Searching for God in time and memory
An examination of Baha'i prayer as 'remembrance'
by Christopher White
Published in Reason and Revelation: Studies in the Babi and Baha'i Religions
13Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2002
Abstract This paper attempts to describe Bahá'í prayer practices in a way that will help both Bahá'ís and scholars of religion better understand and interpret these practices. I begin by borrowing from the Bahá'í scriptures what appears to be an important way of talking about Bahá'í prayer: that is, prayer is a process of "remembering."I then move on to an extended reflection on prayer as "remembrance," examining several ways that understanding Bahá'í prayer as remembrance might help interpreters of Bahá'í worship practices better understand Bahá'í conceptions of God, human nature and the divine-human relationship. I suggest that prayer in the Bahá'í tradition is a process of first understanding and then overcoming the problematic gap between the human and divine worlds. In the final part of the paper I point out that the obligatory prayers can be understood as a particularly efficacious practice of (literally) "re-membering" self, God and the divine-human relationship. Obligatory prayers are, in Bahá'í language, of "special potency and significance" because they enlist both mind and body in a discipline of remembering.It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of prayer to the Bahá'í tradition. While the requirements for prayer and other forms of worship are somewhat relaxed in comparison with the Islamic and the Bábí traditions, the Bahá'í religion upholds prayer and meditation as "the best of all [human] conditions," as the source of the "spiritual nourishment" needed for individual and social progress and, because all human beings have been created to "know and love" God, as one of the main ways to fulfill the purpose of human life.(1) It comes as no surprise that daily prayer is required of all Bahá'ís, who, more specifically, have been told to recite "the verses of God every morn and eventide."(2) Though Bahá'ís can worship together in groups if they wish, there is only one prescribed congregational prayer (the prayer for the departed); prayer is generally considered an individual affair. Even the obligatory prayer (salat), considered by Muslims to be more meritorious when said in congregation, is generally performed by Bahá'ís in private, perhaps because it is in private that individuals can give their "best attention to the remembrance of God."(3) In general, then, Bahá'í teachings dwell on the interior aspects of praying – one's inner attitudes and dispositions – rather than ritual requirements: human beings should pray to God because they want to express their love for him or want to know and understand him and his purpose for their lives, not because they fear his wrath or crave his grace. Prayer is about remaking one's self, not remaking God.Bahá'ís pray every day because they believe prayer brings them closer to the source of all life. Like adherents of most other religions, Bahá'ís pray in order to overcome – if only temporarily – the gap between the divine and human worlds, between Creator and created. In the Bahá'í scriptures this problematic gap often is glossed simply as a "separation" from God; themes of separation and reunion, of estrangement and reconciliation with God, are conspicuous in Bahá'u'lláh's prayers and in his more mystical writings. At first glance, the separation between us and God does not seem too great: God is closer to the human reality, Bahá'u'lláh writes in a well-known passage, than the jugular vein.(4)In another passage Bahá'u'lláh confirms that God is closer than we might think: "Turn thy sight unto thyself," he says, "and you will find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting."(5)Moreover, while spiritual seekers may not find belief easy or instantaneous, Bahá'u'lláh assures us that the sincere will be aided in their search for God by that God-given "trust" which instinctively yearns for its creator, the human heart.(6)Human beings, we might say, are hardwired for God.(7)This is not, unfortunately, the whole story. God is not simply resident within us, easy to perceive, know and love.The immanent God of the Bahá'í scriptures has a transcendent side to be sure: God is "immeasurably exalted," Bahá'u'lláh repeatedly stresses, "above all created things" – so much so in fact that in the final analysis God's reality can never be known by human beings.Bahá'u'lláh describes God's remoteness concisely: "Every way" to the adequate comprehension of God and his creative word, he writes simply, "is barred."(8)At this point, the gap between creator and created suddenly appears more problematic. How is it that God can be both immanent in the human heart and hidden, distant and unknown? Why is it that, in Bahá'u'lláh's words, "At all times I am near unto thee, but thou art ever far from Me"?(9)The paradox of a God who is both astonishingly near and frustratingly hidden is expressed in Bahá'í prayers in language that returns our attention to what it means to be human.As it turns out, the human heart, that "seat of the All-Merciful," also has one quite grievous shortcoming: it has a short memory. All too often it is, Bahá'u'lláh confirms with apparent regret, "forgetful of its Creator."(10)Here then is the reason that the God who has his home within us seems so far away: we have forgotten he is there. We have forgotten our closeness to him. Overcoming this forgetfulness, I will argue, is the main task of Bahá'í prayer.(11)Stated more positively, the purpose of Bahá'í prayer is to "remember."While there are several reasons to think about Bahá'í prayer as remembrance or remembering, the best reason to do so is simply that Bahá'í prayers themselves describe worship in this way.Bahá'u'lláh's prayers are loaded with words like "remembrance" and "forgetfulness." To take one suggestive example, in Prayers and Meditations by Bahá'u'lláh, "remember" and "forget" and their variants appear 110 times in the prayers translated there by Shoghi Effendi.(12)Reading from this collection, worshippers can affirm that God's "remembrance" is their companion in times of loneliness, their healer in times of sickness, their succour in times of anxiety or sadness.(13)It comes as no surprise then that believers might also ask God to help them "remember him" "at all times and under all conditions," hoping, in the words of another prayer, that their hearts might be totally remade into "a receptacle of Thy love and of remembrance of Thee."(14)Of course, remaking one's heart into a place that contains "naught except the treasures of [God's] remembrance and praise" requires hard work and, possibly, some good role models.(15)Fortunately, the prayers in this same collection speak of spiritual heroes worthy of imitation – faithful believers whose hearts "were so carried away by the sweet savours of Thine inspiration that every single member of their bodies intoned Thy praise and vibrated to Thy remembrance" – and villains who, despite God's lamentations, had "forgotten the wonders of [his] mercy."(16)Bahá'ís really moved by the spirit of these prayers might also promise that "nothing whatsoever" would withhold them from "remembering" God, "though all the tribulations of the earth were to assault [them] from every direction."(17)In general, this collection of prayers leaves little doubt about the importance of "remembering."The word translated as "remember" or alternately "mention" of God is the Persian (and Arabic) term dhikr, a word well known to scholars of Islamic mysticism.For Muslim mystics or Sufis, dhikr stands for a range of spiritual practices intended to put believers in a constant state of divine awareness. Dhikr practices vary considerably, depending on the particular beliefs and practices of each Sufi order. In some orders, novices learn and repeat different formulae of divine names, until, in Annemarie Schimmel's words, the dhikr so permeates the student's being that he or she forgets the recollection of everything other than God.(18)Dhikr can be performed silently (dhikr of the heart) or out loud (dhikr of the tongue), in public and in private. God should be remembered at all times and in all places, for the believer who "remembers God permanently is the true companion of God."(19)Dhikr can also involve chanting, singing, dancing and – yes – even getting drunk. While it is safe to say that Bahá'u'lláh rejected this latter method of "remembrance," recent commentators have debated the extent to which Bábís and early Bahá'ís followed other Sufi dhikr practices like repetitive chanting.(20)My sense is that while many, if not most, of the specific Sufi dhikr practices were rejected or simplified in Bahá'u'lláh's writings, Bahá'u'lláh does retain the word dhikr to describe the process (perhaps it is better to say the discipline) of worship. The question is why? Why is prayer a discipline of remembering? Who or what are we remembering in prayer?There are no doubt several meanings of "remember" as it is used in Bahá'í prayers, many of which I cannot explore here. My brief review of Sufi dhikr reminds us of one of them: that remembrance of God is about repeatedly calling God to mind, praying to him, mentioning his names. We remember God in this sense when, as is the case in the short obligatory prayer, we speak of him as mighty, wealthy, helpful and self-subsisting. In the medium and long obligatory prayers we call to mind and also physically enact God's sovereignty, his mercy and his greatness through coordinated verses and postures. By the end of any of the obligatory prayers, worshippers know their God and have called him to mind several times. They have also remembered their own place in the universe; God is mighty and humans are by comparison powerless, God is wealthy and humans are impoverished, God is helpful and forgiving, and humans are the recipients of that assistance, forgiveness and love. So remembrance of God on one level is simply calling God to mind and trying to live with an awareness of that knowledge.There may be other, less apparent meanings of "remembrance" however. What if prayer actually is about remembering a kinship to God that we once knew but have since forgotten? In a passage reminiscent of the Platonic tradition, Bahá'u'lláh asks all of us: "Have you forgotten that true and radiant morn when in these hallowed and blessed surroundings ye were all gathered in My presence beneath the shade of the tree of life, which is planted in the all-glorious paradise?" As if anticipating our response – yes, we did indeed forget – he continues to recall a very distant past that few of us could claim to remember:Awestruck ye listened as I gave utterance to these three most holy words: O friends! Prefer not your will to Mine, never desire that which I have not desired for you, and approach Me not with lifeless hearts, defiled with worldly desires and cravings. Would ye but sanctify your souls, ye would at this present hour recall that place and those surroundings, and the truth of My utterance should be made evident unto all of you.(21)Whether we interpret this passage as a literal account of our beginnings or merely a metaphor of our kinship to God, the language of remembering and forgetting is striking. We are asked to remember that time before time (in illo tempore) when, upon gathering us together in "paradise," God whispered to us the secrets of life. Is this passage, and indeed all scripture, intended as a kind of mnemonic device? Is it intended to jog our memories, encouraging us to "sanctify our souls" in order to recall our "true and radiant" origins and our kinship with God? Other scriptures make it clear that the passage of time and our own absorption in the "changes and chances" of the contingent world have indeed left us forgetful of the deepest truths about self and God. "The True One possesseth invisible worlds," 'Abdu'l-Bahá explains, worlds which can be sensed only if we "purify and clarify" our "spiritual nostrils from every worldly moisture."