Evolution of Soul: An Interview with Gary Zukav

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In 1980, I gave my son a book about physics for his 15th birthday. I had not thought to read it myself, but one day he left it in the bathroom, and I opened it for a quick look while I soaked in a warm tub. The book, Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (Morrow, 1979), proved to be more than an interesting read. Zukav had managed to synthesize the current knowledge and wisdom about the new physics, and weave deep philosophical questions into the fabric of what … [Read more...]

What Patch Adams means to America

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In a current movie, a brilliant medical student moves through his training thumbing his nose at the establishment, spreading laughter and hope among the medical staff and patients. From the roiling confusion of mental illness, he experiences an epiphany of his life and purpose, and begins forming ideas about how to make a difference. He does medical school his way, including joy and laughter and high creativity in his daily rounds. At graduation, he accepts his diploma with great dignity, then … [Read more...]

On Service: An Interview with Dr. Patch Adams

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I remember listening to radio and early television as a child. The commercials for, say, an appliance store, or grocery store, or gas station, often included the phrase “Service with a Smile.” Of course, service without a smile is an oxymoron—then it is not service, but a lifeless act, an obligation, an impersonal job. Dr. Patch Adams understands this “service with a smile.” In fact, he believes in and practices service with a belly laugh, with a guffaw, with giggles and farts and … [Read more...]

From Age-ing to Sage-ing with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

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An old paradigm, in which the elderly lived with their extended families and participated in the lives of their loved ones, is long gone. Somehow, the elderly in America are now often forgotten, in the way, warehoused in assembly-line nursing homes, and perceived as drains on the economy. This is the state of affairs at a time when 80 percent of Americans can now expect to live beyond the age of 65, when 75 million baby boomers will reach retirement age in the next 20 years, and when a woman who … [Read more...]

The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life: An interview with Thomas Moore

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Somewhere along the way to three cars in every garage, American society lost or misplaced something important: its enchantment with life and the world. Such a loss threatens an even greater loss-that of the soul. In his first two bestsellers, Care of the Soul and Soul Mates, author Thomas Moore dished out a large dose of preventative medicine for the preservation of our individual and collective souls. Moore's latest book, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (Harper Collins, 1996), leads the … [Read more...]

Earl Bakken still challenges how we view health care

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Minnesotan finds more than sunshine in land of Rainbows -- An Edge Interview Forty-five years ago, Earl Bakken developed the first battery-powered, transistorized pacemaker and co-founded Medtronic Inc. The company, still developing ever-improving pacemakers and many other high-tech products for cardiac and neurologic health, now employs 10,000 people worldwide. Bakken has been called the "father of high-tech medicine," and he is considered a motivating force behind Medical Alley, Minnesota's … [Read more...]

Soul Issues are World Issues: An interview with Robert Sardello

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No system of thought, philosophy, psychology, or religion can be static. To be viable, such systems must evolve along with the evolution of the consciousness of the humans living and embracing them. In a fine illustration of this movement toward the future, Robert Sardello, Ph.D., has gifted us with Love and the Soul: Creating a Future for Earth. Dr. Sardello's book, an exploration and guide to" finding the doorway leading to the creation of a new spiritual culture," pushes the boundaries of … [Read more...]

Do Beliefs Determine UFO Existence?

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Unidentified flying objects, alien abductions, crop circles, all sorts of encounters with alien beings - this is the stuff of the extraordinary, far outside our, ordinary, consensual reality. But these events do happen, they often have multiple witnesses, and they leave "nuts and bolts" evidence behind. For the most part, science, as we know it, has neither the paradigm nor the knowledge to explain these events. Therefore, mainstream science chooses to ignore these phenomena, these untidy … [Read more...]

An interview with Michael Ventura

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“An Artist Without Obsession Isn’t Worth a Damn!” According to author John Updike: "The ditch digger, the dentist, and the artist go about their work in much the same way Any activity becomes creativity when the doer cares about doing it right or better. The artistic impulse is a mix, in varying proportions, of childhood fantasizing brought on by not necessarily unhappy periods of solitude; a certain hard wish to perpetuate and propagate the self; a craftsmanly affection for the materials … [Read more...]

Jon Kabat-Zinn – On Meditation

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Several years ago, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., created the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, where severely ill patients are treated, patients with. AIDS, cancer, heart disease, chronic pain, etc., all referred by mainstream physicians. The clinic's cornerstone healing technique is mindfulness meditation, and the results of its healing power are laid out in Dr. Kabat-Zinn's first book, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face … [Read more...]

Ron Mangravite transmits healing energy

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Sometime during his 30s, Ron Mangravite attended a party where the conversation centered around a topic called bioenergetics. As he listened, he felt a familiarity with the concept, though he'd not heard it before, and found himself saying "1 can do that." So they all formed a circle, holding hands. To everyone's surprise, some people began to fall over when he did "that." Though he'd had an unusual childhood, marked with serious illness, Ron had, up to that point, lived a fairly conventional … [Read more...]

An interview with Torrey Lystra: On Spirituality

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If there is such a thing as a starting place, given that all of life is a circle, Torrey Lystra considers the roots of his journey on the red road (spiritual lifestyle) to have developed in his life as a naturalist. After graduation from college, his career included work as park ranger, wilderness preserve manager, and park manager. In this process he developed over 500 programs in ecology and wilderness appreciation, lectured extensively to school and special interest groups, consulted for … [Read more...]