Consciousness & Thought Books - Page 4

Conversations With God : An Uncommon Dialogue, Book Three, Audio Volume I

Neale Donald Walsch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 259 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

My son and I had read books 1 and 2. He asked when I was going to get book 3. I ordered it to give to him at Christmas. The book was in excellent condition and arrived in a timely maner.
We have both read it and enjoyed it very much.

COMPLETELY CONTRADICTS THE BIBLE 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

There is alot of good stuff in these books for you to think about and learn from. BUT, IT SAYS INCREDIBLY HORRIBLE THINGS THAT ARE SUPPOSEDLY OK WITH GOD, SUCH AS CHILD MOLESTATION for example. I was very excited about this collection but half way through book 1, I threw them all in the recycle bin. The movie however was excellent and extremely uplifting.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU RENT THE MOVIE AND FORGET ABOUT THESE BOOKS. The movie does not delve into the things that GOD is supposedly telling him that he writes in his books. DON`T WASTE YOURE MONEY ON THESE BOOKS !

Alex

Editorial Review:

InspirationalLarge Print Edition* A New York Times BestsellerSuppose you could ask God the most puzzling questions about existence, and God would provide clear, understandable answers? It happened to Neale Donald Walsch. Conversations with God is Neale Donald Walschs account of his direct conversations with God, beginning in 1992 while Walsch was immersed in a period of deep depression. He composed a letter to God in which he vented his frustrations, and much to his surprise even shock God answered him.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Julian Jaynes

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Total reviews: 141 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fascinating and controversial speculation 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Julian Jaynes' speculations in this unusual work are both fascinating and controversial. His thesis is extremely interesting. Essentially, Jaynes speculates that until at most a few thousand years ago human beings did not possess consciousness of the kind possessed by humans today. He believes that until relatively recently, humans had a form of bicameral mind, in which one side of the brain communicated with the other by creating illusions both visual and auditory--such that people actually believed that they heard voices telling them how to behave. Such commands, originating within each person's own mind, directed behavior much as our own conscious decision-making does so today. Jaynes argues that this "bicameral mind" explains why virtually all ancient religions feature human beings speaking directly with and otherwise interacting with "gods" on more or less a regular basis--something that does not happen today, at least in most people's experience. Jaynes analyzes ancient texts, primarily the Iliad, and notes that the persons written of in such texts are directed by "gods" and do not appear to explain their actions in terms of conscious experience. Put simply, according to Jaynes ancient humans were automatons who obeyed commands deriving from within their own minds, which commands appeared to them as real external forces ("gods").

Jaynes believes that modern consciousness is just another form of learned behavior which arose because it evidently had survival value as human society became more complex, and environmental stresses occurred. Thus, humans learned more advanced behavior as opposed to the earlier "bicameral" mind. Pretty interesting speculation. I am certainly not qualified to say whether Jaynes is correct or not.

The book itself is a very hard slog and most of it is not particularly well-written, but it rewards the reader with some excellent portions of good writing and ingenious speculation. For example, Jaynes describes modern consciousness as being like a flashlight beam in a dark cellar. To the viewer, only the illuminated portion of the cellar is visible (which he likens to the conscious part of a person's mind) while most of it is dark, and unperceived. As Jaynes points out, it is impossible to be conscious of that which is not within our consciousness, which is most of our mind and behavior. According to Jaynes, ancient humans simply lacked the narrow flashlight beam, and substituted bicameralism for it. Which, of course, raises the question--just as consciousness is arguably a higher mental state than bicameralism, is there a higher mental plane than consciousness?

My layman's guess is that most of Jaynes' speculation about historical bicameralism is incorrect, but notwithstanding that, this work contains some of the most interesting analysis concerning the nature of consciousness that one is likely to find. And it is quite possible (and Jaynes makes out a good case) that ancient humans did have a significantly different form of consciousness than do modern persons. One wonders what post-conscious human beings will be like.

Editorial Review:

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Alan Watts

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 79 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Revolutionary and Radical 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

There are many many books available today written about the non-dual philosophy or perspective. At the time this book was written, the old nonduality traditions like Zen, Dzogchen and Taoism were well-known but cloaked in the mystery of Asian or Eastern religions or philosophies. Alan Watts was one of the first to take this revolutionary and radical perspective to the West.

