Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality PDF Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190868244
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality PDF Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190868244
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality PDF Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190868236
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
"This pioneering study examines the philosophy of the nineteenth-century Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna and brings him into dialogue with recent Western thinkers. Sri Ramakrishna's expansive conception of God as the impersonal-personal Infinite Reality, Maharaj argues, opens up an entirely new paradigm for addressing central issues in the philosophy of religion"--

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta PDF Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350063258
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
This handbook brings together a distinguished team of scholars from philosophy, theology, and religious studies to provide the first in-depth discussion of Vedanta and the many different systems of thought that make up this tradition of Indian philosophy. Emphasizing the historical development of Vedantic thought, it includes chapters on numerous classical Vedantic philosophies as well as the modern Vedantic views of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and Romain Rolland. The volume offers careful hermeneutic analyses of how Vedantic texts have been interpreted, and it addresses key issues and debates in Vedanta, including religious diversity, the nature of God, and the possibility of embodied liberation. Venturing into cross-philosophical and cross-cultural territory, it also brings Vedanta into dialogue with Saiva Nondualism as well as contemporary Western analytic philosophy. Highlighting current scholarly controversies and charting new paths of inquiry, this is an indispensable research guide for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of Vedanta and Indian philosophy.

The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency

The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency PDF Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441140840
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This study examines how key figures in the German aesthetic tradition — Kant, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno — attempted to think through the powers and limits of art in post-Enlightenment modernity. Ayon Maharaj argues that the aesthetic speculations of these thinkers provide the conceptual resources for a timely dialectical defense of "aesthetic agency"— art's capacity to make available uniquely valuable modes of experience that escape the purview of Enlightenment scientific rationality. Blending careful philosophical analysis with an intellectual historian's attention to the broader cultural resonance of philosophical arguments, Maharaj has two interrelated aims. He provides challenging new interpretations of the aesthetic philosophies of Kant, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno by focusing on aspects of their thought that have been neglected or misunderstood in Anglo-American and German scholarship. He demonstrates that their subtle investigations into the nature and scope of aesthetic agency have far-reaching implications for contemporary discourse on the arts. The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency is an important and original contribution to scholarship on the German aesthetic tradition and to the broader field of aesthetics.

Infinite Progress

Infinite Progress PDF Author: Byron Reese
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1608324044
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Social Forecasting, Futurology.

The Infinite Tides

The Infinite Tides PDF Author: Christian Kiefer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608198154
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Set in depleted, post-recession suburbia, with its endlessly interlocking cul-de-sacs, mega-parking lots and big box stores, The Infinite Tides tells the story of star astronaut Keith Corcoran's return to earth. Keith comes home from a lengthy mission aboard the International Space Station to find his wife and daughter gone, and a house completely empty of furniture, as if Odysseus had returned to Ithaca to find that everyone he knew had forgotten about him and moved on. Keith is a mathematical and engineering genius, but he is ill equipped to understand what has happened to him, and how he has arrived at the center of such vacancy. Then, he forges an unlikely friendship with a neighboring Ukrainian immigrant, and slowly begins to reconnect with the world around him. As the two men share their vastly different personal and professional experiences, they paint an indelible and nuanced portrait of modern American life. The result is a deeply moving, tragicomic and ultimately redemptive story of love, loss and resilience, and of two lives lived under the weight of gravity.

Reality Transurfing

Reality Transurfing PDF Author: Vadim Zeland
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1846946603
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
Transurfing Reality was one of the top non-fiction bestsellers in the world in 2005 and 2006. Unknown till now in the West, the series has sold over 1,300,000 copies in Russia in three years. This translation (by Natasha Micharina) describes a new way of looking at reality, indeed of creating it. It provides a scientific explanation of the laws that help you do this, building up a scientific model, speaking in detail about particular rules to follow and giving important how-to tips, illustrated with examples. The author introduces a system of specific terms, notions, and metaphors, which together make a truly convincing, thought-provoking theory of creating your own life. “You are ruled by circumstances and it will always be like that until you learn how to manage your reality,” says the author. Bringing together the cutting edge of modern science and philosophical teaching, the book's style is popular-scientific, metaphorical and conversational. Books in the series: Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations; Reality Transurfing 2: A Rustle of Morning Stars; Reality Transurfing 3: Forward to the Past; Reality Transurfing 4: Ruling Reality; Reality Transurfing 5: Apples Fall to the Sky

Learning Interreligiously

Learning Interreligiously PDF Author: Francis X. Clooney SJ
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506440134
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Learning Interreligiously offers a series of about one hundred short pieces, written online between 2008 and 2016. They are meant for a wide range of readers interested in interreligious dialogue, interreligious learning, and the realities of Hindu-Christian encounter today, and are rich in insights drawn from teaching, travels in America and India, and the author’s research on sacred texts. The author, a Catholic priest who has spent more than forty years learning from Hinduism and observing religion as a plus and minus in today’s world, has much to share with readers. Some pieces were prompted by items in the news, some go deeper into traditions and probe the rich Scriptures and practices going back millennia, some seek simply to provoke fresh thinking, and others invite spiritual reflection. The book is divided into several parts so that readers can focus on individual events that made the news or on longer term and more concerted study. Familiar texts such as the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, and key passages from the New Testament will be considered for their spiritual possibilities. Readers will find much here to learn from and respond to as they too consider religion in today’s world.

Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism

Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism PDF Author: Swami Medhananda
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197624464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
"Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedåanta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India's most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of âSaçnkara's Advaita Vedåanta or as a "Neo-Vedåantin" influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. In Swami Vivekananda's Vedåantic Cosmopolitanism, Swami Medhananda rejects both of these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda's philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedåantin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers. Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedåanta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with a galaxy of contemporary philosophers, Medhananda demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda's views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness"--

Infinity and the Mind

Infinity and the Mind PDF Author: Rudy Rucker
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191255
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A dynamic exploration of infinity In Infinity and the Mind, Rudy Rucker leads an excursion to that stretch of the universe he calls the “Mindscape,” where he explores infinity in all its forms: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, theological and mundane. Using cartoons, puzzles, and quotations to enliven his text, Rucker acquaints us with staggeringly advanced levels of infinity, delves into the depths beneath daily awareness, and explains Kurt Gödel’s belief in the possibility of robot consciousness. In the realm of infinity, mathematics, science, and logic merge with the fantastic. By closely examining the paradoxes that arise, we gain profound insights into the human mind, its powers, and its limitations. This Princeton Science Library edition includes a new preface by the author.