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The World As Symbol

An Interview With Steven Forrest

Each of us lives in a different reality. Each of us has a different perspective, a different purpose, a different viewpoint. We have to honor those differences. The function of astrology is not to thrust my view on someone else but to help another person see whatever it is they need to see more clearly.

Cosmic Blues

A Reluctant Interview With Emmanuel

Death is the most pleasant thing that will happen to you, though it is very hard to convince people of that.

The Magic And The Power

An Interview With Odetta

I’m shy about writing, about exposing myself, but songs have come through me. Once, I was in Israel and had a hard night — an argument that was so unimportant I don’t even remember what it was about — and I decided I’d go to sleep. In those days that was the way I handled my problems. There’s a Chinese proverb that says if you have a big problem, and you need to solve it, go to sleep. The problem won’t disappear, but you’ll wake up in another position. (Chuckles.) Well, I got back to the hotel, and I couldn’t go to sleep. So I took pencil and paper in hand and out came a song. The kind of writing I admire involves yourself right out there, like Joni Mitchell. Her songs are about what she did or didn’t do or what she’s feeling. It’s almost like an exorcism. But I haven’t gotten there yet.

Don’t Blame Nature

An Interview With Frances Moore Lappé

There is no correlation between scarcity of resources, density of population, and hunger. Hunger exists where there is a small minority of people who control the resources and use them for their benefit.

True Love

A Conversation With Bartholomew

Bartholomew: I see two areas of difficulty. One is in the realm of relationships. Can you tell me your perception of the problem?

Louis David: I’m thinking of my wife, Christine. We’ve been married 17 years. Not long ago, she and I met with her therapist and he said that I recreated her reality for her.

The Doctor Who Won’t Charge

An Interview With Patch Adams

People are not their diseases. They are the same weak fragile beings that we ourselves are. Traditionally, a physician in general practice follows patients throughout their lives, but without touching on the quality of a person’s life, their loves, concerns, and fears, we ignore a gigantic area of resource and of disease.

Worth Fighting For

An Interview With Holly Near

I just got back from Nicaragua. I hadn’t known much at all about this country that the United States has been involved with for many years. The Marines were in Nicaragua as long ago as the Thirties. How can you live in a country and not know about a place where your Marines have been for that long?

Judaism’s Mystical Heart

An Interview With Dovid Din

The unity that Judaism is looking for is the point at which, without losing this brain, a corridor of correspondence is opened between this brain — the individual identity — and the transcendent identity. But it isn’t that I become annihilated and flow into the great river; it’s that I am maintained in a scale model relationship to the transcendent. I stay here, but I grow outward. I stay here, but I use my here only to be positioned onto there.

Blessed Ignorance

An Interview With Donald Michael

There is the need to acknowledge to oneself and share with others extremely high levels of uncertainty. By uncertainty I don’t mean probability; I mean the uncertainty that accompanies knowing that you don’t know.

Returning To Beauty

An Interview With James Applewhite

Building the pyramids or Chartres cathedral are not totally reasonable endeavors — to spend all this money and time and effort and lives in some cases, piling up beautifully cut stone, and yet it’s what gives the grandeur to human existence. It makes humanity in society have something of the brilliance of the light shafting down from the stars.