”The Psychology of Rapid Self-Employment Achievement Plan, Personal Development, Diet & Fitness Achievement Guide Under One Roof”

The Steps You Must Take to Escape the Rat Race Before You Get Fired or Pension Scammed

WHY is it of paramount importance to business and personal development success?

“Could you repeat that again please?” As mature learners, we know that comprehension is not a one way ticket to ultimate success. Often, we need to return to what we are learning to make sure we “grasp” meaning.

Therefore we return to the information presented to us by the teacher or business coach as often as you must, in order to wipe off any obscurity , clear off uncertainties of the way the information is represented to us, further more, we must mentally reconstruct the information so that it personally makes sense to us.

Reflecting, clarifying, and paraphrasing should be our primary tools during our learning experience. sadly, readers and listeners cling to the habit of taking only one way ticket though their learning session, whether they truly understand it or not.

They may be seduced by story telling of the success or business guru, by elaborate language of a millionaire mindset, or become infatuated with unrealistic glossy video clips of flash cars, private jets, and money falling down from thin air, or by poetic esoteric quotes, and or by deficient language explanation, rather than pondering the meaning of a passage.

As a result, their “voyage” through the textbook, or seminar session becomes an entertaining journey of the dream world. Homework may be accounted for, but these audiences throw the book in the air, and prepare for celebration, without having a clue about how A gets to B, and how B gets results in neuropsychology of achievement.

CAUTION: DO NOT BUY OR INVEST IN ANY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM OR TOOL, UNLESS IT CAN PROVIDE YOU THE FOLLOWING:

1. The method must be based on real-life scientific facts and results.

Scientific research has proven that any inspirational or motivational materials that are not based on how your brain functions and retains information will have no lasting impact.

Why despite tons of books and seminars on the subject “success” and still people are not achieving rich results? Why despite all the techniques used, the effort and money invested in those success program did nothing but failed people.

We can say that some success coaches/gurus are giving bad name to science. They are not qualified teachers, and not scientifically literate. It is this kind of gurus who put much emphasis on the important use of layman language. Then, layman has a predisposition for intellect. Laymen must bear in mind that in order to reach any level of success, you must select someone who adheres to the discipline of professional teaching.

You too, must ensure to apply yourself whole-heartedly to your chosen subject, in the same way you adhere to your work, professional and personal life. This approach will help you be selective of who you should read, and will unable you to comprehend, then succeed.

When one is teaching the art of thinking, belief systems and consequence, surely one is not attending the esoteric or religious sermon whereby you are not required to think of the validity of concepts, define and justify its consequence.

Indeed, you are expected to listen and apply with the heart,and it is noble to forgive others without the need for intellectual or scientific comprehension.

However, when it comes to learning the art of thinking, belief systems, and behaviour, you will need a structured lesson plan, with aims and objectives, because this subject require you to ‘comprehend’ correctly the psychological tools that controls your life, such as, thinking, imagination, beliefs, desires, pain, pleasure, action and consequence etc.

How is it possible to implement neuropsychology achievement principles, if your business coach, or success guru, is unable to explain, the interconnectedness of neuro associative principles, that govern our behaviour?

comprehending the neuropsychology is of paramount importance to success. Of course, the teacher must allow you to ask questions.

However, today’s success seminar are like sermons.You are bombarded with must do, can do, act now, today’s success guru shout at you like a sergeant does to his soldiers.

Some seminars, audios, and cds on success lack quality, methodology, and structure of professional teaching, and thus fail to meet the need of students, learners, and success enthusiasts.

in fact clinical neuropsychologists are outraged at the way, psychology is handled and abused. let me give you some evidence of what is actually lacking in the teaching of success.

There are two negative causal effects that hinder success. However, forgive me for not displaying them right now.

Look out for Article 2 soon

copyright (c) 2008

Andre Zizi is a philosophy graduate,

Author – The Spiritual Psychology of the Science of Money-phology

Qualified teacher, and a writer

Independent neuroscience/ neuropsychology researcher

Mentor and counsellor with Neuro-Linguistic-Programming diploma

Feel free to contact me on 07999 579 135 if you have an interest in my products, service, of share vision.

In an article published by Vanity Fair Magazine Lindsay Lohan had finally come clean on rumors about her incredibly shrinking body, by admitting that her low body weight was due to bulimia.

It would seem from the above-mentioned publications that Ms. Lohan is not only suffering from a drug addiction, but also an eating disorder! One would have to wonder what causes someone that has captured fame and fortune to suddenly fall prey to the trap of addiction?

Well, lets take a moment to examine Lindsay’s upbringing!

Lindsay’s former bodyguard Tony Almeida was quoted in the latest issue of In Touch as stating; If Lindsay Lohan’s life is a train wreck, she’s got no one to blame but her parents. “Lindsay was a very sweet and talented kid, but she didn’t stand a chance against her parents and the Hollywood system,” he told the magazine.

Sex, drugs and suicide attempts — according to Tony, Lindsay tried it all while underage and under the neglectful watch of her legal guardians, Mom and Dad, the story reports. Even when her soon-to-be absentee daddy, Michael, did pay attention to Lindsay’s bad behavior, the punishment was worse than the crime.

Annoyed with Lindsay’s late-night whining, the magazine reports that “Michael slammed on the brakes and dragged her out of the car, pushed her up on the hood, screamed at her and called her a ****,” Tony recalls. “I got in the middle of it and pulled him off.”

Like the stand-up dad he is, Michael claims ignorance of the incident. Still, Pops Lohan told In Touch, “If I did do it, if that’s the worst anyone can say about me, then it’s not too bad.” Now that’s fatherly advice you can take to rehab.

Meanwhile, mom Dina often “let her do whatever she wanted, just to keep her happy and working . . . [At her 16th birthday party] Lindsay drank whatever she wanted – I saw her drinking beer and mixed drinks with my own eyes [without Dina's intervention].” As Lindsay’s manager, Dina – who was desperate to become a star herself – received 10 percent of her income. “Lindsay was the family cash cow – and she resented it,” Almeida claims. “They counted on her to pay their bills . . . I saw Lindsay exhausted, begging her mother for some time off.” Young Lindsay’s parents looked the other way as she began a life of boozing, boys and drugs. When she was 15, they allowed her to share a room with her then-14-year-old boyfriend, Aaron Carter, at Loews in Miami Beach. Almeida relates, “They knew Lindsay was sleeping in Aaron’s room. But they seemed happy she had chosen somebody who could benefit her singing career.”

It is quite apparent that a whole host of dysfunctional patterns took place in the Lohan household. Both parents were obviously uninvolved in Lindsay’s life, and at times were verbally abusive, and inadequetly parented their children.

I am not at all surprised that Lindsay has fallen prey to not one but two addictions since the emotional pain caused by family dysfunction is at the root of all addictive behavior.

Are you suffering from addiction?

When you were a child, did your parents verbally abuse you? Were you physically or sexually abused? Did one or both of your parents suffer from alcoholism or drug abuse? Did your parents control or manipulate you? Did your parents show up part-time for a job that required full time parenting? Like most, you may not realize how much these family dysfunctions have destroyed your self-esteem or why they are the root cause of your addiction! You see, there are many types of addictions, and they all have the same common denominator’ family dysfunction!

As a life coach, I have helped addicted clients learn the secrets to overcoming addiction, and I have established a unique five-step process as a potential benchmark for recovery. My success has overwhelmingly convinced me that the mainstream approach to addiction is fundamentally amiss because formal treatment programs attempt to defeat the symptoms rather than address the core issue.

Addictive behavior is a symptom of the emotional trauma caused by family dysfunction. Therefore, when you fix the root of the problem habitual behavior becomes repulsive. Instead, the mainstream philosophy has followed a pattern of bombarding the public with multiple theories and confusing psychobabble, neither of which address liberation from family dysfunction nor restoring self-esteem. These treatments not only fail to preserve anonymity, but they also fail in excess of ninety percent of the time!

The following is a brief outline of the 5 steps to addiction freedom. Prior to following these steps or any addiction recovery program, take the necessary time to ascertain whether you require the additional support of an addiction counselor or medical attention regarding withdrawal.

1. Step One: Unearth the Square Root

Family dysfunction is the common denominator, or square root of all addictive behavior, and until it is brought to the forefront and confronted nothing will change! This is by far the most important and critical step of the entire process. There are two parts to step one, and they are as follows:

A. Uncovering your family dysfunction

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Verbal abuse

Alcoholic parent

Controlling parent

Inadequate parenting

B. Confront the parent or parents responsible for the dysfunction

The thought of confronting the person that is responsible for your emotional trauma is one the most frightening situations you will face. However, it is also the most liberating and empowering thing you’ll ever do! Why do you need to confront your parent or parents? Well, first let me clarify the meaning of the word confront and in what context we are using this term. Confronting the person does not at all mean that you should verbally attack them for your misfortunes. On the contrary, you are not doing this for them. You are doing it for you! The confrontation is not meant to be an attack, but it is rather a chance for you to set the record straight and drop the emotional baggage that you’ve been toting around.

2. Step Two: Remove your Emotional Baggage

You have completed step one and have confronted your parent or parents. This in and of itself will have removed much of the pain and emotional trauma. However, to fully free yourself from their emotional stronghold, it will be necessary to find forgiveness in your heart for a family member that has committed an atrocity against you. Forgive! How can I forgive someone that committed these atrocities against me? Many people have a misconception about forgiveness. Forgiveness is not reconciliation! There is a drastic difference between the two. Reconciliation would mean that you have accepted and submit to their behavior and have agreed to try and continue the relationship under those circumstances. Forgiveness means that you merely give up or cease the resentment of the offender.

Step Three: Cure Wounditis

Without question, partaking in habitual behavior not only causes you pain but, it inflicts pain on the people around you as well. However, do not allow what you have done in the past or what others have done to you, to cause you to live in fear of what the future holds. The past is the past, it is over, and living in it does not serve anyone well. Live in the present moment, be kind to yourself, and learn to love yourself. How can you love someone else if you don’t love yourself? The answer is you can’t!!! It isn’t a big secret that you’re feeling shame and guilt for what you’ve done. In fact, you’re probably questioning right now as to whether you should be punished for your past actions. Well guess what, its ok! God doesn’t punish people, we punish ourselves. God is a loving and forgiving being. So if you thought that you would continue to punish yourself with shame and guilt before God gets a hold of you, you can stop right now! We do not have defects of character, are not full of shortcomings, and we certainly are not powerless! On the Contrary, we are all the same, we are all connected, and we all have the same power to change!
Step Four: Awaken the Power within

Whether you want to admit it or not, all of the pain you have been through concerning your habitual behavior is a spiritual lesson. And until you view it as such, it will continue to cause you suffering and unhappiness. Every dark cloud does have a silver lining, and if you look hard enough you’ll find one in this habitual situation too. However, to find that silver lining you must ask the right questions;

1. What can I learn from my addiction?

2. How can I grow from it?

The answers to these questions can be found in a place that is uncharted by most, and it is just waiting to be explored! It’s called your true self! To embark on a journey of Self -reflection requires the practice of Mediation.

For more information on mediation you can visit my website below.

Step five: Practice Acts of Random Kindness

Happiness is a state of mind. Individuals that are suffering from addictive behavior are not happy! Ironically, in an attempt to find happiness, they chose a vehicle to mask their emotional pain through the use of alcohol, illicit drugs, and various other compulsions. However, happiness is never found on the outside in material possessions or in the abuse of substances and compulsions! True life happiness can only be found in one place, and that place is within! Happiness is not found in the practice of outward ideals or in other people. To the contrary, it is actually the small acts of random kindness that opens the heart and fuels the principle of unconditional love!

To practice spirituality is to be of service to your fellow man and make no mistake about it that is why we are all here. Begin with small acts of kindness such as opening a door for someone, letting someone go before you in the checkout line or just taking the time to offer a kind word to an older person or a child. You get the picture! The first thing I do upon waking in the morning is think of how I can be of service and throughout the day I am always mindful of opportunities that present themselves for me to do just that. You know, the paradox of the whole thing is that the more kind and generous you are the more love, kindness and abundance you’ll receive back. Don’t believe me! Just try it and watch what begins to happen to you.

Finally, good luck in your quest for addiction freedom. Visit my website below to subscribe to my Free E-guide and Weekly E-Zine;
overcome Addiction

Best Wishes,

David Roppo
Addiction Coach

1)Start with the market and not the product.

Find out what people want in the market place and then sell them exactly what they want. In other words, conduct a survey and see if there is any demand for your chosen product before developing the product. Some people advocate finding out what people are buying by visiting internet and examining products that are being searched for. There is merit in this strategy but it is only relevant if your market is world wide otherwise the internet data will distort your analytical results.

2)Controlling your marketing spend.

Marketing is the key to creating awareness and thereby market penetration. However, it is quite easy to spend all of your marketing budget and not generate any sales. Test the water with your advertising campaigns. Run a few advertisements and check to see if they generate any sales.

Write your advertisement yourself and talk about all aspect of your business or service and service delivery. Make an offer that customers will find irresistible, give them an incentive to test your product or service, back your offer with a no quibble money back guarantee.

3)Don’t wear too many hates yourself.

It is very easy to think that you have to do everything yourself. There are two possible consequences of an attitude whereby you think that you can do everything yourself; you prevent your business from developing simply because you are doing too much and more importantly you will lose focus and sight of where you want to go.

4)Set a sensible pricing structure for your products and services.

Set your prices that are competitive as well as profitable. New entrants in the small business sector tend to undercut their competitors and by so doing don’t make any profit. Consider this scenario; wedding quote for 100 people, lunch and evening buffet, silver service, champagne and wine with bride and groom’s own labels on them. It is easy to quote a price of $50 per head because that sounds within the ball park. However, upon working out all the costs we came back with a per head price of $70 per head. Moral of this story being that working out prices before preparing quotation is a good idea and we advise people to conduct this exercise every time.

5)Use technology to create awareness.

Internet is the best vehicle to tell your potential and actual customers about you, your products and your service. However, you need to line up what you do with the way you present your information on your internet site. Make sure that you design your internet site yourself and by that I mean replicating what you do and how you do it pretty much exactly how you do it. Otherwise, you may harm your business because you may not get noticed.

6)Set goals; both end goal and the intermediate ones.

You need to decide where you want to be in two years’ time. By setting that target goal, you will then set a road map for your business to go for. The road map will consist of intermediate goals along the way which you can use as testing tools to gauge your progress and fine tune your strategy as and when the need arises.

7)Take action.

According to the motivational GURU Anthony Robinson you’ve got to take action. Take massive action he says. Having a good and well researched idea is not enough, you have to implement that idea otherwise all the effort to date amounts to very little. Just do it.

Finally, about 90% of the business success can be attributed to good management team, well researched market, a good and feature rich quality product as well as good financial backing to say the least. The remaining 10% of the business success is to do with luck, risk taking and even being in the right place at the right time. Be thorough in your research, understand your market and your product, follow the above 7 steps and you will have avoided the dreaded pitfalls.

However if you have ever been hit by an entrepreneurial seizure there is something that happens which is unexplainable.  If you are eager to respond to this intense emotion you will by no means be happy living your life by a employment narrative. You desire more.  A partition will feel like a prison and until you create something you can label your own you will believe like each day a part of you is making a deal with the devil.

For most folks starting a venture is a frightening proposition.  So how do you create an atmosphere that pulls you towards achievement?  What can you do to motivate yourself to get your life back and build fortune from home? Creating a purpose driven home based business is the winning combination that blends living your passion and profiting from it.

Here are steps you can take towards a purpose driven work at home business career:

- You can create a vision and mission for your home based enterprise that inspires you.  Life is too short. When you create the resolution to leave the rat race you do not desire to generate a business that is simply another employment.  So why are you taking this journey?  What do you want your business to look like?
For example, I am clear that my work from home venture is as much about lifestyle as it is profit.  Every time I work on my business I look at my mission that includes income developed due to inactive income and working no more than 25 hours a week.

Why?  Because after 30+ years in Corporate America I learned that what are important to me are my personal relationships.  I no longer wanted to trade my time for money.  At the end of my life I do not want to remember how many hours I worked for someone else or the sacrifices I made for a company.  As a result, my vision is to generate a lifestyle that allows me to enjoy life with the folks I care about.

What is your vision for your business?  Try to include all of your senses.  What will it look like when you get there? How will you feel?  Who will be there to celebrate with you?  Will you smell the breeze of the ocean water or the pungent fragrance of swaying honeysuckle?  The more you link up with your vision the more you will be inspired.

- Create your business based around something you are passionate about.  There is something magical that happens when you are operating in something you love to do and are uniquely good at.  Have you ever had a employment you hated?  How did you feel?  You will never live a happy life doing something you don’t like.  Discover your passion and give it all you’ve got.

For years I worked in jobs that I was good at, yet  hated.  However, when I struck out on my own I wanted to have a life I loved. I uncovered my unique talents and went to work.  And what happened for me can happen for you.

When you start to live the life you were born to do the universe makes all of the resources available to you that you need to be successful.  So what are you passionate about?  What skills and talents do you have you can generate a living and business around?  Write down two or three skills have that would be utilized in your purpose driven business.

-Create your business a business that is bigger than you.  What would it feel like to know that your business was directly responsible for impacting the world in some way?  How would you feel to know that when you passed on people from around the world would thank you for the part you played in creating something of value that was important to them?

At first, this line of thinking can be overwhelming.  However, not when you start to think of what is at the core of any business.  Your objective is to find a solution to your customers? problems.  And in exchange they are willing to pay you for it.  To the extent that you get to know their hopes, desires, dreams and pains and you help to successfully maneuver the maze of life they will be forever grateful.

So how can your venture make its mark in the world?  My goal is to help people discover their passion, monetize it and live a life they love.  I personally desire to help 1000 people in the next 5 years take their life back and build wealth from home.  The very thought that I could play a small part in helping someone else do this gives my business a purpose much bigger than me.

Write down one goal that you have for your business that is bigger than you.  Make  sure you keep the goal in front of you where you can see it everyday.

- Develop a business plan that supports your values and beliefs.  Whenever you are working to accomplish something great you must have a plan.  The creation of your business plan is the map that you will use to guide you through your journey.  One of the keys to a successful plan is to make sure everything you do is consistent with your values and beliefs.

For example, if you have a family and want to spend more time with them you do not desire to build a business that requires you to spend long amounts of time away from them to build.

Do not get me wrong. You will make choices and sacrifices.  However, those should be things that are short term and spelled out.  You want to be clear what you are giving up or making adjustments and what you will get in return.

-Pull out all the stops for integrity–that means knowing your values in life and behaving in a way that is in harmony with these values.  When you are building something that is consistent with who you are as a person your daily actions will feed your soul.

-Consider giving a proportion of the profits to an organization you love.  I love the quote, “No one has ever become poor by giving.” –Anne Frank.  Actually our lives are enriched when we give.

For example, maybe you have a spiritual organization you would like to tithe to.  Or you might like to help a cause that is close to your heart.  Do you have an institute you would like to contribute to? Think about how you would feel if your company was contributing to an organization that was helping to create a difference in the world.

-Extend your hand to help someone who wants to do what you do.  One of the ways to give purpose to your business is to teach, coach or mentor a person.  There are people who would love to benefit from the knowledge and expertise you have acquired.  You might want to teach a class or create a coaching club. You can impact several folks at once and leverage your time. Who can you reach out to and help?  What vehicle will you use to create a difference for someone else?  Write down 3 ideas and implement one immediately.

-Generate a community by enrolling others to make it happen.  Have you ever experienced the power of what happens when several folks are committed to one goal?  There is a powerful force that happens when you speak your purpose out loud and invite others to become a part of it.  Look for opportunities to have customers, friends, family and colleagues to become a part of the mission of your business.  Your company could become a cause for change in the world.

For example, who would ever imagine that the purpose of a greeting card company was to change peoples lives one card at a time?  Well it is true.  I had the privileged of hearing the CEO of this greeting card speak.  He told the story of how he had a prompting to say goodbye one more time to his brother when he was moving and failed to do so. Shortly after the move he got a phone call that his brother had died tragically.  He was disturbed by the fact he had failed to say good bye.  Later he was inspired to create a greeting card company that allows people to act on their promptings.  Never again, would anybody miss any opportunity to send someone they care about a card. His passion and commitment about his business is contagious.  He truly embodies the characteristics of a purposed driven home based business.

So the choice is yours. You can create a business that focuses solely on making a buck and during the difficult times it might not be enough to get you through.  Or you can create something with an objective.  These traits are a winning combination.  Life is truly a joy when you can have a home based business with purpose and profit from it.

Good Luck!

Having utilized muscle testing for 20 years as an integral part of my healing practice, as well as every other aspect of my life, it was relatively easy for me to integrate David Hawkins’ interpretation of the “Levels of Consciousness” as a valid and now indispensible tool in my understanding of reality.

There is a video about late enlightened teacher. The narrator did a wonderful job of explaining some seemingly cryptic words spoken by this teacher. At the very end there was one quote which although visually displayed in its entirety, was truncated in quoting by the narrator. This gave a totally different meaning from the original statement. It also had the effect of perverting the essence of a true spiritual teaching.

Someone else, who had also spent much time with this teacher and had himself transcended linear reality to a high level of consciousness, and perhaps was the source of that self-serving misinterpretation, used it to justify a non-integrous action. That action in a person of lower consciousness might be considered a slip; in that particular enlightened being, the consequence was a “fall from grace”. A student, who was present at the time, reported a deep wounding and sense of betrayal, for himself as well as many of his fellow students.

Over the years I have wandered from one teacher and teaching to another in search of truth and healing. Many were the times when something lured me, only to show up as less than advertised. As a reaction, I let go of many healing practices, which contained elements which did not sit well. As I surrendered my anger and judgments of these teachers, certain insights surfaced in a new light. In my surrender I was shown the essence of truth which underlay the distortions and also a much higher option in utilizing these revelations.

My time spent teaching for what became a cult-like organization, gave me a deeper perspective on entities and their various forms and nuances. Some of the observations about human behavior are very astute while some explanations appear to be nothing more than glamour with the effect of hooking people into specialness, all the while denying that hook. Using muscle testing, to show me where the line between truth and falsehood lies, I am benefitting greatly from my past experiences.

The practice of soul retrieval has been a great gift to the therapy community. Traditionally, the healer is the one who journeys to find the fragment, often going into lower realms and then relating the story; with luck triggering an integration of the fragment back into the recipient. If instead of using one’s intuition to retrieve the fragment, one were to use it, with muscle testing as a confirmation, to guide the client into a retrieval and self integration, the experience can be much more empowering, truthful and consciously expansive. One can take it another big step forward by turning the whole process into a prayerful request, invoking an even greater power. Utilizing the same principal as the 12-step programs, surrendering one’s own personal will to a higher power (God, Divinity, etc.) the healer and the client can step out of self-importance and invite the highest expression of Divinity to come forth in assistance. It is tapping into the levels of consciousness, which makes these programs successful, where all else failed.

I readily admit that it has taken me some time to let go of the negative energy I carried about some of my past journeys. A lot of it was tied up in the hurt and resulting judgments I carried, from betrayals of spiritual trust on the part of the various leaders. Often the betrayal is hidden and when it is exposed, can prove devastating to an innocent aspirant. Even those experiences, over the course of time, have a positive aspect. I now have the memories of those traits as examples of what I choose not to be. They are indelible markers as to the boundaries of the straight and narrow path of integrity and consciousness.

PETER DRUCKER –“In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.”

PETER DRUCKER –“It was naive of the 19th century optimists to expect paradise from technology — and it is equally naive of the 20th century pessimists to make technology the scapegoat for such old shortcomings as man’s cruelty, immaturity, greed and sinful pride.”

PETER DRUCKER –“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

PETER DRUCKER –“Management means the substitution of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force.”

PETER DRUCKER –“The only thing that matters is how you touch people. Have I given anyone insight? That’s what I want to have done.”

PETER DRUCKER –“Wherever you see a successful business someone once made a courageous decision.”

PETER ERBE –“The caterpillar trusts his maker that all is well. He does not ding to his old garment and thus is transformed into a magnificent butterfly There is no pain, it is a natural transmutation. So it is with us. As the chrysalis is the bridge between caterpillar arid butterfly so is True perception the bridge between separation and Oneness. We are transmuting into a new state of Being. Clinging to our caterpillar stage, our old ways of judgment, we shall never learn to fly into the dawn of a new day.”

PETER F DRUCKER –”We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.”

PETER F DRUCKER –“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”?

