Are You or Are You Not

Description

This book challenges the "dominant paradigm" of reality, which claims that the equations of physics open the only window through which we may view the true nature of reality. Acting on the possibility that this paradigm is false, the book proceeds to explore, find, and evaluate alternate views, focusing on developing an understanding of who and what we are in the greater scheme of the real dimensions of life. In this search the reader will travel beyond physics to the worlds offered by those whose views have been regularly condemned and suppressed as worthless, mystical, and even thought of as dangerous. These include encounters with occultism, the esoteric Tarot, and Western and Eastern mysticism as found in Tibetan Buddhism, Egyptian mythology, and the long tradition of Hermetism as described by the semi-mythical "guide of souls," Hermes Trismegistus. Most importantly, philosophers and philosophical psychologists of the western tradition such as Henri Bergson, John Dewey and Carl Jung, whose works have been eclipsed by the current styles of mainstream philosophy, are brought to the fore and their works are found to contain elements of these other, technically forbidden, ways of thinking. Together with the author, the reader will negotiate a way through such forbidden territory by means of a magical amulet, called by the author simply the "clinical approach."

Stan V. McDaniel is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Sonoma State University in Northern California, where he taught logic, advanced philosophy, Eastern philosophy, and innovative courses such as the philosophy of Carl Jung, for over a quarter of a century. During this time he refined his personal philosophical viewpoint, partly in the crucible of classroom discussion in his advanced classes. His book Are You or Are You Not? summarizes the essence of his mature thinking.