Thursday 6 July 2000

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Welcome to Issue #5 of the Universal Quest Newsletter

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear fellow Questors

It has been a month since our last newsletter. For us, June has been a month of consolidating and re-evaluating our plans and I apologize for the silence you have experienced. We now have over 510 subscribers and this has encouraged us to become more ambitious in our desire to fulfill our mission. Over the next few weeks you will find much more activity on our Web site (http://www.universalquest.com) as we grow into a substantial resource for all kinds of questing on the Web. This newsletter will provide short insights and information about news and quests that you can pursue further through our Web site or on the Web as a whole. We will also be providing links to real world guides, events and activities which will both enhance and assist your questing experience.

Now is the time to get involved. We are looking for contributors and Guides to share their personal quests with our readership. If you are interested in becoming a contributor then please visit http://www.universalquest.com/guide.htm and join our adventure. We are also looking for support in the form of administrative assistance, creative input, technological know-how and financial investment. If you would like to get involved, do contact me at the address below.

Enjoy the journey, for there is nothing else but the journey itself and the love and kindness of the souls we meet along the way.Éand don't forget to tell everyone you know about the Quest.

Raja Choudhury
Founder
Raja@universalquest.com

"All they can see is the wall in front of them..."

"The most famous passage in all Plato's writings occurs in the Republic, and is know as the Myth of the Cave. In it Plato puts into symbolic form his view of the human condition, and especially of human knowledge, in relation to reality as a whole."

"Imagine, he says, a big cave, connected to the outside world by a passage long enough to prevent any daylight from penetrating into the cave itself. Facing the far wall, with their backs to the entrance, is a row of prisoners. Nor only are their limbs chained, they are also fastened by the neck so that they cannot move their heads, and therefore cannot see one another, indeed cannot see any part of themselves. All they can see is the wall in front of them. And they have been in this situation all their lives, and know nothing else."

"In the cave behind them is a bright fire. Unknown to them there is a rampart as high as a man between the fire and them; and on the other side of this rampart are people perpetually passing to and fro carrying things on their heads. The shadows of these objects are cast on to the wall in front of the prisoners by the light of the fire, and the voices of the people carrying them are echoed back from this wall to the prisoners' ears. Now, says Plato, the only entities that the prisoners ever perceive or experience in the whole of their existence are those shadows and those echoes. In these circumstances it would be natural for them to assume that shadows and echoes constitute all the reality there is; and it would be to this "reality," and to their experiences of it that all their talk would refer."

"If one of the prisoners could shake off his chains, so cramped would he be by a lifetime of entrapment in the half-dark, that merely to turn around would be painful and awkward for him, and the fire would dazzle his eyes. He would find himself confused and uncomprehending, and would want to turn back again to face the wall of shadows, the reality he understood. If he were dragged up and out of the cave altogether into the world of blazing sunlight he would be blinded and bewildered, and it would be a long time before he was able to see or understand anything. But then, once he was used to being in the upper world, if he were to return to the cave he would be temporarily blinded again, this time by the darkness. And everything he said to the prisoners about his experiences would be unintelligible to those people whose language had reference only to shadows and echoes."

"The way to begin understanding this allegory is to see us human beings as imprisoned in our own bodies, with only other such prisoners for company, and all of us unable to discern the real selves of one another, or even our own real selves. Our direct experience is not of reality, but what is in our minds."

From: Bryan Magee's "The Story of Thought" - The Essential Guide to the History of Western Philosophy
A Quality Paperback Bookclub exclusive. Published by DK Publishing as The Story of Philosophy. Copyright 1998 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London.
Text copyright 1998 Bryan Magee Page 31 - The Myth of the Cave.

Despite what Freud and Jung taught, a leading expert says the human brain is the real dream-weaver. Where do we go when we dream? According to a leading brain specialist, Dr. G. William Domhoff of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the human brain is the real 'dream-weaver,' adding shape and color to the stuff of daily life to create those magical, sometimes scary 'home movies' in our heads. "I think dreaming is a form of thinking that's going on during sleep," he explained, "but it's a pictorial form of thinking." He presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society. Recent findings shed doubt on long held beliefs that dreams represented an expression of 'unconscious' fears and desires suppressed in waking life. According to Domhoff dreams begin in the limbic region deep in the brain. This is where emotional memories are held and as a result the conclusion being drawn is that the inability to process all emotional interactions in waking hours reveal themselves in dreams. But what about the unconscious mind?

Read more about this at Brain.com

~50,000 of the cells in your body will die and be replaced with new cells, all while you have been reading this sentence!
~In one hour, your heart works hard enough to produce the equivalent energy to raise almost 1 ton of weight 1 yard off the ground.
~In a year, a person's heart beats 40,000,000 times.
~Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.
~Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.
~Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
You use an average of 43 muscles for a frown. You use an average of 17 muscles for a smile. Every two thousand frowns creates one wrinkle.
~You burn 26 calories in a one-minute kiss.
~Among the first known "dentists" of the world were the Etruscans. In 700 BC they carved false teeth from the teeth of various mammals and produced partial bridgework good enough to eat with.
~Ophthalmic surgery was one of the most advanced areas of medicine in the ancient world. Detailed descriptions of delicate cataract surgery with sophisticated needle syringes is contained in the medical writings of Celsus (A.D.14-37)
~A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 100 m.p.h.
~If you were freeze-dried, 10% of your body weight would be from the microorganisms on your body.
~According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 100 million acts of sexual ~intercourse each day.
~Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
~One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all of the world's telephones put together.

