This stimulating new work is based on a highly-successful--and extremely popular--course which Professor De Nicolas has taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for over 15 years. In "Habits of Mind," De Nicolas reveals that the most important achievement of education is to develop in students those skills that enable them to participate fully in the life of humankind. He calls these skills the "inner technologies," and intends by the phrase something very different from congnitive skills. Education, he claims, must nurture the capacity for fantasy and imagination. In "Habits of Mind," he traces the relative importance of these capacities through the history and philosophy of education from Plato onward. The habits of intellectual discourse are treated as an organic thread from the ancient past to the present.

As this epic of the soul unfolds, we, the readers, are drawn into undulating waves of realities, at times, into almost otherworldly spaces, through the subtle art of this poet's creation. Of course, this experience is not new to anyone familiar with the other works of Antonio de Nicolas. From his acclaimed poetic translations of the Spanish masters: Juan Ramon Jimenez, Ignatius de Loyola, San Juan de la Cruz, to his own earlier collections of poetry:

This book reconstructs the original and origins of the Rig Veda, (between 5.000 to 2.500 B.C, ) the first Indo-European written document ever to show the origin of cultures and the power of music in the recitation and construction of the original hymns. Here we find the original geometries, original forms, original sacrifice of any form to claim supremacy over the others and the continued movement of human life. This book brings together early humans with modern neurobiological discoveries and shows the origins of multiple centers of knowing (the gods), the movement of the singer and the song in a world that avoids idolatry of substances by insisting in the constant movement of singer, song, and music. If you thought you knew all there is to know about the language you use, read this book and find out the idolatry of its imagery and the possible sacrifice needed for a happy, communal and divine life.

Professor de Nicolas presents the reader with actualized posibilities of knowing other cultures as they knew themselves. In his work, philosophy becomes an ongoing synthesis of knowledge and sensation. This new translation of The Bhagavad Gita, with its easy and beautiful reading, is a major philosophical attempt to read a most important text of a culture in it's own context.

This book reconstructs the original and origins of the Rig Veda, (between 5.000 to 2.500 B.C, ) the first Indo-European written document ever to show the origin of cultures and the power of music in the recitation and construction of the original hymns. Here we find the original geometries, original forms, original sacrifice of any form to claim supremacy over the others and the continued movement of human life. This book brings together early humans with modern neurobiological discoveries and shows the origins of multiple centers of knowing (the gods), the movement of the singer and the song in a world that avoids idolatry of substances by insisting in the constant movement of singer, song, and music. If you thought you knew all there is to know about the language you use, read this book and find out the idolatry of its imagery and the possible sacrifice needed for a happy, communal and divine life.

Professor de Nicolas presents the reader with actualized posibilities of knowing other cultures as they knew themselves. In his work, philosophy becomes an ongoing synthesis of knowledge and sensation. This new translation of The Bhagavad Gita, with its easy and beautiful reading, is a major philosophical attempt to read a most important text of a culture in it's own context.