John Lennon Extols the Virtues of Transcendental Meditation in a Spirited Letter Written to a Beatles Fan (1968)

in Letters, Music, Religion | April 18th, 2018

An Indi­an guru trav­els to the West with teach­ings of enlight­en­ment, world peace, and lib­er­a­tion from the soul-killing mate­ri­al­ist grind. He attracts thou­sands of fol­low­ers, some of them wealthy celebri­ties, and founds a com­mer­cial empire with his teach­ings. No, this isn’t the sto­ry of Bhag­wan Shree Rajneesh, the head of the reli­gious move­ment in Wild Wild Coun­try. There was no mirac­u­lous city in the Ore­gon wilds or fleet of Lear­jets and Rolls Royces. No stock­pile of auto­mat­ic weapons, planned assas­si­na­tions, or mass poi­son­ings. Decades before those strange events, anoth­er teacher, Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi inspired mass devo­tion among stu­dents around the world with the peace­ful prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion.

Rolling Stone’s Claire Hoffman—who grew up in a TM com­mu­ni­ty—writes of the move­ment with ambiva­lence. For most of his dis­ci­ples, he was a “Wiz­ard of Oz-type char­ac­ter,” she says, dis­tant and mys­te­ri­ous. But much of what we pop­u­lar­ly know about TM comes from its most famous adher­ents, includ­ing Jer­ry Sein­feld, Katy Per­ry, David Lynch, the Beach Boys, and, of course, The Bea­t­les, who famous­ly trav­eled to India in 1968, med­i­tat­ed with Mia Far­row, Dono­van, and Mike Love, and wrote some of their wildest, most inven­tive music after a cre­ative slump fol­low­ing the huge suc­cess of Sgt. Pepper’s.

“They stayed in Rishikesh,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings, “a small vil­lage in the foothills of the Himalayas, con­sid­ered the cap­i­tal of yoga. Immersed in this peace­ful com­mu­ni­ty and nur­tured by an inten­sive dai­ly med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, the Fab Four under­went a cre­ative growth spurt—the weeks at Rishikesh were among their most fer­tile song­writ­ing and com­pos­ing peri­ods, pro­duc­ing many of the songs on The White Album and Abbey Road.” Unlike most of the Maharishi’s fol­low­ers, The Bea­t­les got a per­son­al audi­ence. The Indi­an spir­i­tu­al teacher “helped them through the shock” of their man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein’s death, and helped them tap into cos­mic con­scious­ness with­out LSD.

They left on a sour note—there were alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety, and Lennon, being Lennon, got a bit nasty, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ing The White Album’s “Sexy Sadie” with the lyrics “Maharishi—what have you done? You made a fool of every­one.” But before their falling out with TM’s founder, before even the trip to India, all four Bea­t­les became devot­ed med­i­ta­tors, sit­ting for two twen­ty-minute ses­sions a day and find­ing gen­uine peace and happiness—or “ener­gy,” as Lennon and Har­ri­son describe it in a 1967 inter­view with David Frost. The next year, hap­pi­ly prac­tic­ing, and fever­ish­ly writ­ing, in India, Lennon received let­ters from fans, and respond­ed with enthu­si­asm.

In answer to a let­ter from a fan named Beth, evi­dent­ly a devout Chris­t­ian and appar­ent­ly threat­ened by TM and con­cerned for the bands’ immor­tal souls, Lennon wrote the fol­low­ing (see his hand­writ­ten reply at the top):

Dear Beth:

Thank you for your let­ter and your kind thoughts. When you read that we are in India search­ing for peace, etc, it is not that we need faith in God or Jesus — we have full faith in them; it is only as if you went to stay with Bil­ly Gra­ham for a short time — it just so hap­pens that our guru (teacher) is Indi­an — and what is more nat­ur­al for us to come to India — his home. He also holds cours­es in Europe and Amer­i­ca — and we will prob­a­bly go to some of these as well — to learn — and to be near him.

Tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion is not opposed to any reli­gion — it is based on the basic truths of all reli­gions — the com­mon denom­i­na­tor. Jesus said: “The King­dom of Heav­en is with­in you” — and he meant just that — “The King­dom of Heav­en is at hand” — not in some far dis­tant time — or after death — but now.

Med­i­ta­tion takes the mind down to that lev­el of con­scious­ness which is Absolute Bliss (Heav­en) and through con­stant con­tact with that state — “the peace that sur­pass­es all under­stand­ing” — one grad­u­al­ly becomes estab­lished in that state even when one is not med­i­tat­ing. All this gives one actu­al expe­ri­ence of God — not by detach­ment or renun­ci­a­tion — when Jesus was fast­ing etc in the desert 40 days & nights he would have been doing some form of med­i­ta­tion — not just sit­ting in the sand and pray­ing — although me it will be a true Chris­t­ian — which I try to be with all sin­cer­i­ty — it does not pre­vent me from acknowl­edg­ing Bud­dha — Mohammed — and all the great men of God. God bless you — jai guru dev.