Extracted from THE TYANA TABLOID : 2 APRIL 2000 Tyana@apollonius.net

TAOISM

"Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
These three are indefinable, they are one.

From above it is not bright;
From below it is not dark:
Unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
Form of the formless, Image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it - there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the Tao, Move with the present.
Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao."

~ Lao Tzu

"There is a thing, formless yet complete. Before heaven and earth it existed. We do not know its name, but we call it Tao. It is the Mystery of Mysteries." With these words we begin or quest into Lao Tzu and Taoism.

Taoism is a mystical tradition that has, along with Confucianism, shaped Chinese life for more than 2,000 years. The Taoist heritage emphasises individual freedom, spontaneity, mystical experience and techniques of self-transformation. It is a complete antithesis to Confucian concern with morality, community, law and governmental responsibilities. Aspects of Taoism were appropriated in East Asian cultures influenced by China, especially Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The concept of the Chi as a primal force throughout the universe is fundamental to Taoism. As a result Taoism has been very influential in Chinese medicine and martial arts (Chi Gong, Tai Chi, et al.)

Lao Tzu, (Chinese: "MASTER LAO,") considered to be the author of the Tao-te-ching (the seminal book on Taoism) lived in 6th century BC China and was the first philosopher of Taoism. He was venerated as a philosopher by Confucianists and as a saint or god by some of the common people and was worshiped as an imperial ancestor during the T'ang dynasty (618-907).

To find out more:
The most comprehensive and authentic site on the Taoist religion and philosophy is at http://www.tao.org/welcome.htm
There are many personal sites as well. Some of the best of these are: http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/laotzu.htm on Taoism and Pantheism
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/lao.html on the life and vision of Lao Tzu and
http://members.aol.com/MrSage365/LaoTzu.html - a good site on the Tao.

WATER ON MARS

NASA scientists interpreting images from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars, believe that they have observed evidence of water oozing from the Martian surface. These latest results come after a succession of failed missions to the Red Planet, and stimulate the future of Martian exploration.

Geological features of the Martian surface provide ample evidence that water flowed freely billions of years ago, but it was thought that the Martian atmosphere was too thin to retain water on the surface today. However, the evidence supporting 'water' illustrated by Mars Global Surveyor images appears several kilometers below the average surface level, in the bottom of deep canyons and craters.

Read the full story at the BBC World Service site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/skyatnight/news.shtml or Visit the NASA Web site at http://www.nasa.gov

RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT

"I want to be President for a very simple reason. Because this country needs a very strong progressive movement that challenges the accepted concentration of power and wealth in the hands of global corporations who dominate our government, our workplace, our environment and many other areas of our political economy."

Ralph Nader, the long-time consumer and environmental advocate and legend has accepted the Green Party's nomination for the 2000 Presidential Election in the US. With sufficient grass-roots support, the Green Party is set to become a national political party with access to government funds, media and much more, provided Nader can get 5% of the vote. His acceptance speech was a real rally call to consciousness and common sense.

You can watch the video of his full acceptance speech at http://www.cspan.org/campaign2000/greenparty.asp.
The official Web site for the campaign is at http://www.votenader.org.
There is also a great resource site at http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/US/Green_Party/ and
you can visit the US Green Party at http://www.greenparty.org

Astrology

KEPLER COLEGE in Seattle
The Father of Modern Astronomy, Johannes Kepler, based his life work on the synthesis of arithmetic, astrology, astronomy, geometry and music. Unwilling to segregate his studies, he gave life to mathematics; to astronomy, the soul; and to astrology, scientific reason. It is to his holistic vision of an implicate order in the universe that Kepler College has been dedicated. Kepler College mission is to gather the best scholars, teachers and communicators for its faculty, and foster an atmosphere of philosophical diversity and academic freedom. As it is committed to demonstrating to society the importance of astrology as a social technology, its curriculum is built upon a strong base of the humanities, arts and sciences. The interdisciplinary curriculum will comprise of history, philosophy, cultural anthropology, mythology, comparative religion, psychology, astronomy, mathematics, logic, ethics, systems theory and, of course, it is saturated with astrological counseling and instructional methodologies. The College is authorized by the Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board to issue Bachelor and Master Degrees in Astrological Studies. It is the only college of Astrology in the western world to attain this status!

For more information see: http://www.keplercollege.org/mission.html

STARIQ
A great new astrological site has been launched called StarIQ.com. Jeff Jawer and Rick Levine, both respected members of the worldwide astrological community, founded this content filled resource. The site not only provides comprehensive astrological services (many free) but is also a magazine that looks at the world and the news through astrological eyes.

Have a look at the site at http://www.stariq.com

ASTRODIENST
Another comprehensive new Astrology Web site has been published from Switzerland called Astrodienst (http://www.astro.com/). The site describes itself as providing Astrological Computer Services. It includes a lot of free services including the generation of a complete free personal chart based on time of birth and location (literally anywhere in the world). It also provides free readings, analysis and much more. The site is hosted by Liz Green and Robert Hand.

Visit this site at http://www.astro.com

About Universal Quest

Raja Choudhury : Founder
A T Mann : Cofounder/Contributing Editor

Visit our Web Site at http://www.universalquest.com

We would love your contributions, articles, thoughts, comments, suggestions and ideas. Please do write to us at news@universalquest.com

All rights reserved ©copyright May 2000
Raja Choudhury
Universal Quest,
560 W 43 Street - Suite 20G
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 917 769 7616