Download or read book Shining Light on Transcendence written by Peter Fenwick and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is consciousness? How does it relate to the brain, to the mind? Does it even extend beyond them? And if so, might those experiences -- telepathy, extrasensory perception, near death experiences -- be called 'paranormal' because we can't explain them by any normal means? Anything with a firm belief structure, whether it is science or religious faith, limits experimentation and a free spirit of enquiry. I wanted to find a synthesis between these two fields of experience, the measurable and the immeasurable. And it seemed to me that the best - indeed, the only way I could find out more was by finding people who had such immeasurable experiences and studying them. A few years ago I was introduced by a friend to a philosopher, Alain Forget, who, I was told, had a remarkable ability to give 'energy. During this 'energy-giving' process my friend had been aware of light radiating from him. My own ego wanted to persuade this unusual man to allow me to put him under the microscope. But in doing so I found myself, perhaps reluctantly at times, under the microscope of his perceptual grasp of human nature. And I realise that it has changed me, and that much of what I thought about myself was not based in reality. This book tells that story. Peter Fenwick

Download or read book The Soul s Upward Yearning written by Robert Spitzer and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2015-08-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early twentieth century, scientific materialism has so undermined our belief in the human capacity for transcendence that many people find it difficult to believe in God and the human soul. The materialist perspective has not only cast its spell on the natural sciences, psychology, philosophy, and literature, it has also enthralled popular culture, which offers very little to encourage the"soul's upward yearning". There are many signs of the widespread loss of confidence in our ability to soar upward, and these have been noted by thinkers as diverse as Carl Jung (psychiatrist), Mircea Eliade (historian of religion), Gabriel Marcel (philosopher), and authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Their observations were validated by a 2004 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry that linked the absence of religion with a marked increase in suicide, meaninglessness, substance abuse, separation from family members, and other psychological problems. Thus, the loss of transcendence is negatively affecting an entire society. It is stealing from countless individuals their sense of happiness, dignity, ideals, virtues, and destiny.Ironically, the evidence for transcendence is greater today than in any other period in history. The problem is, this evidence has not been compiled and made widely available—a challenge Father Spitzer aspires to meet with this book. Father Spitzer's work provides a bright light in the midst of the darkness by presenting traditional and contemporary evidence for God and a transphysical soul from several major sources. It shows that we are transcendent beings with souls capable of surviving bodily death; that we are self-reflective beings aware of and able to strive toward perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty; that we have the dignity of being created in the very image of God. If we underestimate these truths, we undervalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny.

Download or read book Buddhahood written by Phirozshah Dorabji Mehta and published by The Phiroz Mehta Trust. This book was released on 1988 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Critical theory and legal autopoiesis written by Gunther Teubner and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects and revises the key essays of Gunther Teubner, one of the world’s leading sociologists of law. Written over the past twenty years, these essays examine the ‘dark side’ of functional differentiation and the prospects of societal constitutionalism as a possible remedy. Teubner's claim is that critical accounts of law and society require reformulation in the light of the sophisticated diagnoses of late modernity in the writings of Niklas Luhmann, Jacques Derrida and select examples of modernist literature. Autopoiesis, deconstruction and other post-foundational epistemological and political realities compel us to confront the fact that fundamental democratic concepts such as law and justice can no longer be based on theories of stringent argumentation or analytical philosophy. We must now approach law in terms of contingency and self-subversion rather than in terms of logical consistency and rational coherence.

Download or read book The Human Mind and Belief 3 Reloaded written by Eugene G. Breen and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mans search for meaning is a perennial quest. The workings and desires and hopes and frustrations of the mind, tell us many things about it, and why it is the way it is. The awesome capacity of the entire person to become addicted to almost anything, throws a light on our strength and also our weakness. The human face is a shadow cast by the mind, and more often than not, it functions as a one-way mirror rather than a true reflection of what is going on beneath the surface. We become attached to people and things, and we actually love. The exhilaration of true joy crafted onto a robust scaffold of pain and disappointment and suffering and sorrow is counter intuitive yet very real. Joy in the possession of the beloved is as good as it gets down here, but our minds pine for this bliss always. This longing for joy is not a vestigial structure in a once functional lobe of our primordial brains that has become atrophied due to disuse. It is the flicker of light at the end of our tunnel showing us the way to go. The human mind is truly a blueprint of our destiny.