With love,
John Lennon

This hard­ly sounds like the man who imag­ined no reli­gion. A fan in India wrote Lennon less to inquire and more to acquire, name­ly mon­ey for a trip around the world so that he could “dis­cov­er the ‘huge trea­sure’ nec­es­sary for achiev­ing inner peace.” Lennon respond­ed with a brief rebuke of the man’s mate­r­i­al aspi­ra­tions, then rec­om­mend­ed TM, “through which all things are pos­si­ble.” (He signs both let­ters with “jai guru dev,” or “I give thanks to the Guru Dev,” the Maharishi’s teacher. The phrase also appears as the refrain in his “Across the Uni­verse.”)

The let­ters come from an excel­lent col­lec­tion of his cor­re­spon­dence, The John Lennon Let­ters, which includes oth­er mis­sives extolling the virtues of tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion. We might take his word for it based on the strength of the cre­ative work he pro­duced dur­ing the peri­od. We could also take the word of David Lynch, who describes med­i­ta­tion as the way he catch­es the cre­ative “big fish.” Or we could go out and find our own meth­ods for expand­ing our minds and tap­ping into cre­ative poten­tial.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

Watch John Lennon’s Last Live Per­for­mance (1975): “Imag­ine,” “Stand By Me” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Help a Library Transcribe Magical Manuscripts & Recover the Charms, Potions & Witchcraft That Flourished in Early Modern Europe and America

in Books, History, Religion, Science | April 11th, 2018

Mag­ic is real—hear me out. No, you can’t solve life’s prob­lems with a wand and made-up Latin. But there are aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments of mag­ic, only they go by dif­fer­ent names now. A few hun­dred years ago the dif­fer­ence between chem­istry and alche­my was nil. Witch­craft involved as much botany as spell­work. A lot of fun bits of mag­ic got weed­ed out when gen­tle­men in pow­dered wigs purged weird sis­ters and gnos­tic heretics from the field. Did the old spells work? Maybe, maybe not. Sci­ence has become pret­ty reli­able, I guess. Stan­dard­ized clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems and mea­sure­ments are okay, but yawn… don’t we long for some witch­ing and wiz­ard­ing? A well-placed hex might work won­ders.

Say no more, we’ve got you cov­ered: you, yes you, can learn charms and potions, demonolo­gy and oth­er assort­ed dark arts. How? For a one­time fee of absolute­ly noth­ing, you can enter mag­i­cal books from the Ear­ly Mod­ern Peri­od.

T’was a ver­i­ta­ble gold­en age of mag­ic, when wiz­ard­ing sci­en­tists like John Dee—Queen Eliz­a­beth’s sooth­say­ing astrologer and reveal­er of the lan­guage of the angels—burned bright­ly just before they were extin­guished, or run under­ground, by ortho­dox­ies of all sorts. The New­ber­ry, “Chicago’s Inde­pen­dent Research Library Since 1887,” has reached out to the crowds to help “unlock the mys­ter­ies” of rare man­u­scripts and bring the diver­si­ty of the time alive.

The library’s Tran­scrib­ing Faith ini­tia­tive gives users a chance to con­nect with texts like The Book of Mag­i­cal Charms (above), by tran­scrib­ing and/or trans­lat­ing the con­tents there­in. Like soft­ware engi­neer Joseph Peterson—founder of the Eso­teric Archives, which con­tains a large col­lec­tion of John Dee’s work—you can vol­un­teer to help the Newberry’s project “Reli­gious Change, 1450–1700.” The New­ber­ry aims to edu­cate the gen­er­al pub­lic on a peri­od of immense upheaval. “The Ref­or­ma­tion and the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion are very big, cap­i­tal let­ter con­cepts,” project coor­di­na­tor Christo­pher Fletch­er tells Smithsonian.com, “we lose sight of the fact that these were real events that hap­pened to real peo­ple.”

By aim­ing to return these texts to “real peo­ple” on the inter­net, the New­ber­ry hopes to demys­ti­fy, so to speak, key moments in Euro­pean his­to­ry. “You don’t need a Ph.D. to tran­scribe,” Fletch­er points out. Atlas Obscu­ra describes the process as “much like updat­ing a Wikipedia page,” only “any­one can start tran­scrib­ing and trans­lat­ing and they don’t need to sign up to do so.” Check out some tran­scrip­tions of The Book of Mag­i­cal Charms—writ­ten by var­i­ous anony­mous authors in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry—here. The book, writes the New­ber­ry, describes “every­thing from speak­ing with spir­its to cheat­ing at dice to cur­ing a toothache.”

Need to call up a spir­it for some dirty work? Just fol­low the instruc­tions below:

Call their names Ori­moth, Bel­moth Limoc and Say thus. I con­jure you by the neims of the Angels + Sator and Azamor that yee intend to me in this Aore, and Send unto me a Spirite called Sag­rigid that doe full­fill my comand­ng and desire and that can also undar­stand my words for one or 2 yuares; or as long as I will.

