The Masters of Enlightenment: Albert Einstein

The Low Density Lifestyle book is now out! You can check out an excerpt from the book, and buy it, at the Low Density Lifestyle bookstore.

The series on the Masters of Enlightenment continues today with a profile of a man who was one of the greatest scientists of all time, and who, through his blend of logic, creative intelligence and intuitive insights, opened our minds to the way the universe operates, and in the process, opened the doors of perception to the realm in which science and spirituality merge.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 and died April 18, 1955. He was a German theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics; his theories also provided the concepts and foundation for quantum physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”

He escaped from Nazi Germany in 1933, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and settled in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940. He taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities; he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects such as socialism, international relations and the existence of God. His great intelligence and originality has made the word “Einstein” synonymous with genius.

Einstein was a scientist, an artist, a philosopher, a rebel, and a mystic. He was an original thinker, and left his indelible mark in the collective consciousness of the world.

His life’s work earned him Time Magazine’s award in 1999, in their retrospective issue that looked back at the 20th century, as “Man of the Century.”

While growing up, Albert Einstein had such a spotty track record as a student that no one would have predicted where he would end up. One teacher told the young Einstein, “You will never amount to anything.” Einstein was later expelled from high school and flunked his college entrance exam.

The issue for Einstein as a student was that he did not think in a purely linear way, which is the way the education system generally teaches.

Sadly, the way the education system is constituted these days, it plays a major role in the repression of genius, human potential, and the potential for self-realization and enlightenment.

Many brilliant thinkers who have done much to change the course of humanity are not linear thinkers. They are creative thinkers who see the world in original ways.

If creative thinkers are expected to adjust their thinking from a nonlinear way to a linear one, in order to conform to the one-size-fits-all method of teaching that is the norm in education, they eventually lose their capability for original thinking. And sadly, when this occurs, the world becomes poorer for the experience.

Albert Einstein pointed this out in the case of the 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, who discovered electromagnetism. Einstein said of Faraday’s discovery, “Faraday’s discovery was an audacious mental creation, which we owe chiefly to the fact that Faraday never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking freely.”

Because of his own spotty track record as a student, once he graduated college, it was only thanks to a family connection that he got a job, as a civil servant in a patent office in Switzerland.

It was while working there in 1905 that he changed the course of history with his discovery of Special Theory of Relativity, which he wrote about in a published paper. Over the next few years, he expounded on Relativity Theory with papers on the nature of light and the General Theory of Relativity.

Einstein’s theories changed the notion of space and time, the notion of mass and energy, the notion of matter and light, and the way they are all perceived.

He opened the door to the understanding that the universe we live in is one ruled by quantum laws, a universe in which matter is primarily empty space rich in information and consciousness. Einstein’s perceptions showed that at its core, matter is not solid but comprised of waves.

Faced with such bold new assertions, it is understandable how Einstein and other scientists of the era who built on Einstein’s theories came to adopt a mystical worldview. They realized the universe was much different than what they had been taught, and that this new conception of the universe was closer in line with the teachings of Eastern philosophies than anything existing science could define.

But Einstein himself was always a mystic. His way of learning and perceiving, as I pointed out earlier, was a nonlinear one. He was a visual thinker, and stated, when asked about how his thought processes worked:
“Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more of less clear, that I can reproduce and recombine at will.”

Einstein was a brilliant creative thinker, one who saw the universe with fresh eyes. He had beginner’s mind – the mind of an original thinker – and maintained it his entire life. At his memorial, the scientist Robert Oppenheimer proclaimed: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness . . . There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”

When you mix in his creative thinking and original mind with his tendency towards mysticism, you arrive at someone who is enlightened. And the beauty of Einstein’s enlightened mind was that he was able to articulate his vision clearly, for all to understand.

You may not be able to comprehend the profundity of his scientific achievements, but there are many other things that Einstein said that are equally as profound. Here is a sampling of them:

* “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
* “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
* “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
* “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
* “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
* “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
* “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
* “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
* “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
* “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
* “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
* “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
* “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
* “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
* “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
* “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
* “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
* “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
* “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
* “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
* “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
* “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
* “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
* “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
* “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
* “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
* “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
* “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
* “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
* “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
* “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
* “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
* “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
* “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
* “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
* “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
* “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
* “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
* “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
* “The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
* “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
* “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
* “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
* “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
* “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
* “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
* “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

Dream…Believe…Love/Happy Xmas(War is Over)

As we enter into the Holiday season, I thought a good way to end the year – this is the last article of the year (I’ll resume with the Masters of Enlightenment series right after the New Year) – is with the above video.

It’s a video montage I created in celebration of the spirit of the Holidays.

It’s an homage to peace, love, trust, hope, belief, and the knowledge that we can make this a better world, a peaceful, sane, healthy and happy world, a Low Density Lifestyle world.

I call it Dream…Believe…Love.

If only everyone lived by that credo…

Below is another video that captures the spirit of the Holidays.

This is a song that when it came out in 1971 was branded as radical because it was written and sung by a notorious peace activist, John Lennon. Yet now, the song is heard every year at this time.