Alan Watts writes from a clear understanding of the nature of reality - he does this in a way that slowly lures us from our conditioned and programmed thought process into a more open and accepting stance.

He points to the fact that the illusion of "ME" being a separate entity held prisoner within a bag of skin and bones is merely a mistake in perception, a false belief given to us by unknowing and similarly-illusioned parents. He uses concepts and illustrations to guide us past the mind, past the overlay of conceptual belief, into a pure STOP, a cease of the mind, in which the true nature of beingness can be known.

The traditional Eastern philosophies were always viewed as just that - Eastern and "separate" philosophies, which applied to "those of that faith" but was not much more than a passing curiosity of those in the West. When this book came out, it was an introduction to Advaita Vedanta, a Western slant on the Eastern teachings. It talked about things which were taboo in the west, hence the title "The Book on the Taboo against knowing what you are."

And why is it Taboo? It's taboo because there is a Truth shining through the words, a freedom of being which underlies ALL religious beliefs, a seeing/knowing which is ever-present and prior to the mind and it's attempts to run away from the Truth. And who wants their long-held and treasured beliefs to be questioned?

Who really wants to know that they truly do not exist?

Editorial Review:

A witty attack on the illusion that the self is a separate ego that confronts a universe of alien physical objects.

Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking

D.Q. Mcinerny

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Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Whether regarded as a science, an art, or a skill–and it can properly be regarded as all three–logic is the basis of our ability to think, analyze, argue, and communicate. Indeed, logic goes to the very core of what we mean by human intelligence. In this concise, crisply readable book, distinguished professor D. Q. McInerny offers an indispensable guide to using logic to advantage in everyday life. Written explicitly for the layperson, McInerny’s Being Logical promises to take its place beside Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style as a classic of lucid, invaluable advice.

As McInerny notes, logic is a deep, wide, and wonderfully varied field, with a bearing on every aspect of our intellectual life. A mastery of logic begins with an understanding of right reasoning–and encompasses a grasp of the close kinship between logical thought and logical expression, a knowledge of the basic terms of argument, and a familiarity with the pitfalls of illogical thinking. Accordingly, McInerny structures his book in a series of brief, penetrating chapters that build on one another to form a unified and coherent introduction to clear and effective reasoning.

At the heart of the book is a brilliant consideration of argument–how an argument is founded and elaborated, how it differs from other forms of intellectual discourse, and how it critically embodies the elements of logic. McInerny teases out the subtleties and complexities of premises and conclusions, differentiates statements of fact from statements of value, and discusses the principles and uses of every major type of argument, from the syllogistic to the conditional. In addition, he provides an incisive look at illogical thinking and explains how to recognize and avoid the most common errors of logic.

Elegant, pithy, and precise, Being Logical breaks logic down to its essentials through clear analysis, accessible examples, and focused insights. Whether you are a student or a teacher, a professional sharpening your career skills or an amateur devoted to the fine points of thought and expression, you are sure to find this brief guide to effecting reasoning both fascinating and illuminating.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

William James

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Always providing further insight 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This 1902 publication still takes pride of place as a landmark study and remains one of the most influential books ever on psychology and spirituality. The style is accessible and engaging, consistently interesting with well-reasoned arguments. Religions are not compared; the study is restricted to the experiences of the individual.

James considers the feelings, actions and experiences of people insofar as they understand themselves to be in a relationship with whatever they consider the Divine. It has nothing to do with churches, doctrine or dogma, concerning itself only with the religious experiences of everyday life.

He emphasizes the passionate aspect of religion and its power of adding enchantment to life. Dealing objectively with a wide spectrum of observed and personally related religious experiences, James also quotes from the autobiographical writings of famous authors, theologians and mystics from many traditions including Whitman, Luther, Voltaire, Emerson, Tolstoy and many others.

The terrain of study is clearly identified and circumscribed. Chapter titles include Religion & Neurology, the Reality of the Unseen, the Religion of Healthy-Mindedness, the Sick Soul, the Divided Self & the Process of Unification, Conversion, Saintliness, Mysticism and Philosophy.

In his own words: "Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or thought. When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories which religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary. If you wish to grasp its essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements."

This book offers a treasure trove of insights, revelation, wisdom and points to ponder that contributes substantially to the reader's understanding of consciousness, psychological processes, mystic states, thought & emotion, and the relationship to the Eternal Divine.

