The Quintessence of Dust: If Humans Aren’t Dust, What Are They? PDF Download

Author: David Sinclair
Publisher: Magus Books
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Are you self-organizing dust that becomes alive if it is arranged in just the right way? Are you dust that had life breathed into it by "God", as the Book of Genesis says? Are you dust that links to a mind and is animated by the mind so long as the link remains functional? Well, what are you? Do you know? If you don't know, shouldn't you be trying to know? Go on, what is your quintessence? Write it down. If you can't, what does that say about you? Here's an astounding thing. Feeling types, sensing types, intuitive types and thinking types all have totally different ideas about the "dust" from which the Bible said we came. Do you understand why? Come inside and find out why you hold the beliefs you do. Your beliefs would be totally different if you had a different personality type. Doesn't that disturb you? If you were born in a different part of the world, to different parents, you would have completely different religious beliefs. Equally, if you were born with a different personality type, you would relate entirely differently to the world and believe totally different things about the nature of reality. Don't you want to rise above all these contingencies and know what the absolute, objective truth is? Why not?!

Author: Kenneth Chan
Publisher: Quintessence of Dust
ISBN: 9780595313372
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Shakespeare's Hamlet contains a profound spiritual message for mankind that has been largely unrecognized for centuries. The meaning of Hamlet so perplexed critics over the last four hundred years that many finally concluded, after immense struggle, that the play lacks a binding philosophy. Nothing, in fact, is more wrong. Quintessence of Dust now explains how Shakespeare meticulously crafted every scene to convey, through our emotional involvement in the drama, a central spiritual message. The book also explains by a single coherent theme practically every aspect of the play that has puzzled critics for centuries. It demonstrates that Hamlet is nothing short of an artistic miracle, reflected both in its poetic brilliance and in its profound meaning.

Author: Peter Brook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350069434
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Hailed as 'the theatrical event of this century' (Sunday Times), Peter Brook's unique dramatization of India's great epic poem, The Mahabharata played to ecstatic audiences worldwide. In The Shifting Point, one of theatre's great visionaries assesses the lessons of his pioneering work from his brilliant debut at Stratford and the West End in the 1960s to the triumphant success of The Mahabharata. With the bravura and insight of a great practitioner and explorer he reveals some of the inspiration behind his extraordinary career. Published in Bloomsbury's Revelations series, Brook's account covers many of the groundbreaking productions that cemented his reputation as 'one of the artistic geniuses of our time' (San Franciso Herald): his controversial productions of King Lear and Romeo and Juliet; the three-month period in Africa which culminated in The Conference of the Birds; Marat/Sade; filming King Lear and Lord of the Flies, and the epic The Mahabharata. With Brooks's reflections on the problems of Shakespeare and opera, and on a range of modern theatre artists including Grotowski, Gordon Craig and Samuel Beckkett, The Shifting Point provides a uniquely revealing account of 4 decades of artistic exploration. 'The great thing about Brook is that, in a medium where others provide answers, he keeps asking questions. This sage and stimulating book shows that, inside a sophisticated adult mind, lurks the intemperate curiosity of a child; which is the mark of genius.'(Michael Billington, Listener)

Author: Maxine Greene
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787952915
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
"This remarkable set of essays defines the role of imagination in general education, arts education, aesthetics, literature, and the social and multicultural context.... The author argues for schools to be restructured as places where students reach out for meanings and where the previously silenced or unheard may have a voice. She invites readers to develop processes to enhance and cultivate their own visions through the application of imagination and the arts. Releasing the Imagination should be required reading for all educators, particularly those in teacher education, and for general and academic readers." —Choice "Maxine Greene, with her customary eloquence, makes an impassioned argument for using the arts as a tool for opening minds and for breaking down the barriers to imagining the realities of worlds other than our own familiar cultures.... There is a strong rhythm to the thoughts, the arguments, and the entire sequence of essays presented here." —American Journal of Education "Releasing the Imagination gives us a vivid portrait of the possibilities of human experience and education's role in its realization. It is a welcome corrective to current pressures for educational conformity." —Elliot W. Eisner, professor of education and art, Stanford University "Releasing the Imagination challenges all the cant and cliché littering the field of education today. It breaks through the routine, the frozen, the numbing, the unexamined; it shocks the reader into new awareness." —William Ayers, associate professor, College of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago

