BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?
Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction * New York Times Bestseller * A Huffington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year * One of the Best Books of the Month on Goodreads * Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Book of the Year * An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year “Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk did for raptors.” —New Statesman, UK “One of the best science books of the year.” —Science Friday, NPR Another New York Times bestseller from the author of The Good Good Pig, this “fascinating…touching…informative…entertaining” (The Daily Beast) book explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food. Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.
George Adamski's lost debut puts his teaching on par with 21st-century science Until it was wrested from the mists of time, The Invisible Ocean (1932) was unknown to even Adamski's most dedicated students. Depicting cosmos as a sea of consciousness in which life expresses itself at its multifarious levels of manifestation, it shows that Adamski's interest and teaching were consistent throughout his life and, if anything, only matured in their expression. In The Sea of Consciousness Gerard Aartsen presents George Adamski's earliest teaching in the context of systems science -- which holds that nothing is separate, that everything interacts and evolves as an integral system -- and reveals how Adamski's philosophy and teaching were far ahead of their time. Reading Adamski's first publication alongside the insights from the very forefront of 21st-century scientific thinking should prompt a complete reassessment of his work on the part of everyone who is less than convinced that Adamski could be speaking from a higher level of understanding than most of us have access to. This is a volume of historical importance that could well signal the ultimate rehabilitation of George Adamski's reputation. About the author: Gerard Aartsen is a lifelong student of the Ageless Wisdom teaching and the author of four books about the extraterrestrial presence that have all been published in multiple languages. His work is based on the paradigm that Life is universal and One, expressing itself through the evolution of consciousness at all levels of existence, and that humanity must begin to manifest its oneness in diversity in order to survive and thrive.
This book explores the unprecedented surge or oceanic feeling in the aesthetic expression of the romantic century. As secular thought began to displace the certainties of a sacral universe, the oceans that give life to our planet offered a symbol of eternity, rooted in the experience of nature rather than Biblical tradition. Images of the sea permeated the minds of the early Romantics, became a significant ingredient of romantic expression, and continued to emerge in the language, literature, art, and music of the nineteenth century. These pages document the evidence for this oceanic consciousness in some of the most creative minds of that century.
This book covers the basics through to the highest levels of consciousness. This book is for the individual who truly wishes to learn how to manifest success and prosperity into their life, beyond the Law of Attraction and who also wish to delve deeper into their Divine Nature.
"Most of us believe that we live in only three states of consciousness: wakefulness, sleep, and dreaming. But there is so much more. In [this book], ... Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., [posits that] the ... daily practice of transcendental meditation (TM) can permanently improve your state of mind during the routine hours of waking life--placing you into a super-mind state of consciousness where you consistently perform at peak aptitude"--
National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch 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. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Waking up spiritually is a life-altering event that shifts the world view, and changes the perception of what it means to be human. It is a significant grace in anyone's life, bringing the potential for profound peace, unconditional love and intuitive wisdom. However, spiritual "seekers" rarely have a clear understanding of what it means to become Awakened or Self-realized, nor do they recognize the natural tendency to become stuck in various cul-de-sacs along the way, or know how to cope with the challenges that arise in this process. Awakening is both sudden and gradual, often beautiful and ecstatic, but it can also be disorienting as the "seeker" falls away. Few spiritual systems or therapists are able to offer guidance to those in this process, and this can lead to confusion, detours and lengthy periods of darkness before embodiment and freedom are established. "The Awakening Guide" reveals how the search for love, wisdom and wholeness unfolds for those who meditate, and also those who have sudden awakenings to expanded consciousness, radiant emptiness, Oneness and the realization of Self. This might happen following breathing or energy practices, transmission or diksa, traumatic or near-death events, drug experiments, biofeedback, or spontaneously while walking down the street. Consciousness shifts. Wham! Another reality is opened, and the world you know changes before your eyes. Consciousness is invited to recall itself as Source. An initial awakening is seldom permanent, and many seekers are disappointed to discover that this first flash of insight was only a glimpse, and the subsequent months and years require trust, patience and a commitment to living in Truth if they hope to be stabilized in an awakened state. This inspirational book, written by a non-dual teacher and therapist who has explored the path of spiritual awakening for more than 40 years, and witnessed the spiritual emergence of over 2000 people, is a companion to support a new perspective as an old identity falls away. It offers some guidelines for awakening, descriptions of the varieties of experiences that have been called awakening, comments by people who have had glimpses of awakening, and a revelation of the primary issues and resolutions an awakened person may need to face. It is a companion to Dr. Greenwell's book "The Kundalini Guide."
"Enthralling . . . breathtaking . . . Metazoa brings an extraordinary and astute look at our own mind’s essential link to the animal world." —The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "A great book . . . [Godfrey-Smith is] brilliant at describing just what he sees, the patterns of behaviour of the animals he observes." —Nigel Warburton, Five Books The scuba-diving philosopher who wrote Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom—the Metazoa—they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds. In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus—the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective experience with the assistance of far-flung species. As he delves into what it feels like to perceive and interact with the world as other life-forms do, Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the animal body well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. In accessible, riveting prose, he charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments—eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment—shaped the subjective lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus, and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds, and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers their stories together in a way that bridges the gap between mind and matter, addressing one of the most vexing philosophical problems: that of consciousness. Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our high-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and active bodies. The story that results is as rich and vibrant as life itself.
The seas and oceans are currently taking centre stage in academic study and public consciousness. From the plastics littering our seas, to the role of climate change on ocean currents from unequal access of marine resources to the treacherous experiences of seafarers who keep our global economy afloat; now is a crucial time to examine how we live with the sea. This ambitious book brings together an interdisciplinary and international cohort of contributors from within and beyond academia. It offers a range and diversity of insights unlike previous collections. An ‘oceanic turn’ is taking place, with a burgeoning of academic work that takes seriously the place of seas and oceans in understanding socio-cultural and political life, past and present. Yet, there is a significant gap concerning the ways in which we engage with seas and oceans, with a will to enliven action and evoke change. This book explores these challenges, offering insights from spatial planning, architectural design, geography, educational studies, anthropology and cultural studies. An examination through these lenses can help us to better understand human relationships with the seas and oceans, and promote an ethic of care for the future.