Listening is clearly central to the practice of both counselling and psychotherapy. Given this, it is quite extraordinary how little thought has been given to the nature of therapeutic listening and to the cultivation and evaluation of the therapist as listener. Instead, listening is a subject marginalised in both the theoretical literature on psychotherapy and in the practical training of counsellors and psychotherapists .In this collection of essays and articles by Peter Wilberg, the thinking of Martin Heidegger provides the platform for an exploration of the deeper nature of listening - not simply as a passive prelude to therapeutic or diagnostic responses, but as a mode of active inner communication with others. What Wilberg calls Maieutic Listening is not a new form of psychotherapy, but the innately therapeutic essence of listening as such - understood not as a mere therapeutic 'skill' but as a our most basic way of being and bearing with others in pregnant silence.

INNER UNIVERSE - the groundbreaking precursor to Peter Wilberg's book 'The QUALIA Revolution'. Today both science and religion still fail to provide us with a philosophically consistent understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. Religion replaces such an understanding with symbols of this reality. Meanwhile, physics has retreated into its own form of quasi-religious fundamentalism - treating its own purely quantitative symbols as more fundamentally 'real' than any of the tangibly experienced, 'empirical' phenomena that they are supposed to 'explain'. What alone can be called 'fundamental' science has nothing in common with either religious or scientific fundamentalisms. Its foundation lies instead in a dimension of reality that is ignored in both science and religion. This is the realm that Peter Wilberg calls the 'Inner Universe'. The Inner Universe however, is not fundamentally made up either of 'matter' or fields of 'energy' but rather of fields and field-patterns of awareness. Since we can only know of any phenomenon on the basis of an awareness of it, it follows that awareness as such can alone be considered the most 'fundamental' reality of all - being irreducible in principle to a mere 'property' or 'product' of any phenomena which we only know of through it (whether matter or energy, a God or gods, our bodies or our brains). By introducing a ground-breaking philosophical understanding of fundamental science as a 'field-phenomenological' science of awareness, Peter Wilberg challenges today's 'fundamentalist' scientific and religious taboo on understanding the fundamental nature of reality in a way that is itself fundamentally new.

In this book, Acharya Peter Wilberg offers an introduction to Hinduism from a number of radically new perspectives - historical and philosophical, economic and political, socialist and Marxist. Its aim is to overcome the whole idea of Hinduism as just one major world 'faith' among others - and instead to reveal anew the radical essence of Hinduism as the 'Eternal Truth' or 'Sanatana Dharma'. At its heart is an understanding that the question of God's reality is not a question of the existence or non-existence of a single divine being - one that merely happens to have or 'possess' some form of consciousness. Instead the 'Eternal Truth' of Hinduism is the recognition that God IS Consciousness. This is not a consciousness that is 'yours' or 'mine'. Nor is it the Private Property of ANY body or being - human or divine. Instead God is consciousness AS SUCH - that 'pure awareness' recognised in Hindu religious philosophy as the Divine source and Divine essence of ALL things and ALL beings.

This collection of tantric poetry stands in the tradition of mystical poetesses and seers such as Lalla and Akka. Its source is not the sort of New Age 'neo-tantrism' that uses the language of tantra only to offer pseudo-spiritual 'mood music' for the sensual intensification of bodily sex and intimacy. Instead the language of these poems expresses direct, lived experiences of tantra understood in the traditional sense - as a deeply sensual intimacy and intercourse with the Divine. The primary medium of this intercourse is not the sexuality of the physical body but that of the soul and its body. This is our body of sensual, feeling awareness - born from the Great Mother's womb of rich and fertile Darkness into the spacious Living Light of the Lord.

