I died from the mineral kingdom and became a plant;

I died to vegetable nature and became an animal;

I died to animality and became a human being.

Next time I will die to human nature and lift up my head among the angels.

Once again I will leave angelic nature and become that which you cannot imagine.

—Rumi

According to Sufi tradition, we have seven souls, or seven facets of the complete soul. Each represents a different stage of evolution. There are the mineral, vegetable, animal, personal, human, and secret souls, and the secret of secrets.

The Sufi model of the souls is one of balance. According to this model, spiritual growth is not a matter of developing the higher souls and ignoring or even weakening the lower ones. Each soul has valuable gifts, and in Sufism, real spiritual growth means balanced development of the whole individual, including body, mind, and spirit.

There are many systems and disciplines that focus on the body—sports, martial arts, healing techniques, and a variety of other physical disciplines. Modern education focuses almost completely on the mind. Many spiritual disciplines stress spiritual principles and practices, yet they ignore mind and body. In Sufism, all of life is part of spiritual practice. Family, work, and relationships provide as much opportunity for spiritual development as prayer or contemplation.

The Arabic term for soul, ruh, also means "spirit" and "breath." The Koran (15.29) reads, "I have fashioned him (Adam) and breathed into him of My spirit (ruh)." The highest level of the soul, the secret of secrets, is a spark of God’s spirit.

Each facet of the soul has its own dynamics, its own needs and strengths. At different times, different souls may be dominant. Knowing which soul is most active is important information for a Sufi teacher. For example, a dream that comes from one soul will be interpreted very differently than a dream from another soul.

When the naturally healthy dynamics of the soul shift to one extreme or another, what is healthy can become toxic. For example, curare is a wonderful heart medicine, but it can also be used as a deadly poison.

If we are concerned about some of our souls and ignore others, we are inevitably thrown out of balance. For example, if we ignore our vegetable and animal souls, we lose touch with the fundamental needs of our bodies and put our health at risk. (A classic example are stereotypical computer programmers who are so involved with their demanding intellectual tasks that they eat junk food and suffer from chronic lack of sleep and exercise.) If we neglect our secret soul and the secret of secrets and disregard our spiritual needs, our spiritual health suffers. Many people lead lives that are rich in material success and worldly activity, yet they are spiritually malnourished. Ideally, balance of all seven souls brings about balanced health and growth and a rich, full life.

The Mineral Soul

The mineral soul, the ruh madeni, is located in the skeletal system. In the diagram of the seven aspects of the soul, the mineral soul is adjacent to the secret of secrets, which is the place of the pure divine spark within each of us. The mineral world is close to God; it never revolts against divine will. Wherever a rock is placed, there it will stay eternally unless some outside force moves it.

Just as our physical skeleton remains hidden inside the body, there is a hidden, inner structure in our bodies—the mineral soul. If someone asked for a description of your mineral soul, you probably would not know how to begin. Yet what is difficult to know, what we frequently take for granted, often is of great value.

Imbalance in the mineral soul can manifest as either extreme flexibility or extreme rigidity. We say that people "have no backbone" or are "spineless" if they are too easily swayed by influences around them. They find it hard to stick with anything or to hold a position—physically, mentally, or emotionally. One example of a lack of solid structure is the jellyfish. The boneless jellyfish is a highly successful life form that has survived and flourished for countless millennia. However, it is completely at the mercy of the tides. We would be violating our basic physical structure, which gives us the capacity for independent movement, if we behaved like the jellyfish.

The other extreme is someone who is "fossilized," calcified or unbending, rigid and unyielding, incapable of responding flexibly and appropriately to changes in the environment. Some people are "stiff-necked," too proud to bow their heads, while others are "thick-skulled," or unable to take in new information.

One definition of neurosis is to continue doing the same thing even though it does not work. Some people are so rigid that they cannot change to save their own lives. Some people know they are going to die of smoking but they can’t stop.

The Vegetable Soul

The vegetable soul, the ruh nabati, is located in the liver and is related to the digestive system. It regulates growth and the assimilation of nutrients, functions we share with plants. This is a new function, evolutionarily speaking, as the mineral world has no need of nourishment. In other words, there is a soul in us that is like the soul that God also gave to plants.