And that’s because it tells us of hope – about a world of peace, which is what the Xmas spirit is about, and also what a Low Density Lifestyle world is about. So now the song is a hymn that is heard every Xmas holiday season.

As well it should.

The only sad thing about the song is that it was written by a man who is no longer with us, a visionary who perceived what a Low Density Lifestyle world looked like, and articulated it very clearly.

Happy Xmas/War is Over – Thank you John Lennon.

And I want to thank each and every one of you…

Have a wonderful Holiday season, and see you next year.

The Masters of Enlightenment: J. Krishnamurti

“What Krishnamurti has done is to free spiritual life as science has done in other areas. He has maintained that one can be in total freedom from the very beginning to the very end, and he has stood for that, like a rock, for forty years. I think it may well take the world fifty more years to understand that. I think he is the man of tomorrow.”  – Vimala Thakar

The series on Spirituality continues with articles about people who were true Masters of Enlightenment.

What I mean by that term is that they were great spiritual teachers, and also people who lived by the creed they spoke.

They were beacons of light, capable of pointing a finger to help us understand the map of reality.

Today, for the first article in this series, I will profile Jiddhu Krishnamurti.

J. Krishnamurti was born May 12, 1895 in India, and died Feb. 17, 1986. He was a radical teacher of enlightenment and the truth.

I say radical because he advised people to break free of their mental shackles and discard dogmas, religions, philosophies, gurus, teachers and theories, and in its place search for the undeniable truth that lies at the heart of reality.

Krishnamurti was relentless in his denouncing of all organized belief, the notion of “gurus,” and the whole teacher-follower relationship. Instead he was single minded in his dedication to the work of setting man absolutely, totally free.

He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.

Denouncing the concept of saviors, spiritual leaders, or any other intermediaries to reality, he urged people to directly discover the underlying causes of the problems facing individuals and society.

Such discovery he considered as being within reach of everyone, irrespective of background, ability, or disposition. He declared allegiance to no nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy, and spent his adult life traveling the world as an independent individual speaker, speaking to large and small groups, as well as with interested individuals.

Krishnamurti had first-hand knowledge of gurus and saviors, because he was raised to be a savior – at a young age, he was deemed to be the World Teacher by the Theosophical Society, a quasi-mystical organization founded in New York City in 1875 that had gained prominent international media attention and public interest and was very influential in Indian society.

The Theosophical Society had an estate in India, and in 1909 the 14-year-old Krishnamurti was living on the estate, because his father worked as a clerk for the Society.

Charles Webster Leadbeater was the President of the Society, and he noticed the young boy walking on the grounds. Leadbeater was a clairvoyant, and in the boy he recognized “a spiritual teacher and a great orator,” one likely to be used as the “vehicle for the Lord Maitreya” – the latter, according to Theosophical doctrine, an advanced spiritual entity that periodically appears on earth as a World Teacher to guide the evolution of humankind.

From that point on, Krishnamurti was groomed to be the World Teacher. He was privately tutored in India and Europe, and while in Europe met many prominent, and wealthy, people.

His daily program of studies included rigorous exercise and sports, tutoring in a variety of school subjects, Theosophical and religious lessons, yoga and meditation. At the same time, Leadbeater personally assumed the role of guide in a parallel, mystical instruction of young Krishnamurti.

Over the next few years, Krishnamurti continued his studies, but at the same time began going through a series of mystical and inexplicable life-transforming experiences. He would lapse in and out of consciousness, and described it to others as a “mystical union.” About the experiences he said:

“I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased… I have seen the Light. I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world… Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.”

Over the next few years, these experiences intensified, and these, along with the death of his brother, to whom he was very close, led him to question everything about his journey as the World Teacher. He started changing his teachings and veered from Theosophy, and began to focus on concepts such as questioning authority and liberation, as opposed to following the teachings of any one person.

Finally, in 1929, without any warning, while speaking to the annual meeting of the Theosophical Society in India, he announced that he was disowning his role as World Teacher, and instead would focus on leading people to the unbridled truth. He said in part:

“I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path.

“This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.”

From that moment on, Krishnamurti became his own man, and spoke out on the specifics of enlightenment. He spent the rest of his life holding dialogues and giving public talks around the world on the nature of belief, truth, sorrow, freedom, death, and the quest for a spiritually fulfilled life. He accepted neither followers nor worshipers, regarding the relationship between disciple and guru as encouraging dependency and exploitation.

He constantly urged people to think independently and clearly and free their minds of their own incipient dogmas. “All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.”

Included in this was inward authority:
“Having realized that we can depend on no outside authority … there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals.”

Krishnamurti’s home base for the rest of his life was Ojai, California, where he could spend time sequestered in meditation and writing, and communing with nature, which from an early age was one of his passions.

From his home base his insights deepened and his influence grew. He befriended and collaborated with well-known philosophers, writers and scientists, which allowed his audience to broaden.

Over the years, his subject matter included psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about positive change in society. Maintaining that society is ultimately the product of the interactions of individuals, he held that fundamental societal change can emerge only through freely undertaken radical change in the individual.