Seems sim­ple enough, but of course this busi­ness did not sit well with some pow­er­ful peo­ple, includ­ing one Increase Math­er, father of Cot­ton, pres­i­dent of Har­vard, best known from his work on the Salem Witch Tri­als. Increase defend­ed the pros­e­cu­tions in a man­u­script titled Cas­es of Con­science Con­cern­ing Evil Spir­its, a page from which you can see fur­ther up. The text reads, in part:

an Evi­dence Sup­posed to be in the Tes­ti­mo­ny
which is throw­ly to be Weighed, & if it doe
not infal­li­bly prove the Crime against the
per­son accused, it ought not to deter­mine
him Guilty of it for So right­eous may
be con­demned unjust­ly.

Math­er did not con­sid­er these to be show tri­als or “witch­hunts” but rather the fair and judi­cious appli­ca­tion of due process, for what­ev­er that’s worth. Else­where in the text he famous­ly wrote, “It were bet­ter that Ten Sus­pect­ed Witch­es should escape, than that one Inno­cent Per­son should be Con­demned.” Cold com­fort to those con­demned as guilty for like­ly prac­tic­ing some mix of reli­gion and ear­ly sci­ence.

These texts are writ­ten in Eng­lish and con­cern them­selves with mag­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al mat­ters express­ly. Oth­er man­u­scripts in the project’s archive roam more broad­ly across top­ics and lan­guages, and “shed light on the entwined prac­tices of reli­gion and read­ing.” One “com­mon­place book,” for exam­ple (above), from some­time between 1590 and 1620, con­tains ser­mons by John Donne as well as “reli­gious, polit­i­cal, and prac­ti­cal texts, includ­ing a Mid­dle Eng­lish lyric,” all care­ful­ly writ­ten out by an Eng­lish scribe named Hen­ry Feilde in order to prac­tice his cal­lig­ra­phy.

Anoth­er such text, large­ly in Latin, “may have been start­ed as ear­ly as the 16th cen­tu­ry, but con­tin­ued to be used and added to well into the 19th cen­tu­ry. Its com­pil­ers expressed inter­est in a wide range of top­ics, from reli­gious and moral ques­tions to the lib­er­al arts to strange events.” Books like these “reflect­ed the read­ing habits of ear­ly mod­ern peo­ple, who tend­ed not to read books from begin­ning to end, but instead to dip in and out of them,” extract­ing bits and bobs of wis­dom, quo­ta­tions, recipes, prayers, and even the odd spell or two.

The final work in need of transcription/translation is also the only print­ed text, or texts, rather, a col­lec­tion of Ital­ian reli­gious broad­sides, adver­tis­ing “pub­lic cel­e­bra­tions and com­mem­o­ra­tions of Catholic feast days and oth­er reli­gious occa­sions.” Hard­ly sum­mon­ing spir­its, though some may beg to dif­fer. If you’re so inclined to take part in open­ing the secrets of these rare books for lay read­ers every­where, vis­it Tran­scrib­ing Faith here and get to work.

via Smith­son­ian/ Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Behold the Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script: The 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear 48 Hours of Lectures by Joseph Campbell on Comparative Mythology and the Hero’s Journey

in Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion | March 28th, 2018

What does it mean to “grow up”? Every cul­ture has its way of defin­ing adult­hood, whether it’s sur­viv­ing an ini­ti­a­tion rit­u­al or fil­ing your first tax return. I’m only being a lit­tle facetious—people in the U.S. have long felt dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the ways we are ush­ered into adult­hood, from learn­ing how to fill out IRS forms to learn­ing how to fill out stu­dent loan and cred­it card appli­ca­tions, our cul­ture wants us to under­stand our place in the great machine. All oth­er press­ing life con­cerns are sec­ondary.

It’s lit­tle won­der, then, that gurus and cul­tur­al father fig­ures of all types have found ready audi­ences among America’s youth. Such fig­ures have left last­ing lega­cies for decades, and not all of them pos­i­tive. But one pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al from the recent past is still seen as a wise old mas­ter whose far-reach­ing influ­ence remains with us and will for the fore­see­able future. Joseph Camp­bell’s obses­sive, eru­dite books and lec­tures on world mytholo­gies and tra­di­tions have made cer­tain that ancient adult­hood rit­u­als have entered our nar­ra­tive DNA.

When Camp­bell was award­ed the Nation­al Arts Club Gold Medal in Lit­er­a­ture in 1985, psy­chol­o­gist James Hill­man stat­ed that “no one in our century—not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Levi-Strauss—has so brought the myth­i­cal sense of the world and its eter­nal fig­ures back into our every­day con­scious­ness.” What­ev­er exam­ples Hill­man may have had in mind, we might rest our case on the fact that with­out Camp­bell there would like­ly be no Star Wars. For all its suc­cess as a mega­mar­ket­ing phe­nom­e­non, the sci-fi fran­chise has also pro­duced endur­ing­ly relat­able role mod­els, exam­ples of achiev­ing inde­pen­dence and stand­ing up to impe­ri­al­ists, even if they be your own fam­i­ly mem­bers in masks.