When we were in the womb, we functioned mainly from the vegetable soul. We were rooted to our mother’s uterus by the umbilical cord through which we took in nourishment. We developed and grew larger, and that was just about all that we did. Our functioning was essentially the same as that of plants.

There is tremendous intelligence within the vegetable soul. We generally overlook this intelligence because we place so much value on the abstract learning of the head. But no matter how many college degrees we might earn, we still don’t know how to digest a peach or a piece of bread. We don’t know how to make hair grow on our heads. These kinds of basic physical functions are all carried out through the age-old wisdom of the vegetable soul.

The Animal Soul

The animal soul, the ruh haywani, is located in the heart and is connected to the circulatory system. Animals have developed a four-chambered heart and a complex circulatory system that distributes blood throughout the organism. (In reptiles, the circulatory system is not yet fully developed, and the reptile heart has only three chambers. As a result, their capacity for movement is inhibited, and reptiles require warm weather to be fully active. The more developed mammalian circulatory system holds heat better, and this allows mammals to be more active in all climates.)

The animal soul includes our fears, angers, and passions. All organisms tend to move toward whatever is rewarding (passions) and to move away from (fears) or push away (angers) whatever is punishing, toxic, or painful. For years, behavioral psychology has concentrated on these fundamental responses to the world in studying the effects of reward and punishment.

As psychology has gotten more complex, we tend to forget the power and universality of the two basic instincts of attraction and repulsion. Even an amoeba will move away from a drop of acid placed on a microscope slide or move toward a drop of nutrient solution. If a single-celled organism has these responses, every cell in our bodies must have the same capacity.

These instincts are basic to self-preservation and species preservation, which first appear with the animal soul. In plants, the instincts to reproduce and survive are severely limited. They are built into the structure of the plants and are relatively rigid and unchanging.

The behavior of animals is far more flexible and responsive to the environment. The instinct for self-preservation moves us to avoid what is painful or dangerous. Plants may put forth seeds and orient to the sun, but there is no passion in the plant kingdom. Within the animal soul, passion is rooted in the reproductive instincts. In addition to sexual desire, it is the matrix of love and nurturing.

The Judeo-Christian tradition has devalued the body and the functions of the animal soul. Traditionally, it is considered unfortunate (if not outright sinful) to have a body, and it is even worse that this body of ours contains so many drives and instincts, fears, and passions. The drives of the body are considered antithetical to the development of the soul.

In the Sufi model of the seven souls, all souls have to be healthy for the individual to develop as a whole human being. We all have passions, fears, and appetites, and these are useful, functional parts of us. However, they should not dominate our lives. The animal soul needs to be in balance with the other souls, not in charge. When that balance is attained, a well-developed animal soul is an invaluable asset to our health and well-being.

The Personal Soul

The next facet of the total soul is the ruh nafsani. The personal soul is located in the brain and is related to the nervous system. Just as the development of the heart and circulatory system distinguishes the animal from the plant kingdom, the development of a complex nervous system distinguishes humans from animals. This highly developed nervous system brings the capacity for greater memory and for complex thinking and planning. The intelligence of the personal soul allows us to understand our environment far more deeply than the capacities of the mineral, vegetable, and animal souls.

It also allows us to respond more effectively to the world around us. We can plan ahead and create mental models of the possible effects of our actions. For example, in one classic psychology experiment, dogs were shown a bowl of food on the opposite side of a chain-link fence. If the fence was short, the dogs quickly and easily went around it to get to the food. As the fence got longer, the dogs had to go farther and farther away from their goal to get around the fence. When the fence section became quite long, the dogs remained rooted to the spot directly opposite the food and tried to dig under the fence.

That problem poses no difficulty for humans, including relatively young children. Because of their inability to form complex mental models, animals tend to seek immediate gratification and to be dominated by short-term motivations. The development of human intelligence has allowed us to plan far ahead and to function much more effectively in the world. As a result, humanity has become more and more powerful, dominating all other species.

The personal soul is also the location of the ego. We have both a positive and a negative ego. The positive ego organizes our intelligence and provides our sense of self. It can be a force for self-respect, responsibility, and integrity. On the other hand, the negative ego is a force for egotism, arrogance, and a sense of separation from others and God. The positive ego is a great ally on the spiritual path. It can provide a sense of inner stability during the ups and downs that inevitably occur on the spiritual path. The negative ego is an enemy. It distorts our perceptions and colors our relations to the world.

