An Introduction to Awareness

by James M. Corrigan

Can Reason entertain a Reality different than that of the Material world that pervades our thought today? Are we wrong about the form of the world and the life that we are experiencing? Starting from the one incontrovertible truth - that we are present - the author develops a view of reality that encompasses all of human experience and in the process shows how what we call physical reality and what we call spiritual reality are not two things as they are seen today - that there is only one Reality and it is nondual Awareness. This book puts the question of what reality is to the ultimate test by removing every one of our unfounded assumptions about it.

Genres: Philosophy

212 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2006

About the author

The goal of my writing is to promote an unconstrained science founded upon an inclusive cognitive frame that allows us to go beyond the inherited limitations of mechanical materialism. To advance that goal, I present a novel paradigm for understanding ourselves and our world, which is called Responsive Naturing, to replace the physical causality that modern science currently reduces all explanations to. This novel paradigm developed out of my lifelong contemplative practice using a singular meditation technique, called Great Responsiveness Meditation, which I also write about and teach.

Responsive Naturing provides a sound foundation for veridical science, so that both science and spirituality can be founded upon a common understanding of ‘how things work’. This empowers us in ways that our disjointed and parochial schools of thought lock us out of completely, opening up new possibilities, and methods of looking at problems, and finding solutions, across disciplines.

I have been an entrepreneur, inventor, an activist with a lifelong involvement in environmental and compassionate campaigns, a local elected official serving a community of 8,000, an award-winning university lecturer, philosopher, contemplative scientist, and a daily meditator for over 60 years. I have a doctoral-level education in Philosophy and will be defending my doctoral dissertation in 2024 at Stony Brook University. As well, I have had a 30 year career in Software Design focused on automated software development, where I was first confronted with the unsolvable enigma — from within our current cognitive frame of mechanical materialism — of human creativity.

I strongly believe that only by changing how we think about our problems, and how we relate to each other and our shared world, will we be able to overcome the extreme challenges that we face today. We can't fix problems with the old way of thinking and acting that caused those problems to begin with.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Finding truth is an intuitive process, but so too is reasoning." (p. 125) Intuition, properly understood, is a kind of gateway of to awareness. I like the author's balancing act between objective awareness and intuition. There is valuable wisdom here.