The Eternal Essence of the Divine Mind

The Eternal Essence of the Divine Mind
Author: Mark A. Notar
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2019-12-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 164530891X

The Eternal Essence of the Divine Mind By: Mark A. Notar After years of investigating, studying, and contemplating the teachings of the inherent wisdom of the human race, Mark A. Notar has produced an inspirational extended essay that is designed to serve as a gateway to the pursuit of greater understanding and spiritual revelation. The Eternal Essence of the Divine Mind is the result of his study of hundreds of texts concerning philosophy, comparative spirituality/religion, mythology, metaphysics, psychology, and sociology over the course of twenty-plus years. Notar will guide you on an unrelenting journey toward greater realization and understanding.

Spinoza's Heresy

Spinoza's Heresy
Author: Steven Nadler
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2001-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191529974

At the heart of Spinoza's Heresy is a mystery: why was Baruch Spinoza so harshly excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community at the age of twenty-four? In this philosophical sequel to his acclaimed, award-winning biography of the seventeenth-century thinker, Steven Nadler argues that Spinoza's main offence was a denial of the immortality of the soul. But this only deepens the mystery. For there is no specific Jewish dogma regarding immortality: there is nothing that a Jew is required to believe about the soul and the afterlife. It was, however, for various religious, historical and political reasons, simply the wrong issue to pick on in Amsterdam in the 1650s. After considering the nature of the ban, or cherem, as a disciplinary tool in the Sephardic community, and a number of possible explanations for Spinoza's ban, Nadler turns to the variety of traditions in Jewish religious thought on the postmortem fate of a person's soul. This is followed by an examination of Spinoza's own views on the eternity of the mind and the role that that the denial of personal immortality plays in his overall philosophical project. Nadler argues that Spinoza's beliefs were not only an outgrowth of his own metaphysical principles, but also a culmination of an intellectualist trend in Jewish rationalism.

The Divine Mind

The Divine Mind
Author: Michael Gellert
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2018-01-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1633883183

A Jungian psychoanalyst with a background in Judaism and Zen Buddhism explores the history of God concepts in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. This book is about the Abrahamic God’s inner journey, an epic that begins in the Hebrew Bible—the common source of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This God emerges as a living, textured personality as tormented as a Shakespearean character and as divided against humanity as the devil who personifies his dark side. Yet in heroic fashion, he embarks on a journey to greater consciousness, stretching into himself in the Talmud, New Testament, Qur’an, and Gnostic writings. Then finally, with and through the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics, he discovers his true self as the absolute Godhead. He takes up residence in their psyches as their own Divine Mind or true self. The book suggests that what God learned from his journey might be something that we in turn could learn from and that could help us at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In this way, God’s inner journey becomes a metaphor for our own. Michael Gellert, a Jungian psychoanalyst, treats this story and the sacred writings that convey it as psychological facts—as expressions of the human psyche—regardless of whether or not God actually exists. He shows how the Hebrew Bible presents God as a primitive, barbaric tribal war god while centuries later the mystics portray him as their innermost essence and emptied of all projected, external, anthropomorphic images. Thus, God’s inner journey and the evolution of human consciousness—his story and ours—parallel each other and are integrally related. Rich in historical detail and psychological insights, this is a book that will be welcomed by seekers of every background and orientation.

Post-Secularism, Realism and Utopia

Post-Secularism, Realism and Utopia
Author: Jolyon Agar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2013-12-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317950461

This book addresses the recent rise in post-secularism in the humanities and social sciences. Post-secularism is the proposition that the secular project begun by the Enlightenment has come to an end. If we define secularism as the historical process of increasing marginalisation of the religious from contributing to debates in the public sphere and the process of public policy formation then it is in crisis. This opens up the intriguing possibility that there may be opportunities for renewed debate about the nature of our "secular age" and the role of religion in modern society.

The Imaginary of Animals

The Imaginary of Animals
Author: Annabelle Dufourcq
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1000414299

This book explores the phenomenon of animal imagination and its profound power over the human imagination. It examines the structural and ethical role that the human imagination must play to provide an interface between humans’ subjectivity and the real cognitive capacities of animals. The book offers a systematic study of the increasing importance of the metaphors, the virtual, and figures in contemporary animal studies. It explores human-animal and real-imaginary dichotomies, revealing them to be the source of oppressive cultural structures. Through an analysis of creative, playful and theatric enactments and mimicry of animal behaviors and communication, the book establishes that human imagination is based on animal imagination. This helps redefine our traditional knowledge about animals and presents new practices and ethical concerns in regard to the animals. The book strongly contends that allowing imagination to play a role in our relation to animals will lead to the development of a more empathetic approach towards them. Drawing on works in phenomenology, contemporary animal philosophy, as well as ethological evidence and biosemiotics, this book is the first to rethink the traditional philosophical concepts of imagination, images, the imaginary, and reality in the light of a zoocentric perspective. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars and students in the field of animal studies, as well as anyone interested in human and non-human imaginations.