Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities


Book Description

"Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty . . . weaves a brilliant analysis of the complex role of dreams and dreaming in Indian religion, philosophy, literature, and art. . . . In her creative hands, enchanting Indian myths and stories illuminate and are illuminated by authors as different as Aeschylus, Plato, Freud, Jung, Kurl Gödel, Thomas Kuhn, Borges, Picasso, Sir Ernst Gombrich, and many others. This richly suggestive book challenges many of our fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our world."—Mark C. Taylor, New York Times Book Review "Dazzling analysis. . . . The book is firm and convincing once you appreciate its central point, which is that in traditional Hindu thought the dream isn't an accident or byway of experience, but rather the locus of epistemology. In its willful confusion of categories, its teasing readiness to blur the line between the imagined and the real, the dream actually embodies the whole problem of knowledge. . . . [O'Flaherty] wants to make your mental flesh creep, and she succeeds."—Mark Caldwell, Village Voice




Other Times, Other Realities


Book Description

Nearly a century has passed since Freud's theories unleashed a revolution in our understanding of the human psyche. Yet, as Arnold Modell firmly points out, we still do not possess a theory that explains how psychoanalysis works. Other Times, Other Realities provides brilliant insight into this perplexing problem and lays the foundation for a comprehensive theory of psychoanalytic treatment. Modell's careful consideration of Freudian theory, the interpretations of contemporary ego psychology, and the contribution of object theory discloses the changing significance of the fundamental elements of the therapeutic process. In Other Times, Other Realities, readers will discover an illuminating synthesis of concepts underlying the various interpretations of the psychoanalytic process.




Choctalking on Other Realities


Book Description

As LeAnne Howe puts it, "The American Indian adventure stories in Choctalking on Other Realities are three parts memoir, one part tragedy, one part absurdist fiction, and one part 'marvelous realism.'" The stories in this book "form the heart of [Howe's] life's journey, so far," chronicling the contradictions, absurdities, and sometimes tragedies in a life lived crossing cultures and borders. Section one is comprised of three stories about Howe's life in the 1980s working in the bond business for a Wall Street firm. Part of an otherwise all-male group of "guerrilla warfare bond traders," Howe was the only American Indian woman, and (out) democrat, in the company. Section two is about her life in the early 1990s traveling abroad as what she calls an "International Tonto" to places like Jordan, Jerusalem, and Romania, and to Japan, where she served as an American Indian representative during the United Nations' "International Year For The World's Indigenous People." Section three reaches back into Howe's experiences in the 1950s as an "unruly Indian girl" as well as the later evolution of her political consciousness and her activism. The epilogue, "A Tribalography," is a literary discussion of how to read Native and indigenous stories. LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation and writes fiction, poetry, screenplays, and creative nonfiction, primarily dealing with American Indian experiences. In 2012 she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Her first novel Shell Shaker received an American Book Award.




Astral Planes and Your Other Realities


Book Description

Can you visit other planes and realities? But can you live other lives there, in your other planes and realities? People can always tell beautiful paranormal stories, or who knows, you might have already been there yourself, saw them, felt them, and now this is why you search through all higher knowledge to learn more about your experience. But was it real? Are your other worlds real, as real as this world? All realities are real, in a rather trivial manner. And even more, all realities are objectively real, but only as long as you are there. Since existence defines them similarly, determining closely your continuous firsthand experience. Furthermore, many realities are part of life, part of this life that we have here in this world. And now, if you have found your way into these other planes of existence in a conscious manner, it might have been a natural process altogether, and not exactly a random experience. It had a purpose, while you might have missed fulfilling it, and now it is certainly meaningful to know everything that you can ever discover. Yet if you have never had a paranormal experience yourself, and now you simply wonder what is going, there are very powerful drugs that you take regularly with your food, drinks, drugs, and medicine, meant to hold you forcefully in this world. And now this is exactly what you do, you remain here nicely, for life. And it happens with everybody, or almost, depending on where you live, or depending on your development and genetic background. There is a difference between astral planes, the natural human environment, and your other realities. Because existence comes in three distinct levels, used to distinguish between your higher and lower realities. While you can understand all your realities through your mind, reasoning, awareness, and imagination, since even this world makes sense to you only as part of your reasoning, awareness, mind, and imagination, and not exactly directly, as anyone may expect. And this is the case because there is no other way to experience anything in life and in the wider world, but through your perception, reasoning, and understanding, and through the multitude of your selves, intelligences, and identities present throughout all your realities. And this is why you cannot understand astral planes, along with your other realities, if you do not understand your cognitive system first, along with your intelligences, selves, memories, and expectations, since everything is interconnected. This interesting entanglement of meanings and constraints causes the ultimate truth of your wider existence to remain hidden beneath strong consensual conditions, and within tedious loops of reasoning, remaining inaccessible in this manner to the ignorant and to the unconditional follower of common ideologies, while allowing the truth only to those living life freely, consciously, and in full awareness and understanding of the wider world, through the fulfillment of all natural, higher level needs and meanings. Because these are your developmental opportunities that you experience in each one of your worlds and realities, while following the fulfillment of your natural, intelligent human needs for higher experience and higher development. This book studies you and your life and existence throughout all your realities that you employ, encounter, inhabit, create, and co-create throughout your wider existence, helping you understand who you are through all your selves and intelligences, as you live your life throughout all your worlds and realities. If you seek to gain wider understanding of who you truly are, this book is for you.




Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities


Book Description

"Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty . . . weaves a brilliant analysis of the complex role of dreams and dreaming in Indian religion, philosophy, literature, and art. . . . In her creative hands, enchanting Indian myths and stories illuminate and are illuminated by authors as different as Aeschylus, Plato, Freud, Jung, Kurl Gödel, Thomas Kuhn, Borges, Picasso, Sir Ernst Gombrich, and many others. This richly suggestive book challenges many of our fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our world."—Mark C. Taylor, New York Times Book Review "Dazzling analysis. . . . The book is firm and convincing once you appreciate its central point, which is that in traditional Hindu thought the dream isn't an accident or byway of experience, but rather the locus of epistemology. In its willful confusion of categories, its teasing readiness to blur the line between the imagined and the real, the dream actually embodies the whole problem of knowledge. . . . [O'Flaherty] wants to make your mental flesh creep, and she succeeds."—Mark Caldwell, Village Voice




The Reality Of God Forces Other Realities


Book Description

This book was written to put forth the concept that since those who were ignorant of the reality of God, worshipped him according to their own lack of understanding; they simply worshipped what was commonly characterized as a spirit. In the schools of thought today universally, the two major camps are "believers and non-believers." There are those who say they believe in God as a spirit and those who say that since they cannot empirically substantiate the reality of God, he or it doesn't exist. What's consistent with them both is ignorance of the reality; therefore, it stands to reason that if the reality is made manifest, all that's build upon their ignorance (white world) would automatically unravel.




Portals


Book Description

As Alice in Wonderland discovered, cave entrances, tunnels, spirals and mirrors can transport people to strange worlds where anything is possible. Portals investigates how we move beyond the conscious and physical world using our senses, into other realities of the spiritual and the divine. Portals looks at the techniques used to alter consciousness practised by shamans, monks and other religious specialists. These include the use of drugs, as well as drumming, chanting and meditation. The book provides a new, anthropologically-grounded perspective on the wide-ranging questions about the realities of human consciousness and mystical, spiritual and religious experience.







Other Worlds


Book Description

Christopher White points to ways that both spiritual practices and scientific speculation about multiverses and invisible dimensions are efforts to peer into the hidden elements and even existential meaning of the universe. Creatively appropriated, these ideas can restore a spiritual sense that the world is greater than anything our eyes can see.




Miracles and Other Realities


Book Description

Once in a generation, a person of extraordinary psychic powers comes along. Miracles and Other Realities tells the true story of Thomaz Green Morton, a gifted psychic from the Minas Gerais region of Brazil. Originally published in 1990 and now rereleased for a modern audience, Miracles and Other Realities recounts the fascinating story of Thomaz Green Morton and his powerful psychic abilities. This book will turn the heads of scientists, whose traditional acceptance of reality has been limited to that which can be measured objectively, and will introduce to a wider audience the power of mind over matter. Thomaz’s story begins when he is struck by lightning on his twelfth birthday. This electrical insult to his body detonated a dazzling range of paranormal abilities. (Severe electric shock is, incidentally, common to the childhood experience of every major psychic.) Thomaz has since been called the most powerful psychic in the world. Driven by his mind to the farther reaches of reality to produce psychic phenomena such as metal-bending, spiritual healing, and transmutations of matter, Thomaz’s feats are well-documented by the authors. The story is all the more captivating because Thomaz is graced with a childlike emotional temperament, making him intent on living life to its fullest. Coauthors Lee Pulos and Gary Richman explore through Thomaz the ways in which magic, or miracles, challenges the conventional view of reality, thereby shaking up rational belief systems that inhibit the experience of new realms of possibility. Readers will find Thomaz’s story compelling, not only as a real-life example of human potential but as a metaphor for unleashing other realities and levels of consciousness to tap into the potential within themselves.