“It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve. If the mind is petty, small, narrow, limited, however great and complex the problem may be, the mind approaches that problem in terms of its own pettiness… Though it has extraordinary capacities and is capable of invention, of subtle, cunning thought, the mind is still petty. It may be able to quote Marx, or the Gita, or some other religious book, but it is still a small mind, and a small mind confronted with a complex problem can only translate that problem in terms of itself, and therefore the problem, the misery increases. So the question is: Can the mind that is small, petty, be transformed into something which is not bound by its own limitations?”

George Leonard: The Passing of a Cultural Icon

George Leonard was 86 years old when he passed away on Jan. 6, 2010 after a long illness at his home in Mill Valley, CA.

Although Leonard didn’t live as long as some of the other masters of longevity featured in this series on longevity, he still lived a long, vital and rich life, for George Leonard was a cultural icon who left a lasting mark on the world.

He was also an icon of a Low Density Lifestyle world.

I can’t say I knew him, although he did endorse my book, Quantum-Integral Medicine: Towards a New Science of Healing and Human Potential. I had been a long-time admirer of his work, so I sent him my book in galley form, and he was kind enough to write a ringing endorsement. After that, we had some email contact, and I spoke to him once on the phone when I was in L.A. while I was on a book tour.

But for the most part, my admiration of George Leonard was from a distance.

He was a writer, editor, and educator who wrote extensively about education and human potential. He was President Emeritus (and one of the founders) of the Esalen Institute, past-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, President of ITP International, and a former editor of Look Magazine.

He also was an aikido sensei, held a fifth degree black belt in aikido, and co-founded the Aikido of Tamalpais dojo in Corte Madera, California.

His specialty was human potential, and in that vein he authored many books on the subject, including The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei, Education and Ecstasy, The Transformation, The Silent Pulse, The End of Sex, Walking on the Edge of the World, Mastery, and The Life We Are Given.

Anybody who has an interest in personal growth, be it the development of physical health, emotional well-being or spiritual development, has George Leonard to thank for helping to bring the human potential movement to the forefront of consciousness.

In fact, George Leonard is considered, along with his good friend Michael Murphy, as one of the founders of the human potential movement.

Born and raised in the deep south, after graduating college and then serving in the Air Force as an intelligence officer, Leonard got a job as an editor at Look magazine in 1953. He became the first to predict the tumult and idealism of the ’60s when he wrote a January 1961 cover article called “Youth of the Sixties: The Explosive Generation.” A year later he predicted, accurately, that the youth movements would first manifest themselves in California.

At the same time, he found himself wanting to become a part of the changes he had foretold. Shedding the conventions of objectivity in his reporting, he became a voice for an emerging new consciousness.

In 1965 Leonard met Michael Murphy, a co-founder of Esalen, in San Francisco, where Esalen was opening a learning center. Soon Leonard was visiting Esalen’s main campus, a seaside complex in the redwood-studded area of central California known as Big Sur.

“Explosion, catharsis, adventure” were the words Mr. Leonard used to describe his first impressions in an interview with U.S. News & World Report in 1992.

He went on to become the president of the institute’s trustees for many years and was an important figure in expanding its concerns to include issues of social justice.

Because Leonard was raised in the deep south in the 1920’s and 1930’s, he had seen firsthand the horrors of racism, and wanted to make sure that the fledgling human potential movement that he was spearheading also had a place for social awareness and justice.

Because he brought a certain degree of intellectual rigor and gravitas to his work, Leonard made sure that this burgeoning movement had focus, purpose and a deeper meaning to it.

Jeffrey J. Kripal, a biographer of Leonard and a historian of the human potential movement, said that the human potential movement that was significantly shaped by Esalen was more intellectually grounded than the hippie culture of a few years later. Dr. Kripal called Esalen “a high-end movement that helped generate the counterculture.”

We can thank George Leonard for this: he had a depth and breadth of mind that allowed him to help shape the human potential movement in a forceful way, and with it bring a new renaissance that spurred a blossoming of culture.

And with this, it helped plant the seeds for the development of a new consciousness, one that we see coming to fruition in this day and age.

Being a visionary and a pioneer, George Leonard was also at the forefront of this new consciousness and awareness. In recent times, he and Michael Murphy started a program called Integral Transformative Practice, which on their website, www.itp-life.com, they define as:

Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) calls us to a high adventure:
Through the positive transformation of ourselves,
our relationships, our society.

It is integral in that it integrates body, mind, heart, and soul.
It is transformative in that it produces positive change.
It is a practice that involves a long-term, well researched program.

So goodbye George Leonard, you were indeed a master of longevity. It is people like you, visionaries who are far-reaching in the lasting effect they have on others - and may I add, people who live a Low Density Lifestyle – that have made this world an incredibly beautiful place to live.

It is time for each one of us to step up and fill his shoes.

Jack LaLanne – The Master of Longevity

In the previous article in this series on Longevity, I told you about the amazing Joe Rollino, an incredible master of longevity, who died far too soon at age 104.

