by Nanci L. Danison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2011
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Danison presents an account of spiritual beliefs gleaned from her near-death experience.
At 43, Danison (Backwards Guidebook, 2009, etc.) died shortly before an operation. After a brief period where her heart stopped due to anaphylactic shock or hypoglycemia, she spontaneously revived. During the time that she was dead, however, Danison experienced a series of profound visions that would dramatically influence the rest of her life. In her third book concerning near-death experiences, the author sets out to compare the spiritual truths she learned during the experience with ideas from organized religion. She describes realizing or remembering truths about the universe, witnessing the Big Bang and understanding that beings are not truly individuals but manifestations of God. The book describes Danison’s experiences in simplistic prose using New Age terms, referring to her experiences as “knowings,” God as “the Source” and those in the afterlife as “Light Beings.” Throughout her near-death experience, Danison realized that humans never learned Christian dogma and teachings from the Source. Instead, they constructed religious ideas and the concept of a messiah who will lead them back to the divine and out of fear and an inability to understand that humans are the Source—they exist as thoughts and fragments of the Source’s consciousness. The book provides typical apocalyptic warnings, describing a “transitional period” beginning around 2013 that involves natural disasters, mass pandemics and flooding. Disappointingly, the book doesn’t provide a very complex investigation of near-death experiences and religion, instead skimming over the basic history of Christianity and comparing it to Danison’s experience, such as her witnessing the evolution of Christianity from early disjointed groups. Likewise, while Danison’s visions may theoretically have been hallucinations, the book presents them as physical and spiritual truths. Readers interested in near-death experiences may find the book compelling for its depiction of reality, but those who don’t accept Danison’s experience at face value will struggle with the text. Too narrow in scope to provide a legitimate comparison between near-death experiences and organized Christianity.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1934482100
Page Count: 183
Publisher: A.P. Lee & Co
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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