Offering multiple perspectives from many fields of human inquiry that may move all of us toward a more integrated understanding of who we are as conscious beings.
Science Fiction author David Brin has a new book called Existence (2014) in which he speculates on the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. He recently stopped by Google to talk about the book - here is a summary:
Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence.
Gerald
Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people
have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up.
But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects,
something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he
grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien
artifact.”
Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared
experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an
alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans
always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And
insatiable curiosity.
Brin is the author of several classic sci-fi novels, including Earth (1991), The Postman (1997), and Otherness (1994).
David Brin is a scientist, best-selling author and tech-futurist. His novels include Earth, The Postman (filmed in 1997) and Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. A leading commentator and speaker on modern trends, his nonfiction book The Transparent Society won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. Brin's newest novel Existence explores the ultimate question: billions of planets are ripe for life. So where is Everybody? David's main thread: how will we shape the days and years ahead -- and how will tomorrow shape us? David's books are available on Google Play: http://goo.gl/iiv9Qk
How interesting that the TED folks allowed Hameroff to give his talk but took down Sheldrake and Hancock, and then canceled the whole TEDx West Hollywood program. Hameroff is just as speculative as the others, and was featured in a film (the inane What the Bleep Do We Know!?) about Ramtha, "a Lemurian warrior who fought the Atlanteans over 35,000 years ago," and is channeled by JZ Knight in her 12,800-square-foot French chateau-style home in Yelm, Washington.
Yeah, no woo here.
The attacks on Sheldrake and Hancock are political - they challenged the existing system in ways it cannot defend against short of silencing them. But Hameroff is within the system, claiming to use quantum physics to support his claims.
Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness. For nearly forty years, Dr. Hameroff's research is centered on how the pinkish gray meat between our ars produces the richness of experiential awareness. A clinical anesthesiologist, Hameroff has studied how anesthetic gas molecules selectively erase consciousness via delicate quantum effects on protein dynamics. Following a longstanding interest in the computational capacity of microtubules inside neurons, Hameroff teamed with the eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to develop a controversial quantum theory of consciousness called orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) which connects brain processes to fundamental spacetime geometry. Recently Hameroff has explored the theoretical implications of Orch OR for consciousness to exist independent of the body, distributed in deeper, lower, faster scales in non-local, holographic spacetime, raising possible scientific approaches to the soul and spirituality.
I do not really believe in this version of Jesus' life - that he did not die on the cross and then wandered to Asia and became a monk, Buddhist or otherwise. Another popular version of this story is that he did not die on the cross, and he married Mary Magdalene and had children.
There is also the suggestion in another video (presented below) that Jesus was educated by Buddhist teachers during the lost years, perhaps traveling to India during that time. More likely, to me, is that he did leave Palestine and traveled north to one of the philosophical centers, where he encountered and integrated some Buddhist teachings (including reincarnation).
The second thesis makes the most sense to me. The teachings of Jesus, at least the ones considered most accurate (The Gospel of Thomas), contain elements of Buddhist thought filtered through a Jewish worldview. This makes more sense than other versions - there was a considerable interplay between Greek culture and Buddhism following Alexander the Great's conquest of India in the 4th century BCE. It's not at all out of the question that Jesus was exposed to these ideas before beginning his teaching career.
In 326 BCE, Alexander invaded India. King Ambhi, ruler of Taxila, surrendered his city, a notable center of Buddhist faith, to Alexander. Alexander fought an epic battle against Porus, a ruler of a region in the Punjab in the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BCE.
Several philosophers, such as Pyrrho, Anaxarchus and Onesicritus, are said to have been selected by Alexander to accompany him in his eastern campaigns. During the 18 months they were in India, they were able to interact with Indian ascetics, generally described as Gymnosophists ("naked philosophers"). Pyrrho (360-270 BCE) returned to Greece and became the first Skeptic and the founder of the school named Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.[3] Few of his sayings are directly known, but they are clearly reminiscent of eastern, possibly Buddhist, thought:
"Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention"
"Nothing is in itself more this than that" (Diogenes Laertius IX.61)
Another of these philosophers, Onesicritus, a Cynic, is said by Strabo to have learnt in India the following precepts:
"That nothing that happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams"
"That the best philosophy [is] that which liberates the mind from [both] pleasure and grief" (Strabo, XV.I.65[4])
Sir William Tarn wrote that the Brahmans who were the party opposed to the Buddhists always fought with Alexander.
These contacts initiated the first direct interactions between Greek and Indian philosophy, which were to continue and expand for several more centuries.
Pyrrhonism, or Pyrrhonian skepticism, a philosophy attributed to the philosopher Pyrrho, who was with Alexander in his conquest of India, is based on the recorded teachings of Pyrrho and these contain a definite Buddhist flavor (perhaps a good insight into Theravada Buddhism in its early years):
It is necessary above all to consider our own knowledge; for if it is in our nature to know nothing, there is no need to inquire any further into other things. […] Pyrrho of Elis was also a powerful advocate of such a position. He himself has left nothing in writing; his pupil Timon, however, says that the person who is to be happy must look to these three points: first, what are things like by nature? second, in what way ought we to be disposed towards them? and finally, what will be the result for those who are so disposed? He [Timon] says that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indifferent and unstable and indeterminate (adiaphora kai astathmêta kai anepikrita); for this reason, neither our perceptions nor our beliefs tell the truth or lie (adoxastous kai aklineis kai akradantous). For this reason, then, we should not trust them, but should be without opinions and without inclinations and without wavering, saying about each single thing that it no more is than is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not (ou mallon estinê ouk estin ê kai esti kai ouk estin ê oute estin oute ouk estin). Timon says that the result for those who are so disposed will be first speechlessness (aphasia), but then freedom from worry (ataraxia); and Aenesidemus says pleasure. These, then, are the main points of what they say (Aristocles in Eusebius PE 14.18.1–5 = DC53; tr. Bett 2000 with changes)
The best evidence for the Buddhist ideas in some of Jesus' teachings comes from the Greek philosophers who were influenced by Buddhist teachings and from the almost certain presence of Buddhist "missionaries" in the Mediterranean region, including what was then Palestine.
