"Fascinating . . .
Bursts with hope for everyone who is brain injured (not just stroke
patients) and gives medical practitioners clear, no-nonsense information
about the shortcomings of conventional treatment and attitudes toward
the brain injured . . . . But to my mind, what makes My Stroke of
Insight not just valuable but invaluable -- a gift to every spiritual
seeker and peace activist -- is what I would describe as Taylor's
fearless mapping of the physiology of compassion, the physiology of
nirvana. This book is about the wonder of being human."
Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Services]
Thompson,
William Irwin. GAIA: A Way
of Knowing -- Political Implications of the New Biology.
Lindesfarne Press, Great Barrington, MA, 1987. [In
the Preface, the author remarks, "Ideas, like grapes, grow in
clusters. People like to hang out together because they can feel
their ideas growing fuller and richer on the vine. This book is
just such a cluster of ideas that comes from a small group of people who
have been hanging out together for the last six years." The
group members whose thoughts are inscribed here are Gregory Bateson,
Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis,
Henri Atlan, John Todd, Hazel Henderson, and of course, William Irwin
Thompson.
From the back cover: What physics was to engineering in an
industrial society, biology can become to ecology in a new
society. A new biology and a new philosophy of life and living
organisms are emerging from international scientific work currently
being done in many different fields. .. (their various ideas and
works are individually quite unique and stimulating, but) .. [W]hen
all of these approaches are looked at together, as the cultural
historian William Irwin Thompson does, what can be seen is the
foundation of a startling new paradigm of wholeness: life as
cognition, communication, knowing. (Their collective voices)
..present a picture of the new biology and its cultural
implications, suggesting that, for the first time since Newton, we have
the chance to create a new ecology of consciousness, the basis for a new
political and economic order which, because it arises out of the study
of life, is life-enhancing and life-embracing.]
Thompson, William
Irwin and Spangler, David. Reimagination
of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular
Culture. Bear
& Co., Rochester, VT, 1991.
Tiller, William A.
Science
and Human Transformation: Subtle Energies, Intentionality and
Consciousness. Pavior Publishing, Walnut Creek, CA,
1997.
Tillich,
Paul. The Courage to Be.
Yale
University
Press, New Haven,
CT
, 1952.
Trobridge,
George. Swedenborg: Life and
Teaching. Pillar Books, NYC, 1976.
Tulku,
Tarthang. Time, Space, and Knowledge: A New
Vision of Reality. Dharma Publishing, Berkeley, CA,
1977.
Twain,
Mark [aka: Samuel Clemmons]; Edited by Howard G. Baetzhold and
Joseph B. McCullough. The Bible According
to Mark Twain: Irreverent Writings on Eden, Heaven, and the Flood
by America's Master Satirist. Touchstone/Simon &
Schuster, NYC, 1995. [I am a long-time
devotee of Mark Twain. He has been far from my mind in regards to
this web project, but one very late night, it was as if he came to me
like an earnestly urgent 4-year-old kid onamission and begged me to add
at least this one "appropriate" book and maybe a quote or two
to the collections. A purely fun imaginal thought I could not
resist. Let's see .. 'appropriate' .. did you know Clemmons was
one of the founding members of the American Society for Psychical
Research and also of the Twilight Club that exists to this
day? Patricia Keegan writes [ www.washingtoninternational.com/personality.html
],
|
The
original Twilight Club was initiated over a century ago by a
group of visionary thinkers. It became one of the greatest and
most far-reaching ethical movements in recorded history. Founded
in the late 1870’s by Herbert Spencer, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Walt Whitman, John Burroughs, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Edith
Markham, Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, the Club was kept
alive primarily by the efforts of Walter Russell. Out of this
movement came landmarks we take for granted today: Andrew
Carnegie’s nationwide building of libraries; organizations
like the Boy Scouts of England and America, the Rotary, the
Kiwanis, Lions Club, the Better Business Bureau; and
inspirational writings like Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn, Ralph Waldo Trine’s In Tune with the
Infinite, Edwin Markham’s Children in Bondage, and Alexis
Carrel’s Man, the Unknown.
|
Also
see www.twilightclub.org
or www.philosophy.org ]
Ullman, Montague.
