Issue #3 - 3 May 2000
Welcome to the Universal Quest Newsletter
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Wednesday 3 May 2000 AD Friday 5 May at 4:08 a.m. EDT spectacular alignment of seven planets and the sun |
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Welcome to Issue #3 of the Universal Quest Newsletter |
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"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." ~T S Eliot Dear fellow Questors On May 5th a spectacular alignment of seven planets and the sun will occur for the first time in recent history. Our planet will join the moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in an approximate line for several days beginning Wednesday 3 May. The grouping will come closest to forming a straight line on Friday at 4:08 a.m. EDT. This alignment will not occur again until 2675. We will not be able to see this spectacle, as we are the only planet on this side of the Sun during the event. Many believe that this is the beginning of major earth changes as solar flares (ironically called Brahma's breath) will engulf the earth and cause dramatic shifts. Scientists at NASA believe that the effect will be minimal. Whatever the outcome, this should be a time of meditation and contemplation as we are witnessing heavenly forces at work and no one truly knows the significance of this event on our lives physically, psychologically or spiritually. What a great time to live in. The Hubble telescope has opened up the universe for us to look at. Genetic historians have traced our origins back to 10 Adams and 18 Eves in Africa over 144,000 years ago. Spiritual awakening on every front seems apparent. The Internet has opened up the world of knowledge and communications for us as no other man-made technology has done before. These are certainly exciting times. To celebrate this we are going to launch a new Web site in June at www.universalquest.com. Our purpose will be to provide a home on the Internet for all "Questing Souls." We will start life as an online magazine and community and we will grow to become a complete world from which to undertake all kinds of quests and adventures. We will provide a balanced, optimistic yet critical view of the Universe of possibilities out there. We want you to join our mission by contributing your thoughts, ideas, articles, images, art, suggestions and more. Do write to me with your thoughts as we will build Universal Quest together and don't forget to tell everyone you know about the Quest.
Raja Choudhury,
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A Time of Rebirth |
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The last two weeks were a significant time in mythology and spiritual life. Across the world people celebrated rebirth and resurrection. Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead. The night of the Passover came and Moses liberated his people from Egypt. Ram returned triumphant from his exile after burning down Lanka and destroying Ravana. Adonis had to die so that Aphrodite could live. To our ancestors the myths of spring rebirth were as old as agriculture itself. First we have a time of plenty. Then a harvest, remembering a glorious past. Then there is fear that we may never have another harvest and a suffering and darkness overcome us. We then send our hero into the underworld/wilderness/forest and he has to suffer many ordeals and struggles. He gathers many insights, revelations and tools;and learns the secrets of rebirth along the way. Then he goes through an immense struggle against some prevalent dark force to bring this knowledge back to us. He endures a ritual of fire or blood in order to revitalize the soil. Sometimes the hero must die in order to bring us the benefits. After a period of sorrow or contemplation, the hero is reborn as a new plant or tree of life and with a new consciousness. Great celebrations follow. Later on in spiritual history, this myth took the form of an internal transformation as the death of the ego and a spiritual rebirth as seen in the Upanishads, Mahayana Buddhism, Gnosticism, Sufism and other mystical traditions. In the ancient way the Earth is our mother and we must return to the womb to bring back the essence that leads to rebirth. In the later traditions, the secrets to rebirth and immortality lie within each of us and we must die from our past life of attachment in order to be reborn in spiritual consciousness. The true essence and meaning of spring is rebirth. |
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Terence McKenna Tribute |
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In Dec. 1999,Terence McKenna (1947 - 2000) gave a talk at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA, at which he said: "I have an absolute faith that the universe prefers joy and distills us with joy. That is what religion is trying to download to us, and this is what every moment of life is trying to do-if we can open to it. And we psychedelic people, if we could secure that death has no sting, we would have done the greatest service to suffering intelligence that can be done. " You can watch video clips from this expansive talk at Mystic Fire Video
Terence McKenna Versus The Black Hole: An Interview with Erik Davis
Read the full transcript at http://www.sightings.com/general/mc.htm Read our tribute at http://www.universalquest.com/mckenna.htm or visit Terence McKenna Land at http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm |
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Nature: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) |
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"As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
You can read more poetry by Longfellow at http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/longfe25.html Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807, and was educated at Portland Academy and alongside Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin College and then at Harvard University. He taught at Bowdoin from 1829 to 1835 and he joined Harvard in 1836 and taught there until 1854, He was married twice. Longfellow's first book of poems, Voices of the Night, was published in 1839, and his last, In the Harbor, in 1882. Between those two dates, Longfellow published more than 20 books including the classics Ballads and Other Poems (1842), The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and The Divine Tragedy (1871). In 1842 Longfellow visited Dickens in London, and his 1868-69 tour of Europe included honorary degrees at Oxford and Cambridge, by which time he had become as universally popular a poet as Tennyson. A bust was placed in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey after his death; the only American to be afforded this honor. |
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Books of Hope; Hubble Images |
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Books of Hope
Visit "Books of Hope" at http://britannica.com/hope/ |
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Hubble Images after 10 years
See some of these wonderful images at http://hubble.stsci.edu / and at http://www.nytimes.com/hubble |
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10 Adams and 18 Eves: Tracing our Genetic Ancestors |
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Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia have been studying human mitochondrial DNA in order to trace human genetic history through gene mutations in ethnic groups around the world. Having taken samples from thousands of people worldwide they have been able to determine that our ancestors came out of South Africa around 144,000 years ago and all of us can be traced back to 10 Adams and 18 Eves. It is now possible to determine where we came from, who our genetic ancestors were and what route they took around the world in the great quests of the past 144,000 years. Dr.Wallace of Emory University said "We are looking at the begiining of what we would call Homo sapiens." The biologist Edward O wilson mused that a new basis for spiritual values might be found - not in the usual religious sources but in what he sees as the inspiring story of human origins and history. Doctor Underhill of Stanford Universiry added "We are all Africans at the Y chrmosome level and that we are really all brothers." To top it all off a new business has been launched at Oxford University allowing people of European descent to determine which of the 7 daughters of Eve (from the 18) they have descended from. A service for all ethnic groups is planned shortly. Read the full article in the New York Times by going to http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050200sci-genetics-evolution.html If you are of European descent, find out who your ancestors were by going to http://www.oxfordancestors.com/ |
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Astrology Week - A T Mann |
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As we approach the Great Conjunction on Wednesday, May 3rd at 23:12PM, all seven classical planets (out to Saturn) are coming together in the fixed sign Taurus. All of the innermost bodies in the Solar System out to Saturn are on the same side of the Sun, and indeed in the same sign. No one knows when the last time this happened, although it is surmised to be thousands of years at least. The imbalance has manifested as intense solar flares and other solar activities, sending the solar wind towards the Earth in particular abundance. Communication satellites are having much trouble and we don't know the long-range effects of such a radical configuration. Symbolically this puts special pressures on Taureans and also those other fixed signs Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, as well as the material/financial earth signs Capricorn and Virgo. In all a powerful shifting of values and structures is already in process. There is a revisioning of our relationship to the physical world taking place and you are invited to join in, whether you want to or not! |
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About Universal Quest |
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Raja Choudhury
: Founder
We would love your contributions, articles, thoughts, comments, suggestions and ideas. Please do write to us at news@universalquest.com
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