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2013-0507

Ghost On The Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire

1 Comment[Author: mkeltz Category: History, Non-fiction, Reviews ]

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By James Romm

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York, 2011 Buy this Book!

James Romm is the pen name of James H. Ottaway, Jr., a Professor of Classics at Bard College, New York. “The story of Alexander’s conquests is known to many readers,” writes the author in the Preface, “but the dramatic and consequential sequel to that story is much less well-known. It is a tale of loss that begins with the greatest loss of all, the death of the king who gave the empire its center … The era that followed came to be defined by the absence of one towering individual, just as the previous era had been defined by his presence. It was as though the sun had disappeared from the solar system… The brightest celestial bodies in this new, sunless cosmos were Alexander’s top military officers, who were also in some cases his closest friends. Modern historians often refer to them as ‘the Successors’ (or ‘Diadochs,’ a Greek word meaning virtually the same thing). But that term is anachronistic for the first seven years after Alexander’s death, when none of these men tried to succeed the king; they vied for his power but not his throne.” Members of the Macedonian royal family, the Argeads, could only have assumed the throne, although by 308 B.C. the era of the Argead dynasty was well and truly over.

Ghost on the Throne is a clear and accurate historical account that chronologically details the deadly conflicts among both the military generals who had been appointed by Alexander as satraps of huge regional areas (as well as Perdiccas, in charge in Babylon), and the members of the Macedonian royal family, which included Olympias, Alexander’s mother, and Rhoxane and her son, Alexander IV. Rhoxane and her son died around 313 B.C., probably from poisoning. On page 205 of the book the author summarizes the extent of the tragic account: “The pattern of mitosis that had beset the empire since Alexander’s death seemed to be recurring without end. First the royal family had split into two factions and designated two kings to take Alexander’s place; then the designs of Perdiccas had brought a split between two wives; finally all of Asia had been split by the falling-out of Perdiccas and Antipater, and by the war those two had handed down to their surrogates, Eumenes and Antigonus…”

For this history of the wars for Alexander’s crown and empire, author James Romm lists his most important sources in the Preface, beginning with the 2002 publication by Brian Bosworth, a “masterly study,” The Legacy of Alexander: Politics, Warfare, and Propoganda Under the Successors. The sources include the firsthand account of Hieronymous of Cardia (a Greek soldier of fortune) that was lost but “mined for information” by Arrian of Nicomedia in the second century A.D.; the first century B.C. account of Diodorus Siculus; the account of Pompeius Trogus, a Roman writer; the Lives of Plutarch from the late first and early second century A.D.; and the Notes of Photius, the ninth century A.D. patriarch of Constantinople. There is an extensive Bibliography, maps, illustrations, and 31 pages of Notes that will leave the reader confident in the accuracy of the outer or objective history. The author also writes that he has examined more unconventional or subjective accounts, such as those by “Athenaeus, collector of gossip and anecdotes, and the anonymous author of The Lives of the Ten Orators.” The Introduction that follows the Preface describes the great archaeological discovery by Manolis Andronikos in Vergina (Northern Greece) in 1977-79, a discovery that has been confirmed to be a Great Tumulus contemporary with Alexander, containing the remains of his relatives and close companions and possibly artifacts that belonged to Alexander himself. More »

Tags: Alexander the Great, Crown, death, Empire, Ghost, James Romm, Martha Keltz, Throne, War

2013-0407

The Secret of Light

1 Comment[Author: mkeltz Category: Academic, Non-fiction, Reviews, Science ]

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By Walter Russell

Published by The University of Science and Philosophy, Waynesboro, VA, 1974. 1994. Buy this Book!

In the Foreword, after listing many factors by way of pointing out how little our present-day civilization has progressed toward spiritual understanding of the universe, Walter Russell offers the following: “Within the secret of Light is the answer to all of these heretofore unanswered questions, and many more, which the ages have not yet solved. This revelation of the nature of Light will be the inheritance of man in the coming New Age of greater comprehension. Its unfoldment will prove the existence of God by methods and standards acceptable to science and religion alike. It will lay a spiritual foundation under the present material one of science.” At the beginning of the Foreword (and also preceding each chapter) clarifications and extensions on the qualities of Light are offered with quotations from Russell’s great work, The Divine Iliad: “Man progresses in cycles of approximately twenty-five hundred years. At the beginning of each cycle of his growing awareness of the Light within him, God sends messages through prepared messengers to further his comprehension of the Light. Comprehension of these cosmic messages gradually exalts mankind into higher beings, and thus each cycle is one more step for man toward full awareness of the Light, and of his Oneness with God.” In Chapter One, “The Eternal Question,” the author emphasizes: “A new cycle of three thousand years duration is now in its birth throes.”