PETER F DRUCKER –“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

PETER F DRUCKER –“One cannot buy, rent or hire more tunes. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply there is no substitute for time. Everything requires time. AH work takes place in, and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.”

PETER F DRUCKER –“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

PETER F DRUCKER –“We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is writing books about it.”

PETER F. DRUCKER –“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”

PETER O’TOOLE –“When did I realise I was God? I was praying and suddenly realised I was talking to myself.”

PETER RUSSELL –“ Inner evolution is not an aside to the overall process of evolution. Conscious inner evolution is the particular phase of evolution that we, in our corner of the universe, are currently passing through. From this perspective, the movement towards a social super organism and the mystical urge to know an inner unity are complementary aspects of the same single process, the thrust of evolution towards higher degrees of wholeness.”

PETER SELLERS –“There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me but I had it surgically removed.”

PETER STERRY –“0 peaceful and pleasant war Where the Supreme Love stands on both sides, where, as in a mysterious love-sport, or a Divine love-play, it fights with itself.”

PETER STERRY –“See a golden Chain, see the/Order of the precious Links, see how in a beautiful circle the beginning is fastened to the end.”

PETER STERRY –“While we were Innocent, our Nakedness was our Purity, as a beautiful Face unveiled, as a Jewel drawn forth from the Case.”

PETER USTINOV –“As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we’re all Generals. Only, some of us never grow out of it.”

PETER USTINOV –“At the age of four with paper hats and wooden sword we are all generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.”

PETER USTINOV –“Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.”

PETER USTINOV –“Corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy.”

PETER USTINOV –“Corruption is nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy.”

PETER USTINOV –“Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.”

PETER USTINOV –“We have a right to share your privacy in a public place.”

PETER WHATSON –“You don’t go from nothing to a great idea without doing a lot of work.”

PG WODEHOUSE –“Mr. Howard Saxby literary agent, was knitting a sock. He knitted a good deal, he would tell you if you asked him, to keep himself from smoking, adding that he also smoked a good deal to keep himself from knitting.”

PHAN WANNAMETHEE –“Khantidhamma – patience, forbearance, and forgiveness—was taught by the Buddha so that people would have patience: tolerance of the body and the mind, in order to achieve beneficence and right aims. One should be able to bear hardship and work with diligence.”

PHILIP CULLEY –“Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into the Eternal, so when rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder.”

PHILIP K DICK –“Reality is that which, -when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

PHILIP LARKIN- “It becomes still more difficult to find words at once true and kind, or not untrue and not unkind.”

PHILIP LARKIN –“Life has a practice of living you if you don’t live it.”

PHILIP ROTH –“The pompous son of bitch knows everything; its too bad he doesn’t know anything else.”

PHILIPPE QUINAULT- “It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary.”

PHILIPPIANS –“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

PHILIPPIANS –“Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

PHILIPPIANS –“Forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark.”

PHILIPPIANS –“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS –“The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death — that is not the great thing — but that… we are to, and may, live nobly now because we are to live forever… Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer; Death is strong, but Life is stronger; Stronger than the dark, the light; Stronger than the wrong, the right; Faith and Hope triumphant say Christ will rise on Easter Day”

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA –“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

PHYLLIS BOTTOME –“There are two ways of meeting difficulties. You alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.”

PHYLLIS DILLER –“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”

PHYLLIS DRYDEN –“Life, love, and laughter—what priceless gifts to give our children.”

PICASSO –“It takes one a long time to be young.”

PICCOLO MACHIAUELLI –“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

PICO IYER- “If every journey makes us wiser about the world, it also returns us to a sort of childhood.”

PIERRE DE COUBERTIN –“…the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

PIERRE LAVAL –“If peace is a chimera, I am happy to have caressed her.”

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN –“We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.”

PIERRE TEILHARD DECHARDIN –“Those who die in grace go no further from us than God—and God is very near.”

PIERRE TIELHARD De CHARDIN –“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness God for the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”

PINDAR –“A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.”

PIR VILAYAT KHAN –“The essential part of our being can only survive if the transient part dissolves. Death is a condition of survival. That which has been gained must be eternalised, and can only be eternalized by being transmuted, by passing through death they must return.”

PITTACUS- “Obey the law whoever you are that made the law.”

PLATO – “Good people do not law to tell them to act responsibility, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

PLATO –“As the proverb says, a good beginning is half the business, and ‘to have begun well’ is praised by all.”

PLATO –“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

PLATO –“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.”

PLATO –“Democracy passes into despotism.”

PLATO –“He was a wise man who invented God.”

PLATO –“I am better off than he (a man reputed for wisdom) is, for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know… The truth is, 0 men of Athens, that God only is wise.”

PLATO –“I have good hope that there is something after death.”

PLATO –“I must first know myself, as the Delphi an inscription says; to be curious about that which I am not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.”

PLATO –“Man is made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of him; wherefore also every man and woman should walk seriously, and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and be of another mind from what they are at present… And what is the right way of living? We ought to live sacrificing, and singing, and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods.”

PLATO –“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

PLATO –“Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”

PLATO –“No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.”

PLATO –“No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man… No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory”

PLATO –“The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time. Do not admonish them but always carry out your own principles in practice.”

PLATO –“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

PLATO –“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”

PLATO –“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

PLATO –“Who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him; although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp; they may be justly compared to the mutinous sailors…”

PLATO –“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

PLATO-“It is the power of appearance that leads us astray.”

PLAUTUS –“I believe there is nothing amongst mankind swifter than remour.”

PLAUTUS- “If you speak insult, you shall also hear them.”

PLINY THE ELDER –“It is far from easy to determine whether she (Nature) has proved to be a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.”

PLOTINUS –“Harmonies unheard create the harmonies we hear and wake the soul to the consciousness of beauty, showing it the one essence in another kind; for the measures of our music are not arbitrary, but are determined by the Principle whose labour is to dominate matter and bring pattern into being.”

PLUTARCH –“Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.”

PLUTARCH –“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”

PLUTARCH –“Our senses through ignorance of reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is.”

PLUTARCH- “Perseverance is more prevailing then violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield taken little by little.”

PLUTARCH- “Perseverance is more prevailing then violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield taken little by little.”

POLLY STRAND –“The road to health is paved with vegetables, fruits, beans, rice and grains.”

POPE –“We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.”

POPE- “Wit that can creep and pride that licks the dust.”

POPE GREGORY –“If the work of God could be comprehended by reason, it would be no longer wonderful.”

POPULAR VERSE –“Baba Nanak Shah Hindu ka Gum, Mussalman ka Pir.”

PORTUGUESE POET –“Look, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates. Fernanda Pessoa,”

PRABHATI –“When I am quiet, they say I have no knowledge; when I speak, I talk too much they say. When I sit, they say an unwelcome guest has come to stay; When I depart, I have deserted my family and run away, When I bow, they say it of fear that I pray Nothing can I do that in peace I may spend my time. Preserve Thy servant’s honour now and Hereafter, 0 Lord Sublime.”

PRAMOD KUMAR –“Vedanta declares that solving the fundamental problem of life equips us with immense inner strength to face and solve all the other problems. It does not promise a magical solution but awakens the mind with a new vision of life, which is beyond all conflict and want.”

PRANAB MUKHERJEE –“Sometimes the (Chinese) incursions take place. Every incursion (into Indian territory) is taken care of. It’s being addressed through the established mechanism.”

PRASNA UPANISHAD –“Both what has been seen and what has not been seen, both what has been heard and what has not been heard, what has been experienced and what has not been experienced, both the real (sat) and the unreal (asat) — he sees all. He sees it, Himself being all.”

PRASNA UPANISHAD –“He, knowing all, becomes the All.”

PRASNA UPANISHAD –“The Creator, out of desire to procreate, devoted himself to concentrated ardour (tapas). Whilst thus devoted to concentrated ardour, he produced a couple, Matter and Life (prana), saying to himself, “these two will produce all manner of creatures for me”.”

PRATIBHA PATIL –“I stand here as the Republic’s first servant… to live up to the high expectations of the people… and serve the best interests of the people.”

PRAYER –“Creation You remember, God, considering all the deeds of all creatures fashioned since earliest times.”

PRAYER FOR PROTECTION –“May I become at all times, Both now and for ever, A protector for the helpless, A guide for the lost ones, A ship for those to cross oceans, And a bridge to cross rivers, A sanctuary for those in danger, A lamp for those in darkness, A refuge for those who need shelter, A servant to all in need.”

PRAYER OF A TAMIL –“I do not know, 0 God, What is there in store for me. Only let me have your grace, To live with your blessing.”

PRAYER OF THOMAS JOHN CARLISLE –“Help us to harness the wind, the water, the sun, and all the ready and renewable sources of power. Teach us to conserve, preserve, use wisely the blessed treasures of our wealth-stored earth. Help us to share your bounty, riot waste it, or pervert it into peril for our children or our neighbours in other nations. You, who are life and energy and blessing, teach us to revere and respect your tender world.”

PREMCHAND SAHAJWALA –“So many candles together bring so many people together. That’s Diwali.”

PRIMO LEVI –“The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one’s country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.”

PRIMO LEVI –“To be considered stupid is more painful than being called gluttonous, lazy, and cowardly: every weakness has found its defenders, but stupidity hasn’t.”

PRINCE CHARLES –“Moves should be taken to ensure there was something left to hand on to future generations.”

PRINCE CHARLES –“Something as curious as the monarchy won’t survive unless you take account of people’s attitudes. After all, if people don’t want it, they won’t have it.”

PRINCE EJE OYEWOLE –“He has been a very good Pope, very accommodating and the most travelled, and definitely ordained from above. I would say he cared more about the Third World and the world at large.”

PRINCE PHILIP WINDSOR –“If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”

PRINCE WILLIAM AND HARRY –“This event is about all that our mother loved in life… Her music, her dancing, her charities and her family and friends…. We wish to celebrate her life and not dwell on her death… After 10 years there’s been a rumbling of people bringing up the bad and over time people seem to forget or have forgotten all the amazing things she did.”

PRIYANKA TEREDESAI –“What is necessary in life is to fix yourself to the axis of your own life, which is your true nature. If you manage to remain undeviated from your true nature or principles, no positive or negative peak can move you from there.”

PROMISE KEEPERS –“A tremendous display of hunger for God exists in men today..; I believe God is showing us now that he wants us to be global. Bill McCartney, Founder,”

PROPHET ZARATHUSTRA –“Do not be blind to the marvels of Nature. One draught of Nature’s elixir is better than a dozen doses of any other drink. Incomparable is the joy that Man finds in this world of a thousand wonders when he lives in communion with Nature. From Nature to God is the next logical step. Nature is saturated with the Divine Life of Ahura Mazda.”

PROVERB –“, Boast not yourself of tomorrow; for you know not what a day may bring forth.”

PROVERB –“A lean agreement is better than a fat judgment.”

PROVERB –“A soft answer turns away anger, but a sharp word makes tempers hot.”

PROVERB –“A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength.”

PROVERB “As the thinketh in his heart, so he is.”

PROVERB –“Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; … but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.”

PROVERB –“Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.”

PROVERB –“Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”

PROVERB –“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”

PROVERB –“He that is of a merry heart: hath a continual feast.”

PROVERB –“He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool— avoid him! He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep — waken him! He who knows not and knows that he knows not wants a beating — beat him! But he who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man—know him.”

PROVERB –“It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age.”

PROVERB –“Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.”

PROVERB –“The first of April, some do say,/ Is set apart for All Fools’ Day/ But why the people call it so,/ Nor I, nor they themselves do know./ But on this day are people sent/ On purpose for pure merriment.”

PROVERB –“The more you know, the less you understand.”

PROVERB –“They are all straight to him who understands and right to those who find knowledge. Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold; for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.”

PROVERB –“We must have reasons for speech but we need none for silence.”

PROVERB, NATIVE AMERICAN –“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.”

PROVERBS –“Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.”

PROVERBS –“There are friends who pretend to be friends, and there are friends who stick closer than a brother.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS –“A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS –“He is safe from danger who is on guard even when safe.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS –“It is a good thing to learn caution from the misfortunes of others.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS- “The highest power may be lost by misrule.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS –“To do two things at once is to do neither.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS –“While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.”

PUBLILIUS SYRUS- “You may often make excuses for another, never for yourself.”

PUJYAPADA –“How can activity be good or wicked? That which is performed with good intention is good; and that which is performed with evil intention is wicked…That which purifies the soul or by which the soul is purified, is merit—producing a happy feeling. That which keeps the soul I away from good is demerit — producing I an unhappy feeling.”

PUNJABI SAYING –“Baba Nanak, the great man of God. The guru of the Hindus and the pir of the Mussalmans,”

PURANANOORU –“All towns are one, all men our kin. Life’s good comes not from others’ gift, nor ill Man’s pain and pain relief are from within. Death’s no new thing; nor do we get Overwhelmed When Joyous life seems like a luscious draught. When grieved, we patiently suffer; for, we deem This much-praised life of ours a fragile raft Borne down the waters of some mountain stream… We marvel not at greatness of the great; Still less despise we , men of low estate.”

PURANDARADASA –“Make me your dasa, 0 Swami, One who is known by a thousand names Help me leave behind my sins Protect me with the cloak of your kindness Make me your dasa, O Lord…”

PUSHKAR MAHATTA –“This world does not run by logic or reason A mystic power drives the earth and the suns, Every breeze on a flower, Every smile on a child, Every breath we take, Are driven by the hands of God, He is the infinite Intelligence, the infinite consciousness, The infinite force commanding his world.”

PUSHKAR MAHATTA –“This world is a cage And we are birds who must fly, Break open, cry Feel the sky, Feel your heart, Feel your soul, Feel the prayer, This world is yours, Only learn how to fly.”

PYTHAGORAS –“He who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

PYTHAGORAS –“If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity adversity; if life, death.”

PYTHAGORAS –“Strength of mind rests in sobriety; for this keeps your reason unclouded by passion.”

PYTHAGORAS –“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”

QHERIE CARTER-SCOTT –“We do not all walk around with our hearts wide open all the time, however; doing so would leave us overwhelmed and in emotional danger. If I kept my heart open and exposed while watching the news every night, I would most likely never recover from the rush of helpless and hopeless feelings created by all the tragic stories. Sometimes it is necessary to keep your emotional barriers up as a way to protect yourself. The key to learning the lesson of compassion is realising that you are in control of the erection or destruction of those barriers that create distance between you and others.”

QPRAH WINFREY –“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.”

QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS- “The deepest river flow with the smallest noise.”

QUIXOTE –“I am plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve my self.”

QUR’AN –“Hold fast, all together, to God’s rope, and be not divided among yourselves. Let there arise out of you one community, inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: those will be prosperous.”

R BROOKS –“A prayer, in its simplest definition, is merely a wish turned heavenward.”

R CHOUDURY -“If we do not crave for rewards we have no reason for frustration. This does not mean that we lose our motivation to work. When we talk of rewards and results W we interpret these according to our personal perspective, conditioned by ideas of profit and loss, power and prestige. To get a clearer, more objective perspective we have to step aside from our personal involvement to an impersonal level of detachment. Detachment is not indifference or apathy it means putting action (karma) into a broader perspective, away from petty gains. Carry out karma for its own sake with single-pointed effort (yoga) and you; will be free to enjoy total job satisfaction.”

R D LAING –“Creative people who can’t help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.”

R R SAMUEL BECKETT –“Every word is like m unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”

R REYNOLDS –“Few of us realise how short the career of what we know as “science” has been. Three hundred and fifty years ago hardly anyone believed in the Copernican planetary theory Optical combinations were not discovered. The circulation of blood, the weight of air, the conduction of heat, the laws of motion were unknown; the common pump was inexplicable; there were no clocks, no thermometers; no general gravitation; the world was five thousand years old; spirits moved the planets; alchemy, magic, astrology imposed on everyone’s belief.”

R W EMERSON – “Peace has its victories, but it lakes a brave man to win them.”

R W EMERSON – “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

R W EMERSON -“We are coaxed, flattered and duped from morn to eve, from birth to death; and where is the old eye that ever saw through the deception? The Hindoos represent Maia, the illusory energy of Vishnu, as one of his principal attributes. As if in this gale of warring elements which life is, it was necessary to bind souls to human life as mariners in a tempest lash themselves to the mast and bulwarks of a ship, and Nature employed certain illusions as her ties and straps… Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

R W EMERSON – “When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.”

R W EMERSON –“A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.”

R W EMERSON –“Always do what you are afraid to do.”

R W EMERSON –“An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.”

R W EMERSON –“Bad times have a scientific value. There are occasions, a good learner would not miss.”

R W EMERSON –“Be careful what you set your heart on, for it will surely be yours.”

R W EMERSON –“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”

R W EMERSON –“Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?”

R W EMERSON –“Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”

R W EMERSON –“Concentration is the Secret of strength.”

R W EMERSON –“Concentration is the secret of strength.”

R W EMERSON –“Concentration is the secret of strengths in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human affaire.”

R W EMERSON –“Difference of opinion is the one crime which kings never forgive.”

R W EMERSON –“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

R W EMERSON –“Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself.”

R W EMERSON –“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

R W EMERSON –“Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”

R W EMERSON –“Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world, is the triumph of some enthusiasm.”

R W EMERSON –“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”

R W EMERSON –“every word is a poem waiting to be written.”

R W EMERSON –“Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.”

R W EMERSON –“Father is a convenient name and image to the affections; but drop all images if you wish to come at the elements of your thought and S use as mathematical words as you can.”

R W EMERSON –“Fear always springs from ignorance.”

R W EMERSON –“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”

R W EMERSON –“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

R W EMERSON –“For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”

R W EMERSON –“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”

R W EMERSON –“For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee!”

R W EMERSON –“Good offers to every mind its choice between truth and response.”

R W EMERSON –“Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them.”

R W EMERSON –“Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”

R W EMERSON –“He who has a husband friend has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.”

R W EMERSON –“He who has a husband, friend has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.”

R W EMERSON –“Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.”

R W EMERSON –“If a man owns land, the land owns him.”

R W EMERSON –“Is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates and Jesus, and Luther and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took fresh.”

R W EMERSON –“It is dainty to be sick if you have leisure and convenience for it.”

R W EMERSON –“It was the first of book; it was as if an empire spake to us, nothing small or unworthy but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.”

R W EMERSON –“Life is a festival only to the wise.”

R W EMERSON –“Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.”

R W EMERSON –“Life is a train of moods like a string of Stand as we pass through them they prove to be many coloured lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”

R W EMERSON –“Men are what their mother made them.”

R W EMERSON –“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

R W EMERSON –“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

R W EMERSON –“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

R W EMERSON –“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

R W EMERSON –“Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”

R W EMERSON –“Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.”

R W EMERSON –“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

R W EMERSON –“Our greatest glory is in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”

R W EMERSON –“Our high respect for a well read man is perished enough of literature.”

R W EMERSON –“Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.”

R W EMERSON –“Our strength grows out of our weakness.”

R W EMERSON –“Peace cannot be achieved through violence; it can only be attained through understanding.”

R W EMERSON –“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”

R W EMERSON –“That which we persist in doing becomes easier — not that the nature of the task has changed, but I our ability to do has increased.”

R W EMERSON –“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”

R W EMERSON –“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

R W EMERSON –“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”

R W EMERSON –“The next thing to saying a good thing yourself is to quote one.”

R W EMERSON –“The only way to be a friend is to be a friend.”

R W EMERSON –“The search after the great men is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood.”

R W EMERSON –“The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause.”

R W EMERSON –“The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.”

R W EMERSON –“The true test of civilisation is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops —no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”

R W EMERSON –“The true test of civilisation is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops — no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”

R W EMERSON –“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.”

R W EMERSON –“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.”

R W EMERSON –“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.”

R W EMERSON –“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; This is to have succeeded.”

R W EMERSON –“Want is a growing gain whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.”

R W EMERSON –“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”

R W EMERSON -“We are coaxed, flattered and duped from morn to eve, from birth to death; and where is the old eye that ever saw through the deception? The Hindoos represent Maia, the illusory energy of Vishnu, as one of his principal attributes. As if in this gale of warring elements which life is, it was necessary to bind souls to human life as mariners in a tempest lash themselves to the mast and bulwarks of a ship, and Nature employed certain illusions as her ties and straps… Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

R W EMERSON –“We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.”

R W EMERSON –“We must not let the grass grow on the path of friendship.”

R W EMERSON –“We must set up a strong present tense against all rumors of warth, past and to come.”

R W EMERSON –“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

R W EMERSON –“When Nature has worked to be done; she creates a genius to do it.”

R W EMERSON -“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

R W EMERSON –“You shall have joy or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.”

R W EMERSON, -“If the red slayer thinks he slays/ Or if the slain thinks he is slain/ They know not well the subtle ways/ I keep, and pass, and turn again/Far or forgot to me is near/ Shadow and sunlight are the same/The vanished gods to me appear/ And one to me are shame and fame/ They reckon ill who leave me out/ When me they fly, I am the wings/I am the doubter and the doubt/ And I the hymn the Brahmin sings/ The strong gods pine for my abode/ And pine in vain the sacred Seven/But thou, meek lover of the good/Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.”

R W GRISWOID –“If you can’t do as you wish, do as you can.”

R. S. BALASEKAR –“When man accepts finally that he cannot make sense out of life on the basis of anything fixed, then and only then can life make sense.”

R. S. BALASEKAR –“Your doubts will never be totally destroyed until perception has gone beyond mere phenomenality, and such perception is not a matter of will but of Grace.”

R.G. INGERSOLL- “Take from the church the miraculous the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.”

R.L.STEVENSON- “Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage.”

R.L.STEVENSON- “There is no duty we so much under-rate as the duty of being happy.”

R.M.INGERSOLL- “The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.”

R.W. CLARK –“No external advantages can supply self-reliance. The force of one’s being … must come from within.”

R.W.EMERSON- “All life is an experiments you make the better.”

RABBI BORUCH LEFF –“Silence allows us to remove all of the external and physical distractions in our lives and lets us focus upon the essence of our being, the soul.”

RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER –“When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to nourish your soul.”

RABELAIS- “The right of war, let him take who take can.”

RABIA AL BASRI –“0 Allah! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE – “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE – “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE – “There are two classes of things in the world, our is the true, the other is the more than true.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE – “We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE – “Why did I present myself in this fashion? This is self mockery.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“ Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realisation.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –““Awake my mind, gently awake in this holy land of pilgrimage on the shore of this vast sea of humanity , that is India. Here I stand with arms outstretched to hail man — divine in his own image — and sing to his glory in notes glad and free. No one knows whence and at whose call came pouring endless inundations of men rushing madly along—to lose themselves in the sea; Aryans and non-Aryans, Dravidians and Chinese, Scythians, Huns, Pathans and Moghuls — all are mixed, merged and lost in one body. Now the door has opened to the West and gifts in hand they beckon and they come —they will give and take, meet and bring together, none shall be turned away from the shore of this vast sea of humanity that is India.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Art should not reproduce what we see. It should make us see. Chinese proverb what is Art? It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in it’s hand with a grip that kills it.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Blessed is he whose fame does not outshine his truth.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Colour me now, before You leave me. Colour me with Your song. Colour me in Your secret melody Colour me in the light of Your laughter. Colour me with the kindness of Your tears. May Your colours, colour my very soul.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the fast as in the laying of it down.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Diverse courses of worship/ from varied springs of fulfillment, Have mingled in your meditation. / The manifold revelation of the joy of the Infinite, Has given form to a shrine of unity in your life. / Where from far and near arrive salutations, / to which I join mine own.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“God seeks comrades and claims love: The Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“I shall be called by a new name, Embraced by a fresh pair of arms.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty I acted and behold, duty was joy.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“If anger be the basis of our political activities, the excitement tends to become an end of itself, at the expanse of the object to be achieved.’