If you read the article, you will recall that Joe was hit by a car on Jan. 11, 2010, and passed away shortly thereafter. Otherwise, Joe would still be going strong. His daily routine was to get up very early, walk 5 miles, and then possibly go for a swim in the icy, frigid Atlantic ocean by Coney Island, in Brooklyn, NY.

Today I want to tell you about another amazing master of longevity, one that is still going strong - Jack LaLanne.

Jack Lalanne, born in 1914, is now 95. He is considered the “godfather of fitness,” and is well-known for the many books he has written, the fitness television show he hosted from 1951-1985, and for the juicer that bears his name that he sells on TV.

But Jack LaLanne is no hawker of questionable goods. He is the real deal – a model for how to live a healthy, vital and long life, a Low Density Lifestyle life.

His passion is living a healthy and fit life, and he is recognized for his success as a bodybuilder and for his prodigious feats of strength.

But it wasn’t always that way for Jack – he was a sickly child who was addicted to sugar and junk food. At age 15 he heard a lecture on health and nutrition that had a profound impact on him, and from there decided to focus on his health.

He changed his diet and started exercising regularly. He made these lifelong habits, and he blames overly processed foods for many of today’s health problems. He advocates an organic, vegetarian diet as the best type of diet to eat, and his simple rules of nutrition are, “if man made it, don’t eat it”; and “if it tastes good, spit it out.”

His interest in health led Jack to take pre-med courses in college, and to attend and graduate from a chiropractic college. Yet his newfound interest in personal health steered him away from the idea of treating disease for a living, and instead, his focus became helping people to avoid disease by achieving optimal health and fitness.

In 1936 in Oakland, CA, he opened up the first health spa/gym way before it was fashionable, and at the gym he preached the benefits of weightlifting. Meat and potatoes was the standard fare back then, yet LaLanne, far ahead of his time, opened a combination gym, juice bar and health-food store.

In the 1950s, on his TV show, LaLanne suggested that daily calisthenics rather than girdles would keep housewives trim. “My whole career, doctors and so-called experts called me a crackpot and charlatan,” he says. “But I was right.”

He celebrated his recent 95th birthday with the publication of his new book, Live Young Forever. In the book, Jack teaches you how to achieve a vibrant, motivated, stress-free, sexually active life that will make waking up a joy for decades to come.

That sounds to me just like a Low Density Lifestyle life.

Even at age 95, Jack LaLanne continues to work out daily, exercising for two hours every morning. He spends an hour and a half in the weight room, and then a half hour either swimming or walking.

And for various prior birthdays, he has done all kinds of prolific activities to show off his fitness. For example:

***in 1976, at age 62: To commemorate the “Spirit of ‘76″, United States Bicentennial, he swam one mile in Long Beach Harbor in Southern California. He was handcuffed and shackled, and he towed 13 boats (representing the 13 original colonies) containing 76 people.

***in 1979, at age 65: Towed 65 boats in Lake Ashinoko, near Tokyo, Japan. He was handcuffed and shackled, and the boats were filled with 6,500 pounds of Louisiana Pacific wood pulp.

***in 1980, at age 66: Towed 10 boats in North Miami, Florida. The boats carried 77 people, and he towed them for over one mile in less than one hour.

***in 1984, at age 70: Once again handcuffed and shackled, he fought strong winds and currents as he swam 1.5 miles while towing 70 boats with 70 people from the Queensway Bay Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary.

And what is the key to longevity, according to Jack Lalanne, the master of longevity? Let’s hear it from Jack, in his own words:

“You have to work at longevity. Exercise is king and nutrition is queen: together, you have a kingdom. My ‘secret’ is that you have to plan for your life. Some older people are now starting to exercise, but there are too many fat people. They spend time watching TV and drinking at the bar, then they say they don’t have time to exercise. People need to get their priorities straight.

“To live a long life, you have to work at living. Most Americans work at dying. You wouldn’t give your dog a donut and coffee for breakfast. Yet people fill their bodies with junk and then wonder where their physical health has gone.

“Life is like planting seeds. Put junk in, junk comes out. Exercise is also essential. Exercise increases your life expectancy and gives you a reason to get up in the morning. With a sound program of physical fitness, everyone can lead healthy and productive lives in their golden years.

“You control your life. My dad died at 50, but your genetics don’t control your longevity. Do the things that are under your control. Man can live to be 150. Common diseases like diabetes can be controlled by diet and exercise. Stay away from animal fats and processed foods. Read every food label, and if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t buy it. Buying nutrient-empty foods is like putting water in the gas tank of your car. But good food by itself is not enough. You need a healthy lifestyle as well.

“Nutrition and exercise should be an important part of everyone’s life. Life should be a happy adventure, and to be happy you need to be healthy. Just take things one step at a time, and remember that everything you do takes energy to achieve. You need to plant the seeds and cultivate them well. Then you will reap the bountiful harvest of health and longevity!”

Thank you Jack LaLanne. You are a true visionary and pioneer. Listen to his words well, and you too can live a long and vital life.

Another Person Who is Changing the World

In the previous article in this series on What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?, I discussed 50 People Who Are Changing the World.

