Transition, Infinity, and Ecstasy


Book Description

Though modern astronomers and astro-phycisists like Stephen Hawking have their doubts about interstellar travel there are countless references to inter-dimesional travel in mostly ancient Indian texts: The 'Kandha Puranam' (nearlly 17 million years ago)mentions that the Asura (Titan) King 'Sooran' ruled over 1008 universes and had 'vimanas' or flying crafts that could in an instant travel all over space cutting across dimensions at tremendous speed,that could hover in mid-air,over water,disappear and re-appear all of a sudden and had a host of stealth-weapons,even 'nuclear-winter' is mentioned for it is said that the entire world was enveloped in darkness caused by Sooran during the war; Lord Muruga possessed the 'Peacock Craft' that could circumvent the '14 worlds' and fly beyond in a micro-second and his "missile with the lengthy flame"(nedunchudar Vel) was 'voice-activated' and re-useable and was so powerful that it blew up into smitherns the 'Kraunja' mountain which even our modern day nuclear weapons cannot do according to scientists; The Ramayana(1.7 million years ago) mentions that Emperor Ravana's 'Pushpaka vimana' which he captured from 'Kubera' the Lord of riches in heaven could host "as many passengers as it takes",there were stun-weapons and stealth-technology; In the Mahabharata war(3500 b.c.) nuclear weapons like the 'brahmastra' were used and there is mention of numerous flying crafts of the Lords (Angels) of Asuras (Titans) and Rakshasas (Demons) who all travelled to and fro from the upper and lower worlds; The 'Sri Linga Purana' mentions that Lord Brahma's 'Swan Craft' flew and transcended the seven upper worlds while Lord Vishnu's 'Boar Craft' 'tunnelled' though the seven lower worlds and went even beyond 'Baathala' the lowest plane which all reminds us of blackholes being portals and shortcuts to parallell universes which is being theoretically proved today!; More than 2500 years ago the Japanese Royal Family's ancestors met with the 'Sun God' who landed on Mount Fuji and were presented with a sword and an orb which are still in the Imperial Palace in Japan; The native Indian's forefathers living on 'sun Island' on lake Titicaca in South America were visited by the Sun God; The Dogon tribes of Mali have a tradition that their forefathers had sailed on a great ship that flew down form Sirius the star,but what is interesting is that they don spacesuit-like gear and celebrate their home-coming once every fifty two years which is when sirius comes in direct alignment with our world!




American Ecstasy


Book Description

"American ecstasy is a memoir in pictures and words of the twelve years photographer Barbara Nitke spent shooting stills on porn movie sets in New York City. The book takes place in the 1980s at the end of the Golden Age of Porn, as the industry transitioned from high budget, scripted film productions to smaller and ever cheaper video shoots. Nitke's images reveal the contradictions inherent in the business - great beauty, tinged with sadness, punctuated by surreal silliness. As she chronicles the sights and sounds of life on the sets, her stories also reveal her own struggle to come to terms with the end of her marriage and her fascination with the sexual outlaws of the porn world. Among the porn stars featured are Ron Jeremy, Vanessa del Rio, Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell, Sharon Kane, Siobhan Hunter, Jeanna Fine, Damian Cashmere, Tasha Voux, and many more. Directors include Henri Pachard, Candida Royalle, Lasse Braun and others."--




Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus


Book Description

Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus provides the first full study of Thomas Gallus (d. 1246) in English and represents a significant advance in his distinctive theology. Boyd Taylor Coolman argues that Gallus distinguishes, but never separates and intimately relates two international modalities in human consciousness: the intellective and the affective, both of which are forms of cognition. Coolman shows that Gallus conceives these two cognitive modalities as co-existing in an interdependent manner, and that this reciprocity is given a particular character by Gallus anthropological appropriation of the Dionysian concept of hierarchy. Because Gallus conceives of the soul as hierarchized on the model of the angelic hierarchy, the intellect-affect relationship is fundamentally governed by the dynamism of a Dionysian hierarchy, which has two simultaneous trajectories: ascending and descending. Two crucial features are noteworthy in this regard: in ascending, firstly, the lower is subsumed by the higher; in descending, secondly, the higher communicates with the lower, according to the nature of the lower. When Gallus posits a higher, affective cognitio above an intellective cognitio at the highest point in the ascent, accordingly, this higher affective form both builds upon and sublimates the lower intellective form. At the same time, this affective cognitio descends back down into the soul, both enriching its properly intellective capacity and also renewing the ascending movement in love. For Gallus, then, in the hierarchized soul a dynamic mutuality between intellect and affect emerges, which he construes as a spiralling motion, by which the soul unceasingly stretches beyond itself, ecstatically, in knowing and loving God.