Dream Telepathy: Experiments in
Nocturnal Extrasensory Perception (Studies in Consciousness).
Hampton
Roads,
Charlottesville,
VA, 2003.
Underhill,
Marilyn. Mysticism.
Oneworld Publications, Oxford, [Reissue] 1999.
Upledger,
John E. Cell Talk: Talking to Your
Cell(f). North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA,
2003. [I have this habit of reading the
acknowledgements first, because from it comes much added insight about
the author/s. In his Dedication, Dr. Upledger says, in gratitude
to all who are participating in this type of medicine with mindfulness
and heart, "... it's clear we are making a difference.
It feels like science and spirituality are finally beginning to
blend. This is as it should be."
I did not
know anything about this man or his work until I discovered this book,
written by an orthopedic doctor, which in my mind is mostly associated
with allopathic / Western medicine. This is what brings me to say,
regarding his "heart / spirituality" comment in his
acknowledgements: Can you feel
that 'Shift'? [YYESSSS!!]
From the inside flap of the book cover:
This groundbreaking book by a medical pioneer explores uncharted
territory in complementary healthcare: communicating with the
body on a cellular level to facilitate health and well-being.
In Cell Talk, Dr. Upledger presents the conceptual and
experiential core of his work. As the creator of CranioSacral
Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release®, he has synthesized
years of research and clinical observations into a fascinating theory
of the human body. By addressing the relationship between cell
activity and consciousness, he strikes at the heart of how living
systems form and heal themselves and, indeed, how organisms with minds
may exist at all. Understanding how cells communicate and how it
is possible to augment their interactions provides us with a new way
of catalyzing cure.
While Cell Talk documents the decades-long development of Dr.
Upledger's successful and revolutionary therapies, its concept opens
new vistas of understanding and therapeutic options. It offers
an unabashed look at the possibilities of working with cellular
consciousness.
Here's a wowww to
chew on: Put this understanding -- I/thou, blended,
consciousness-to-consciousness communication with our trillions of
bodily cells -- together with the rEvolutionary consciousness
transformation we are moving into as a global human event. Some
like Peter Russell,
Lynn Margulis, James
Lovelock and Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin have spoken of this
mutually aware blending of the functional awareness of our many billions
in terms of our becoming the unified, planetary I-am awareness,
the "global brain"/mind. The
understanding gained from this crucially important work, Dr. Upledger's Cell
Talk, is an essential complement to the developmental, evolutionary
process we are discovering together from what feels like the other end
of the telescope -- or microscope, as it were -- and in a fascinating,
experiential way, boils down to same-same!!]
Valarino,
Evelyn Elsaesser. On the Other Side of Life:
Exploring the Phenomenon of the Near-Death Experience.
Insight Books/Plenum Press, NYC
and London, 1997.
Valarino,
Evelyn Elsaesser, and Ring, Kenneth. Lessons
from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience.
Moment Point Press, Portsmouth, NH, 1998. [See
review by Rhea A. White. The
book is largely about aftereffects of NDEs and also to some degree
"nonNDEs," meaning, any type of EHE other than specifically
NDEs. White sees this as a highly important work in relation
[also] to EHEs as a whole. Her review is over two large journal
pages long!]
Vallee, Jacques. Forbidden
Science. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA,
1992.
Van
Praagh, James. Talking to Heaven: A
Medium's Message of Life After Death. Signet/Penguin,
New York, 1997.
Varela,
Francisco. !!!!
Vaughan,
Frances E. Awakening
Intuition. Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City, NY,
1979.
Vincent, Ken R.
Visions
of God from the Near Death Experience. Larson
Pub., Osseo, MN, 1994.
Viney,
Geoff. Surviving
Death: Evidence of the Afterlife.