In the video inter­views above from 1987, Camp­bell pro­fess­es him­self no more than an “under­lin­er” who learned every­thing he knows from books. Like the con­tem­po­rary com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gist Mircea Eli­ade, Camp­bell did not con­duct his own anthro­po­log­i­cal research—he acquired a vast amount of knowl­edge by study­ing the sacred texts, arti­facts, and rit­u­als of world cul­tures. This study gave him insight into sto­ries and images that con­tin­ue to shape our world and fea­ture cen­tral­ly in huge pop cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions like The Last Jedi and Black Pan­ther.

Camp­bell describes rit­u­al entries into adult­hood that view­ers of these films will instant­ly rec­og­nize: Defeat­ing idols in masks and tak­ing on their pow­er; bur­ial enact­ments that kill the “infan­tile ego” (aca­d­e­mics, he says with a straight face, some­times nev­er leave this stage). These kinds of edge expe­ri­ences are at the very heart of the clas­sic hero’s jour­ney, an arche­type Camp­bell wrote about in his best­selling The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces and pop­u­lar­ized on PBS in The Pow­er of Myth, a series of con­ver­sa­tions with Bill Moy­ers.

In the many lec­tures just above—48 hours of audio in which Camp­bell expounds his the­o­ries of the mythological—the engag­ing, acces­si­ble writer and teacher lays out the pat­terns and sym­bols of mytholo­gies world­wide, with spe­cial focus on the hero’s jour­ney, as impor­tant to his project as dying and ris­ing god myths to James Fraz­er’s The Gold­en Bough, the inspi­ra­tion for so many mod­ernist writ­ers. Camp­bell him­self is more apt to ref­er­ence James Joyce, Carl Jung, Pablo Picas­so, or Richard Wag­n­er than sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, or com­ic books (though he did break down Star Wars in his Moy­ers inter­views). Nonethe­less, we have him to thank for inspir­ing the likes of George Lucas and becom­ing a “patron saint of super­heroes” and space operas.

We will find some of Campbell’s meth­ods flawed and ter­mi­nol­o­gy out­dat­ed (no one uses “Ori­ent” and “Occi­dent” anymore)—and mod­ern heroes can just as well be women as men, pass­ing through the same kinds of sym­bol­ic tri­als in their ori­gin sto­ries. But Campbell’s ideas are as res­o­nant as ever, offer­ing to the wider cul­ture a coher­ent means of under­stand­ing the arche­typ­al stages of com­ing of age. As Hol­ly­wood exec­u­tive Christo­pher Vogler said in 1985, after rec­om­mend­ing The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces as a guide for screen­writ­ers, Campbell’s work “can be used to tell the sim­plest com­ic sto­ry or the most sophis­ti­cat­ed drama”—a sweep­ing vision of human cul­tur­al his­to­ry and its mean­ing for our indi­vid­ual jour­neys.

You can access the 48 hours of Joseph Camp­bell lec­tures above, or direct­ly on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

A 12-Hour East­ern Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty Playlist: Fea­tures Lec­tures & Read­ings by Joseph Camp­bell, Christo­pher Ish­er­wood, the Dalai Lama & Oth­ers

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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70,000+ Religious Texts Digitized by Princeton Theological Seminary, Letting You Immerse Yourself in the Curious Works of Great World Religions

in Archives, Religion | March 13th, 2018

It is maybe easy for those unfa­mil­iar with the study of reli­gion to reduce the aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline to a pon­der­ous exercise—self-serious, obsessed with tra­di­tion, ren­dered sus­pect by his­to­ries of vio­lence and high­ly implau­si­ble, con­tra­dic­to­ry claims. But this is a mis­take. For one thing, as schol­ar of reli­gion Wil­fred Cantwell Smith once wrote, “the study of reli­gion is the study of persons”—quite broad­ly, he sug­gests, to study reli­gion is to study human­i­ty: anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, art, lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy, mythol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, etc. Study­ing reli­gion can also be—contrary to cer­tain stereotypes—a great deal of fun.

In what oth­er schol­ar­ly pur­suit, after all, can one read Regi­nald Scot, Esquire’s 1584 The Dis­cov­er­ie of Witch­craft, L. Aus­tine Waddell’s 1805 The Bud­dhism of Tibet, and J.G. Frazer’s 1894 The Gold­en Bough, inspi­ra­tion for T.S. Eliot’s poet­ry and spir­i­tu­al ances­tor to Joseph Campbell’s pop­u­lar com­par­a­tive work The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces?

But of course, not many an advanced schol­ar would find him or her­self immersed in all of these texts, spe­cial­iz­ing, as they must, in one par­tic­u­lar area. Those of us who are mere­ly curi­ous, how­ev­er, or insa­tiably curi­ous, can do as we please in the the­ol­o­gy library, thumb­ing through what­ev­er strikes our fan­cy.