(22) This is not the only time the Bahá'í scriptures instruct believers to purify their hearts and minds in order to remember a long-forgotten meeting with God.(23)This passage also reminds us that while "the world" is not bad per se (only undue attention to it is considered blameworthy), it does force upon us one thing that unfailingly separates us from our creator: time. Time makes forgetfulness possible. "In the sight of God the past, the present and the future are all one and the same," 'Abdu'l-Bahá explains, "whereas, relative to man, the past is gone and forgotten, the present is fleeting, and the future is within the realm of hope."(24)While for God all contacts, contracts and covenants made with human beings in the contingent world exist simultaneously, for human beings these same events drift out of consciousness into that "gone and forgotten" past, that waste basket of experiences that are never repeated, called to mind or otherwise strengthened in memory. Except in moments of sanctification and prayerful remembrance we are unable to escape a consciousness of time. The daily practice of prayer, however, reminds us of spiritual truths forgotten in a lifetime (or, for that matter, in a day) by strengthening our memory of God and his teachings through practice and repetition. In this way, remembering collapses time, remembering closes the "gap of createdness" and makes us, as a result, more God-like (for, is God not in a constant state of remembrance?). "Remembrance of Thee is eternal" Bahá'u'lláh proclaims;(25) remembrance overcomes our embeddedness in time by returning us to a consciousness of events, ideas and values that endures.Searching for God and self in memory is, of course, nothing new. For Plato and other classical thinkers, the search for truth involved "recollecting the world of primordial forms which the soul had contemplated in between this and its previous earthly existence." "Contemplative knowledge was pure and perfect, but the reincarnated soul drank from the spring of Lethe and forgot the knowledge it had obtained from direct contemplation of the Ideas." Here, learning rather than worship is recollection of "the real, the archaic forms, the transpersonal and eternal truths."(26)Much later, a young Christian bishop struggling to find himself turned inward and in the process made famous the connections between memory, identity and God. "Ascending by steps to him who made me," Augustine writes in his autobiographical Confessions, "I come into the fields and spacious palaces of my memory." In memory this fourth century thinker found his true self and his God, both of them "various," "manifold" and "immense."(27)For their part, Muslim thinkers have exfoliated the connections between memory and divine knowledge in countless theological and mystical works – so much so that one recent commentator has claimed that the duty of human beings in Islam "is simply to 'remember' (dhikr)."(28)Taking their cue from mystics and theologians, a number of contemporary scholars of religion have begun examining exactly how memory functions for individuals and societies. Lawrence Sullivan has recently pointed out that forgetfulness usually leads to negative consequences: forgetfulness can cause disorientation, a fractured sense of identity and broken relationships. We can see how this might be the case, e.g., with someone afflicted with memory loss or Alzheimer's disease in old age. Without memories sustaining the web of relationships that bind us to others and to our community, our sense of identity unravels. On a communal level, societies recognize the importance of memory by institutionalizing or memorializing historical events in ritual, art and culture. Paul Connerton points out for this reason that religion and society are themselves forms of memory.(29)Examples are legion. Societies memorialize personalities in statues and art, commemorate defining battles or conflicts by reenacting them, and remember founding principles by institutionalizing them in their legal and judicial systems. Religions memorialize key events and personalities in similar ways.The Christian Eucharist is a good example of this, though there are many others. At communion, each Christian remembers Jesus's archetypal sacrifice by actually partaking of that sacrifice – that is, by eating Jesus's body and drinking his blood. Through this act, each Christian not only remembers Christ's sacrifice but comes to understand its relation to their lives: Christ died so we could live. This ritual places the individual Christian life into a wider context of meaning and in the process the life in the present takes on the meanings of the past. Like the Christian Eucharist, Bahá'í worship practices connect believers with the wider meanings of their tradition. Performing Bahá'í prayers gives believers a basic map of the world and reveals how they fit into it.Probably no other Bahá'í prayer sets up this basic "map" of the world better than the obligatory prayers, prayers which, according to Bahá'í scriptures, are "by their very nature of greater effectiveness" and "endowed with a greater power than the non-obligatory ones."(30)Unlike all other Bahá'í prayers, these prayers of "special potency and significance" coordinate bodily postures and prescribed verses in a discipline of attentiveness that involves both mind and body. These are the only prayers that come with specific instructions about how and when to perform them (in other words, these are the only prayers with what we could call ritual requirements). They typically are recited by individual Bahá'ís on a daily basis; they must be preceded by ablutions, or ritual washings of hands and face; they must be said at prescribed times; and they must be said while facing Bahjí, the place in Israel where Bahá'u'lláh is interred. Unlike other Bahá'í prayers, the obligatory prayers also incorporate bodily postures and gestures. Believers wash their hands and face while asking God to purify their bodies and minds, believers bow to the ground while affirming God's sovereignty, believers stand with raised arms and entreat God to see and hear their prayers. This carefully prescribed prayer environment is, as I have said, unusually efficacious: "Through such prayer," 'Abdu'l-Bahá explains, "man holdeth communion with God...converseth with the true Beloved of one's heart, and attaineth spiritual stations."(31)Unfortunately, other than this short explanation of the power of the obligatory prayers and 'Abdu'l-Bahá's mysterious comment that "in every word and movement of the obligatory prayer there are allusions, mysteries and a wisdom that man is unable to comprehend,"(32) we know little about the obligatory prayers. Why are they "by their very nature of greater effectiveness"? What are the "allusions" and "mysteries" that are enshrined in their "every word and movement"?Though I may be rushing in where angels fear to tread, I would like to spend the last few pages trying to unpack the meanings and significance of these singular prayers. I would to propose first that when prayers are practised instead of merely spoken they are more easily understood and reflected upon. Then I will propose, returning to my theme of remembrance, that the obligatory prayers are more efficacious than other Bahá'í prayers because unlike other prayers they enlist both body and mind in a discipline of remembrance.In the obligatory prayers, bodily postures and gestures express and reinforce inner attitudes. For example, a believer's sense of humility in the face of the mystery of God is symbolized in a bow to the floor; a desire to purify oneself spiritually is translated into ritual washings of hands and face; an anticipation of God's help is transformed into expectant gazes and raised hands. To be sure, enacting our beliefs somehow makes them more real: humility, submission, love, praise – all are observed visually, experienced bodily and processed cognitively in the obligatory prayers. In a way, all inner dispositions are iconographically displayed in the postures of the obligatory prayers in such a way that they can be critically reflected upon. Observing themselves with hands raised in supplication believers might question the depth of their dependence on God. Do I need God enough to raise my hands to him and ask for his help? Do I feel inside the love I am expressing outwardly? There is a certain complementarity to thought and action in these prayers: bodily postures can express, reinforce and even challenge inner attitudes, and vice-versa. Perhaps this is what Shoghi Effendi meant when he pointed out that the movements of the obligatory prayers help believers "fully concentrate when praying and meditating."(33)In these prayers, attitudes and actions, words and deeds harmonize to become, in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words, a "beautiful prayer."The body is not passive in this process. On the contrary, I would argue that the body can actually determine what is learned, felt or remembered while praying the obligatory prayers. Evidence for this claim comes from several quadrants.First of all, Bahá'í scriptures themselves repeatedly point out the connections between outer behaviours and inner dispositions. 'Abdu'l-Bahá points out in several passages that the body (or more generally, the material world) can dramatically influence the life of the spirit. "The eye sees; the heart is affected. The ear hears; the spirit is influenced. The heart is at rest; the thoughts become serene, and for all the members of man's body a pleasant condition is realized." In short, the sensations of the body affect the spirit.(34)In another passage that seems to corroborate this point, Shoghi Effendi points out that the "mystic feeling which unites man with God" is principally "brought about and maintained by means of meditation and prayer."(35)In other words, outer acts of worship do not just express inner attitudes of devotion – they cultivate these attitudes. Applying this argument to the obligatory prayers, I would argue that the act of bowing one's forehead to the ground actually creates a sense of humility; that the act of washing one's face and hands actually creates a feeling of inner purity; that raising one's hands to God actually creates a sense of expectation. This may seem an odd or counter-intuitive conclusion, especially for those of us living in cultures that distinguish sharply between mind and matter and identify spirituality only with the former. Nevertheless, it seems to be the conclusion suggested by the Bahá'í scriptures and, for that matter, by a great deal of corroborating literature in the social sciences beginning with the James-Lange theory of emotions.(36) An important implication of my conclusion here is that people who would like to believe – people who would like to feel a love for God but do not – can pray with the hope that the act of praying itself will bring about belief. Those interested in exploring the question of God or belief in him might experiment with prayer.In addition to expressing, creating and sustaining inner dispositions, the body is accomplishing something else in the obligatory prayers – it is remembering.Remembering the words and meanings of the obligatory prayers takes place on a bodily level as physical postures and gestures are associated with certain attitudes and dispositions towards God.As the body sits, as it stands, as it drops to the ground or raises its hands, it calls to mind the verses and inner dispositions associated with these postures. The body, in other words, becomes a mnemonic device. In the long obligatory prayer for example, the believer stands, gazes to the right and the left "as if awaiting the mercy of his Lord" and invokes God by saying "O Thou Who art the Lord of all names and the Maker of the heavens!" After several more verses the believer raises his or her hands and supplicates God with several more prescribed verses. Then the believer kneels, bows his or her head to the ground and recites: "Exalted art Thou above the description of anyone save Thyself...."