The Forbidden Gift


Book Description

"The Forbidden Gift is defining that intangible knowing, that unmistakable feeling that tells you there is more, more than you have previously ever had the chance to fully conceptually digest and savor defining that feeling behind whose many masks lie layer upon layer of uncomfortable sensations that, as you progressed through life, you merely adapted to and incorporated into the you that you are today." "Who are you? Each chapter of this book is a walk through your life and the life of humankind in general. 'Who am I?' is naturally followed by 'What is my purpose for living, for being? Who is responsible for all this? What is the reason?' To answer these questions we must look into the heart, the source of your reality, and venture beyond the known into the unknown." "That is what this book is all about-liberation from the unconscious forces that cause you to behave, think, feel and live in fashions that are not productive, but counterproductive to realizing the whole essence of your highest potential. If you open your heart and mind to what is said, you will experience personal insights and a loosening of the very dense jungle of chronic, deeply rooted scripting that controls your entire orientation and self-creation in the life process." "The strength to make impact, the strength and methodology to pull your own strings, and the ability to sense your own power and apply it intelligently and with sensitivity-even passion-is my theme." -ANTTARR




Hungry for Ecstasy


Book Description

Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, The Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties by Sharon Klayman Farber explores the hunger for ecstatic experience that can lead people down the road to self-destruction. In an attempt to help mental health professionals and concerned individuals understand and identify the phenomenon and ultimately intervene with patients, friends, and loved ones, Farber speaks both personally and professionally to the reader. She discusses the different paths taken on the road to ecstatic states. There are religious ecstasies, ecstasies of pain and near-death experiences, cult-induced ecstasies, creative ecstasies, and ecstasies from hell. Hungry for Ecstasy explores not only the neuroscientific processes involved but also the influence of the sixties in driving people to seek these states. Finally, Farber draws from her own personal and professional experience to advise others how to intervene on behalf of the person whose behavior puts his or her life at risk.




Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy


Book Description

A detailed study of John Keats's classic volume of poetry published in 1820 considered in the light of the history of melancholyFirst, book-length critical study of John Keats's collection of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems (1820)Considers the anthology as a poetically and thematically unified collection, instead of the more usual method of analyzing the poems in chronological order of writingProposes that the main theme running through the volume is melancholy, a very capacious medical category extending back to ancient Greco-Roman writers, through the Renaissance, and the subject of literary cults in the Romantic ageThe first detailed study of Keats's markings and annotations on his copy of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) which was his favourite book during 1819 when he was writing the poemsThis book examines John Keats's immensely important collection of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems (1820), and is published in the volume's bicentenary. It analyses the collection as an authorially organised and multi-dimensionally unified volume rather than as a collection of occasional poems. R. S. White argues that a guiding theme behind the 1820 volume is the persistent emphasis on different types of melancholy, an ancient, all-consuming medical condition and literary preoccupation in Renaissance and Romantic poetry. Melancholy was a lifelong interest of Keats's, touching on his medical training, his temperament and his delighted reading in 1819 of Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy.




William James at the Boundaries


Book Description

At Columbia University in 1906, William James gave a highly confrontational speech to the American Philosophical Association (APA). He ignored the technical philosophical questions the audience had gathered to discuss and instead addressed the topic of human energy. Tramping on the rules of academic decorum, James invoked the work of amateurs, read testimonials on the benefits of yoga and alcohol, and concluded by urging his listeners to take up this psychological and physiological problem. What was the goal of this unusual speech? Rather than an oddity, Francesca Bordogna asserts that the APA address was emblematic—it was just one of many gestures that James employed as he plowed through the barriers between academic, popular, and pseudoscience, as well as the newly emergent borders between the study of philosophy, psychology, and the “science of man.” Bordogna reveals that James’s trespassing of boundaries was an essential element of a broader intellectual and social project. By crisscrossing divides, she argues, James imagined a new social configuration of knowledge, a better society, and a new vision of the human self. As the academy moves toward an increasingly interdisciplinary future, William James at the Boundaries reintroduces readers to a seminal influence on the way knowledge is pursued.




Dynamics of Faith


Book Description

One of the greatest books ever written on the subject, Dynamics of Faithis a primer in the philosophy of religion. Paul Tillich, a leading theologian of the twentieth century, explores the idea of faith in all its dimensions, while defining the concept in the process. This graceful and accessible volume contains a new introduction by Marion Pauck, Tillich's biographer.




Experiments in Mystical Atheism


Book Description

A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In this book, Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism. In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive sensibility—at once deeply atheist and richly religious. Experiments in Mystical Atheism argues that these “godless epiphanies” hold the key to renewing philosophy today.




Comparative Criticism: Volume 14, Knowledge and Performance


Book Description

Addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.