The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality
Lisa J Miller (editor)
Get the Book2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2024
This is a landmark volume, especially given the fact that it has been published by one of the world’s leading university presses. It forms part of the Oxford Library of Psychology, a series designed to review major sub-disciplines with breadth, comprehensiveness and exemplary scholarship; it also combines a searchable online facility. Significantly, though, only two of over 60 contributors from outside the United States.
In her introduction, Lisa Miller remarks that the handbook is at the cutting edge of an expanded psychology that directly addresses the broadened set of ontological assumptions and a view that spirituality is fundamental to the human constitution. In one sense, it continues the work of William James after a long diversion by taking the human mind as part and parcel of a living spiritual reality, which leads to an expansion of psychology ‘by a Copernican magnitude’ in the direction of postmaterialism, ‘a science beyond the limitations of exclusive ontological materialism and mechanism.’ This takes consciousness as fundamental and the fabric of reality.
The Matter With Things
Iain McGilchrist
Perspectiva, November 9, 2021
In this landmark new book, Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces – ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time? Is the cosmos without purpose or value? Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?
In doing so, he argues that we have become enslaved to an account of things dominated by the brain’s left hemisphere, one that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality that is all around us, had we but eyes to see it. He suggests that in order to understand ourselves and the world we need science and intuition, reason and imagination, not just one or two; that they are in any case far from being in conflict; and that the brain’s right hemisphere plays the most important part in each. And he shows us how to recognise the ‘signature’ of the left hemisphere in our thinking, so as to avoid making decisions that bring disaster in their wake.
Following the paths of cutting-edge neurology, philosophy and physics, he reveals how each leads us to a similar vision of the world, one that is both profound and beautiful – and happens to be in line with the deepest traditions of human wisdom. It is a vision that returns the world to life, and us to a better way of living in it: one we must embrace if we are to survive.
The Science Delusion: Science Set Free
By Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
Book of the Year Award
Scientific and Medical Network
2020 UK Edition
2012 US Edition
Reviews
"Thirty years after his first heretical books, Sheldrake's new one, Science Set Free, is a landmark achievement. No science writing has inspired me more."
— Deepak Chopra, San Francisco Chronicle, read review
"Sheldrake drags ten of the most powerful dogmas out of the basement and into the light of day; and does science, humanity and the world a large, a considerable favour."
— The Independent, read review
The Flip
Jeffrey J. Kripal
Bellevue Literary Press, 2019, 239 pp., p/b – ISBN 978-1-942658-52-8
Jeffrey Kripal is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and chairs the board of the Esalen Institute. He gave two brilliant and lucid talks at the science of consciousness meeting in Interlaken in June, and this superb book fully reflects these qualities. The flip of the title refers to epiphanies of mind that transform the outlook of the experiencer in the direction of holding consciousness rather than matter to be primary. This has immense implications for the future of knowledge, as the book explains in detail, beginning with experiences currently regarded as impossible within the scientific framework, then looking at flipped scientists and philosophers, the relationship between consciousness and cosmos, how symbols mediate meaning, and at the future politics of knowledge.
I was struck by Tom McLeish quoting Charles Darwin’s son writing about a special quality leading him to make discoveries: ‘it was the power of never letting exceptions pass unnoticed.’ In the consciousness field, for exceptions read anomalies. Nomos is order so an anomaly is something that does not fit into the currently accepted framework of assumptions. Far from never letting exceptions pass unnoticed, the scientific establishment goes out of its way to ignore and suppress findings inconsistent with its basic philosophy, exerting social and professional peer pressure in order to keep people in line.
Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century
Edited by Etzel Cardeña, John Palmer and David Marcusson-Clavertz
This is the first book in more than 40 years to provide a comprehensive scientific overview of research in the field of parapsychology, explaining what we know and don't know about so-called psi phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition or psychokinesis. Contributors evaluate the evidence for these phenomena, accounting for factors such as selective memory, wish fulfillment and incorrect methods or analyses, in some cases offering psychological, physical and biological theories.
31 chapters by 37 experts
» Part 1. Basic concepts
1. An overview of modern development in parapsychology / Nancy L. Zingrone, Carlos S. Alvarado and Gerd H. Hövelmann
2. Parapsychology in context: the big picture / Edward F. Kelly
3. The case against psi / Douglas M. Stokes
» Part 2. Research methods and statistical approaches
4. Experimental methods in anomalous cognition and anomalous perturbation research / John Palmer
5. Research methods with spontaneous case studies / Emily Williams Kelly and Jim B. Tucker
6. Macro-psychokinesis: methodological concerns / Graham Watkins
7. Statistical guidelines for empirical studies / Patrizio E. Tressoldi and Jessica Utts
Death Makes Life Possible
Marilyn Schlitz, PhD
Dr Marilyn Schlitz presents a wealth of teachings and practical guidance on how to turn this taboo topic into a source of peace, hope, connection, and compassion. Featuring contributions by eminent scientists and scholars, spiritual leaders and devout skeptics, health practitioners, and people from all walks of life, this far-reaching work offers a companion to the award-winning documentary, revealing the myriad ways that we grow and change by expanding our perspectives on the ultimate mystery facing each one of us.