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“If they heed not thy call, Walk alone, walk alone.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“In the Upanishads we find the note of certainty about the spiritual meaning of existence. In the very paradoxical nature of the assertion that we can never know Brahma, but can realise Him, there lies the strength of conviction that comes from personal experience. They aver that through our joy we know the reality that is infinite, for the test by which reality is apprehended is joy Therefore, in the Upanishads Satyam and Anandam are one.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“India chose her places of pilgrimages on the top of hills and mountains, by the side of the holy rivers, in the heart of forests and by the shores of the ocean, which along with the sky, is our nearest visible symbol of the vast, the boundless, the T.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky. It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet’s heart.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Just as we do not need help in order to breathe, nor do we hold meetings at the Town Hall for our blood circulation, similarly, in the past, the samaj looked after its own needs… It did not have .to depend on the state.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement. The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky the holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak. But speech breaks not into song, and I carry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them./ Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Let the promises and hopes, the deeds and words of my country be true, my Lord.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Mini was somehow posse for a blind belief that if one searched the Kabuli’s sack; one would find a couple of human-lings like her concealed in it.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the mist of our daily habits.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and i cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Nirvana is not the blowing out of the ‘ candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Our solitary tear would hang on the cheek of time in the form of this white and gleaming Taj Mahal.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, moulding them into money.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“The higher nature in man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This is man’s dharma, man’s religion, and man’s self is the vessel.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shouts in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“The setting sun said: “Who win take up my work?” The world heard this and yet remained responseless like a picture. There was an earthen lamp. It said: I “Lord! I will exert myself to my utmost”.

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“We came nearest to the great when we are great in humanity.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“We do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope.”

RABINDRA NATH TAGORE –“What you are you do not see, What you seeis your shadow.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE – “Death is not extinguishing the light, it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“Aren’t you in need of a little improvement yourself?… Stop being so old.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the door open.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift, but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts and say that children must learn through the same process that they learned by We insist upon forced mental feeding and our lessons become a form of torture. This is one of man’s most cruel and wasteful mistakes.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The higher nature in man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This is man’s dharma and religion, and man’s self is the vessel which is to carry this sacrifice to the altar.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead him deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural phenomena… When a man… meets the eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then he discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he is born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmony with the All is established.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The Taj Mahal is like an eternal teardrop on the cheek of time.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“This is my prayer to thee, my Lord; Give me strength rightly to bear my joys and sorrows; Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service; Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“Trees are meant to be the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“What is Art? It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“When we watch a child trying to walk, we see its countless failures; its successes are but few. If we had to limit our observation within a narrow space of time, the sight would be cruel.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“You are invited to the festival of this world and. your life is blessed.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE –“You yourself are your own obstacle.”

RACHEL CARSON –“If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

RACHEL CARSON –“In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.”

RACHEL CARSON –“Natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or society. Whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man’s spiritual growth.”

RACHEL CARSON –“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

RACHEL CARSON –“We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature.”

RACHEL CARSON –“We stand now where two roads diverge… The road we have long been travelling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road, the one less travelled by, offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN –“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you — all of the expectations, all of the beliefs — and becoming who you are.”

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN –“Health is not an end: it is a means. Health enables us to serve our purpose in life, but it is not the purpose of life. Perhaps reconnecting to the purpose that we each serve may be the most powerful way to heal.”

RACHEL NAOMI REMEN –“I have come to suspect that healing is more closely related to mystery than mastery, more a function of the soul than the mind.”

RAE NOEL –“Whenever the human adventure reaches great and complete expression, we can be sure it is because someone has dared to be his unaverage self.”

RAFAAEL ORTIZ –“Love is not finding someone to live with; it’s finding someone you can’t live without.”

RAFAELBRAS –“You’ll never be able to control nature. The best way is to understand how nature works and make it work in our favour.”

RAHIM –“It is in your power to do karma, but we do not have any control over its success.”

RAHMAN BABA –“Live not with thy head showing in the clouds, Thou art by birth the offspring of this earth, The stream that passed the sluice cannot again flow back, Nor can again return the misspent time that sped, Consider well the deeds of the good and bad, Whether in this thy profit lieth or in that.”

RAHUL GANDHI –“I have heard my father telling my mother that he would have stood in front of the masjid to protect it.”

RAIMUNDO PANIKKAR –“The entire purport of the Vedas is liberation or freedom. Freedom may be interpreted in many ways. It is Brahmn, it is atman, it is nirvana. Or it can be said to consist in being, in happiness, in release, from all bondage. More numerous still are the ways that are supposed to lead to it. Right action, true knowledge and genuine love are the classical ways.”

RAINER MARIA RILKE –“It s possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Yes, t is possible.”

RAJA YOGI B K JAGDISH CHANDER –“There is diminishing of happiness when any thought of envy or hatred creeps in. But when the wise man feels the oncoming of such a feeling, he should remember that if portends his fall. Greatness consists in philanthropy, large-heartedness, magnanimity and goodwill towards all.”

RAJA YOGI RAJA YOGI B K JAGDISH CHANDER –“Though man has language as a potent means of expression, and he has the intellect also to argue his case and to convince others, yet man ultimately uses the ways of the animals who… do not have language and reason as their means to seek justice… So, the lesson I learn from history, is that man does not learn lesson from history.”

RAJAN -“In this vastness there is place for space and much more. In this eternity there is place for time and the chimes of its measure. In the depth of the deep there is space for the light to enter but not the door to escape. In the roaming mind, there is space for the quietude by tapas of fortitude. In the emerald blue silence there is space for awareful existence of the fullness of ananda. In awareness there is the melody of the music of the spheres pulsating with cosmic life — heard only in silence. In consciousness, you and I are nowhere or everywhere vibrant in the soft whisper of the fathomless silence. If only we listen.”

 

Even its post-Hispanic name, San Pedro, embodies these qualities because Saint Peter is the holder of the keys to Heaven and the name of the cactus therefore speaks of its ability to ‘open the gates’ into another world where those who drink it can heal, discover their divinity, and find their purpose on Earth.

 

It is also known as huachuma and this is how it is most often referred to by the shamans who use it, who call themselves huachumeros (male) or huachumeras (female). Its use as a sacrament and in healing rituals is as old as history itself. The earliest archaeological evidence so far discovered is a stone carving of a huachumero found at the Jaguar Temple of Chavín de Huantar in northern Peru, which is almost 3,500 years old. Textiles from the same region and period of history depict the cactus with jaguars and hummingbirds, two of its guardian spirits, and with stylised spirals representing the visionary experience. 

 

Another image, of an owl-faced woman holding a cactus, comes from a ceramic pot from the Chimú culture, dating to 1200 AD. According to native beliefs, the owl is a tutelary spirit and guardian of herbalists and shamans, so the woman depicted is most likely a curandera (healer) and huachumera.

 

Cactus ceremonies are held today for the same reasons as ever: to cure illnesses of a spiritual, emotional, mental, or physical nature; to know the future through the prophetic and divinatory qualities of the plant; to overcome sorcery or saladera (an inexplicable run of ‘bad luck’); to ensure success in one’s ventures; to rekindle love and enthusiasm for life; and to experience the world as divine.

 

The ethnobotanist, Richard Evans Schultes, wrote of San Pedro in the book Plants of the Gods that it is “always in tune with the powers of animals and beings that have supernatural powers… Participants [in ceremonies] are ‘set free from matter’ and engage in flight through cosmic regions… transported across time and distance in a rapid and safe fashion”. He quotes one Andean shaman who describes some of the effects of the plant: “First, a dreamy state… then great visions, a clearing of all the faculties… and then detachment, a type of visual force inclusive of the sixth sense, the telepathic state of transmitting oneself across time and matter, like a removal of thoughts to a distant dimension”.

 

Lesley Myburgh (known in the Andes as La Gringa: “the outsider woman”) is another of these shamans. She has led ceremonies with San Pedro for almost 20 years.

 

“It is a master teacher”, she says. “It helps us to heal, to grow, to learn and awaken, and assists us in reaching higher states of consciousness. I have been very blessed to have experienced many miracles: people being cured of all sorts of illnesses just by drinking this sacred plant. We use it to reconnect to the Earth and to realize that there is no separation between you, me, the Earth, and the Sky. We are all One. It’s one thing to read that, but to actually experience this oneness is the most beautiful gift we can receive.

 

“San Pedro teaches us to live in balance and harmony; it teaches us compassion and understanding; and it shows us how to love, respect, and honour all things. It shows us too that we are children of light – precious and special – and to see that light within us.

 

“Each person’s experience will be unique, as we are all unique, and drinking San Pedro is therefore a personal journey of discovery, of the self and the universe. There is one thing in common though: The day that you meet San Pedro is one you will never forget – a day filled with light and love, which can change your life forever… and always for the better”.

 

In 2008, during one of my visits to Peru to work with San Pedro, I interviewed La Gringa about her life and experiences with huachuma, the cactus of vision. Her answers show not only the healing potential of this plant but cast light on the traditions which surround it and their evolution in the modern world. For those who work as shamanic healers, what La Gringa has learned from huachuma is also of interest because it suggests where illness may come from and how, therefore, it may be cured, even by those who do not work with San Pedro themselves.

 

How did you come to be involved in shamanic practice?

I first drank San Pedro in the 1990s and that experience overturned everything I thought I knew about reality. During my visions, out in the mountains, I saw a stairway of light on a nearby hill and I called my shaman over to explain it.

 

“There is nothing to explain”, he shrugged. “It is a stairway of light”.

 

“You mean you see it too?” I asked.

 

“Of course”, he said. “Take a photograph if you don’t believe it is there”. I thought he was crazy. How could I photograph a vision: something that was just in my head? But I didn’t want to be disrespectful so I took the picture anyway.

 

Later I got it developed, and there it was: a stairway of light, just as I’d seen it, although I had never seen it there in the mountains before and you will probably not see it now. I called my shaman and he came over to look at the picture, although he didn’t seem that surprised by it, like I was.

 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” he said. “These things are not just in your mind. They exist. San Pedro opens your eyes to what is already there!”

 

San Pedro had shown me reality as it actually was, but it had also changed what I thought of as real. I now understood the vast power we humans have, and that we can manifest anything we choose; we just have to believe we can. San Pedro teaches us how to believe.

 

It teaches us that we are part of everything, that we are brothers and sisters, and that nature in its true form is beautiful. It wakes us up and shows us how to be conscious of the Earth. Before San Pedro I used to walk through the world and not notice it. Now I notice everything and I have a new respect for it.

 

That wasn’t the only ‘miracle’ I saw that day though. My shaman was a gentle man and I felt peaceful and protected as I lay in the sun. So, when I opened my eyes and saw two children looking down at me, they were so beautiful I thought they were angels. I was in awe of them and it took me some moments to realise they were real and were crying and asking for help.

 

They said their father was sick at home and they had no mother so they didn’t know what to do. They were frightened that he was dying.

 

I went to their house with my shaman and when I saw the man I thought he was dying too. But the shaman walked calmly over to him and started to blow on the top of his head through some coca leaves he had with him. He then used a feather, running it over the sick man’s head and body; then he said a prayer.

 

As soon as that was done the man sat bolt upright and started to vomit like he’d never stop. Immediately he looked better. The shaman said he’d be fine after that and when we left the house he was already out of bed and taking care of his children.

 

That was my first experience of a shamanic healing, and all the shaman had used was a feather and some leaves and, of course, the knowledge given him by San Pedro. After that I knew that I wanted to work more with this plant.

 

You trained with other shamans too. Tell us about your present teacher.

His name is Ruben. I met him ten years ago in a church in the Sacred Valley, quite by chance. I learned so much from him right from the start. He is a famous anthropologist who for many years ran the Machu Picchu sacred site, but he is also a shaman so he knows why and how things work from both a historical and a spiritual perspective.

 

His training was very hard. He was not like my first shamanic teachers, who were much gentler. He made me drink San Pedro twice a week for several years. Sometimes I would beg him not to have to drink it! I’d sob and say I was too sick to drink, because I just couldn’t face another session. But he would say, “Good! You’re sick! That – and the fact that you can’t face the healing you need – is exactly why you need to drink it! Get your coat and let’s go!”

 

At the time it was agony, but now I know he was right and drinking all that San Pedro was the best thing that happened to me. I saw all the bad things in my life in a new light and was able to let them go. I cleared whole lifetimes in those years, and I learned so much about San Pedro and healing too.

 

I still work with Ruben and I hope I always will. But he has softened a little now and no longer demands that I drink every week.

 

He is an ‘old school’ shaman, though, isn’t he, with lots of ritual as part of his ceremonies – the singado and contrachisa, etc. Did he teach you that too?

Oh yes. But I never felt comfortable with those rituals and Ruben agreed that I should work differently, especially as I was now healing many Westerners who didn’t really understand the rituals anyway. San Pedro guided me and said I should keep things simple. So now I say a prayer to open the ceremony and then as much as possible allow San Pedro to do its work without me getting in its way.

 

I do sometimes use tobacco in ceremonies though, but not the singado [tobacco leaf macerated in honey and alcohol which many shamans ask participants to snort into their nostrils to clear negative energies]; just tobacco smoke. It is good to blow the smoke over people if they are going through a tough time or have stuck energy somewhere within them. The smoke frees it up.

 

I also use agua florida [a plant-based perfume with healing properties] to balance people’s energies. Mostly I ask them to sniff it from the bottle or from their hands and it helps to ground them, but sometimes I spray it over them.

 

And of course I also use a mesa [a cloth altar laid out in a specific ritual way], although mine is much simpler than many others. In Peru, shamans work with many different layouts of mesa, but when you have your own you learn to use it in a way that suits you. It is a living thing so you develop a relationship with it. San Pedro teaches you how to use it too.

 

The objects at the centre of my mesa are shells and stones which have meaning and power for me. I arrange them in a straight line, like a spinal column with the stones as the vertebrae. This follows the notion in Peru that spiritual energy is held in the small of the back and as we advance on our paths and the plants guide us it begins to rise up the spine to the head, where it resides when we become fully conscious.

 

In the Andes we have three sacred animals: the serpent, puma, and condor, and you will sometimes see statues of all three, one on top of the other. The serpent represents the divine energy we hold in our backs; the puma is the body; and the condor is the awakened self: the mind that soars above the world. So these statues are also a representation of energy flowing through us and bringing us into new consciousness. The mesa I use is like that.

 

Some shamans use chonta [wooden staffs sometimes used to beat participants to move their spiritual energies around] and swords on their mesas as well; as protections and to change the energies of patients and heal them. I don’t, because I have always known that San Pedro protects me and my participants anyway, and that there is no greater protection or more powerful healer than the plant! So why would I need to hit participants with sticks – and interrupt their healings by doing so?

 

Ruben is a historian and regards my approach as form of evolution which gives people the healing they need through the correct ceremonies for our times. But it is also a de-evolution because so many rituals and objects have been artificially added to San Pedro mesas and ceremonies through the influence of the Spanish Catholics.

 

Before the Spanish came to Peru, Andeans believed in Inti, the god of the sun, and Pachamama, the Earth, so their rituals were simpler and needed fewer symbols, appeasements to God, or ways to keep evil at bay. The idea of guilt and a God who needed appeasing arrived with the Catholics and it was they who made our ancestors change their rituals or be killed. Before this, they were more natural and flowing.

 

So what I do may be an evolution, as Ruben calls it, but it is also a return to what was always done. It is as if we have evolved backwards rather than forwards in time!

 

Is your decision to hold ceremonies in the day instead of at night part of this ‘backwards evolution’ too?

Ruben holds his ceremonies at night and that is how he taught me, but as I grew in my understanding of San Pedro, night ceremonies – for practical as well as spiritual reasons – became another thing that did not really work for me.

 

Perhaps it is to do with the Spanish again and their Catholic notions of guilt and “suffering for our sins” that most San Pedro ceremonies are held at night! I always found it so cold and uncomfortable that I could never really relax enough to receive the healing of San Pedro. I mentioned this to Ruben and he understood exactly what I meant, so he began to hold ceremonies for me during the day. Then I really noticed the difference. In daylight is where all my breakthroughs have come.

 

For one thing, with San Pedro, you can look around you and see the beauty of the world and notice how connected you are to everything: that you are beautiful and part of a beautiful creation. You can’t do that in darkness.

 

What people need to understand is that San Pedro is not a hallucinogenic like ayahuasca, so they will never see images and pictures, and there is no point, therefore, in lying in the dark waiting for something to happen. San Pedro’s teaching is visionary instead, in the revelations it brings about the natural – not the spirit – world, and in daylight you can see that more clearly. That is why we hold our ceremonies in sunlight: because San Pedro wants it that way and that is how it was first done.

 

How do you prepare your San Pedro?

Most shamans peel and cut the cactus then boil it for between four and eight hours. They may also add alcohol and sometimes other plants or ingredients. I cook mine for twenty hours, however, so it is much stronger and also means that people are less likely to vomit when they drink it. Other San Pedro brews feel weak to me now and rarely give the same visions.

 

Some shamans say you don’t really need visions for a healing to take place with San Pedro. They have a point, but I still think they are important, because as well as the healing people need to know they have been healed. When the visions come they can feel it, then they understand it is real and pay attention to what they are shown… about how to protect themselves and stay well, or their place in the world and the beauty of their lives. Without the visions they can’t know this.

  

There are some other things to consider when preparing San Pedro. I only work with cactuses that have seven or nine spines because they produce the most gentle and beautiful brews. Those with six or eight spines are not so strong, while elevens and thirteens can be very intense but also sometimes dark. I never use either with patients.

 

Those with four spines are only ever used for exorcisms, and the patient and healer must both drink. You don’t ever want to try a San Pedro like this though. It is horrible and the visions take you straight to Hell.

 

While the cactus is cooking we often sing songs to it or offer our prayers that it will produce good healings. Every time we stir it we offer a new prayer, so maybe twenty prayers go into each bottle.

 

Sometimes the spirit of San Pedro shows up while we are cooking it too, in patterns on the surface of the water which tell us who will be coming to drink it and why. I have seen patterns in the form of ovaries, for example, complete in every detail; or hearts enclosed by circles. Then the next day a woman has arrived for help with a fertility problem and brought with her a man whose heart was closed to her dreams. In this way San Pedro can show us what people need before they even arrive.

 

What healings have you seen from San Pedro ceremonies?

One that meant a lot to me was for a woman who had always said she would never drink San Pedro, so her story shows in a way that you don’t even need to believe in the plant for it to heal you – although it is better if you do.

 

This woman’s husband had died a few years ago. He was a strong man but his disease meant he had wasted away to nothing. It took him a year to die while the woman nursed him. Then, just three months after that, her son was killed; murdered in South Africa, stoned to death and left to die. He was just 26.

 

The woman was shattered. She became like the walking dead. Soon afterwards she had a stroke which paralysed her arm and, from the shock of all she had been through, she got diabetes as well.

 

Finally, despite all her reservations before, she asked me if she could drink San Pedro. I gave her the tiniest amount but it was just perfect for her, as San Pedro always is, and then she lay in my arms and cried her heart out for five hours.

 

That is a good expression for what happened actually, because I had drunk San Pedro too and through its eyes I saw strands of energy coming from her heart and circling her chest and arm like a tourniquet. I began pulling them out of her and throwing them away.

 

The next morning was like a miracle. Her arm, which had been totally paralysed, had regained all of its movement. When she got home she saw a specialist who tested her diabetes too and that had gone as well. Now she has no problems at all.

 

I asked her about her San Pedro experience later and she said she had felt a lot of pain in her heart, which is where I had also seen the energy of grief that was binding her. So as well as curing her physical problems, San Pedro showed her why she had them: because of the emotional distress she had been unable to let go of before.

 

What I have learned from San Pedro is that illness is never a “thing” that is in us; it is not “diabetes” or “a stroke”. It is a belief that we carry: that we must mourn for the ones we have lost, for example, or for ourselves, through a pain or disability that makes our suffering visible and “real”. So illness is a thoughtform; a negative pattern we hold on to and reproduce. San Pedro not only heals us but shows us this thoughtform. Then, the next time it arises, we know it and can make a conscious choice to think and act differently.

 

The woman you described sounds like she had a “psychosomatic” problem, a term that has lost much of its power in the West today. Can you elaborate?

Every illness we have arises from our minds and souls. Another woman came to me after she was diagnosed with cancer and had been receiving chemotherapy. She looked so ill that I took her in and she spent the next seven days with me, vomiting constantly. At the end of it she realised that her doctors were not helping her and decided to work with the plants instead.

 

She phoned her doctor to cancel her appointments and he was extremely angry. He told her she couldn’t do that; that she was stupid and would die as a result of her decision – which, incidentally, is a curse.

 

Anyway, she stuck to her decision and now, through San Pedro, she is healed. The plant again showed her why she had cancer – which no Western medicine can do – and told her she had a choice: in blunt terms that she could die or change her mind and live the life she wanted. I know that sounds too easy but it really is as simple as that. She decided not to have cancer anymore because her realised that life was just too precious once she had seen it through San Pedro’s eyes.

 

I have also worked with women who have been sexually abused as young girls and are carrying the energy of that in their bodies, and usually a sense of guilt or shame as well, as if it was somehow their fault. This energy is also a thoughtform and it is making them ill and, sometimes, suicidal.

 

They need to drink San Pedro three times. The first is terrible, even for me to watch. They just lie in a foetal position and scream. The second time they are more relaxed but there is still a lot of crying. I usually drink San Pedro with them so I can connect to what they are going through and the plant can teach me what they need to heal.

 

The third time they drink everything changes and it is an experience of total joy. Afterwards they are so different that not even their friends recognise them! San Pedro shows them another way, a new belief about themselves, and helps them reconnect with love and the beauty of life which has been lacking for so long in their own.

 

That sounds like soul retrieval, but instead of the shaman performing it, the intelligence of the plant does it for them.

That’s right. It is soul retrieval or, rather, life retrieval. We hold our negative beliefs about ourselves as tensions in our bodies. If we don’t eventually release them, they become hardened and manifest as physical or emotional problems. At the same time, our good energies are blocked so that the fullness of our souls is not expressed and parts of us stay buried. San Pedro removes our negative beliefs so the positive ones shine through. So it is a form of soul retrieval; one where we return ourselves from ourselves.

 

Can you say more about how negative beliefs affect us?

In the Andes, shamans talk about “good” and “bad ideas” and these are, in a way, what I mean by thoughtforms. When someone says, for example, that you have “good ideas”, they don’t mean you are a creative genius! They mean you have good or spiritual thoughts or that you are at one with the truth and goodness of the world.

 

Sometimes they talk about a “good” or “bad wind” as well. These “winds” are an accumulation of thoughts or energies which are attracted to each other and share a common affinity. The good energies of many people having positive and uplifting thoughts can create a good wind but, by the same token, negative thoughts can band together to create a bad wind. In both cases, they are a sentient force which circulates in the world.

 

Thoughts like these have physical effects. I recently took a horse ride with a friend, for example, to visit the Q’ero of the high Andes and, some way into our journey, miles from anywhere and from medical help, my friend swooned and fell from her horse. She lay on the ground shaking and not of this world at all.

 

Luckily, we had a shaman with us who knew what had happened and, taking out his coca leaves, he placed them on her and blew through them into her crown. She stopped shaking straightaway and then began to come round.

 

When I asked him what had happened, he just shrugged and said “a bad wind”. She had been hit by a thoughtform which had, in a way, possessed her. He had blown a different energy into her to remove it and fill her with light.

 

But, imagine: if stray thoughts can do this much damage, how much stronger are our own ideas? Our beliefs about ourselves, our sicknesses and our powers or weaknesses are not random, after all; they are personal to us and may have been with us for years. So it is literally true that our thoughts can kill or cure us. We must be careful, then, about what we think. San Pedro helps and heals us by showing us how to do that.

 

Is there anyone you wouldn’t hold a ceremony for?

I once thought so. A few years ago some young people who were travelling South America asked for a ceremony. When I told them what it involved, they said not to worry, they’d taken a lot of drugs in the past and had heard about San Pedro and wanted to try “a new drug experience”. I must admit that I judged them in a bad light because they were trivialising San Pedro and saw it as “just another drug” – which it is not. It is a powerful spiritual medicine.

 

It was San Pedro that told me to relax. It reminded me that it can handle things for itself and make its own decisions about who can drink it, and to remember that I was the guide, not the healer! So after that I didn’t judge them and I gave them San Pedro.

 

Afterwards, they came to speak to me about their “drug experience” and told me their encounter with San Pedro had been the most humbling of their lives. San Pedro had told them straight, they said, that: “I am not LSD! I AM SAN PEDRO!” They learned from that and for some it changed their lives. They no longer take drugs at all.

 

So now I am humble too because I know that San Pedro will always give people what they need – even if it is not what they thought they would get. I like the expression you use: that with plant work you should have intentions but not expectations. That seems a good approach. But, in any case, I trust San Pedro and I know it will act with integrity towards everyone, so now I no longer discriminate.

 

There is a diet that goes with San Pedro, just as there is for ayahuasca. But with San Pedro it is easier. Can you say something about it?