We may do so from the com­fort of wher­ev­er we can get wifi thanks to Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Seminary’s The­o­log­i­cal Com­mons’ project with the Inter­net Archive, which has dig­i­tized over 70,000 texts from the Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Library, span­ning hun­dreds of years and near­ly every con­ceiv­able reli­gious sub­ject. Yes, there are shelves of hym­nals, hard­ly the kind of thing to gen­er­ate much inter­est among any but the most devout or the most deeply-down-a-schol­ar­ly-rab­bit-hole. But there are also many fas­ci­nat­ing gems like Jacob Grimm’s 1882–88 Teu­ton­ic Mythol­o­gy in four vol­umes (trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish), like E.A. Wal­lis Budge’s beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed 1911 Osiris and the Egypt­ian Res­ur­rec­tion, and like Wes­leyan min­is­ter Charles Roberts’ 1899 The Zulu-Kafir Lan­guage Sim­pli­fied for Begin­ners.

Like many texts writ­ten by colo­nial observers and Ori­en­tal­ist schol­ars, some of these books may tell us as much or more about their authors than about the pur­port­ed subjects—we encounter in reli­gious schol­ar­ship no more nor less bias than in any oth­er field, though piety is giv­en license to take more overt forms. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as Cantwell Smith wrote, “the tra­di­tion­al form of West­ern schol­ar­ship in the study of oth­er men’s reli­gion was that of an imper­son­al pre­sen­ta­tion of an ‘it.’” But these out­dat­ed views are them­selves instructive—as part of a process towards a wider human­ist under­stand­ing, “the grad­ual recog­ni­tion of what was always true in prin­ci­ple, but was not always grasped.”

For stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­al schol­ars, the Prince­ton dig­i­tal library is obvi­ous­ly, well… a god­send. For the merely—or insatiably—curious, it is an open invi­ta­tion to explore strange new worlds, so to speak, and to real­ize, again and again, that they’re all the same world, seen in innu­mer­ably dif­fer­ent ways. In this archive, you’ll find pri­ma­ry texts and com­men­taries on Islam, Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Judaism, Zoroas­tri­an­ism, Greek and Egypt­ian reli­gions, indige­nous faiths of all kinds, and, of course, giv­en the source, plen­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty (like the 1606, pre-King James Bible at the top). “The next step,” writes Cantwell Smith, in mov­ing the study of reli­gion for­ward, “is a dia­logue.… If there is lis­ten­ing and mutu­al­i­ty… the cul­mi­na­tion of this progress is when ‘we all’ are talk­ing with each oth­er about ‘us.’”

Enter the online Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary Library here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Launch­es a Free Online Course to Pro­mote Reli­gious Tol­er­ance & Under­stand­ing

Phi­los­o­phy of Reli­gion: A Free Online Course 

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Harvard Launches a Free Online Course to Promote Religious Tolerance & Understanding

in Harvard, History, Neuroscience, Psychology, Religion | March 1st, 2018

It is dif­fi­cult to have dis­cus­sions in our cur­rent pub­lic square with­out becom­ing forced into false choic­es. Fol­low­ing Mar­shall McLuhan, we might think that the nature of the dig­i­tal medi­um makes this hap­pen, as much as the con­tent of the mes­sages. But some mes­sages are more polar­iz­ing than others—with argu­ments over reli­gion seem­ing­ly primed for bina­ry oppo­si­tions.

That many nuanced posi­tions exist between deny­ing the valid­i­ty of every reli­gion and pro­claim­ing a spe­cif­ic ver­sion as the only one true path shows how durable and flex­i­ble reli­gious thought can be. The wide­spread diver­si­ty among reli­gions can­not mask the sig­nif­i­cant degree of com­mon­al­i­ty between them, in all human soci­eties, lead­ing schol­ars like anthro­pol­o­gist Pas­cal Boy­er to con­clude, as he writes in Reli­gion Explained, that “the expla­na­tion for reli­gious beliefs and behav­iors is to be found in the way all human minds work….”

I real­ly mean all human minds not the just the minds of reli­gious peo­ple or some of them. I am talk­ing about human minds, because what mat­ters here are prop­er­ties of minds that are found in all mem­bers of our species with nor­mal brains.

Famed Stan­ford biol­o­gist Robert Sapol­sky, who hap­pens to be an athe­ist, claims that some­where around 95% of the human pop­u­la­tion believes in some sort of super­nat­ur­al agency or reli­gious set of expla­na­tions, and that such faith has “unde­ni­able health ben­e­fits,” and is thus bio­log­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

The real ques­tion, he reluc­tant­ly admits, is not why so many peo­ple believe, but “what’s up with the 5% of athe­ists who don’t do that?” The ques­tion needn’t imply there’s any­thing abnor­mal, infe­ri­or, or supe­ri­or, about athe­ists. Vari­a­tions don’t come with inher­ent val­ues, though they may even­tu­al­ly become the norm.

