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Journey to the Centr...
Journey to the Centre of my Being
by: Jim Wilson₹315.00
ISBN: 9789387242647
Year Of Publication: 2019
Edition: 1st Edition
Pages : 216
Language : English
Binding : Hardcover
Publisher: Zen Publications
Size: 23
Weight: 270
Jim Wilson is an adventurer: mountaineering; Antarctic exploration; adventure films with Sir Edmund Hillary (on one of which he drove a jet boat up Mother Ganga from ocean to sky); climbing and school building with Sir Edmund in the Everest region of Nepal; and sailing to Pacific islands in a small yacht. These physical adventures provide an exciting backdrop to this book.
But Jim is also a religious adventurer. He relates in depth, with clarity and humour, his long journey in search of a satisfying way of understanding and experiencing the true nature of his self, and of his place in this mysterious universe. Studying Western philosophy and theology moved him away from intense involvement in the liberal Christianity of his parents. So he looked to India, inexhaustible source of inspiration. For two years he studied Indian philosophy and religion at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Then he taught for 23 years in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, returning many times to India and Nepal.
Though profoundly moved by the religions he studied and taught about, he was unable to accept the metaphysical beliefs underpinning them. Increasingly, though, he became fascinated by modern scientific discoveries about the universe, and about our planet and the evolution of life on it. So he wove together elements from religious and scientific traditions. In particular, he took Adi Shankara’s Advaita, also known as spiritual monism, and applied it to the physical universe, adding in also feelings and attitudes from New Zealand’s indigenous Maori religion. He now believes that the centre of his being is the physical energy of the universe, with which, therefore, he is at one. He finds this deeply satisfying in understanding, and emotionally and morally experiencing, his place on this planet and in the universe. Because it owes so much to spiritual monism he calls it physical monism, or physical Advaita.
Foreword by Lloyd Geering
Acknowledgements
Part I. Faith Flowers, then Fades
- When I Was a Child
2.God ‘Calls’
3.Philosophy
- Arguments for the Existence of God
- Arguments against the Existence of the Christian God
- Theology
Part II. Nepal and India
- Sherpas and their Buddhism
- Ah, India
- Materialism, Proto-scientific Theories, and Dualism
- Non-dualism (Spiritual Monism)
- Hindu Theism
- Ganga and Hinduism
Part III. Religious Studies
13 The Early Years
14.Buddhism
- Hinduism Again
- Fiji: Cultural Adventures
- Fiji: Religious Adventures
- Maori Religion
- The Greenstone Trail
20.Feminism
Part IV. Physical Monism
- Nietzsche and Existentialism
- Mountaineering
23.Physical Monism
- Papatduanuku, My Mother and My Nourisher
End Notes
“Journey to the Centre of my Being”
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The Paratrishika Vivarana by the great Kashmiri philosopher and mystic Abhinavagupta is an extensive commentary on the Paratrishika Tantra, and it is one of the most profound texts, not only of non-dualist Kashmir Shaivism, but of Indian philosophy and mysticism in general. The present work attempts to make this difficult text accessible, by culling out the important themes and offering an interpretation. The main focus is on the understanding of the Absolute (Anuttara) and the ways to realize it. The central theme of mantra also leads to a mysticism of language with its philosophical implications. All these reflections and practices are inscribed in the theory that everything is related to the totality, every part contains the whole of reality (sarvam sarvatmakam). It is this holistic vision of Abhinavagupta, based on the Tantras, which makes this work so relevant in our times of fragmented aspects of life and knowledge in search of integration. No doubt, in the view of the Tantra and of Abhinavagupta, language and mantra provide the key.
This fascinating book is an important contribution to studies and interpretations on Kashmir Shaivism, its spirituality and philosophy, and on Abhinavagupta in particular. -
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The book comprises 14 articles on Gandhi and his values, its relevance to industrial age, views on nonviolence, economics of gram swaraj, significance of peace and tolerance in an era of explosive technology and his spiritual and ethical doctrine in the context of current global conflicts. The book is sure, a must read for everyone who wants to see a better world. -
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“Dreams play a significant role in our life, meaningfully affecting us in the development of our personality and our spiritual journey. They are an everyday experience for any human being. Dreams have always been of great interest to poets and philosophers alike since ancient times and examples are aplenty in Indian and Western scriptures. However, it is an uphill task for an ordinary person to fully appreciate the intricacies and significance of dreams in the day-to-day life. It is here that this book proves as an invaluable guide providing deep understanding on the nature of dream and sleep.
This book is a repertoire of human wisdom – gathered for centuries and attested by the modern science – offering enormous insights into our dream and deep-sleep states. It asks, from a common man’s point of view, many a question that perturb us and provides answers to them from the scientific and spiritual perspectives in a captivating way. Some such questions include:
• Do we see dreams in black and white or in colour?
• What does a visually-challenged person see in his dreams?
• Why are some of our dreams extraordinarily vivid with electric colours, the clarity and brilliance of which, we may never encounter in our ordinary waking lives?
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• How does our memory work in dream state? Why do we forget our dreams and is it possible to improve dream recall and cultivate awareness in dreams?
• Why do we fail to distinguish a dream object from the physical world object while we are dreaming?
• If the dream experience exactly feels like the real world and we fail to distinguish it from the waking world while we are dreaming, how can we be certain that we are not dreaming now?
• How does a dream contain various persons exhibiting opposite emotions at the same time when all the dream characters including the witnessing dreamer are produced out of single mind of the dreaming person?
• Can we intentionally transform the dream scenarios? If so, what would be the philosophical implications of it?
• Can dreams and sleeps be utilized for spiritual elevation?
… and many more questions we always wondered about the daily eight hours of our bed time, but never got the right answers to! We find new meanings and ways in dealing with our dreams in this volume, therefore, it is a must read for every dream enthusiast as well as any serious spiritual seeker.
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Sale!Modern Civilization ₹720.00
The crisis of the age inheres in this, that notwithstanding the century’s mind-numbing disasters, it persists in subscribing to propositions which have logically led to the atomization of the whole cloth of human experiencing, and being. Great indeed is the value which is placed on the procedure of analytic dismemberment. While the method has certainly been result-producing, materially, in its wake it has brought immense suffering – both physical and spiritual. The price paid for a lopsided advance is thirty major wars – with their toll of one hundred and thirty million lives, and the irreparable destruction of the natural environment. The time demands a reappraisal of the basic paradigms of human existence, but the hegemony of well-entrenched vested interests – material or intellectual – would seem to preclude this.
The “advanced” people among the mankind of the day become suicidally specialized. For, if the mechanical model of thought has been of advantage in man’s preceding unfolding, the same, what may be called the “survival” paradigm, now creates dangerous dualities, binary oppositions (you–me, body–mind, East–West, etc). The model has outlived its usefulness merely enforcing dormancy on a major part of the human brain.
It behoves mankind to choose wisely right now – since parallel to the socio-economic, scientific and technological revolutions there has got to be the overdue radical psychic transformation. The first step towards clearing the fateful crisis would therefore be to be aware and end the hold of the linear, causal, mechanical thought orientation over the intellectual culture of the times.
Delving deep into the epistemological cum ontological causation of the emergency confronting the being and becoming of man, this volume provokes the thoughtful lay reader to a serious engagement with his or her self.
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