This BBC 4 documentary examines the question "Did Jesus Die?" It looks at a bunch of ideas around this question until minute 25, where this examination of ideas takes a very logical and grounded turn with surprising conclusions that demonstrate...
The three wise men were Buddhist monks who found Jesus and came back for him around puberty. After being trained in a Buddhist Monastery he spread the Buddhist philosophy, survived the crucifixion, and escaped to Kashmir, Afghanistan where he died an old man at the age of 80.
Some interesting articles in this new issue of Social Text - all of the articles focused in some way on speculation. Here are links and abstracts for the articles.
In our dystopian present, the term speculation is
associated with an epistemology of greed, a sanctioned terrorism, and a
new dimension of imperialism no longer based in production but in
abstract futures. But speculation means something else for those who
refuse to give its logic over to power and profit. >>
"What will you do when the apocalypse comes??" he asked me
urgently. My first reaction was to laugh derisively. But a friend made
me think twice. "Who knows, maybe he's right," she said. Then came the
Tsunami that devastated South Asia in 2004. And the levees that breached
during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Who's to say what's real?>>
Science fictions never present the future, only "a
significant distortion of the present," as Delany wrote in 1984. But
they also distort the present of anyone reading at any time, even the
text's own future. The contours of Dhalgren's disintegrating city belong
to the wake of 1960s countercultures and social movements, to a sexual
and racial moment whose history uninformed new generations of readers
will learn as they read, even if they fail to recognize it. Sexual
pleasure in Delany's work links the past and present and lets a
different future feel possible, even when it takes place within
structuring limitations. >>
Chinese-Canadian author Larissa Lai imaginatively
interrogates the boundaries of the human, alchemizes myths of origin,
and embraces the impurity of the cyborg while foregrounding the politics
of racialization, animality, and sexuality. Lai builds on the rich
tradition of women of color writing in sf/speculative fiction by
splicing together cultural theory and current events with a panoply of
intertexts. Traversing past, present, and future, Lai maps the
permeability of the human through the vectors of animal,
creator-goddess, cyborg, and transgenic procreation. Her distinctive
métissage of Chinese legend, EuroAmerican culture, Orientalist
archetypes, Western popular music, and science fiction disrupts cycles
of institutionalized exploitation, corporatized amnesia, and
multicultural assimilation.[1] Akin to the work of Octavia Butler, Karen
Tei Yamashita, and Nalo Hopkinson, Lai's...>>
China Miéville is the recipient of multiple awards for his
speculative/science/weird fiction novels, and the only author ever to
win three Arthur C. Clarke Awards. His most recent novel, Embassytown,
came out in May 2011 and has received enthusiastic reviews. As well as
writing fiction, Miéville earned his Ph.D. at London School of Economics
in International Law and is the author of Between Equal Rights, A
Marxist Theory of International Law (2006). Known for his radical
fictive speculation, China Miéville is also fiercely engaged with
radical politics--he stood for the House of Commons as candidate for the
Socialist Alliance in the 2001 UK general election--and so is often
asked about the relationship between his politics and his writing. He...>>
The short film accompanying musician and designer M.I.A.'s
(Maya Arulpragasam, who is British of Sri Lankan Tamil descent) song
"Born Free" was released in April of 2010 and immediately banned from
YouTube. Arulpragasam is no stranger to controversy, since she has drawn
attention to the violence perpetrated against the Tamil minority in Sri
Lanka, while her music and accompanying visual work is replete with
references to different forms of political violence and identification
with non-western persecuted populations.One of the few female artists in
contemporary popular music that fuse explicit political content with
cutting edge sounds, Arulpragasam has often been accused of toying with
radical chic and being politically naïve, rather than associated with a
long tradition of women of color...>>
Race is an illusion. So say we all! But what do we intend
by this saying, this performative? Denise Ferreira da Silva is but the
most recent of scholars to note that, in dispelling race from its
improper place in the order of the human sciences, casting it into
disrespectability along with sorcery, alchemy, and other bait for the
credulous, we consolidate that much more firmly the protocols of
scientific rationality. But the protocols of science gave us race as an
invidious distinction in the first place. Reason giveth, and reason
taketh away, seems to be the faith animating the claim "Race is an
illusion." But what if were to suspend such faith in the subject of
Enlightenment rationality? What...>>
When it comes to dealing with misfortune and injustice,
the most effective tool to use if we want to make sure that troubles
will persist without relief is a simple sentence: That's water under the
bridge. No use crying over spilled milk. The past is over and done
with. The goose is cooked. What's done is done.Whenever people have
their attention called to injuries that occurred in the past, it is
almost certain that someone will pipe up with a demand that everyone cut
short the desire to improve the world and, instead, to defer to the
water-under-the-bridge school of history.[1]There are is perhaps no
better example of the water-under-the-bridge school of thought in the
settler-colonial imagination, than Orson Scott...>>
The Natives should have died off by now. To still be alive
is a miracle. Can you taste two billion year old air on your breath or
the remnants of primordial seas in your sweat? Do you feel e-coli
breaking bread in your bowels? Does your heart synch up with these
words, these poetic echoes of ancient ancestors? Self and other,
simultaneously...>>