One of the major distinctions between the negative and positive egos is that the positive ego is our servant and the negative ego constantly tries to be our master. Like a donkey, the ego is meant to work for us, but all too often we seem to be carrying the ego on our backs and serving it.

The Human Soul

The ruh insani is located in the galb, the spiritual heart. The human soul is more refined than the personal soul. It is the place of compassion, faith, creativity. In one sense, the human soul includes the secret soul and the secret of secrets. It is the place of our spiritual values and experiences.

Creativity and compassion first occur at this soul level. The brain, which develops in the personal soul, is like a computer, involved mainly with storage and manipulation of data, but not with the creation of new information. Creativity happens in the heart. It is unfortunate that our educational system has become so focused on the development of intellect that little attention is given to the development of the heart, which is nourished by the arts and by worship, love, and service to others.

The heart intelligence of the human soul and the abstract intelligence of the personal soul complement each other. Thinking is concerned with impersonal, logical analysis. The heart adds compassion and faith. Combining the two leads to better judgment. The head knows what is most effective, while the heart knows what is right.

Intuitive intelligence functions without the conscious use of reason. This form of intelligence is nourished by faith in God or in the existence of a larger reality; awareness of the external world and inner awareness developed through self-observation, contemplation or meditation; and compassion and a resulting sense of attunement with nature, animals, and other people.

The Secret Soul

The ruh sirr is the part of us that remembers God. The secret soul, or inner consciousness, is located in the inner heart. This soul is the one that knows where it came from and where it is going. One Sufi teacher writes, "The inner consciousness is that which God keeps hidden, keeping watch over it Himself." Another comments, "The body is completely dark, and its lamp is the inner consciousness. If one has no inner consciousness, one is forever in darkness."

Before our souls incarnated, God said to them, "Am I your Lord?" and the souls said, "Indeed, truly." The soul that responded was the secret soul. The secret soul knew who it was then, and it still knows. For millennia, the secret souls lived in close proximity to God, bathed in the light of God’s presence. Only on incarnation into this material universe did we lose this sense of connection.

The Secret of Secrets

The sirr-ul-asrar includes that which is absolutely transcendent, beyond time and space. This is the original soul (ruh) that God breathed into Adam, that is, into humankind. It is at our core, the soul of the soul. It is the pure divine spark within us. For this reason, our image of what it is to be human needs to expand. We are not merely thinking animals, nor are we only our personalities. We are the divine encased in and intermeshed with the body and the personality. Our capacity for spiritual growth and understanding are virtually limitless.

The Sufi master Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani explains the relationship between the human soul, the secret soul, and the secret of secrets:

God Most High created the holy spirit as the most perfect creation in the first-created realm of the absolute going of His Essence, then He willed to send it to lower realms . . . to teach the holy spirit to seek . . . its previous closeness and intimacy with God. . . . On its way God sent it first to the realm of the Causal Mind. . . . As it passed through this realm it was given the clothing of divine light and was named the sultan-soul (secret of secrets). As it passed through the realm of angels . . . it received the name "moving soul" (secret soul). When it finally descended to this world of matter it was dressed in the clothing of . . . coarse matter in order to save this world, because the material world, if it had direct contact with the holy spirit, would burn to ashes. In relation to this world, it came to be known as life, the human soul.

Sheikh Muzaffer used to say, "Within you is that which completely transcends the entire universe." Each of us has within our hearts that spark of God that cannot be confined within us or contained within this world or the thousands of universes that make up the whole of physical creation. That is also us. We all need to remember who we really are.

Robert Frager is a professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California. He holds the PhD from Harvard University and has studied modern Japanese spirituality, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, Sufism, and mystical Christianity as a colleague of the Dominican theologian Matthew Fox. This article is extracted from his most recent book, Heart, Self, & Soul: A Sufi Approach to Growth, Balance, and Harmony (Quest Books, 1999).

