Rupert Sheldrake, William Tiller, John Mack

These three gentlemen get a mention in my book, Metaphysical Odyssey Into the Mexican Revolution, in the introductory chapter which provides some background, relevant for my subject, Francisco I. Madero, about 19th century psychic research-- though they are researchers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Sheldrake, a biologist, and Tiller, a Stanford University physicist (emeritus), are active as I write; Mack, a member of Harvard University's Medical School faculty, passed away in 2004. Sheldrake's TEDx talk was removed from the website; Tiller has encountered no end of resistance to his ideas; and the Dean of Harvard's Medical School attempted to revoke Mack's tenure. My point is simply that the Torquemadas of orthodoxy persist.

For those interested in a fascinating bit of surfing:

Rupert Sheldrake's homepage
Rupert Sheldrake talk at TEDx Whitechapel
The controversy about his TEDx talk

William Tiller's The Tiller Foundation: Institute for Psychoenergetic Science.
Meryn José's Merlian News Podcast interview with Dr Tiller

John Mack Biography
John Mack Institute
And--not for the faint-of-heart--John Mack and Budd Hopkins in conversation in 1997.

Among the scientists on Francisco I. Madero's radar were Sir William Crookes, a distinguished Oxford University chemist whose psychic research earned him no end of disrespect, and French Nobel -prize winner Charles Richet, who did--there is no other word-- wild experiments with Italian medium Eusapia Palladino and who coined the term ectoplasm.


COMMENTS

Cyberflanerie: Reality Can Be Play-Do Edition

Terminal Cancer Patients Not.

Ninety is the new... wow!

Award-winning young adult writer Randall Platt offers her bodacious tips for supersonic creativity.

Reality shifter Cynthia Sue Larson's new book is about Quantum Jumping.

You thought capitalism originated in English and North America? Uyy, quizá que no.

Femme et Fleur goes inside the art inspired by the MER KA BA (click then scroll down past the homme qui porte une veste rose).

And if your mind is really open, I mean reeeeeeally open, have a listen. If you're afraid of things that go bump in the night, do not.

COMMENTS

Top 10 Books Read 2011

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
I have so much to say about this, why, I wrote a whole blog.

2. What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
The concept of the "technium" is something I find myself coming back to again and again. The author writes a brilliant blog called The Technium.

3. The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healerby Kyriacos C. Markides
This was one of the many books I read in preparing the introduction to my translation of Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual of 1911. Sociologist Markides' work stands out among the many books on esoteric subjects not only for the quality of the writing, but the author's open-heartedness combined with discernment. If anyone were to ask me where to start reading on the subjects of healers and mediums, I would tell them to start with Markides.

4. Holy Sh*t: Managing Manure to Save Mankind by Gene Logsdon
Highly amusing. I've become a fan of the author's blog, The Contrary Farmer, where, by the way, you can download a free e-book of his best posts.

5. Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and Living in Viet Nam by Wayne Karlin
Transcendent and fascinating, this is one of the most important works to come out of the Viet Nam War.

6. To Be Young by Mary Luytens
Oh, those wacky Theosophists...

7. Francisco I. Madero by Stanley R. Ross
The classic of the 1950s. I have my quibbles about the book but overall, it is an impressive work of original scholarship and reads as smoothly as a good novel. I'd put it on my short list of recommended books to read about Mexico.

8. Art, Life and UFOs: A Memoir by Budd Hopkins
A deeply strange book by a deeply courageous and all-around original American.

9. Peregrina: Love & Death in Mexico by Alma M. Reed, Edited and with an introduction by Michael K. Scheussler; Foreword by Elena Poiatowska
This is the memoir of Alma Reed, a San Francisco journalist, a feminist far head of her time, who came to Mexico and fell in love with Yucatan's charismatic left-leaning governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto. They were engaged to be married when he was murdered in 1924.(I hope to interview Michael K. Schuessler about this book for my Conversations with Other Writers podcasts in 2012.)

10. The Beekeeper's Lament by Hannah Nordhaus

Top 10 Books Read 2010
Top 10 Books Read 2009
Top 10 Books Read 2008
Top 10 Books Read 2007
Top 10 Books Read 2006

Art, Life and UFOs: A Memoir by Budd Hopkins

Imagine if your dentist also enjoyed an international career as a leading shoe designer, or say, your neighbor the Hip-Hop star turned out be, by day, an high-level insurance executive. Those are just a couple of the bizarre analogies that come to mind when I think of Budd Hopkins's tandem careers as a world-class abstract expressionist, palling around New York City with Motherwell, Kline, Rothko, de Kooning, and others, and as a leading researcher of the UFO abduction phenomenon.

I first heard of Hopkins several years ago when I began to read about UFOs, originally as research for a fiction project and later, out of genuine curiosity. Curiosity: strange, how little most people have when it comes to UFOs. (Want to clear out a dinner party fast? Just bring up the subject.) Perhaps this is because it takes more courage than most people have in the face of such disturbing information. Disturbing indeed; horrifying. Yet, subtract all the UFO material and Hopkins' beautifully written memoir would still be fascinating and important reading.

For me a crucial question is, what does it take to fuel serious art-making decade after decade? There are thousands upon thousands of artists, most of them ambitious kids and a few middle aged wannabes. But to continue to make serious art after those first workshops, after the first, second, and fiftieth rejection, and into one's 60s, 70s, and beyond, takes a very rare fuel, a kind of stubbornness wedded to vision and infused with playfulness and curiosity. Curiosity: there's that word again.

Art, Life and UFOs: A Memoir

More anon.