From “Concerning the Divine Iliad”: The Divine Iliad cannot be fully published for many years. As much of it as can now be published will appear in these pages. Further portions of it will be released as the world is ready to receive them.” The Divine Iliad is currently available in two volumes, and the second part of the first volume includes The Secret of Light.

Walter Bowman Russell, born in Boston, Mass., (May 19, 1871–May 19, 1963), published the first version of The Secret of Light in 1927 with the title The Universal One. However, he came to regard this first effort as a failure and twenty years later, in 1947, re-published this phenomenal work with its present title. According to the Biographical Information on Walter Russell online (address below), in 1921, at the age of 49, Walter Russell experienced his illumination into the “Light of Cosmic Consciousness” during a time period that lasted 39 days and nights. This was the longest period of his illumination but not the first. He first “left his body and felt the ecstasy of cosmic consciousness” at the age of seven, and after that time he had similar experiences every year during the month of May. Pentecost Sunday often falls around mid-May and it seems fitting to associate the significance of this observance with the life and work of Walter Russell. From the biography cited, Russell died on his 92^nd birthday, “mentally awake and active right up until the end.” In 2013, Pentecost Sunday falls on May 19th.

Russell left conventional schooling at the age of nine to help support his family. He was “a musician from infancy,” and a blind neighbor, his first teacher, taught him to play the piano. At the age of 13 he became a church organist and also entered art school. From this time period onward he was entirely self-supporting and self-educated. There was first a crisis, however, when at the age of 14 he became seriously ill with “black diphtheria” and was declared dead by a physician. Yet during this severe illness he experienced his second great illumination wherein self-healing knowledge was revealed, and he was able to rise from the sickbed perfectly healed.

The Secret of Light is divided into three parts: Part I, Omniscience, The Universe of Knowing; Part II, Omnipotence, The Universe of Power; Part III, Omnipresence, The Universe of Being, Postulates and Diagrams. There are 17 chapters in Part I and 16 chapters in Part II, although the chapters are generally only a few pages in length, enabling the reader to more easily assimilate such subjects as “Sensation and Consciousness,” “Knowledge Versus Thinking,” “Thinking Versus Sensing,” “Electrical Awareness,” “Motion Simulating Rest,” “Genesis,” “The Unfolding-Refolding Principle,” and “The Illusion of Attraction and Repulsion of Matter.” Part III, subtitled “This Magnetic-Electric Universe,” contains 77 pages of diagrams, beginning with the diagram representing “The Mystery of Gravitation and Radiation,” and ending with two complex diagrams described by the legends as “Opposite actions simultaneously void each other,” and “This universe of matter is composed of pairs of negations which never exceed zero.” Russell’s “Periodic Table of the Elements” is shown on page 262. (“In 1941, the American Academy of Sciences conferred a doctorate on him, after several laboratories had isolated the elements which he had foreseen: Deuterium, Tritium, Neptunium and Plutonium.”)

At the beginning of a study of this book the serious reader will ask: Who is the Being who is communicating with Russell and instructing him about the secrets of Light, the Being of the Divine Iliad? The source is identified as the One, God the Father, as still, magnetic center of the universe, as “the fulcrum,” and as the foundation of all material existence. God the Son, whom Russell refers to as Jesus or the Nazarene, can also be recognized: “I am the Light; I alone AM… All men will come to Me in due time, but theirs is the agony of awaiting.” “All power is from the One. All power returns to the One.” The Laws of the universe, of the One God, are accentuated throughout this work. “The Cause is real. The Effect is but a simulation of the reality.” “This material universe of many seemingly separate parts is electric.” “Whatever man desires, the God in him will create. Man must, however, co-create with God according to God’s universal law. If man breaks that law, the law will break him to an equal extent.”

In 1957, Walter Russell and his second wife, Lao Russell (1904–1988), published a little book called Atomic Suicide. Considering the span of Russell’s lifetime, and that of Lao, it is clear that perhaps the most important aspect of his mission and message was to communicate the direct response of God to the emergence of the so-called “atomic age,” to communicate God’s answer and warning regarding unlawful interferences with Nature — activities that continue to prevail in the name of science — as well as the abuses by humanity of the natural world. His lifetime also just preceded our electronic and computer age. Russell’s work in the secret of Light is undoubtedly at the highest and purist level of spiritual-scientific, geometric and mathematical thinking (it was not within his mission to describe the universe as consisting of hierarchical orders of living spiritual Beings as does Rudolf Steiner), yet his work can be easily understood by everyone. Everyone who has ever given any thought or serious study to the mysteries of the universe can increase his or her understanding to a degree that will prove very surprising, at many levels of endeavor and inquiry, with only one reading of The Secret of Light.