Fy137 or Feynmanium

If you have ever read Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman, you know that he believed that there were still many things that experts, or in this case, physicists, did not know. One of these 'unknowns' that he pointed out often to all of his colleagues was the mysterious number 137. This number is the value of the fine-structure constant (the actual value is one over one-hundred and thirty seven), which is defined as the charge of the electron (q) squared over the product of Planck's constant (h) times the speed of light (c). This number actually represents the probability that an electron will absorb a photon. However, this number has more significance in the fact that it relates three very important domains of physics: electromagnetism in the form of the charge of the electron, relativity in the form of the speed of light, and quantum mechanics in the form of Planck's constant. Since the early 1900's, physicists have thought that this number might be at the heart of a GUT, or Grand Unified Theory, which could relate the theories of electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and most especially gravity. However, physicists have yet to find any link between the number 137 and any other physical law in the universe. It was expected that such an important equation would generate an important number, like one or pi, but this was not the case. In fact, about the only thing that the number relates to at all is the room in which the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli died: room 137. So whenever you think that science has finally discovered everything it possibly can, remember Richard Feynman and the number 137.

Dr. Bill Riemers writes: classical physics tells us that electrons captured by element #137 (as yet undiscovered and unnamed) of the periodic table will move at the speed of light. The idea is quite simple, if you don't use math to explain it. 137 is the odds that an electron will absorb a single photon. Protons and electrons are bound by interactions with photons. So when you get 137 protons, you get 137 photons, and you get a 100% chance of absorption. An electron in the ground state will orbit at the speed of light. This is the electromagnetic equivalent of a black hole. For gravitational black hole, general relativity comes to the rescue to prevent planets from orbiting at the speed of light and beyond. For an electromagnetic black hole, general relativity comes to the rescue and saves element 137 from having electrons moving faster than the speed of light. However, even with general relativity, element 139 would still have electrons moving faster than light. According to Einstein, this is an impossibility. Thus proving that we still don't understand 137.

Dr. James G. Gilson contributes more with his Solution to a 20th Century Mystery: Feynman's conjecture of a relation between α, the fine structure constant, and π.

Feynman's Conjecture: A general connection of the quantum coupling constants with π was anticipated by R. P. Feynman in a remarkable intuitional leap some 40 years ago as can be seen from the following much quoted extract from one of Feynman's books.

There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e, the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to -0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to π or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!

The Solution: It will here be shown that this problem has a remarkably simple solution confirming Feynman's conjecture. Let P(n) be the perimeter length of an n sided polygon and r(n) be the distance from its centre to the centre of a side. In analogy with the definition of π = C / 2r we can define an integer dependent generalization, π(n), of π as π(n) = P(n) / (2r(n)) = n tan(π / n).  Let us define a set of constants {α(n1, n2)} dependent on the integers n1 n2 as α(n1, n2) = α(n1, ∞) π(n1 x n2) / π, ...........................* where α(n1,∞) = cos(π / n1) / n1.  The numerical value of α, the fine structure constant, is given by the special case n1 = 137, n2 = 29.  Thus α = α(137,29) = 0.0072973525318...  The experimental value for α is αexp = 0.007297352533(27), the (27) is +/- the experimental uncertainty in the last two digits.

The very simple relation * between α, the fine structure constant, π and π(n) confirms Feynman's conjecture and also his amazing intuitional skills.

Link: For details of how the formula * was obtained and some of the consequences arising from it visit the website: http://www.fine-structure-constant.org/.

We live in the age of individuality. There is great Interest in social change that supports individualism. Rudolf Steiner's "Philosophy Of Freedom" was written for our age. It was written for those striving for individuality. "The Philosophy Of Freedom" begins by giving twelve principles of individual life.

SHAKE OFF AUTHORITY
An individualist makes an energetic effort to shake off every kind of authority.
INDIVIDUAL VALIDATION
Nothing is accepted as valid unless it springs from the roots of individuality.
LEADERLESS STRIVING
You do not look for a hero to follow, but find your own way.
INDIVIDUAL IDEALS
You will not allow ideals to be forced upon you.
INDIVIDUAL WORTHINESS
You are convinced that in each of us, if we probe deep enough, there is something noble and worthy of development.
NONCONFORMITY
You no longer believe that we must all strive to conform to a common norm.
PERFECTION OF EACH
No one will be left behind. The perfection of the whole depends on the unique perfection of each single individual.
UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION
You do not want to do what anyone else can do equally well.
Because you are unique, your contribution must be something that you alone can offer.
CREATIVE EXPRESSION
You assert the right to creatively express what is unique in you,
without being concerned with suppressive rules or social norms.
DYNAMIC LANGUAGE
Your writing does not conform to the standards that grammar demands.
INDEPENDENT
You do not want to be dependent in any way.
FREEDOM
These are the principles of individual life.
This is what freedom looks like.
If you support freedom for all, the Philosophy Of Freedom is for you

1.
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil and was written as a study by Philip Zimbardo after conducting an experiment where he used students as "prison guards" and other students as "prisoners" after only six days the experiment had to be stopped because of how brutal the would-be prison guards (students, mind you) had become.