Download or read book Forms of Transcendence written by Sonia Sikka and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1997-05-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets up a dialogue between Heidegger and four medieval authors: St. Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and Jan van Ruusbroec. Through a close reading of medieval and Heideggerian texts, the book brings to light elements that present possibilities for a revised appropriation of some traditional metaphysical and theological ideas, arguing that, in spite of Heidegger's critique of "ontotheology," many aspects of his thought make a positive, and not exclusively critical, contribution. Unlike some past studies of the relation between Heidegger and medieval mysticism, this book seeks to establish a real identity between the content, the subject-matter (Sache), of the medieval and Heideggerian texts that it examines. In so doing, it challenges Heidegger's own assertion that what he calls "being" cannot be called God. Against this assertion, Sikka argues that what is to be called God remains an open question, and points out metaphysical and theological elements in Heidegger's reflections on being that help to answer this question. Offering new insights into the relation between metaphysics, theology, and mysticism, the book contributes not only to Heidegger studies but to philosophical theology as well.

Download or read book Mystical Theology written by J. J. McEvoy and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The treatise by the Pseudo-Dionysius De Mystica Theologia was translated into Latin in the ninth century, but it had to await the first decades of the thirteenth to receive interpretation and commentary. Thomas Gallus, a member of the Victorine School at Paris, glossed the Latin version of Iohannes Sarracenus in 1233. This new, critical edition and translation are based upon all five manuscripts, two of which are recent discoveries. The commentary by Bishop Grosseteste was made at Lincoln around 1242. It was based upon his new version of the Greek text. Both are published here with a translation. These earliest Latin commentators ventured a full-scale reappropriation of the contents of The Mystical Theology. They explored the trans-conceptual ecstasy of the individual soul that passes through purification and illumination to union with God by means of an exceptional grace of divine love. Between them they provided the context which not only the later mystical theology of monastery and university but also the actual spiritual experience of countless souls was formed.

Download or read book mindandbelief com written by Eugene G. Breen and published by Author House. This book was released on 2014 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human mind is the pinnacle of creation. It is spiritual and emanates from the human brain, initially at any rate! It is sociable and abstract and has an enormous coefficient of expansion. It can love. It can think. It can believe. It is the faculty that sets us apart from all other levels of being on the planet. It inhabits a dying world which has flickers of life like fireworks which sooner or later disappear like Chinese lanterns in the sky. We disappear too but our minds live on, hankering to be reunited with our "old flames" our bodies. Then the orchestra rises in crescendo as our minds and bodies reunite "for better or for worse", and ride into the sunset. Great stuff! Read all about it. The mind and body inseparable in life, and separated at death, reappear in "This is Your Life - Last Epic Episode." What will it be? A comedy, a tragedy or a thriller? It is all up to free will and belief. The believing mind is all powerful, provided it engages rationality honestly.

Download or read book Dark Light Consciousness written by Edward Bruce Bynum and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to awaken the Ureaus--the serpent power of spiritual transcendence within each of us--and connect to the superconscious of the universe • Reveals the biochemistry of how the body’s melanin provides the template for the subtle energy body or light body • Shows how embracing the dark light consciousness of the awakened Ureaus opens a portal to the sacred darkness of the superconscious • Provides illustrated instructions for meditation practices, breathing exercises, and yoga postures to safely awaken Ureaus/Kundalini energy Within each of us lies the potential to activate a personal connection to the superconscious. Called “Ureaus” in ancient Egyptian texts and “Kundalini” in ancient Hindu yoga traditions, our innate serpent power of spiritual transcendence inhabits the base of the spine in its dormant state. When awakened, it unfurls along the spinal column to the brain, connecting individual consciousness to the consciousness of the universe enfolded within the dark matter of space. At the root of creativity and spiritual genius across innumerable cultures and civilizations, this intelligent force reveals portals that enfold time, space, and the luminous matrix of reality itself. Combining physics, neuroscience, and biochemistry with ancient traditions from Africa and India, Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D., explores the ancient Egyptian science of the Ureaus and reveals how it is intimately connected to dark matter and to melanin, a light-sensitive, energy-conducting substance found in the brain, nervous system, and organs of all higher life-forms. He explains how the dark light of melanin serves as the biochemical infrastructure for the subtle energy body, just as dark matter, together with gravity, holds the galaxies and constellations together. With illustrated instructions, he shows how to safely awaken and stabilize the spiritual energy of the Ureaus through meditation practices, breathing exercises, and yoga postures as well as how to prepare the subtle body for transdimensional soul travel. By embracing the dark light of the shining serpent within, we overcome our collective fear of the vast living darkness without. By embracing the dark, we transcend reality to the dimension of light.