St. Martin's Press, NY, 1993.
Walsch,
Neal Donald. Conversations with
God. Hampton Roads
Pub., Charlottesville, VA, 1997.
Washington,
Peter. Madam Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics,
Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America. Schocken
Books, London/New York, 1993/1995. [Think of
your favorite hirstorical
or even fiction authors who have a genius for rendering anything about
the heights and depths of what it means to be human into print, who
create those generous reads you just can't put down and are loathe to
see end, and you can imagine the kind of treat you are in for when you
pick up this book -- if you have an interest in the centuries-old
hirstory of the so-called New Age, that is, from the absurd to the
sublime. I have
one big bad bone to pick with Washington, which may have been more a
publisher decision than his, but it has to do with the subtitle.
The book is about so much more than spiritualism, and some would argue,
by the way, that spiritualism wasn't brought to America at all,
but that's quibbling. Spiritualism is but one multi-piece pattern
found within the elaborate crazy-quilt of the last few centuries
Washington puts into exquisite perspective concerning our moving
steadily, if roughshod, through a process of individuation (not his term
or context, but mine--RR). Things-spiritual comprise the major
piece of what we are struggling to comprehend in this great age of our
wakening more fully to the who and what we are as being human, and Peter
Washington's book offers a magnificent, sometimes
fall-on-the-floor-laughing, sometimes pathetically cave-bound [think
Plato's Cave] groping process of this consciousness-expanding epoch.
How
about a broader, far more and appropriate context for the subtitle, such
as having to do with the quest for a true spiritual science? We
are a world with a hirstory that has long revered two tracts of
exploration and expressed in a number of dichotomies, the latest being
[Western] science and religion, or some would say, science and
spirituality. A much older parallel disparity with a similarly
drama-filled hirstory has to do with an apparent split between trust in
belief based on a lineage or great teacher of wisdom on the one hand,
and on the other, knowing from direct experience that arises
spontaneously and through an exacting discipline, such as the rigors of
modern science exemplify.
One
more bone: Where's David
Spangler in all
this, who was unfortunately dubbed the 'father of the New Age' us
post-WWII baby boomers grew up with??? Unfortunate or not, the moniker
makes a deserved point about one of the great Seers of our times -- a
seer being one, in Spangler's case, whose consciousness reaches deeply
into the physical and subtle worlds with equal and natural grace.
And
one more note: the author provides a rare treat of a
portrait of Rudolf Steiner, weaving him into the hirstoric context
of his contemporaries -- and that's more than three paragraphs long
specifically about this. Maybe I haven't looked very hard, but
nearly all the biographical materials I have come across about Steiner
have been written by those so devoted to his Anthroposophical
movement, hirstorical perspective was subsumed in all-things
Steiner. I wish such scholars of Washington's caliber would put
related spiritual/scientific giants like Steiner, Spangler, John
Heron, Rhea White, Eileen Garrett, J. B. Rhine, John Mack, William
Tiller, Christian DeQuincy, Amrit Goswami, William Irwin Thompson, Edgar
Mitchell ... okay, see virtually my whole booklist! ... into a
come-of-age perspective that demonstrates the evidence and worth of the
merging interests of science and spirituality. Some of these have
themselves explicitly suggested or indeed developed their own
disciplines that could be called the best of both enterprises, if I may
put it this way [Steiner,
White,
Heron,
Goswami,
deQuincey,
Maslow].
From
the back cover: The
New Age is not so new. Peter Washington traces its roots to just
before the dawn of the twentieth century, when a mysterious renegade
Russian aristocrat named Madame Blavatsky appeared in America claiming
that Darwin was wrong, that man was descended not from apes but from
spirit beings. Theosophy, the movement she founded, spawned
competing gurus and sects -- Steiner, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Krishnamurti
-- that had particular appeal to women, to influential intellects of the
day (Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Lloyd Wright,
Katherine Mansfield, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood), and to a
host of colorful adventurers, uncertified lunatics, wealthy and lonely
spinsters, charlatans, and lost souls.