As I have not delved fully into the book, or the study itself held at Stanford I will say that if a person is focusing only on the lower aspects of existence and becomes convinced that there is only evil and embraces that paradigm as their own "reality" then sure it would work. I wonder though if the "guards" were simply manifesting what they thought a "guard" should be, like taking what they know from the un-reality of popular media. I think it would have gone very different if they did not use all male guards (they did) and chose people from different cultures and social standing (these were all Stanford students). Regardless history is replete with many more examples where people spontaneously act with kindness and compassion. Consider the Japanese after their quake. Consider the world coming together for Haiti after their quake (I was there doing humanitarian work, and there were amazing things happening). Sure there are some douche bags, and you know what, sometimes I'm one of them - but not all the time. Hope this didn't muddy the water too much.

Elsworth F. Baker, M.D..
Reprinted from the Journal of Orgonomy, Volume 1, 1968
The American College of Orgonomy

Full scale biographies and critiques will someday be written about Wilhelm Reich. He led a full life and one whose importance will only gradually dawn on people of the world. He had three marriages and three children, lived in six countries, and accumulated an unequalled knowledge and understanding of living and natural functions. He became proficient in, and increased the knowledge of, important fields of human endeavor, including psychology, sociology, religion, chemistry, agriculture, meteorology, astronomy, engineering, painting, sculpture, and music, and was a noted author. In his last years, he studied law. Besides this, he originated and developed a new science, orgonomy, the science of the functional laws of cosmic energy, and a new way of thinking which he called "functionalism." The guiding principle of functionalism is the identity of variations in their common functioning principle. He left over one hundred thousand pages of manuscript, most of which has not yet been published, although about twenty books and over one hundred articles have been. Here I wish to give only a thumbnail sketch of his life and work, with but a few excerpts from each.

Earth's magnetic field (also known as the geomagnetic field) is the magnetic field that extends from the Earth's inner core to where it meets the solar wind, a stream of energetic particles emanating from the Sun. Its magnitude at the Earth's surface ranges from 25 to 65 µT (0.25 to 0.65 G). It is approximately the field of a magnetic dipole tilted at an angle of 11 degrees with respect to the rotational axis—as if there were a bar magnet placed at that angle at the center of the Earth. However, unlike the field of a bar magnet, Earth's field changes over time because it is generated by the motion of molten iron alloys in the Earth's outer core (the geodynamo).

The North Magnetic Pole wanders, but does so slowly enough that a simple compass remains useful for navigation. However, at random intervals, which average about several hundred thousand years, the Earth's field reverses, which causes the north and South Magnetic Poles to change places with each other. These reversals of the geomagnetic poles leave a record in rocks that allow paleomagnetists to calculate past motions of continents and ocean floors as a result of plate tectonics.

The region above the ionosphere is called the magnetosphere, and extends several tens of thousands of kilometers into space. This region protects the Earth from cosmic rays that would otherwise strip away the upper atmosphere, including the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

In Southern France there are certain districts covered with pine groves that are periodically ravaged by fires. Often the pines grow again, and where before there was nothing but calcined dust, you may see, some years later, a new forest of resinous trees. But sometimes, as though the violence of the fire had reached the very seeds themselves, the hill that was once covered with trees remains bald and barren for many years. Then suddenly, on the top of the hill, there springs up a single tree, which, strangely full of life, rises solitary as though to attest the lost presence of a dead forest that flourished there at one time.

“Yearly there came something to light, whereby the Mathematica, Physic and Magic (for in those are they of the Fez most skillful) were amended; as there is nowadays in Germany no want of learned Men, Magicians, Cabalists, Physicians, and Philosophers, were there but more love and kindness among them, or that the most part of them would not keep their secrets close only to themselves.”