(37)The series continues – a different verse is associated with each posture. When the prayer is repeated, the body and its postures and gestures help cue in memory the appropriate verses and their meanings. In several cultures around the world, novices memorize their own traditions and scriptures in a similar way – that is, by associating them with head or body positions.(38)Scholars who have studied how peoples and cultures remember their traditions have argued recently that the body itself has an ability to remember and know. Paul Connerton and Tom Kasulis have observed that habitual bodily activities, like typing for instance, remain a kind of knowledge and memory in the body. We remember how to type when we sit at the keypad not because we think about "the place of each letter among the keys" but because our bodies have a "knowledge bred of familiarity in our lived space."(39)In other words, our fingers know where the letters are without us having to "think" about where they are. Many examples could be chosen to illustrate how the body learns and remembers through habitual activity. Playing tennis, playing a musical instrument, driving a car – all involve the body in a kind of embodied knowing and remembering that is made possible by habitual activity. This is also a type of memory that is particularly robust. Every culture, Connerton writes, "will entrust to bodily automatisms the values and categories which they are most anxious to conserve. They will know how well the past can be kept in mind by a habitual memory sedimented in the body."(40)Borrowing Connerton's language, we might say that the "bodily automatisms," or the coordinated postures and verses of the obligatory prayers, are "sedimenting" some of the most important values of the Bahá'í religion in each worshipper's body. This is, to be sure, a powerful type of "remembering."(41)The "bodily automatisms" of prayer can be just that – mindless rituals. And they can be seen as such by scholars. But they can also be read as those actions that incarnate Bahá'í principles, translating ideas into actions in ways that protect them from the forgetting that invariably comes with the passage of time. Human absorption in the "changes and chances" of the world, as I have suggested, can leave us forgetful of our true origins in, and with, God. Once recalled in prayer and scripture however, knowledge of our kinship to God has the potential to remake us in the present: Bahá'í prayer places a picture of the world as it really is before believers and re-places them in that world as sons or daughters of God, as humble believers, as servants of God and others. In the end, then, prayer is not about remaking God but remaking (literally, "re-membering") one's self. Put another way, prayer reconstitutes the self as a self-in-God. In the obligatory prayers, as we have seen, this discipline finds its most powerful form, for here body and mind together remember and are in turn "re-membered": rehearsed in the mind and enacted in the body, the words of the obligatory prayers recreate the whole person, body and mind, in their image.Endnotes'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978) 202; Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian (New Delhi: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1973) 86-7.Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitab-i-Aqdás: The Most Holy Book (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1992) 73.The Báb, Selections from the Writings of the Bab (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1976) 93-4.See Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1994) 185. The passage reads: "Considering what God hath revealed, that 'We are closer to man than his life-vein,' the poet hath, in allusion to this verse, stated that, though the revelation of my Best-Beloved hath so permeated my being that He is closer to me than my life-vein, yet, notwithstanding my certitude of its reality and my recognition of my station, I am still so far removed from Him." For the Qur'anic verse, see sura 50:16.Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1990) 7.Ibid., 6, 17. Elsewhere in the Bahá'í writings the human capacity to know and love God is associated with the "soul," as seems to be the case in Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings 158-9: "Know, verily that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem....It is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him." "Soul" and "heart" seem to be used synonymously in the Bahá'í scriptures.This is not a new idea. For centuries, Christian theologians and Muslim mystics (particularly Sufis such as, e.g., Rumi and Attar) have spoken of an inborn capacity to know God.Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings 4.Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words 29. See also Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings 185.Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings 185.Though it is beyond the purview of the current paper, we might also argue that the main purpose of Bahá'í life in general is remembrance. In other words, remembrance can be understood not simply as one activity (e.g., prayer) but as the central activity of collective Bahá'í life, especially as it is institutionalized in, for example, the Mashriqu'l-adhkar (literally, the dawning-place of the remembrance of God). There are many other ways in which memories of both God and Bahá'í traditions are institutionalized in Bahá'í life (e.g., in texts, statuary, architecture and art). The author is currently working on expanding this analysis to include these other activities.Using an internet search tool called "Trueseeker" (http://sunsite.unc.edu/Bahá'í/TrueSeeker/), I scanned several of Bahá'u'lláh's writings for the words "remember" and "forget" and their variants ("remembered," "remembering," "remembrance," "remembers," "forgot," "forgotten," "forgetful," "forgetfulness," and "forgets"). The results from my analysis of Prayers and Meditations (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1996) were as follows: "remember" occurred 16 times; "remembered," 4 times; "remembering," 13 times; "remembrance," 66 times; "remembers," 0 times; "forgot," 0 times; "forgotten," 4 times; "forgetful," 4 times; "forgetfulness," 3 times; "forgets," 0 times. Any irrelevant "hits" were left out of the tallies here (e.g., "forgot" actually appears once in Prayers and Meditations but it is not used to describe worship or worship practices. It was therefore left out of the final count.)XV:29; LXXVII:126-7.XLIV:63; XL:56-7.LXIV:102.LXXXV:144; XXXII:39.XC:151-2.Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) 171.Ruzbihan Baqli, quoted in Schimmel, Mystical 167-8. The practice of dhikr has some Qur'anic warrants. Sura 33:40 commands believers to "recollect God often." Sura 13:28 confirms that "the recollection of God makes the heart calm." See Schimmel, Mystical 166-190.See Steven Scholl's paper "The Remembrance of God: An invocation technique in Sufism and the Writings of the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh" and rejoinders. Published in Bahá'í Studies Bulletin 2.3 (December 1983): 73f-104f.Bahá'u'lláh, The Hidden Words 27-8.Quoted in Bahá'í World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1976) 393.See 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections 207.See 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections 207.Bahá'u'lláh, Prayers and Meditations 127.Lawrence Sullivan, "Memory Distortion and Anamnesis: A View from the Human Sciences," in Daniel Schacter et al. (eds.) Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains and Societies Reconstruct the Past (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) 387.See Augustine, Confessions (trans. John Ryan) (New York: Doubleday, 1960) X:8, 236 and X:17, 246.William C. Chittick, quoted in Lawrence Sullivan, "Memory Distortion and Anamnesis" 388.See Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) passim.From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, dated 4 January 1936 to an individual believer. Quoted in The Universal House of Justice (ed.), The Compilation of Compilations (vol. 2) (Maryborough: Bahá'í Publications Australia, 1991) 238.Quoted in Compilation (vol. 2) 232.Ibid., 233.From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, dated 5 November 1934 to an individual believer. Quoted in ibid., 237.'Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions. (Wilmette: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1985) 244-7. There are, of course, many ways in which the body affects the spirit in Bahá'í belief and practice. We might cite Bahá'í teachings on cleanliness or on chastity as two suggestive examples.Shoghi Effendi, Directives 86-7. My emphasis.Contemporary advocates of the James-Lange theory contend that bodily activities (smiling, crying, etc.) are often prior to their corresponding emotions. In other words, these thinkers argue that bodily activities cause feelings. For an introduction to this literature see Robert Zajonc et al. Emotions, Cognition and Behavior (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). See also William James, Principles of Psychology (vol. 2) (New York: Holt, 1890) 1066; Robert B. Zajonc, "Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need no Inferences," American Psychologist 35 (1980): 151-175; Robert Zajonc, "The Face as a Primary Instrument of Social Process," in R. Zajonc and S. Moscovici (eds.), Social Psychology and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press); and Gerald Clore, Can Emotions be Nonconscious? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).For the prayers themselves and the instructions that go with them see Bahá'u'lláh, Prayers and Meditations 314-323.See for example Tom Kasulis's excellent collection of essays on bodily practices in Asian religions entitled Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993). The chapter by Frits Staal, "Indian Bodies," (59-102) is particularly useful.Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember 95.Ibid., 102. We could also talk about the kind of remembering Connerton describes here as "procedural," that is, as memory of skills and procedures, as opposed to "declarative" (memory of names, dates and other facts). It may be an important corroboration of Connerton that psychologists have found procedural memory more robust than declarative memory in the elderly and in those with amnesia and dementia.We should note that the remembering that goes on in prayer, and the reflection on that process of remembering that the prayers themselves call for, are constitutive of the prayer experience itself. Bahá'í prayers themselves participate in their interpretation (by interpreting prayer, to give one example, as remembrance) and encourage reflection on prayer as a part of prayer. Using this definition, we might understand this essay and any other reflection on prayer as an act of worship.
Saturday 30 June 2007
Tuesday 26 June 2007
"You gotta read this!
from a bahais list
" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan
Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had
been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think
about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity
or keeping it for themselves.
As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists
stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the
interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a
primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to
food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior
moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was
basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific
support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis
of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is
also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow
its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new
window on what it means to be good.
Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological
experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass.
The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are
showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be
hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary
processes that began in other species.
No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in
the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe's
head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests:
One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its
neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually
forgo eating.
What the new research is showing is that morality has biological
roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in
Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time.
The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation
of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience
vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an
important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a
short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and
wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of
Chicago.
The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers
and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling
questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry --
rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal
responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very
idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just
another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive
and propagate.
Moral decisions can often feel like abstract intellectual challenges,
but a number of experiments such as the one by Grafman have shown
that emotions are central to moral thinking. In another experiment
published in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist
Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with
damage to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex lack the ability to feel their way to moral answers.
When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients
coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers. Damasio said
the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that
when confronted by a difficult issue -- such as whether to shoot down
a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city -
- these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that
afflicts those with normally functioning brains.
Such experiments have two important implications. One is that
morality is not merely about the decisions people reach but also
about the process by which they get there. Another implication, said
Adrian Raine, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Southern
California, is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral
people.
Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse. Without that awareness,
people relying exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to
sort their way through moral thickets. Does that mean they should be
held to different standards of accountability?
"Eventually, you are bound to get into areas that for thousands of
years we have preferred to keep mystical," said Grafman, the chief
cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke. "Some of the questions that are important are
not just of intellectual interest, but challenging and frightening to
the ways we ground our lives. We need to step very carefully."
Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said
multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain
activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above
our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by
philosophers and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's
basic propensities.
Moral decision-making often involves competing brain networks vying
for supremacy, he said. Simple moral decisions -- is killing a child
right or wrong? -- are simple because they activate a straightforward
brain response. Difficult moral decisions, by contrast, activate
multiple brain regions that conflict with one another, he said.
In one 2004 brain-imaging experiment, Greene asked volunteers to
imagine that they were hiding in a cellar of a village as enemy
soldiers came looking to kill all the inhabitants. If a baby was
crying in the cellar, Greene asked, was it right to smother the child
to keep the soldiers from discovering the cellar and killing everyone?
The reason people are slow to answer such an awful question, the
study indicated, is that emotion-linked circuits automatically
signaling that killing a baby is wrong clash with areas of the brain
that involve cooler aspects of cognition. One brain region activated
when people process such difficult choices is the inferior parietal
lobe, which has been shown to be active in more impersonal decision-
making. This part of the brain, in essence, was "arguing" with brain
networks that reacted with visceral horror.
Such studies point to a pattern, Greene said, showing "competing
forces that may have come online at different points in our
evolutionary history. A basic emotional response is probably much
older than the ability to evaluate costs and benefits."
While one implication of such findings is that people with certain
kinds of brain damage may do bad things they cannot be held
responsible for, the new research could also expand the boundaries of
moral responsibility. Neuroscience research, Greene said, is finally
explaining a problem that has long troubled philosophers and moral
teachers: Why is it that people who are willing to help someone in
front of them will ignore abstract pleas for help from those who are
distant, such as a request for a charitable contribution that could
save the life of a child overseas?
"We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you
existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn't face
the other kind of situation," Greene said. "It is comforting to think
your moral intuitions are reliable and you can trust them. But if my
analysis is right, your intuitions are not trustworthy. Once you
realize why you have the intuitions you have, it puts a burden on
you" to think about morality differently.
Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed
psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has
found that people all over the world process moral questions in the
same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human
brain, rather than a product of culture. It may be useful to think
about morality much like language, in that its basic features are
hard-wired, Hauser said. Different cultures and religions build on
that framework in much the way children in different cultures learn
different languages using the same neural machinery.
Hauser said that if his theory is right, there should be aspects of
morality that are automatic and unconscious -- just like language.
People would reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a
sentence without having been trained in linguistics. Hauser said the
idea could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances.
U.S. law, for example, distinguishes between a physician who removes
a feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who
administers a drug to kill the patient.
Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more
emotionally charged -- and therefore feels like a different moral
problem, when it really is not: "In the end, the doctor's intent is
to reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive
euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead."
from a bahais list
" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan
Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had
been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think
about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity
or keeping it for themselves.
As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists
stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the
interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a
primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to
food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior
moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was
basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific
support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis
of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is
also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow
its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new
window on what it means to be good.
Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological
experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass.
The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are
showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be
hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary
processes that began in other species.
No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in
the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe's
head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests:
One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its
neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually
forgo eating.
What the new research is showing is that morality has biological
roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in
Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time.
The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation
of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience
vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an
important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a
short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and
wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of
Chicago.
The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers
and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling
questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry --
rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal
responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very
idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just
another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive
and propagate.
Moral decisions can often feel like abstract intellectual challenges,
but a number of experiments such as the one by Grafman have shown
that emotions are central to moral thinking. In another experiment
published in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist
Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with
damage to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex lack the ability to feel their way to moral answers.
When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients
coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers. Damasio said
the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that
when confronted by a difficult issue -- such as whether to shoot down
a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city -
- these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that
afflicts those with normally functioning brains.
Such experiments have two important implications. One is that
morality is not merely about the decisions people reach but also
about the process by which they get there. Another implication, said
Adrian Raine, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Southern
California, is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral
people.
Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse. Without that awareness,
people relying exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to
sort their way through moral thickets. Does that mean they should be
held to different standards of accountability?
