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www.JoelDiana.com or JoelKramer-DianaAlstad.com |
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About The Passionate Mind |
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The Passionate Mind: A Manual for Living Creatively with One’s Self contains Joel Kramer's timeless talks demonstrating his unique approach to the Yoga of Mind by enabling people to experience it. This form of mental yoga teaches you to look within, expanding consciousness through self-seeing and self-understanding. It is a meditation in action that can be done whenever, wherever, alone or in relationship. The book deals from a new vantage point with the perennial issues of living: the nature of belief, fear, desire, pleasure, freedom, love, time, death, meditation, the unconscious, violence and evolution. NORTH ATLANTIC BOOKS $10.95 Distributed by Random House www.northatlanticbooks.com 800-733-3000 112 pages, ISBN 0-938190-12-1 |
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Review Excerpts “Intriguing topic discussed with eloquence.... Stimulating and mind-stretching.... Subjects of elemental and universal interest: belief, pleasure, freedom, fear, death, time, analysis and the unconscious, images, love, sexuality, meditation, evolution” – L.A. Times “Joel Kramer, in his own unique way, shares direct ways of helping you to experience being both the Known and the Knower.” – Alan Watts “The Passionate Mind held my interest throughout, which for me is unusual. It presents basic verities in a way that anyone could assimilate, with beauty and simplicity.” – Anais Nin “A passionate and fascinating thinker” – Marin Independent Journal “A manual of magnitude for today's living” – New York Culture Review “Perhaps Joel Kramer's singular merit lies in his content which is so unusual, so startling, as to grip the mind and shake its foundations. He deals with simple, even commonplace subjects which have been abused again and again. Only he brings fresh impact to their understanding.” -- Gordon Sherman, former Chair of the Board, CA School of Professional Psychology __________________________________ The Passionate Mind: A Manual for Living Creatively with One’s Self 112 pages, $10.95 ISBN 0-938190-12-1 __________________________________ WATCH FOR: THE PASSIONATE MIND REVISITED Expanding Personal & Social Awareness North Atlantic Books, summer 2009 |
The Passionate Mind The Passionate Mind: A Manual for Living Creatively with One’s Self contains Joel Kramer's timeless talks demonstrating living meditation by enabling people to experience it. This Yoga of the Mind (jnana yoga) teaches you to look within, expanding consciousness through self-seeing and self-understanding. It is a meditation in action that can be done whenever, wherever, alone or in relationship. The book deals from a new vantage point with the perennial issues of living: the nature of belief, freedom, fear, desire, love, meditation, violence and evolution. The Passionate Mind suggests that the reader let the words carry one wherever they do. Many readers shift into a broader way of observing what goes on inside themselves and in the world. The language is simple, examining what each of us can be an expert in—what it means to be a human being from one’s own unique perspective. By using thought to explore itself, Joel leads people in a living inquiry, which is also an expression of his own inner inquiry concerning the basic mechanisms of thought and how it creates conditioning. As the mind turns inward upon itself to discover how it works, it can see the way beliefs, fear and desire filter and bias perception. The Passionate Mind does not present a philosophy, a theory, beliefs or content that can be "mastered." Rather it gives the reader an experience of a process of self-inquiry by exploring the way thought itself functions, filters and structures experience, perception, emotions and ideas. This meditative frame of mind is concerned with observing oneself in daily life rather than serving as a vehicle toward some ideal way to be. It is a meditation grounded in living, not a path to follow or a prescribed technique with predicted results, such as “becoming more spiritual.” Ideas of what growth is are limited by what you are now. If instead we are interested in experiencing what we are in a curious, attentive manner, including any judgments, comparisons, agendas, liking or disliking that may occur, we can sometimes move beyond these into something more objective or truly new and unknown. So Yoga of the Mind is not primarily concerned with quieting thought, but rather with non-evaluatively seeing how one’s mind works, including the values it has and judgments it makes. Though thought does construct goals, judgments and the like, one can observe them in a goal-less fashion. Replacing such ideals as silencing thought or transcending ego with a real curiosity about how one actually works, minimizes effort and conflict. Through awareness of the mind’s mechanical aspects, one can perceive the nature and limits of thought. This very seeing can move one out of the mind's habits. Clarity about the dynamics and functions of thought allows the possibility of springing out of personal and cultural conditionings, subjectivity and patterns. Being truly interested in “what is” in the living moment contains its own momentum. “Seeing clearly moves one—a movement into newness and the unknown, which is where growth and creativity lie.” * * * * * * * * The Passionate Mind, based on transcripts of Joel’s 1968-74 yoga seminars, was first published by Celestial Arts (1974-81). In 1982 upon reading it, Richard Grossinger, president of North Atlantic Books, offered at once to publish it, realizing it's a classic that should remain in print. He later published The Guru Papers, also still in print. Dora Jane Cornwall, the illustrator of The Passionate Mind and creator of Memry the Dragon, was Joel's partner of many years when the book was first published in 1974. Her on-line gallery is at www.doracornwall.com. The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power (co-authors Joel & Diana) continues the thread of examining the mind’s workings, this time with the focus on social influences—especially how individuals and society manipulate fear and desire to maintain power. It unmasks authoritarianism in ideals and ideologies that we take for granted, including traditional spiritual frameworks and their unlivable ideals of purity and selflessness. Since fear, desire and belief—also topics of The Passionate Mind—are at the root of authoritarian mental control, the two books are useful complements to each other. |
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Copyright . Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. All rights reserved.
