Explore the vast range of titles available.

In his book Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2007), Fredric Jameson analyzes the multiple components of utopia and the possibility of achieving utopia in the near future. As this book argues, however, human civilization will never achieve utopia unless humans reach a state of pure consciousness in which they will use their full mental potential and avoid making blunders in life that would undermine the possibility of a utopia. This book develops a non-teleological, comparative poetics between Western and Sanskrit literary traditions by analyzing their opposing theories of language, consciousness and meaning. This comparison seeks to demonstrate the complementary nature of their two perspectives: the objective, conceptual emphasis of contemporary Western theory; and the subjective experiential emphasis of Sanskrit poetics. The potential contribution to the West of Indian culture in general, and Sanskrit poetics in particular, centers on the phenomenon of direct experience. Without the direct experience of pure consciousness, humans will not achieve a state of utopia because they will remain entangled in materialism without access to idealism or spiritualism available only through the direct experience of the unity of pure consciousness or the void of conceptions.

Integral Drama critically explores modern drama in the context of Indian aesthetics described in the Natyashastra and the vast, new interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies. It also focuses on how Indian theatre aesthetics has influenced modern drama theories and practice, and the extent to which this has promoted the development of higher consciousness in actors and audience. According to Indian aesthetics, rasa or aesthetic rapture is refers to bliss innate in the Self that manifests even in the absence of external sources of happiness. Overall, this book explores the relation between modern theatre and higher states of mind and demonstrates that one of the key purposes of theatre is to help the spectator experience the pure consciousness event described in consciousness studies by theorists such as Anna Bonshek, Ken Wilber, Robert K. C. Forman, Jonathan Shear, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Ralph Yarrow and others. Integral Drama will appeal not only to drama theorists but also to teachers and students of acting, as well as an educated general audience interested in understanding the aesthetic experience of theatre. Integral Drama, moreover, can be used as a textbook for acting and drama theory classes and would also appeal to university and public libraries. The book serves as a bridge between the ideas and experiences long understood through Indian philosophy and the many questions raised by modern theatre studies.

Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind's capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind's conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision.

Different symbolic traditions have different ways of describing the shift of awareness toward sacred events. While not conforming to familiar states of phenomenality, this shift of awareness corresponds to Turner's liminal phase, Artaud's metaphysical embodiment, Grotowski's “translumination,” Brook's “holy theater,” and Barba's “transcendent” theater—all of which are linked to the Advaitan taste of a void of conceptions. This book argues that, by allowing to come what Derrida calls the unsa.

The notion of the sacred has long informed the work of British dramatists like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Ralph Yarrow''s Sacred Theatre is the first book to examine the role of the sacred in the practice, process, and performance of drama. While leaving enough room for the personal and experiential, Yarrow draws on concepts from sociology, anthropology, and critical theory as well as analytical readings of plays and performance events to examine how theater interacts with the otherworldly. This volume is essential reading for anyone intrigued by the intersection of drama and consciousness. \"This book takes on the enormous task of identifying not only the sacred in theatre but also questions ideas of sacred across the spectrum. It offers a great deal of material for discussion within performance and theatre theory courses.\"--Jade Rosina McCutcheon, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, DavisThe notion of the sacred has long informed the work of British dramatists like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Ralph Yarrow''s Sacred Theatre is the first book to examine the role of the sacred in the practice, process, and performance of drama. While leaving enough room for the personal and experiential, Yarrow draws on concepts from sociology, anthropology, and critical theory as well as analytical readings of plays and performance events to examine how theater interacts with the otherworldly. This volume is essential reading for anyone intrigued by the intersection of drama and consciousness. \"This book takes on the enormous task of identifying not only the sacred in theatre but also questions ideas of sacred across the spectrum. It offers a great deal of material for discussion within performance and theatre theory courses.\"--Jade Rosina McCutcheon, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, DavisThe notion of the sacred has long informed the work of British dramatists like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Ralph Yarrow''s Sacred Theatre is the first book to examine the role of the sacred in the practice, process, and performance of drama. While leaving enough room for the personal and experiential, Yarrow draws on concepts from sociology, anthropology, and critical theory as well as analytical readings of plays and performance events to examine how theater interacts with the otherworldly. This volume is essential reading for anyone intrigued by the intersection of drama and consciousness. \"This book takes on the enormous task of identifying not only the sacred in theatre but also questions ideas of sacred across the spectrum. It offers a great deal of material for discussion within performance and theatre theory courses.\"--Jade Rosina McCutcheon, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, DavisThe notion of the sacred has long informed the work of British dramatists like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Ralph Yarrow''s Sacred Theatre is the first book to examine the role of the sacred in the practice, process, and performance of drama. While leaving enough room for the personal and experiential, Yarrow draws on concepts from sociology, anthropology, and critical theory as well as analytical readings of plays and performance events to examine how theater interacts with the otherworldly. This volume is essential reading for anyone intrigued by the intersection of drama and consciousness. \"This book takes on the enormous task of identifying not only the sacred in theatre but also questions ideas of sacred across the spectrum. It offers a great deal of material for discussion within performance and theatre theory courses.\"--Jade Rosina McCutcheon, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, DavisThe notion of the sacred has long informed the work of British dramatists like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Ralph Yarrow''s Sacred Theatre is the first book to examine the role of the sacred in the practice, process, and performance of drama. While leaving enough room for the personal and experiential, Yarrow draws on concepts from sociology, anthropology, and critical theory as well as analytical readings of plays and performance events to examine how theater interacts with the otherworldly. This volume is essential reading for anyone intrigued by the intersection of drama and consciousness. \"This book takes on the enormous task of identifying not only the sacred in theatre but also questions ideas of sacred across the spectrum. It offers a great deal of material for discussion within performance and theatre theory courses.\"--Jade Rosina McCutcheon, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, Davis.

Samuel Beckett's \"Waiting for Godot\" and \"Endgame,\" Haney explains, refine the mediation of qualia to a point of abstraction at which awareness, if not altogether transcending mediation, verges on a state of non-separateness. There are flavors of non-separateness, differences of historical residue, in nonintentional awareness, which in its purest form consists of a flavorless flavor.

Comparing Derrida with two Indian philosophers, Bhartrhari and Shankara, this essay argues that the attempt to deconstruct logocentrism reflects a limited rather than a comprehensive view of the full range of language and the self, and that the knowledge of expanded awareness available through Sanskrit poetics can take one beyond the oppositions inherent in deconstruction.

Wole Soyinka's plays are examined with regard to the mechanics of integration between essence and materiality and unity and diversity in \"A Dance of the Forests\" and \"The Road.\" Soyinka represents Yorba mythology in these plays not as an isolated ahistorical ideal but as a cultural system enmeshed in the conflicted environments of modern Africa.