"Eventually, you are bound to get into areas that for thousands of
years we have preferred to keep mystical," said Grafman, the chief
cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke. "Some of the questions that are important are
not just of intellectual interest, but challenging and frightening to
the ways we ground our lives. We need to step very carefully."
Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said
multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain
activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above
our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by
philosophers and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's
basic propensities.
Moral decision-making often involves competing brain networks vying
for supremacy, he said. Simple moral decisions -- is killing a child
right or wrong? -- are simple because they activate a straightforward
brain response. Difficult moral decisions, by contrast, activate
multiple brain regions that conflict with one another, he said.
In one 2004 brain-imaging experiment, Greene asked volunteers to
imagine that they were hiding in a cellar of a village as enemy
soldiers came looking to kill all the inhabitants. If a baby was
crying in the cellar, Greene asked, was it right to smother the child
to keep the soldiers from discovering the cellar and killing everyone?
The reason people are slow to answer such an awful question, the
study indicated, is that emotion-linked circuits automatically
signaling that killing a baby is wrong clash with areas of the brain
that involve cooler aspects of cognition. One brain region activated
when people process such difficult choices is the inferior parietal
lobe, which has been shown to be active in more impersonal decision-
making. This part of the brain, in essence, was "arguing" with brain
networks that reacted with visceral horror.
Such studies point to a pattern, Greene said, showing "competing
forces that may have come online at different points in our
evolutionary history. A basic emotional response is probably much
older than the ability to evaluate costs and benefits."
While one implication of such findings is that people with certain
kinds of brain damage may do bad things they cannot be held
responsible for, the new research could also expand the boundaries of
moral responsibility. Neuroscience research, Greene said, is finally
explaining a problem that has long troubled philosophers and moral
teachers: Why is it that people who are willing to help someone in
front of them will ignore abstract pleas for help from those who are
distant, such as a request for a charitable contribution that could
save the life of a child overseas?
"We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you
existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn't face
the other kind of situation," Greene said. "It is comforting to think
your moral intuitions are reliable and you can trust them. But if my
analysis is right, your intuitions are not trustworthy. Once you
realize why you have the intuitions you have, it puts a burden on
you" to think about morality differently.
Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed
psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has
found that people all over the world process moral questions in the
same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human
brain, rather than a product of culture. It may be useful to think
about morality much like language, in that its basic features are
hard-wired, Hauser said. Different cultures and religions build on
that framework in much the way children in different cultures learn
different languages using the same neural machinery.
Hauser said that if his theory is right, there should be aspects of
morality that are automatic and unconscious -- just like language.
People would reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a
sentence without having been trained in linguistics. Hauser said the
idea could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances.
U.S. law, for example, distinguishes between a physician who removes
a feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who
administers a drug to kill the patient.
Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more
emotionally charged -- and therefore feels like a different moral
problem, when it really is not: "In the end, the doctor's intent is
to reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive
euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead."
Monday 25 June 2007
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July 7, 2007 |
=============Nutrition & HealingSpecial Report
Could the secrets to
SAVING YOUR EYESIGHT
be found in a bowl of CHILI?
Sound crazy? Tell that to the MD who's been helping his patients regain their vision for over 20 years...with a "vitamins and minerals" miracle probably in foods in your kitchen right now, with NO surgery and NO side effects...
It's all thanks to Harvard-educated JONATHAN V. WRIGHT, M.D., who braved ridicule and hostility to pioneer a new kind of medicine that works to stop the causes of chronic disease. His new breakthroughs are saving thousands of lives every year...
Keep reading to learn about...
SPECTACULAR SUGAR CANE CURES outdo cholesterol drugs
MUSTARD MIRACLE all natural cancer-fighter that's found in mustard and other Brassica vegetables could save you from early cervical cancers
"NO GRAIN, NO PAIN" common food that's used to reduce arthritis
THE LIFESAVING ESTROGEN SECRET your gynecologist didn't tell you about
HOW STANDARD PROSTATE THERAPY causes cancer and turns men into women
MACULAR DEGENERATION BREAKTHROUGH promotes strong vision and memory
PIONEERING A NEWKIND OF MEDICINE
While drugs just suppress symptoms, these spectacular new food and vitamin cures from award-winning Dr. Jonathan V. Wright may actually beat your vision loss for good...
Dear Friend,
If you're trying to fight vision loss, you don't need a prescription--and, please stay out of the operating room!
Because you'll find more effective ways to save your vision in your kitchen than you would in any hospital or pharmacy.
That's right! There are simple, safe natural ways to fight the number one cause of vision loss - age-related macular degeneration or ARMD.
But there's no time to waste! Even the Director of National Eye Institute recently stated that age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) will soon become an epidemic.
You read right...he said epidemic.
A word used to describe AIDS, type II diabetes, and heart disease.
Friend, this is getting very serious. But now, thanks to one courageous doctor, there's hope...
To other doctors throughout the world, Dr. Jonathan V. Wright isn't just a pioneer--he's a hero. In many circles, he's revered as one of the reasons we now have the life-giving miracle called natural medicine.
He championed it against all odds, braving ridicule, hostility and even a band of armed thugs sent to trash his clinic.
(No kidding, keep reading.)
And because he fought so hard, now it really is possible for you to learn how to defeat macular degeneration...
The "Mineral and Vitamin" ARMD-prevention program that starts in your kitchen...
Possibly just the contents in your kitchen (with no digestive aids or IV nutrients) can actually PREVENT the problem, and once it starts....
It begins with simple remedies like homemade chili!
That's because high quality red meat, beans, garlic and onions are some of the richest "eye foods" you can eat!
See, with just the right additions to your diet and Dr. Wright's usually-reliable team of eye-saving nutrients, you'll be well on your way to keeping your vision sharp as an eagle!
So no matter what you've heard about macular degeneration, the simple truth is there is a solution, and...
You never need to go blind!
Not a chili fan? Not a problem! As long as you know which vital nutrients (because vitamins and amino acids are involved, too) are missing from your diet, you can easily uncover a whole world of vision-saving recipes.
Incredible as it sounds, it's really happening--because Dr. Wright is constantly pushing the envelope. Now, you too will learn to:
Safeguard your vision with one delicious food that's the strongest source of eyesight power--(but be careful...it's also a popular aphrodisiac)...
Avoid these 3 prescription vision killers!
3 popular prescription drugs may actually HELP MACULAR DEGENERATION take over your eyes?
Check this information before filling out your next Rx
Unlock your body's secret ARMD fighter--in fact, the best way to save your vision is already inside you waiting to work wonders, you just need to know how to use it...
And now, Dr. Wright has compiled his most important research for you in his new special report "Secrets to Saving Your Vision."
(I'll tell you more about how to get it in a minute.) As you'll learn, Dr. Wright's famed "food and vitamin cures" have been showing unparalleled results for decades.
In fact, Dr. Wright's success with ARMD (and many other illnesses) is the reason there's a six months wait to see him! And he accomplishes it all for you without prescription pills, invasive surgical procedures, or any of modern medicine's costly side-effects (costly both to your wallet and health)!
Isn't it time you learned about them tooRIGHT NOW
In the following paragraphs, you'll learn about just a few of these breakthroughs...discoveries so profound, they'll totally change the nature of what doctors can do for you in years to come.
But why wait years? JUST SIGN UP today and I'll be pleased to send you 8 FREE BONUS GIFTS detailing all of Dr. Wright's most valuable new breakthroughs.
Whether you want to restore your own health, or help a parent, spouse or loved one...
This FREE 8-VOLUME BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures will show you how to get healthier than you ever dreamed, without surgery, drugs, radiation or anything else more dangerous than...
SUGAR SHOCKERSHAKES MEDICAL WORLD
They've told you that all sugar is bad, but SURPRISE...
Dr. Wright has discovered that, much like fats, there are 'bad' and 'good' sugars, and the difference can transform your health in days - or even minutes.
'BAD' sugars attract dangerous germs...
You see, sugar isn't just sweet for us - germs love it too.
The sugar in your body sends out chemical signals that draw them like moths to a flame.
By reading the 'sugar code' on your cell walls, these pathogens target cells all over your body. But what if you could turn that secret code against your microbial enemies? Incredibly, now you can, with...
'GOOD' sugars that disable germs
These 'exotic' varieties aren't found in table sugar, but they do show up in small quantities in certain fruits, like cranberries. Their molecules are just a little different, but it makes a huge difference to germs...
