Spirituality and Dialectics is a passionate and rigorous argument against nihilism and a manifesto for the party of meaning and hope. It demonstrates how we can ground principles of meaning and value, against the aesthetic and intellectual hegemony of the enlightenment--culminating most currently through postmodernity, as a basis for the critique of all present injustice. What emerges is a vision of a new social order that permits the full development of human social capacities.

What is Destiny? What is Karma Yog? Why do bad things happen to good people? What does the soul look like? Dialectics is a method of investigating into the nature of the Truth, through discussions in the form of questions and answers. Many a times, resolution of the doubt creates an experience that is nothing short of an epiphany, a sudden enlightenment, or an intuitive leap of realization. The satisfaction of having a troubling question answered after many years of intellectual discomfort is much like the gratification of taking off a tight shoe after wearing it all day, except that the latter is a physical relief while the former is an intellectual deliverance. Over the last 25 years, Swami Mukundananda has been asked hundreds of thousands of questions from people across the world, on diverse topics related to religion, spirituality and God. These discussions with devotees, seekers and learners are now available as a source of guidance for sincere seekers worldwide. The book is a compilation of answers to some of the most challenging questions regarding spirituality, the goal of life, philosophy, the holy scriptures, and more.

Du Bois's Dialectics is doubly distinguished from other books on Du Bois because it is the first extended exploration of Du Bois's contributions to new critical theory and the first book-length treatment of his contributions to contemporary black radical politics and the developing discipline of Africana Studies. With chapters that undertake ideological critiques of education, religion, the politics of reparations, and the problematics of black radical politics in contemporary culture and society, Du Bois's Dialectics employs Du Bois as its critical theoretical point of departure and demonstrates his (and Africana Studies') contributions to, as well as contemporary critical theory's connections to, critical pedagogy, sociology of religion, and reparations theory. Rabaka offers the first critical theoretical treatment of the W. E. B. Du Bois_Booker T. Washington debate, which lucidly highlights Du Bois's transition from a bourgeois black liberal to a black radical and revolutionary democratic socialist. This book is primarily directed at scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students working in and associated with Africana Studies, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Cultural Studies.

Religion and Dialectics carries to a new level, the critical dialogue between religious belief, dialectical thinking, and socialist practice, which has given birth, among other things, to the theology of liberation and to a new Marxist sociology of religion. On the one hand, Anthony Mansueto argues that, contrary to the claims of Marx and the dialectical materialist tradition, religion is fundamentally a force for human development and social progress and that atheism, far from being integral to the socialist project, in fact helps to legitimate the market order. On the other hand, Mansueto sharpens considerably the dialectical critique of Christianity, asking just what elements of this tradition are conducive to human development and social progress, and which are not.

We live in intelligent projected universe, guided by means of information, by Cosmic Intelligence and Divine Spirit. The antagonist forces, principles and mechanisms, which interfered in creation, have been only the tools, manipulated by Creator Intelligence to achieve His project. Human intelligence and psychic phenomena appear by the interaction of soul with the neuronal computer of brain. A new image of divine creation, based on matter, meta-information and Divine Spirit arises. Materialist Dialectics must be replaced by Psycho-Spiritual Dialectics.

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call Election.

Identifying an important subgenre of horror literature, this book argues that Catholic horror fiction works distinctively to inspire the philosophical, theological, and spiritual imaginations of readers from all backgrounds and faith traditions. Hurley analyzes four novels that are foundational to the genre of Catholic horror: J.K. Huysmans’s Là-Bas (1891), Robert Hugh Benson’s The Light Invisible (1903) and A Mirror of Shalott (1907), and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971). Putting these texts in conversation with the classical liberal arts, the book shows how Catholic horror fiction coheres in a commitment to dialectical thinking that aims both to resolve—and to accommodate—contrasting world views. Given its use of this methodology, Catholic horror literature is uniquely positioned to draw readers into a contemplative mindset. In presenting ghost stories, tales of possession, and narratives about evil, Catholic horror invites audiences to confront and reflect on profound existential questions—questions about the line between life and death, the nature of being, and the meaning of reality.

Spirituality, education and society: An integrated approach argues the value of spirituality in education as a way to address the lived experiences and personal knowledge of students, with the goal of creating a more holistic, transformative educational process. This edited volume has a wide array of viewpoints which all point to the importance of spirituality in the authors’ personal lives, their communities and society at large. Spirituality is conceptualised as a base from which to challenge dominant forms of knowing, while in the process being able to center and engage with an important aspect of the student that has been missing from current evaluations – their spiritual selves.Within the diversity of this volume it becomes evident that spirituality cannot be confined to a singular definition and that educators must be willing to create spaces to foster spiritual growth and exploration if we are to break away from the commoditized, disempowering system that is so dominant today. This edited collection is a valuable resource for students, practitioners, educators and administrators who wish to engage in transformational schooling. Its multidisciplinary approach engages ideas around critical pedagogy, sociology of education, and inclusive schooling. There is an increasing need for exploring novel paradigms of studying education in the context of the dynamics that straddle social, economic and technological processes that have come to characterize the world in recent years. This book is a timely contribution in this respect as its focus transcends hitherto applied approaches that depend largely on western orientation. The book breaks new grounds in studying education and society that find significant relevance in societies that are marginalized by the dominant western understanding. The authors draw from the rich heritage of spirituality that is akin to the non-western social paradigms to develop a rigorous but creative concept of schooling. I am sure practitioners, researchers and students of education will find it a valuable source of practical and theoretical information that would widen their horizon of understanding of sociology of education. - Tom Mongare Ndege, PhD, Moi University, Kenya The editors have compiled a brilliant collection of essays. Each piece of scholarly work shows how spirituality is a paramount part of our everyday lives and is connected to teaching, learning, living and healing. This is a timely and most relevant work that is sure to spur critical dialogue and discussion. This collection shows that while the spirit may be wounded it can never be broken. - Erica Neeganagwedgin, PhD, University of Toronto

The argument presented in this book is that the recent ‘spiritual’ trajectory of Roy Bhaskar’s work, upon which he first embarked with the publication of his From East to West, undermines the fundamental achievements of his earlier work. The problem with Bhaskar’s new philosophical system (Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism or simply Meta-Reality), from the critical-realist Marxist perspective endorsed here, is that it marks both a departure from and a negation of the earlier concerns of Bhaskar to develop a realist philosophy of science and under-labour for an emancipatory materialist socio-historical science. The end-result is a meta-philosophy which is irrealist, speculative, under-theorized, internally self-contradictory, and which cannot provide philosophical guidance to liberatory social practices. In opposition to theist ontological logics more generally (including the rather more rational theism presented by Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier and Doug Porpora), the argument of this book is that the earth-bound materialist dialectics of the classical Marxist tradition, and the naturalistic humanism these dialectics under-labour on the terrain of socio-historical being, offer a much more promising way forward for critical realist theory and for liberatory politics and ethics.

The revelatory experience or in common parlance, “hearing God’s voice,” is prized by Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians for its contribution to spirituality, yet remains one of the most problematic areas of church life. Theological tensions and pastoral fallout have plagued the experience since the time of the New Testament. Drawing on the tools of practical theology, this book presents the findings of a unique and ground-breaking study among Australian Pentecostals. With a theological framework modelled on New Testament practice and undergirded by the accountability of the local church, many of the problems associated with revelatory experience can be addressed and the experience fully harnessed for kingdom purpose.