All teacher plants require some ritual precautions prior to and during the ceremony. This is what we call the diet. It refers not just to restrictions around food and drink, as the name might suggest, but to other behaviours as well so we approach the plant with a pure intent. So when we talk about the “diet”, it is really more like the ancient Greek understanding of “dieta”: a change in lifestyle, not just in what we eat.

 

Ayahuasca demands preparation some days before, including food and behavioural taboos, sexual abstinence, fasting, and meditation, but San Pedro does not ask for such major changes. Nevertheless, for a day before it is drunk, food and drink should be as bland as possible and contain no alcohol, meat, oils or fats, spices, citrus fruits or juices, and there should be no sex.

 

For about twelve hours before the ceremony, there should be no food at all. This means a day of fasting if you are drinking San Pedro at night or no food from about 8pm on the night before if you are drinking it the next day. For a few hours before the ritual I also suggest a period of quiet reflection so you can think about what you would like to heal or learn about yourself.

 

That is really all the diet requires, although there are some specific conditions where a consultation with your shaman and medical doctor is recommended in advance of drinking San Pedro. These include problems with the colon, high blood pressure, heart conditions, diabetes, or mental illness. None of these will necessarily prevent you from drinking since the condition itself may be the very thing that you want San Pedro to cure, but your shaman and doctor must know.

 

A general rule with plant work is: the purer your body and spirit, the more powerful the medicine and its teachings. The diet helps with this.

 

I’ve heard it said that the ‘processes’ (set and setting) involved in ceremonies can contribute to the effects; that the shaman acts as a sort of hypnotherapist, for example, and offers healing suggestions to the patient, while the ritual contains practices like meditation which are relaxing and healing. What do you think of that?

I sometimes get asked things like that, mostly by scientists and academics. They want to know what the “make up” of San Pedro is, what its “active ingredients” are, and “how it works”. I tell them I don’t know and don’t care! For me, it is not San Pedro’s “mescaline content” or “properties” that are important; it is a healing spirit which produces miracles that I have seen with my own eyes. So I really don’t know or care how it works. I can’t explain a miracle any more than those who ask me about it can! But I know this: if you needed a miracle because your life was in that much pain, and if – by the grace of God and San Pedro – you got one, you wouldn’t care how it worked either!

 

Part of the disease, it seems to me, is to want to understand the world in terms of its “mechanisms” when its nuts-and-bolts really don’t matter at all. It is the beauty of the world that should attract, engage, and inspire us! When we drink San Pedro that is one of the first things we learn – and then our questions become irrelevant anyway. So the real answer, for those who want to know the hows and whys of San Pedro, is simple: drink it and then you will see!

 

The “what” of San Pedro is that it heals lives. Let us leave the sleepless nights of the whys and hows to the academics for whom such things seem to matter.  

 

 

The Author

Ross Heaven is the author of more than 10 books on shamanism and shamanic healing, including Plant Spirit Shamanism, Plant Spirit Wisdom, and The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions. He runs workshops on these subjects too, as well as journeys to Peru to work with the shamans, healers, and plant spirit medicines (ayahuasca and San Pedro) of the Amazon and Andes. For more details of these events and a free Information Pack, visit www.thefourgates.com or email ross@thefourgates.com.

 

by

Michael Mifsud

Remembered or Utilized. ?

Never in the history of mankind has so much been made of what is technically no more than scant misapplied information about a man apparently called Jesus. Hundreds of devises to fool the public like – divine books not written with human hands – contrived apparitions – direct revelations. – are manufactured overnight by thousands of movements and reflect the puerility of its creators, yet millions fight and die for it´s, often obscure, contents. Many of these cults are based on a way of life to create communities serving the purpose of a handful with their very lives in their hands. Most depend on what we can call faith on demand to ensure easy unobstructed management. All, have an invisible, divine spirit who demands its subjects to behave in a a particular way.  The basis of mainstream Christianity is that their founder Jeus and source  of the teachings is a Son of God. This extraordinary statement alone, has been the basic cause of the shedding of the blood of more innocent people than anything else in the history of mankind. The association of a mortal prophet with the very identity of God himself is an unequivocable challenge to other people’s Gods. To most religions it is the source of such abhorrence and hatred that it is difficult to imagine that such a higher level being could have allowed it in his name.

This peculiar, blind sense of religious identity is behind most of the problems of the world today and not least of all, because religion, God and his mortal messengers, are in the main, utilized to keep people together for economic reasons and not necessarily in their own interests. Whereas at one time, it was merely a form of cultural Government,intended to keep people together, today,  it is a way of assuming world authority and destroying anything that challenges what it does to its people. Most of the highly religious countries including Catholic ones, demonstrate through  its high level of poverty and lack of human rights that blind faith is a dangerous factor in terms of survival.

Poverty allied to religious indoctrination.

In some very poor countries, religion has become a basis for maintaining the poor happy with their lot and providing noble, subservient cheap labour. What is more disquieting however, is the added acceptance of the violation of body and mind as part of the suffering to be expected and tolerated in the name of The Heavenly Father. For the puppeteers who control most of mankind in this way, this is a simple way of making sure that the average believer pays up and stands up against any outside challenges that attempts to alter anything. This is now abundantly obvious to the better educated masses who shun packaged religious experiences  in he form of the modern gospel preachers intent on hypnotizing the unsuspecting audiences. These messengers are now being seen to be emissaries not of Gods, but the pawns of economic interests cynically unrelated to the essence of the religion they preach. The fact that many of these preachers have been found wanting in their own sordid lives is no surprise, but the realisaton that they manage to fool so many for so long makes one wonder just what level of development the masses, anywhere, reach in their race through empty meaningless lives. Despite the claims made by major religions of the uniqueness of their own faiths and the need to follow its teachings, most of them make show a lack of honest effort to effectively train their followers in the ways of moral or ethical values. The failure to eradicate the gruesome conflict that leads people to suicide and others to provoke violence through pyschological manipulations, seems a contradiction of all that religion should stand for. It appears to offer little hope for a successful and happy life, merely attempting to help, with sugary words, to soften the blows of suffering, guaranteeing those taken in, a vantage point in an afterlife that none of them can offer at least, a free sample of. Most intelligent people today (and the majority in high office), do not believe in the teachings of their religious leaders and subscribe to them as a form of social or political protection for fear of alienation. The standard respond to their lack of transparency often runs along the hypocritical lines that poor people need the hope that it offers and that their sensitivity has to be taken into account. The priest therefore becomes the ally of the politician,  being two of a kind, intent on their own survival at the altar of public ignorance. High street fraudsters could do no better or in more appropriate terms. The anecdote of the Emperor’s clothes is highly relevant in this instance and that is exactly what the whole thing is about – belief or alienation. The whole issue therefore, in the early part of the 21st. century,  is not what one could consider to be a good state of affairs when conversely, even selling an ambiguously labelled produce is a ground for criminal charges. It is interesting that when one takes a closer look at the nature of the whole business and stares with some honesty at the religious figures whose names are invoked in the process, the whole thing falls apart.

God or excuse for suppression ?

Is there such a thing as a mortal representatives of a being of another dimension who actually watches over us (good and bad) and keeps his distance with a view to letting us sort it all out ?  In reality, it would turn him into something that our own common sense and basic educational values would tell us to give a wide berth to.  There is absolutely nothing that suggests, scientifically or academically that a glimpse has been caught in one way or another that there is anything called God in the way it is described by religious teachers. Least of all, in terms of credibility, when the type of people who propagate it are looked at with any degree of moral objectivity. Do not kill, for example and love thy neighbour,  but if anyone challenges the beliefs, the threat to life and body becomes all too real.  In the minds of most sensitive people who really care for the sanctity of life these contradiction in terms are disturbing and depressing.  Most, rich and poor, young and old, dim or gifted, would like God to be there but one with corrective powers, in view of the increasing degree of injustice and inexplicable depravity carried out in so called religious, modern societies. It is difficult to argue against the religious concept that it is in the nature of man to adore and externalize himself as a form of sublimination of his natural loneliness, but that such a thing could actually contribute to a healthy, evolving society, taking all religions in context, is a different matter altogether. They would have to share the same God and know that they are doing it and agree to differ about any differences between their specific ways of adoring. This does not mean however, that people like Jesus and Mohammed, Moses and Buddha or all the Messianic figures of the past were not what we can loosely call divinely inspired. In fact, so they were, if we look back on the impact they had on their societies, but we can say the same thing about the great philosophers and thinkers of the ages who contributed to the betterment of the state of mankind in a more direct and effective way. Divine inspiration in this context is, in my estimation, a momentary ability to see complicated needs with a clarity that lends itself to put corrective or promotional measures into practice. How many of us have not in one moment or another experienced that “Eureka !” and seen through to the centre of the problem to the point of feeling faint over it ? It happens to many of us and whose lives are changed as a result. The mechanics of this means of revelation can in fact be encouraged through known psychological and spiritual techniques and is not entirely dependent on divine intervention.  It is only a combination of emotions and state of mind that produces this remarkable window, if only for a split instant. It has however, absolutely nothing to do with God or Gods and often the masterful contribution of a good, experienced teacher or the teachings which planted the seed in the mind in the first place.  It can also be the results of a variety of conflictive emotional experiences or the realisation brought about by a sudden quirk of the brain. The Sufi teacher Gurdjieff was well known for creating this response in his disciples. All the revered prophets experienced these sudden revelations in times of great stress but they were also highly influenced by their own guides. They in turn, became instruments of personal guidance, creating followers – but were just that, good teachers with a deep place in their hearts for the people they chose to teach and lead. In Greek mythology the Muses were capable of provoking such inspiration- an expression often used today by those in need of fresh stimulation.

There are however, many differences between the awesome religious figures of world religions and which are beyond the scope of this particular article.  Jesus for example, despite all the stories written about him, is not historically clear. Mohammed however, brought up in his teachings, revered him unconditionally and would have in the main, stuck close to his teachings or whichever version his ancestors and teachers were brought up in.  Mohammed was a Nazrim (Nassarene) like Jesus or Boabdil of Granada – members of a religious body that went back thousands of years and to whose central Deity, the first born had to be sacrificed either physically (as the Patriarch  Abraham would have done), or symbolically, in the form of priesthood. It is the Islamic version of the replacement of Isaac by Ishmael in the proposed sacrifice which gives a clue as to what is happening here.  Ishmael was not the father of the Jews of the tribe of Judah under Isaac and the clear indication is that it is this tribe that is rejected and not the other descendants of Abraham. Some Islamic scholars insist that both Abraham and Isaac throw doubt on their progeny with the confusion caused by the passing off of their respective wifes as sisters whom they both  surrendered to the risks of foreign royal harems. The biblical studies make it quite clear and remains as baffling as anything can possible be with ancient legends. The very Royals who took them expressed alarm and anger at having been tricked on discovering that they were the wives of the contributors. The descendants of Sarah , Abrahams wife, are therefore not acceptable to those who doubt the genetic descent from the Patriarch as a result. Ishmael, acceptable to Islam, is the son of Haggar, the servant and not necessarily a concubine, but an issue in any case. The curious parallel this peculiar story brings to mind, is the traditional Pharaonic custom of marriage to their sisters in orde to protect the throne from outide manipulation, but it is more than liklely, that in fact they sired children of the high priests who were the real fathers and therefor by hiding their identities were able to claim that the children were divinely generated. The Pharaohs had children from concubines but none of them qualified for the throne. This seems to point to the strong possibility that Abraham was a man of Royal birth and Sarah was really his sister and joined genetically to his own blood and that of the Royal figure she was surrendered to. The same with Isaac. The children of the wives and sisters of both would have then had Royal blood from two sources. Without doubt that the system could work very well and a long line of similar contrived descent could provide an emperor with blood from every royal family in the known world. Power in any case is what was being sought.

Two different Messiahs.

The prophet Mohammed and Jesus both belonged to the same ideological body of historical beliefs and both became Messiahs or liberating prophets who expressed their jihads in different ways. One at the point of a sword and the other through martyrdom. There are also radically different versions of ancient beliefs which came from the same texts. At which point for example, Isaac, the supposed object of the sacrifice by Abraham, was replaced by Ishmael is difficult to determine, but there is no doubt that the acceptance of the return of Jesus (Issa in Islamic terms) by Mohammed at the end of time coincides with early Christian teachings. The only aspect of Islam that connects with Judaism it would seem, is the Orthodox Sharia Laws. Judaism appears to have presently extinguished the practice, but even in the times of Jesus, women were, we are told, gruesomely stoned. There is hatred and revenge in this and other acts done in the name of God by both Judaism and Islam and in the Jewish case, it is incorporated in the Law of Tallion which is defined as “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Taking Divine law into human hands was something that Jesus was strongly opposed to and whatever the atrocity comitted by a delinquent, most ancient religious documents clearly state that life belongs to God and not for humans to take with their own hands. Is this not why Law and Justice has become the ethical basis of most ordered societies – to protect life and property ? This does not entail causing what it tries to protect, if one assumes that it is all done out of respect for the sanctity of life, as expressed in religious teachings. Capital punishment therefore, whether humane or primitive, is no better than the concept of lynching which at least takes place when all parties are in the heat of the issues and like wild, depraved creatures express their anger.  Both scenarios are still summary executions and to an evolved human with any sensitivity, is no more than pure evil.  The fact that the world´s highest evolved societies have abolished the practice is proof of the strength of public revulsion against it.  Any religion which approves such acts of vengeance is defying every ancient rule which forms the original base of the  major faiths of the world.  Limiting the freedom of delinquents however is a form of protection of the family, but taking life only satisfies baser feelings not in keeping with the sort of spiritual development that mystical religions and concepts of love were intended to nurture. A religion not based on the highest for of human expression, love, cannot be right.

Messiahs of different eras.

It is interesting to compare the efforts of say Mohammed, Jesus and Moses with respect to their historical context and approach to the saving or protection of their people. All did it in entirely different ways but achieved the same results. The difference between that of Jesus and Mohammed is one of style. Both wanted to create a new world based on the ancient roots of their threatened ancestral tribes. Both wanted to collect and reunite their scattered sheep and both did it in ways that only historically can we begin to understand, in their complexities. One did it in battle, the other through submission and pacifistic techniques. Curiously, there is nothing in either the teachings of Mohammed or Jesus which suggests that they were anything other than enlightened Prophets who preached love and tolerance. The followers of both were prepared to allow themselves to surrender to torture and execution in the name of God at one point and later, like the future crusaders, also prepared to fight in self defence against an aggressor. St. Bernard, preached extensively with respect to the almost impossible task of justifying a Christian Jihad involving occupation of distant lands and killing in self defence. He made it almost impossible to kill and be saved without very strict precautions which are  beautifully described in his letters to a Hugh around the early part of the 12th.century.  When Mohammed went to war it was because in his own mind and that of his people he was protecting their interests, their way of life and their territories in exactly the same way that a modern General does it today. He was safeguarding the welfare of the people who put their trust in him as a military commander. It had nothing to do with creating a religion. Both Mohammed and Jesus welcomed followers to the cause, but would have been confused about a religious identity which was any different to the one that they were both brought up in. In fact, the beliefs of the Prophet Mohammed were those of Jesus and it can in many ways be said that he was a Christian who created new ways of self fulfillment. The word Christian however, does not mean much to anyone other than those who hold that Jesus was either God or in some way, the son of God. Follower of Jesus or Jesuit would be more appropriate. For most, other than those brought up in this belief, a flesh and blood, mortal Jesus was a contradiction of terms and had to convince themselves that he was really a physical manifestation of a spiritual being. In other words man and God. The combination of course, was needed, to be able to justify the uniqueness of the Christian faith and its superiority over others. Christianity and Islam could be considered two sides of the same coin – their respective prophets and the expression of the worldly, spiritual aspirations of the times. In fact this is what Messiahs are all about. Judaism, knew only one concept of Messiah, a military warrior who would rid them of the shackles of their oppressors and that is what Moses and David was all about.  Moses did in fact try and create a religious fear of political proportions to ensure unity and sense of purpose, but once the safety of the so called promised land had been reached, he was it would appear, superfluous and in fact mysteriously and unfairly punished. What it implies in real fact is that he was not a Messiah but a fallen leader and despite the magnitude of his task no Mosian religion emerged – simply a variety of peoples with common experiences.  In that sense Judaism has little to do with the other two major religions of the world. The variety of peoples under Moses were not Jews in the academic sense of the world, but Israelis of the twelve tribes.  Or so one would assume from the rituals which led to the breaking of the tablets. In any case, the descendants of these are in the main, followers of Jesus or Mohammed.

Uncontrollable events?

Jesus was a very gentle person, if we are to believe in the sayings, quoted by others. He identified himself as a leader or teacher but he did not like being associated with the idea that he should have to qualify in the manner of a warrior like David, as if the latter was some form of Divine being.  He challenges the concept when he asks in his inimitable manner – “Was David also not a servant of God ?” Jesus chose passive leadership because he sensed the futility of armed struggle. He knew that the futile loss in combat of great ancient ancestors had achieved little. The tribes were still oppressed and the ancient God forgotten.  He was prepared to be physically sacrificed to channel the hatred of those who cavorted with the occupying forces and transform himself into a source of future inspiration. It goes without saying, that he must have known that he would become an object of great admiration and that his aims would be carried out in memory of this event, but the concept of any religion other than that of his ancestral tribes, would have been inexplicable to him. There was only one faith – that of the Divine Inspiring Protector and the rest, the ordinary day to day attempts to civilise and join forces in harmony and family protection within ethical values. Jesus´s submission to the idea of execution involved survival and from an Asian ascetic mystic viewpoint, even burial was not a barrier to resucitation What was different was the torture and mutilation stages that preceded this one.  If Jesus was to qualify for his own predictions of physical resurrection after the three day suspension of terrestial abode this situation could not guarantee results of any type taking into account that he could be hanged on the cross in a state of near collapse.The events leading up to the crucifixion, the hanging and eventual laying to rest in a state of semi coma, could have, under moderate circumstances, have provided a possibility of resuciation from an induced cataleptic state. Most Indian mystics did this regularly but never under such a variety of life threatening factors. The matter has been analysed and discussed in the media at great length with as many in favour of the possibility of physical ressurection as in favour of a death put into question by the deliberate removal of the body. If we are to understand the mission at all, it looks likely that the whole affair was a form of intense initation pitting the life forces of the middle aged but hardy Jesus against a series of events that appear to be manipulated to produce an eventual recuperation. Professor Schoenburg, the writer who dedicated many of his books to the subject was quite convinced that Jesus made it physically to live on for many years to come.

A conspiracy theory.

It is now coming to light that the early life of Jesus, especially in his twenties, is inexplicably missing and likely to coincide with what  many consider his hidden Asian period. This appears to be deliberately ignored in view of the enormous details provided with respect to other issues in the life of Jesus. When looking across the amount of information available on his life and the sources from which it is gleaned, there is no denying that it all appears to be a carefully editted resume calculated to deter further research in pursuit of anything else of any real interest. The only real perpertrators of such, is the case, can only be an organised authority and the only candidate for this one is The Byzantine State. Like lean meat, the trimmings considered unnecessary were promptly removed and the cut out figure we accept as Jesus Christ today, was born. There was not need to estblish a real Jesus in the same way that most Moslems will tell you there is no need to go deeper into the mortal aspects of Issa or Mohammed. The point raised is that the important thing are the teachings – a noble thought, but which teachings are these if neither wrote anything down ? When we discuss the life of Jesus we have to take into account his unusual and dramatic death – or survival. One has to inevitably ask the question as to whether the whole passion scenario leading up to the resurrection could have been staged or planned with a precision that would guarantee the desired results. If this was so, then there were a number of conspirators involved, including Jesus himself and high members of the Roman authorities. It is also likely that Jesus envisaged the possibilities of subjection to such a life defying ordeal and his exclamations to that effect point clearly in that direction. The original flagellation and the long trek to the top of Calvary may not have been taken into account with respect to an eventual survival. The event could have been masterminded by people intent on seeing that the final removal from the cross would still provide a narrrow corridor for the life suspension process to be given a chance of reversal. Jesus probably knew that he might just survive the ordeal and prepared himself for it. The quoted exclamations like “ father take this cup away from me “ if we are to consider them genuine, make it clear that he had doubts about whether it would really work or whether he could take the pain. Documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to Professor Schoenburg,  imply that he might have just barely made it and that he emerged from a long and very serious illness with doubts as to whether it served any purpose at all.

Prophets and leaders.

All that has been attributed to Mohammed or Jesus can be attributed to all the well known names of past giants of religious history, like Mithras and even that of Hermes, much adored within Rosicrucian circles as a great Prophet of divine status. The same amazingly, is not said of Moses who was considered human enough to have to die as a result of his negligence and not allowed to enter the new earthly kingdom of Canaan. Most others were either carried off to heaven or disappeared without trace as a fitting and inconclusive Divine end like that of king Arthur. We do not have, as a result, a religion called Mosian and the Jewish spiritual identity appears to be more of a cultural survival of a tribe of Judah than a religion. What emerges, taking into account that the synagogue is a social and teaching centre and not a temple, that apart from the belief in a God it is not a religion as such but more of a people with religious beliefs. Not the same thing, and applies to say Fremasonry, as well, which is not a religion but a community of brethren with religious beliefs. Non Jewish entrants into Jewish families, however incorporated (by marriage or vocation), always complain of a subsequent lack of identity and or acceptance, which is to be expected. The Jewish people adhere to a God whose name they are forbidden from uttering but whom we gather from the old testament was called Yahweh or Jehovah (apparently a fire or volcano God) but it was not the God of the tribes of Israel which repudiated it at every turn in favour of their own ancestral ones and which often led to conflict. Adonai, often quoted as being another name for Jehovah has recently been associated with the God Aton in view of he fact that the prefix “ai” implied a genetive “of” and the “d” interchangeable with “t” as has always been the case with the ancient regional languages. This puts the question of Moses and his God into the lap of the sun religions and brings the Hysos into the realms of Akhenaton with all its implications. An added and significant factor in this respect is the meaning of the word Jerusalem, in Latin. Hierosolymitani, means city of the sun people and synonymous with Heliopolis. Whether Moses was Aknaton or not the fact remains that it is easier to prove that he was, than the opposite, taking into account all the coincidences surrounding both. It could also well be that as a well known historical personality with a need for human remains, it was considered prudent to ensure in the religious records that he was as mortal as could be, mistakes and all. It is difficult to determine what the “religion”" of the Jews really is and apart from a mythological attachment to the warrior David and the Temple of Solomon which defies arheological substantiation, there are few handles with which to raise the subject. Islam however, like Christianity, stretches across all races and easily absorb members of other creeds in the manner of a faith or religious identity – a singular characteristic that has to be taken into account when defining a religion or a cult. Whilst Jews do take on converts, there is little doubt that they are mere guests and cannot possibly be identified with what everyone knows as Jewish. Thgousands of years agom, the attempt to blend in with the other tribes through the acquisition of the crown via David, came to a halt because of that. The tribes of Israel had Gods in common which were irreplaceable and unacceptable to the Judeans and the bloody massacre of the Benjamite women at the instigation of Judea on the basis of the rape of the Levite´s wife, is a vivid reminder of the Law of Tallion and its far reaching results. The shattered Royal tribe of Benjamin, contenders to the crown, was forced to seek survival in the women of Saba, like their ancestors. Judea earned the enmity of the tribes as a result and had to leave Al Israel, never to form a part of it ever again. The present modern State therefore, as scholars point out, should be called Judea and most definitely not Israel which is a denial of the realities of ancient history. If Israel was therefore to be re- installed, it would incorporate, most of the members of the Middle East and most of the descendants of the Western world. None of these would qualify for membership, if they happened to be Jewish. A pity, that this should not be the final resolution of the whole distasteful problem which has gone on for far too long and stands as the most important menance to the stability of humanity today.

Israel the Commonwealth of tribes.

