Former TM insider inundated with publicity about TM being a scientific relaxation technology that is a cure for just about everything and, since non-religious, should be in our public schools. It was a false narrative. Someone needed to set the record straight, and with his background in public health and behavioral science, he decided to do it.

Millions of people meditate daily but can meditative practices really make us ‘better’ people? In The Buddha Pill, pioneering psychologists Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm put meditation and mindfulness under the microscope. Separating fact from fiction, they reveal what scientific research – including their groundbreaking study on yoga and meditation with prisoners – tells us about the benefits and limitations of these techniques for improving our lives. As well as illuminating the potential, the authors argue that these practices may have unexpected consequences, and that peace and happiness may not always be the end result. Offering a compelling examination of research on transcendental meditation to recent brain-imaging studies on the effects of mindfulness and yoga, and with fascinating contributions from spiritual teachers and therapists, Farias and Wikholm weave together a unique story about the science and the delusions of personal change.

In a near future ravaged by killer hurricanes, rampant overdevelopment and increasingly underdressed waitresses, ex-newsman Jon Templeton has had the worst Thursday of his life. He's forced to fight off an amorous co-worker at the PR job he hates, only to have his wife discover his admirer's panties in his pocket. Now he's dead, interrupted on his way to his heavenly reward by Eli, an elderly Rastafarian surfer who claims to be the Supreme Being. Still reeling from having lost any chance of redemption in his human life, Jon is offered a mission: Discover for the surprisingly clueless deity the true identity of Lucas Scheafer, deputy to the Rev. Lawrence Whitaker and his sultry wife, Veronica, leaders of the sexually free-wheeling Church of the New Revelation, headquartered in America's new Sin City, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Jon's quest is paralleled by that of Mako Nikura, reluctant heir to a weapons and aerospace fortune, who hopes to find the secret to his father's death and its connection to the domestic terrorist organization SHAG. Little do Jon and Mako know, but their paths lead to the same exceptionally odd - and potentially cataclysmic - destination.

Transcendence offers an original theory of self and society that reconciles philosophical and political commitments to self-determination, cultural pluralism, and cosmopolitanism.

This title gathers together essays on deception, self-deception, and the intersections of the two phenomena, from the leading thinkers on the subject. It will be of interest to philosophers across the spectrum including those interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and metaphysics.

Examines the notion of Darstellung [representation] in the critical discourse of German Idealism and Romanticism, paying particular attention to Kant, Fichte, Novalis, and Kleist.

Henry E. Allison presents a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). It differs from most recent commentaries in paying special attention to the structure of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and the views to which Kant was responding. Allison argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy and that its significance lies mainly in two closely related factors. The first is that it is here that Kant first articulates his revolutionary principle of the autonomy of the will, that is, the paradoxical thesis that moral requirements (duties) are self-imposed and that it is only in virtue of this that they can be unconditionally binding. The second is that for Kant all other moral theories are united by the assumption that the ground of moral requirements must be located in some object of the will (the good) rather than the will itself, which Kant terms heteronomy. Accordingly, what from the standpoint of previous moral theories was seen as a fundamental conflict between various views of the good is reconceived by Kant as a family quarrel between various forms of heteronomy, none of which are capable of accounting for the unconditionally binding nature of morality. Allison goes on to argue that Kant expresses this incapacity by claiming that the various forms of heteronomy unavoidably reduce the categorical to a merely hypothetical imperative.

The object of these scripts is to expose and air out the unprovable stances and influences of religious belief and its exploitation with no absolute condemnation on conventional beliefs. Conventional religion tends to cancel itself with the passage of time. Detailed descriptions are enclosed. The nutshell has it that in comparing archaic beliefs to unfolding beliefs, time is revealing a picture of inevitable and irreversible changes in those beliefs. Following the process of these changes will allow one to blend with them while broadening their scope on life or whatever else. Humans have precariously searched for a form of security that lessened the burden of exposure to accepting responsibility for living a life on planet Earth. Then, someone or other discovered, invented or rationalized something they believed was bigger and more powerful than them. Over a period of mankinds time, that power of belief became a dominant source of security and eventually emanated a belief of living forever in this illusionary state of security. Humans have been trapped into misconception, misunderstanding and vulnerable susceptibility for millenniums concerning their nature of choice in believing almost anything including the need for some type of mind salvation. An evolution of belief is slowly transforming from archaic views to a spiritual, consciousness of future orientation. Insight on basic and spiritual belief is covered.

This collection brings together the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the rich tradition of American pragmatist thought, taking seriously the commitment to pluralism at the heart of both. Contributors explore in novel ways Deleuze’s explicit references to pragmatism, and examine the philosophical significance of a number of points at which Deleuze’s philosophy converges with, or diverges from, the work of leading pragmatists. The papers of the first part of the volume take as their focus Deleuze’s philosophical relationship to classical pragmatism and the work of Peirce, James and Dewey. Particular areas of focus include theories of signs, metaphysics, perspectivism, experience, the transcendental and democracy. The papers comprising the second half of the volume are concerned with developing critical encounters between Deleuze’s work and the work of contemporary pragmatists such as Rorty, Brandom, Price, Shusterman and others. Issues addressed include antirepresentationalism, constructivism, politics, objectivity, naturalism, affect, human finitude and the nature and value of philosophy itself. With contributions by internationally recognized specialists in both poststructuralist and pragmatist thought, the collection is certain to enrich Deleuze scholarship, enliven discussion in pragmatist circles, and contribute in significant ways to contemporary philosophical debate.