副标题: The Search for the Science of Spirituality
电子书下载格式:mobi+epub+pdf+txt
作者:BarbaraBradleyHagerty
出版时间:14 May 2009
书籍简介:
Is spiritual experience real or a delusion? Are
there realities that we can experience but not
easily measure? Does your consciousness
depend entirely on your brain, or does it
extend beyond? In Fingerprints of God,
award-winning journalist Barbara Bradley
Hagerty delves into the discoveries science
is making about how faith and spirituality
affect us physically and emotionally as it
attempts to understand whether the ineffable
place beyond this world can be rationally
—even scientifically—explained.
Hagerty interviews some of the world’s
top scientists to describe what their groundbreaking
research reveals about our human
spiritual experience. From analyses of the
brain functions of Buddhist monks and Carmelite
nuns, to the possibilities of healing
the sick through directed prayer, to what
near-death experiences illuminate about the
afterlife, Hagerty reaches beyond what we
think we know to understand what happens
to us when we believe in a higher power.
Paralleling the discoveries of science is
Hagerty’s own account of her spiritual evolution.
Raised a Christian Scientist, she was
a scrupulous adherent until a small moment
as an adult triggered a revaluation of her
beliefs, which in turn led her to a new way of
thinking about God and faith.
An insightful examination of what science
is learning about how and why we believe,
Fingerprints of God is also a moving story of
one person’s search for a communion with
a higher power and what she discovered on
that journey.
One theme kept drawing my attention, a theological
buoy that repeatedly popped up in the
choppy sea. No matter what their belief systems,
the people who had enjoyed profound spiritual
experiences saw the same kind of “Other.” In
fact, they generally shunned the word “God,”
since it is the purview of particular religions. And
without exception, this Being in the eye of their
spiritual tornadoes was a hovering presence, infinitely
intelligent and gentle. My mystics might
use different terminology, but they described
uncannily similar experiences: light, love, peace,
and often, an overwhelming sense of unity with
the universe. . . .
I asked Bill Miller at the University of New
Mexico if he had found any particular themes in
the accounts of his “quantum changers.”
“All the people who describe the mystical
type of experience, described the same ‘Other,’”
said Miller, who is a Presbyterian. “Never mind
their religious upbringing—
they were in the presence
of the same thing.”
“What is that ‘Other’?” I asked.
“It’s profoundly loving and accepting beyond
words. It doesn’t demand anything of you
at the moment. You simply feel accepted as you
are, and loved as you are, to the very depth of
your being.”
作者简介:
Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the award-winning religion
correspondent for National Public Radio. She is the recipient
of the Templeton–Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science
and Religion, and a Knight Fellowship at Yale Law School. Before
joining NPR, she was a reporter at The Christian Science Monitor
for eleven years. Hagerty lives in Washington, D.C.
fingerprints
of god
Barbara Bradley
Hagerty
may
Hardcover
ISBN 978-1-59448-877-1
$26.95/$29.50 CAN
Nonfiction
6" x 9"
320 pages
Export rights: W
Also available
as an e-book.
© Steve Barrett
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