What is the meaning of life? Where does everything come from? Why is anything? In Authentic Knowing, Imants Baruss shows us how we might transform ourselves so that we can come closer to answering these existential questions. Baruss argues persuasively that our knowledge is limited by the interpretations of experiences provided by the society around us. These include the materialistic explanations belonging to a traditional scientific worldview, which can account for neither the nature of matter nor anomalous phenomena, such as near-death experiences. However, authenticity, the effort to act on the basis of one's own understanding, can form the basis for answers to existential and scientific questions.

The Authentic Dissertation is a road map for students who want to make their dissertation more than a series of hoop-jumping machinations that cause them to lose the vitality and meaningfulness of their research. Students and tutors are presented with practical guidance for the kind of alternative dissertations that many educators believe are needed to move Doctoral and Master’s level work beyond the limitations that currently stifle authentic contributions for a better world. Drawing on his Cherokee/Creek ancestry and the Raramuri shamans of Mexico the author explores how research can regain its humanist core and find its true place in the natural order once more. Four Arrows provides a degree of "credibility" that will help graduate students legitimize their ideas in the eyes of more conservative university committees. This inspiring book will also help academics who sincerely want to see these alternative forms but are concerned about the rigor of "alternative" dissertation research and presentation. The featured dissertation stories tap into more diverse perspectives, more authentic experience and reflection, and more creative abilities. They are, in essence, spiritual undertakings that Honour the centrality of the researcher’s voice, experience, creativity and authority Focus more on important questions than on research methodologies per se Reveal virtues (generosity, patience, courage, respect, humility, fortitude, etc.) Regard the people’s version of reality The goal of this book is not to replace the historical values of academic research in the western tradition, but to challenge some of these values and offer alternative ideas that stem from different, sometimes opposing values.

"With lucidity and elegance, Zukav explains that we are evolving from a species that pursues power based upon the perceptions of the five senses -- external power -- into a species that pursues authentic power -- power that is based upon the perceptions and values of the spirit. He shows how the pursuit of external power has produced our survival-of-the-fittest understanding of evolution, generated conflict between lovers, communities, and superpowers, and brought us to the edge of destruction. Using his scientist's eye and philosopher's heart, Zukav shows how infusing the activities of life with reverence, compassion, and trust makes them come alive with meaning and purpose. He illustrates how the emerging values of the spirit are changing marriages into spiritual partnerships, psychology into spiritual psychology, and transforming our everyday lives. The Seat of the Soul describes the remarkable journey to the spirit that each of us is on."--Amazon.com.

According to John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Donald Schon, and Allan Collins, school activities, to be authentic, need to share key features with those worlds about which they teach. This book documents learning and teaching in open-inquiry learning environments, designed with the precepts of these educational thinkers in mind. The book is thus a first-hand report of knowing and learning by individuals and groups in complex open-inquiry learning environments in science. As such, it contributes to the emerging literature in this field. Secondly, it exemplifies research methods for studying such complex learning environments. The reader is thus encouraged not only to take the research findings as such, but to reflect on the process of arriving at these findings. Finally, the book is also an example of knowledge constructed by a teacher-researcher, and thus a model for teacher-researcher activity.

As the population of Latinx students grows in U.S. public schools and our nation seeks to address systemic inequities, racism, and xenophobia, this counternarrative provides inspiration to those wishing to reinvigorate schools and build a more caring and just world. This book documents the innovative practices, successes, and struggles of a full-service community high school serving mostly low-income, Latinx youth in an economically depressed California city. Based on 4 years of qualitative research, the author examines how educators, families, and community members established and sustained a social justice school that immersed youth in authentic cariño—a holistic blend of familial, intellectual, and critical care. By nurturing students’ moral, social, personal, and academic development, the school produced college-bound graduates ready to be agents of change in their own lives and in their communities. This case study synthesizes and extends scholarship on color-conscious, healing-centered educational care and offers rich portrayals of praxis that illuminate how schools can equip marginalized youth to thrive. “Although directed toward Latinx students, this work will benefit all students! Curry has provided us with a masterpiece.” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison “A must-read for teachers, researchers, and practitioners searching for a deeply authentic model for transforming schooling.” —Shawn Ginwright, San Francisco State University

Offering the perspectives of some of the most respected thinkers in transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies, this book explores the farther reaches of knowing, both ourselves and the world, described here as transpersonal, post-conventional, or spiritual. The contributors' work is presented from their own authentic knowing, whether through personal narrative or through conceptualization informed by such knowing. They explore what "knowledge" can consist of as it stretches beyond conventional objective observation and analysis. Contributors include Arthur Deikman, Jorge Ferrer, Fred J. Hanna, Tobin Hart, Zia Inyhat Khan, Peter L. Nelson, Kaisa Puhakka, Donald Rothberg, Jenny Wade, Michael Washburn, and John Welwood.

In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western culture that have characterized its development. Focusing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas.