The Transcendent Dynamic
The Transcendent Dynamic

Author: David Birnbaum

Publisher: New Paradigm Matrix

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0984361987

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Summa Metaphysica proposes a comprehensive and integrated metaphysical structure – a new paradigm. Summa I: God and Evil: Religious Man (published 1988) and Summa II: God and Good: Spiritual Man (first launched 2005 online) comprise Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica series. The author has proposed that one fundamental concept – and one fundamental concept alone – Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the infinite power) – ignited – and drives – the cosmos – and the integral infinite divine. Building upon his 1988 treatise, in Summa II: God and Good: Spiritual Man (17 years later) the author lays out his overarching metaphysical structure in very significantly greater scope, depth, breadth and texture. Summa III: The Transcendent Dynamic: Secular Man offers a metaphysics for ‘Everyman’ – de-linked from any spirituality or religious aspects. It might best be classified as ‘scientific metaphysics’. It Is anchored In a creative finesse of science and logic. Birnbaum’s paradigm is non–linear, as opposed to the linearity of the great bulk of Western philosophy. It is non– circular, as opposed to the circularity of much of Eastern philosophy. Rather, Birnbaum’s paradigm is what the author refers to as a “spiral/reflexive” dynamic (elucidated in the text). The author proposes that this Quest for Potential∞ paradigm more elegantly explains the dynamics of the cosmos – and of life, in particular – than alternate propositions. According to Birnbaum, only the full plethora of potentials – and the quest thereof – could have ignited the cosmos. The combined potentials for love, life, intellectuality, spirituality and, indeed, for an infinitely Perfect Divine, ignited, birthed, nurtured, and projected the cosmos onward on its quest towards infinity. ‘Extraordinariation,’ according to the author, is the overarching goal. Thomas Aquinas wrote Summa Theologica c. 1273 within a Christian context. The Summa Metaphysica series, proposing an original, dynamic, overarching, and integrated metaphysics, is crafted within a Jewish context seven hundred years later.

Understanding Our Story
Understanding Our Story

Author: Rebecca Letterman

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1532601794

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Understanding Our Story presents a concise introduction to the original, transformative thinking of Adrian van Kaam, CSSp, PhD (1920-2007). While many books are available on "spiritual formation" and "Christian disciplines," no other author of our time has offered such a holistic and comprehensive explanation of Christian formation and its relationship to the human spirituality of all persons. Understanding our Story culls the most seminal ideas and vocabulary from van Kaam's eleven volumes on formation science, formation anthropology, and formation theology, and provides examples of his theoretical-practical research drawn from everyday life, Scripture, Christian writers, and van Kaam's life story itself. In doing so, it makes his extensive work available to scholars in the field of spiritual formation, and gives all readers the opportunity to utilize his insightful thinking to more fully understand the myriad ways in which God reforms and transforms lives into the image of Christ. In the pluritraditional world in which we live, where so many faith and formation traditions demand our attention, van Kaam's formative spirituality provides a means of respectful dialogue with formationally relevant truths from others and of wise appraisal of ideas that are (and are not) conducive to, and compatible with, the Christian revelation.

Philosophy of Gorakhnath
Philosophy of Gorakhnath

Author: Akshaya Kumar Banerjea

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 8120805356

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This volume contains the essence of the writings and teachings of Mahayogi Gorakhnath. It is well pointed out that while the ultimate object of the search is the same for a Yogi and a philosopher, their modes of approach are different, the latterês being intellectual and the formerês intuitive and spiritual. The task of a Yogi does not require any subtle intellectual speculation or the framing of hypotheses and theories. The quest of the Yogi is a direct spiritual experience of truth on a high plane of consciousness. The highest state of Samadhi attained by the Yogi is neither purely subjective nor objective. It transcends both categories and it is an integrated experience beyond formal description. Such a transcendent state of consciousness is alone called Samadhi. This book analyses in detail the nature of Samadhi Experience. The term –Experience” is perhaps inaccurate because, in this state of Samadhi, there is no relation between subject and object, the experiencer and the experienced. It is the fulfilment of life as described in the Yogasutras. The Yogi who comes back from Samadhi may not have attained Kaivalya or Moksha, but he is illuminated by his experience. If he assumes the role of a teacher or preacher, he gives expression to his experience in such forms as may be easily intelligible to the people at large. Gorakhnath was a Maha-Yogi. The cult of the Kanphata Yogis is a definite unite within Hinduism, and its study is essential for understanding this phase of the religious life of India. the book is divided into three sections. The first two sections comprising chapters 1 - 13 deal with the cult and history of this sec. the third section containing chapters 14 - 16 opens with the Sanskrit Text Goraksastaka and its English rendering and annotations. The book is fully documented. It has a preface, Glossary, Bibliography, Plates and General Index. This book is an attempt to present a systematic and consistent account of the philosophical background of the spiritual culture associated with the names of Yogi Gorakhnath and other adepts of the Natha school.