Download or read book Hermeneutical Essays on Ved ntic Topics written by John Geeverghese Arapura and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1986 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays on central topics of Vedanta arranged in a thematically connected manner. It facilitates a look inside the system from certain vantage points which are the topics divided into the main body and an appendix. The topics in the main body are being Maya and the discourse about Brahman; Transcendence and the Transcendent Via the Doctrines of Brahman and Sunyata the Notion of Aviadya; Macro-Micro-Cosmology Approached through the Gita Text; Time within Logos and without as in Grammer philosophy and Madhyamika.

Download or read book An Existentialist Theory of the Human Spirit Volume 2 written by Shlomo Giora Shoham and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-22 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume examines how sexual mores and behavior, religious dogma and practice, and literary creativity and authenticity have influenced and been influenced by the existentialist thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche, Husserl and Buber, and the writings of Camus, Dostoevsky, Beckett, Shestov, Berdyaev and Tillich. It compares human and cultural attributes with the attributes of pagan and monotheistic Gods, and Buddhist, Gnostic, Christian and Muslim mysticism with Jewish Kabbalah. It explains society’s harsh treatment of Vincent van Gogh and Antonin Artaud, and analyzes the existentialist approach to existence, absurdity, human dialogue, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. It will appeal to students and professionals in fields as diverse as philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, religion, law, art, drama, literature, cosmology and physics.

Download or read book Karl Jaspers written by Ronny Miron and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the work of German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) from his origins as a young psychiatrist up to his maturity as an existentialist philosopher. The critique of Jaspers’s thought follows his attempts to grant meaning to the human search for self-understanding. It reveals the difficulties and frustrations entailed in this search. The book reveals to the reader Jaspers’s handling of these difficulties through constituting a philosophical relation toward the Being existing beyond the individual: other people, the world, and transcendence.In this book, the author conducts an ongoing dialog with existing research into Jaspers’s work, and proposes her own new reading. As well as critiquing the existing interpretations, the author uncovers the challenges Jaspers’s character has presented the readers. Unlike most scholars, who generally ignored Jaspers’s early writings, dealing with psychiatry and psychology, this book suggests a philosophical reading of these writings. This exposes the unity of the world from which Jaspers created, first as a psychiatrist and later as a philosopher. This reading shows Jaspers’s work as an ambitious attempt to formulate an original perception of the two basic themes that have interested philosophy and human thought throughout the ages: Selfhood and Being.

Download or read book Seven Heavens written by Carla Wills-Brandon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores ancient Jewish beliefs in life after death as well as contemporary spiritual experiences • Reveals clear references to the afterlife, heaven, and spiritual encounters in ancient Hebrew texts, including the Torah, the Zohar, and the Dead Sea Scrolls • Shares profound stories from the author’s clinical therapy practice to show how afterlife beliefs can heal destructive emotional patterns and ancestral trauma • Describes the psychological parameters of trauma resolution, enabling long-term healing and spiritual advancement Exploring afterlife theories from the ancient world as well as contemporary afterlife encounters, Carla Wills-Brandon, Ph.D., reveals references to Jewish mysticism and afterlife encounters in ancient Hebrew texts, including the Torah, the Talmud, the Zohar, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the writings of the early Kabbalists. She shows how these works describe not only the realms of heaven but also near-death experiences (NDEs), after-death contact, reincarnation, and deathbed visions of crossed-over loved ones. Drawing on her background in psychology and her experience as a licensed therapist, she explains how acknowledging an afterlife as well as spiritual encounters can help you find peace after loss, discover inner spiritual light, and heal from destructive emotional patterns and ancestral trauma, including intergenerational wounds such as those from the Holocaust. Sharing profound accounts of modern-day premonitions, spirit visitations, dream encounters with the dying, NDEs, and other psychic manifestations, the author shows how similar our contemporary mystical experiences are to those of our ancestors. Looking at the strong emotional resonances created by unresolved trauma, she explains how many survivors of World War II developed PTSD, which has been passed down from one generation to the next. She shows how believing in life after death and speaking about spiritual experiences can help heal emotional trauma and release difficult memories stuck psychically in our personal and ancestral past. Revealing how spiritual seekers can benefit not only from a belief in the afterlife but also from expressing their visions of the unseen, the author shows how knowing that physical death is not final fosters a healthier preparation for one’s own death and the deaths of those we cherish as well as a more fulfilling life.

