to play in the spiritual development of a man who claimed no divinity for himself, yet established one of the world’s great religions.

“I know that Muhammad suffers under centuries of disapproval outside the Muslim world,” Chopra writes. “Ours is not the first age to react suspiciously when told that Islam means peace.” By exploring the life—and the humanity—of Muhammad, Chopra performs an important service by fostering a better understanding of a vibrant, vital faith that continues to transform the world.

“One of the most imaginative and touching biographies of Muhammad….Chopra’s grasp of Muhammad’s life and mission extends his range in a surprising direction; his popularization is welcome.” — Publishers Weekly

“Compellingly told, this is not only good storytelling, it also helps readers,
especially non-Muslims, better understand the complexities and contradictions surrounding Islam.” — Booklist

“Higher consciousness is universal. It is held out as the ultimate goal of life on earth. Without guides who reached higher consciousness, the world would be bereft of its greatest visionaries—fatally bereft. Muhammad sensed this aching gap in the world around him. He appeals to me most because he remade the world by going inward. That’s the kind of achievement only available on a spiritual path. In the light of what the Prophet achieved, he raises my hope that all of us who lead everyday lives can be touched by the divine.”

—Deepak Chopra, from the Author’s Note in MUHAMMAD: A Story of the Last Prophet

About The Author
Deepak Chopra is the founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California, and Manhattan, New York, and is acknowledged as one of the master teachers of Eastern philosophy in the Western World. He has written more than fifty-five books and has been a bestselling author for decades with over a dozen titles on the New York Times bestseller lists, including Buddha, Jesus, The Third Jesus, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, The Path to Love, and many others.

MUHAMMAD
A Story of the Last Prophet
By Deepak Chopra
HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
October 2010 s Hardcover, $25.99 s ISBN: 9780061782428

Commentary on Book Launching on Sept 21, 2010 by Deepak Chopra at the Riverside Church, New York

The book launching event witnessed a unique convergence of three aspects of ancient and traditional cultures and religions being showcased in the presence of a full-packed hall of attendees and fans of Deepak Chopra. A Hindu by birth, Deepak authored more than 50 books, one of which the most recent one entitled ” Muhammad – A Story of the Last Prophet” was launched in the interior church hall – an event that may seem ‘ sacrilegious ‘ if it was held in some countries that view their places of worships as ‘holy’.

And to add spice to this event, Deepak invited his rock and roll Pakistani singer to accompany his reciting of poems by Rumi with the strumming of the guitar and humming the sounds of Allah.

All in all, it was an inspirational evening to remember – with the audience joining in the singing of John Lenon’s “Imagine” lead by Salman Ahmed, UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador


Located on the Upper West Side, on the edge of the Morningside and Harlem communities of New York City, the edifice is modeled after the 13th Century gothic cathedral in Chartres, France. Its gothic tower stands as a beacon to the world and continues to bring people with very different perspectives together. A bird’s eye-view of The Riverside Church from the Hudson River with its surrounding community in the background. Surrounding the church are religious and educational institutions and the public parks of Morningside Heights and Harlem. The Riverside Church is situated at one of the highest points of New York City, overlooking the Hudson River and 122nd Street.

Interior: From The Inside Looking Out…
In the Nave of The Riverside Church, the strivings and aspirations of humanity pervade which is a tribute to its founders, architects, artists, and craftsmen, and to their dedication to the glory of God.

The Labyrinth on the floor of the chancel has been adapted from the maze at Chartres, one of the few such medieval designs in existence.

The pulpit has welcomed speakers from far and near: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached his famous anti-Vietnam War sermon from this pulpit; Nelson Mandela addressed the nation during an interfaith celebration welcoming him to America; Marian Wright-Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund spoke about the need to provide quality healthcare to all children; and the well-known Dr. Tony Campolo delivered a sermon concerning affluence in America.

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Rock & Roll Jihad
A Muslim Rock Star’s Revolution

Description

“The story you are about to read is the story of a light-bringer….Salman Ahmad inspires me to reach always for the greatest heights and never to fear….Know that his story is a part of our history.”
– Melissa Etheridge, from the Introduction

With 30 million record sales under his belt, and with fans including Bono and Al Gore, Pakistanborn Salman Ahmad is renowned for being the first rock & roll star to destroy the wall that divides the West and the Muslim world. Rock & Roll Jihad is the story of his incredible journey.

Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the U2 of Asia, a sufi – rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Salman’s story began in New York, where he spent his teen years learning to play guitar, listening to Led Zeppelin, hanging out at rock clubs and Beatles Fests, making American friends, and dreaming of rock-star fame. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Salman was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious — and stratified — society.

He finished medical school, met his soul mate, and watched his beloved funkytown of Lahore transform with the rest of Pakistan under the rule of Zia into a fundamentalist dictatorship: morality police arrested couples holding hands in public, Little House on the Prairie and Live Aid were banned from television broadcasts, and Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers proliferated on college campuses via the Afghani resistance to Soviet occupation in the north.
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Undeterred, the teenage Salman created his own underground jihad: his mission was to bring his beloved rock music to an enthusiastic new audience in South Asia and beyond. He started a traveling guitar club that met in private Lahore spaces, mixing Urdu love poems with Casio synthesizers, tablas with Fender Stratocasters, and ragas with power chords, eventually joining his first pop band, Vital Signs. Later, he founded Junoon, South Asia’s biggest rock band, which was followed to every corner of the world by a loyal legion of fans called Junoonis.