Reviews
"Helpful as well as delightful. With brilliant intellect and warm heart, Dr. Schlitz beautifully makes the age-old case that confrontation and contemplation of death brings one more vibrantly to life! I heartily recommend it."
- Robert "Tenzin" Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University
"This is an important book. Schlitz shows us that the limits of human growth are not fixed and opens new windows on our capacities for self-transcendence."
- Michael Murphy Co-founder of the Esalen Institute
One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters
Larry Dossey, MD
Dossey shows how Western cultures have become obsessed with the importance of individuality and self, to the neglect of the unity, connectedness, and interdependence of all of life. The result has been a pandemic of selfish and greed. Using a variety of examples of human and animal experience -- creativity, group behaviors, dreams, near-death experiences, shared physical and emotional phenomena, and more -- Dossey paints a picture of consciousness as nonlocal -- consciousness unconfined to specific points in space and time, therefore unitary, eternal, and one.
Reviews
"Larry Dossey is a pioneer who keeps finding new frontiers. With One Mind, his merging of science and wisdom has come full circle, as Dossey makes the case for ancient spiritual teachings about the one and the many. I'm happy to embrace Larry as a kindred spirit."
- Deepak Chopra, author of Spiritual Solutions
The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
David Bentley Hart
A deeply thoughtful discussion of meanings of "God" in different religious traditions - Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism and various paganisms - showing how much they have in common, and how all of them differ from atheism. The most powerful evidence for the existence of God, Hart argues, is human experience.
Reviews
"David Hart can always be relied on to offer a perspective on Christian faith that is both profound and unexpected. In this masterpiece of quiet intellectual and spiritual passion, he magnificently sets the record straight as to what sort of God Christians believe in and why."
- Rowan Williams, University of Cambridge
"David Bentley Hart's new book is a feast- stylish and substantial. Bringing together Sanskritic analyses of God's being with Latin and Greek and Arabic ones, this is a considerable achievement by one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary theology."
- Paul J. Griffiths, Duke Divinity School
Aping Mankind
Raymond Tallis
Tallis is a neuroscientist who is appalled by the exaggerated claims made for the ability of neuroscience and evolutionary theory to explain human consciousness and behavior. He offers a powerful critique of the materialist theory that we are our brains. Tallis does not write from a religious point of view, but as a secular humanist.
Reviews
"A terrific book, though readers must be prepared to read it at least twice, not because it is in any sense obscure, but fully to appreciate the richness and subtlety of Tallis's novel insights, with all their implications for our understanding of humanity's precious attributes of freedom, intentionality and moral responsibility."
- James Le Fanu, The Tablet
Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
Simon Conway Morris
Morris shows that there are any examples of convergent evolution, in which different lineages have evolved very similar structures and functions. In addition to well known examples like the independent origins of camera eyes in vertebrates and invertebrates, Morris point to many others, and even has a 5-page index of convergences. He suggests there are "attractors of functionality" and that evolution is far less a matter of blind chance or contingency than is often assumed.
Reviews
"Life's Solution is an absorbing presentation written to challenge and inform the mind of the reader. Life's Solution is a superb contribution to both Contemporary Philosophy Studies academic reference collections and University level and Evolutionary Biology reading lists."
- Is Library Bookwatch, December 2003
The Electric Sky
Donald E. Scott
A heretical take on astronomy and cosmology, providing a very interesting alternative to the orthodox "gravity-only" model, with an emphasis on plasma physics, vast electric currents, and a reinterpretation of quasars, galaxies and solar physics.
Reviews
"I really love this book. It is causing me to rethink a great deal of my own work. I am convinced that The Electric Sky deserves the widest possible readership.... I felt genuine excitement while reading and felt I was delving into a delicious feast of new ideas."
- Gerrit L. Verschuur, PhD, Physics Department, University of Memphis
"You don't have to be an astronomer to enjoy this book. It's an exciting story about how a small group of physicists, engineers and other scientists have challenged the establishment, the big science astronomers who are reluctant to listen to anyone outside their own elite circle."
- Lewis E. Franks, PhD, Stanford University, Fellow of the IEEE (1977), Professor Emeritus and Head of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts (Retired)
Are You an Illusion?
