Pluriverse, the final work of the American poet and philosopher Benjamin Paul Blood, was published posthumously in 1920. After an experience of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide during a dental operation, Blood came to the conclusion that his mind had been opened, that he had undergone a mystical experience, and that he had come to a realisation of the true nature of reality. This title is the fullest exposition of Blood's esoteric Christian philosophy-cum-theology, which, though deemed wildly eccentric by commentators both during his lifetime and later in the twentieth century, was nonetheless one of the most influential sources for American mystical-empiricism. In particular, Blood's thought was a major inspiration for William James, and can be seen to prefigure the latter's concept of Sciousness directly.

Pluriverse, the final work of the American poet and philosopher Benjamin Paul Blood, was published posthumously in 1920. After an experience of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide during a dental operation, Blood came to the conclusion that his mind had been opened, that he had undergone a mystical experience, and that he had come to a realisation of the true nature of reality. This title is the fullest exposition of Blood's esoteric Christian philosophy-cum-theology, which, though deemed wildly eccentric by commentators both during his lifetime and later in the twentieth century, was nonetheless one of the most influential sources for American mystical-empiricism. In particular, Blood's thought was a major inspiration for William James, and can be seen to prefigure the latter's concept of Sciousness directly.

At a time when Capitalism is openly reproached as an exploitation of Labor, back into which it should be resolved and integrated at the expense of individual ambition, initiative and comprehensive genius; when vulgar equality and fraternity are rated above aesthetic excellence and distinction, as if man could live by bread alone, this brief treatise is obviously issued as a protest against what is deemed and exalted as the "ideal " of Socialism - but which the author regards rather as an inconsequential dream that does not realize its own meaning-and also as a defense of the Capitalist class from objurgations born of prejudice and ignorant inexperience.

"He is in the light of the eye, and in the object that it shines on. He is not a curiosity, a member of a species, or a thing to be represented by any device. He is the One-the original-the all in all." Benjamin Paul Blood's Optimism (1860) is a testament to the idea that spiritual experience must precede religious knowledge. Impassioned by his own mystical experiences, Blood spells out an eternal nondual philosophy in a distinctly American voice that helped shape the work of William James (Varieties of Religious Experiences) and the 19th-century religious philosophers. In Optimism, we find a timeless, practical guide to faith and acceptance of whatever life delivers.

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