Today I will discuss another person who is changing the world, and making it more sane and peaceful. He wasn’t on the list, because he deserves his own article.

He is Greg Mortenson, author of the 2007 bestseller Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission To Promote Peace…One School At A Time, and the recently released sequel, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mortenson is the co-founder and director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute, and founder of the educational charity Pennies For Peace. He’s a humanitarian, international peacemaker, and former mountain climber from Bozeman, Montana.

The mission of the Central Asia Institute is to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He was a finalist for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and in March 2009 received Pakistan’s highest civilian award, the Sitara-e-Paskistan (The Star of Pakistan), in recognition of what he’s done.

What exactly has Greg Mortenson done? To answer that question, let’s first look at how he got to where he is now.

In 1992, Greg’s younger sister Christa passed away due to epilepsy.

In 1993, to honor his deceased sister’s memory, Mortenson went to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain, in northern Pakistan. After more than 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers completed a life-saving rescue of a fifth climber that took more than 75 hours. The time and energy devoted to this rescue prevented him from attempting to reach the summit.

After the rescue, he began his descent of the mountain and became weak and exhausted. He took a wrong turn along the way and ended up in Korphe, a small village where he was cared for by the villagers while he recovered.

Once Mortenson’s health was restored, he felt a debt to the remote community for their compassion, and said he would build a school for the village. After a frustrating time trying to raise money, Mortenson convinced Jean Hoerni, a Silicon Valley pioneer, to found the Central Asia Institute, with Mortenson as the Executive Director.

The Institute began its work, yet over the years, in the process of building schools, Mortenson has survived an eight-day armed 1996 kidnapping in the tribal areas of Waziristan, in Pakistan’s  North-West Frontier Province; escaped a 2003 firefight between Afghan opium warlords; endured two fatwas by angry Islamic clerics for educating girls; and received hate mail and threats from fellow Americans for helping educate Muslim children.

Mortenson believes that education and literacy for girls globally is the most important investment all countries can make to create stability, bring socio-economic reform, decrease infant mortality, decrease the population explosion, and improve health, hygiene, and sanitation standards globally.

Mortenson believes that fighting terrorism only perpetuates a cycle of violence, and that there should be a global priority to promote peace through education and literacy, with an emphasis on girls’ education.

“You can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads or put in electricity, but unless the girls are educated, a society won’t change,” Mortenson says. Because of community buy-in, which involves getting villages to donate free land, subsidized or free labor, free wood and resources, the schools have local support and have been able to avoid retribution by the Taliban or other groups opposed to girls’ education.

As of October 2009, Central Asia Institute has established over 131 schools in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan, which provide education to 54,000 students, including over 44,000 girls. Pennies for Peace is a program Mortenson launched to involve American school-children in fund-raising efforts for the schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

You can hear Greg Mortenson explain his work in the above video, and as you listen you will see why he truly is helping to create a Low Density Lifestyle world.

To learn more about his work, check out his website Three Cups of Tea.

50 People Who Are Changing the World

Over the last few days during this series on What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?, I’ve been discussing war, peace, and making the world a better place.

I said how we’re all in this together, so ultimately, it’s up to all of us to help make this a more livable, lovable and sane world.

There are many people who have made it their mission to make this world a better place, a Low Density Lifestyle kind of world. In this article you can learn about 50 of them. Maybe one day your name will be on the list.

This list and article is from the Utne Reader.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. On paper and in person his visage exudes optimism, righteous ambition, and immeasurable humility. Which is why, as we searched for an iconic figure to represent this, our second annual list of visionaries, his name immediately jumped to mind. That’s because the visionaries we were drawn to made the cut not for being revolutionary inventors, innovative environmentalists, vociferous outcasts, or intrepid reformers—although you’ll find all of these enviable character types on the following pages—but for the unwavering, inexhaustible sense of purpose they bring to their work.

Labors of peace, love, and justice are rarely recognized by our celebrity-obsessed media, and by extension most of us. Quiet resolve does not fill tents at the circus. Principle doesn’t make for a sexy photo. Selflessness, unless it is exhibited by heroes in the heat of a crisis, is often presented as weakness. Yet it is only the strongest among us who can stay true to a vision.

This section is a tribute to that resolve. Here’s hoping it inspires your dreams.

Christian Bök
Experimental Poet
This poet isn’t content with words on a page—he prefers to work under mind-bending constraints that truly stretch his linguistic limits.

Dave Zirin
Sports Columnist
In his “Edge of Sports” column and other multimedia outlets, Zirin brings a progressive eye to the world of athletics. He’s the thinking fan’s sportswriter, using our various fields of battle as a sociological lens.

Noah Baker Merrill
Cofounder, Direct Aid Iraq
This humanitarian activist won’t let Americans forget Iraq. Even (and especially) as the country and its people fade from U.S. headlines, Baker Merrill builds bridges of friendship and restitution.