— The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R: C:

Translated by Thomas Vaughn (Eugenius Philalethes 1652)

Many books mentioning Paracelsus also cite him as the origin of the word "bombastic" to describe his often arrogant speaking style, which the following passage illustrates:
I am Theophrastus, and greater than those to whom you liken me; I am Theophrastus, and in addition I am monarcha medicorum and I can prove to you what you cannot prove...I need not don a coat of mail or a buckler against you, for you are not learned or experienced enough to refute even a word of mine...As for you, you can defend your kingdom with belly-crawling and flattery. How long do you think this will last?...Let me tell you this: every little hair on my neck knows more than you and all your scribes, and my shoe buckles are more learned than your Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your high colleges.
—Paracelsus,

We are direct revelation of god because god as we know it exist through us. Alians does not exist. If they do then we are not mandatory agent for god's existence and our best judgement is not unique or necessarily only truth.

Sections:
Review of probabilities
Review of philosophy of scientific inference
Review of  Logic/Analogy
Review of Mathematics
Review of Geometry
Review of Causality
Review of time
Review of linguistics
Review of psychology/unconscious
Review of Neuroscience
Review of particle physics
Review of Relativity
Review of Quantum mechanics
Review of History
More

Preparatory Commitee for International Festivals to celebrate the millennium of the Muslims arrival to the Americas ( 996-1996 CE )

INTRODUCTION

Numerous evidence suggests that Muslims from Spain and West Africa arrived to the Americas at least five centuries before Columbus. It is recorded,for example, that in the mid-tenth century, during the rule of the Ummayyed Caliph Abdul-Rahman III (929-961 CE), Muslims
of African origin sailed westward from the Spanish port of DELBA (Palos) into the "Ocean of darkness and fog". They returned after a long absence with much booty from a "strange and curious land". It is evident that people of Muslim origin are known to have accompanied Columbus and subsequent Spanish explorers to the New World.

The last Muslim stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell to the Christians in 1492 CE, just before the Spanish inquisition was launched. To escape persecution, many non-Christians fled or embraced Catholicism. At least two documents imply the presence of Muslims in Spanish America before 1550 CE. Despite the fact that a decree issued in 1539 CE by Charles V, king of Spain, forbade the grandsons of Muslims who had been burned at the stake to migrate to
the West Indies. This decree was ratified in 1543 CE, and an order for the expulsion of all Muslims from overseas Spanish territories was subsequently published. Many references on the Muslim arrival to Americas are available. They are summarized in the following

The alchemist Robert Boyle is credited as being the father of chemistry. Paracelsian iatrochemistry emphasized the medicinal application of alchemy (continued in plant alchemy, or spagyric). Studies of alchemy also influenced Isaac Newton's theory of gravity

Alchemical symbolism has been used by psychologists such as Carl Jung who reexamined alchemical symbolism and theory and presented the inner meaning of alchemical work as a spiritual path.[101][102]

Jung was deeply interested in the occult since his youth, participating in seances, which he used as the basis for his doctoral dissertation "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena."[103] In 1913, Jung had already adopted a "spiritualist and redemptive interpretation of alchemy", likely reflecting his interest in the occult literature of the 19th century.[104] Jung began writing his views on alchemy from the 1920s and continued until the end of his life. His interpretation of Chinese alchemical texts in terms of his analytical psychology also served the function of comparing Eastern and Western alchemical imagery and core concepts and hence its possible inner sources (archetypes).[105][106][107]

Jung saw alchemy as a Western proto-psychology dedicated to the achievement of individuation.[101][107] In his interpretation, alchemy was the vessel by which Gnosticism survived its various purges into the Renaissance,[107][108] a concept also followed by others such as Stephan A. Hoeller. In this sense, Jung viewed alchemy as comparable to a Yoga of the East, and more adequate to the Western mind than Eastern religions and philosophies. The practice of Alchemy seemed to change the mind and spirit of the Alchemist. Conversely, spontaneous changes on the mind of Western people undergoing any important stage in individuation seems to produce, on occasion, imagery known to Alchemy and relevant to the person's situation.[109] Jung did not completely reject the material experiments of the alchemists, but he massively downplayed it, writing that the transmutation was performed in the mind of the alchemist. He claimed the material substances and procedures were only a projection of the alchemists' internal state, while the real substance to be transformed was the mind itself.[110]