Neither moderate Islam nor Christianity therefore has anything to do with Judaism since both were concerned in the main, with the ancient tribes of Israel, which religious history tells us as already mentioned, broke its links with the tribe of Judah after the death of Absalom the son of the first king of Israel – Saul. The tribe of Judah according to etymologists, had its origins in the ancient kingdom of Saba and its original followers were black Africans – a fact verifiable from the unchallengeable understanding that both David and Solomon or Daud and Sol Amon were married to Sabaens. The Iehudi which is probably derived from the i h v of Jehovah, were classified as wandering, tonsured black monks and were Hammites and not Shemites which is another modern misconception. Without doubt, they married into other tribes and cultures to arrive at the Jewish people of modern biblical times but the origins are in Africa like that of the Benjamites (Benshamites) or house of Sham as the name clearly illustrates. The Ethiopian leader Haillie Salassie was a very much revered religious figure to the Rastafarians of Jamaica who curiously, in the manner of Nazarenes did not cut their hair. It is not suprising that he considered himself The Lion of Judah and that he wished to demonstrate that his lineage came from ancient Saba. During the investigations carried out with respect to Jewish cultural groupings in the world, it was a little disconcerting to many that the Falashes of Ethiopia appeared to be genuine descendants of the tribe of Judah and linked directly with the sacrificial religious concepts of David and Solomon. The unwillingness on the part of Jewish medical authorities to accept their blood in donorship caused a great deal of controversy throughout the African world and was interpreted as a form of cultural rejection. It may however, have been as a result of other factors, including biochemical ones.

It is worth noting that Saba was probably the most ancient and civilised of nations, with man himself, owing his existance and origins to the region. The concept of the Temple and everything that came to be considered monumental of the land of Egypt had its origins there. Coming to grips however, with the reality of a king of the Sun of Amon and a Daud or David, is not an easy matter. The Dravidian Asians of southern India have enough common links with a Judean cultural past to question as to whether their name should not be Davidians or Daudians. There is however, nothing reliable in archeological terms that attests to the historical realities of either David or Solomon or what could have been their cultural remains. Saba itself still lies in the realms of mythology although the study of Yemen history and sectors of Northern Asia reveal curious traces of defined Ethiopian settlements (note two “Sabaen” Prester Johns in Medieval lore – one in Africa and the other near the Caspian Sea). It is probable that the settlement on the shores of the Caspian and mentioned in Marco Polo might well be mythical as well, although there is little doubt that the site known as Caracorum was considered sacred by the Mongols.

The Jewish faith today is probably an extension of a historical background and the religious cultural remains of a great period of history directly associated with the lands of Ethiopia and Egypt Saba itself covered all the Arabian peninsular and modern Ethiopia, not to mention Egypt itself and the concept of the two crowns may well be a reminder of the two nations that merged culturally and perhaps eventually – dynastically. The Jewish priesthood, as is popularly referred to by the various families like Cohen and Levy, appears to point to a descent of such families from  the Temple priesthood of the order of Sol Amon. The Jewish people could therefore be members of a pocket of original temple families, in the same way as the descendants of the artisans who built the pyramids are identifiable as a people even today. They could also be descendants of Royal families of Saba married into the priestly caste, but it is all in the sphere of interesting speculation and no more. It is also very curious and beyond analisis, that the Egyptians call Obama, the new Tutenkhamun. If we consider that the young P’haraohs´s father was none other than the controversial Akhenaton who introduced a new sun religion and rule, on their ancestors, it makes one wonder. The equation that puts this Pharoah in the role of Moses and Tutenkhamun as a redeemer and return to status quo, is probably a coincidence, but then one would have to find out who got the crowd to draw the relationship and why.

Strong cultural differences.

The background to the religious understandings of Mohammed and Jesus however is in the wide variety of concepts which have little to do with the very specific cultural morality of the Jewish people. The very existance of the revenge laws throws Jesus straight out of the window and shows that he was not a Jew by culture or education even if he had Jewish blood from some ancestors. If we are to go by ancient British genealogies, Mary his mother and Anne his grandmother, were definitely not Jewish but members of one of the tribes of Israel. Some will say that this is not academic enough and that these genealogies are spurious, but with a little bit of imagination and the study of aspects of ancestral names given, it is possible to determine whether they carry tribal names or connotations. To invent these names merely to cococt false genealogies is not that easy, of interest to the manipulator or even likely. The likely probablility would have been that strong Judaish names would have been placed to further the commonly, but erroneously held beliefs that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.

Much incidental information given by critics, anxious to repudiate religious claims, are often much more valuable in context that they realize themselves. It is therefore part of the work of good researchers looking for clues, to note these things and then attempt to either marry them up with other material or even perhaps see if they open doors to unsuspected corners. In this way, it becomes fairly obvious that Jesus  had never formally lived in a Jerusalem (which he visited with some trepidation), leaving hurriedly and always after an argument or assertion which had provoked the priests. It is of course understandble that the scenes created by the scribes were essays designed to promote an image for posterity – a type of propaganda – and much could be mere invention, but these when seen in context, provide a good insight into what it might all mean. The walking on the water, the water to wine, the loaves and the fishes – all these appear to be attempts to fill in the lack of magic often associated with divine figures – a magic that Jesus appears quite capable of performing, but which he disliked intensely.

Jerusalem it must be stressed, was never the capital of Israel but the capital of Judea. This city wasd taken by the tribal army of Judah from the Jebussites over a thousand years before and it could also be that the term “city of the sun” was a Jebbusite one. The sun worhip concept may not have been a Judean one. However, there are other indications that the Judeans were in fact sun worshippers and that Yaweh was a Sun God. We have always been told that Jesus spent a portion of his life in Egypt and more recent studies show that it was likely that he spent time in the Asian sub continent including Tibet and that documents and religious sayings attest to his presence there. His teachings in content and style point in that direction and not to those, say, of John the Baptist who was a doom merchant. Jesus was very much against the commercialisation of religion through the concept of a central meeting point like that of the Temple at Jerusalem. Making payments to a form of head office was something that Jesus did not approve of, taking into account the real needs of the families who made these expensive journeys for no purpose other than to pay tribute to a vain and hollow priesthood. “Give unto Caeser what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”, did not include the Temple priesthood - of that we can be certain.. For Jesus this fuelled the concept of privilege and turned the priests into wealthy leaders only shadowed by the puppet king forcibly imposed on them. The concept of Zionism and Vatican authority with its world aspirations therefore stems from that very basic foundation of centralized, contributed authority, It is what makes economic systems powerful but unfortunately, almost always, of little benefit to the very contributors who make it possible. Runaway taxation forcibly imposed in some western societies today, speaks for itself and the slur on Jesus for mixing with tax collectors, does the same. It shows that the public instinctively shuns contributions on demand and those who force them to make them. Religions based on taxation, which was the case in the time of Jesus, were expected to provide social welfare and not enhancement of public figures. It was this that Jesus detested apart from the tacit acceptance of the commercialisation of religious spaces into which the faithful went for entirely different reasons.

Jerusalem obviously had  the same connotation to Judaism as  Mecca to Islam – a focal point to which followers had to go and spend money in pursuit of their identity. The Temple that Jesus referred to however, was that of the heart and based on Greek and Phoenician teachings on ethical values. He also placed a great deal of emphasis on ennoblement through knowledge and in fact, spurned those who did not cultivate the will to listen or see things clearly. There is no connection between these two very different approaches to the development of the spirit of the people.

Orthodox Islam, as it is shown today however, has a great deal in common with ancient Judaism and probably inherited or even originated in many of its followers during the second half of the first millenium AD. In fact, the end of first millenium AD shows Jews actively participating in various aspects of the structural and financial sectors of the populations – in one particular case, to the point of almost getting themselves lynched for being responsible for imposing new and heavy taxation. The present Askhenazi Jews who recognize that their origins are obscure, are probably descendants of those Christian, Jewish and Israeli converts into Islam and who identified or felt safe within the new religious order. Joining the religion of the conquerors as a means of survival was a commong thing to do and thos who did often waited patiently through generations for the right religious climate, to go back to their ancient traditions.  They could have been members of one or several of the tribes of Israel which had  a secret oral tradition that bound them at family level,  It is perhaps not so suprising after all, that many Asiatic people like the Afghans, consider themselves Bani Israel, which is a common term for House of Israel or descendants of. The curiosities of the present conflict therefore are a little out of accord with the realities of religious history and need fresh and careful thought on all fronts and on both sides of the so called divide. During world war 11 some British officers were astounded, when taken into the confidence of religious tribal leaders in the Middle East, to discover that among their treasured belongings was a very old copy of the Gospel of St. John whom they secretly revered.

Religious Snobbery.

The Judean upper classes looked down on the citizens of Samaria and Gallilee. These areas were the homelands of Jesus. This fact alone clearly demonstrates that he was not a Jew in the true sense of the word. “Nothing good can come out of Gallilee”, we are told.. As a potential leader of the Jews, he would have identified himself as such through an active part in the daily life of the Jewish community, but it is quite clear that the whole area of Judea is alien to him. The parable of the good Samaritan, usefully included in basic Christian knowledge, is an episode that attempts to demonstrate this Jewish disregard for outsiders. We are also also told that Jesus rescued a woman from stoning. As a Jew he would have been loathe to break this taboo or get himself involved in a practice that drew its existance from the vilest of human sentiments. He would have been ripped apart by the crowd foaming at the mouth for blood sacrifice. If he did indeed stop a stoning, knowing as we do today, how even members of the family callously destroy the face and head of helpless loved ones, it must have been because he was feared or respected, at least. It is difficult to associate this form of execution not just with the uniquely gentle Jesus but with the loving Mohammed who was also a man of great intelligence and sensitivitity. His daughter Fatima who revered her father would have pronounced herself on this issue had she thought that her father accepted it. Mohammed was also responsible for the restoration and historical remembrance of the ancient site at Mecca which contained the black stone that belonged to the people of Anatolia and called the Kha aba by them – a name that still stands today. This same stone was the meteorite held in awe by the ancients who worshipped a Goddess called Cybeles. The Romans, against popular teaching, were a very cultured race and took great pains in pointing out that the Middle Eastern cultures came from their own basic ancestry – a fact born out by the Essenes who called them the Kittim and descendants of the tribes. It was the Romans who brought the stone down to the present site according to popular lore. Mohammed showed in this act of historical conservation, a little of his great respect for history and ancient religious sites which are now incorporated into the great centres of Islam. It also shows his high degree of tolerance and cultural recognition. The inside of the Kaaba has now been opened and photographed to show its internal fittings, which demonstrate that another form of religion was practiced there. It is more than likely a type of teaching centre, like a synagogue or perhaps a shrine to Cybele. There is a body of academic knowledge which suggests that Abraham himself attended this shrine and which according to the Victorian Professor Higgins, was dedicated to a cult which utilized the dove as a religious symbol. Christians associate it with the Paraclete of John the Baptist. The world associates it with news, peace and love – a cementing force. John, it should be mentioned, spoke of major changes which the new Messiah would bring about. Although Jesus did fulfil some of John´s aspirations, he did not fit the mold entirely and in many ways he felt responsible for the events that led to the bizarre and untimely execution of his cousin. In fact, we are told that he was very nervous when he heard what had happened and fled from Judea to the safety of his homelands, probably concerned about his own life. This very human streak in Jesus, emphasises aspects of his personality which can be clearly defined when looked at objectively. He could have joined the public lamentation of the assasination of this noble martyr at the hands of barbaric, so called royals, to console at least or even preach against, but he chose to flee. It implies that he knew that the people behind it were the Temple priests or dangerous hidden hands and that it was likely that his own life was in immediate danger. The events taken in context show a very confused cousin of an executed religious figure in a strange light and an emotional level that cannot compare with that of a hardened mystic like John. He looks more like a highly cultured man from a distinguished family used to better things and not quite ready to meet his fate, but it begs the question, having been baptised by the executed man and gloried in the claims to his own possible Messiahship. Or perhaps he saw in the event, an opening for his own objectives and beginning of his own line of provocation ? Whichever, it was a strange way of showing it.

The child prodigy

It we go back in his life to his appearance at the synagogue as a child with an enormous body of religious knowledge behind him, it makes sense that they knew he had the makings of a leader. They would more than likely also have known that he was of the same family as the executed hermit, if we assume of course that he and his aunt Elizabeth were known members of local families. By getting out of the area as soon as he was informed of the fate of John, he could have assumed that the next logical purge would have been him and that his every move was being watched.  It does offer a dignified explanation as to why he did not join the large following crying in helpless anger against the asassination of such a popular figure. Jesus may have also thought that the situation carried enough of its own momentum and did not need him. But was he also perhaps a respected and feared figure well known to the priests of the Temple, who were waiting for a false move ? The fact that the woman at the well of Samaria called him Lord speaks for itself. This term was only applied to figures of very high stature equivalent to Imam in Islam. The Jewish priesthood would therefore  strike a double blow at the crucifixion – remove a potential critic and debilitate the people of the adjacent biblical lands which held him in esteem and who were influenced by heretical teachings brought in from other parts of the world. Herod after all, had wanted to meet him and exchange views as the bible clearly states. It lends more reality to the historicity of the figure of Jesus than the cloudy concepts of his so called divine status. Why ? Because it is in those little details, glossed over by the religious teachers and twisted to justify wrong conclusions, that we get a glimpse of a hidden tradition – a hidden reality that makes better sense.

Jesus  is not as fully documented as Mohammed, who is a genuine historical figure full of writings of the period which attest to his existance. The same is not the case with Jesus, who is really a product of the writings of a number of so called witnesses who could have been taken from nowhere by scribes who intended to create the myth. Had Paul of Tarsus not taken up the issue with his friends in high places and not been a Roman citizen, it is doubtful if the teachings of this interesting, little understood man, would have come down to us today. It is a well known secret that many high Vatican officials talk about their great debt to Paul. This however does not in any way mean that Jesus can be dismissed as lightly as that. Despite Paul, there are other ways of arriving at the conclusion that although there is no hard evidence of a type one could call conclusive, there is a very strong indication that Jesus existed and that all the things that we are told about him are based on mental notes taken around the time. It can also be taken for granted that the sum total of his so called sayings, add up to a body of knowledge of the human condition that would not be properly understood for thousands of years to come. It also goes without saying therefore, that Christianity as we know it, has little if anything to do with the teachings of Jesus, as we shall see.

As Shri Bhimrao Ambedkar says “Subtler minds and abler pens than mine have been brought to the task of unraveling the mysteries of caste; but unfortunately it still remains in the domain of the ‘unexplained’ not to say of the ‘ununderstood’1a”. Never has this observation been more apt than now, when no aspect of social and political life of India is free of its influence. And this influence seems to be on the rise. To unravel some of the mysteries this institution holds within, let us take a journey through its origin and development.

“Caste “”, as defined, for example, by Lundenberg2 “is merely a rigid social class into which members are born and from which they can escape or withdraw with extreme difficulty”. In other words, it is a type of stratification system, which is most rigid in matters of mobility and distinction of status. Much need to be explained about the genesis of this system, though a good deal has been written about its nature, especially the various features of control influencing its members, its origins does not seem to have received enough attention. Some of the theories proposed are, racial theory -that caste system is a gift of Aryans, political theory -that caste system is an invention of Brahmins, occupational theory -that caste system is functional differentiation of occupational differences, traditional theory -that caste system is of divine origin to maintain social harmony, guild theory -that caste system is the product of interaction between guilds, tribes and religion, religious theory -that caste system is the institutionalization of prevailing customs, each caste being the followers of certain deity and evolution theory -that caste system is a result of social evolution moderated by various factors, like prejudices, lack of control mechanisms, geographic isolation of Indian peninsula as well as conquerors’ policies, especially that of the British, to name a few.

1 THEORIES OF CASTE ORIGIN-AN EXAMINATION

1.1 Racial Theory: The fact that caste names Brahmana, Kshtriya, and Visya are frequently mentioned in the RigVeda along with words like ‘dasa’, ‘varna’, gives credence to the theory that caste is an invention of IndoAryans. In ‘cultural history of India’ Al Basham mentions that caste system evolved to accommodate large variety of tribes into Aryan society during expansion of vedic Aryan territories.

However, such delineation does not take into consideration the importance generally was ascribed to ‘the moral worth’ of a man rather than his ‘birth’, which, we can see at many places in puranic literature, ‘mahabharata’ et al. Also, caste differences and demarcation of people on that basis was not considered as seriously as we do these days. In Al Baroonis India, he describes human, according to Indian thought, as “consisting of 25 elements, soul (sattva, tamas, rajas), matter, nature, will” etc, learn all these and one “will achieve salvation whatever religion one may follow”. Similar is the opinion of Sir Vincent Smith, who in ‘Asoka-his History’ says “Though each caste has its own dharma, the conduct is less rigid than it has been since Moslem invasions”. From all these, a conclusion one can reach is that, caste, as we see now, needs some more explanation, than that,” it has been evolved during intermingling of Indo Aryan local tribes.

1.2 Political Theory: In Mahabharata(shantiparva) creation of caste is given thus: “Brahma created the world entirely Brahmanic1b. Later, those Brahmins fond of sensual pleasure became kshtriyas. Those Brahmins who subsisted by agriculture neglecting their duties entered the state of Vaisya and those who were fond of mischief and falsehood sank into the condition of Sudras”. In ‘Hindu Caste System….’3, Dr Sharma explains the formation of caste thus: To meet liturgical needs, the society from among themselves would select, on the basis of skills of elocution, the Brahmins. Similarly, for administrative purposes, those with qualities of leadership would be selected….. Furthermore, visha(clan or tribe) also embodied people known as Shudra(meaning not of tribe, newcomers) representing all new comers to that particular tribe….Thus all responsibilities related to a visha could be grouped into four subcategories”, each having “their duties and skills”.

Though caste can thus be seen as having been a useful tool for maintaining social order, the fierce form it is having now needs much more explanation than what is offered by this theory.

1.3 Occupational theory: According to ‘Theodosian’ code, in early Roman Empire, son was required to follow fathers’ profession, thus maintaining availability of skill while solving the question of continuation of enterprises. That such an arrangement was widely followed can be observed in many of the popular surnames of today, Smith, Miller, Potter, to name a few.

How these occupational guilds and other family groups metamorphosed into castes, in India, while they amalgamated fully into the larger social canvas in rest of the world, is a question, needing finer minds and greater efforts perhaps, to answer.

1.4 Traditional theory, Guild theory and Religious theory: These theories propose divine intervention in human affairs. Such intervention regulates society by bringing harmony in all essential functions for social well being, mankind being left free in search of bliss. Occupational groups, which originate as a result of such harmony, on passage of time, converted themselves into castes by following endogamy. In this phenomenon of caste formation, some groups find themselves becoming endogamous and others find themselves forced into becoming so by society(by closing all avenues of social interaction).

Such a theory may be able to explain the formation of castes as a singularity in social evolution, but fails in providing rationale for the vast expanse of caste in Indian society.

1.5 Evolutionary theory: This theory, in fact, is not a new or different theory. It states, in effect, that over the years, formation of caste is influenced by all factors we have seen earlier, in some form or other.

2 THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT OF CASTE-A STUDY

1.1 The origin and development of caste therefore narrows down to the peculiarities of Indian social evolution which could transform into castes (as they are now) under the influence of factors like the ones mentioned in these theories. The stratification property of caste, one such peculiarity, in fact, is not a monopoly of India, its mention being found at many places. History by Herodotus, Mande or Osu caste systems of Africa, division of people into four estates in medieval Europe, of feudal barons, clergy, urban merchants and the mass of people as well divisions among old Israel population having ritual ramifications are a few places where one can find a system of differentiating humans to varying levels.

Such a process of division, in fact, has been a subject of study by sociologists, notably, Herbert Spencer, who in his sociological theories have put forth following generalizations:

• The larger the number of people and internal transactions, greater will be the size and degree of internal differentiation of government.

• The greater the actual or potential level of conflict with other societies and within a society, the greater will be the degree of centralization of power in a government.

• The greater the centralization of power, the more visible class divisions will be and the more these divisions create actual or potential conflict.

Like colonies of all living species, powerful leadership and consequently concentration of power did happen in all cultures giving rise to class structures.

1.2 Thus we see, though the tendency to form social class is present in every society, in our case, the stratification became increasingly stable, crystallizing into castes. The main factor which effected this transformation, of a social class into a caste, is another peculiarity of Indian social evolution, endogamy. Says Ambedker “Remember that endogamy is foreign to the people of India…It is no exaggeration to say that with the people of India exogamy is a creed and none dare infringe it…there are more rigorous penalties for violating exogamy than there are for violating endogamy. Castes, as far as India is concerned, means superposition of endogamy on exogamy”. He further elaborates how, sati or enforced widowhood (where widow is not allowed to remarry), imposition of celibacy on widower as well as girl marriage came to be part of Indian “uxorial customs to maintain numerical parity between the two sexes”, making endogamy workable leading to perpetuation of caste system.

1.3 S Charles Hill says 1b”Instead of allowing ourselves to be misled by the outward show of Hinduism we must concentrate our attention on what the Hindu writings tell us … According to the Bhagawat Gita, to be truly wise one must have learnt:

• To control the body in its appetites and desires so that it does not injure itself or impede the free action of soul

• To act for benefit of the community without hope of reward… so long as ones duty as laid down by the requirement of caste is performed

• To resign oneself with absolute patience to pain and suffering and loss and feel no exultation in success

…………………………………………………………………

In other words, to fit oneself for the position of a ruler one must have overcome all human weaknesses and renounce all material rewards…………… It is not necessary to enter upon the requirements of other castes, for the above is sufficient to show that what differentiates them is simply character”. He continues, stressing the fact that more than one observer has commented on the purity, regularity, equity and strictness of the ancient Indian government, “The ideal Hindu kingdom is not an utopian dream, still exists in the hearts of Hindus, that it was based upon a social system which secured the happiness and contentment and loyalty of all classes of the people, and that the later stages of corruption and confusion have been due to foreign intrusion whether from central Asia or from Europe, whilst whatever unrest now prevails in India is caused by the incessant struggles of the Hindu caste ideal against alien influences.” About the caste system existing then, he says, “….. as a matter of fact, though we talk of upper and lower castes, no caste was originally considered superior or inferior…..though in the Sudra the body is predominant, in the Vaisya the reason, in the Kshtriya the heart and in the Brahmin the soul, all castes are equally manifestations of Brahma though of different qualities. The relation between a higher and lower caste is then more like that between an adult and a child than that between a noble and a serf.” He says further, “It provides every member of the community with a position which, though rigidly fixed, is fixed only by his natural limitations, and so allows him every opportunity of using to their full extent whatever abilities he may possess to the general advantage.”

The views expressed by O P Gupta5a also are not dissimilar, “Supporters of casteism oftenly quote two slokas viz. (IV.13) and (XVIII.41) of Shrimad Bhagwat Gita to support four castes by birth. Let us examine. In sloka (IV.13) Lord Krishna says: “Chaturvarnyma mayaa sristam gunkarma vibhagsah” i.e. four orders of society created by Me according to their Guna (qualities/behaviour) and Karma (profession/work/efforts). Lord Krishna does not say guna and karma of previous life. In sloka (XVIII.41) Lord Krishna says “Brahmana Kshatriya visham sudranam cha paramtapa, karmani pravibhaktani svabhavaprabhavaigunaih.” It means people have been grouped into four classes according to their present life karma (profession/work) and svabhava (behaviour). `The division of labour into four categories – Brahman, Ksatriya, Vaishya and Sudra – is also based on the Gunas inherent in peoples’ nature`. Had this division been based on birth, Lord Krishna would have naturally used phrase ‘Janmani pravibhaktani’ in the very shloka (XVIII.41). In sloka (XVIII.42), Lord Krishna prescribes duties (karma) which one must do in order to qualify as a Brahman i.e. among other duties (karma), he must have studied Vedas and must teach Vedas to others. Thus, if a person has neither studied Veda, nor teaches Veda to others, he is not a Brahman. “

During the journeys of Hieun Tsang, he is said to have mentioned5b “…society consists of four caste groups. These four castes form classes for ceremonial purity.”

Such a system, where social life is entirely independent of political government naturally disintegrated when Indian society came into contact with various invading societies, the most potent western invasion being the one beginning with landing of Portugese adventurers at Calicut with VascoDaGama, who utilized the differences in social positions among Indians as a convenience in governance by according political legitimacy to existing differences. These differences, which were of academic interest in life thus far, might have been of great use to the invading group in governing the land.

1.4 Endogamy as a custom might have got instituted in such a social system to safeguard the thus legitimized privileges as close to oneself as possible. Ronald Inden4 in his ‘Imagined India’ argues that caste is almost a creation of western efforts to orientalise their conquered subjects. Moreover, genomic studies pertaining to origins of castes have been able to identify differences in distribution of genetic material among different caste groups. While many of those point to similar inferences, that lineages of caste groups(non tribal population) show relationship with central Asia while lineages of tribal groups are predominantly from original Indian gene pool and that genes of upper caste population have greater affinity to Europeans than to Asians7 compared to genes from lower caste population etc, Partha Majumdar et al(ISI Calcutta)8 reports after a comprehensive statistical analysis of data from ethnically diverse populations of India, that, tribal and caste populations are highly differentiated and genetic histories have been considerably obliterated making it impossible to see any clear congruence of genetic affinities.