This book, the oldest and first of several publications by Peter Wilberg on the ontological dimension of listening in both psychotherapy and somatic medicine, is dedicated to the fulfilment of Martin Heidegger's hope that his thinking would ..".escape the confines of the philosopher's study and become of benefit to wider circles, in particular to a large number of suffering human beings." The German word for listening (zuhoren) belongs to a family of words including 'to hear' (horen), to belong (gehoren) and 'belonging together' (Zugehorigkeit). The essential unity or 'belonging together' of 'Being and Listening' was nowhere more strikingly affirmed than in a saying of the German thinker Martin Heidegger: "We hear, not the ear." This saying indicates that it is not bodies or ears but beings that hear. It also hints at a dimension of 'belonging together' or 'we-ness' in the activity of hearing and of listening. For how a human being addresses us, what they say to us - and the manner in which they say it - is itself and already a response to the way in which we are or are not listening to and 'hearing' them - the wavelength of our listening attunement to them. Conversely, as Heidegger goes on to say: ..".if we hear, something is not merely added to what the ear picks up; rather, what the ear perceives and how it perceives will already be attuned (gestimmt) and determined (bestimmt) by what we hear..." Such a Heideggerian 'language of listening', which speaks in a German vocabulary, may be unfamiliar to those whose approach to counselling is shaped by terminologies derived from Freud, Rogers or new 'cognitive' therapies. Yet it has a power to radically deepen our experience of what we call 'listening'; allowing us to understand it merely as a prelude to some form of therapeutic response - nor as a one among other counselling 'skills' or 'techniques' - but rather as our most primordial way of 'being with' and 'bearing with' another human being in pregnant silence. It through this capacity to patiently 'be' and 'bear with' another person's suffering that they in turn can come to be with and 'bear' it in a more patient way - thus granting it time to bear forth or give birth, not just to newly felt questions and insights, but to a whole 'inner bearing' towards their life world and relationships, i.e. to a new way of being - one itself rooted in a new way of listening.

The New Spanda Karikas are not a work of academic scholarship but a result of meditation in the form of an original metaphysical treatise on Spanda. They 'approach anew' (abhi-nava) the whole notion of Spanda - showing its relation to the nature of consciousness, space and time, using it to challenge the foundations of quantum physics and the much distorted concept of 'energy' - whose roots lie not in Indian but in Greek thought. As a result, these new karikas are also able to offers a radically new understanding of the nature of 'matter', the modern scientific 'mystery' of so-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' and - last but not least - to the true essence of music. Spanda is understood for the first time as primordial creative tension between a dark and inexhaustible womb of unmanifest potentialities of awareness or 'non-being' - symbolised by the blackness of the great goddess Kali - and the realm of actuality or 'being' illuminated by the invisible light of awareness identical with the great god Shiva. Through a primordial awareness of the realm of potentiality, the autonomous powers of actualisation or Shaktis latent within it are released - giving rise to a constant process of creative manifestation of all possible actualities and all possible consciousnesses or 'beings'.

What does it mean to 'meditate'? How can we actively affirm and find meaning in all that we experience - even states of mental, emotional or somatic 'dis-ease' - whilst at the same time freeing ourselves from bondage to them? This selection of essays offers a new understanding of 'meditation' as a set of basic principles and practices of AWARENESS which allow us to do just that - to both affirm our conscious experience in all its dimensions, 'positive' or 'negative', whilst at the same time freeing ourselves from identification with them. These practices have a powerful therapeutic value - not just in relation to 'mental' health but also somatic illness. They include: 1. taking 'time outs' between all daily activities to just BE AWARE of our body, self and life-world as a whole. 2. reminding ourselves that the pure AWARENESS of any experienced thought or emotion is NOT ITSELF a thought or emotion - but innately free of thoughts and emotions. 3. 'coming to our senses' - attending to our immediate SENSORY awareness of where and how we feel any states of mental or emotional dis-ease in our bodies. 4. awaiting the 'out of the blue' insights that invariably arise from awareness if we patiently give ourselves all the time we need to 'meditate' - be aware of - our felt bodily sense of 'dis-ease'. Such practices are not simply an eclectic toolkit of psychological theories, techniques and meditational aids. Instead they are all integrated by a SINGLE UNIFYING PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLE - 'The Awareness Principle'. This is a refinement of Indian 'Advaita' philosophy completely transcending conventional Western concepts of 'cognition', 'consciousness' and 'mind'. The Practices of Awareness that follow from The Awareness Principle constitute the 'ABC' of 'Awareness Based Cognitive Therapy'. As well as transforming our everyday lives and relationships they can be incorporated in the work of counsellors, therapists, health, educational and social-work professionals.

