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Death, Our Last Illusion: A Scientific and Spiritual Probing of Consciousness through Death

Published on January 13, 2011 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Death, Our Last Illusion: A Scientific and Spiritual Probing of Consciousness through Death by Susan Shore is now available from The Humanities imprint.

Is there anything beyond death? And is it worth having?

This book begins with the latest science on the Near-death Experience, then explores the passage through physical death to the states of conscious being beyond. These states ~ often blissful ~ are outlined by our great religious traditions, and detailed in Tibetan Buddhism and the perennial philosophy, particularly in the Alice Bailey books. Traditional sources are compared with findings of science and medicine, and psychology from Jung and Piaget to Wilber. Later chapters examine clinical studies by reputable psychiatrists and psychologists: These were undertaken after they accidentally took subjects into ‘the place the Tibetans call the Bardo’ ~ the state after death /between lives.

In a letter to acclaimed Australian journalist Pamela Bone, author Susan Shore wrote:

You say in your book Bad Hair Days that the brain is the only thinking mechanism, therefore consciousness cannot survive death. In my book, I examine a mass of evidence…to the contrary…that is ignored. This is due to its rejection by a materialistic science that can be as inflexible (Dawkins is its apologist) as the religion it often deplores.

Death, Our Last Illusion examines the science of dying (in studies in the Lancet etc.), and discovers that hypoxia, drugs, religious training etc., have no explanatory power as causes of the Near-death Experience.’ (23 August 2007).

Pamela Bone, whose book Bad Hair Days was about the passage to her own death, found the book ‘wonderful…deeply thoughtful…beautifully written. It has made me think again’, she concluded.

John May reviews ‘Trial by Ink’

Published on November 29, 2010 in Book. 0 Comments

picture-1 From The Generalist:

One of the many delights of doing The Generalist is being contacted out of the blue by readers all over the world. Particularly when it is a writer of the calibre of Yahia Lababidi, who wrote:

‘It is heartening to discover your thoughtful Generalist, so full as it is with curiosity and compassion. Please allow me to take this opportunity to briefly introduce myself and my work.’

He was kind enough to send me a copy of his book of essays ‘Trial by Ink’ [Common Ground Publishing] which I have been devouring over the last week. What a stimulating pleasure that has been.

Yahia is of Lebanese/Egyptian extraction, born in 1973, currently living in Washington DC. He is a man of deep thoughts who, unusually, is best known for his aphorisms, which have been widely reprinted.

These stem from his background. He writes; ‘In the culture I come from, a saying is a magical thing. It was something people were always happy to hear or recite…I grew up with grandmothers, both maternal and paternal, who spoke almost exclusively, at times, in sayings. A string of proverbs. Singy-songy, witty-wise remarks. When I found myself writing such things, it made sense for me to share them.’

‘Trial by Ink’ is his first collection of essays. He informs us in the intro that the form was minted by de Montaigne and the word derives from the French essai, which means ‘trial’. He views his essays as ‘ a sort of mental autobiography and a collection of judgements…a catalogue of interests, concerns, possessions, exorcisms and even passing enthusiasms’ written over a seven-year period.

Yahia Lababidi talks about Trial by Ink

Published on November 22, 2010 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

getattachment An Interview with Yahia Lababidi by Caroline Leavitt:

I happen to love essays, and Yahia Lababidi’s Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing, is a dazzling collection. Lababidi is the author of Signposts to Elsewhere, which was selected for Books of the Year in 2008 by The Independent. He’s also been published in AGNI, Cimarron Review, World Literature Today, and several anthologies. Thank you, Yahia, for answering my pesky questions.

What made you write this particular book?

Trial by Ink was composed over a seven year period, so my reasons for writing changed over the years. At times, I just needed to get something off my chest, to unburden myself. Other pieces were me thinking through a subject to try and better understand it, or even discover how I truly felt about it. But, generally speaking, I’d like to think I wrote this book to communicate my enthusiasms, the things I care about in literature and culture, in the hopes that others would, too.

How does being Arab-American inform your work?

Well, a third of this book concerns itself directly with the Middle East and its contradictions bristling side by side: sex and celibacy, superstition and tradition, etc… I do think Art can be a form of cultural diplomacy, and would like to think that a more careful examination of another culture, from an insider’s point of view, might lead to a more sympathetic understanding of it.

Having made the US my home lately, I find that I am more engaged now with teasing out the truths and contradictions embedded within American culture and trying to inspect the national character at closer range. But, what informs my work most I believe are the books I’ve read, and most of those are neither Arab nor American, but more likely European (in English translation).

Your subjects in this collection of essays range from Michael Jackson to Ramadan TV, and it’s been said that you entice the reader, who might prefer not to be here, but is persuaded otherwise by you. How do you think you do such alchemy?