Wafaa El-Sadr
Founder, International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs
When Wafaa El-Sadr first encountered people suffering from AIDS in 1982, there were fewer than 5,000 known cases of the disease. In just a few years, the annual rate of infection would hit 130,000. If there was a ground floor for the epidemic, El-Sadr was on it.

Parvez Sharma
Filmmaker
Sharma traveled a broad swath of the Islamic world to film A Jihad for Love, a first-of-its-kind documentary about gay and lesbian Muslims who are struggling to reconcile their faith with their sexuality.

Mark Kastel
Cofounder, Cornucopia Institute
When you buy organic, you want to trust the label. Kastel and his small but dogged Cornucopia crew make sure that organic food producers are walking their talk by snooping around their barnyards and their balance sheets.

David Oaks
Director, MindFreedom International
People who suffer from mental and emotional problems often have few personal advocates, let alone political or cultural influence. Oaks’ group, MindFreedom International, stands up for them by campaigning against forced medication, abuse of rights, and the media biases that really get these “psychiatric survivors” down.

Maya Enista
CEO, Mobilize.org
Maya Enista wants to create an AARP for the millennial generation, helping people people see millennials as having more value than just helping with your social networking.

Richard Nash
Founder, Cursor
This indie book publishing icon is turning the entire industry on its head in his bold new venture. And guess what—you, dear readers, are the stars of the show.

Mark Gorton
Founder, The Open Planning Project
The goal of urban planning should be to serve people, not machines, and Gorton’s leading the charge to inspire people to kick automobile dependency and take back the streets!

Raj Patel
Author, Stuffed and Starved
In Stuffed and Starved, Patel smartly unpacked the myriad problems with our corporate agriculture and food system, but his interests—and opinions—go even broader in his new book, The Value of Nothing: His sharp social critique extends to economic justice issues like class, wealth, and poverty.

Julie Cajune
American Indian Education Advocate
As part of Montana’s groundbreaking initiative, Cajune provides educators with the tools they need to close the cultural awareness chasm and bring American Indian histories to the masses.

Tyrone Boucher and Dean Spade
Cocreators, Enough
This whip-smart, social-justice-minded pair has created a welcoming forum for the most taboo of subjects: wealth, class, and what it feels like, day-to-day, to resist capitalism.

John Wilbanks
Executive Director, Science Commons
This philosopher-turned-engineer heads up Science Commons, a group that works to spur innovation and discovery by making scientific research and resources easier to share.

Partha Dasgupta
Economist
Dasgupta saw what gross domestic product (GDP) wasn’t measuring—the state of a country’s environmental resources, education, and human welfare—so he came up with a new system. And his “inclusive wealth” concept is starting to catch on.

Daniel Kish
Cofounder and Executive Director, World Access for the Blind
By teaching FlashSonar navigation and emphasizing self-direction, this nonprofit’s bold approach to managing blindness proves there are no limits to what can be done without sight.

Julia “Judy” Bonds
Codirector, Coal River Mountain Watch
Bonds is a matriarch to the movement against mountaintop removal, the coal mining practice that is literally flattening parts of Appalachia. In her work with Coal River Mountain Watch, she engages in direct activism against “King Coal” and teaches others how to do the same.

Lance Ledbetter
Founder, Dust-to-Digital
Ledbetter’s record label has been resurrecting 78s and re­releasing the work of unheralded American folk, blues, and jazz musicians since 2003.

Jonathan Kuniholm
Prosthetics Engineer
Since he lost his arm serving in Iraq, this graduate student and research assistant hopes to revolutionize the prosthetics industry by bringing open source design to the masses.

Kristian Olson
Program Leader, Global Health Initiative
Kristian Olson, program leader of the Global Health Initiative (GHI), fights neonatal death in low-income areas of the world using low-cost resuscitators and incubators made from old car parts.

Cory Doctorow
Copyright Activist
A figurehead for “copyfighters” everywhere, Doctorow is on a crusade against a corporate monopoly on patent law. He thinks replication feeds a culture of creativity and might even be programmed into our DNA; it should be encouraged, not criminalized.

David Bacon
Documentary Photographer and Journalist
Bacon has made a life of documenting the important, inspiring struggles that rarely make the news, bringing to life the stories of undocumented workers, labor activists, and foreclosed homeowners.

Patricia van Nispen tot Sevenaer
Executive Director, ILA Microjustice for All
Billions of people around the globe lack basic legal protection and representation. Van Nispen tot Sevenaer’s innovative Microjustice model is turning the tide, one person at a time.

Sarah Schulman
Author, Ties That Bind
In Ties That Bind (see review, p. 91), this lesbian social critic urges progressives to confront homophobia within their families. Only then will we be as gay-friendly as we think we are.

Tom Regan
Author, The Case for Animal Rights
The philosophical leader of the animal rights movement helped construct a legal framework around the issue—and whatever your stand, he’ll make you rethink it.

René Girard
Emeritus Professor, Stanford University
According to this French-born intellectual’s mimetic theory, imitation is the root of human culture. More Americans ought to mimic the Europeans who rightly celebrate Girard as a brilliant, original thinker.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Author, Staring
Disabled people attract stares—and this social critic posits that the attention sometimes transforms a would-be stigma into empowerment.

