Essence of Divinity


Book Description

ANNOTATION: Elaine first met Sathya Sai Baba in 1973 and has watched his mission of love spread around the world in the past 30 years. The platform on which his astounding activities are based is fivefold: truth, right action, peace, love, and nonviolence. "Essence of Divinity" chronicles Elaine's search for a true spiritual teacher and her experiences with Sai Baba. The book also describes Sai Baba's majorservice projects: his free educational system, from elementary school to the university; his program on education in human values; his free health-care programs, which include hospitals that perform the latest heart surgeries; and his project to bring pure water to the people of the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere. Elaine compellingly weaves together quotes from 30 years of Sai Baba's discourses on several important issues: health care, science and spirituality,the environment, the role of women, and vedanta.




Essence of Devotion


Book Description

ATTAINING DIVINITY · Have you ever wondered who or what God is? · Do you have the thirst to know the supreme truth? · Do you wish to rise above lower consciousness and ascend towards divinity? If yes, then this book is your answer. The journey towards divinity (or truth or supreme consciousness) comprises of two major paths: Knowledge (gyan) and Devotion (bhakti). Actually, both are essential to reach your destination. Some people feel that knowledge is sufficient. But there is the possibility of developing an ego of knowledge and thereby getting stuck in the cosmic illusion once again. Devotion is what will help you to remain established in the liberated state. Devotion gives you the power to easily overcome the obstacles to liberation—the mind, its ego and various tendencies. It helps you to lead a truly successful and peaceful life amidst these chaotic modern times. It adds joy and music to your journey towards the supreme consciousness. With the help of beautiful stories and examples, this book tells you everything about devotion; including what is devotion, its various aspects, its numerous benefits, as well as indications on how to develop devotion and reach the heights of devotion. With practice, you progress from the first to the tenth level of devotion, where you realize that divinity and you are not two different entities—both are one. Such bliss! But you then separate from divinity once again. Why? Only because you love the experience of devotion so much! Such is the sweetness or essence of devotion.




Amritanubhava


Book Description

Written seven hundred years ago, Jnaneshwara’s Amritanubhava is one of India’s greatest philosophical and spiritual writings, alongside the Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads and the great texts of Shankaracharya and Kabir. Jnaneshwara opens the spiritual perspective of Absolute Reality by dispelling any duality between our inner divinity and the individuality of our human soul. His astonishingly original discourse alternates the deepest philosophical insights with often amusing analogies to help the understanding without falling into the serious and abstruse trap of didactic treatises. Reading the Amritanubhava is, also and above all, a spiritual experience that Jnaneshawara wished for all humanity. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi praised this masterpiece, stating that Jnaneshwara had described what happens after Self-realization.




Soul on Fire


Book Description







The One and the Three


Book Description

The One and the Three explores parallels between Byzantine and early Irish monastic traditions, finding in both a markedly trinitarian theology founded on God's contemplation and ascetic experience. Chrysostom Koutloumousianos refutes modern theological theses that affect ecclesiology, and contrasts current schools of theological thought with patristic theology and anthropology, in order to approach the meaning and reality of unity and otherness within the Triadic Monad and the cosmos. He explores such topics as the connection between nature and person, the esoteric dimension of the Self, the relation and dialectic of impersonal institutions and personal charisma, and perennial monastic virtues as ways to unity in diversity.




The Marrow of Modern Divinity


Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.




Divine Ideas


Book Description

This Element defends a version of the classical theory of divine ideas, the containment exemplarist theory of divine ideas. The classical theory holds that God has ideas of all possible creatures, that these ideas partially explain why God's creation of the world is a rational and free personal action, and that God does not depend on anything external to himself for having the ideas he has. The containment exemplarist version of the classical theory holds that God's own nature is the exemplar of all possible creatures, and therefore that God's ideas of possible creatures are in some sense ideas of himself. Containment exemplarism offers a monotheism fit for metaphysics, insofar as it is coherent, simple, and explanatorily powerful; and offers a metaphysics fit for monotheism, insofar as it leaves God truly worthy of the unconditional worship which Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, aspire to offer to God.




The Real Name of God


Book Description

Reveals the real, whole name of God and its place within each of us • Explains how none of the God-names commonly used in the Bible is God’s real name • Shows how the real name of God unites all religions from both West and East • Includes spiritual techniques, prayers, poems, and meditative chants to bring each of us into deep, personal, intimate, living relationship with God Of the many names of God commonly used in the Bible and other sacred literature, none is God’s real name. Every God-name, including YHWH, reflects only one of God’s many aspects, such as the loving creator, the militaristic authoritarian, or the all-knowing judge. None embodies the wholeness, the totality, the full Essence of God. Who then are we to speak to when we seek God? If you can’t truly know something until you know its name, how can we truly know God? The culmination of years of translation research and etymological investigation, Rabbi Wayne Dosick’s work digs through many layers of presumption and deeply ingrained beliefs to reveal the real name of God hiding in plain sight in the Bible: Anochi. He shows how this sacred name unites all religions--both of the West and the East. The name Anochi enables us to finally meet the whole, complete, real God--both the grand God of the vast universe and the God of breath, soul, and heart who dwells within each of us. This in-depth exploration of God’s name includes spiritual techniques, poems, guided prayers, and meditative chants to bring each of us into personal, intimate, and purposeful relationship with God. By knowing the real name of God, we can affirm the connection to the Divine at the core of our being. We can touch the face of God that resides deep within us all.




Triune God


Book Description

The 13th and 14th centuries represented the most productive and influential period in the history of philosophy and theology in the West. A parallel and less influential (for the West) proliferation of arguments and theories took place in the East, at the same time, as a result of the defence of the Hesychastic movement offered by St Gregory Palamas and his followers. The papers brought together in this volume discuss the importance of Palamite ideas for the understanding of God in terms of divine energies, and for contemporary approaches to solving perennial problems in science, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Some of the contributors take a more reserved evaluation of the Palamite corpus, preferring to highlight similarities and differences between Palamas and the chief representatives of Medieval Scholasticism, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Other essays offer a radical re-evaluation of the Western history of philosophy and theology, preferring to bring out the reasons for Western philosophical and theological shortcomings and providing a wider critique on Western culture. Contributors to this volume include some of the top scholars on Palamite studies from the fields of philosophy, theology, aesthetics, cultural criticism, and art theory. As such, it represents a particularly useful resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in Christian theology and philosophy, Byzantine cultural studies and aesthetics.