Instead of just waiting to be eaten, these good sugars overwhelm germs by jamming their chemical 'radar' and blocking the cellular receptors these pathogens grab hold of (kind of like coating your cells with Teflon).
Suddenly, germs have a hard time even finding your cells - but if they do manage to locate a few, they're too slippery to cling to.
Because they can't hang on, your body fluids then wash these germs away harmlessly.
Too good to be true? WRONG. Dr. Wright has found sugars that do exactly this.
Take 'Sugar X', for example. Also known as xylitol, it looks and tastes a lot like ordinary table sugar, but actually disables bacteria...
What better place to test a 'good' sugarthan in your mouth?
To start with, researchers created a gum made from Xylitol. Amazingly, people who chewed it got 80% less tooth decay, even though they didn't change their eating habits. But it gets better...
CONQUER tooth decay with sugar? Strange but true...
In addition to washing out germs, it apparently works the same magic on pollutants, pollen grains and other allergens that attach to your mucous membranes, triggering hay fever and asthma attacks. Suddenly, all those micro-particles get 'unstuck' and slip away.
Can the same thing work formore serious diseases?BIG YES.
For example, researchers placed Sugar X in a nose spray and gave it to people with chronic ear and sinus infections. Lifelong sufferers were shocked to find...
Sinus and ear infections SLASHED BY 93%
Yes, this same sugar 'unsticks' the germs in your nose, sinuses and ear canals! Spray it in, wait a bit, blow your nose, and away go the bacteria.
You better believe I've tried it myself. You can feel the difference in minutes. If you're a sinus sufferer, or know a child tortured by ear infections, think of what this means. Instead of being doomed to a lifetime of antibiotics and all the nasty side-effects they bring...no more diarrhea and cramps, no more yeast overgrowths, no more fatigue, no more suffering, period.
But that's just the start, because now...
Sugar X proves equally miraculous forASTHMA AND HAY FEVERSUFFERERS
In addition to washing out germs, it apparently works the same magic on pollutants, pollen grains and other allergens that attach to your mucous membranes, triggering hay fever and asthma attacks. Suddenly, all those micro-particles get 'unstuck' and slip away.
And there's similar sweet news aboutBLADDER AND URINARY INFECTIONS...
If you or your spouse have ever suffered these painful attacks, I don't have to tell you what antibiotics can't do. They can't keep the infection from bouncing back as soon the drugs stop.
Worse, the germs quickly gain immunity to the antibiotic. Drugs like penicillin that used to work well must now be taken at triple the old dosage. In a frightening number of new cases, they can't kill the bugs at all...
'Sugar M' washes out bugs that resistTHE MOST POWERFUL ANTIBIOTICS...
The scientific name for this miraculous sugar is D-Mannose. And it has already proved a godsend for hundreds of patients at Dr. Wright's clinic, and readers of Nutrition & Healing who have tried it themselves. In most cases, patients are infection free in less than 48 hours. The bacteria become so slippery they can no longer cling to your cell walls. You literally flush them down the toilet.
More good news. These healing sugars even taste delicious, yet...
They don't make you fat, because they'slip-slide' right through your digestive system.
They can even help you lose weight...
Are you starting to see why so many doctors are starting to study Dr. Wright's theories? His solutions don't just stave off disease, they wipe it out for good.
Yet all this is just the beginning. Think even bigger. Like heart disease...
'What? Cut cholesterolwith SUGAR CANE??!!'
Actually, it's even more astonishing than that...
EVEN IF YOU'VE BEEN BLISSFULLY IGNORING your doctor's advice for years, drinking, eating the wrong foods, not getting enough exercise...
Maybe you won't have to pay the piper after all. To a stunned world, Dr. Wright recently revealed details about an all-natural sugar cane extract that's now doing patients more benefit than the latest cholesterol-controlling statin drugs.
Unlike dangerous drugs that simply lower cholesterol, this harmless extract does just about everything your heart could desire. Several studies show that it can:
Cut TOTAL cholesterol as much as 18%...
Slash LDL cholesterol by 25%...
Raise HDL ('good') cholesterol up to 29%...
Drop dangerous triglycerides as much as 18%...
Getting the picture? Your whole circulatory system just got a second chance...
New FREE service fromNutrition and Healing Get direct, FREE access to life-saving tips from one of the most respected sources in alternative medicine, Dr. Jonathan V. Wright's Nutrition & Healing. Based on years of experience and research, these are the solutions Dr. Wright uses in his Tahoma Clinic every day to help keep his patients feeling their best. Solutions such as...
Blinded by the night
The missing link in one natural medicine miracle
Sugar: the good, the bad, and the ugly Now you can put them to work for you with the Health e-Tips from Nutrition & Healing.
Enter your e-mail address: Privacy Policy: We understand and respect how much you value your privacy. That is why we guarantee we will never sell your e-mail address.
No drug known to sciencecan match this
Skeptical? So were a lot of scientists. They proceeded to test the sugar cane extract against top prescription drugs - substances with some very dangerous side-effects. In three different double-blind, placebo-controlled studies, they put it up against prevastatin (Prevachol®), lovastatin (Mevacor®), simvastatin (Zocor®)...
The sugar cane miracle whomped them all. More benefits, no side-effects, and all at a slender fraction of the cost. The results leave little room for doubt...
Yet it's so safe, even diabetics use it withNO HARMFUL SIDE-EFFECTS
In fact, it's been carefully tested on people with type II diabetes and has proved totally safe, with no adverse impact on glucose control.
Yes, even though it's a sugar cane extract. Because this remarkable substance has practically zero carbohydrate content. (Technically, it's not even a sugar.) And this most amazing of 'sugar cures' has even more tricks up its sleeve...
For example, it reduces blood clot risk without aspirin...
Meaning you get the lifesaving benefit without the risk of intestinal bleeding and osteoporosis that aspirin therapy carries. But there's even more it can do for you, as you'll learn in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures. And in case you're wondering...
Why didn't my own doctortell me about this?
Great question. That's exactly why many thousands of caring physicians - alternative and traditional-minded doctors alike - are flocking to Dr. Wright's seminars and subscribing to Nutrition & Healing.
Because he's always pushing beyond medicine's old 'comfort zone.' Challenging smug assumptions. Coming up with dazzling new solutions to puzzles that have eluded tradition-bound doctors for years.
This is also where many doctors found out for the first time about...
'MUSTARD MIRACLE'makes female cancers vanish
You knew vegetables can stave off cancer, but cure it?
SUDDENLY, A DOOR JUST OPENED into a brand new world where miracles are possible even for cancer patients.
This stuff is so harmless, you could (and probably should) take some every day just to be on the safe side. Yet it's so powerful, even I was blown away when Dr. Wright delivered the breathtaking news...
A POTENTIALLY DEADLY SEX-ORGANCANCER HAS BEEN WIPED OUTin nearly 50% of cases by an extractfrom vegetables you eat for dinner
Thirty women with a deadly form of cervical cancer took part in this breakthrough research. And within just 12 weeks...
Nearly half the women who ate the extract becameTOTALLY CANCER-FREE
The results shocked nearly every researcher who saw them, except Dr. Wright.
He had already been advising his patients to devour these veggies with gusto. They're commonly called the mustard family - mustard, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, cabbage and brussels sprouts all belong to the club.
They contain lots of good stuff,but their best secret isTHE MIRACLE MOLECULE I3C
And ending cervical cancer is just the start of what I3C could do for us. It may also prove to be...
A long-sought key to combatting
BREAST CANCER...
UTERINE CANCER...
OVARIAN CANCER...
And every other kind of cancer that feeds on female sex hormones. Instead of attacking cancer cells, I3C reverses their ability to convert your estrogen mix from 'bad' to 'good.'
Yes, there's 'bad' and 'good' estrogen! (This has nothing to do with progesterone.) Dr. Wright is famous for having written about this long ago. And he confirmed they've got to be balanced, just like good and bad cholesterol, because...
BAD ESTROGEN feeds cancer in your breasts and sex organ tissues...
GOOD ESTROGEN inhibits this out-of-control cell growth...
It's a big reason why some women are more prone to cancer than others. It's the type of estrogen in your body that makes the difference. You'll find full details on how to check and correct your own estrogen balance in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures, so please do take the opportunity to subscribe now.