Author: Greg Garrard
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199742928
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism explores a range of critical perspectives used to analyze literature, film, and the visual arts in relation to the natural environment. Since the publication of field-defining works by Lawrence Buell, Jonathan Bate, and Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm in the 1990s, ecocriticism has become a conventional paradigm for critical analysis alongside queer theory, deconstruction, and postcolonial studies. The field includes numerous approaches, genres, movements, and media, as the essays collected here demonstrate. The contributors come from around the globe and, similarly, the literature and media covered originate from several countries and continents. Taken together, the essays consider how literary and other cultural productions have engaged with the natural environment to investigate climate change, environmental justice, sustainability, the nature of "humanity," and more. Featuring thirty-four original chapters, the volume is organized into three major areas. The first, History, addresses topics such as the Renaissance pastoral, Romantic poetry, the modernist novel, and postmodern transgenic art. The second, Theory, considers how traditional critical theories have expanded to include environmental perspectives. Included in this section are essays on queer theory, science studies, deconstruction, and postcolonialism. Genre, the final major section, explores the specific artforms that have animated the field over the past decade, including nature writing, children's literature, animated films, and digital media. A short section entitled Views from Here concludes the handbook by zeroing in on the various transnational perspectives informing the continued dissemination and globalization of the field.

Author: Harriet Bradley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230508154
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change explores the social space occupied by both gender and ethnicity. As recognition of the sociological importance of gender and ethnicity has grown, so has the opportunity for exploring the intersections between them. This volume brings together both theoretical reflections and new research in this key area. For the sociologist this presents a conceptual challenge, while for the individual it may present a series of dilemmas. These are intriguingly traced out in studies which take us from Punjabi families in the UK, to Surinamese migrants in Amsterdam, to Hindu and Muslim women and Black nurses in Britain, the African and Asian diasporas, and gender identity in post-Soviet Latvia.

Author: D. E. Wittkower
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 0812697391
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) is the giant imagination behind so much recent popular culture—both movies directly based on his writings, such as Blade Runner (based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and The Adjustment Bureau plus cult favorites such as A Scanner Darkly, Imposter, Next, Screamers, and Paycheck and works revealing his powerful influence, such as The Matrix and Inception. With the publication in 2011 of volume 1 of Exegesis, his journal of spiritual visions and paranoic investigations, Dick is fast becoming a major influence in the world of popular spirituality and occult thinking. In Philip K. Dick and Philosophy thirty Dick fans and professional thinkers confront the fascinating and frightening ideas raised by Dick’s mind-blowing fantasies. Is there an alien world behind the everyday reality we experience? If androids can pass as human, should they be given the same consideration as humans? Do psychotics have insights into a mystical reality? Would knowledge of the future free us or enslave us? This volume will also include Dick's short story "Adjustment Team," on which The Adjustment Bureau is based. Philip K. Dick and Philosophy explores the ideas of Philip K. Dick in the same way that he did: with an earnest desire to understand the truth of the world, but without falsely equating earnestness with a dry seriousness. Dick’s work was replete with whimsical and absurdist presentations of the greatest challenges to reason and to humanity—paradox, futility, paranoia, and failure—and even at his darkest times he was able to keep some perspective and humor, as for example in choosing to name himself ‘Horselover Fat’ in VALIS at the same time as he relates his personal religious epiphanies, crises, and delusions. With the same earnest whimsy, we approach Philip K. Dick as a philosopher like ourselves—one who wrote almost entirely in thought-experiments and semi-fictional world-building, but who engaged with many of the greatest questions of philosophy throughout the Euro-American tradition. Philip K. Dick and Philosophy has much to offer for both serious fans and those who have recently learned his name, and realized that his work has been the inspiration for several well-known and thought-provoking films. Most chapters start with one or more of the movies based on Dick’s writing. From here, the authors delve deeper into the issues by bringing in philosophers' perspectives and by bringing in Dick’s written work. The book invites the reader with a casual familiarity with Dick to get to know his work, and invites the reader with little familiarity with philosophy to learn more. New perspectives and challenging connections and interpretations for even the most hard-core Dick fans are also offered. To maximize public interest, the book prominently addresses the most widely-known films, as well as those with the most significant fan followings: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Adjustment Bureau. Along with these “big five” films, a few chapters address his last novels, especially VALIS, which have a significant cult following of their own. There are also chapters which address short stories and novels which are currently planned for adaptation: Radio Free Albemuth (film completed, awaiting distribution), The Man in the High Castle (in development by Ridley Scott for BBC mini-series), and “King of the Elves” (Disney, planned for release in 2012).