No explanation of HOW things came to be, whether through a God or Big Bang, diminishes in any way the mystery THAT anything exists at all - even that there 'is' a God or 'was' a Big Bang. Yet as soon as we allow ourselves to wonder at this ultimate mystery, we open ourselves also to an ultimate terror - the terror of conceiving, even for a moment, the possibility of nothing existing or ever having come to be at all. Once we approach the 'black hole' of this ultimate terror and mystery we have already slipped beyond the ultimate horizon of the space-time universe of physics. Recognising this, philosopher Peter Wilberg draws on dark tantric and occult symbolism, the science of 'black holes' and the terrors portrayed in the sci-fi horror movie surrounding them ('Event Horizon') to introduce an ultimate metaphysics beyond 'being' and 'non-being' - one that reveals instead a multidimensional universe of awareness and its hidden powers.

What would it be like to know that you are indeed immortal - that your physical body is but an outward form taken by your own eternal inner form or 'soul body'? What would it be like to experience this soul body as an awareness that is not bounded by your skin but pervades the entire universe - and that can merge with the awareness or 'soul' of others? In this way you can come to experience the bliss of true 'tantra' and 'tantric sex'. This is no mere sensual or spiritual intensification of biological sex but something much deeper - a deeply sensual and sexual intercourse of soul of a sort that requires no skin contact whatsoever - for its sole medium is our divine soul body. Tantra Reborn' introduces this wholly new understanding - and experience - of the tantric tradition and its sexual symbolism, as well as its basis 'The New Yoga'. For this is not a yoga of the physical body or of some 'energy body' but of the soul body itself - our body of sensual feeling awareness or 'soul'.

"Being is no longer the essential matter to be thought." Martin Heidegger Western thought clings to the notion that consciousness is essentially both 'intentional' (awareness of something) and the private property of an egoic 'subject'. It has no concept of a Universal Awareness or 'Absolute Subjectivity' of the sort that Indian thought has long understood as the source of all individualised consciousness. Yet in the language of Martin Heidegger we find words such as 'The Open' or 'The Illuminating Clearing', which suggest a primordial 'space' or 'light' of awareness - one that is the condition for any consciousness of things, and is not the private property of any being, body, brain or 'ego'. Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought explores in an original way the proximity of this language to those schools of Indian thought which recognise a pure, universal and 'non-intentional' dimension of consciousness - an Awareness (Chit) prior to and transcending 'Being' itself (Sat).

The Hindu Tantric Tradition known as Kashmir Shaivism bore within it the understanding that neither God nor Self are beings 'with' awareness. Instead, God like the Self, IS Awareness. This is not an awareness that is 'yours' or 'mine' - the private property of a self or selves, being or beings - or the product of a body or brain. Instead every body and being is a 'Shakti' - an individualised portion and expression of that singular, universal and Divine Awareness known as Shiva. The New Yoga of Awareness is not a scholarly commentary 'on' the Kashmiri Shaivist tradition, but the most comprehensive and original contribution TO that tradition since its synthesis by the great 10th century teacher - Sri Abhinavagupta. Through its innovative principles and practices, Acharya Peter Wilberg unites philosophy and theology, psychology and metaphysics in a way that makes this yoga not just 'a' new yoga but THE New Yoga - a new exposition of Tantric Wisdom evolved from and for Today's World.

