Consciousness Science

Le découragement est le problème majeur de notre temps. Là où nous pourrions avancer, nous baissons les bras. Là où nous pourrions être victorieux, nous partons perdants. On nous a fait croire que nous devions être dans le contrôle permanent, dans l'efficacité absolue. Mais la vie ne se contrôle pas, elle ne se gère pas.

Best-selling historian and philosopher Will Durant devoted his entire life to studying the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. Here is a summation of Durant's work, as he presents the best of world history. Filled with Durant's renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events in simple and exciting terms, it is a concise liberal arts education.

The Essence of Self-Realization, nearly 300 sayings rich with spiritual wisdom, is the fruit of that labor of love. The scope of this book is vast - it offers as complete an explanation of life's true purpose, and the way to achieve that purpose, as may be found anywhere. Filled with lessons and stories that Yogananda shared only with his closest disciples, this volume offers one of the most insightful and engaging glimpses into the life and lessons of a great sage.

What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bio-electrical activity in the brain? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book - part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation - describes Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness.

Every moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever - an idea captured by the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie (pronounced itchy-GO itchy-A). Often spoken in Japan when greeting someone or saying goodbye, to convey that the encounter is unique and special, it is a tenet of Zen Buddhism and is attributed to a 16th-century master of the Japanese tea ceremony, or "ceremony of attention", whose intricate rituals compel us to focus on the present moment.

Many of us often feel challenged by the question of what gives our lives true meaning. What are we searching for? How do we know we are on the right path? In Playing Dead, Robert Sheehan shares intimate reflections on his own search for purpose, looking back at this journey so far and sharing the lessons he has learnt along the way. Meditation is at the heart of Robert's route to awakening and here he reveals how we can welcome practice into our daily lives to nurture a quiet mind and content heart.

In this extraordinary best seller, James Hillman presents a brilliant vision of our selves, and an exciting approach to the mystery at the center of every life that asks, “What is it, in my heart, that I must do, be, and have? And why?” Drawing on the biographies of figures such as Ella Fitzgerald and Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hillman argues that character is fate, that there is more to each individual than can be explained by genetics and environment. The result is a reasoned and powerful road map to understanding our true nature and discovering an eye-opening array of choices.

Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience to our social success. It is arguably the single most important skill for surviving the twenty-first century. But what does it really mean? One decade ago, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life, an institute dedicated to understanding and improving our emotional intelligence. Now he presents the gathered wisdom of those ten years in a wide-ranging and innovative compendium of emotional intelligence that forms an introduction to The School of Life.

Journey alongside professor Bache as he touches the living intelligence of our universe - an intelligence that both embraced and crushed him - and demonstrates how direct experience of the divine can change your perspective on core issues in philosophy and religion. Chronicling his 73 sessions, the author reveals the spiral of death and rebirth that took him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe.

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.

Isn’t it time you started treating yourself with the same love, kindness and respect you give the other important people in your life? So many people are looking outside of themselves for ways to feel good on the inside. The truth is, although they are the only person who can build their confidence up, the way they think and act is doing nothing but tearing it down. The Daily Promise invites you to make small daily changes to the way you treat yourself.

It originated in Asia, moved to Europe, and is now consumed worldwide — a slightly-fermented tea that is purported to cure everything from indigestion to cancer. We’re talking about kombucha, which has exploded in popularity in the last quarter century. While the exact health benefits of kombucha remain unproven, it’s quite certain that the effervescent elixir provides its worldwide fans with a spiritual lift unlike any other drink.

Cynical, quick-on-the-trigger Takeshi Kovacs, the ex-U.N. envoy turned private eye, has changed careers, and bodies, once more, trading sleuthing for soldiering as a warrior-for-hire and helping a far-flung planet's government put down a bloody revolution.

Consciousness Is All is an audiobook on infinite reality. It shows clearly why consciousness itself - also known as the one self, I am, love, life, the Divine, God, and other terms - is the very one being conscious right here, now. Consciousness is absolutely all there is of all there is. Simply nothing exists outside of, or beyond, consciousness.

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.

Fr. Sertillanges's teachings are as timeless as any truths which describe the genuine nature of things. . . . This book is highly recommended not only for intellectuals, but also for students and those discerning their vocation in life. —New Oxford Review

In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.

What is karma? Most people understand karma as a balance sheet of good and bad deeds, virtues and sins - the mechanism that decrees that we cannot evade the consequences of our own actions. In reality, karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment. Karma simply means action - your action, your responsibility. It isn’t some external system of crime and punishment, but an internal cycle generated by you. Accumulation of karma is determined only by your intention and the way you respond to what is happening to you.

From the dawn of history, a universal wisdom tradition has existed that explains humanity’s purpose in the cosmos and our relationship to the Master Source Consciousness. This mystical philosophy was harnessed by the ancient seers known as Gnostics, who were in direct contact with Source Consciousness. As Peter Canova reveals, not only do the ancient teachings of Gnosticism contain important spiritual truths, but they profoundly align with the modern sciences of quantum physics and psychology.

Written by leading non-duality author Greg Goode, After Awareness offers an insider's look at the Direct Path - a set of liberating spiritual teachings inspired by Shri Atmananda (Krishna Menon). This book shares secrets of the Direct Path that are rarely revealed. It examines topics hardly ever mentioned in non-duality discussions, such as the importance of ethics, the language of non-duality, the role of the guru, and the provisional nature of the Direct Path itself.