Author: Neal R. Roll
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1469178737
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
Terror strikes the peaceful future Earth when humanitys linked consciousness abruptly goes silent. Young professor Eddy Afford had planned a self-indulgent time-traveling excursion, but when the disconnected world plunges into anarchy, Eddy finds himself transported to an earlier hostile Earth populated by mutated Punx and militaristic Tagents. Stranded for a year in this dangerous era with his lovable telepathic quadrapet Rover, they befriend the mighty horse Quixote. Together they take up the quest to save Eddys ex-girlfriend Aphrodite from malefic imprisonment in the Singing Dome where women are compelled to sing music so eloquent it bends the laws of nature. During his personal quest, Eddy obtains the Journal of The Muse that reveals the humanity-saving quest he must assume in locating, protecting, and guiding The Five Musicianers to their destinies in composing a musical perfection that will revive the Quintessence, defeat a malicious overlord, and set Eddys future world right again.

Author: S. Antonson
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 1412008174
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
The Circle of Forever is a gothic novel centralizing upon Princess Saphiria in the mists of a siege of Aragonia by its arch rival, Caldrania, who captures her brother. His execution is imminent. Ambushed in the forest, Crown Prince Basidion of Caldrania, seized with his victory of abduction, rages how he will seduce Saphiria. Due to the fragility of the area, Saphiria and her horse vanish into the Circle of Forever, a portal to the ethereal realm, beset with goblins, troll, fairies, dragons, and apparitions, who feed on evil. How can she save her brother and free herself from these unknowns? The middle ages supplicate to conjure the reader into a world riddled with unexplained events, enmeshed with feudalistic knights embroiled in battle.

Author: Alan Beechey
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1464202435
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
If a blackmail letter drives a man to suicide, is the sender guilty of murder? "Yes," says Oliver Swithin, author of bestselling Finsbury the Ferret children's stories and amateur sleuth, who is on holiday in an ancient village. A midnight streak with his naked girlfriend—Scotland Yard's Effie Strongitham—abruptly ends in the discovery of a corpse. Retired radiobroadcaster Dennis Breedlove has hanged himself from the old gibbet. Evidence suggests blackmail may have driven this celebrity to suicide. Irresistibly intrigued, Oliver believes discovering the dead man's secret will lead to the identity of the blackmailer. But in Britain today, when shame is a ticket to fame, why suicide? What if it wasn't? When the mystery abruptly turns inside out, black-clad strangers attack Oliver in the night. The Vicar behaves strangely. So do the village's five unmarried Bennet sisters, a mysterious monk, the persistent, self-effacing Underwood Tooth, and Oliver's Uncle Tim, Effie's superior at the Yard and a part-time Shakespearean actor. Plus Oliver's aunt and his mother. Who else might play a role in This Private Plot? Two William Shakespeares? It's time to put the laugh back into slaughter with the long-awaited third chapter in the career of Oliver Swithin. Yet under the clever wordplay and bawdy jokes lies an inventive and, yes, scholarly plot.