Although it is not a difficult text to grasp, patience is called for since every sentence is loaded with so many layers of meaning that one often has to reread a previous paragraph in order to fully comprehend and properly process the insights and information. A mindful, meditative study of the text will richly reward the reader.

Other works on religion and/or spirituality that I have found illuminating, inspiring or thought-provoking are Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning & The Creative Process in the Individual by Thomas Troward, Religion in the Making by Alfred North Whitehead, The Hidden Power of the Bible by Ernest Holmes, Alter Your Life by Emmet Fox, Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover, The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Adin Steinsaltz and One Cosmos Under God by Robert Godwin.

Editorial Review:

Standing at the crossroads of psychology and religion, this catalyzing work applied the scientific method to a field abounding in abstract theory. William James believed that individual religious experiences, rather than the precepts of organized religions, were the backbone of the world's religious life. His discussions of conversion, repentance, mysticism and saintliness, and his observations on actual, personal religious experiences - all support this thesis. In his introduction, Martin E. Marty discusses how James' pluralistic view of religion led to his remarkable tolerance of extreme forms of religious behaviour, his challenging, highly original theories, and his welcome lack of pretension in all of his observations on the individual and the divine.

Turning the Mind Into an Ally

Sakyong Mipham

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Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Removing the Clutter from your Mind 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Sayong Mipham has produced an easy to digest book involving the basic principles of meditation. At the risk of being overly simplistic, "Turning the Mind into an Ally" involves removing the clutter that crowds the mind. To employ Mipham's own metaphor, our minds often run wild like a horse which needs to be corraled and trained. Even through simple techniques that only involve breathing, one can focus the mind. Yet Mipand's instruction does not stop here as he takes the reader through further levels. I am hesistant to summarize the book further as Mipham states his case much better than I ever could for him.

Although I am a Christian, I have long been interested in Buddhism and the principles of meditation. As Thomas Merton explored in his lifetime, Buddhism has more parallels with Christianity than one might think. In reality, this book is written for a wide audience and can appeal to divergent people including those with only the most basic knowledge of Buddhism.

Editorial Review:

Sakyong Mipham shows how to cultivate a strong stable mind and no longer live "at the mercy of our moods." His stories and wisdom from American culture, as well as from the great Buddhist teachers, help demystify this essential discipline and place it in the framework of Western culture. Accessible, practical, and clear, it provides readers with the necessary tools for taming the mind.

The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

Antonio R. Damasio

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Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' Error, Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic.

A technique for producing ideas

James Webb Young

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

straight to the point, somewhat perceivable 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Although a bit too short, James Webb Young succeeds in clarifying the creative process with common wisdom. It will be helpful for almost anyone, but especially to those in the creative field.

Personally I have been using the same thought process for a couple of years now, but without paying the appropriate attention to detail in every single step of it.

Overall an easy to digest recommended reading.

Savvas S.

Editorial Review:

A McGraw-Hill Advertising Classic

. .

A Technique for Producing Ideas reveals a simple, sensible idea-generation methodology that has stood the test of time.

. .

First presented to students in 1939, published in 1965, and now reissued for a new generation of advertising professionals and others looking to jump-start their creative juices, this powerful guide details a five-step process for gathering information, stimulating imagination, and recombining old elements into dramatic new ideas.

. . .

Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life

Anthony T. Kronman

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The question of what living is for—of what one should care about and why—is the most important question a person can ask. Yet under the influence of the modern research ideal, our colleges and universities have expelled this question from their classrooms, judging it unfit for organized study. In this eloquent and carefully considered book, Tony Kronman explores why this has happened and calls for the restoration of life’s most important question to an honored place in higher education.

 

The author contrasts an earlier era in American education, when the question of the meaning of life was at the center of instruction, with our own times, when this question has been largely abandoned by college and university teachers.  In particular, teachers of the humanities, who once felt a special responsibility to guide their students in exploring the question of what living is for, have lost confidence in their authority to do so. And they have lost sight of the question itself in the blinding fog of political correctness that has dominated their disciplines for the past forty years.

 

Yet Kronman sees a readiness for change--a longing among teachers as well as students to engage questions of ultimate meaning. He urges a revival of the humanities’ lost tradition of studying the meaning of life through the careful but critical reading of great works of literary and philosophical imagination. And he offers here the charter document of that revival.

 

 

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The Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields.

The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy.

This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.