Download or read book Waking Dreaming Being written by Evan Thompson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.
Download or read book Dying What Happens When We Die written by Evan Thompson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata, the Lord of Death asks, "What is the most wondrous thing in the world?", and his son answers, "It is that all around us people can be dying and we don't believe it can happen to us." This refusal to face the inevitability of death is especially prevalent in modern Western societies. We look to science to tell us how things are but biomedicine and neuroscience divest death of any personal significance by presenting it as just the breakdown of the body and the cessation of consciousness. The Tibetan Buddhist perspective stands in sharp contrast to this modern scientific notion of death. This tradition conceives dying not as the mere termination of living processes within the body, but as a rite of passage and transformation of consciousness. Physical death, in this tradition, initiates a transition from one of the six bardos ("in-between states") of consciousness to an opportunity for total enlightenment. In Dying: What Happens When We Die?, Evan Thompson establishes a middle ground between the depersonalized, scientific account of death and the highly ritualized notion of death found in Tibetan Buddhism. Thompson's depiction of death and dying offers an insightful neurobiological analysis while also delving into the phenomenology of death, examining the psychological and spiritual effects of dying on human consciousness. In a trenchant critique of the near-death experience literature, he shows that these experiences do not provide evidence for the continuation of consciousness after death, but also that they must be understood phenomenologically and not in purely neuroscience terms. We must learn to tolerate the "ultimate ungraspability of death" by bearing witness to dying and death instead of turning away from them. We can learn to face the experience of dying through meditative practice, and to view the final moments of life not as a frightening inevitability to be shunned or ignored, but as a deeply personal experience to be accepted and even embraced.
Download or read book Why I Am Not a Buddhist written by Evan Thompson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A provocative essay challenging the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism, from one of the world's most widely respected philosophers and writers on Buddhism and science. Buddhism has become a uniquely favored religion in our modern age. A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational; compatible with cutting-edge science; indeed, "a science of the mind." In this provocative book, Evan Thompson argues that this representation of Buddhism is false. In lucid and entertaining prose, Thompson dives deep into both Western and Buddhist philosophy to explain how the goals of science and religion are fundamentally different. Efforts to seek their unification are wrongheaded and promote mistaken ideas of both. He suggests cosmopolitanism instead, a worldview with deep roots in both Eastern and Western traditions. Smart, sympathetic, and intellectually ambitious, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhism's place in our world today."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Dreams of Light written by Andrew Holecek and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A world-renowned expert in lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga guides us into the tradition’s daytime practices, a complement to the nighttime practices taught in his previous book Dream Yoga. Most of us are absolutely certain that we’re awake here and now—it’s a given, right? Yet, according to Tibet’s dream yoga tradition, ordinary waking life is no more real than the illusions of our nightly dreams. In his previous book Dream Yoga, Andrew Holecek guided us into Tibetan Buddhism’s nocturnal path of lucid dreaming and other dimensions of sleeping consciousness. Now, with Dreams of Light, he offers us an in-depth, step-by-step guide to its daytime practices. Known as the “illusory form” practices, these teachings include insights, meditations, and actions to help us realize the dreamlike nature of our lives. Through an immersive exploration of the tradition, beginners and seasoned practitioners alike will learn everything they need to deeply transform both their sleeping and waking hours. “If you’ve struggled to awaken in your dreams,” teaches Holecek, “these techniques will often spark spontaneous lucidity during sleep. And if you’re already a successful lucid dreamer, they will open you to new depths of experience throughout your day.” For those wishing to explore Tibetan Buddhism’s profound path for awakening to the true nature of reality—day or night—Dreams of Light shows us the way.