Here's where you'll also find the shocking secret that could save millions of men from prostate cancer...
How standard prostate therapy is encouraging cancer and
TURNING MEN INTOWOMEN
Nearly all American men get prostatecancer if they live long enough.
Know why? The truth may appall you...
IT'S COME TO THE POINT where they're telling men that prostate cancer is normal. Autopsies on a frightening number of American men are showing traces of prostate cancer and many authorities are simply admitting defeat.
But not Dr. Wright. For years, he's been warning us that established theories are dead wrong and the latest research reveals he was right all along. Contrary to popular wisdom...
SURPRISE! The bad guy is not just your testosterone...
How could it be? As Dr. Wright has long maintained, prostate cancer rates soar in men exactly at the age when their testosterone production plummets. What's more...
It may not even beyour DHT testosterone...
Some authorities argued that a special kind of testosterone is to blame - so-called 'bad' testosterone or DHT. They blamed DHT for causing both prostate cancer and benign swelling.
Drug firms developed powerful blockers (like Proscar®) to suppress DHT, and promoted them with huge ad campaigns, even though they're known to cause impotence in many men.
So if DHT testosterone causes cancer, these 'wonder' drugs should prevent it, right? But guess what? When researchers at the University of Southern California studied men at high risk for prostate cancer...
Men taking the drugs were 800% more likely TO GET A CERTAIN TYPEOF PROSTATE TUMOR
So if testosterone isn't the problem, what is? How about this for an eye-opener:
Today, many American men over 60have more ESTROGEN in theirbloodstream than a 60-year-old WOMAN!
ESTROGEN! The 'female' hormone! Now, it's natural for men to have a little estrogen in their bodies, just as healthy women need a little testosterone. But too much estrogen isn't just bad for a man, it's catastrophic.
Suddenly, it all makes sense.Prostate cancer and benign prostateswelling and so-called 'male menopause'...
Is it any wonder the prostates of so many men are swelling and growing tumors?
Is it any wonder that millions of strong, healthy, alert men are changing into frail, chronically ill, mentally dull, old codgers who haven't had an erection in decades and couldn't care less if they did?
But where is all this excess estrogen coming from? Strange as it sounds, studies now confirm that if you're a man over 40...
Much of your testosterone may beTURNING INTO ESTROGEN
Weird as it sounds, testosterone-to-estrogen conversion is a well-known chemical process. It's very normal and desirable for women and again, a little estrogen is normal in men, but in way too many cases it's out of control.
Part of the problem could be the well-documented effects of literally dozens of common pesticides and herbicides. Another part could be estrogen-mimicking 'health' foods that men and women are being told to eat. But at least one other culprit is to blame...
FACT: Prescription drugs for BPH encourage testosterone-to-estrogen conversion. Men who take them have even been known to grow female breasts!
Of course, this can't be the only cause. Other drugs and foods may be guilty, and more research is needed...
But there's no need to put up with this plague for even one more day. Dr. Wright has been leading the charge in male hormone research for many years, and in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures he'll show you a blessedly safe and simple way to defeat this secret enemy...
'Passionate' herb banishes excess male estrogen
It's a natural extract from the passionflower that's safe, cheap and readily available. Even if you're wary of taking testosterone-boosters, this herb's a no-brainer. It doesn't change the amount of testosterone you're making, but stops it from turning into estrogen in most cases.
Dr. Wright reports that his male patients who simply take this harmless herb often regain their healthy testosterone balance in as little as a month.
And restoring healthy testosterone levelscan revive a lot more than your prostate...
As hundreds of Dr. Wright's male patients can attest, you may feel like you took a
Jacuzzi-bath in the fountain of youth...
It can rejuvenate your SEX LIFE...
Reverse years of DEPRESSION...
Slash your risk of HEART DISEASE...
Relieve problems from INSOMNIA to OSTEOPOROSIS...
Every man who feels even a little 'behind the curve' should know the truth about testosterone. So subscribe today and get your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures. And find out also...
STUNNING 'STOMACH CURE' restores lost vision, reverses memory loss and ends countless other diseases of aging, too
HOLD A NICKEL IN FRONT OF EACH EYE. Don't move your head. Then try to read...
That's what the world looked like to Sam P. when he first visited Dr. Wright. His macular degeneration had gotten so bad, he didn't even feel safe driving his car anymore.
'My eye doctor says that since the vitamin and mineral pills he gave me don't make any difference, there's nothing left to do,' Sam worried. 'I can't face going blind.'
But it took just 30 days for Sam to reverse his vision loss...
HIS EYES WERE BETTER IN A MONTHand 8 years later he's still doing great
HOW? What on earth did Dr. Wright do that never even occurred to Sam's eye specialist?
Something incredibly strange-sounding. He checked the acid levels in Sam's stomach.
WHY? Because, years ago, Dr. Wright made a revolutionary discovery...
Nearly half of all Americans over 50 lack thestomach acid to digest their food fully,let alone absorb vitamin pills
That's right. Drug companies have cast your stomach acid as a villain, but it's the very foundation of good nutrition. Bear in mind that a healthy stomach needs enough acid to reduce all the solids you eat to soup...
Otherwise your gut simply can't handle what's passing through. You may as well be throwing your veggies and vitamins in the trash...
And this is why so many Americansare growing misty-eyed forgetful and creaky before their time
Now I know what you're probably wondering. 'Not enough stomach acid? How could this be? What about all the heartburn we've got? What about all the commercials for antacids and acid-blockers?
'Everyone knows that heartburn's caused bytoo much acid...'
But hold it right there. Just how do they know? Has anyone actually measured the acidity of your stomach? For that matter, have you ever heard of any doctor measuring stomach acidity?
Well, Dr. Wright does measure it, and he's kept careful figures on patients who complain of heartburn and other stomach ailments. Guess what. Over 90% of them don't have too much stomach acid, but too little...
And when they take supplements to increasethe acid, the heartburn goes away forever
Wild, huh? But there's a logical explanation, as you'll see in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures. And when ailing patients correct this 'minor' problem...often everything else clicks into place.
Their vision, memory - and good spirits -all come rushing back
Makes sense, doesn't it? If you can't break down your food, medically speaking, you're starving to death. You could be eating six meals a day, you could even be overweight, yet if your stomach acid isn't up to snuff, most of the nutrients never get absorbed. But when you restore healthy acidity...
Vision problems disappear, because at last all those veggies and vitamins can go to work.
Memory problems and depression vanish, because healthy stomach acid also breaks protein down into essential amino acids that power your nerve cells. Suddenly, your brain is wired and working again!
You don't get sick as often because healthy stomach acid kills off dangerous parasites and bacteria...
And, in fact, as you'll see in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures, there's hardly any 'disease of aging' that can't be helped to a surprising extent by correcting this simple problem.
I realize this is a mind-bender,but do your loved ones a favor...
If they seem to be losing their mental or visual sharpness, don't write it off to Father Time. Check out the proof in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures. And find out why Dr. Wright is such a legend among patients who thought they were just feeling their age. Like...
When Theresa's husband startedleaving his socks in the fridge...
...she was merely worried. But then he came back from a fishing trip minus the fish, his boat and his dog, they both decided to see Dr. Wright. Vincent thought he was 'losing it,' but it turned out he was actually missing the stomach acid he needed to break down his food. And without it, his brain cells weren't being 'fed' the nutrients they depend on. He's sharp as a razor now!
Hernando's arteries were so badly diseased,he could barely walk...
He told Dr. Wright, 'I'm just waiting around for things to get bad enough so I can have my legs amputated.' But Dr. Wright found that Hernando had very low stomach acid and when they corrected it, Hernando's arteries got younger. Now he says he hikes 'at least two miles, three times a week, without sitting down once!'
Harry's knees were so swollen,he needed a cane to get out of a chair...
And his neck, spine and knuckles all throbbed with osteoarthritis too. But when Dr. Wright fixed his digestive problem, Harry bounced back like a new rubber ball. He felt better in just four weeks, and not long after, all the pain and swelling ceased. Ten years of agony vanished just like that and never came back.
And speaking of joint pain...
Dr. Wright's astonishingbreakthroughnow confirmed by landmark discovery...
'I KNOW THERE AREN'T ANY CURES,' Theresa C. told Dr. Wright.
'I don't expect some of my joints will ever look normal again.'
