Author: Rupert Spira
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 1684030021
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Get Book Here
Book Description
“I’ve gained deeper understanding listening to Rupert Spira than I have from any other exponent of modern spirituality. Reality is sending us a message we desperately need to hear, and at this moment no messenger surpasses Spira and the transformative words in his essays.” —Deepak Chopra, author of You Are the Universe, Spiritual Solutions, and Super Brain Our world culture is founded on the assumption that the Big Bang gave rise to matter, which in time evolved into the world, into which the body was born, inside which a brain appeared, out of which consciousness at some late stage developed. As a result of this “matter model,” most of us believe that consciousness is a property of the body. We feel that it is “I,” this body, that knows or is aware of the world. We believe and feel that the knowing with which we are aware of our experience is located in and shares the limits and destiny of the body. This is the fundamental presumption of mind and matter that underpins almost all our thoughts and feelings and is expressed in our activities and relationships. The Nature of Consciousness suggests that the matter model has outlived its function and is now destroying the very values it once sought to promote. For many people, the debate as to the ultimate reality of the universe is an academic one, far removed from the concerns and demands of everyday life. After all, life happens independently of our models of it. However, The Nature of Consciousness will clearly show that the materialist paradigm is a philosophy of despair and, as such, the root cause of unhappiness in individuals. It is a philosophy of conflict and, as such, the root cause of hostilities between families, communities, and nations. Far from being abstract and philosophical, its implications touch each one of us directly and intimately. An exploration of the nature of consciousness has the power to reveal the peace and happiness that truly lie at the heart of experience. Our experience never ceases to change, but the knowing element in all experience—consciousness, or what we call “I”—itself never changes. The knowing with which all experience is known is always the same knowing. Being the common, unchanging element in all experience, consciousness does not share the qualities of any particular experience: it is not qualified, conditioned, or limited by experience. The knowing with which a feeling of loneliness or sorrow is known is the same knowing with which the thought of a friend, the sight of a sunset, or the taste of ice cream is known. Just as a screen is never disturbed by the action in a movie, so consciousness is never disturbed by experience; thus it is inherently peaceful. The peace that is inherent in us—indeed that is us—is not dependent on the situations or conditions we find ourselves in. In a series of essays that draw you, through your own direct experience, into an exploration of the nature of this knowing element that each of us calls “I,” The Nature of Consciousness posits that consciousness is the fundamental reality of the apparent duality of mind and matter. It shows that the overlooking or ignoring of this reality is the root cause of the existential unhappiness that pervades and motivates most people’s lives, as well as the wider conflicts that exist between communities and nations. Conversely, the book suggests that the recognition of the fundamental reality of consciousness is the first step in the quest for lasting happiness and the foundation for world peace.
Author: Gregory Bateson
Publisher: Hampton Press (NJ)
ISBN: 9781572734340
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.
Author: Paul M. Churchland
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262531061
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Get Book Here
Book Description
"A Bradford book."Includes index. Bibliography: p. [305]-313.
Author: Peter Carruthers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134422210
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Nature of the Mind is a comprehensive and lucid introduction to major themes in the philosophy of mind. It carefully explores the conflicting positions that have arisen within the debate and locates the arguments within their context. It is designed for newcomers to the subject and assumes no previous knowledge of the philosophy of mind. Clearly written and rigorously presented, this book is ideal for use in undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind. Main topics covered include: * the problem of other minds * the dualist/physicalist debate * the nature of personal identity and survival * mental-state concepts The book closes with a number of pointers towards more advanced work in the subject. Study questions and suggestions for further reading are provided at the end of each chapter. The Nature of the Mind is based on Peter Carruthers' book, Introducing Persons, also published by Routledge (1986).
Author: Sebastian Watzl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191633003
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book Here
Book Description
What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective.
Author: Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861716280
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Get Book Here
Book Description
A correct understanding of the mind's nature is the key to success in meditation and to the profound insights at the heart of the Buddha's path. His Holinesss the Dalai Lama.s overview of the important text at the centre of this book, the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel of the Oral Tradition, distills some of the most central themes of Buddhism.
Author: Ole Nydahl
Publisher: Blue Dolphin Pub
ISBN: 9780931892585
Category : Buddhism and culture
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Get Book Here
Book Description
A basic introduction to Buddhism, presenting the essential teachings of the Buddha, his life and times, and his great discovery of the Four Noble Truths.
Author: C. B. Martin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191614602
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book Here
Book Description
What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical. C. B. Martin, an original and influential exponent of 'ontologically serious' metaphysics, echoes Locke's dictum that 'all things that exist are only particulars', and argues that properties are powerful qualities. He also spells out the implications of this view for philosophical conceptions of causation, intentionality, consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Martin emphasizes the importance of non-conscious 'vegetative' systems, which provide clear examples of intentionality in the form of representational use. The slide from representational use to consciousness involves a change in the material of use, but not the form of representation. A concluding chapter provides an argument for the view that an ontology of particular substances and properties leads ineluctably to monism: the bus we board with Locke takes us directly to the world of Spinoza and Einstein. Along the way, we are led to understand the nature of minds and conscious states of mind in a way that avoids both reductionism (the idea that mental is reducible to the non-mental) and dualism (the idea that mental substances or properties differ dramatically from physical substances and properties).
Author: David M. Rosenthal
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195046717
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 642
Get Book Here
Book Description
Since the dawn of history philosophers have speculated about the nature of mind. What kind of thing is the mind? How do mental processes fit with the rest of the natural order? Is the mind something different and separate from the body? What is distinctive of the various kinds of mental phenomena such as thinking, feeling, sensing, and consciousness? Addressing these and related problems, this anthology provides a framework for understanding mental functioning. The readings are grouped into five major sections: General Problems about Mind, Self and Other, Mind and Body, The Nature of Mind, and Psychological Explanation. Each section begins with an introduction that discusses the issues and problems that arise in the various selections and shows how each author approaches them. In addition, a general introduction gives a concise overview of the subject and provides a historical context for the readings. Representative works of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, and Reid provide a solid foundation for the copious selections from contemporary philosophers that follow, among them articles by Fodor, Dennett, Nagel, Putnam, Davidson, Searle, Ryle, Strawson, Burge, Chisholm, Rorty, and Sellars. With sixty-two selections in all, The Nature of Mind is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in this central philosophical topic.
Author: Thomas Nagel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199919755
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 141
Get Book Here
Book Description
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
