This book presents contemporary scholarship on the Yoga Sutra. It revisits Patanjali's philosophy by bringing it into dialogue with contemporary concerns across a variety of topics and perspectives. Questions regarding the role of the body in the practice of classical yoga, the debate between the realistic or idealistic interpretation of the text, the relation between Yoga and other Indian philosophical schools, the use of imagination in the pursuit of self-knowledge, the interplay between consciousness and nature, the possibilities and limitations of using it as a therapeutic philosophy, the science of meditation, and overcoming our fear of death probe the many dimensions that this text continues to offer for thought and reflection.

This handbook brings together a distinguished team of scholars from philosophy, theology, and religious studies to provide the first in-depth discussion of Vedanta and the many different systems of thought that make up this tradition of Indian philosophy. Emphasizing the historical development of Vedantic thought, it includes chapters on numerous classical Vedantic philosophies as well as the modern Vedantic views of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and Romain Rolland. The volume offers careful hermeneutic analyses of how Vedantic texts have been interpreted, and it addresses key issues and debates in Vedanta, including religious diversity, the nature of God, and the possibility of embodied liberation. Venturing into cross-philosophical and cross-cultural territory, it also brings Vedanta into dialogue with Saiva Nondualism as well as contemporary Western analytic philosophy. Highlighting current scholarly controversies and charting new paths of inquiry, this is an indispensable research guide for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of Vedanta and Indian philosophy.

In this book Stephen Phillips focuses on one of the most important poems about meditation in world literature, as understood by two of the greatest philosophers of India, one classical, one modern. Sankara’s commentaries on the Upanisads are a core of the Vedanta tradition and Aurobindo is a towering figure of 20th Hindu thought. This is the first time their approaches have been studied together. The Isa (c. 500 BCE) an “Upanisad” belongs to a genre of “adhyatmika” learning—concerning self and consciousness—in early Indian literature. According to the Ancient Indian tradition of yoga, meditation is antithetical to willful bodily and mental action. Breathing is all you do. In the conception of the Isa Upanisad, we are told that the best that comes from meditation is because of what the “Lord” is. In Sankara's interpretation it comes to block out the little “you,” whereas according to Aurobindo it comes as a divine connection, an occult “Conscious Force” belonging to truer part of oneself, atman, and an “opening” to that self’s native energy. Framed around Aurobindo’s translation of each of the Isa’s eighteen verses, along with a translation of each verse, Phillips follows a different reading of Sankara as laid out in his commentary. All this is done against the backdrop of modern scholarship. Convergences and divergences of these streams are the focus throughout. Appendix A presents the Upanisad with the two readings side by side. This book traces a worldview and consonant yoga teaching common to two authors who are typically taken to be oceans apart, not only chronologically but in intellectual stance. Addressing a huge gap in the contemporary literature on meditation in the Hindu traditions, Phillips presents a compelling new way of thinking about meditation in the Advaita Vedanta philosophy and Upanisad.

Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology is here translated and explained in an invaluable contribution to the history of knowledge, making available in English the very best within the traditions of philosophical speculation and argument in India and Sanskrit over more than twenty centuries. The "Jewel" distills the best arguments and most important positions of the past and provides the dominant focus for later philosophic reflection. The achievement of a great 14th-century logician, Gangesa Upadhyaya ("Professor Gangesa"), the Tattva-cinta-mani is a masterpiece of world philosophy, impacting in classical India not only philosophy but also literary criticism, jurisprudence, and medical theory for centuries. Among scholars, it is commonly counted-with perhaps one or two Buddhist treatises and one or two in Vedanta-among the top four or five philosophic works in the whole long history of classical Indian civilization (from 500 bce to the modern period). This three-volume edition of the work marks the first time time it has been translated into English in its entirety. Becoming the focal point of the long-running Nyaya school and canonized in Sanskrit literature, it is famed, across many schools of philosophy, for cogency of argument and consistency of analysis. Focused on four "knowledge sources" recognized in Nyaya, the text covers the epistemology of perception, inference, analogy and testimony in four chapters. In this landmark translation, Stephen Phillips provides an English-speaking audience all four parts with readable translations and running commentary. He contextualizes, analyzes and translates the text into understandable prose targeting especially those working in analytic philosophy but also anyone unfamiliar with Nyaya who may want to see and make use of its findings now accessible as never before.

