The universe of being is subject to changes in its periodical manifestations. Man is the little universe (Microcosm) made in the image of his creator, the Great Universe (Macrocosm). The matter composing the objects we see and touch, continually returns to its pre-primordial condition of purity and light, which no mortal eye can see or bear its radiance. The man of clay was the first human being to appear on earth, the animal kingdoms coming after him. Animals were “created” much later than Adam, and brought to him to be named. Their bodies have been formed out of the cast off atoms of human life-waves that preceded ours. The constitution of man is seven-fold: his Immortal Higher Triad (Divine Self or Spiritual Soul) is his True Individuality; his Lower Tetrad, overshadowed by the Divine Self, is the false individuality (I-ness or “personality”) or soul of the man of clay who, being of the earth earthly, his animal soul and body are perishable — though his molecules are thrown off for the benefit of lower kingdoms. Nirvana is an actionless yet impersonal subjective state, rooted in non-being, and a refuge against rebirth — but the nirvanee can no longer return to earth, should he change his mind. Nirvana is illusion for it does not exist for us. The immortality of Spirit is inculcated on the neophyte by the Hierophant, and realised during Initiation. At the solemn moment of death, no man can fail to see himself under his true colours, and no self-deception is of use to him any longer. Even when drowning, man follows with his mind’s eye the whole of his life marshalling past, with all its events (causes and effects) to the minutest detail, and sees himself as he truly is, in all his moral nakedness, unadorned by either human flattery or self-adulation.

The book contains popular expositions (accessible to readers with no more than a high school mathematics background) on the mathematical theory of infinity, and a number of related topics. These include G?del's incompleteness theorems and their relationship to concepts of artificial intelligence and the human mind, as well as the conceivability of some unconventional cosmological models. The material is approached from a variety of viewpoints, some more conventionally mathematical and others being nearly mystical. There is a brief account of the author's personal contact with Kurt G?del.An appendix contains one of the few popular expositions on set theory research on what are known as "strong axioms of infinity."

Published to accompany exhibition held at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 22/5 - 26/8 1996.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Famed historian of religion Mircea Eliade observes that even moderns who proclaim themselves residents of a completely profane world are still unconsciously nourished by the memory of the sacred. Eliade traces manifestations of the sacred from primitive to modern times in terms of space, time, nature, and the cosmos. In doing so he shows how the total human experience of the religious man compares with that of the nonreligious. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the history of religion, but its perspective also emcompasses philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. It will appeal to anyone seeking to discover the potential dimensions of human existence. -- P. [4] of cover.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.