Prayer...meditation...speaking in tongues. What do these spiritual activities share and how do they differ? Why do some people believe in God, while others embrace atheism? From the ordinary to the extraordinary, beliefs give meaning to the mysteries of life. They motivate us, provide us with our individual uniqueness, and ultimately change the structure and function of our brains. In Born to Believe, Andrew Newberg, MD, and Mark Waldman reveal -- for the very first time -- how our complex views, memories, superstitions, morals, and beliefs are created by the neural activities of the brain. Supported by groundbreaking original research, they explain how our brains construct our deepest convictions and fondest assumptions about reality and the world around us. Using science, psychology, and religion, the authors offer recommendations for exercising your brain in order to develop a more life-affirming, flexible range of attitudes. Knowing how the brain builds meaning, value, spirituality, and truth into your life will change forever the way you look at yourself and the world.

    The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

    This collection of essays and lectures spans his career, from his first essay on Zen Buddhism in 1955 to his final seminar, given only weeks before he died in 1973. The last essay The Practice of Meditation is written and illustrated in his own hand.

    Most of us have unfinished business that might make us feel like we walk around dragging a heavy ball with a chain connected to our ankle. When you declutter and possibly downsize, you can free yourself of weighty matters that tie you down physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.Lighter Living explains why you might want to simplify your home and your life. It shows you how to declutter and then organize what you keep. Finally, you are given a vision for lifelong decluttering and how it can lead to well-being and peace of mind.

    Runners of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels can learn to maximize their performance by supplying the brain with the right feedback. Based on Fitzgerald's eight-point brain training system, this book will help runners:- Resist running fatigue - Use cross-training as brain training - Master the art of pacing - Learn to run in the zone - Outsmart injuries - Fuel the brain for maximum performancePacked with cutting-edge research, real-world examples, and the wisdom of the world's top distance runners, Brain Training for Runners offers easily applied advice and delivers practical results for a better overall running experience.

    In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.

    

    The text covers the neuroanatomy that medical and other healthcare students need, with expanded coverage of neurophysiology and inclusion of clinical content providing real-life application of neuroanatomy and neurophysiologic concepts to clinical neurologic disorders. Its readability and enhanced full-color illustrations make it a favorite among both students and faculty.Provides a single-author approach for a more consistent, readable text.Contains summary statement headings to help you find what you're looking for within the text.Provides an outline introducing each chapter to help students organize and stay focused as they learn.Includes appealing four-color, computerized three-dimensional images of the brain and brain structures fully integrated with the text.Complements an Electronic Image Bank that is also available separately.Includes more coverage of neurobiology and neurophysiology.Gives more clinical content, including many images depicting neurologic disorders.Features an expanded section on higher cortical function.Features an expanded section on learning and memory.Contains a new chapter on the development, maintenance, and repair of neural connections-an explosive area of research in neuroscience.Supplies a glossary of key terms.Replaces many of the older figures with new, computer-generated illustrations.

    The narcissist provides the direct and no-nonsense explanations and answers to the questions which matter most to you. The narcissist manages to keep a hook in you by leaving you with unanswered questions. These questions prevent you from gaining understanding, make you susceptible to the pull of the narcissist in the future and cause you untold anguish and anxiety. Not any more. A range of incisive questions covering the narcissistic spectrum of behaviours have been posed by those who have been on the receiving end of narcissistic behaviour. Real questions posed by those who know exactly what it is like to be held in the grasp of the narcissist. Real answers provided by the narcissist himself which will provide understanding, enlightenment and freedom.

    Guiding us through the strange and fascinating workings of the subatomic realm to create a new model of human consciousness, the author addresses enduring philosophical questions. Does the new physics provide a basis by which our consciousness might continue beyond death? How does the material world (for instance, ugly inner cities) impinge upon our sense of self? Is there a subatomic wellspring from which our creativity, our empathy with others, and our feelings of unity with the inanimate world originate?Most important, Zohar shows how the vitality of the new physics combats the alienation and fragmentation of twentieth-century life, and replaces it with a model of reality in which the universe itself may possess a type of consciousness, of which human consciousness is one expression.

    

    It draws on extensive interviews with Kissinger, as well as 150 other sources, including Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In addition, it makes use of many of Kissinger's private papers. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this century's most colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his twilight years as a globe-trotting business consultant.

    Under favorable circumstances, this process results in emotional healing, a radical shift in values, and a profound awareness of the mystical dimension of existence. For some, these changes are gradual and relatively smooth, but for others they can be so rapid and dramatic that they interfere with effective everyday functioning, creating tremendous inner turmoil. Unfortunately, many traditional health-care professionals do not recognize the positive potential of these crises; they often see them as manifestations of mental disease and repsond with stigmatizing labels, suppressive drugs, and even institutionalization.In The Stormy Search for the Self, Christina and Stanislav Grof, the world's foremost authorities on the subject of spiritual emergence, draw on years of dramatic personal and professional experience with transformative states to explore these "spiritual emergencies," altered states so powerful they threaten to overwhelm the individual's oridinary reality. This book will provide insights, assurances, and practical suggestions for those who are experiencing or have experienced such a crisis, for their families and friends, and for mental-health professionals. It is also a valuable guide for anyone involved in personal transformation whose experiences, though generally untraumatic, may still at times be bewildering or disorienting.

    this is one of those rare books that will change your beliefs - and in doing so will change your life. tHE ANt AND tHE FERRARI offers readers a clear, navigable path through the big questions that confront us all today. What is the meaning of life? Can we be ethical beings in today's world? Can we know if there is life after death? Is there such a thing as Absolute truth? What caused the Big Bang and why should you care?

    Everything we think and everything we choose to do alters our brain and fundamentally changes who we are, a process that continues until the end of our lives. Few people think of the brain as being susceptible to change in its actual structure, but in fact we can preselect the kind of brain we will have by continually exposing ourselves to rich and varied life experiences. Unlike other organs that eventually wear out with repeated and sustained use, the brain actually improves the more we challenge it. Most of us incorporate some kind of physical exercise into our daily lives. We do this to improve our bodies and health and generally make us feel better. Why not do the same for the brain? The more we exercise it, the better it performs and the better we feel. Think of Restak as a personal trainer for your brain—he will help you assess your mental strengths and weaknesses, and his entertaining book will set you to thinking about the world and the people around you in a new light, providing you with improved and varied skills and capabilities. From interacting with colleagues to recognizing your own psychological makeup, from understanding the way you see something to why you’re looking at it in the first place, from explaining the cause of panic attacks to warding off performance anxiety, this book will tell you the whys and hows of the brain’s workings. Packed with practical advice and fascinating examples drawn from history, literature, and science, Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot provides twenty-eight informative and realistic steps that we can all take to improve our brainpower.