New study of the Christian Topography, a sixth-century illustrated treatise, and its intellectual milieu.

Never before has IT played such a significant role in transforming organisations, of all sizes. And yet it continues to be dominated by technical jargon, acronyms and irrelevant detail. This book cuts through all of the confusion, and presents a clear, direct, solution based focus on the key IT/business issues facing every company and business leader today. This book contains the complete, first fifteen months of David Taylor's highly acclaimed Computer Weekly column - Inside Track. With a reputation for cutting through the hype, David focuses on the IT/business and personal leadership agenda, covering such issues as: * The key IT issues for the boardroom - in business language * Actions to win in the new world of e-commerce - and get started today * The successful new IT leader - the skills you and your company need to employ * Quick solutions to long-term IT problems - they can be resolved * How to motivate your people, and slash staff turnover - save a fortune on recruitment costs * True IT/business alignment - add real value to your bottom line David Taylor is a leading authority on IT in business. He is President of the association of IT Directors, Certus, a reference partner to the UK Government's National Audit Office, and a registered expert with several global research companies. His overall aim is to enable people and organisations to be all that they can be, through the combination of world class technology, true leadership and the release of human potential. With a prestigious background across companies such as Rolls-Royce, Allianz and Cornhill, David has a driving, positive passion for IT in business, and a reputation for championing IT Directors who want to achieve board level positions in their organisations. David and his team work with FTSE 200 companies on winning in the new internet economy, with entrepreneurs starting new dot com ventures, and with CEOs, advising on the qualities they should seek in their IT leaders. A regular writer, television presenter and speaker, David gives keynote, leadership and IT presentations throughout the world. He lives with his wife, Rosalind and their two children, Anthony and Olivia, in Surrey.

Spiritual teacher Dr. David R. Hawkins offers practical advice for readers to reach advanced states of consciousness in their everyday lives, so that they can enjoy being in the world, but not of it. It seems the further the world advances the harder it becomes to lead a life that is centered in love, grace, and compassion. That is, until now . . . In this book, based on the popular audio program of the same name, Dr. Hawkins shares his timeless insights on why certain spiritual experiences only provide temporary enlightenment. In the process, he explains how to turn normal activities into your spiritual practice. Readers will learn: · How to help raise the consciousness of the world · Why being accountable for choices and actions is central to one's spiritual evolution · How to make sure that you’re taking responsibility for your life and choices · What to embrace—and what to avoid—in our technologically advanced world · How to avoid getting overly stressed by change · And much more This extraordinary program captures Dr. Hawkins’s startling brilliance, infectious humor, and deep understanding of walking the awakened path as a citizen of the world.

Though New Zealand author Janet Frame (1924–2004) lived at a time of growing dissatisfaction with European cultural models, and though her (auto-)biography, fiction and letters all testify to the fact that a direct encounter between herself and Buddhism occurred, her work has, so far, never been examined from the vantage point of its indebtedness to Buddhism. It is of the utmost significance, however, that a Buddhist navigation of Frame’s texts should shed fresh light on large segments of the Framean corpus which have tended to remain obdurately mysterious. This includes passages centering on such themes as the existence of a non-dual world or a character’s sudden embrace of a non-ego-like self. Of equal significance is the conclusion one then draws that this unharnessed world which human beings are often unable to embrace has always been right under their nose, for, whenever the aspect of the intellect that filters perceptions into mutually excluding categories fails to function, he or she finds a place of subjective arrival in, and sees, this supposedly unknowable ‘beyond’. Thus, possibly against the grain of mainstream criticism, this study argues that Janet Frame constantly seeks ways through which the infinite and the Other can be approached, though not corrupted, by the perceiving self, and that she found in the Buddhist epistemology a pathway towards evoking such alterity.

A memorable new literary voice traces the story of American fundamentalism through the transcendent lens of his own family experience. Brett Grainger's grandparents, members of the Plymouth Brethren, believed devoutly that Jesus would return and rapture them to Heaven; when he didn't, their lives collapsed. Grainger's father, having fled from his parents' extremism, underwent his own conversion in later life. Grainger himself journeyed away from faith, and yet, two decades later, found a different way back to the church, seeking a balance between extremes. Using those family pathways as a catalyst, he offers a beautifully written, clear-eyed chronicle of fundamentalism in American history, revealing it to be far richer and more complex than the images the word evokes today. Grainger explores seven major themes, including the devotion to biblical literalism, an idea nourished by the writings of nineteenth-century preacher John Nelson Darby; the experience of sudden, personal transformation known as "getting saved"; and the paradox of creation science. Above all, he illuminates the unrelenting pursuit of purity that divides believers into separatists, who shun the sullied compromises of politics, and activists, who fight to bring society under the yoke of divine law-all in the name of being "in the world but not of it." Writing with a passion and conviction born of personal experience, Brett Grainger brings new insight into American history, and invaluable understanding for anyone interested in our country's religious tradition.

David Hume is often considered to have been a sceptic, particularly in his conception of the individual's knowledge of the external world. However, a closer examination of his works gives a much different impression of this aspect of Hume's philosophy, one that is due for a thorough scholarly analysis. This study argues that Hume was, in fact, a critical realist in the early twentieth-century sense, a period in which the term was used to describe the epistemological and ontological theories of such philosophers as Roy Wood Sellars and Bertrand Russell. Carefully situating Hume in his historical context, that is, relative to Aristotelian and rationalist traditions, Fred Wilson makes important and unique insights into Humean philosophy. Analyzing key sections of the Treatise, the Enquiry, and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Wilson offers a deeper understanding of Hume by taking into account the philosopher's theories of the external world. Such a reading, the author explains, is not only more faithful to the texts, but also reinforces the view of Hume as a critical realist in light of twentieth-century discussions between externalism and internalism, and between coherentists and foundationalists. Complete with original observations and ideas, this study is sure to generate debates about Humean philosophy, critical realism, and the limits of perceptual knowledge.

‘The whole hive is really pervaded by the life of love. The individual bees relinquish love but develop it instead throughout the hive. And so we start to understand bee existence if we recognize that the bee lives in an air, an atmosphere, that is entirely impregnated with love.’ From time immemorial, human culture has been fascinated by bees. Mythic pictures and writings tell of our close affinity and connection with these complex creatures, as well as the inestimable value of honey and wax. In recent years, bees have come to prominence again in the media, with reports of colony collapse and the wholesale demise of bee populations, forcing us to awaken to the critical role they play in human existence. Rudolf Steiner’s unique talks reveal the hidden wisdom at work in bee colonies. Speaking in Switzerland in 1923, in response to concerns from beekeepers amongst his local workforce, Steiner delivered a series of addresses whose multi-layered content, structure and wording is unparalleled. In The World of Bees, editor Martin Dettli, a longstanding beekeeper, uses Steiner’s seminal bee lectures as the main framework of the book, augmenting them with further relevant passages from Steiner’s collected works. Dettli also provides substantial commentaries on the texts, placing them within the context of contemporary beekeeping. This new anthology is an essential handbook for anyone interested in beekeeping or the indispensable work that bees do for humanity. It features chapters on the origins of bees, human beings and beekeeping, the organism of the hive, the social qualities of bees, their relationship with wasps and ants, plants and elemental beings, the efficacy of honey, bee venom, as well as scientific aspects such as silica and formic acid processes and a critique of modern beekeeping.