As his music climbed the charts, Salman found himself the target of religious fanatics and power-mad politicians desperate to take him and his band down. But in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald’s, whose religion gives them compassion for and not fear of the West, and who see modern music as a “rainbow bridge” that links their lives to the rest of the world, nothing could stop Salman’s star from rising.

Today, Salman continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West — lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir.

Belief Is Easy, But Faith Takes Discipline – Ed Gurowitz, Ph.D.

Ed Gurowitz, Ph.D.
Business consultant, executive coach

Alan Watts drew an interesting distinction between belief and faith. Referring to the root of belief in Middle English (lief, meaning “wish”), he said that belief is a heartfelt wish that things be or turn out a certain way; in other words, there is a way things should be and a way they shouldn’t be, and belief is a wish that they be the way they “should.” Faith, on the other hand, is trust in the truth — things are the way they are, and that is what there is to work with. In other words, the only power I have is to play the particular hand that I’m dealt and trust that it will work out. In a specifically religious context there is a popular phrase: “The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.” While of unknown origin, this phrase is consistent with numerous Biblical passages from both the Hebrew and Christian Canons and points to the essence of faith as trust.

But even if we accept Watts’ definition of faith, we are left with some questions. First, faith in what? One might opt for a Panglossian faith that this is “the best of all possible worlds” and go blithely along trusting that everything is OK no matter how awful it seems, or one might abandon faith altogether for belief on the one hand, or, on the other hand, the view that the universe is random and nothing matters, or one might opt for the inflated ego of faith in oneself as the answer to it all, or blind faith, à la someone I knew who said that faith is “believing what you know cannot possibly be true.”

My personal choice is faith in God — not the anthropomorphic God of Western religion, but a panentheistic faith in a supreme power that is at the same time immanent (present) and transcendent, and that is the unity of all life expressed in an infinite variety of ways, moving toward its own realization in that unity being re-established.

I am including this expression of my own faith not because I think it’s the right one or the best one but because I need an example for purposes of this essay and would not presume to use anyone else’s faith as my example. Which brings me to my point: belief is a one-time event. You decide what you believe, and that divides the world into two camps — call them good and bad, God and Satan, the way it should be and the way it shouldn’t be, it doesn’t matter. Even situational ethics or moral relativism does this — black and white ethics or morals are bad, situational or relativistic ethics or morals are good. In this sense belief is easy — in the words of a bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

With faith it’s not so easy. First of all, faith has no proof — if one is to have faith in “the word of God,” the question arises, which word? The Bible, including the Hebrew and Christian Canons, the apocrypha, the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls — all of it is rife with contradictions. Belief-based religion is notorious for picking and choosing among the “word of God” to support particular views of what is right and wrong. Faith is, above all, trust — trust that there is a truth that is only dimly reflected in human beings’ attempts to represent it, and that will reveal itself when one is open to its unfolding.

And that trust is not a one-time event; it’s a discipline. By wiring and by learning, we are predisposed to the question “is this good for me or bad” about everything in the world, and the “me” in that question quickly becomes “us” — our family, tribe, nation, etc. In other words, we default to belief, and faith takes work to recover from our immediate reaction and return to the created position of trust and openness to how things will unfold. Also, in my own faith in God, I have to continually remind myself that while God’s will operates immanently, God’s perspective is transcendent and outside of time, so what appears to be an utter disaster now may in the long view be an important contribution toward the realization of that unity that is God.

So for me the question becomes how quickly can I recover from the latest threat or trauma and resume my discipline of faith, accepting what God/life offers me and discovering its significance (or lack thereof) in the fullness of time, while at the same time trusting that the commitments I have taken on — to my family, to the world — are also worthy of trust and that events that appear to be setbacks to those commitments will ultimately forward them, and it is the practice of that recovery that is the discipline of faith and the speed of recovery that is the metric for how much I am growing in faith.

You can find Ed Gurowitz at www.gurowitz.com and on Blogger.
Dr. Ed Gurowitz has a degree in Psychology and has worked as a neuropsychology researcher, a psychotherapist, and an organizational psychologist. He is currently working as a management and leadership specialist, consulting, training, and coaching with leading companies. He is a long-time student of religion and spirituality and is currently co-authoring a book on the unity of the world’s religions and how institutional religion counters that unity.

Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think

Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a new documentary film from Unity Productions Foundation, explores the results of the Gallup Organizations first-of-its-kind opinion poll on the entire Muslim world. One day before President Obama’s long-awaited Cairo speech, this hour-long documentary premiered at Georgetown University Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 and was introduced in a keynote speech by Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

The 55-minute documentary, executive produced by Michael Wolfe and Alex Kronemer of UPF and produced and directed by Robert Gardner examines questions on every Americans mind: Why is there so much anti-Americanism in the Muslim world? Who are the extremists and how do Muslims feel about them? What do Muslims like and dislike about the West? What do Muslim women really

What a Billion Muslims Really Think (Part 01)

Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, presents the results of a comprehensive six-year study undertaken by the Gallup World Poll that represents 90% (or one billion) of the worlds Muslims in some 35 Muslim countries. The event took place at the Dubai School of Government on June 9, 2009. The entire video can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/kpzafl

What a Billion Muslims Really Think (Part 2)

John Esposito, Professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, describes the implications for US foreign policy of the results of a comprehensive six-year study undertaken by the Gallup World Poll that represents 90% (or one billion) of the worlds Muslims in some 35 Muslim countries. The event took place at the Dubai School of Government on June 9, 2009. The entire video can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/kpzafl