Marie-Louise von Franz, a disciple of Jung, continued Jung's studies on alchemy and its psychological meaning. Jung's work exercised a great influence on the mainstream perception of alchemy, his approach becoming a stock element in many popular texts on the subject to this day.[111] Modern scholars are sometimes critical of the Jungian approach to alchemy as overly reflective of 19th-century occultism.[20][85][112]

The word "yahoo" is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". The term "hierarchical" described how the Yahoo database was arranged in layers of subcategories. The term "oracle" was intended to mean "source of truth and wisdom", and the term "officious", rather than being related to the word's normal meaning, described the many office workers who would use the Yahoo database while surfing from work. However, Filo and Yang insist they mainly selected the name because they liked the slang definition of a "yahoo" (used by college students in David Filo's native Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unsophisticated, rural Southerner): "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Filo's college girlfriend often referred to Filo as a "yahoo." This meaning derives from the name of a race of fictional beings from Gulliver's Travels.

So roughly if we assume that on average the stars formed have the same mass as the Sun, then the Milky Way produces about 3 new stars per year. People often approximate this by saying there is about 1 new star per year.

Now what about the rate at which stars die? In typical galaxies like the Milky Way, a massive star should end its life as a supernova about every 100 years. Less massive stars (like the Sun) end their lives as planetary nebulae, leading to the formation of white dwarfs. There are about one of these per year.

Therefore we get on average about one new star per year, and one star dying each year as a planetary nebula in the Milky Way. These rates are different in different types of galaxies, but you can say that this is roughly the average over all galaxies in the Universe. We estimate at about 100 billion the number of galaxies in the observable Universe, therefore there are about 100 billion stars being born and dying each year, which corresponds to about 275 million per day, in the whole observable Universe.

According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people leaving us every year. That's about a 155,000 a day.

Sidi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi (d. 543/1128)

A youth is shipwrecked off the North African coast. He struggles ashore with his father and a few fellow survivors, more dead than alive. They clothe themselves in some oily skins which have been washed ashore with them and make their way with great difficulty to a nearby town. In the principal residence they find a chess game in progress between the governor of the place and his nephew. The youth quickly sizes up the situation on the board, comments on it and, despite his bizarre appearance, is invited to advise the governor. With his help the governor soon wins the game. A dispute arises about some lines of poetry which the young man skillfully resolves by eloquently explaining their true meaning. The governor is so impressed that he immediately invites the youth and his father to stay with him. He feeds and clothes them sumptuously and then sends them on their way with all their needs provided.

William C. Chittick

Whenever "Islam" is mentioned, we need to keep in mind that the word designates the religion of over one billion people, a religion that has been flourishing in much of Asia, Europe, and Africa for well over a thousand years and more recently in North America. We also need to remember that it is difficult to generalize about any religion. In this particular case, specialists have largely given up the old Orientalist habit of talking about Islam as if it were a single, clearly identifiable entity. They readily admit that we are in fact dealing with a multiplicity of phenomena, or, if you prefer, many Islams. In other words, to assert without qualification that "Islam believes this," or "Muslims do that," is misleading to say the least.

Ikhwan al-Safa'

The philosophy of the group of Arab philosophers of the fourth or fifth century ah (tenth or eleventh century ad) known as the Ikhwan al-Safa' (Brethren of Purity) is a curious but fascinating mixture of the Qur'anic, the Aristotelian and the Neoplatonic. The group wrote fifty-two epistles, which are encyclopedic in range, covering matters as diverse as arithmetic, theology, magic and embryology. Their numerology owes a debt to Pythagoras, their metaphysics are Aristotelian and Neoplatonic and they incorporate also a few Platonic notions into their philosophy. The latter, however, is more than a mere synthesis of elements from Greek philosophy, for it is underpinned by a considerable Qur'anic substratum. There are profound links between the epistemology and the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of the Ikhwan, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the former feeds the latter. In the history of Islamic philosophy the Ikhwan illustrate a group where the Aristotelian and the Neoplatonic clash head-on and where no attempt is made to reconcile competing and contradictory notions of God, whom the Epistles treat in both Qur'anic and Neoplatonic fashion. The final goal of the Ikhwan is salvation; their Brotherhood is the ship of that salvation, and they foster a spirit of asceticism and good living accompanied by 'actual knowledge' as aids to that longed-for salvation.

1. Life and works
2. Metaphysics
3. Epistemology
4. Soteriology