But Theresa was wrong and is she ever happy for that! Before long, her pain and her joint deformities were almost entirely gone. She stopped her 12 daily pain pills because she just didn't need them.
Astonishing? But to Dr. Wright, this 'miracle' was quite routine. For years, he's seen the same treatment for inflammatory arthritis heal patient after patient...
HIS SUCCESS RATE IS NEARLY 100%
That's almost unheard-of in medicine - and new research now confirms Dr. Wright is onto yet another huge breakthrough. He's recognized the healing potential in a little known discovery by Dr. James Breneman - the secret culprit hiding behind a large percentage of joint pain and more than 50% of all undiagnosed illness...
It's called low-level food sensitivity. And what it means is that your body can't tolerate certain foods. Oh, you won't break out in hives, but they will trigger immune reactions. Before long, you come down with a full-blown autoimmune condition, like arthritis, lupus, asthma, colitis, Graves' disease, chronic fatigue...
Yet if you simply stop the offending food, the problem melts away like snow in the spring. Want proof? Dr. Wright's track record is quite convincing by itself, but now there's plenty more evidence too...
100 patients totally cured of 'incurable' lupus
An Australian colleague of Dr. Wright's - Dr. Christopher Reading of Sydney - treated 100 people with so-called 'incurable' lupus. All of them had full-blown symptoms (which include joint pain, fever and skin rash) and they weren't just imagining it. They all tested positive for lupus in blood tests.
Yet soon their symptoms vanished and five years later all blood tests came up negative. They were cured.
And all they really did was take some vitamins and cut a few foods from their diet...
Eliminating all grains except rice and corn. You see, these lupus sufferers all shared a sensitivity to gluten, a protein contained in wheat, rye, barley, spelt and oats, but not in corn or rice. And now, a brand-new study reveals it's...
The secret tormentor of 90 million Americans
A brand-new, landmark book just published this year links this same grain sensitivity to joint pain, cancer, depression, brain disorders...even osteoporosis. The study estimates that as many as 90 million Americans are suffering without even suspecting the cause... And genetic research clinches it...
Cutting-edge research reveals that many people with autoimmune diseases share certain genetic commonalities that are known markers for extreme gluten intolerance.
And Dr. Wright has found that when he treats the food intolerance, the other problems fade away...without any need for prednisone or other immune-system destroying medicines. The results are fantastic.
Is YOUR PAIN from grain?
You may be secretly sensitive to grain, or dairy or something else you never suspected - but why guess? Get full details on how to test yourself and clear up the problem for good in your FREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures, where you'll also discover how to...
CUT HEALTH COSTSIN HALF
and your suffering down to nothing
CAN YOU REALLY CUT YOUR HEALTH CARE COSTS IN HALF? Before you dismiss this as hype, let's look at the facts. A few years ago, a major corporate study on a large group of people proved that...
Just one breakthrough used by Dr. Wrightcut all their long-term health problemsby more than 50%...
Just one! That's how incredibly powerful Dr. Wright's 'new medicine' is. That's why he's such a legend among so many doctors and patients.
And that's why I urge you to seize upon his new kind of healing today...
Stop treating your pain only to see it come bouncing back...
Start eliminating the cause and feel your entire body bounce back, often faster than you ever dared imagine!
It all starts as soon as you claim yourFREE BONUS Library of Food & Vitamin Cures...
And if just one of his discoveries can slice your health problems in half, imagine what they all could do for you. I've only had space here to scratch the surface of what you'll find in your FREE BONUS Library.
You'll get full details - and Dr. Wright's comprehensive instructions - covering everything you've read above and so much more, like:
SHRINKING UTERINE FIBROIDS. This ancient Chinese herbal therapy could make more than half of all fibroid surgeries unnecessary. In an open study, it improved the fibroids or totally normalized conditions for 60% of premenopausal women. Sure beats the knife!
ASTONISHING ASTHMA FACT. Scientists have known for decades that nearly 80% of asthmatic children share one glaring nutritional problem. By no coincidence, Dr. Wright has found that he can relieve wheezing in 80% of asthmatic kids through the use of ONE vitamin. Let him show you how.
VARICOSE VEIN VANISHING ACT. Don't just suffer and blame your heredity. You're probably just not getting enough of a very important food! Lack of it creates extra pressure inside your intestines, and this swells the veins in your legs. The remedy is so easy.
THE BURSITIS BUSTER. Often bursitis is simply a signal that you're deficient in good old vitamin B12. Supplement correctly and all the aching can go away. But you must take a form that your body can handle. Let Dr. Wright tell you what works best.
THE PSORIASIS SENSATION. Woodrow D. tried steroid creams, 'tar' preparations, prednisone, you name it. Nothing worked for long until he tried the simple solution suggested by Dr. Wright. Now he's got normal skin (and a new girlfriend). If you're suffering, you've got to try it too.
All these life-giving discoveriesand hundreds more, FREE
To claim your FREE Bonus Library of Food & Vitamin Cures, just click the subscribe now button below. You'll get all 8 lifesaving, life-giving volumes, plus...
AN UNBEATABLE, MONEY-SAVING DEALon today's most honoredalternative health newsletter
When Dr. Wright's colleagues honored him with The Linus Pauling Award, they gave special praise to his cutting-edge health advisory, Nutrition & Healing.
This is the only alternative health newsletter I know of that counts so many doctors among its subscribers. Because it's the real stuff. The first place where you'll learn what new breakthroughs are coming down the road from natural medicine's living legend.
Everything's reported in crystal-clear language, telling you exactly how to go out and do it. So if your doctor ever questions any remedy you read about here, just whip out your newsletter and produce the proof. Any truly objective doctor can't help being impressed with the quality of Dr. Wright's research. (Warning: your doctor may ask to keep the issue!)
No other newsletter of its kind is more respected by natural physicians and actually used by them to heal their own patients. And no other newsletter will do more to heal you...
Because this isn't just 'health news' - each issue is like a complete instruction book for healing yourself. Complete with dosages. Sources for the hard-to-find nutrients Dr. Wright recommends. And all the 'pros' and 'cons' that you (and your doctor!) need to make an informed decision. And, remember, these are the Dr. Wright uses on his own patients day after day.
Just click the subscribe now button below. Do it now!
It saves you up to $69 on your risk-free subscription to Dr. Wright's Nutrition & Healing. And brings you Dr. Wright's complete library for reversing nearly a hundred 'incurable' conditions, including his most acclaimed formulas and programs, FREE with your subscription.
There's no obligation to continue your subscription unless you're thrilled with your first issue. If you're not, just say the word, we'll send you a full pro-rated refund and you can keep your FREE BONUS GIFTS.
Just promise me you'll start using your FREE BONUS GIFTS as soon as you get them...
And as soon as you do, I promise, you'll feel a little stronger every morning, feel a little less pain every evening, until one fine day, you wake and realize...
'I'm not just better, I FEEL FANTASTIC!'
I guarantee your day will arrive very soon. Or just tell us and we'll send you a prompt refund on all unmailed issues. You'll KEEP YOUR FREE BONUS GIFTS no matter what.
Fair enough? So do let me hear from you now.
Let Dr. Wright push the envelope of what's possible for you...
Let his breakthroughs break open the door to a new world where miracles really do happen...
Make it happen today! Subscribe now.
Here's to the dawn of a bright new day in your health,Amanda Ross, Publisher
P.S. FAST-REPLY GIFT! Subscribe today, and I'll rush you Dr. Wright's report on the SHOCKING NEW SUGAR CANE CURES. Read all about the new clinical studies of these astonishing 'good sugars' and sugar cane extracts that outfight antibiotics, outperform cholesterol drugs and even end tooth decay! Don't wait another day to claim this lifesaving FREE BONUS!
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The information provided herein should not be construed as a health-care diagnosis, treatment regimen or any other prescribed health-care advice or instruction. The information is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in the practice of medicine or any other health-care profession and does not enter into a health-care practitioner/patient relationship with its readers. The publisher does not advise or recommend to its readers treatment or action with regard to matters relating to their health or well-being other than to suggest that readers consult appropriate health-care professionals in such matters. No action should be taken based solely on the content of this publication. The information and opinions provided herein are believed to be accurate and sound at the time of publication, based on the best judgment available to the authors. However, readers who rely on information in this publication to replace the advice of health-care professionals, or who fail to consult with health-care professionals, assume all risks of such conduct. The publisher is not responsible for errors or omissions.
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