Mary Midgley
The distinguished British philosopher deconstructs the fashionable materialist idea that our sense of self is an illusion. The denial of the self has been sustained by the belief that the physical sciences require it. Midgley traces the historical roots of this misconception, and shows how our own experiences are just as necessary for understanding of ourselves and the world as the study of brains.
Reviews
"It is a very big little book. Midgley manages in just 150 pages to say more than most scholars manage in a lifetime. ... Midgley combines both the ability to place intellectual fashions in their broader context with having lived long enough to personally witness the rise and fall of many of them. ...in this bite-size book she digests some of the toughest intellectual challenges of our day."
- Stephen Cave, Financial Times
Why Materialism is Baloney
Bernardo Kastrup
The present framing of the cultural debate in terms of materialism versus religion has allowed materialism to go unchallenged as the only rationally-viable metaphysics. This book seeks to change this. It uncovers the absurd implications of materialism and then, uniquely, presents a hard-nosed non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by skepticism, hard empirical evidence, and clear logical argumentation. It lays out a coherent framework upon which one can interpret and make sense of every natural phenomenon and physical law, as well as the modalities of human consciousness, without materialist assumptions.
According to this framework, the brain is merely the image of a self-localization process of mind, analogously to how a whirlpool is the image of a self-localization process of water. The brain doesn’t generate mind in the same way that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water. It is the brain that is in mind, not mind in the brain. Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness. The book closes with a series of educated speculations regarding the afterlife, psychic phenomena, and other related subjects.
Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to The Future of the Universe
Lee Smolin
Smolin argues that physics and cosmology are trapped in insoluble dilemmas by viewing the universe as governed by timeless laws, with time as an illusion. He shows that by treating time as real, the laws of nature can be seen as evolving; indeed they are more like habits than laws. What has happened in the past affects what happens in the present through what Smolin calls "the principle of precedence."
Reviews
"This is a Big Idea, and one with ramifications ranging from the Big Bang to the end of the universe.... The main thread of the argument...is easily grasped, and stands as a provocative challenge to the present state of what we think we know about the universe."
- Quill & Quire
"Time Reborn is the result of [Smolin's] most ambitious quest to date: He wants to get time flowing again.... It is incumbent upon us to occasionally step back and challenge our assumptions; to ask the very deepest questions we can articulate about the nature of the universe and our experience of existing within it.... Smolin is one of just a handful of thinkers who is up to that challenge."
- Dan Falk, The Globe and Mail
Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities
Dean Radin
Dean Radin, one of the world's leading experimental parapsychologists, explores whether yoga and meditation can increase our inherent mental powers, and summarizes experimental evidence for telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition.
Reviews
"In Supernormal, consciousness researcher Dr. Dean Radin shows compellingly that specific ancient claims about extraordinary psychic abilities are real, and how they have been confirmed by an outpouring of ingenious experiments whose statistical power is simply galactic. Supernormal is the crown jewel in Dr. Radin's landmark trilogy, which also includes The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds. Supernormal is a reader's delight. Beautifully written, it is spiced with that rarest ingredient in science writing: humor. If this book does not take your breath away, it should, because it reveals how we can awaken to innate human potentials that are glorious, on which our future may depend. Thank you, Dr. Radin, for showing the way."
- Larry Dossey, MD, author of One Mind
The Sense of Being Stared At
Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
In this newly updated edition, Sheldrake shares his more than 25 years of research into telepathy, the power of staring, remote viewing, precognition, and animal premonitions. Drawing on more than 5,000 case histories, 4,000 questionnaire responses, and the results of experiments on staring, thought transference, phone telepathy, and other phenomena carried out with more than 20,000 people as well as reports and data from dozens of independent research teams, Sheldrake shows that these unexplained human abilities — such as the sense of being stared at — are not paranormal but normal, part of our biological nature. He reveals that telepathy depends on social bonds and traces its evolution from the connections between members of animal groups such as flocks, schools, and packs. Sheldrake shows that our minds and intentions extend beyond our brains into our surroundings with invisible connections that link us to each other, to the world around us, and even to the future.
Reviews
"Important, thought-provoking, and exciting. Sheldrake's combination of good science with an open mind and his willingness to dig deeply where others fear to tread makes for a fascinating, un-put-downable read."
— Graham Hancock, author of Supernatural
Brain Wars
Mario Beauregard
In Brain Wars, acclaimed neuroscientist Mario Beauregard reveals compelling new evidence set to provoke a major shift in our understanding of the mind-body debate: research showing that the mind and consciousness are transmitted and filtered through the brain--but are not generated by it.
Reviews
"Brain Wars explains why the prevailing brain-mind paradigm is falling apart and why we are increasingly being forced to reconsider the nature of consciousness. The consequences of this paradigm shift are profound, and Mario Beauregard does a magnificent job in explaining why."