Will Allen
Founder and CEO, Growing Power
This MacArthur genius’s nonprofit Growing Power is pioneering ways to feed fresh food to those who live in the “food deserts” of our inner cities.

Enrique Peñalosa
Urban Planner
The mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, put the city on the map for its innovative transportation policy. Now he’s a consultant, and his big ideas about livable cities are in demand.

Sarah Haskins
Comedian
This social critic’s “Target Women” segments on Current TV do the nearly impossible: They make feminist critiques informative and darkly funny. For skewering society’s hang-ups and mocking celebrity culture, she deserves a reward—like, say, equal treatment.

Scott Harrison
Founder, charity: water
Harrison is a former nightclub owner and party hound who decided to do something for others. His group charity: water has provided clean water to more than half a million people in Africa, Asia, and Central America.

Rana Husseini
Author, Murder in the Name of Honor
As a journalist, Husseini shed light on honor killings in her native Jordan. As an activist, she works to end them.

Dune Lankard
Founder, Eyak Preservation Council
A native Eyak Athabaskan from Alaska, Lankard became an environmental activist after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Standing up to opponents, some from his own community, he’s a brave and powerful voice among greens.

Hiroshi Sunairi
Founder, Tree Project
Taking seeds from trees that survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast, this artist-cum-entrepreneur has encouraged people to plant them all over the world. By creating beauty from devastation, the creator cultivates peace.

Goretti Kyomuhendo
Founding Member, FEMRITE
The first female Ugandan author awarded a grant from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, the accomplished author of Waiting was on the ground floor of this dynamic association for indigenous female writers.

Nawal Nour
Founder, African Women’s Health Center
During her ob/gyn residency, the Sudanese native and MacArthur genius developed a center for African women who have been circumcised. She continues to run that reproductive health care organization in Boston.

Kim Bobo
Executive Director, Interfaith Worker Justice
A longtime spiritual activist, the author of Wage Theft in America is on a crusade to mobilize people of faith in the battle over fair pay, benefits, and equal treatment for low-wage workers.

Wendy Brawer
Founder, Green Map Systems
By highlighting a community’s green features—compost drop sites, green space, community gardens—Brawer’s maps become tools for environmental and community activists, pointing the way to sustainability.

Brian Conley
Founder, Alive in Baghdad
This videographer, who first traveled to Iraq in 2005, collaborates with local journalists to document daily life under siege. Conley has since expanded his “brand” to Syria and Mexico.

Jigar Shah
Energy Innovator
As the founder of SunEdison, Shah pioneered a new finance model for solar power. He’s now set his sights “beyond the carbon economy” by heading a climate-change initiative, the Carbon War Room.

Virginia Gardiner
Industrial Designer
The London-based Dwell contributor and inventor continues to improve on her LooWatt, a portable, green toilet that captures odor and turns waste into fuel.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Media Activist
The radical feminist and artist is gearing up for A Queer Black MobileHomeComing, a traveling “intergenerational community documentation and education project” that challenges our culture’s heteronormativity.

Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia
Cofounder, POOR magazine
Tapping her life experiences in the Bay Area, this self-proclaimed “poverty scholar” uses a grassroots magazine—as well as her performance art project welfareQUEENS—to tell those street stories the mainstream rarely cares to hear.

Diana Balmori
Founder, Balmori Associates
This architect built a reputation designing green roofs, which she calls the “fifth facade” of buildings. Balmori’s visions keep growing more ambitious, melding futurism with sustainability.

Brewster Kahle
Cofounder, Internet Archive
Thanks to this digital librarian’s nonprofit, researchers, historians, and scholars have permanent access to reams of essential historical data. And he’s just getting started.

Bob Stein
Founder, Institute for the Future of the Book
A digital pioneer who introduced the CD-ROM, Stein is now turning his attention to the ways social networking can turn publishing into an interactive give-and-take between readers and authors.

Sumaya Kazi
Founder, CulturalConnect
This South Asian American entrepreneur created an online media company responsible for five weekly e-magazines that spotlight young professionals of color making their mark.

Robert Bullard
Environmental Justice Advocate
One of the first activists to insert race and class into the environmental debate, this too-often underappreciated author has written 15 essential books, including Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina.

Jeff Chang
Author, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
No writer covers the intersection of hip-hop and politics better than Chang—and he’s got the Obama administration’s ear regarding U.S. arts policy.

Together We Can Change the World

In the last two days, I’ve discussed the vision of War is Over, and then on the next day I talked about War Not Being Over.

We all know which of these two is true.

But we can change the world and make it a better place – a peaceful, sane, healthy, happy, fair world. A Low Density Lifestyle world.

Together we can change the world, because we’re all in this together, as the above video, which will touch your heart, your mind, and your soul, shows.

All it takes is empathy, hope, looking beyond, thinking positive, valuing truth, speaking up, listening, saying what you mean and meaning what you say, challenging the impossible, and a host of other things.

Perhaps I’m being an optimist. But if you don’t have optimism, what do you have?  After all, it’s the optimists who will change the world, because they believe it can be done.