1.5 Whatever may be the case, meaning of caste changed much, from, what Charles Hill observed1c “No caste was originally considered superior or inferior, except in sense that its bodily type represented a more or less advanced stage in human habitations which must be, in turn, occupied by the soul” to one dividing people into, groups with different responsibilities, functions and rights, i.e., different societies.

1.6 Endogamy as well as measures instituted by the invading group in governing the land might be able to put forth a rationale for development of caste, however fails in providing a reasonable explanation to the fact that we have myriad of castes, each having discernable difference in ability when compared with another caste.

3 BEGINNINGS OF CASTE EVOLUTION

1.7 Whatever the shape the evolution of caste took, it certainly resulted in a large multitude of castes, each having discernable difference in ability when compared with one another, especially intellectual. As we have seen earlier, all theories of caste formation and development fail in providing a satisfactory explanation to this phenomenon.

1.8 This could have been caused by singularities in Indian social evolution, mainly owing to changes brought in by external stimuli, two of such being:

-Foreign occupation. Conquests by Muslims, Europeans and the British, and lately

-Russian revolution and the influence of communism on Indian thought

As a result of these, caste became entrenched in Indian society, the stratification property offering much convenience in administration, each caste being a form of professional guild with more or less assured income opportunities, offering social stability. Caste being an idea which is of esoteric nature, such stratifications might have caused least consternation in everyday life.

1.9 That many parts of India, such as, parts of Himachal Pradesh, Northeast including Assam and some parts of central India appear to have been having village communes, where all forms of labour were valued equally, probably points to the nonexistence of any form of caste-like discrimination9a. Also, it may be worth noting that, castes like divisions are found in the history of most nations, in American continent, Africa, Europe or elsewhere in Asia, some societies having complex divisions and others’ relatively simple. Samurais and priests of early Japan and feudal lords of Europe are examples, the study of which will indicate existence of social stratification including hereditary progression, in the lines of caste system of India. Over and above this, a few among these could also boast of social inequalities manifested in institutions of slavery, a cruel practice, if not worse.

1.10 Even untouchability, which find no place in Indian history, is mentioned in the history10 of Herodotus, “the pig is regarded among them as an unclean animal….. are forbidden entry to any of the temples…. and no one will give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd or take a wife from among them so that swineherds are forced to intermarry among themselves.”

4 EVOLUTIONOF CASTE IN CHANGING SOCIAL ORDER

1.11 In short, Indian society, which welcomed the first invader, was having certain abstract notions of stratification, encompassing all aspects of life and society. Thus we have categories or different types of, men, women, guests, maidens, other beings like horses, dogs, cows, activities like sleeping, eating, other abstractions like friends, enemies and others with further subdivisions leading to myriad of esoteric classifications, each possessing unique functional properties; caste being one such subject of classification.

Such abstract nature of caste will be much clearer if we are to note that Hindu puranaic texts contain many instances where the moral worth of a person is seen as having been given greater emphasis compared to other attributes, say caste or family. For example, “truthfulness, generosity, restraint, tapas, constant adherence to dharma- these always lead men to fruition (of their goal) and not caste nor family”, or “Truthfulness, generosity, freedom from hatred, humility, kindness and tapas- he is known as Brahmana where all these are seen” and “if these are seen in a Sudra and they do not exist in a Brahmaa, the Sudra would not be a Sudra and the Brahmana would not be a Brahmana”12.

1.12 Before British: Early invasions to India, almost all, resulted in Islamic rule in India which created “a much stronger and much unified elite, which made it difficult for the ordinary masses to resist social changes, particularly in the realm of philosophical choice, religious pluralism and other personal preferences”9b. Notion of sexual prudery and gender separation infected Hindu households as well. “The overall effect of this cultural, military and political intercourse did not seem to have made any other revolutionary impact on Hindu society or alter the equitable social relations drastically”9b. Long before the arrival of Islam, new religious or reform movements within India opposed the caste system. In 6th century BC, Budhism started it. On casteism as a whole, how much of an effect Budhism could produce is not known. In fact the very nature of caste in the early days is not clearly known. For example, John W McGrindle mentions20, “According to Megastanes, race of India is divided into seven castes.

1 Philosophers- Only they are allowed to marry outside caste.

2 Husbandmen- They cultivate land

3 Herdsmen and hunters- They lead a wandering life

4 Tradesmen- They work in trades like weapon making

5 Fighting men

6 Overseers- They conduct general supervision and report to king

7 Assessors and councilors- They conduct justice, public matters etc

Also, in ‘Inscriptions of Nepal’21, castes are mentioned to be resulting from “the intermingling of varnas” and Vincent Smith22 writes “Though each caste has its own dharma, the conduct is less rigid than it has been since Moslem invasions”.

1.13 Effects of British ascendancy: In the beginning the British did no attempt to interfere with the caste system prevailing in India. In his observations on India, Karl Marx writes 14a”The village isolation produced the absence of roads in India and the absence of roads perpetuated the village isolation. On this plan a community existed with a given scale of low conveniences, almost without intercourse with other villages, and without the desires and efforts indispensable to social advance”17. The British, by bringing steam and railways into India initiated regular and rapid communication. Further introduction of roads breaking up the “self sufficient inertia” of Indian villages are some of the effects of British rule, though aimed at confiscating from India wealth in every possible form while “forbidding at the same time propagation of ideas which might not have been favorable for such ends. The modern industry resulting from railway system will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labor, upon which rests the Indian castes”14. But that did not take place, the changes in social atmosphere brought in by modern industry happened to get expropriated to suit the ordering of caste system.

In a paper ‘The Indian caste system and the British ethnographic mapping’15, Kevin Hobson says,” The caste system had been a fascination of the British since their arrival in India. Coming from a society that was divided by class, the British attempted to equate the caste system to the class system. As late as 1937 Professor TC Hodson stated that: ‘Class and caste stand to each other in the relation of family to species. The general classification is by classes, the detailed one by castes. The former represents the external, the latter the internal view of the social organization.’ The difficulty with definitions such as this is that class is based on political and economic factors, caste is not. In fairness to Professor Hodson, by the time of his writing, caste had taken on many of the characteristics that he ascribed to it and that his predecessors had ascribed to it but during the 19th century caste was not what the British believed it to be. It did not constitute a rigid description of the occupation and social level of a given group and it did not bear any real resemblance to the class system. However, this will be dealt with later in this essay. At present, the main concern is that the British saw caste as a way to deal with a huge population by breaking it down into discrete chunks with specific characteristics. Moreover, it appears that the caste system extant in the late 19th and early 20th century has been altered as a result of British actions so that it increasingly took on the characteristics that were ascribed to by the British.

1.14 “What the British failed to realize was that Hindus existed in a different cosmological frame than did the British. The concern of the true Hindu was not his ranking economically within society but rather his ability to regenerate on a higher plane of existence during each successive life”. He goes on to say “A census was undertaken in India, in 1872 for the first time, as one of the main tools used in the British attempt to understand Indian population. The census forced the Indian social system into a written schematic in a way that had never been experienced in the past. While the mughals had issued written decrees on the status of individual castes, there had never been a formal systematic attempt to organize and schedule all of the castes in an official document until the advent of the British census. The data was compiled on the British understanding of India”. Based on the census results, the British formed certain notions about Indian society and “these notions led to classification of intelligence and abilities based on physical attributes and this in turn led to employment opportunities being limited to certain caste groupings that displayed the appropriate attributes. Indians attempted to incorporate themselves into this evolving system by organizing caste ‘sabhas’ with the purpose of attaining improved status within the system. This ran contrary to traditional purpose of caste system and imposed an economic basis. With this, the relevance and importance of the spiritual, non-material rationale for caste was degraded and caste took a far more material meaning. In a sense caste became politicized as decisions regarding caste increasingly fell into political rather than spiritual sphere of influence. With this politicization, caste moved closer to class in connotation… In expropriating the knowledge base of Indian society, the British had forced Indian society and caste system to execute adjustments in order to prosper within the rubric of the British regime”. Thus we can see that caste was appropriated and in many respects reinvented by the British to create what it is now, with Brahman clearly at the head. That such was not the case in earlier times is mentioned, among others, by Dr Subhash Sharma16, who says that “the evolution of the society and customs were mainly due to individual and collective needs and choices. In addition, role and influence of various espoused or suggested proclamations such as, involving ‘varnasrama dharma’, manusmriti, on the development and progress of society at large was rather insignificant.”

5 CASTE- NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS AND BEYOND

1.15 History of India is replete with stories of social moderation efforts or other rearrangements in our multi faceted society. In the early times, if Budhism and Jainism heralded such efforts, we have Sikhism of relatively recent origin, all forerunners of social reformists. Raja Rammohan Roy, who could be called the father of Hindu reformation, gave leadership to Hindu revival in modern times. Dayanand Saraswati and Arya samaj, Annie Besant and Theosophocal society, Ramkrishna, Swami Vivekananda are some of those great ones who tried to cut through the sectarian lines of Indian religious organization, whose life and times certainly had been a source of inspiration for such efforts during freedom movement. However, those not belonging to upper castes, on becoming members realized that these organizations were primarily concerned with resurgence of Hinduism rather than reform as exemplified in the case of Swami Achyuthanand16, one of the important scheduled caste leaders of UP in 1920-30, who was a member of Arya samaj. The untouchables and other low castes resorted to ‘low caste movements’ of various nature, all of which can be broadly classified into two groups, those advocating resilience of hierarchy while adopting the basic notions of caste system or those suggesting adjustments in practice of caste system to include egalitarian precepts, an exception perhaps being found in Mahatmaji’s views on social struggle.

1.16 Mahatmaji’s views, about caste and the many facets of such social ‘ills’, underwent a gradual change, from 1920’s to late 1940’s.

- In 1920, he believed in the inevitability of caste system and that the many fruits that Indian society reaped over centuries were mainly owing to this. As examples, “I believe that caste has saved Hinduism from disintegration18a”, or, “In accepting the fourfold division, I am accepting the laws of nature.18b.”, can be quoted.

-By mid 20’s, he would start downplaying the inevitability of natural division, “In my conception of the law of varna, no one is superior to any other… A scavenger has the same status as a Brahmin18c”.

-As 30’s reached, he started observing that “unequal economic and social status perhaps existed, over the ages, and we have to enrich the inheritance left to us18d” and by 1935, “caste has to go. The sooner the public opinion abolishes it, the better18e”.

-In 1940’s he started expressing the importance of marriages between ‘atishudras’ and caste Hindus. From according “highest importance to marriages between atishudras and caste Hindus18f” and declaring that he will bless a couple “if the girl is from another community only18g”, he reached, by

-1945, understanding inter-caste as well as inter-religious marriage (if necessary, civil marriages), as a welcome reform. And by 1947, he welcomed “inter-religious marriages whenever it took place18h”

Had it not been for his assassination, we would have been witnessing Indian society, more as Gandhiji expressed on numerous occasions, “entire Hindu society converted to my view18i”.

1.17 The path caste took, during birth of free India and her democracy can be summed up thus: “Nevertheless, whether in relation to history of gender, the victimization of dalits, or the rise of anti Brahmin and backward caste politics, caste has worked to compromise the easy applications of national unity and civilized history. Caste has become the focus of progressive movements and of debates about the character of post colonial politics. It has also become the uncomfortable reminder that all claims about community are claims about privilege, participation and exclusion… caste has simultaneously preserved the patriarchy of pre-modern society and worked to sanction the continued oppression and exclusion of women in nationalist re-imaginings of the past. Caste may be the precipitate of the modern, but it is still the specter of the past19”.

6 CASTE – MY SIDE- A History of singularities

While studying the origins of caste system, an error seems to have crept into all the theories mentioned earlier, is that no theory, takes the philosophical plane of existence of caste (referring to caste as ‘varna’, an abstraction), into account. Though some authors23 tend to believe that castes are ‘hardened’ form of social classes (with implications such as ‘the upper caste might have been formed from the existing higher classes in society’), this is only a conjecture. Social classes are not founded upon occupational limitation where as castes certainly are. The class can be thought of as ‘presenting the external view of social organization’, caste, ‘the internal, abstract view’. Also, with further delineations, caste must have originated from varna as a mechanism for enabling selection of marriage partners. A ‘caste’ system on similar lines is followed among Australian aboriginals31, as described by Felix Keesing, where caste groupings play an important role in selecting partners in a way suitable for preventing progression of many problems where heredity plays a part. (For such a property of caste to manifest, it is necessary that caste is not fixed at birth as it is done in India)

An examination of our ‘puranic’ texts reveals that our forefathers spent much effort in ‘classification’ as a primary step in learning or understanding. Thus we have all objects, animate or inanimate, all actions and other abstractions classified into esoteric groups or subgroups, each having identifiable properties. Many methods are mentioned about stratification, say, of men and women into ‘varna’ based on intellectual orientation, of women into different types based on certain social nature (‘Kamasutra of Vatsyayana is a detailed treatise of this), of maidens, liars, thieves and other activities of war and love, to list a few. ‘Arthsastra’ of ‘Chanakya’ contain much dissertation on such topics.24

Nowhere in later writings or in social customs can these romantic delineations be seen as having been practiced widely. Of the myriad of themes our ‘puranic’ texts contain, caste alone became instituted in later social life, and this can be attributed to the ‘singularities’ in social evolution in India.

6.1 The first singularity is our philosophy or the way in which we understood our philosophy. For example, it treats possessions as bringing misery to man, leading therefore to a life, where, lesser the possessions, more desirable the life becomes. We, I think, do not realize that story of progress humans made so far is the story of our efforts, in adding new possessions, retaining a few or in the destruction of some. This did lead, as Marx observed earlier14, to formation of caste as the result of ‘the total lack of social intercourse’ compounded by ‘absence of desires and efforts indispensable to social advance’.

6.2 Next singularity is the attack by various invaders, almost all of them contributing to changes in social appearance of caste system, due to, their inability in appreciating Indian caste system as well as their ability in shaping caste system to suit the needs of governing the vanquished. British, though had to the longest lasting empire in India, did nothing to alter the existing caste equations or for social restructuring. This stands in opposition to their efforts in the direction of welfare of aborigines and their integration in another part of British Empire, Australia, even though “several of the tribes of southern India, who were of the race ‘Homo

Dravida’ (as he called it), had more in common with Australian aboriginals than their Aryan or high caste neighbours.”30

. For example, “When Dr Cecil Cook was appointed Chief Protector in 1927; he was wholly unsupportive of the missions. This was partly because of the poor conditions. More importantly, Cook had a similar vision of assimilation as West Australian Chief Protector A.O. Neville. Cook supported biological assimilation. Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white29.” The British view is better expressed thus, which perhaps explains why caste is still a problem in India, we are dutifully preserving a British legacy: “As Lord Dufferin put it: ‘The diversity of races in India and the presence of a powerful Mohamedan community, are undoubtedly favourable to the maintenance of our rule…”31

6.3 Another singularity is Mahatma Gandhi. His views contained “I believe in ‘varnashrama’ of the Vedas which is based on absolute equality of status, notwithstanding passages to the contrary elsewhere”,…”The most effective, quickest, and the most unobtrusive way to destroy caste is for reformers to begin the practice with themselves…” and “The higher classes will have to descend from their pedestal…”18e. His advice to the lower caste was that they should “endeavor to merge themselves in the ocean of Hindu community” and “trust merit to command attention”18j. On another occasion, he is seen as proclaiming that reserving seats (for positions) is a dangerous principle. ”Protection of neglected classes should not be carried to an extent which will harm them…” and a person after he has secured a seat in an elected body should “depend upon his intrinsic merit and popularity to secure coveted positions”18k. To the castemen, on the other hand, his advice was that they “should prove that they had obliterated caste by their readiness to take up all those occupations which the ‘untouchables’ engaged in. Thus they should be ready to do a scavengers work….. The system of cleaning toilets would then be automatically transformed. In England real Bhangis were famous engineers and sanitarians… who had a perfectly clean way of dealing with human excreta… Needless to say, the Harijans will live in the same streets as others without any segregation…”.

Given that the prestige and influence Gandhiji had at that time, above mentioned changes would have taken place, leading to a social revolution as he would have been hoping for, resulting in a generation having, greater degree of cohesion in society, upper caste much less ‘upper’ and lower caste none ‘lower’ than any other, but for the social and political changes brought in when we introduced draft constitution with certain provisions, like reservation, for dealing with caste problem. Perhaps the very adoption of the idea of reservation without much debate25 by framers of constitution might have been hastened by the ‘preposterous’ suggestions of Gandhiji, the acceptance of which would certainly have resulted in them or their progeny (for sure) to have lost their exclusiveness (which caste status brought).

6.4 Communism presented another singularity. Our idea of caste and the way we found solutions to the problems it posed was altered much under the influences of communism and the revolutions in Russia and China.

(Communism in fact has more than on face. What we commonly see, a group of young (and may be not so young) men and women charged with ideals and the desire to see the ‘plight’ of many changed for the better, is one. A group (this may be a smaller one) of ‘intellectuals’ who manufacture propositions convincing enough to inspire, propel and guide them in their quest, making them move forward with incessant thrust, is another. The former is responsible for all that we welcome in a change, the alacrity, the selfless devotion of protagonists and absence of any motive or consanguineous profit other than for benefit of all. In short, in communism, those who follow the precepts are the best of humanity and the system hence produce good results even though they the philosophy is flawed. Also, as there isn’t any self interest, in communism, every effort yield favorable results, and that might be the reason that no one noticed the contradictions it contained, till communism collapsed.)

During communism in Russia26, the famines of 1921 and 1932-33 resulted in the death of more 5 million people each (Not counting additional deaths of 7-8 million people in the violence involved with ‘dekulakization’ during the period 1930-37)

In China, communists adopted genetic theory ‘lysenkoism’27, a modified form of Lamarckism, one of the main beliefs of which is that, like species help each other whereas unlike species do not, in guiding state farming policy. Accordingly, Mao ordered, organization of agriculture into collectives, introduction of certain farming practices like close planting, deep plowing, non use of chemical fertilizer etc, resulting in massive fall in agricultural output giving rise to a famine on a scale never before seen in China, in the period 1958-61, resulting in the death of a staggering 30 to 40 million Chinese.

In India, ‘lysenkoism’ and the possibility of inheriting environmentally acquired characteristics proposed by that theory perhaps supported the ‘reservationists’, as well as providing them with the necessary scientific foundation to ‘reservation’ as a panacea for all social inequalities. This also might have been the reason that none of the eminent reformers could see anything disadvantageous in it.

6.4 Next singularity, the most potent of all, is reservation or its euphemism, social justice. Wide acceptance of reservation as the panacea for all the ills associated with social stratification is, I think, due to the influence of communism, specifically, of the ‘scientific’ tenets propounded by Lysenkoism. The romantic thought, of lower caste brethren being uplifted enmasse by a small degree of social adjustment on the part of upper caste people must have influenced our constitution makers.

The desirable changes reservation system did bring in, and is doing so have been discussed at length, the general idea emerging from all these is that,

- Reservation system offers many advantages to the downtrodden, marginalized sections,

- The disadvantage of reservation system is that(mainly) opportunities are being denied for upper caste people, that is to say,

- Advantages of ‘reservation’ shall be to lower castes, and

- Disadvantages of ‘reservation’ shall be felt by upper castes

Such an idea is preposterous. Reservation system may be providing certain advantages to marginalized sections, however, some disadvantages also is their share. The most substantial of such disadvantages is that, it reduces or takes away opportunities of competition. As competition is removed from those from lower castes, they also are denied the fruits of competition, which, as is well known, is growth, intellectual et al. This is the most serious effect of reservation, and if we are also to consider the fact that, simultaneously, upper castes, due to greater opportunities of competition(or opportunities for sharper competition) made available to them as a side effect of reservation, are growing further in all faculties at a faster rate, the intellectual(for one) gap between lower and upper caste people will be on the increase, as generations go by, making it difficult to cohabit, at least as equal beings.

Even this could have been introduced in a manner befitting, or as an incentive to, growth. For example, ‘reservations’, if limited to jobs needing higher educational or academic performance shall be forcing lower castes to attain greater standards in learning. As mentioned earlier, the desire in providing an alternative to ‘wild’ suggestions of Gandhiji might have blinded all reformists from seeing any such possibilities.

In a study focusing on the ‘role of education in social mobility within the context of class structure’ by Hiroshi Ishida et al27, class origin (corresponds to respondent’s father’s class) and class destination (current class of respondent) are seen to have been influenced by

- Unequal access to education for different class origins. ‘two forms of educational advantage to sons of professional and managerial class(read upper castes), a better access to higher levels of education and an avoidance of lower levels’.

- Allocation of class positions(of destination) influenced by class origin. ‘Here also, highly qualified people have advantage in access to professional and managerial positions, but they also may be successful in avoiding manual positions. Conversely, poorly qualified are not only excluded from professional and managerial positions, they are more likely to be recruited to manual positions’. (Reserving such jobs for low castes is, adding fuel to fire)

Effect of education on class reproduction and mobility is remarkably uniform across nations with the exception of two socialist nations, namely, Poland and Hungary, of this study, where, more people can be seen as choosing manual and unskilled classes as destination, irrespective of class origin. In this, a major obstacle to equality of educational opportunity probably comes from the resistance of service class origin (e.g. managerial classes) to low qualifications, in addition to having access to high qualifications. While in case of lower classes, even when they were provided with access to high qualifications, as they are now, “the easy availability of low qualifications and the possibility of finding a livelihood effectively prevented them from reaching higher destinations”. Also, the low classes lack the ‘cultural traits’ necessary for entry into higher levels of education. Thus, as the cultural needs and desires, the fulfillment of which is the yearning of all who try to achieve better positions in life, are not fully developed in the case of lower castes, it is all the more important that this possibility of ‘finding a livelihood with low qualifications’ is eliminated, for education to be of use as an expedient.

6.5 Next and probably the last singularity may happen sometime in the future, many (or may be few) generations from today. In his well known essay on “Biological Possibilities for the Human Species in the Next Ten Thousand Years”28, JBS Haldane mentions of the possibility of human species “dividing into two or more branches for development of different human capacities. To me this is a terrible danger, as such species should fail to understand each other… and such misunderstanding can generate quarrels and even war.” This singularity though shall be befalling on all cultures, its effect on the already stratified (intellectually) Indian society shall be momentous, we might be on that ‘branch’ of the ‘species’ we wouldn’t want to be.

7 Caste – a summary

Caste is a relic of dark ages. It did not evolve into a modernized version naturally as we were not the real custodians of our society, having been under foreign rule for many years and those ruled over finding great use in caste, halting any such prospect. Other countries had their share of such customs which are even more shocking, like lynching or burning at stake, various entertainments of Roman Empire, all of which, evolved into something less obnoxious, as time went by. Even in recent times, some countries continued following many questionable practices and one such in the area of eugenics can be cited as example, where, compulsory abortion or other control over reproduction is imposed32.

Only one medicine has been tried so far towards demolition of caste and that is reservation. It is only logical to realize that as the cure did not work, we need to change medication.

NOTES

1 The Indian Antiquary

a) May 1917 ‘Caste in India, Genesis, Mechanism and Development-

BR Ambedkar This theses describes the role of caste system in establishing the customs of ‘sati’, ‘girl marriage’ as well as perpetuation of widowhood et al,,., in Hindu society.

b) March 1930 “Origin of the Caste system in India’- S Charles Hill

c) April 1930 ………………………do…………continued

d) October 1930 ……………………….do…….…..continued

1 An Introduction to Sociology

DR Sachdeva and Vidya Bhushan

3 ‘Hindu caste system and Hinduism- vedic vocations were not related to heredity’- Dr Subhash C Sharma

www.geocities.com/lamberdar/_caste.html

4 Quoted in ‘Caste race and sociologists’- Gail Omvedt

5 a)Caste and Bhagawat Gita – Ambassador(to Finland) O P Gupta, IFS http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13167991

b)http://www.palikanon.com/

6 ‘Origins of Castes and Tribes in India’

R Cordaux et al Current Biology 2004 14:231

7 ‘Molecular Anthropology’ M Bamshad et al

http://jorde-lab.genetics.utah.edu/elibrary/Babshad_2001a.pdf

8 ‘Ethnic India- A Genomic view with special reference to peopling and structure’ Partha P Majumdar, Anabala Basu et al.