- Dean Radin PhD Co-Editor-in-Chief, Explore, Senior Scientist Institute of Noetic Sciences
"Mario Beauregard shows convincingly that the materialistic philosophy of the 19th century is an impoverished framework incompatible with contemporary science, from physics to psychology. The concepts he develops in Brain Wars are required reading for scientific literacy in today's world."
- Bruce Greyson, M.D. Research psychiatrist, University of Virginia
The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, Vapor
Gerald Pollack
Winner, 2014 International Summit Excellence Award, Society of Technical Communication
An astonishing reinterpretation of many familiar phenomena, and an excellent summary of recent research on the properties of liquid-crystalline water. Pollack includes many stimulating "out-on-a-limb" speculations.
Reviews
"In The Fourth Phase of Water, Gerald Pollack offers an elegant new theory of water chemistry that has profound implications not only for chemistry and biology, but for the metaphoric foundation of our understanding of reality and our treatment of nature."
- Charles Eisenstein, Read Full Review: The Waters of Heterodoxy
Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship
Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD and
Franklin Santana Santos, MD, PhD (Eds.)
This thought-provoking volume argues against the purely physical analysis of consciousness and for a balanced psychobiological approach. It bridges philosophy of mind with science of mind to examine transcendent phenomena empirically, such as mystic states, near-death experiences and past-life memories, that have confounded scientists for decades. Representing disciplines ranging from philosophy and history to neuroimaging and physics, and boasting a panel of expert scientists and physicians, including Andrew Newberg, Peter Fenwick, Stuart Hameroff, Mario Beauregard, Deepak Chopra, and Chris Clarke the book rigorously follows several lines of inquiry into mind-brain controversies, challenging readers to form their own conclusions--or reconsider previous ones.
Reviews
"Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship is an important contribution. It provides a balance of the purely physical analyses of consciousness with the psychobiological. In this way, it attempts to bridge mind philosophy with science. It empirically examines transcendent phenomena, such as mystical altered states, near-death experiences, end-of-life, mediumistic experiences, and past-life memories."
- Vernon M. Neppe, Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, Journal of Parapsychology Vol. 77, no. 1., Spring 2013
Mind and Cosmos
Thomas Nagel
Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian
Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False
Nagel is one of the world's leading philosophers of mind. Although he is an atheist, he argues that the materialist approach to life and mind has failed to explain consciousness, intentionality, meaning and value. This failure threatens to unravel the entire naturalistic worldview in biology, evolutionary theory and cosmology. We need a new kind of science.
Reviews
"A sharp, lucidly argued challenge to today's scientific worldview."
- Jim Holt, The Wall Street Journal
"An intense philosophical takedown of Neo-Darwinism and scientific materialism. It's a brave and contrarian book. Reminds me of Wittgenstein's remark: 'Even if all our scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all.'"
- E.L. Doctorow, The New York Times Book Review
The Eternal Law: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Modern Physics, and Ultimate Reality
John H Spencer PhD
2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal Winner in Classical Studies / Philosophy
The Eternal Law takes the reader on a fascinating journey through some of the most profound questions related to our understanding of modern science. What does it mean to say that there is an eternal mathematical law underpinning all of physical reality? How must we expand our narrow conception of science to include not only logic but also intuition, consciousness, and the pursuit of beauty, symmetry, simplicity, and unity?
Is truth objective, or is it nothing more than a whimsical projection of opinions? Why were many of the key founders of modern science inevitably drawn to ancient Greek philosophy? The extraordinary clarity of The Eternal Law helps to restore a sane vision of reality, while deepening our appreciation of what Einstein called 'the mysterious'.
Reviews
"I found John Spencer's The Eternal Law to be enormously refreshing; for here we have someone willing to speak out forcefully in favour of Platonic ideals lying at the roots of modern science."
- Sir Roger Penrose (OM FRS), Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford
The Presence of The Past
Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
Challenging the fundamental assumptions of modern science, this ground-breaking radical hypothesis suggests that nature itself has memory. The question of morphogenesis - how things take their shape - remains one of the great mysteries of science. What makes a rabbit rabbit-shaped? How do newts regenerate limbs? Why are molecules shaped the way they are? Why do societies arrange themselves in certain predictable patterns?
According to Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation, these questions remain unanswered in part because convention is hobbled by the reductionist assumption that finding the answers to such questions is largely a matter of figuring out the machinery of nature, of getting to the bottom of an ultimately mechanical universe. But, Sheldrake suggests that nature is not a machine and that each kind of system - from crystals to birds to societies - is shaped not by universal laws that embrace and direct all systems but by a unique "morphic field" containing a collective or pooled memory. So organisms no only share genetic material with others of their species, but are also shaped by a "field" specific to that species.