Watch the video to learn more. And then decide which of these you put into practice on a daily basis.

What if War Isn’t Over?

In yesterday’s article during this series on What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?, I showed the video of John Lennon’s well-known holiday anthem, Happy Xmas/War is Over.

I discussed it within the context of what John Lennon stood for – he was a man of vision and a man of peace. He was able to clearly articulate what a Low Density Lifestyle world should look like.

I said how the song, when it came out in 1971, was seen as radical and the work of a notorious peace activist, but now is sung far and wide by all kinds of musicians.

And to prove my point, in yesterday’s article were versions by Celine Dion, Melissa Etheridge, Tom Jones, the Three Tenors, and U2.

Which means the song is now a fully accepted and loved part of the holiday season. As well it should, since it is a hymn to peace – and isn’t that what the holiday spirit is about?

But what if war isn’t over? (I know, I know, just look around us – it goes without saying.)

So let me clarify it: what if we continue on the path we’re on, of many countries armed with nuclear weapons, ready to use the final option if necessary?

That’s the point of the above video, courtesy of Good Magazine.

So I invite you to watch it and to understand that is not the vision of the world we want to live in. That’s the vision of a High Density Lifestyle world, and is certainly not what a Low Density Lifestyle World Would Look Like.

So let’s all resolve to do better. Before it’s too late.

Happy Xmas, War is Over, Goodbye John

A little more than 29 years ago, on Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon left us. I thought of him the other day when I was walking through a store and heard his song Happy Xmas/War is Over.

This is a song that when it came out in 1971 was branded as radical because it was written and sung by a notorious peace activist. Yet now, the song is heard every year at this time.

And that’s because it tells us of hope – about a world of peace, which is what the Xmas spirit is about, and also what a Low Density Lifestyle world is about. So now the song is a hymn that is heard every Xmas holiday season.

As well it should.

The only sad thing about the song is that it was written by a man who is no longer with us, a visionary who perceived what a Low Density Lifestyle world looked like, and articulated it very clearly.

Earlier in this series on what a Low Density Lifestyle world would look like, I told you about the work of Yoko Ono.  She has been someone who has worked tirelessly for peace, for the cultivation of the imagination, and for the integration of the two, originally with her husband John Lennon, and then by herself.

She has also kept the spirit of John alive. On the recent anniversary of his death, she wrote the following:

Affirmation for Planet Earth

Yoko Ono Lennon
December 8, 2009

On the anniversary of the passing of my husband, John Lennon,
I would like you to share an affirmation with me.
Think it, say it, with firm belief,
knowing that we are all one.

In the name of truth, peace and love:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Our planet is healthy and whole,
We, the people of Earth
See clearly, Hear clearly, Think clearly.
Make the right judgement, right decision and the right move
For the benefit of our planet and others.

We are now bathing in the light of Dawn,
Standing in the Heaven we have created together,
Sharing the Joy
With all Lives on Earth
And of the Universe,
As we are all one, united with infinite and eternal love.

For the highest good of all concerned, So be it.

With all my love,
yoko ono lennon

December 8, 2009

Tokyo, Japan

And two years ago, on Dec. 8, 2007, she wrote the following:

December 8, 2007
by Yoko Ono Lennon

I miss you, John.

27 years later, I still wish I could turn back the clock to the Summer of 1980.

I remember everything – sharing our morning coffee, walking in the park
together on a beautiful day, and seeing your hand stretched to mine -
holding it, reassuring me that I shouldn’t worry about anything because
our life was good.

I had no idea that life was about to teach me the toughest lesson of all.

I learned the intense pain of losing a loved one suddenly, without
warning, and without having the time for a final hug and the chance to
say, “I love you,” for the last time. The pain and shock of that sudden
loss is with me every moment of every day.

When I touched John’s side of our bed on the night of December 8th,
1980, I realized that it was still warm. That moment has haunted me for
the past 27 years – and will stay with me forever.

Even harder for me is watching what was taken away from our beautiful boy,
Sean.

He lives in silent anger over not having his Dad, whom he loved so much,
around to share his life with. I know we are not alone. Our pain is one
shared by many other families who are suffering as the victims of
senseless violence. This pain has to stop.

Let’s not waste the lives of those we have lost. Let’s, together, make
the world a place of love and joy and not a place of fear and anger.
This day of John’s passing has become more and more important for so
many people around the world as the day to remember his message of Peace
and Love and to do what each of us can to work on healing this planet we
cherish.

Let’s: Think Peace, Act Peace, and Spread Peace.
John worked for it all his life.
He said, “There’s no problems, only solutions.”

Remember, we are all together.
We can do it, we must.
I love you!

yoko

Yoko Ono Lennon
8 December 2007

Below, there are a series of videos just to show how popular John Lennon’s song has become. The first video is of Celine Dion singing the song; then Melissa Etheridge; then Tom Jones singing Happy Xmas at a concert at the Vatican; then the Three Tenors - Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras – singing it in Vienna; and finally U2 singing an acoustic version in 1988 on TV on The Late, Late Show.

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