ISI Calcutta etc

9 ‘Caste and gender equations in Indian history’

a) http://india_resource.tripod.com/social.htm

b) http://india_resource.tripod.com/sahistory.htm

10 ‘The history of Herodotus’, Book I CLIO

Translated by George Rawlinson

http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html

11 ‘Battle for Liberation, Then and Now’

Annie Namala and Paul Divakar www.labourfile.org

a treatise tracing the efforts in rehabilitation of scavengers over the years. It mentions that, ‘Narada smriti’, though enumerates 15 kinds of slaves including those engaged in disposal of human excreta; there is no reference to untouchability.

12 History of Dharmasastra

13 ‘The race war’ Ronald Seghal JonathanCape 1966

14 ‘The future results of British rule in India’ Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune 8 August 1853 www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm

15 ‘The Indian caste system and the British- Ethnographic mapping and the construction of the British census in India’ Kevin Hobson

www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITcastebritishframeset.htm

16 mentioned at http://kellog.nd.edu/events/pdfs/Jaffrelot.pdf

17 This could explain how endogamy came to be instituted in Indian society. Absence of roads perpetuating village isolation, the only way to ensure continuation of species might have been adopted, endogamy. That such isolation affected our society, in more ways than one, can be seen, in the interesting fact that even in 19th century kerala, those who cross river ‘Bharatapuzha’ were liable for excommunication, or from observing that one of the significant sources of state’s income(in Kerala ) was tax imposed on lower caste men for sporting a moustache.

18 ‘Mahatma Gandhi – the collected works’ Delhi(58-94)

a) Vol XIX p 83

b) Vol XXIX p 410

c) Vol XXXV p 260

d) Vol LIX p 319

e) Vol LXII p 121

f) Vol LXXX p 77

g) Vol LXXX p 99

h) Vol LXIV p 35

i) Vol LXLI p 318

j) Vol LVIII p 163

k) Vol LXXVI p 314

A detailed study, tracing ‘the change in Gandhi’s ideas about varna and intermarriage over the years’ is “HOW GANDHI CAME TO BELIEVE CASTE MUST BE DISMANTLED BY INTER MARRIAGE”

-Prof Mark Lindley

http://www.bfg-muenchen.de/caste.htm

19 Caste as India

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7191.html

20 ‘Ancient India as described by Megastanese and Arrian’

John W McGrindle(Retired principal Patna college)

21 ‘Inscriptions of Nepal’ DR Rajmi

22 ‘Asoka- His history’ Vincent Smith

23 ‘Caste class and race’ Oliver Cromwell Cox

24 Had this propensity for classification been continuing as such, much contribution could have come from Indian culture, towards scientific development, to note one possibility. Like most of the scientific terms having a Greek origin, we could have been having such terms in many an area, having Indian origin.

25 constituent assembly debates

http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol7p3b.htm

Pandit Thakur Dass Bhargava: opposes reservation during the debates while discussing art 294 of Indian constitution. “…… it may be said that in wealth, social influence and social status they are inferior, but all the same I want that their position may be leveled up in ways other than by reservation of seats… will be very harmful…”

http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol9p17b.htm

Shri Brajeshwar Prasad: “…The problems (the scheduled castes face) are primarily educational and of an economic character. They are of a cultural character. We want to raise the cultural level of these down-trodden and oppressed people. I do not see how their representation in the legislatures will in any way alter the material and the moral level of these people. Representations here and there will provide opportunities for a handful of leaders but it will not in any way materially alter their economic or their educational level. Better lay down in the Constitution that a fixed percentage in the budget, both Central and Provincial, shall be exclusively devoted for their welfare…I am quite clear in my own mind that by giving them a few seats here and there, their economic condition and their education level will in no way be improved”.

26 http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine

The Soviet Famines of 1921 and 1932-3

Ukrainian agronomist, Trofim D. Lysenko, well known for ‘scientific declarations’ regarding the perniciousness of genetics.

In the U.S.S.R. of the 1930s, Trofim D. Lysenko rose to considerable power by claiming that his version of genetics, rather than that of Mendel and Darwin, could assist in the development of socialist ideology. If each successive generation of citizens had to be educated in Marxist ideology, he claimed, the utopia they envisioned would take too long to be realized. Rather, Lysenko rejected Mendelian heredity as bourgeois, and interpreted Marx as stating that man and nature are improvable and perfectable. He claimed, for example, that a winter wheat could be changed to a spring variety simply by altering the temperature at which it was grown, and that, by similar means, he could change wheat into rye in one generation. Darwin’s struggle for existence, too, was dismissed as a bourgeois tool used to justify competition-based capitalist society. His erroneous assertions dominated Soviet biology for 30 years. He was eventually ousted, in 1965, due to rampant crop failures and shortages. Lysenkoism has come to represent the devastating consequences of marrying science to ideology. http://www.galafilm.com/afterdarwin/english/glossary/lysenkoism.html

http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/165/1/1.pdf

http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/lysenkoism.shtml

27 Hiroshi Ishida, Walter Müller, and John M. Ridge. 1995. “Class Origin, Class Destination, and Education: A Cross-National Study of Ten Industrial Nations”. American Journal of Sociology 101: 145-193.

28 “Biological Possibilities for the Human Species in the Next Ten Thousand Years” J. B. S. Haldane

http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/Haldanebioposs.htm

One possibility mentioned in this essay is production of a human clone, which, of course, has already taken place.

29 Bringing them home – The History

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/bth/text_versions/map/history/nt.html

30 Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: the early origins of Indian anthropometry – Crispin Bates

http://www.csas.ed.ac.uk/fichiers/BATES_RaceCaste&Tribe.pdf

31 Cultural Anthropology Felix M Keesing,

The aborigines have an intricate classification system that defines kinship relations and regulates marriages, men and women grouped as Banaka, Burung, Karimera and Palyeri. Rules of marriage, descent, and residence determine how these sections interact: Karimera men must marry Palyeri women, and their children are Burung, Banaka men must marry Burung women and their children are Karimera and so on. Sons live in the same hordes as their fathers, so the composition of hordes alternates every generation. The complex system, by requiring each man to marry a woman from only one of the three possible sections, fosters a broad network of social relations and creates familial solidarity within the horde as a whole. Aborigines maintain elaborate systems of totemism (the belief that there is a genealogical relationship between people and species of plants or animals). They see the relationship between totemic plants and animals as a symbolic map of the relations between different people.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17404/17404.txt lists ‘caste’ names as

Burong (Parungo),

Ballieri (Parajerri; Butcharrie),

Banaka (Boogarloo),

Kymerra (Kaiamba), for example for one tribe, each tribe having different ‘castes’

32 htttp://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa49740.000/hfa49740_0.HTM Civilizations can be judged by how they treat women, children, old people, and strangers. Vulnerable people bring out the kindness in every society and also the cruelty. Every so often, they become the object of practices so vile that they will cause people to recoil in horror across the centuries. One such practice is forced abortion, another is forced sterilization. The world has known for well over 15 years now that the Government of China routinely compels women to abort their unauthorized unborn children and that the Chinese men and women are often forcibly sterilized.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=D32EE0B42BA9215764FCF0CAC4F9A7E6.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=255383 The recent development of molecular genetics has created concern that society may experience a new eugenics. This paper argues that the dominant view of eugenics as morally and scientifically illegitimate is not tenable when it comes to the uses of compulsion, political motivation, and scientific acceptability. In spite of a general condemnation of eugenics, health authorities today are trying to prevent individuals with deviant behavior from reproducing or at least from rearing children.

The months between the cherries and the peaches

Are brimming cornucopias which spill


 

Fruits red and purple, somber-bloomed and black;

Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches

We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill

Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback.

—Elinor Wylie1

I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that’s practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course.

—Jack Kerouac2

  In October of 1998, Jiao-Tong, the literary editor of the China Times in Taipei, Taiwan, invited me to write an essay on American food in American literature for presentation at the first International Conference on Food and Literature that was held in Taipei in May of 1999.  I thought that I would find many secondary source books on this topic.  After extensive searches of the net and communications with several professors of American literature at universities in the United States and Canada, I was quite surprised to find no book in print on the topic.  Not only was there no book about it there was also no single article that directly addressed my topic.  The absence of secondary sources explains why most of the references in this essay are to primary sources.  The limitations on time and space for this writing further explain why I have limited my survey of American literature to novels, short stories and poetry.  I have tried to make a representative selection among novelists, short story writers and poets including writers from almost two hundred years of American literature, both genders and a variety of ethnic groups.  Because there are so many versions of primary works that I cite, I have limited those citations to author’s name, title of work and internal part such as verse, chapter, or section and omitted page numbers of the particular versions that I used.  Less well-known works, collections and anthologies receive standard citation format.

To bring some order to this vast quantity of material, I have created three themes around which I can weave what I have found about American food in American literature: continuity and discontinuity; purity and impurity; and, abundance and scarcity.  These three themes allow several important truths about the American experience through time to appear as preoccupations of its writers as well.  For example, the great changes wrought on the land and the indigenous peoples were accompanied by profound and lasting attachments to European food habits.  Also, the tremendous abundance of natural resources and artificial wealth in America has long coexisted with devastated land and utter poverty.  The greatest American writers, such as Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway and Steinbeck, have repeatedly recognized and embodied these extremes in their plots and in their characters, much as they are embodied in the every day lives and personalities of Americans.

As an introductory frame for my presentation, I would like to offer some possible explanations for the lack of secondary sources.  First, I think that most of the famous and popular American foods, such as pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream are derivative from European foods.  The pizza came from Italy.  The hot dog is a version of the German sausage.  Hamburgers are reformed meatballs joined with bread that is as old as agricultural civilization itself.  And ice cream also has its counterparts in the cuisine of European nations.  So the first reason for the lack of secondary sources is that most American foods are derivative and not original to America.

An ironic counterexample in this context is the Chinese fortune cookie.  As a food item, it has very little nutrition, but as a part of the American idea of Chinese food it has become a necessity at American Chinese restaurants.  However, I have asked several owners, waiters and waitresses in American Chinese restaurants whether Chinese fortune cookies came from China.  All of them have told me that they did not.  They were invented in America and most likely, according to this oral history, in San Francisco.  This seems to me to be a credible history.  San Francisco grew as a city on the money generated by high-risk professions such as whaling, shipping, gold mining and offshore ocean fishing.  We can easily imagine an enterprising Chinese person noting how concerned the Americans in these professions were with their future good luck or bad luck, putting this understanding together with a well-established American liking for sweet desserts, and creating a sweet dessert that looked different and contained words of wisdom about the consumer’s fate.

 Second, until the last few decades, American literature and literary criticism were dominated by males whose worldview connected food with women and put them both in the kitchen and out of sight.  Most of the male writers whom I read for this essay used food and activities around food to highlight aspects of character or plot.  They did not present food gathering and preparation, cooking, serving, eating, drinking and cleaning up as activities that substantially reinforced aspects of their main characters, most of whom are men, or as events that substantially advanced the plot, story-line or themes of their writing. 

Indeed, a related topic could be included in this kind of study that has to do with care of the body generally.  For example, it is extremely rare for any American writer to mention such bodily functions as excretion or urination.  Different kinds of breathing are certainly associated with different kinds of emotional and physical conditions, such as fear, sorrow, fatigue, exertion or contemplation.  But like food, other bodily processes are usually ignored, taken for granted or glossed.  I mention this topic only in passing, and do not have the time or space here to dwell on it, but simply to point out that focusing on food as a topic in relation to literature is an important innovation that signifies a range of human activities whose presence or silence in literature would be an interesting expansion of this focus.     

Third, as an American, I feel that most Americans take food for granted.  We tend to view it as an unavoidable burden placed on our freedom of activity by the condition of having a physical body.  We tend, especially in the last decade of the 20th century, to try to minimize as much as possible the time and energy required for all phases of life connected with physical nourishment of our bodies.    The growth, popularity and power of the fast food industry in America reflect this disdain for the necessities of physical nourishment.

After the Allied victory in World War II, the US experienced unprecedented prosperity while applications of new technology allowed older tasks to be done with increasing speed.  The complete acceptance of free market competition, in an ideological, political and economic opposition to centralized, planned economies and societies, the tremendous success of rapid, large-scale mass production in support of military forces during the war, and the increasingly tense and complicated struggle between capitalism and communism began to change the values of American society from the slower, simpler values of agricultural life and rural living to the faster, more complicated values of industrial production and urban living.  Speed began its emergence as a paramount American value.  For example, in 1955, shortly before the experiences recorded in Kerouac’s On the Road, the two fast food companies that are now the largest in America—McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken—were founded.  “By the early 1980s there were about 440 food franchising companies with a combined total of more than 70,000 retail outlets in the United States.”3  Americans from smaller, more congested living situations in Europe slowly adjusted to the scope of the American land and its resources.  Size, especially bigness, became a common value in all areas of American life.  With the advent of speed as a value, the American ideology for the remainder of the 20th century gained its primary outlines—the bigger the better, the faster the better.  From automobiles to hamburgers, this ideology began increasingly to govern how Americans thought about everything they did.  Both values play significant and signifying roles in the relationship between American food and American literature.   

Besides the social environment of European derivation, male dominance and indifference toward food, there is the traditional character of the successful American writer.  Most of America’s most famous writers were and continue to be male.  Most of these male writers, such as Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Poe, and Miller, continually placed their leading characters, most of whom were males, in positions that required the creation of a stable and meaningful life.  Like the first colonists, like the pioneers, like the immigrants, their characters are continually faced with challenges to their survival, their ability and their manhood where the latter is defined in terms of overt verbal and physical superiority rather than mutual, cooperative care or nurturing.  An ironic counter-example is Ayn Rand, a female writer who totally accepted the values of competition, personal power and rugged individualism. Her powerful male characters, such as the nearly godlike architect in Atlas Shrugged, are faced with problems and situations that demand forceful, individual creation and production on large scales. 

The fact that creation and production also consumed energy, resources, time and money was not a central concern until the beginnings of the environmental movement in the late 50’s and early 60’s.  The fact that creation and production often resulted in the emotional and physical deprivation of less independent beings, such as children, animals, women, the poor, and members of minority ethnic groups was also not a central concern of American writers or critics until the late 50’s and early 60’s.  The earlier writers felt driven to produce and reproduce the feelings, drives, imagery and characters of male-oriented, individualistic creation and production in their writings.  As a consequence, many of the facts of life, such as eating, drinking, digesting, excreting and nurturing were consistently absent, implied, glossed or ignored.

These are at least four reasons why there is such a scarcity of secondary sources on the topic of American food in American literature.  It is, in effect, a book waiting to be written.

Fortunately, however, there are many instances of food in American literature and they do show some interesting patterns and features.  I have created three themes to focus these patterns and features: continuity and discontinuity; purity and impurity; and, abundance and scarcity.  First I am going to briefly described the substance and justification of each theme and then proceed with the literary material that especially illustrates and is illuminated by each theme.

A.            Continuity and Discontinuity.  The first European colonists on the East Coast of America experienced several discontinuities and began creating others.  From crowded European cities and farmlands they came to vast, sparsely inhabited forests, mountains and valleys.  From the rigidly intolerant societies of many 16th and 17th century European countries they came to a land whose societies, those of the indigenous peoples, were completely strange and closed to them.  From lives of poverty and scarcity they came to a land that gradually disclosed resources and riches beyond their wildest dreams.  From old, settled areas in Europe that had long ago been tamed by the sword, the plow, the cross and the crown they came to wilderness that seemed indifferent to the grandeur and traditions of European civilization.

Within these discontinuities they also created discontinuities in the lives of the indigenous peoples, by war, trade and intermarriage.  In the natural life cycles of the new land, they also began creating discontinuities by the invasive activities of logging, farming, mining, urbanization, hunting and fishing.  The cultivation of extremes that have

become fixtures of American life began at this time.  There were Americans who loved the wilderness and the indigenous ways and shed as many of their European ways as possible.  There were Americans who loathed the wilderness and the native ways and strove either to change them or destroy them.  These latter among the early colonists insisted on the continuation of European religions and languages, official protocols, social forms and manners and whatever foods they could make in the new world, such as bread, or have shipped from Europe without spoilage, such as tea.

The indigenous people fell before the larger and larger waves of Europeans most of whom firmly believed that the best Indian was a dead Indian.  For example, it is estimated that in 1600 there were approximately 10,000,000 indigenous people living in many different groups, or tribes, across the American continent.  By 1900, under an official US government policy of extermination, that total had fallen to approximately 500,000.  The impact of the new inhabitants on the land has been no less powerful.  In 1600, most of the land east of the Mississippi River and west of the Rocky Mountains was covered with mixed hardwood and deciduous forests.  By 1990, less than 3% of the original trees remained standing.

Besides the clash of Europeans and indigenous peoples, the growing population of Americans cultivating land for crops, especially cotton and tobacco, sold to a growing population of consumers in Europe provided a market for human labor—slaves.  The slave trade, initiated by the Dutch and pursued by almost every Western European country with seafaring expertise, created extreme discontinuities in many aspects of African life that are beyond the scope of this essay.  But the importation of Africans as slaves created an entirely new stream of Americans, subjected for two hundred years to plantation conditions of near starvation, who invented and innovated with the meager edible material accessible to them.  Their creativity has contributed many different kinds of distinctively American foods, such as chitlins, greens, and an entire range of foods centered in the bayou area of Louisiana known as Cajun food.  Along with original contributions made by the indigenous peoples to the first colonists’ and pioneers’ diets such as corn, some of these food items that have lasted longer than the institution of slavery itself have also found places in American literature.

B.             Purity and Impurity.  The early colonists on the American East Coast brought with them a deep fear of hell and a deep desire to purify their lives of any elements that prevented the practice of true Christianity.  True Christianity meant for them a literal reading of the bible and a literal construction of human social life around the teachings and tenets of the bible.  Red, for them, was the color of the devil, the color of evil and the color of the indigenous people.  Pure black and pure white were their colors of choice.

Those Americans who loved the wilderness, however, quickly adopted the use of multi-colored animal skins for clothing and natural dyes for coloring cloth or their skin.  It was therefore no mere historical accident that the American cultural revolution of the 60’s adopted wildly colored clothing, vehicles, hair and language as an obvious and dramatic signifier against the dark suits, white shirts, dark ties and dark shoes of establishment figures.  It was no historical accident that the beatniks and hippies both reached out for foods that differed greatly in flavor, color, smell, taste and texture from white bread, roast beef, boiled potatoes, oatmeal, milk and tea.  It was also no historical accident that some of the most influential writers of this era, such as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, found deep and lasting inspiration from the literature and the food of lands and peoples far beyond the American shores.

C.            Abundance and Scarcity.  From 1895 to 1915, approximately 23,000,000 immigrants moved from Europe to the United States.  These people came from all parts of Europe.  They left living conditions characterized by poverty, political turmoil and oppression and lack of any kind of opportunity for improvement.  America was a land that promised to make their dreams of prosperity, wealth, abundance and freedom come true.  Many of those immigrants made their fortunes in America then returned with them to their families in Europe.  But many others stayed in America, had their families there and began contributing tastes, colors and flavors to an increasingly heterogeneous American scene.  This period of intense migration saw the beginnings of neighborhoods in major cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. These were ethnic enclaves for Italians, Poles, Germans, Jews, as well as Blacks trying to find an alternative to the militarily defeated but still powerful racism of their former southern masters, or others whose strong sense of group identity always brought with it special foods that were amplified by the increasingly large scales of American life.

At the same time, the rapid growth of large-scale manufacturing, in factories employing tens of thousands of immigrants who were poorly paid and allowed only a minimal education beyond the background of their European origins, turned some of these neighborhoods into the first American slums and ghettos.  Extremely low wages, non-existent social services, waves of unemployment and the increasing pressure of large families and new arrivals frequently put many of these new Americans on the edges of malnutrition, hunger and even starvation. Abundance and scarcity began to appear as poles of a socioeconomic oscillation driven not by such obvious institutions as slavery but by beliefs, prejudices and attitudes about the superiority and inferiority of different kinds of peoples coupled with firmly established patterns of access and lack of access to resources.  The negative shock of World War I was followed by the positive euphoria of the roaring 20’s.  That decade of unprecedented prosperity and national expansion was followed by the great depression of the 30’s.  America was clearly moving into the vanguard of a world order whose extremes ranged from genocide to population explosion, from starvation to rotting surpluses and from worn feet in foul mud to toenail polish in satin slippers on polished marble. 

A first glimpse of the theme of continuity and discontinuity can be seen by comparing the two citations at the beginning of this essay. Elinor Wylie lived from 1885 to 1928.  Jack Kerouac lived from 1922 to 1969.  Ripe fruit appears as an edible food from the tree in Wylie’s poem and as an ingredient of pie in Kerouac’s novel.  Wylie’s cherries and peaches are closer to unprocessed nature than Kerouac’s baked apple pie.  Wylie’s poem signifies the rootedness of the early European colonists in a land that provided ample foodstuffs.  Kerouac’s novel signifies the restlessness of urban Americans for whom food had become an uninteresting necessity. 

Wylie’s poem signifies abundance and therefore the value of bigness without the addition of speed that played such an important role in the life of Kerouac’s main character, Dean Moriarty.

In fact, Dean Moriarty was based on the real man, Neal Cassady.  In 1964, I was living in Palo Alto, California, having dropped out of Stanford University to try my hand at writing fiction and poetry.     I met a lovely young woman who was a first year student at Stanford and invited her to a party.  The party was in a house in the east side of Palo Alto that was increasingly known as a suitable place for non-conformists and beatniks.  The party featured many people whom neither my friend nor I knew along with much wine.  It also featured some very unusual people.  At one point during the party we were drinking wine in the small, brightly-lit kitchen.  In a commotion of laughing, talking people, a young man with a brilliant smile and ringing laughter, whose feet seemed barely able to stay on the floor, floated and flew through the room while the man who had invited me to the party introduced him to me as Neal Cassady.  He acknowledged me and disappeared out another door.  I never saw him again but retain to this day the vivid impression of light and speed that he also seems to have given to Kerouac.

The continuity between Wylie’s poem and Kerouac’s novel is indicated by the American saying, “It’s as American as apple pie!”  Another kind of continuity appears, moreover, when the verse after the one quoted above from Wylie’s poem is considered:

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones

There’s something in this richness that I hate.

I love the look, austere, immaculate,

Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.

There’s something in my very blood that owns

Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,

A thread of water, churned to milky spate

Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.4

Taken together, this verse and the one quoted at the beginning of this essay dramatically display all three themes.  There is continuity and discontinuity between the doctrines of a European religious heritage, Puritanism, that emphasized great worldly achievements but as little worldly display as possible.  One of Max Weber’s most important contributions to our understanding of the modern Protestant viewpoint is his clear delineation of the conflict in early Protestantism between acquiring great wealth to signify being in god’s favor and displaying only humility to the rest of the world without the material ostentation that the Pietists, the Puritans, the Luddites and many other Protestant groups found so distasteful in Catholicism.

Weber argues, convincingly, I think, that the “Puritan, like every rational type of asceticism, tried to enable a man [sic] to maintain and act upon his constant motives, especially those which it taught himself itself, against the emotions.”5   The goal of this action was to lead a certain kind of life “freed from all the temptations of the world and in all its details dictated by God’s will, and thus to be made certain of their own rebirth [in heaven after the last judgment] by external signs manifested in their daily conduct.”6 From the Bible as well as from all other religious literature, success in difficult tasks is a clear sign of God’s favor.  For Protestants, such signs do not guarantee salvation but they are the closest to a guarantee that a Protestant can get.  Indeed, that “God Himself blessed his chosen ones through the success of their labours was…undeniable…to the Puritans.”7  This doctrine that combined asceticism with success in worldly endeavors positioned Protestantism to be the driving religious force behind capitalism and the great creations and accumulations of material wealth that have occurred in modernity.  But it is no less true that this combination can be a rhythm, an oscillation, a confusion or conflict.  This combination clearly provides much of the historical substance for our themes of abundance and scarcity and purity and impurity.