Download or read book Transcendence written by Norman E. Rosenthal and published by TarcherPerigee. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this definitive book on the scientifically proven health and stress-relieving benefits of Transcendental Meditation, a renowned psychiatrist and researcher explores why TM works, what it can do, and how to use it for maximum effect.

Download or read book Light and Dark written by Sōseki Natsume and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Light and Dark, Natsume Soseki's longest novel and masterpiece, although unfinished, is a minutely observed study of haute-bourgeois manners on the eve of World War I. It is also a psychological portrait of a new marriage that achieves a depth and exactitude of character revelation that had no precedent in Japan at the time of its publication and has not been equaled since. With Light and Dark, Soseki invented the modern Japanese novel. Recovering in a clinic following surgery, thirty-year-old Tsuda Yoshio receives visits from a procession of intimates: his coquettish young wife, O-Nobu; his unsparing younger sister, O-Hide, who blames O-Nobu's extravagance for her brother's financial difficulties; his self-deprecating friend, Kobayashi, a ne'er-do-well and troublemaker who might have stepped from the pages of a Dostoevsky novel; and his employer's wife, Madam Yoshikawa, a conniving meddler with a connection to Tsuda that is unknown to the others. Divergent interests create friction among this closely interrelated cast of characters that explodes into scenes of jealousy, rancor, and recrimination that will astonish Western readers conditioned to expect Japanese reticence. Released from the clinic, Tsuda leaves Tokyo to continue his convalescence at a hot-springs resort. For reasons of her own, Madam Yoshikawa informs him that a woman who inhabits his dreams, Kiyoko, is staying alone at the same inn, recovering from a miscarriage. Dissuading O-Nobu from accompanying him, Tsuda travels to the spa, a lengthy journey fraught with real and symbolic obstacles that feels like a passage from one world to another. He encounters Kiyoko, who attempts to avoid him, but finally manages a meeting alone with her in her room. Soseki's final scene is a sublime exercise in indirection that leaves Tsuda to "explain the meaning of her smile."

Download or read book The Light Shines On in the Darkness written by Robert Spitzer and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would an all-loving God allow suffering? Are not suffering and love opposed to one another? Does suffering have any meaning or benefit? Is there any objective evidence for God, for a soul that will survive bodily death, for the resurrection of Jesus? Who is God anyway – benevolent and loving, or angry and retributive? Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., gives a comprehensive response to these questions and many others, explaining the contemporary evidence for God, the soul, and the resurrection. He discusses how God uses suffering to lead us to compassion for others and eternal life. He also shows how the Holy Spirit guides us through times of suffering toward our salvation, explaining the signs and the interior movements that reveal the Spirit's actions. Fr. Spitzer not only addresses the perplexing questions associated with suffering but teaches us how to suffer well. He points out some of the most common mistakes people make when trying to interpret God's motives for allowing or alleviating suffering. He demonstrates why suffering – in combination with love – is one of the most powerful motivating agents for personal, cultural, and societal development.

Download or read book All Things Shining written by Hubert Dreyfus and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it’s quite new. In medieval Europe, God’s calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in “the zone,” you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a “wrong” choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal? All Things Shining says we can. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with and responsiveness to the world. Their journey takes us from the wonder and openness of Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert. Dreyfus, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, for forty years, is an original thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new relevance for people’s everyday lives. His lively, thought-provoking lectures have earned him a podcast audience that often reaches the iTunesU Top 40. Kelly, chair of the philosophy department at Harvard University, is an eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the culture—and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away—captures a generation adrift. Re-envisioning modern spiritual life through their examination of literature, philosophy, and religious testimony, Dreyfus and Kelly unearth ancient sources of meaning, and teach us how to rediscover the sacred, shining things that surround us every day. This book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves. It offers a new—and very old—way to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern world.