Not quite for me to say… even I knew;) But, I’m certainly happy to hear it! I can say that if one is implicated in the story they are investigating, the reader picks up on that sense of involvement and discovery. In a sense, the essays in this book are all personal trials; whether I happen to be writing about pop culture or spirituality, I feel an intimacy for the subject matter and suspect I stand to learn something essential about myself. Also, I must say, I’ve been lucky in this undertaking – even in the few journalistic, commissioned pieces included here – that I have only written about what I wanted to reflect upon.

Read More…

Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing

Published on July 30, 2010 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing by Yahia Lababidi is now available from The Humanities imprint.

There are at least three aspects of this collection of essays which are both singular and superb. First, not surprisingly, the prose is incisive and yet evocative; Lababidi moves from the aphoristic and the epigrammatic to the suggestive, the lightly hinted, the nuanced, with impressive ease. This is a rare gift, more associated with European writers than with American. This striation of tone, of register, of mood, gives a sense of surprise to his sentences; they spring back to the touch. Sometimes they even seem surprised at themselves.

Secondly, Lababidi covers a huge range of subjects. From Nietzsche to belly-dancing, indeed! What is impressive, however, is not so much the range itself as the aplomb with which he disports himself there. Kafka, Kierkegaard, Montaigne, et al., rub shoulders with Michael Jackson and “Ramadan TV.” But I like the fact that he don’t blur distinctions either. These writers or entertainers are treated on their own terms. I’m not a fan of Michael Jackson, or of Susan Sontag, for that matter, but Lababidi persuades me to an unexpected sympathy with them, at least while I’m reading his essays. The ability to reveal or to create affinities is the secret gift of the greatest essayists, in my view, and Lababidi does this impressively often in Trial by Ink. There is also a finely calibrated sense of the absurd, the whimsical, the slyly surrealistic throughout. And this has the unexpected but quite genuine effect of strengthening and emphasizing not only the literary but the moral seriousness of the essays.

Finally, there is something which is difficult to express: this book has a distinctive flavour, the unmistakable flavour of a sensibility. This unites the essays, however disparate in topic. But this “taste” is what draws the reader into the book and entices him from one essay to the next. The book becomes an exploration on which the reader embarks. This is one of the elements in collections of essays I most appreciate–this secret invitation au voyage which the author holds out–and Lababidi does this extremely well–with courtesy as well as cunning. The reader is like Bartleby (in my favourite of these essays) who prefers not to but here is persuaded otherwise.”

—Eric Ormsby, author of Ghazali (Makers of the Muslim World)

Feminist Press

Published on March 5, 2010 in Book. 0 Comments

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From It’s Nice That:

Feminist Press is an independent nonprofit publisher based in New York. Founded in 1970, they have a wide variety of material that ranges from fiction to feminist theory. Promoting freedom of expression and social justice, they now own a great collection of books from around the world and from diverse racial and class backgrounds, as well as a section on African Women’s Writing.

Recommended reading, Waiting, a novel by Goretti Kyomuhendo.

Reclaim Your Self: The Complexity of Identity

Published on February 16, 2010 in Book. 0 Comments

Reclaim Your Self: The Complexity of Identity by Andrew Malionek is now available from The Humanities imprint.

Socrates once asked the simple question – “Who am I?” For thousands of years, philosophers, theologians, scientists and psychologists have contemplated the answer to this question. In a modern world filled with distractions, an individual is more prone to disillusionment. Self-knowledge, the foundation for physical, spiritual, and mental growth, nurtures confidence and builds a defense system against despair. Awareness and knowledge of the self is crucial to proper overall development.

The author examines definitions of the self given by physicalists, scientific realists and the cognitive method of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. who defines the self as a rational and spiritual being. Examples of near-death experiences and temporal lobe epilepsy will be used to help explain the different theories.

The author thoroughly discusses the importance of self-knowledge in every dimension of human growth and encourages the reader to reclaim the desire to know the self.

Only A God Can Save Us

Published on October 15, 2009 in Book. 0 Comments

Only A God Can Save Us: Heidegger, Poetic Imagination and the Modern Malaise by Henk J. Van Leeuwen is now available from The Humanities imprint.

In the shadow of a looming global environmental catastrophe humanity is at an unprecedented crossroad where crucial and difficult decisions must be made about how we are to live. This book questions where the desire for certainty and mastery is taking us and argues that reliance on technology and information alone cannot avoid an ecological catastrophe. It attends to an existential poverty of spirit that, it suggests, is at the root of contemporary problems. It tackles the association between a metaphysical void, with its growing sense of meaninglessness, and the ecological predicament.

While many find the consolations of traditional religion increasingly untenable, a hunger for a spiritual dimension in life persists. In a rare excursion, yet one which continues the uniquely human search for a transcendent ground of being, the book explores an unfamiliar kind of thinking which shelters and liberates the poetic imagination that counters the modern malaise. In a scholarly yet accessible account van Leeuwen uncovers from Martin Heidegger’s middle/late philosophy an extraordinary pathway of transformative thinking where this imagination is nurtured.

Continue reading ‘Only A God Can Save Us’