What
they had in common -- and share with the millions who make up the
"alternative religions" of today's New Age -- is a hunger for
the key to what makes everything fit together, a hunger that has not
been satisfied by either mainstream religion or science.
Well-researched,
thought-provoking, and often hilarious, Madame Blavatsky's Baboon
provides a fascinating and helpful perspective on the hopes and fears of
our own day as well as those of a century ago.]
Watts, Alan.
The
Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Vintage
Press, New York, 1966.
Weenolsen,
Patricia. The
Art of Dying : How to Leave This World With Dignity and Grace, at Peace
With Yourself and Your Loved Ones.
St Martins Press, NY, 1996.
[Synopsis from amazon.com:
… [W]ritten for the dying person, this life-enhancing guide
helps one resolve the physical, emotional, and spiritual concerns unique
to this "end time." Includes a Foreword by Bernie Siegel, M.D.
"Speaks to modern readers with refreshing frankness and wit."
Publishers Weekly. … With
the help of case histories, exercises, and Weenolsen's own warm yet
straightforward advice, this life-enhancing guide helps the dying person
resolve the physical, emotional, and psycho-spiritual concerns unique to
this "end-time." "At once hope-inspiring and clear-headed
. . . a considerable contribution to the art of living."
--M. Brewster Smith, past president, American Psychological
Association. ]
Weiss, Jess E.
The
Vestibule. Pocket Books, New York, 1972, 1994. [A
most influential classic for many people I occasionally love to
reread! From the back cover:
For everyone who has ever wondered what really happens after death,
this stunning book is a revelation. Originally published
twenty-five years ago, THE VESTIBULE is the earliest known collection
of first-person accounts confirming that this life is but one phase of
our existence. Today, its message resonates even more
powerfully. These remarkable stories are told by men and women
who were pronounced dead, only to return to their bodies and resume
living with a new respect for the beauty of the eternal spirit in all
of us. Each of these richly detailed narratives describes
intense feelings of peace and joy at the time of death, and their
remarkable similarities build an overwhelming case that life is a
continuum -- and that spirit lives on.
Discover how our mortal existence in the "vestibule" of this
world is just a precursor to the truly glorious afterlife awaiting
each and every one of us. Open THE VESTIBULE and open your heart
and mind to the possibilities of hope and light -- in this world and
beyond.
"THE LITTLE ROOM BEGAN TO FILL WITH LIGHT. ... There is no word
in our language to describe brilliance that intense ... It was a
presence so comforting, so joyous and all-satisfying that I wanted to
lose myself forever in the wonder of it." -- Testimony of Dr.
George Ritchie [[the person who so influenced Dr. Raymond Moody, who
as a result did research that resulted in another important classic,
Life After Life, in which he coined the term "near-death
experience."]], declared dead by an Army physician and an
attending nurse on December 20, 1943.]
Westrate, Elizabeth.
A Family Undertaking [documentary].
Five Spot Films LLC, [where?], 2004.
Wetzel, Joseph [translator].
The
Bridge Over the River: Communications from the Life After Death of
a Young Artist Who Died in World War I. The Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1974.
Wheatley,
Margaret J. Leadership and the New
Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World [2nd ed.].
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1999.
[From the back cover:
Revised and Expanded Edition of a bestselling Classic.
"THE BEST MANAGEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR." --Industry Week
magazine survey by Tom Brown. ..
"ONE OF THE TOP TEN BUSINESS
BOOKS OF ALL TIME." --Xerox Business Services Magazine.
"hold onto the top of your
head when you read this book.... Using exciting
breakthroughs in biology, chemistry, and especially quantum physics,
Wheatley paints a brand-new picture of business management. This
new relationship between business and science is nothing less than an
entirely new set of lenses through which to view our
organizations." --Library Journal.
A Guide for Turbulent Times: We live in a time of chaos, rich in
potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born.