What Peter Wilberg calls Cosmic Qualia Science is a revolution in our most basic understanding of what constitutes 'science' and scientific knowledge - not merely a 'quantum leap' but a Qualia Revolution. It begins by recognising that the most fundamental scientific 'fact' is not the existence of an objective physical universe, but our subjective experience of it. However, even the most advanced 'quantum' science cannot explain even elementary qualities of our sensory experiencing - the experience of 'redness' for example. Qualia are usually defined as experiences of sensory qualities. But what if awareness is not a blank receptacle for sensory experiences but has its own innately sensual or soul qualities, qualities such as the inwardly sensed colour, tone and texture of our moods - or the sensed inner 'warmth' or 'coolness' of another human being. Peter Wilberg argues that Qualia in this sense are the basic stuff of which not only dreams but the physical universe itself is composed.

The Science Delusion offers a counterpart to the wave of aggressive anti-religionism exemplified by Richard Dawkins' 'scientific' critique of The God Delusion. Its aim is not to defend any specific religious faiths, but to show how what we call 'science' is as much based on irrational and dogmatically unquestioned beliefs as the most 'fundamentalist' religion. By cutting through the common myths and delusions that make up our idea of 'science', as well as those that science itself is founded upon, philosopher Peter Wilberg lays down a 'heretical' challenge to the quasi-religious authority that the modern scientific world-view wields in today's globalised Western media and culture. In contrast to the unthinking debate between secular atheists and religious theists, he argues that the question of God's reality does not depend on the existence or non-existence of a supreme being 'with' consciousness - but can be answered through a new understanding of God as consciousness.

Awareness of the different elements of our conscious action and experience frees us from restricting attachments to them - from confining identification with anything we think, feel or do. This 'Awareness Principle' is both a liberatory life principle and a life practice of a sort long recognised in yogic philosophy. As well as being healing and freeing The Awareness Principle is also a new foundational principle for the sciences and religion - offering the sole possible philosophical basis for both a new Theology and a truly scientific 'Theory of Everything'. For the most fundamental scientific fact is not the objective existence of a manifest universe but awareness of that universe. Peter Wilberg's writings on 'The Awareness Principle' reaffirm and rearticulate in a new and clear way a centuries-old understanding of Hindu tantric philosophy - namely that the '1st Principle' of the universe is not matter or energy but the innate potentials and power (Shakti) of pure awareness (Shiva).

Peter Wilberg presents a political history of the subversive 'gnostic' theologies of the first century, and with it, a theo-political critique of the ruling god-concepts of the 21st century. 'From New Age to New Gnosis' is spiritual Marxism and a powerful spearhead aimed at the 'New World Order' of economic 'liberalism', neo-conservatism and military imperialism. It challenges all four faces of its famous dollar pyramid - the 'i-dollartry' of new technologies, the reduction of the human being to a genetic machine, the politically illiterate platitudes of New Age 'spirituality' - and the spiritual illiterate 'literalism' of Christian biblical fundamentalism and racist Zionazism - which now see their own zealotry mirrored and confronted by militant Islam. What Peter Wilberg's recognises is that what our divided world now calls for is not a revival of fundamentalisms of any sort but a New Gnostic spirituality that understands the "wordless knowledge within the word" (Seth).

The aim of Heidegger, Medicine and 'Scientific Method' is to ensure that the profound implications of the Zollikon Seminars Heidegger held for doctors and psychiatrists do not remain unheeded. In one short volume Peter Wilberg concisely summarises Heidegger's fundamental critique of 'scientific method', redefines the basic principles of the 'phenomenological method' and lays out the foundations of a new 'phenomenological' approach to medicine - one which understands that illnesses have meanings not 'causes'. Grounded in Heidegger's fundamental distinction between the physical body (Korper) and the 'lived' or 'felt' body (Leib), phenomenological medicine offers a highly practical and therapeutic understanding of the relation between a patient's clinical disease 'pathology' and the felt 'dis-ease' or pathos that it embodies.

Where do we feel our awareness centred in our bodies - in our heads, and hearts or lower down - in the abdominal region that the Japanese call hara? This question forms the starting point for a new understanding of our inwardly sensed body as a distinct inner body. The innermost centre of this awareness body - the hara - is a centre of inner connectedness, linking us to the aware withinness of everything and everyone around us.