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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > States of consciousness > General
Millions of readers of Carlos Castaneda books have long enjoyed the
fantastic teachings of don Juan Matus, the Yaqui shaman from
northern Mexico. Now, thanks to the practical techniques based on
Castaneda's writings offered here by author Victor Sanchez--the
body as a field of energy, the not-doings of the personal self,
stopping the internal dialogue, the magic of attention, setting up
dreaming, the warrior's greatest love, and more--you can apply
these teachings to your everyday life.
What occurs within coma? What does the coma patient experience? How
does the patient perceive the world outside of coma, if at all? The
simple answer to these questions is that we don't know. Yet the
sheer volume of literary and media texts would have us believe that
we do. Examining representations of coma and brain injury across a
variety of texts, this book investigates common tropes and
linguistic devices used to portray the medical condition of coma,
giving rise to universal mythologies and misconceptions in the
public domain. Matthew Colbeck looks at how these texts represent,
or fail to represent, long-term brain injury, drawing on narratives
of coma survivors that have been produced and curated through
writing groups he has run over the last 10 years. Discussing a
diverse range of cultural works, including novels by Irvine Welsh,
Stephen King, Tom McCarthy and Douglas Coupland, as well as film
and media texts such as The Sopranos, Kill Bill, Coma and The
Walking Dead, Colbeck provides an explanation for our fascination
with coma. With a proliferation of misleading stories of survival
in the media and in literature, this book explores the potential
impact these have upon our own understanding of coma and its
victims.
Conversations on Consciousness is just that - a series of twenty
lively and challenging conversations between Sue Blackmore and some
of the world's leading philosophers and scientists. Written in a
colloquial and engaging style, the book records the conversations
Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at
conferences in Arizona or Antwerp, or in their labs or homes in
Oxford or San Diego. The conversations bring out their very
different personalities and styles and reveal a wealth of
fascinating detail about their theories and beliefs. Why is
consciousness such a special and difficult issue for twenty-first
century science? Sue, herself a researcher into this controversial
and difficult topic, begins by asking each of her colleagues this
simple question and is immediately plunged into the depths of the
debate: how do the subjective experiences we call consciousness
arise from the physical brain? Is this even the right question to
ask? Can zombies - people who behave outwardly just like others but
have no inner mental life - exist? What can dreams tell us about
consciousness? Should we all be learning to meditate?Do we have
free will, and if not is it possible to live without it? With an
introduction setting out the broad structure of the debate on
consciousness, and an extensive glossary, this book provides an
engaging and accessible account of the most challenging problem of
all, through the words of some of the leading figures involved in
seeking to solve it.
How can we deal with the rapidly increasing pace and complexity of
life, fear of terrorism and the threatening state of world affairs,
climate breakdown, the confusions of personal relationships-without
succumbing to stress, depression and illness? Halliday provides a
way to assimilate the shocks of life experiences, so that we might
live a more balanced life. The way to achieve this is through
reconnecting with the centre of our own being, our consciousness.
Halliday sets out not only the nature of this consciousness, but
also its relation to the world of phenomena, to the nature of
being, and in particular, to mankind. He begins by examining the
meaning of terms such as sentience, consciousness and awareness.
They are to some degree interchangeable and refer to, `That in and
by which we know what we know, and that we know.' If we ask
ourselves what this statement means, we can only say that, `We know
what we mean. Consciousness is its own evidence', and thus we
cannot indicate what we mean by one of these consciousness-related
words, `without appealing to that in us, which corresponds with
their significance, that is, to that in us which knows that it
knows'. Halliday sees a complex structure such as the brain, as `a
vehicle for the expression of the complex processes of an [already
existing] sentience'. He posits that the ultimate source and origin
of our being resides in an absolute field of sentience, and states
that the true nature of the self is `consciousness itself'. But, as
beings with physical bodies, we are tyrannised by the limitations
of our sense organs; by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance
of pain, by emotional charges in the records of our experiences, so
that we often behave in a reactive manner-as if we were no more
than animals with no free choice. But, if we remember the nature of
our true self, and our source in consciousness, we can free
ourselves from this enslavement and become human, that is, capable
of free choice and action.
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