We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us
now. New science -- the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory,
and quantum physics that are changing our understanding of how the world
works -- offers this guidance. It describes a world where chaos is
natural, where order exists 'for free.' It displays the intricate
webs of cooperation that connect us. It assures us that life seeks
order, but uses messes to get there.
Leadership and the new Science is the bestselling, most acclaimed, and
most influential guide to applying the new science to organizations of
all types, and to our personal lives. Wheatley describes how the
new science radically alters our understanding of the world, and how it
can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic
times. It will teach you to move with greater certainty and easier
grace into the new forms of organizations and communities that are
taking shape. You'll learn that:
-
Relationships,
not lone individuals, are the basic organizing unit of life.
-
Chaos
and change are the only route to transformation.
-
participation
and cooperation are essential to our survival in this interconnected
world.
-
Order
is natural, but not available through traditional methods of
control.
As we explore new ways of seeing, we emerge from the chaos with new
capacities and new energy. In the midst of turbulence, we create
work and lives rich in meaning.]
White,
John. The Meeting of Science and Spirit.
______________?
White,
John. A Practical Guide to Death and
Dying. Paraview Special Editions, NYC, 2004.
White, Rhea A. EVERYTHING!
[She has published very little in the form of actual books, alas. But,
fortunately, there is another way to access much of her work, which is
her Exceptional Human Experience Network website at www.ehe.org.
Her magnum opus as a whole is the formation of an all-inclusive
framework for understanding the almost endless variety of significant
anomalous and "exceptional" experiences that can and do impact our lives.
But it goes far beyond this, giving, for example, much attention
to how we may optimize them in ways that nurture our development as
spiritual beings; also how we may help others and even the world
as a whole by
simply sharing them. There
is so much that cannot be said here about the importance of her
contribution to our greater understanding of ourselves and our
humanizing potential, suggestive in William James’ idea of the “MORE
that is human” that we may continue to bring into fuller expression
developmentally. I highly
recommend a fascinating immersion experience on her website, where you
may explore much of her huge collection of articles / essays /
scientific papers about her EHE ideas and paradigm.
A few other marvels you can enjoy include people’s
EHE autobiographies and EHE stories, as well as her dictionary of
terms and a list of possible kinds of “exceptional experiences”
[EEs] and potential EHEs. For
starters, to find out more about these terms, see the “Dictionary of
EHE-Related Terms: An Experiencer’s Guide.”]
NOTE:
As of February 24, 2007, more than 50 years after the
dramatic NDE that launched her lifepath to gifting us with
'all-things EHE', Rhea White graduated happily and once more into the
loving embrace of those Everlasting Arms. Now twice over, she has come
to know-that-she-knows: "Nothing that
has ever lived can possibly die!" Her
website is now back up, still as www.ehe.org,
under the protective umbrella of the Parapsychology Foundation, to which
White bequeathed her prolific works, mostly in the form of journals,
databases, and professional articles. You can visit their website
at www.parapsychology.org.
White,
Rhea A. Exceptional Human Experiences as
Vehicles of Grace: Parapsychology and the Outlier Mentality.
Academy
of
Religion
and Psychical Research Proceedings Annual Conference, 1993, pp. 46-55.
(Abridged version)
White,
Rhea A. and Murphy, Michael. In
the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports.
Arkana/Penguin, NYC, 1978
and 1995.
Wilde, Stuart.
The
Quickening. Hay House, Carson, CA, 1988.
Wilde, Stuart.
Sixth
Sense. Hay House, Carlsbad, CA, 2000.
Wilde, Stuart.
Whispering
Winds of Change. Nacson & Sons, Pty., Sydney,
Australia, 1993.
Wilkerson,
David. The Cross and the Switchblade.
______________?
Williams, Kevin R.
Nothing
Better Than Death: Insights From Sixty-Two Profound Near-Death
Experiences. Xlibris Corp., Philadelphia, 2002.
Willis-Brandon, Carla.
