Joel Kramer - The Passionate Mind Revisited: Expanding Personal and Social Awareness

Copyright 2009 by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. Copyright 2009 cover image Passionate Minds by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

The Passionate Mind Revisited: Expanding Personal and Social Awareness is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Kramer, Joel, 1937

The passionate mind revisited : expanding personal and social awareness / Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-1-58394-814-9

1. Self-perception. 2. Awareness. 3. Thought and thinking.

4. Meditation. 5. Emotions. I. Alstad, Diana, 1944 II. Title.

BF697.K683 2009

128dc22

2009020382

v3.1

Dont go to the movies. Put down your magazine. Shut off your computer. Read this book. It will show you what is really happening now. Being able to understand what the worlds big changes are really about and what that means to you and your children is the real news of our todays. Accessible and profound. Read it and weep, or clap with joy. This truly is our future and, more importantly, our choice. Jeremy Tarcher, founder of Tarcher Books

In this timely, brilliant, and original tour de force, Kramer and Alstad, two of the seminal thinkers of our time, have given us a remarkable gift: a hopeful, unsentimental analysis of both how we got here and where hope for a viable future lies. If you read one book this year, let it be The Passionate Mind Revisited. It will change your life. Jeffrey B. Rubin, author ofThe Art of Flourishing

The Passionate Mind Revisited is a fearlessly rational engagement with subjects we all too often accept as beyond rational thoughtemotion, spirituality, relationships, and life in a time of conflicting realities and an endangered planet. The final chapter on Evolution takes on intelligent design and hard-nosed scientific materialism and offers an eminently sensible alternative view of the great mystery: intelligence without design. An important book. Deserves to be widely read. Walter Truett Anderson, author ofAll Connected Now

By bridging aspects of intelligent design with evolution authors Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer probably havent solved the American culture wars. But they might have. Guernica / a magazine of art & politics(FromGuernicasintroduction to its online adaptation of the last chapter ofThe Passionate Mind Revisited, Intelligence Without Design)

Interesting, broad-ranging, and helpful book about the human situation. Whether it is for you depends on your interest in philosophy, human behavior, and personal development. For philosophers, Kramer and Alstad are miraculously clear, and lead the reader by meticulous steps to some surprising conclusions. Diane Johnson, author ofLe Divorce

In 1974 The Passionate Mind took me on a journey into my deepest self; it made me dance in the dark. Now, in The Passionate Mind Revisited, the entire worldthe cosmos in which that self residesis explored. The investment of the 60s and 70s in freeing ourselves is now turned toward a globe in need of freedom from hunger, poverty, and violence. The Passionate Mind Revisited is a critical tool for social, political, and ethical transformation. Frances Kissling, past president of Catholics for Choice

First released in 1974, The Passionate Mind explored the functions of the mind and how to divorce perception from cultural conditioning, memory, and secondhand knowledge. The book showed a new way to be clear, aware, and radically present in the world. It was, in short, a revolutionary manifesto for self-exploration and personal thinking. [The Passionate Mind Revisited] reads like a survival guide for the new world ordera manual on how to live consciously and well in a world that seems to be collapsing around us. Help[s] us enhance self-inquiry [by asking] lifes most important questions. A well-reasoned exploration of the human condition. Yoga Journal

This book will change the way you look at thingsperhaps everything. Nobody does a more masterful job of folding back the fabric of our individual, cultural, and human mindsets and revealing denials, blind spots, hypocrisies, and paradoxes than Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer. They open hidden doors to rooms in your house you never knew were there to both delight and disturb. These pges bristle with brilliant, incisive insights and surprising and important truths. Kevin W. Kelley, author ofThe Home Planet

A welcome infusion of clarity, brilliance, and inspiration that will very likely blow your mind. This profound book is a philosophical, intellectual, and spiritual Rosetta Stonenot a glib compilation of simplistic answers but a critical frame of reference that challenges the way we think about the nature of thinking itself. The Passionate Mind Revisited is essential reading for anyone trying to get their bearings amid confusing and contradictory claims and ideas that have long been promoted about the meaning of self-awareness and social consciousness. If you intend to delve into any other discussion of the powerful social, religious, psychological, ecological, and ethical changes confronting us, read this book first or you may miss the crucial context that will help you make sense of it all. Keith Harary, PhD, executive director of the Institute for Advanced Psychology

The phrase looking inward has become anathema to many social reformers who emphasize external action. In turn, this knee-jerk activism is criticized by those advocating inner development. A framework that includes both approaches is provided in this brilliant book. Its rare to read a book permeated by so many challenging and provocative insights. Stanley Krippner, coauthor ofPost-Traumatic Stress Disorder

A breakthrough in spiritual realism, pioneering in its confrontation of lifes perennial tough judgment calls, and courageous in its intolerance of the crypto scientific pseudo-spiritual gloss, this book will meet you where you really live.