But if we accept the well-sup­port­ed the­sis that reli­gion is a phe­nom­e­non root­ed in and nat­u­ral­ly expressed by the human mind, like art, lan­guage, and lit­er­a­ture, we would be neg­li­gent in remain­ing will­ful­ly igno­rant of its expres­sions. And yet, Diane Moore, direc­tor of Har­vard Divin­i­ty School’s Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy Project, tells the Huff­in­g­ton Post, “wide­spread illit­er­a­cy about reli­gion… spans the globe” and “fuels big­otry and prej­u­dice and hin­ders capac­i­ties for coop­er­a­tive endeav­ors in local, nation­al, and glob­al are­nas.”

Har­vard aims to help change atti­tudes with their Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy Project, which offers free online cours­es on the world’s five major reli­gions—Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam, Judaism, Bud­dhism, and Hin­duism—through their edX plat­form. The first course of the series, taught by Moore, is self paced. “Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy: Tra­di­tions and Scrip­tures” sur­veys the method­ol­o­gy of the project as a whole, explor­ing “case stud­ies about how reli­gions are inter­nal­ly diverse, how they evolve and change through time, and how reli­gions are embed­ded in all dimen­sions of human expe­ri­ence.” (See a pro­mo video at the top and a teas­er for the project as a whole above.)

Under­stand­ing reli­gion as both a uni­ver­sal phe­nom­e­non and a set of cul­tur­al­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly spe­cif­ic events resolves mis­un­der­stand­ings that result from over­sim­pli­fied, sta­t­ic stereo­types. Study­ing the his­tor­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal, and geo­graph­i­cal vari­eties of Islam, for exam­ple, makes it impos­si­ble to say any­thing defin­i­tive about one sin­gu­lar, mono­lith­ic “Islam,” and there­fore about Mus­lims in gen­er­al. The same goes for Chris­tians, Hin­dus, Jews, Bud­dhists, etc. The fact that reli­gion is embed­ded in near­ly every facet of human expe­ri­ence, writes Moore in an intro­duc­to­ry essay for the project, means that we can cred­it it with the “full range of agency from the heinous to the hero­ic,” rather than flip­ping between these extremes to score chau­vin­ist points or inval­i­date entire realms of social life.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured one of the cours­es from the big five series of class­es, “Bud­dhism through its Scrip­tures.” The method there applies to each course, which all engage rig­or­ous­ly with pri­ma­ry sources and schol­ar­ly com­men­tary to get stu­dents as close as pos­si­ble to under­stand­ing reli­gious prac­tice from both the inside and the out­side. Grant­ed this canon­i­cal approach ignores the prac­tices of mil­lions of peo­ple out­side the big five cat­e­gories, but one could osten­si­bly apply a sim­i­lar aca­d­e­m­ic rubric to the study of syn­cretisms and indige­nous reli­gions all over the world.

Pro­fes­sor Moore’s “Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy” class—which you can audit free of charge or take for a cer­tifi­cate for $50—promises to give stu­dents the tools they need to under­stand how to sur­vey reli­gions crit­i­cal­ly, yet sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly, and to “inter­pret the roles reli­gions play in con­tem­po­rary and his­toric con­texts.” Like it or not, reli­gions of every kind remain per­va­sive and seem­ing­ly intractable. Rather than fight­ing over this fact of life, we would all do bet­ter to try and under­stand it. Begin to enlarge your own under­stand­ing by sign­ing up for “Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy: Tra­di­tions and Scrip­tures” for free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Harvard’s Intro­duc­to­ry Course on Bud­dhism, One of Five World Reli­gions Class­es Offered Free Online

Athe­ist Stan­ford Biol­o­gist Robert Sapol­sky Explains How Reli­gious Beliefs Reduce Stress

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Take Harvard’s Introductory Course on Buddhism, One of Five World Religions Classes Offered Free Online

in Online Courses, Religion | February 8th, 2018

A friend of mine describes her child­hood as, in part, resem­bling a real-world com­par­a­tive reli­gions course. Her broad-mind­ed moth­er encour­aged her to choose her own reli­gious iden­ti­ty, or none at all. This required her to do inde­pen­dent research, not only in libraries, but in the church­es, mosques, syn­a­gogues, and tem­ples of an unusu­al­ly reli­gious­ly diverse group of friends and acquain­tances. It’s an expe­ri­ence that dif­fers from that of most peo­ple, and one not with­out its own pressures—how does one know what to believe with­out an author­i­ty fig­ure to dic­tate, many may won­der?

She did just fine, acquir­ing con­sid­er­able under­stand­ing of world reli­gions while her­self set­tling on a Bud­dhist path, the only one of the big five, it seems, that encour­ages peo­ple to try out spir­i­tu­al meth­ods for them­selves and deter­mine what seems true or not. At least the Bud­dha sup­pos­ed­ly rec­om­mend­ed this in one “Sut­ta” (or “sutra”)—an ancient form of writ­ing prac­ticed by ear­ly Indi­an philo­soph­i­cal schools and a word whose mean­ing takes on a very mod­ern res­o­nance for 21st cen­tu­ry dig­i­tal read­ers: “thread.”

