:: On Vision And Being Human ::

On Vision And Being Human Cover Image

 

ON VISION AND BEING HUMAN
Exploring the Menstrual, Neurological and Symbolic Origins of Religious Experience

340 Pages: B&W with 30 Illustrations
Release Date: 1st November 2015
Book Size: 15.5cm x 23.5cm
Genre: Research / Philosophy
ISBN-10: 1326337580
ISBN-13: 978-1326337582
Price: £16.95 excluding P&P

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I am delighted to announce the publication of my book, entitled 'On Vision and Being Human: Exploring the Menstrual, Neurological and Symbolic Origins of Religious Experience'. This essay explores the problems presented by visionary experience in the modern world, and utilises symbolic cognition as a way to come to a new understanding of the human being in the twenty-first century as living in two different worlds, one of scientific evidence and one of imaginative colour. This beautifully-presented 340-page book features 30 beautiful monochrome visionary illustrations, as well as endnotes and detailed annotations.

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Visionary and religious experiences are ubiquitous among human beings, but why do we often experience them as emerging from a hidden reality beyond the senses, a world that is ‘Other’? Why should we believe in the existence of deities and supernatural beings despite the mundane evidence of our own eyes which tells us otherwise? Why do we as intelligent primates ascribe any importance to these experiences and ‘imaginary’ realities at all?

This creative and speculative thesis, from an artist and poet with both scientific and visionary experiential backgrounds, seeks to answer these questions in a wholly new way, gazing not only into the substance of visions themselves but also by exploring the humanist, neurological and evolutionary social realities that may have given rise to our propensity for these transformative and deeply meaningful voyages inwards.

Centred around the idea of symbolic cognition as a fundamental organising principle of human experience, a diverse series of musings upon the nature of reality, human neurology and consciousness, as well as the evolutionary origins of ritual behaviour and interpersonal trust, uncovers a Darwinian origin for our expectations of hidden worlds as part of a wider holistic human image which draws from twenty-first century understandings of who we are and where we have come from.

At times strictly scientific and at times wildly imaginative, Bruce seeks to transcend many of the artificial boundaries we have constructed for ourselves, to arrive at a refreshingly new and delightfully playful image of what it means to be alive as a human being in the modern world. This book is the first in a forthcoming series of explorations towards a more holistic system of thought, perception and experience, entitled Visionary Humanism.

:: Selected Page Previews ::

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