Walter Russell, from many of his later photographs, has an appearance that is often described as “everyone’s kindly grandfather” – a wise grandfather full of piety and humility who will remind us often that “God is Light. God is Love.” He does not seem to quite fit the picture of the Initiate as presented by Rudolf Steiner in many lectures from many different sides within Anthroposophy. However, it may be that his lifework bears a relationship to Rudolf Steiner’s statements on the return of Vulcan (lecture referenced below).

If Russell could be compared with a well-known figure in the history of Christianity, it might be Saint Paul. Thomas Aquinas, who lived during a very dark period of the Middle Ages, frequently quoted Saint Paul: “For now we see in a glass dimly, but then face to face.” — Corinthians 1, 13:12. There can be no doubt that Walter Russell has had face-to-face meetings with God and, astonishingly, every year during the month of May. Face-to-face meetings with God or one of His divine messengers have been promised for all of us, by Saints Paul and Thomas Aquinas, at some point along the way on our individual spiritual journeys. – Review by Martha Keltz

References:

The University of Science and Philosophy

Biographical Information on Walter Russell

Rudolf Steiner regarding the return of Vulcan: A Picture of Earth Evolution in the Future

There are many very helpful YouTube videos online about Walter Russell and Lao Russell and their work; just enter their names, or The University of Science and Philosophy, on the YouTube search line.

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Tags: consciousness, cosmic, Light, Martha Keltz, Secret, walter russell

2013-0307

Life Before Life: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives

Comments Off[Author: mkeltz Category: Non-fiction, Paranormal, Psychology, Reviews ]

Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives

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By Jim B. Tucker, M.D., Foreword by Ian Stevenson, M.D.

Published by St. Martin’s Griffin Press, New York, N.Y., 2005. Buy this Book!

In the Foreword of Life Before Life, Ian Stevenson (1918 – 2007), whose work became well-known after the 1966 publication of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, informs the readers that Jim Tucker writes so well that “he may beguile a casual reader into thinking he or she has no work to do. Read on, and learn that evidence may answer – sooner than you expected – the most important question we can ask ourselves: What happens after death?” Author Jim Tucker, a child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, has taken on the task of continuing the monumental work that Ian Stevenson began in the 1960s. He writes in the Introduction: “More than 2,500 cases are registered in the files of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia… Previously, we have only written for a scientific audience, but now that we have forty years’ worth of data, the general public deserves the opportunity to evaluate the evidence as well. I will try to present it in as fair a way as possible so that you can judge for yourself.” For example, in the third chapter, titled “Explanations to Consider,” numerous other possibilities by way of understanding the cases described in Life Before Life are carefully considered, such as fraud, fantasy, genetic memory and possession, but these are generally ruled out through deductive reasoning, with the reader led back to serious consideration of reincarnation. Through the end of this chapter and in the four that follow, Dr. Tucker continues the substantiation of reincarnation by presenting remarkably similar data for more than 40 cases that involve children’s memories of previous lives. In Chapter 8, “Divine Intermission,” he achieves a tentative transition from emphasis on the mysteries of the soul to considerations for the existence of higher causative factors: spirit. In the ninth chapter he presents “Opposing Points of View,” and in the tenth and final chapter he at last allows for some “Conclusions and Speculations,” including “The Question of Karma.”

Near the end of the 1960s, financial support in the amount of one million dollars for Ian Stevenson’s work came from the will of Chester F. Carlson (1906 – 1968), who invented the photocopying process for the Xerox Corporation. Although the unusual nature of the research made some people uneasy, “Universities are not in the habit of turning down million-dollar gifts…The university eventually did decide to accept the money since it had been given to support scholarly work, and the work continued.”

