“This is a stunning and audacious work of grand social theory. . . . Sclove exposes modernity as a covert struggle, stretching out over four centuries, between economic growth and psychospiritual self-realization.”

Professor Penny Gill, Mount Holyoke College, and author of What in the World is Going On

“Escaping Maya’s Palace is profound, powerfully original, and politically and spiritually sophisticated at a level that is very rare. It could be life-changing for many people and a catalyst for integrating deeper psychospiritual awareness into social-change movements!”

Sally Kempton, author of Meditation for the Love of It

“Mind-blowingly insightful. . . . Sclove’s book unmasks fatal defects in economic thought together with surprising opportunities for social and environmental salvation.”

Professor Richard B. Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Development Betrayed

“Escaping Maya’s Palace is a remarkable book. . . . . If you are open to considering fundamentally different ways of thinking about the largest human challenges, Sclove’s book will give you a truly thoughtful and deeply informed point of entry.”

Professor Joshua Cohen, Stanford University, and Co-Editor, Boston Review

“An amazing and soul-nourishing book that courageously defies the taboo against integrating spiritual wisdom into modern scholarship.”

Professor Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, Smith College, and author of Subversive Spiritualities

“Richard Sclove is a Renaissance man for our times, weaving insights from a dozen disciplines into a dazzling string of revelations. His book presents a compelling new rationale for creating more self-reliant and culturally progressive local economies.”

Michael Shuman, author of The Local Economy Solution

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News & Events

Newsweek magazine publishes Richard Sclove’s essay about J. Robert Oppenheimer

Posted on: 10th August, 2023

Richard Sclove’s Newsweek essay reveals a hitherto-untold story involving J. Robert Oppenheimer, a remarkable self-fulfilling prophecy, and the ethics of nuclear weapons. The essay spins off from research that Richard conducted while writing Escaping Maya’s Palace:

He Became Death, Destroyer of Worlds. If Only He’d Read a Bit Further . . . 

The new film Oppenheimer includes a famous episode in which lines from the Bhagavad Gita, a slim section of ancient India’s 18-volume epic the Mahabharata, flash through Oppenheimer’s mind as he witnesses the explosion of the world’s first atomic bomb in July 1945: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Historians debate the exact words that Oppenheimer recalled, and whether it was during the “Trinity” atomic-bomb test or sometime after. But they have missed something more important: Oppenheimer did more than just associate the atomic bomb with the Gita’s “destroyer of worlds” passage. Without knowing it, he completed an astounding self-fulfilling prophecy: Some two thousand years earlier, the Mahabharata foresaw something like a nuclear weapon and then, through its influence on Oppenheimer, contributed to making its vision come true . . .

Read the rest of the essay here