Download or read book Running Is a Kind of Dreaming written by J. M. Thompson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful, breathtaking memoir about a young man's descent into madness, and how running saved his life. “Voluntary or involuntary?” asked the nurse who admitted J. M. Thompson to a San Francisco psychiatric hospital in January 2005. Following years of depression, ineffective medication, and therapy that went nowhere, Thompson feared he was falling into an inescapable darkness. He decided that death was his only exit route from the torture of his mind. After a suicide attempt, he spent weeks confined on the psych ward, feeling scared, alone, and trapped. One afternoon during an exercise break he experienced a sudden urge. “Run, I thought. Run before it’s too late and you’re stuck down there. Right now. Run. ” The impulse that starts with sprints across a hospital rooftop turns into all night runs in the mountains. Through motion and immersion in the beauty of nature, Thompson finds a way out of the hell of depression and drug addiction. Step by step, mile by mile, his body and mind heal. In this lyrical, vulnerable, and breathtaking memoir, J. M. Thompson, now a successful psychologist, retraces the path that led him from despair to wellness, detailing the chilling childhood trauma that caused his depression, and the unorthodox treatment that saved him. Running Is a Kind of Dreaming is a luminous literary testament to the universal human capacity to recover from our deepest wounds.
Download or read book The Science of Consciousness written by Trevor A. Harley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience of consciousness, including sleep, dreaming, meditative, and altered states.
Download or read book Waking Dreams written by Mary M. Watkins and published by Gordon & Breach Publishing Group. This book was released on 1976 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mind in Life written by Evan Thompson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is life related to the mind? Thompson explores this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness, drawing on sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy. Ultimately he shows that mind and life are more continuous than previously accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind.
Download or read book Life as a Waking Dream written by Diane Kennedy Pike and published by Berkley. This book was released on 1997 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional method of dream interpretation involves identifying the elements and themes, making significant associations, and then deciphering the disguised messages. Pike has spent the last ten years developing her "waking dream" theory. Now, with the help of the stories from dream group participants, she reveals how this technique has been adapted to help those who cannot remember their dreams tap into the wisdom and insight of dream analysis.
Download or read book Lucid Dreaming written by Stephen Laberge and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distilled from his more than 20 years of pioneering research at Stanford University and the Lucidity Institute, this volume is an effective and easy-to-learn tool available for people to begin their own fascinating nightly exploration into lucid dreaming.
Download or read book Dreaming Yourself Awake written by B. Alan Wallace and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “accessible look at the ways we can access the hidden adventures within our dreams and stretch our imaginations into the realm of enlightenment” through lucid dreaming and dream yoga (San Francisco Book Review) Some of the greatest of life’s adventures can happen while you’re sound asleep. That’s the promise of lucid dreaming, which is the ability to alter your own dream reality any way you like simply by being aware of the fact that you’re dreaming while you’re in the midst of a dream. There is a range of techniques anyone can learn to become a lucid dreamer—and this book provides all the instruction you need to get started. But B. Alan Wallace also shows how to take the experience of lucid dreaming beyond entertainment to use it to heighten creativity, to solve problems, and to increase self-knowledge. He then goes a step further: moving on to the methods of Tibetan Buddhist dream yoga for using your lucid dreams to attain the profoundest kind of insight.
Download or read book Waking Dream Therapy written by Gerald N. Epstein and published by Gerald Epstein. This book was released on 1992-01-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past one hundred years, psychotherapy has neglected the inner world of image in favor of words. Now, Dr. Gerald Epstein presents the next evolution in therapy -- Waking Dream.Epstein's approach is brief, effective and powerful. Waking Dream Therapy uses mental imagery to journey inward. The explorer starts from a waking state and via imagination, reenters a night dream fragment to explore the dream. This inner journey reveals new directions and jolts the person to change. The book also contains a history of imagination; instructions for the process; examples of waking dreams; and the meaning of symbols. It appeals both to clinicians and to anyone who seeks self-transformation.
Download or read book States of Consciousness written by Dean Cvetkovic and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-22 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this accessible overview of current knowledge, an expert team of editors and authors describe experimental approaches to consciousness. These approaches are shedding light on some of the hitherto unknown aspects of the distinct states of human consciousness, including the waking state, different states of sleep and dreaming, meditation and more. The book presents the latest research studies by the contributing authors, whose specialities span neuroscience, neurology, biomedical engineering, clinical psychology and psychophysiology, psychosocial medicine and anthropology. Overall this anthology provides the reader with a clear picture of how different states of consciousness can be defined, experimentally measured and analysed. A future byproduct of this knowledge may be anticipated in the development of systematic corrective treatments for many disorders and pathological problems of consciousness.