A condensed example of the oscillation between abundance and the austerity of American Puritanism can be seen in a brief passage from the short story, The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether, by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49).  This passage also underlines the way in which food and the activities surrounding food have been treated by many of America’s greatest male writers—as unavoidable but uninteresting necessities, even in a fictional setting:  “The table was superbly set out.  It was loaded with plate, and more than loaded with delicacies.  The profusion was absolutely barbaric.  There were enough meats to have feasted the Anakim.  Never, in all my life, had I witnessed so lavish, so wasteful an expenditure of the good things of life.”8

The tension between the narrator and his hosts in Poe’s tale is echoed by the tension between the narrator and the main character in On the Road.  The quote from Jack Kerouac is part of the first-person narration of the novel by Sal Paradise, the supporting, secondary character that is based on Kerouac himself.  For the duration of his cross-country hitchhiking trip, he lives on apple pie and ice cream.  This diet reflects not only Sal’s poverty, but also clearly situates the novel in a continuous American tradition that de-emphasizes the bodily, physical or material world.  A discontinuity, however, occurs between the naturalness of the fruits in Wylie’s poem and the impersonal, processed food that Sal Paradise ate.  A further discontinuity appears in the fact that Sal is taking his food on the road, on the run, at high speed, while Wylie is painting a picture of humans relating to trees that by their nature cannot move from where they are.

Wylie’s poetic picture is drawn from her life in New England.  Many of the first colonists stayed on or close to the coast because it allowed them to continue the seafaring lives and occupations they had practiced in Europe and because it provided an abundance of food.  However, their Puritan ideology often resulted in lives that were lived as far from that abundance as Wylie’s “cold silver on a sky of slate.”  Another American poetess, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), was born in Massachusetts and raised by her grandparents in Nova Scotia, the eastern, seafaring Province of Canada. Her life partly overlapped Wylie’s and she also paints the spirit of that area specifically in terms of food but with an emphasis on the austerity of their diet:

From narrow provinces

of fish and bread and tea,

home of the long tides

where the bay leaves the sea

twice a day and takes

the herrings long rides,9

Moreover, the abundance that Wylie hates is also rejected by Kerouac in an off-hand, casual way as though the less time a man spent on something as mundane as food the better or higher quality a person he was.  However, the oscillation between abundance and scarcity appears in Kerouac’s novel in the contrast between Sal Paradise and the main character of On the Road, Dean Moriarty.

“…but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn’t care one way or the other, ‘so long’s I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy,’ and ‘so long’s we can eat, son, y’ear me?  I’m hungry, I’m starving, let’s eat right now!”—and off we’d rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, ‘It is your portion in the sun.’” (Ch. 1 (italics in original))

It is also certainly worth noticing in passing that in both writers, differentiated by gender, by background, and by time, there is a strong connection between religion and food.  This commonality and this continuity clearly occur in the traditional American feast days of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  All three feature unusually large and lengthy meals as well as strong connections with the Christian, Protestant backgrounds of the early American colonists, settlers and pioneers.  As with the bodily functions mentioned before, bringing the topic of food and literature into the foreground also illuminates the strong presence of Judeo-Christianity in American life and literature.  Again, this innovative topic proves to be a powerful lens for viewing a wide range of signifiers that occur repeatedly and pervasively in American literature.

Indeed, the theological basis of Wylie’s hatred of “this richness” is the Puritan soul struggling for release from all of its attachments, involvements, entanglements and preoccupations to, with and in the material world.  Metaphysical battles are fought on empirical battlefields.  In this case, the metaphysical battle between the ontological powers of good and evil is fought on the empirical battlefield of the relationship between a poetess and edible, natural fruit.  The apple signifies the fall of man at the hand of woman.  The hatred of  “this richness” is therefore a self-hatred that drives the woman farther from impure nature and closer to the immaterial purity of the austere, unadorned Protestant soul.  The continuity of the human body with nature is displaced by the discontinuity of the immaterial soul with the body.  The abundance of human bodies and souls is displaced by the scarcity of the elect, those in Protestant doctrine chosen by God from the foundations of the world to survive the last judgment and live eternally in heaven.

Serious reflection on the relationship between food and literature brings us to a range of signifiers that underpins all literature, namely, religion.  Why?  Because writing originally served the purpose of passing on what is most valuable in the viewpoint and experience of the group.  The most valuable possession of all is that which most certainly promotes the survival of the group. All human groups discovered long ago that humans are dependent on greater powers for survival.  All humans need air, water, food, warmth and sleep.  The fear of, respect for, worship of and sacrifice to the powers that govern life, both visible and invisible, is the ancient substance of all religions.  The ancient truth and pervasive message of all religions is the dependency of humans on those powers, including the power of reproduction that is represented in ancestor worship.  Religion embodies, ritualizes and carries forward that fundamental truth of human dependency.  The denial of that dependency can lead to greatly innovative creativity and profoundly transformative spirituality as well as to self-destruction and madness.  Humans can imagine absolute freedom but to try to live it, as Nietzsche showed, leads only to self-destruction and madness.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) struggled with madness all her life and eventually ended her life by committing suicide.  The following poem opens with the kind of paean to natural abundance that we saw in Wylie’s poem and closes with a similar feeling of empty space and cold silver.  The contrast between the terms “nothing” and “blackberries” in the first line signifies the tension between abundance and emptiness.  This signifier in turn connects with the tension between purity and impurity through the signifier of nothingness as a desirable and advanced spiritual state and as the material condition of spiritual devotees on earth.  In this poem, these themes are again carried by concrete, local wild food and abstract, created imagery that moves the reader away from an abundant present to an absent but implied purity above or beyond the physical earth:

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving.  Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices.  These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them.  A last hook brings me

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.10

It is no accident, in this perspective, that Neal Cassady, the living person behind Kerouac’s character Dean Moriarty, died of a drug overdose on the hot, shining steel rails of a railroad track in central Mexico.  The use of drugs in all groups has traditionally been associated with personal and group alignment to the greater powers for the purpose of amplifying the ability of the group to survive.  Cut from their traditional moorings in religion, drugs have become a way to experiment with the physical, psychic and spiritual dimensions of absolute freedom.  The fact that many drugs, such as LSD, cocaine, methamphetamine and opium, make the user feel that they need no food or other natural supports for their existence, shows precisely how they fit into the attempt to deny dependency and achieve absolute freedom.  The discontinuity of the American experience in relation to older traditions, the abundance of material wealth and the usually unacknowledged background ideal of a pure, immaterial soul have worked together to produce in its literature characters like Dean Moriarty who make a life—and a death—of treading the edge between innovation and self-destruction.

Or, to condense our themes in the pithy and quintessentially American poetic language of William Carlos Williams:  “the pure products of America go mad” (from “On The Road To The Mental Hospital”)  

Apple pie and ice cream, moreover, also provide Kerouac with an opportunity to make a statement of value that clearly displays abundance as bigness:  “I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer.” (Ch. 3)  “Better,” “deeper,” “bigger,” and “richer,” work together to define a system of values that was both American—bigger is better—and Romantic—depth and richness.11

The theme of abundance can be found in all periods of American literature.  In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, Scarlet Letter, for example, a character who is the “father of the Custom House—the patriarch, not only of his little squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over the United States—was a certain permanent Inspector.”12  The Custom-House was the official federal government office responsible for inspecting all cargo coming into the country by ship and determining what if any duties had to be paid.  In the novel, this particular Custom-House is located on a wharf in the harbor of Salem, Massachusetts.  In this particular character, Hawthorne signifies one of the most important aspects of the American diet that also repeatedly appears in its literature—the consumption of large quantities of meat.  The Inspector had the unusual ability to remember in great detail

“the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat….to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster….it always satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher’s meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table.  His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s very nostrils….A tenderloin of beef, a hindquarter of veal, a sparerib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board…would be remembered….”13 

The dominance of meat in the American diet can be seen in several ways.  One is the following chart of specialty foods in the individual franchises of the top thirty fast-food companies in the US:

Type of Food Number of Franchises

Chicken 8,683

Hamburger/Hot Dog/Roast Beef           29,600

Pizza [usually served with a

meat topping]            11,593

Tacos [usually served with a

meat filler] 3,620

Seafood 2,630

Pancakes/Waffles [usually eaten

        with bacon,

        sausage or ham] 1,63014

Another view of this American food habit comes from considering the quantities of meat consumption and production in the United States.  For example,

“Americans spend about 25 percent of their food budget on red meat.  The per capita consumption of beef in the United States has increased steadily, while that of pork has declined….Only in Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina is per capita consumption higher than in the United States.  The United States normally produces about 27 percent of the world’s meat.” (Ibid., (13) 190)

From the United States Chamber of Commerce, the source of these statistics in Compton’s Encyclopedia and from the 19th century work of Hawthorne, we can move to the late 20th century.  In the late 1980’s, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, by a California writer, Fannie Flagg, was published.  In the first section of the novel, a reproduction of an article from the weekly newspaper in her fictional southern US town of Weems, Flagg describes the basic menu of the newly opened Whistle Stop Cafe:

…the breakfast hours are from 5:30 to 7:30, and you can get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and red-eye gravy, and coffee….

For lunch and supper you can have:  fried chicken; pork chops and gravy; catfish, chicken and dumplings; or a barbecue plate; and your choice of three vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink and dessert….

…the vegetables are:  creamed corn; fried green tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyed peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.15

Later in the novel, the items in a particular meal served to a customer are described as “fried chicken, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, fried green tomatoes, cornbread, and iced tea.”16

The fatness, abundance and purity of meat in the American diet have also been used by some writers as a counterfoil to other kinds of scarcity and impurity.  Sylvia Plath uses the tradition of a large meat meal on Sunday, as a once a week special gathering for American families, that often features a large, oven-roasted turkey, to give stark contrast to another kind of oven:

Mary’s Song

The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.

The fat

Sacrifices its opacity…

A window, holy gold.

The fire makes it precious,

The same fire

Melting the tallow heretics,

Ousting the Jews.

Their thick palls float

Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out

Germany,

They do not die.

Grey birds obsess my heart,

Mouth ash, ash of eye.

They settle.  On the high

Precipice

That emptied one man into space

The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.

It is a heart,

This holocaust I walk in,

O golden child the world will kill and eat.17

One of America’s most gifted and enigmatic of contemporary poets, the Pulitzer Prize winner John Ashbery (1927-), turns America’s abundance into a counterfoil not of impurity but of scarcity as a lack of certainty:

Hardly anything grows here,

Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,

The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.

The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;

Birds darken the sky.  Is it enough

That the dish of milk is set out at night,

That we think of him sometimes,

Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?18

Besides the prominence and priority of meat, the Plath poem and the lists from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café foreground an important continuity and discontinuity in American food.  The important continuity stems from the fact that the early colonists and pioneers, trying to live in a strange land before it had been developed for agriculture, made their bread primarily from locally available grains, especially corn.  Wheat and other related grains were too hard to grind by hand and required a heavy, complicated mill that the early settlers could not carry with them.  Corn became a staple food as important to the early European colonizers as it already was to the indigenous people:

Young, ripe corn was eaten as roasting ears.  In winter the husks of the kernels were soaked off with lye to make hominy.  For breakfast and supper there was boiled corn-meal mush.  Sometimes the mush was fried and served with butter or pork drippings.  The most common dish, however, was hot corn bread.  Baked on a hoe blade before the fire, this was called hoecake.  Mixed with water into a stiff batter and covered with hot ashes, it was ash cake.  From the Dutch oven it emerged as corn pone or corn loaf.  Small cakes of corn pone were called corn dodgers.19

In the passage from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter both fish and turkey are mentioned along with pork and chicken.  The fish and turkey were most likely caught and shot in their natural habitats.  The pork and chicken were most likely raised and butchered in a domestic animal keep.  This combination of wild and domestic meat began with the first colonists and continues to the present day.  Indeed, the pioneers who traveled by foot, wagon and horse from the east westward on the American continent found a great abundance of wild game for meat.  Still they tried to carry enough familiar, nutritious foodstuffs to last them for the journey to their new homestead and to carry them through periods when wild game was unavailable.  A typical load for one adult traveling by oxen-drawn wagon westward was:

“…200 pounds of flour, 30 pounds of pilot bread, 75 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of rice, 5 pounds of coffee, 2 pounds of tea, 25 pounds of sugar, half bushel of dried beans, one bushel dried fruit, 2 pounds of baking soda, 10 pounds salt, half a bushel of cornmeal.  And it is well to have a half bushel of corn, parched and ground.  A small keg of vinegar should also be taken.”20

In many rural or sparsely inhabited parts of America the mixing of wild and domestic meats continues to this day.  In Alaska, for example, where I have lived for many years and which is one-third the area of the entire contiguous forty-eight states of the US, many people still rely on hunting for a large portion of their meat supply.  John Haines, past Poet Laureate of the State of Alaska and Alaska’s best known poet, began homesteading near Fairbanks, Alaska in the 1950’s.  I have known him personally for many years and read poetry with him on the stage of the Loussac Library in Anchorage in 1986.  His poetry clearly reflects how the dependence on wild meat can crystallize the themes of abundance and purity in an identification with the predator:

If the Owl Calls Again

at dusk

from the island in the river,

and it’s not too cold,

I’ll wait for the moon

to rise,

then take wing and glide

to meet him

We will not speak,

but hooded against the frost

soar above

the alder flats, searching.

with tawny eyes

And then we’ll sit

in the shadowy spruce and

pick the bones

of careless mice,

while the long moon drifts

toward Asia

and the river mutters

in its icy bed.

And when morning climbs

the limbs

we’ll part without a sound,

fulfilled, floating

homeward as

the cold world awakens.21

Long before Haines or any other European settled in Alaska, however, the indigenous  people had long lived on whatever meat animals they could kill and prepare.  In fact, when the first French explorers met and spent time with the indigenous people in the north of what is now Canada, they were so impressed by the predominance of uncooked meat in their diets that they called them “Esquimeaux,” which is French for “eaters of raw meat.”  Further down the coasts of Canada and Alaska, however, salmon run by the millions up the great rivers and are caught and used by the local people.  These Americans now eat their salmon after it has been smoked or cooked, as told in the following poem, “Subsistence #2” by Andrew Hope, III (1949-), of Sitka, Alaska:

Dog salmon colors

Glistening

Evening sun

Incoming tide

Washing the beach

Dog salmon shine

Silver purple flash

Reaching

Lifting a big one

By the tail

Incoming tide

Washing the beach

Time to eat

Fried dog salmon

For dinner22

There are five kinds of salmon that migrate into Alaskan fresh waters and are used there for food.  Each kind has its own name and some kinds have different names in different areas of Alaska.  Thus, discontinuities through time in preparation—from raw to cooked—have occurred along with discontinuities in time among practices of naming the same foodstuff.  Dog salmon are so-called because they were once used by the thousands to feed the many dogs upon which the indigenous Alaskan people relied for transportation during the long winters.  This kind of salmon, however, is perfectly fit for human consumption and now that many indigenous people in Alaska travel only by motorized vehicles in all seasons, dog salmon have become a staple of human nutrition.  

These discontinuities connect with the discontinuity signified by the meal ingredients in the first and second quotes from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café which is variation in regional foods.  Grits, for example, is a kind of cereal or mush made from corn or wheat that is coarsely ground.  Grits is considered by most Americans to be a food characteristic of the American South.  Its public presence in northern cities is usually the result of southerners moving north and opening restaurants that feature American Southern cuisine.  Other typical regional American foods are codfish associated with the northeastern seafood cuisine, key lime pie associated with the cuisine of the Florida Keys, tortillas and red beans associated with the southwest cuisine derived from America’s Hispanic heritage, and salmon associated with the northwest and Alaskan cuisines.

One of Alaska’s Native American poets, Charlie Blatchford, a Yupik Eskimo whom I knew personally and who is now deceased, stated the case for meat very simply in one of his few published poems:

Forgotten Words

Our language, of what I know,

has been prepared

with wisdom and grace.

The fine skin has been fleshed

and lies to one side.

The innards have carefully

been exposed.

Their sweet flesh

ready for feast.

Meat, the staple of life,

is consumed with satisfaction…

Sedating our need

for new words.23

In the hands of more contemporary poets who are not Native American, as Charlie Blatchford was, meat continues to signify substantial food and is often joined by a kind of substance that could serve as a separate topic alongside food—intoxicants such as alcohol and drugs.  In Whitman, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg and many other writers, wine, beer and other kinds of mind-altering substances often accompany food and especially meat.  This range of consumable signifiers has a history in all literatures that is as ancient, as interesting and as important as that of meat and other foods.  Indeed, putting the light of interest on food has again brought into focus an important stream in the lives of all peoples that could well serve as a topic for extensive further research, discussion and writing.  In many poets, the connection between meat and wine is briefly made, as in the fourth verse of “Asylum” by Herman Fong (1963-):

At meals they barely feed her,

give her the smallest cuts of meat,

mostly fat, and a few red drops of wine.24

A concentration on the details of ordinary life characterizes the style of many American writers, both older and younger.  John Steinbeck, a Nobel laureate and one of the pre-eminent American literary voices of the 20th century, frequently drew for his characters and settings from the everyday lives of people in California.  Some of his best and most popular writings, novels such as Cannery Row, Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men, and the short story collection, The Long Valley, feature characters and settings in coastal, southern and central California.  Tortilla Flats features the lives of “paisanos” who lived near the central California coastal town of Monterey.  According to Steinbeck, a paisano was a “mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican and assorted Caucasian bloods” (Ch. 1).  The main character, Danny, and his friends hear about a ship that has been wrecked on the nearby coast.  They go to the beach and salvage flotsam from the wreck then sell it.  The sale puts five dollars into Danny’s possession, an unusually large amount of money:

The five dollars from the salvage had lain like fire in Danny’s pocket, but now he knew what to do with it.  He and Pilon went to the market and bought seven pounds of hamburger and a bag of onions and bread and a big paper of candy.  Pablo and Jesus Maria went to Torrelli’s for two gallons of wine, and not a drop did they drink on the way home, either. (Ch. 5)

Part of Steinbeck’s genius as a writer and one of the aspects of his stories that set them apart from other American writings is the deliberate use of food items and activities for characterization and plot development.    Tortilla Flats provides an example of his style as well as continuing to demonstrate the importance of meat in the American diet across all geographic regions and ethnic groups:

Danny’s business was fairly direct.  He went to the back door of a restaurant.  “Got any old bread I can give my dog?”  he asked the cook.  And while that gullible man was wrapping up the food, Danny stole two slices of ham, four eggs, a lamb chop and a fly swatter.

“I will pay you sometime,” he said.

“No need to pay for scraps.  I throw them away if you don’t take them.”

Danny felt better about the theft then.  If that was the way they felt, on the surface he was guiltless.  He went back to Torelli’s [the wine merchant], traded the four eggs, the lamb chop and the fly swatter for a water glass of grappa and retired toward the woods to cook his supper. (Ch.1)

The particular food item of onions appears in the first passage from Tortilla Flats as a small detail that signifies a range of regional foods in an American southwest first colonized by European settlers from Spain not from England.  Between hamburger and onions are both the continuity of easily prepared and consumed meat and the discontinuity of regional American cuisines.  Another great American literary voice, that of William Carlos Williams, also picked out this range of southwestern signifiers on his one and only trip to that part of America.  Besides a fine ear for the peculiarities that distinguish American English from all other kinds of English, Williams also had a keen eye for the small details of place that brought the reader in close to the object of Williams’ writing.  The following passage is from “The Desert Music” which was based on Williams’ trip to the American southwest and his sojourning in towns that, at that time, were far more Hispanic than Caucasian:

–paper flowers (para los santos)

baked red-clay utensils, daubed

with blue, silverware,

dried peppers, onions, print goods, children’s

clothing     .      the place deserted all but

for a few Indians squatted in the

booths, unnoticing (don’t you think it)

as though they slept there      .25

The use of activities around food to develop plot and character is also part of the style of another American novelist who received a Nobel Prize for literature, William Faulkner (1897-1962).  From the deserts and sparse valleys of the southwest to the lush forests, swamps and meadows of the deep south, American literature, like the perduring literature of every language, has consistently insisted that the physical place and its features are part of the story.  In the following passage from Light in August, Faulkner uses Mrs. McEachern’s attempt to nourish Joe as a reflector for both characters:

He was lying so, on his back, his hands crossed on his breast like a tomb effigy, when he heard again feet on the cramped stairs….

Without turning his head the boy heard Mrs. McEachern toil slowly up the stairs.  He heard her approach across the floor.  He did not look, though after a time her shadow came and fell upon the wall where he could see it, and he saw that she was carrying something.  It was a tray of food.  She set the tray on the bed.  He had not once looked at her.  He had not moved.  “Joe,” she said. He didn’t move.  “Joe,” she said.  She could see that his eyes were open.  She did not touch him.

“I aint hungry,” he said.

She didn’t move.  She stood, her hands folded into her apron.  She didn’t seem to be looking at him, either.  She seemed to be speaking to the wall beyond the bed. “I know what you think.  It aint that.  He never told me to bring it to you.  It was me that thought to do it.  He dont know.  It aint any food he sent you.”  He didn’t move.  His was calm as a graven face, looking up at the steep pitch of the plank ceiling.  “You haven’t eaten today.  Sit up and eat.  It wasn’t him that told me to bring it to you.  He dont know it.  I waited until he was gone and then I fixed it myself.”

He sat up then.  While she watched him he rose from the bed and took the tray and carried it to the corner and turned it upside down, dumping the dishes and the food and all onto the floor.  Then he returned to the bed, carrying the empty tray as though it were a monstrance and he the bearer, his surplice the cut down undergarment which had been bought for a man to wear.  She was watching him now, though she had not moved.  Her hands were still rolled into her apron.  He got back into bed and lay again on his back, his eyes wide and still upon the ceiling.  He could see her motionless shadow, shapeless, a little hunched.  Then it went away.  He did not look, but he could hear her kneel in the corner, gathering the broken dishes back into the tray.  Then she left the room. It was quite still then.26

Faulkner lived and wrote in the Bible Belt.  The Bible Belt signified the fact that most people in the south were fundamentalist Christian Protestants who girded themselves with the spirit of austerity and yearning for an otherworldly paradise of simplicity and peace articulated so strongly by New England writers such as Wylie and Bishop.  Although food occurs frequently in Faulkner’s work, it is rarely ample, elaborate or wasted.  Usually it serves to highlight the physical scarcity and tenuous moral condition of people who live on the edge of a society whose abundance seldom appears in his work:

And Judith.  She lived alone now.  Perhaps she had lived alone ever since that Christmas day last year and then year before last and then three years and then four years ago, since though Sutpen was gone now…she lived in anything but solitude, what with Ellen in bed in the shuttered room, requiring the unremitting attention of a child while she waited with that amazed and passive uncomprehension to die; and she (Judith) and Clytie making and keeping a kitchen garden of sorts to keep them alive; and Wash Jones, living in the abandoned and rotting fishing camp in the river bottom which Sutpen had built after the first woman—Ellen—entered his house and the last deer and bear hunter went out of it, where he now permitted Wash and his daughter and infant granddaughter to live, performing the heavy garden work and supplying Ellen and Judith and then Judith with fish and game now and then, even entering the house now, who until Sutpen went away, had never approached nearer than the scuppernong arbor behind the kitchen where on Sunday afternoons he and Sutpen would drink from the demi-john and the bucket of spring water which Wash fetched from almost a mile away….”27

Another indication of Faulkner’s genius is his ability to see in an event as ordinary as a young man ordering pie and coffee from a waitress with whom he secretly wants some kind of relationship the potential for fine, deep drama.  Faulkner’s preference for scant food and small food items continues to display the themes of scarcity and purity that were inescapable in his social and historical environment.  In the following passage, Faulkner describes Joe, the boy in the passage just presented, who has come to a restaurant to be served by the waitress, in terms that transparently bring into play the signifiers of purity as immaterial dimension and food as binding, burdensome material necessity:

He believed that the men at the back…were laughing at him.  So he sat quite still on the stool, looking down, the dime clutched in his palm.  He did not see the waitress until the two overlarge hands appeared upon the counter opposite him and into sight.  He could see the figured pattern of her dress and the bib of an apron and the two bigknuckled hands lying on the edge of the counter as completely immobile as if they were something she had fetched in from the kitchen.  “Coffee and pie,” he said.

Her voice sounded downcast, quite empty.  “Lemon coconut chocolate.”

In proportion to the height from which her voice came, the hands could not be her hands at all.  “Yes,” Joe said.

The hands did not move.  The voice did not move.  “Lemon coconut chocolate.  Which kind.”  To the others they must have looked quite strange.  Facing one another across the dark, stained, greasecrusted and frictionsmooth counter, they must have looked a little like they were praying:  the youth countryfaced, in clean Spartan clothing, with an awkwardness which invested him with a quality unworldly and innocent; and the woman opposite him, downcast, still, waiting, who because of her smallness partook likewise of that quality of his, of something beyond flesh.  Her face was highboned, gaunt.  The flesh was taut across her