In the “Kala­ma Sut­ta,” which one trans­la­tor describes as “The Buddha’s Char­ter of Free Inquiry,” the reli­gious founder and for­mer prince attempts to set­tle reli­gious dis­putes by explain­ing to some per­plexed vil­lagers that one must use one’s own moral and intel­lec­tu­al rea­son­ing to find the truth. It’s a dis­course that cap­tures the Socrat­ic style of many Bud­dhist texts, and a famous one for West­ern­ers for obvi­ous rea­sons, but to say that it is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all kinds of Bud­dhism would be myopic.

Bud­dhist scrip­tures “num­ber in the thou­sands,” says Pro­fes­sor Charles Hal­lisey of Har­vard Divin­i­ty School, mak­ing their study a hum­bling life­long activ­i­ty that can nev­er be exhaust­ed. “What you have is a dif­fer­ent phe­nom­e­non in which no one can ever say, ‘I know it all.’” Pro­fes­sor Hal­lisey leads a new online course from Harvard’s edX, which you can audit for free, called “Bud­dhism through its Scrip­tures.” The course looks at dis­tinc­tive prop­er­ties of this world reli­gion through sev­er­al impor­tant texts, his­tor­i­cal con­text, and com­men­tary from notable schol­ars like Thanis­saro Bhikkhu.

You can reg­is­ter now for Pro­fes­sor Hallisey’s fas­ci­nat­ing sur­vey course on Bud­dhist scrip­tures here. “Bud­dhism through its Scrip­tures” is one of five such rig­or­ous, yet high­ly acces­si­ble cours­es offered by edX, under the umbrel­la pro­gram “Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy: Tra­di­tions and Scrip­tures” (see an intro­duc­to­ry video above), which offers stu­dents and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers a sym­pa­thet­ic yet schol­ar­ly overview of each of the largest world reli­gions: Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam, Judaism, Hin­duism  and Bud­dhism. These cours­es are designed and taught by accom­plished Har­vard pro­fes­sors, and they intro­duce stu­dents to his­tor­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and tex­tu­al issues with­in each tra­di­tion.

The approach of these cours­es is summed up by Reli­gious Lit­er­a­cy Project Direc­tor Diane L. Moore in a doc­u­ment called “Our Method.” Reli­gious schol­ars, she writes, rec­og­nize “the valid­i­ty of nor­ma­tive the­o­log­i­cal asser­tions with­out equat­ing them with uni­ver­sal truths about the tra­di­tion itself.” One can study reli­gions with a crit­i­cal, yet char­i­ta­ble, eye, allow­ing them to speak for them­selves while remain­ing skep­ti­cal of their claims, and while acknowl­edg­ing their “full range of agency from the heinous to the hero­ic.” In his intro­duc­to­ry video lec­tures, Pro­fes­sor Hal­lisey admits this isn’t always easy.

It almost goes with­out say­ing, as he does say, that “con­ver­sa­tions about reli­gious mat­ters can be con­tentious, even painful—sometimes intense­ly so.” But like the best reli­gious teach­ers, Hal­lisey urges his stu­dents to think for them­selves, and to place the study of reli­gion “firm­ly in the Human­i­ties,” a dis­ci­pline in which “we not only… learn about oth­er men and women, but also… learn about our­selves…. When we look back at what has hap­pened to us, we can say that we ‘have grown.’” We can study some or all of the world reli­gions and have this expe­ri­ence, even if we end up adopt­ing none of them.

Sign up to take “Bud­dhism and its Scrip­tures” here, either as a free audit­ed course or for a Ver­i­fied Cer­tifi­cate for $50.

This course will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Reli­gion Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dalai Lama’s Intro­duc­tion to Bud­dhism

Bud­dhism 101: A Short Intro­duc­to­ry Lec­ture by Jorge Luis Borges

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A YouTube Channel Completely Devoted to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gregorian Chant, Byzantine Chant & More

in Music, Religion | January 22nd, 2018

The artists of medieval Europe, at least accord­ing to the impres­sion we get in his­to­ry class, gave far less con­sid­er­a­tion to the world around them than the world above. His­to­ri­ans argue about how much that gen­er­al atti­tude hin­dered the improve­ment of the human lot dur­ing those ten cen­turies or so, but even we denizens of the 21st cen­tu­ry can feel that the imag­i­na­tions of the Mid­dle Ages did tap into some­thing res­o­nant — and in the domain of music quite lit­er­al­ly res­o­nant, since the sacred songs of that time still cre­ate a prop­er­ly oth­er­world­ly son­ic atmos­phere when they echo through cathe­drals.

If you don’t hap­pen to live near a cathe­dral, you can expe­ri­ence some­thing of that atmos­phere through your head­phones any­where you hap­pen to be with Cal­lix­tus, a chan­nel on the not nor­mal­ly sacred space of Youtube. “Per­haps named in hon­or of either Pope Cal­lis­tus or Xan­oth­opou­los Cal­lis­tus, Patri­arch of Con­stan­tino­ple,” writes Catholic web site Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza, it offers “an impres­sive col­lec­tion of sacred music, most­ly medieval, includ­ing choral works belong­ing to both West­ern Chris­tian­i­ty and the East­ern tra­di­tion.”