Download or read book Lucid Dreaming Made Easy written by Charlie Morley and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible introduction to the theory, practice, and innovative techniques behind becoming lucid in your dreams Lucid dreaming is the art of becoming conscious within your dreams. Charlie Morley has been lucid dreaming since he was a teenager and has trained with both Eastern and Western experts in this profound practice. In this introductory guide, Charlie explains how lucid dreaming is a powerful gateway into the subconscious mind and how it can help the reader transform, improve and heal all areas of their life. In this book, the reader will learn to use the virtual reality of the dream state to: - Explore creative ideas - Understand addictions and unhealthy behaviours - Heal phobias and overcome fears - Forgive the past - Live a more awakened life This title was previously published within the Hay House Basics series.
Download or read book Dream Patterns written by Jonson Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dream Patterns" teaches readers to identify the significant, meaningful patterns in their dreams and how to use that knowledge to make changes in their waking lives. Almost every book on dream interpretation emphasizes the interpretation of individual elements of individual dreams. But dreams contain much imagery that is not meaningful or interpretable. "Dream Patterns" shows how to break through the noise created by physical sensations, events of the previous day, intrusions of conscious thinking, and other stimuli to reveal repeating imagery and themes that reflect unrecognized patterns in our waking lives. Awareness of these patterns liberates us from them and empowers us to live our life more skillfully. This book is for dreamers of all skill levels, from people who rarely recall and have never before studied their dreams to people who have spent years studying their dreams but who want to get more out of them. You will learn how to recall, record, and analyze your dreams, and then how to apply the lessons of those dreams to your waking lives. While "Dream Patterns" emphasizes long-term patterns and expresses skepticism about the value of most individual dreams, it does teach you also to recognize and benefit from those few dreams that really are significant in isolation. Such dreams include “big dreams” that reflect major life and spiritual changes.
Download or read book Conscious Mind Sleeping Brain written by J. Gackenbach and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A conscious mind in a sleeping brain: the title of this book provides a vivid image of the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, in which dreamers are consciously aware that they are dreaming while they seem to be soundly asleep. Lucid dreamers could be said to be awake to their inner worlds while they are asleep to the external world. Of the many questions that this singular phenomenon may raise, two are foremost: What is consciousness? And what is sleep? Although we cannot pro vide complete answers to either question here, we can at least explain the sense in which we are using the two terms. We say lucid dreamers are conscious because their subjective reports and behavior indicate that they are explicitly aware of the fact that they are asleep and dreaming; in other words, they are reflectively conscious of themselves. We say lucid dreamers are asleep primarily because they are not in sensory contact with the external world, and also because research shows physiological signs of what is conventionally considered REM sleep. The evidence presented in this book-preliminary as it is-still ought to make it clear that lucid dreaming is an experiential and physiological reality. Whether we should consider it a paradoxical form of sleep or a paradoxical form of waking or something else entirely, it seems too early to tell.
Download or read book John Cohen Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream written by and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-31 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photographer and musician John Cohen's final testimony: a lyrical flow of images from his 60-year career One cold sunny morning in December 2018, Gerhard Steidl drove from New York City to see John Cohen (1932-2019)--photographer, filmmaker and founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers--at his home in upstate Putnam Valley. The purpose of the visit was to collect images for Cohen's 2019 book Look up to the Moon. In Cohen's barn-cum-studio they stumbled across another group of prints from across his 60-year career. Steidl took the boxes under his arm, and the photos now appear for the first time here, in Cohen's most lyrical and personal book, as well as his last. Sequenced wholly by mood and intuition and eschewing titles and dates, the portraits, landscapes and still lifes, along with drawings, unify disparate subjects--his wife Penny, Roscoe Holcomb, fragments of the Parthenon--into a dreamlike flow. Cohen's text, recalling his intertwining dreams across decades, explores the line between dream and reality, memory and book.
