The Awakened Ones : Phenomenology of Visionary Experience

While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, Gananath Obeyesekere believes an even richer knowledge is possible through a bold confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, he fearlessly pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding. Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term "dream-ego" through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry. About the Author: Gananath Obeyesekere is professor emeritus of anthropology at Princeton University. His books include Cannibal Talk: Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Sea; Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth; Land Tenure in Village Ceylon; Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience; The Cult of the Goddess Pattini; Buddhism Transformed; The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology; and The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, which won the prize for most outstanding book in sociology and anthropology from the Association of American Publishers and the Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. The Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience Contents Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction Book 1. THE VISIONARY EXPERIENCE: Theoretical Understandings The Awakened Buddha and the Buddhist Awakening Time and Space in Visionary Experience Critique of the Cogito: The Buddha, Nietzsche, and Freud Daybreak: The Space of Silence and the Emergence of Aphoristic Thinking Schreber and the Pictorial Imagination Book 2. MAHAYANA: Salvific Emptiness, Fullness of Vision Hinge Discourse: The Movement Toward Mahayana and the Rise of Theistic Mysticism Introducing Tibetan Treasure-Seekers: Visionary Knowledge and Its Transmission Picturing the Tibetan Cosmos The Waking Dream in a Buddhist Text on Illusion Ambivalence, Fakery, and the Validation of the Buddhist Vision The Tibetan Dream-Time and the Dissolution of the Self Book 3. THE COSMIC “IT”: The Abstract Being of the Intellectuals Plotinus: The Mystical Reach of the Absolute Plotinus and the Buddha: The Discourse on the Ineffable Secular Spirituality in the Metaphysics of Physicists Book 4. PENITENTIAL ECSTASY: The Dark Night of the Soul Showings: The Christian Visions of Julian of Norwich Dryness: Psychic Realities and Cultural Formations in Female Visionary Religiosity Replenishment and Rapture: The Case of Teresa of Avila Analysis: Deep Motivation and the Work of Culture in Christian Penitential Ecstasy Historical Tableaux: The Participatory Visualizations of Margery Kempe Margery’s Grief: A Postpartum Depression and Its Transformation Book 5. CHRISTIAN DISSENT: The Protest Against Reason Hinge Discourse: The Occult Worlds of Early European Modernity William Blake and the Theory of Vision The Cure at Felpham Aside: The Work of the Dream-Ego Back to Blake and the Wide Realm of Wild Reality Blake’s Peers: Poetry and the Dreaming Book 6. THEOSOPHIES: West Meets East The Visionary Travels of Madame Blavatsky: Countering Enlightenment Rationality The Production of Psychic Phenomena The Cold Snows of a Dream: The Death of Damodar Mavalankar Colonel Olcott and the Return to Euro-rationality Epistemic Breaks: Blavatsky and the Hindu Consciousness Book 7. MODERNITY AND THE DREAMING Hinge Discourse: Dream Knowledge in a Scientific Weltanschauung A Postscript to Freud: Rethinking Manifest Dreams and Latent Meanings Carl Gustav Jung and the “Natural Science” of Oneiromancy On Synchronicity Jung’s Psychosis: When the Dead Awaken The Tower: The Dark Night of Jung’s Trance Illness Book 8. CONTEMPORARY DREAMING: Secular Spirituality and Revelatory Truth Lucid Dreaming: Visionary Consciousness and the Death of God Eroticism and the Dream-Ego Edwin Muir: A Myth Dreamer of Death and Transcendence ENVOI—INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY: The Ethnographer’s Dream and the Return of the Vultures Notes Glossary Index

While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, Gananath Obeyesekere believes an even richer knowledge is possible through a bold confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, he fearlessly pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding.

Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term "dream-ego" through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Columbia University Press

economic Structuralists Use A Broad, Systemwide Approach To Understanding Development, And This Textbook Assumes A Structuralist Perspective In Its Investigation Of Why A Host Of Developing Countries Have Failed To Grow At 2 Percent Or More Since 1960. Sensitive To The Wide Range Of Factors That Affect An Economy's Strength And Stability, The Authors Identify The Problems That Have Long Frustrated Growth In Many Parts Of The Developing World While Suggesting New Strategies And Policies To Help Improve Standards Of Living.

after A Survey Of Structuralist Methods And Post-world War Ii Trends Of Global Economic Growth, The Authors Discuss The Role That Patterns In Productivity, Production Structures, And Capital Accumulation Play In The Growth Dynamics Of Developing Countries. Next, It Outlines The Evolution Of Trade Patterns And The Effect Of The Terms Of Trade On Economic Performance, Especially For Countries That Depend On Commodity Exports.

the Authors Acknowledge The Structural Limits Of Macroeconomic Policy, Highlighting The Negative Effects Of Financial Volatility And Certain Financial Structures While Recommending Policies To Better Manage External Shocks. These Policies Are Then Further Developed Through A Discussion Of Growth And Structural Improvements, And Are Evaluated According To Which Policy Options& Mdash;macro, Industrial, Or Commercial& Mdash;best Fit Within Different Kinds Of Developing Economies.

"Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term 'dream-ego' through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry."--Book jacket Economic structuralists use a broad, systemwide approach to understanding development, and this textbook assumes a structuralist perspective in its investigation of why a host of developing countries have failed to grow at 2 percent or more since 1960. Sensitive to the wide range of factors that affect an economy's strength and stability, the authors identify the problems that have long frustrated growth in many parts of the developing world while suggesting new strategies and policies to help improve standards of living. After a survey of structuralist methods and post-World War II trends of global economic growth, the authors discuss the role that patterns in productivity, production structures, and capital accumulation play in the growth dynamics of developing countries. Next, it outlines the evolution of trade patterns and the effect of the terms of trade on economic performance, especially for countries that depend on commodity exports. The authors acknowledge the structural limits of macroeconomic policy, highlighting the negative effects of financial volatility and certain financial structures while recommending policies to better manage external shocks. These policies are then further developed through a discussion of growth and structural improvements, and are evaluated according to which policy options-macro, industrial, or commercial--best fit within different kinds of developing economies. Economic structure, policy, and growth Growth and policy space in historical terms Growth rates, economic structures, and energy use Open economies and patterns of trade Patterns of net borrowing in open developing economies Financial structures Macroeconomic policy choices Growth and sectoral policy Stylized facts and policy alternatives.