One
Last Hug Before I Go: The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions.
Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 2000.
Wilson, Colin.
Afterlife:
An Investigation of the Evidence for Life After Death.
Harrap Limited, London,
1985; Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY, 1987. [Do
you ever have rainy-day moments when you just want to hide from the
world and curl up with a GOOOOOD book? Some of my absolute, dog-eared
favorites were authored by Colin Wilson.
From
the back cover: Is
there life after death? ... From Adam Crabtree's patients who heard
"voices inside their heads" to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on death
and dying, from Rudolf Steiner and Madame Blavatsky to Kenneth Ring and
Raymond Moody, Colin Wilson examines theories, trends, phenomena in an
effort to reach a conclusion to this most perplexing issue. Wilson
includes hundreds of case histories and anecdotes on topics as diverse
as split brain research, apparitions, telepathy, the magic of primitive
man, precognition, out-of-the-body experiences, A-consciousness and
B-consciousness, vampires, the subliminal mind, past lives, the mystery
of multiple personalities, and contact with the dead.]
Wilson, Colin.
Beyond
the Outsider. Carroll and Graf Publishers, New
York, 1965. [From the back cover: This
remarkable sequel (to The Outsider) completes, summarizes, and
extends his convincing dissection of modern literature, philosophy, and
religion. Colin Wilson here argues that our world needs a new
impulse and direction and erects a provocative signpost for the future.]
Wilson, Colin.
Mysteries.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1978. [Another
well-thumbed friend.]
Wilson, Colin.
The
Outsider. Houghton
Mifflin Col, Boston, 1956. [Rhea
White has said this was one of the influential books of her young
adulthood. Truly, "The Outsider has had a lasting effect on
contemporary thought. In that best-selling book, Colin Wilson
reinterpreted the social, psychological, artistic, metaphysical, and
sexual problems which face modern man." --from the back cover of Beyond
the Outsider, by Colin Wilson.]
Witzenmann,
Herbert. The Virtues: The Seasons
of the Soul. Spicker Books,
____?, 1975 [English Transl.], 1972 [German]. [From the
introduction: "[The Virtues]
were first published in the Star Calender (sic) for the year Easter
1969 to Easter 1970, Philosophic - Anthroposophic Press (Dornach
1968). They are printed in this edition for the second time in an
almost unaltered form" and were based on Rudolf Steiner's own
remarks on the virtues." From Notes to the First German
Edition, 1972:
The inner path is the constant moving mean between being body-free and
resurrecting to a spiritually molded state of being. Virtues are
stages of the constant struggle to achieve a middle way between
divergencies. As witnesses to the experience of such a center of
balance, they are described by Rudolf Steiner not as achievements but
as steps of progress. They are the reflective awareness in
between remembrance of the spirit's descent and premonition of the
spirit's goal. They are the motion of path-finding which yet is
quietude because it ascertains the right direction through truth and
inner life.
What
an unexpectedly and profoundly transporting experience to experience
this precious jewel of a book that must be read from within the
Within-ness of one's being. In the very reading you are instantly
there!]
Wolf, Fred Alan.
The
Dreaming Universe: A Mind-Expanding Journey into the Realm Where
Psyche and Physics Meet. Simon & Schuster, New
York, 1994.
Wolf, Fred Alan.
The
Spiritual Universe: How Quantum Physics Proves the Existence of
the Soul. Simon & Schuster. New York, 1996.
Wright, Machaelle Small.
Behaving as if the God in All Life
Mattered. Perelandra,
Jeffersonton
,
VA
, 1987.
Yogananda,
Paramahasa. Autobiography
of a Yogi. Self-Realization Fellowship, Los
Angeles,
1979.
Young,
A. M. The Reflexive Universe:
Evolution of Consciousness. Robert Briggs Associates,
Mill Valley, CA, 1976.
Zaleski, Carol.
Otherworld
Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern
Times. Oxford University Press, NY and Oxford,
1987.
