This controversial book offers another view on spirituality, one which maintains that we simultaneously uncover our authentic selfhood and awaken our sense of universal connection as we experience the enlightenment process. Blackstone writes from the unique perspective of a psychotherapist who is also a body work practitioner with a deep understanding of spiritual practice.
The late eighteenth century witnessed an explosion of intellectual activity in Scotland by such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James Boswell, and Robert Burns. And the books written by these seminal thinkers made a significant mark during their time in almost every field of polite literature and higher learning throughout Britain, Europe, and the Americas. In this magisterial history, Richard B. Sher breaks new ground for our understanding of the Enlightenment and the forgotten role of publishing during that period. The Enlightenment and the Book seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as The Wealth of Nations and The Life of Samuel Johnson were written by authors who eyed their publishers as minor functionaries in their profession. To the contrary, Sher shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth-century involved a deeply complex partnership between authors and their publishers, one in which writers saw the book industry not only as pivotal in the dissemination of their ideas, but also as crucial to their dreams of fame and monetary gain. Similarly, Sher demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking in order to advance human knowledge as well as to accumulate profits. The Enlightenment and the Book explores this tension between creativity and commerce that still exists in scholarly publishing today. Lavishly illustrated and elegantly conceived, it will be must reading for anyone interested in the history of the book or the production and diffusion of Enlightenment thought.
The Method is based upon the understanding that spiritual awakening is not an attainment, but a dissolution. These 5 steps are intended to permanently dissolve the deeply ingrained belief that you can *make* yourself free. If these steps are followed through with utter totality, awakening will be what's left as a byproduct.
A unique manual of spiritual insight and revelation which takes the reader beyond accepted boundaries of non-duality and enlightenment. Book of Enlightenment is a revolutionary compendium of spiritual knowledge addressed to those commencing their inner journey, as well as those who have already reached higher levels of spiritual realization. The purpose of this book is to reveal the multidimensional evolution of human potential. It is a book of spiritual guidance directed to uncompromising seekers of truth. Anadi presents a living teaching which continues to evolve, with a wealth of material available that expands further on the foundations laid here.
In Evolutionary Enlightenment, Andrew Cohen redefines spiritual awakening for our contemporary world—a world characterized by exponential change and an ever-expanding appreciation for the processes of evolution. Cohen’s message is simple, yet profound: Life is evolution, and enlightenment is about waking up to this fundamentally creative impulse as your own deepest, most authentic self. Through five tenets for living an enlightened life, Cohen will empower you to wholeheartedly participate in the process of change as your own spiritual practice. Evolutionary Enlightenment not only makes deep sense of life today; it will show you how to play an active role in shaping the world of tomorrow.
The Enlightenment Process describes the process of enlightenment as the gradual realization of our most subtle dimension of unified, all-pervasive consciousness. It also explains how we uncover our authentic selfhood and embodiment at the same time as we arrive at our spiritual oneness with other people, the world, and cosmos.Using a set of simple but effective meditational and physical exercises for "subtle self" work, Judith Blackstone clearly and expertly indicates the way in which we can deepen our spiritual awareness, develop our capacity for contact with other people, and reconnect with the world. Her lifetime of experience in depth-psychology, bodywork, and Kundalini yoga gives this book a distinctive authority and clarity. This revised and expanded version of The Enlightenment Process is an invaluable guide that will lead readers in navigating the confusing or conflicting teachings on enlightenment. It does this by giving a more comprehensive description of the enlightened state. Anyone who has already started on the spiritual path or has a background in psychotherapy will be able to appreciate The Enlightenment Process more fully as it is a significant contribution to our understanding of the more advanced stages of personal growth. Included in the book are 18 practical exercises that will assist readers on this path to self-awareness.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Ends of Enlightenment explores three realms of eighteenth-century European innovation that remain active in the twenty-first century: the realist novel, philosophical thought, and the physical sciences, especially human anatomy. The European Enlightenment was a state of being, a personal stance, and an orientation to the world. Ways of probing experience and knowledge in the novel and in the visual arts were interleaved with methods of experimentation in science and philosophy. This book's fresh perspective considers the novel as an art but also as a force in thinking. The critical distance afforded by a view back across the centuries allows Bender to redefine such novelists as Defoe, Fielding, Goldsmith, Godwin, and Laclos by placing them along philosophers and scientists like Newton, Locke, and Hume but also alongside engravings by Hogarth and by anatomist William Hunter. His book probes the kinship among realism, hypothesis, and scientific fact, defining in the process the rhetorical basis of public communication during the Enlightenment.
This complete guide to enlightenment presents the wisdom of the ancient science of self-inquiry, a time-tested means for achieving spiritual freedom. The author convincingly refutes the popular view that enlightenment is a unique state of consciousness and debunks a host of other myths. In his straightforward style he reveals proven methods for purifying the mind, and takes the reader from the beginning to the end of the spiritual path, patiently unfolding the logic of self-inquiry.
This book shows that mysticism is incomplete without scientific rationalism, and that our current social and political projects cannot be completed without assimilating the values and practices of mysticism. It discusses cross-cultural ethics, mysticism and value theory, mysticism and metaphysics, mysticism and the theory of knowledge, ethics and religion, parapsychology, patriarchy, and social and political history.
