Dark Pool of Light, Volume One

by GROSSINGER, RICHARDKRIPAL, JEFFREY J.

• ISBN13: 9781583944349
• ISBN10: 1583944346
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2012-08-21
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Summary

In books like Embyogenesisand Embryos, Galaxies, and Sentient Beings, author Richard Grossinger brought together the subjects of biological embryology and the esoteric process of human consciousness becoming embodied ("The embryo is the universe writing itself on its own body"). In Dark Pool of Light, his latest creation, Grossinger weaves neuroscience-based behaviorism and the phenomenology of "being" and reality together with psychological and psychospiritual views of "that single thing which is most difficult to understand or vindicate: our own existence." In 2008 Grossinger began studying with noted psychic teacher John Friedlander, who helped him refine his vision of cerebral and somatic awareness to still-subtler levels. " Dark Pool of Lightbegan unnamed in the journals of my psychic work with John Friedlander," says Grossinger, "not so much a record of actual practices as insights from them and extensions out of them." An expansive inquiry into the nature of consciousness, the series examines the tension between the scientific and philosophical, and psychic views of the same phenomena, and includes "field notes" and experiential exercises that invite the reader to make their own explorations. Dark Pool of Lightis divided into three volumes, which the author calls "movements"; the allusion to music is apt, for the book unfolds in a truly symphonic manner. In Volume 1, Grossinger begins with the scientific and philosophical, analytical views of reality, exploring the science, parascience, philosophy, and psychology of consciousness. Covering topics as diverse as current discoveries in neuroscience and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, the book gives a broad overview of the bodies of knowledge concerning the nature of reality and consciousness.

Table of Contents

Volume 1: The Neuroscience, Evolution, and Ontology of Consciousness
Foreword	p. xi
Foreword	p. xiii
Introduction	p. xix
What the Fuck Is This?	p. 1
The Scientific View of Reality and Consciousness	p. 10
Consciousness: Everything and Nothing	p. 43
Degrees of Consciousness: Protoconsciousness, Preconsciousness, and the Freudian Unconscious	p. 63
The Spectra of Consciousness	p. 63
Protoconsciousness to Consciousness	p. 65
Sigmund Freud's Theory of Consciousness	p. 75
Dreams to Psychoanalysis	p. 84
The Unconscious	p. 93
Systemic Consciousness: Nonconsciousness and the Loss of Consciousness	p. 96
Qualia or Zombies?	p. 127
Consciousness as an Emergent Phenomenon: The Psycholinguistics and Phylogenesis of Meaning	p. 178
The Origin of Life	p. 178
The Evolution of Consciousness	p. 186
The Birth of the Symbol	p. 214
Ontogeny and Phylogeny	p. 230
The Quantum Brain	p. 243
The Ontology and Cosmology of Consciousness	p. 282
The Subtexts of Science	p. 322
Deleted Scenes	p. 337
Endnotes	p. 349
Index	p. 385
About the Author	p. 416
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