The Transcendence of God
The Transcendence of God

Author: Edward Farley

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-06-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1532631774

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In the varying perspectives of theological thought the contrasting ideas of transcendence and immanence must inevitably be looked at together. To whatever extent they are held to be mutually compatible or mutually exclusive, neither can be considered without at least some cognizance being taken of the other. Nevertheless, in the swinging of the pendulum from era to era, first one and then the other theme receives the greater weight of attention. Thus, nineteenth-century liberalism placed more emphasis on immanence, whereas the twentieth-century revolt against liberalism has concentrated on transcendence. In this book the author studies the transcendent aspect of God as developed by five contemporary theologians. Two of the men whose work Dr. Farley examines, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, are thoroughly familiar. The other three, Karl Heim, Charles Hartshorne, and Henry Nelson Wieman, have received less attention in recent studies. The five represent widely divergent traditions, but all of them agree in opposing immanentism. Moreover, they all deal with the tension between the philosophical and the Biblical affirmations of God's transcendence, and attempt to show, in their respective ways, how these types of "beyondness" are related.

Dynamics of World History
Dynamics of World History

Author: Christopher Dawson

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-05-20

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1497651409

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In scope and in vision Christopher Dawson’s historiography ranks with the work of men like Spengler, Northrop, and Toynbee. Several major themes run through Dawson’s work, but perhaps his most unique contribution was his insistence on the importance of religion in shaping and sustaining civilizations. Religion, Dawson believed, is the great creative force in any culture, and the loss of a society’s historic religion therefore portends a process of social dissolution. For this reason, Dawson concluded that Western society must find a way to revitalize its spiritual life if it is to avoid irreversible decay. Progress, the real religion of modernity, is insufficient to sustain cultural health. And an ahistorical, secularized Christianity is an oxymoron, a pseudo-religion only nominally related to the historic religion of the West. Dawson maintained that the hope of the present age lay in the reconciliation of the religious tradition of Christianity with the intellectual tradition of humanism and the new knowledge about man and nature provided by modern science. Dynamics of World History shows that though such a task may be difficult, it is not impossible.

Transcendent Kingdom
Transcendent Kingdom

Author: Yaa Gyasi

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 052565819X

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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! • Finalist for the WOMEN'S PRIZE Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

Religious Individualisation
Religious Individualisation

Author: Martin Fuchs

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 1086

ISBN-13: 3110580934

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This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past. Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.

Emotions and Religious Dynamics
Emotions and Religious Dynamics

Author: Nathaniel A. Warne

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1317144554

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We all feel emotions and are moved to action by them. Religious communities often select and foster certain emotions over others. Without understanding this it is hard to grasp the way groups view the world and each other. Often, it is the underlying emotional pattern of a group rather than its doctrines that either divides it from, or attracts it to, others. These issues, so important in today's world, are explored in this book in a genuinely interdisciplinary way by anthropologists, psychologists, theologians and historians of religion, and in some detailed studies of well and less well known religious traditions from across the world.

Adult Development
Adult Development

Author: Jan D. Sinnott

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0199892822

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Relationships, especially close relationships, are among the most important aspects of life for most of us. Close relationships reach to the very heart of our happiness --but exactly what processes or skills, over the course of a lifetime, help us learn to relate to one another more and more deeply, and to grow past the differences and problems that might divide us? Adult Development applies the concept of complex postformal thought in order to explore how certain cognitive processes support individuals' close relationships such that those relationships grow stronger and richer over time. Complex postformal thought allows a person to deal with everyday logical contradictions by letting that person understand that "reality" and "meaning" are co-created. In this way, postformal thought enables adults to bridge two contradictory but logical positions and reach an adaptive synthesis of them through a higher-order logic. Taking this inquiry a step further, Sinnott examines the role played by postformal thought in intimate relationships -- those between spouses, partners, parents and children, siblings, and close friends. Sinnott argues that postformal thought seems to develop later in life and is somewhat akin to the concept of wisdom. Based on 30 years of research, this book diverges from typical contributions to this field by discussing positive adult development in the context of close relationships. Rather than focusing on the emergence of deficits of adulthood and particularly aging, Sinnott instead explores the cognitive processes that are important in creating and sustaining close ongoing relationships.

The Psychology of Political Behavior in a Time of Change
The Psychology of Political Behavior in a Time of Change

Author: Jan D. Sinnott

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-23

Total Pages: 631

ISBN-13: 3030382702

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This volume seeks to add a unique perspective on the complex relationship between psychology and politics, focusing on three analytical points of view: 1) psychology, politics, and complex thought, 2) bio/psycho/social factors of masculinity and power, and 3) underlying factors in political behavior. Contributors examine recent political events worldwide through a psychological lens, using interdisciplinary approaches to seek a deeper understanding of contemporary political ideas, psychologies, and behaviors. Finally, the book offers suggestions for surviving and thriving during rapid political change. Among the topics discussed: Biopsychological factors of political beliefs and behaviors Understanding political polarization through a cognitive lens Impact of psychological processes on voter decision making Motivations for believing in conspiracy theories Nonverbal cues in leadership Authoritarian responses to social change The Psychology of Political Behavior in a Time of Change is a timely and insightful volume for students and researchers in psychology, political science, gender studies, business and marketing, and sociology, as well as those working in applied settings: practitioners, government workers, NGOs, corporate organizations.