"A powerfully informative guide for patient and practitioner from a misinformed past toward a future of recovery and health." -David Perlmutter, MD, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Grain Brain and Brain Wash In this important and timely book, Steven Phillips, MD, and his former patient, Sony singer-songwriter Dana Parish, reveal striking evidence that a range of common infections, from COVID-19 to Lyme, cause a variety of autoimmune, psychiatric, and chronic conditions. Chronic explores the science behind what makes them difficult to diagnose and treat, debunks widely held beliefs, and provides solutions that empower sufferers to reclaim their lives. After nearly dying from his own mystery illness, Dr. Phillips experienced firsthand the medical community's ignorance about the pathogens that underlie a deep spectrum of serious conditions-from fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, to depression, anxiety, OCD and neurodegenerative disorders. Parish, too, watched her health spiral after twelve top doctors missed the underlying infections that caused heart failure and other sudden debilitating symptoms. Now, they've come together with a mission: to change the current model of simply treating symptoms and shift the focus to finding and curing root causes of chronic diseases that affect millions around the world.

Often translated simply as "logic," the Sanskrit word nyAEya means "rule of reasoning" or "method of reasoning." Texts from the school of classical Indian philosophy that bears this name are concerned with cognition, reasoning, and the norms that govern rational debate. This translation of selections from the early school of NyAEya focuses on its foundational text, the NyAEya-sA"tra (c. 200 CE), with excerpts from the early commentaries. It will be welcomed by specialists and non-specialists alike seeking an accessible text that both represents some of the best of Indian philosophical thought and can be integrated into courses on Indian philosophy, religion, and intellectual culture.

A missing Iraqi scientist, an ex-Secret Service agent, and the threat of another biological terrorist attack-all these elements come together in the gripping true story of the Gray Bird of Baghdad. Iraqi Microbiologist Thamer Abdul Rahman Imran has information vital to stopping the unthinkable: a biological attack on the US. When he learns that the new Iraqi government wants to arrest him and the insurgents want to kill him, he goes into hiding. Racing against time, ex-Secret Service agent Steve Monteiro and his team set out on a mission to find the missing scientist and learn what he knows. The journey takes them from the White House to the Middle East as they fight bureaucrats in Washington who want them to fail. Why? And what is this vital information that Thamer possesses? The Gray Bird of Baghdad tells the true story of one's man's quest to protect his country and another man's fight to save his family from the ravages of a country at war.

Often translated simply as "logic," the Sanskrit word nyAEya means "rule of reasoning" or "method of reasoning." Texts from the school of classical Indian philosophy that bears this name are concerned with cognition, reasoning, and the norms that govern rational debate. This translation of selections from the early school of NyAEya focuses on its foundational text, the NyAEya-sA"tra (c. 200 CE), with excerpts from the early commentaries. It will be welcomed by specialists and non-specialists alike seeking an accessible text that both represents some of the best of Indian philosophical thought and can be integrated into courses on Indian philosophy, religion, and intellectual culture.

Approximately 100 detailed period photographs from the Francis Frith archive with extended captions and full introduction are collected in this volume. Suitable for tourists, local historians and general readers, it includes a voucher for a free mounted print of any photograph shown in the book.

The work of three present-day Sankritist-philosophers, God and the World's Arrangement allows readers to engage directly with writings of the classical Indian philosophers Sankara and Vacaspati, as well as some of their most acute critics, on the question of whether the existence of a creator God can be known by reason alone. Carefully selected and annotated with the needs of students foremost in mind, these new translations will be of interest to anyone wishing to see up close a newly set gem of our philosophical inheritance from global antiquity.

For serious yoga practitioners curious to know the ancient origins of the art, Stephen Phillips, a professional philosopher and sanskritist with a long-standing personal practice, lays out the philosophies of action, knowledge, and devotion as well as the processes of meditation, reasoning, and self-analysis that formed the basis of yoga in ancient and classical India and continue to shape it today.

In discussing yoga's fundamental commitments, Phillips explores traditional teachings of hatha yoga, karma yoga, "bhakti" yoga, and tantra, and shows how such core concepts as self-monitoring consciousness, karma, nonharmfulness ( "ahimsa"), reincarnation, and the powers of consciousness relate to modern practice. He outlines values implicit in "bhakti" yoga and the tantric yoga of beauty and art and explains the occult psychologies of "koshas," "skandhas," and "chakras." His book incorporates original translations from the early Upanishads, the "Bhagavad Gita," the "Yoga Sutra" (the entire text), the "Hatha Yoga Pradipika," and seminal tantric writings of the tenth-century Kashmiri Shaivite, Abhinava Gupta. A glossary defining more than three hundred technical terms and an extensive bibliography offer further help to nonscholars. A remarkable exploration of yoga's conceptual legacy, "Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth" crystallizes ideas about self and reality that unite the many incarnations of yoga.