In the cases presented the children first begin talking about the previous life around the age of two, and the median age when the talking stops is 72 months or 6 years. The children generally describe events near the end of the previous life and rarely remember more than one life. However, in the case of Bobby Hodges from North Carolina, which opens Chapter 8, memories from lives other than the most recent are described: in one life Bobby describes a death that resulted from a gunshot wound, and in another from a motor vehicle accident. What stands out in the cases presented in Dr. Tucker’s book is the fact that the amount of time in-between lives is surprisingly short, ranging from six months to fifty years, with most rebirths occurring from eighteen months to five years after the previous deaths. Most of the cases occurred in Asia or India — Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar and Turkey — with the rebirths almost always occurring within the same region or nation, and sometimes within the same family. However, a significant number of cases are given that originated in England, Europe and the United States. A two-year-old boy in Britain recalled the life of a German WWII pilot, stating “I crashed a plane through a window.” Later, he drew swastikas and eagles and demonstrated the Nazi salute and the goose-step march of German soldiers. (This has similarities to the case of James Leininger, in the book Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot, which is reviewed on this bLog.) Some two dozen international cases involved a change from Japanese to Burmese lives, with the children recalling lives of Japanese soldiers who had been killed in Burma in WWII. These statistics do appear to be pointing to certain causative factors in quick returns: violent and sudden deaths in WWII, as well as in many other circumstances, such as in crimes or fatal accidents. In such circumstances the potential for spiritual development within the individual may be far better served in earthly life rather than in the spiritual world between death and rebirth.

An extraordinary case is described on page 114, at the beginning of Chapter 6, which is titled “Unusual Behaviors.” This relates the disturbing memories of a four-year-old girl who resided in Florida. The child, Kendra Carter, developed a loving attachment to her swimming instructor, named Ginger. The child talked about Ginger all the time and then began saying that she had been a baby in Ginger’s tummy, but that Ginger “had allowed a bad man to pull her out and that she had tried to hang on but could not. She described being scared in a dark and cold place afterwards. Kendra’s mother eventually found out from Ginger that she had in fact had an abortion nine years before Kendra was born when she was unmarried, sick, and dealing with anorexia nervosa… This case presents us with a number of perplexing questions. Why would a four-year-old girl think that she had been involved in an abortion? What caused her to develop the idea of reincarnation when she was being raised by a mother who could not even consider the possibility?” The mother attended a conservative Christian church and “did not accept the idea that reincarnation is a process that normally occurs.”

How does Jim Tucker achieve the transition from soul to spirit in the final chapters of the book? Concisely and admirably: challenging the assumption that the areas of physics and paranormal phenomena are incompatible; discussing how consciousness can be regarded as separate from the physical brain; mind-matter interactions; pointing out how mainstream science, while necessarily conservative, favors the status quo far longer than is productive; addressing the arguments of the population explosion; and pointing out that religious beliefs are not part of scientific objectivity, although deserving of consideration. The author quotes Matthew 11:10-14 and 17:10-13, from the New Testament: “Jesus says that John the Baptist is the prophet Elijah who had lived centuries before, and he does not appear to be speaking metaphorically.” In the chapter titled “Conclusions and Speculations” he addresses such difficult questions as: Does Everybody Reincarnate?, In Cases of Reincarnation, What Reincarnates?, The When and Where of Reincarnation, The Question of Karma, Enduring Emotions, Advice for Parents, Spiritual Speculations, Future Research, and Final Thoughts (Out of the mouth of babes …)

But it seems that this book and the extensive studies and research from which it draws, as totally admirable and necessary as it is, can only partly answer the question pointed out by Ian Stevenson in the Foreword: What happens after death? For the memories recounted can almost entirely be attributed to the causative factor of the “quick return.” This may be more than enough for many readers. Yet others may ask: what occurs in-between death and rebirth when the individual has led a long and fulfilling life, resplendent with good deeds and the continuous quest to develop higher or spiritual consciousness, and who then experiences a natural death, such as someone like Mother Teresa? What occurs within the soul and spirit when there are hundreds of years in-between lives? And what is required to be brought from earthly life in order to make such long, fruitful interludes possible? – Review by Martha Keltz

Recommended:

Life Between Death and Rebirth, Sixteen Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, 1912 – 1913; Karmic Relationships, Volumes I through VIII, Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, 1924; At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lectures I through XIV, by Rudolf Steiner, 1906; Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (one of the “basic books” of Spiritual Science), by Rudolf Steiner, 1904.

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Tags: book, Children, Ian Stevenson, Jim B. Tucker, Life, Martha Keltz, Memories, Previous Lives, review

2013-0207

Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work

Comments Off[Author: kkaine Category: Biography, Non-fiction, Reviews ]

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By Gary Lachman

Tarcher Book Publishers, February, 2007. Click to Buy this Book!

When speaking of the life and work of Rudolf Steiner, the greatest challenge is to express it in general terms. Gary Lachman has done just that. The other challenge for those who know Rudolph Steiner’s work is to speak of it in an unbiased way. Gary Lachman invites you to know Rudolf Steiner in his humanity; a man who had one foot on this earth and the other in the spiritual world that weaves through every physical Higgs boson particle.