Cal­lix­tus’ playlist includes such endur­ing “hits” of these tra­di­tions as the Gre­go­ri­an chant “Invi­ta­to­ri­um: Deum Verum,” the Byzan­tine chant “Δεύτε λαοί” (“Come Ye Peo­ples”), and the mul­ti-part Medieval Chant of the Tem­plars.

How did this still-haunt­ing style of music come about? Accord­ing to for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne, who laid out these ideas in a pop­u­lar TED Talk, it evolved along­side the hous­es of wor­ship them­selves, the archi­tec­ture shap­ing the music and the music shap­ing the archi­tec­ture: “In a goth­ic cathe­dral, this kind of music is per­fect,” says Byrne. “It does­n’t change key, the notes are long, there’s almost no rhythm what­so­ev­er, and the room flat­ters the music. It actu­al­ly improves it.” So famil­iar­ize your­self with all this sacred music through Cal­lix­tus, but as soon as you get the chance, hie thee to a goth­ic cathe­dral: no mat­ter your reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ties, it will cer­tain­ly enrich your aes­thet­ic ones.

via Aleteia and @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

The His­to­ry of Clas­si­cal Music in 1200 Tracks: From Gre­go­ri­an Chant to Górec­ki (100 Hours of Audio)

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Celebrate the Women’s March with 24 Goddess GIFs Created by Animator Nina Paley: They’re Free to Download and Remix

in Animation, Art, Life, Religion | January 19th, 2018

As mil­lions of women, men, and friends beyond the bina­ry gear up for Wom­en’s March events around the world this week­end, we can’t help but draw strength from the Venus of Wil­len­dorf in Graph­ics Inter­change For­mat, above.

Like the pussy hats that became the most vis­i­ble sym­bol of last year’s march, there’s a strong ele­ment of humor at play here.

Also respect for the female form.

As Dr. Bryan Zyg­mont notes in his Khan Acad­e­my essay on the Venus of Wil­len­dorf, her exis­tence is evi­dence that “nomadic peo­ple liv­ing almost 25,000 years ago cared about mak­ing objects beau­ti­ful. And … that these Pale­olith­ic peo­ple had an aware­ness of the impor­tance of the women.”

Ani­ma­tor Nina Paley has tak­en up our Pale­olith­ic ances­tors’ baton by cre­at­ing two dozen ear­ly god­dess GIFs, includ­ing the Venus.

As fur­ther proof that sis­ter­hood is pow­er­ful, Paley is shar­ing her unashamed­ly boun­cy pan­theon with the pub­lic. Vis­it her blog to down­load all 24 indi­vid­ual god­dess GIFs. Dis­sem­i­nate them wide­ly. Use them for good! No per­mis­sion need­ed.

Paley is no stranger to god­dess­es, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly placed the divine hero­ine of the Ramayana front and cen­ter in her semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fea­ture length ani­ma­tion, Sita Sings the Blues.

She’s also incred­i­bly famil­iar with rights issues, fol­low­ing mas­sive com­pli­ca­tions with some vin­tage record­ings her Bet­ty Boop-ish Sita lip-synchs in the film. (She had pre­vi­ous­ly believed them to be in the pub­lic domain.) Unable to pay the huge sum the copy­right hold­ers demand­ed to license the tunes, Paley ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to relin­quish all legal claims to her own film, plac­ing Sita Sings the Blues in the pub­lic domain, to be freely shared, exhib­it­ed, or even remixed.

If Paley’s the poster child for copy­right issues she’s also a shin­ing exam­ple of deriv­ing pow­er from unlike­ly sources.

As she wrote on her web­site near­ly ten years ago:

My per­son­al expe­ri­ence con­firms audi­ences are gen­er­ous and want to sup­port artists. Sure­ly there’s a way for this to hap­pen with­out cen­tral­ly con­trol­ling every trans­ac­tion. The old busi­ness mod­el of coer­cion and extor­tion is fail­ing. New mod­els are emerg­ing, and I’m hap­py to be part of that. But we’re still mak­ing this up as we go along. You are free to make mon­ey with the free con­tent of Sita Sings the Blues, and you are free to share mon­ey with me. Peo­ple have been mak­ing mon­ey in Free Soft­ware for years; it’s time for Free Cul­ture to fol­low. I look for­ward to your inno­va­tions.

As for Paley’s own plans for her god­dess­es, they’ll be a part of her upcom­ing ani­mat­ed musi­cal, Seder-Masochism, not­ing that “all ear­ly peo­ples con­ceived the divine as female.”

Down­load Nina Paley’s God­dess GIFs here. Watch Sita Sings the Blues here. March ever onward!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her on Feb­ru­ary 8 for Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, when a host of New York City-based per­form­ers and musi­cians will res­ur­rect  a long for­got­ten work from 1911 as a low bud­get, vari­ety show. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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