At the core of Rudolf Steiner’s teaching lies the principle of metamorphosis. He invites us to observe and think deeply about the form-changing process we can observe in nature and apply that to human evolution. Gary Lachman uses this same principle to reveal the life of Rudolf Steiner through the pages of his book. Steiner himself wrote in his autobiography that its purpose was to “trace the course of his thought and to show how it evolved over time.” Yet many of his followers today embalm the Steiner they think he was in the ideas of a century ago when he lived.

One of the key principles to change is the encounter with a force of resistance. Through the journey that Gary sketches we come to understand that at every turn in his life Rudolf Steiner met with resistance in one form or another, both from without and from within his organization. He still does today. Why wouldn’t such a significant thinker be as well-known as Einstein? Einstein! the one whose theories do not metamorphose into modern scientific thought as well as he may have hoped. On the back cover of Gary’s book we read, “Rudolf Steiner — educator, architect, philosopher and agriculturist — ranks amongst the most creative and prolific figures of the early twentieth century. Yet he remains a mystery to most people.”

What Gary Lachman has written in this biography goes a long way to unraveling this mystery. Steiner wanted to find ways of expressing with utmost clarity what he called “the living activity of the human spirit.” Gary explains that from an early age Steiner was aware of things “seen” and things “not seen.” The things “not seen,” meaning not grasped by the senses, weren’t fantasies, or what we’d call “mere imagination.” They were inner events taking place on a kind of interior stage, the soul.” Gary says that “Rudolf Steiner talks about the visual world as a tapestry behind which is a great work.” More »

Tags: book, Gary Lachman, Introduction, Kristina Kaine, Life, new, review, rudolf steiner, Work

2013-0107

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith

Comments Off[Author: mkeltz Category: Biography, Non-fiction, Reviews ]

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By Fawn M. Brodie

First Vintage Books Edition, 1995; originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1945. Click to buy this book!

In the Preface of the first edition of her book, author Fawn M. Brodie (1915–1981) sums up the challenges faced by all those who decide to undertake a serious study of the life of Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805–1844), founder of Mormonism: “It was in a funeral sermon that the Mormon prophet flung a challenge to his future biographers. To an audience of ten thousand in his bewitching city of Nauvoo, Joseph Smith said on April 7, 1844: ‘You don’t know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it; I shall never understand it. I don’t blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.’ Since that moment of candor at least three-score writers have taken up the gauntlet. Many have abused him; some have deified him; a few have tried their hands at clinical diagnosis. All have insisted, either directly or by implication, that they knew his story. But the results have been fantastically dissimilar.” Having been raised in a Mormon family, Fawn McKay Brodie departed from the faith and perhaps wrote her first historic biography as a means of coming to terms with this towering, shadowy and perplexing figure of her childhood. Later she wrote biographies of Thaddeus Stevens, Sir Richard F. Burton, Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon, and became the first female professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the Preface to the 1970 edition of No Man Knows My History she acknowledges “the continuing growth of a considerable literature on human behavior, some of which is decidedly relevant to an understanding of the more baffling aspects of the Mormon prophet’s character.” She points out in the 1970 psychoanalytical Supplement that it is not intended to be a comprehensive clinical portrait, “which would have to be the work of a professional based on much more intimate knowledge of the man than is presently possible.” However, despite these cautious remarks, as well as a statement that “the clinical definitions of 1970 cannot easily be superimposed on the social and political realities of 1840,” her lack of comprehension of Christian esotericism, spirituality and the nature of visionary experience and clairvoyance leaves her little option other than repeating a number of psychological suppositions, such as “unconscious conflicts over his own identity,” “pseudologia fantastica,” “parapath,” “alienated from reality,” “grandiose” and “megalomania.”

From the point of view of Anthroposophy (defined as knowledge of the human being, sophy meaning wisdom and anthro referring to the human being) it would seem that the young, charismatic “Joe Smith” had genuine visionary experiences and may have been deeply connected by destiny with the pre-Christian history of settlement on the American continents by foreign peoples. This awareness could have been awakened in him by a reading of the 1823 publication by Ethan Smith: View of the Hebrews. There would be no wrong at all in the likelihood that the work of Ethan Smith was instrumental in the inspiration of The Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith was also obviously moved by his readings and studies of the Old Testament, particularly Isaiah, which spoke to him personally, and from which he drew strength for his life and his spiritual aspirations. Author Fawn Brodie casts doubt on the originality and authenticity of The Book of Mormon in citing Ethan Smith’s work in particular. More »

Tags: biography, book review, Fawn M. Brodie, history, Joseph Smith, Life, man, Martha Keltz