Spirit Science And Health

From meditation to reciting mantras or praying, spirituality is more and more often being recognized for its beneficial effects on health. In this volume, a team of experts from across disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, public health, and pastoral care offer reader-friendly chapters showing the state of the art in understanding this connection. Chapters include attention to special populations such as youth, HIV/AIDS patients, cancer patients, and those in hospice care. Contributors, all members of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University, aim to use the scientific understanding of the spirituality/health connection to promote better health for the general public. From meditation to reciting mantras or praying, spirituality is more and more often being recognized for its beneficial effects on health. In this volume, a team of experts from across disciplines including psychology, medicine, nursing, public health, and pastoral care offer reader-friendly chapters showing the state of the art in understanding this connection. Chapters include attention to special populations such as youth, HIV/AIDS patients, cancer patients, and those in hospice care. Contributors, all members of the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University, aim to use the scientific understanding of the spirituality/health connection to promote better health for the general public. One focus of this volume is to show easy ways to incorporate spiritual practices in an environment that is often multicultural, multi-religious, stressful, hurried, and secular.

We propose that the major health crises in the United States are not about heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, or obesity. Instead they are about violence, prejudice, social isolation, and runaway materialism. Unfortunately, traditional health promotion continues to "attack" our problems by declaring war on disease, obsessing about epidemiologically based risk factors and frightening people about what they eat, how much they weigh, and what they like to do or not do. These approaches rarely help and often create an atmosphere of anxiety and confusion. This book is an invitation to health professionals to rethink our current understanding of health, illness, and the process of healing. It covers topics that are rarely addressed in health promotion including the history of the human species, the Scientific Revolution, quantum physics, and the latest mind/body/spirit research. While it may seem as if this information is only marginally related to health, we believe it provides a critical foundation for the truly holistic approach to health promotion we describe in detail in this book. It is time to re-create our profession and set a daring new course to improve the quality of the human experience.

From the Preface. THIS little work has been prepared in great haste, amid a multitude of pressing duties. A selection has been made not quite at random from an immense mass of manuscript which*has been steadily accumulating for more than a year under the reporter's hands. As the best reporters are not usually quite accurate and as extemporaneous speeches, even though delivered under inspiration, often contain some sentences which have too local, immediate and personal a bearing to render them valuable for permanent preservation, it has been found necessary to review the whole of the matter at first selected for this book with the utmost care, so as to eliminate as far as possible the less important and include the more important material. With a view to covering as much ground as possible in the fewest number of words, large portions of some lectures have been entirely omitted, and parts of others have been introduced wherever consecutiveness of ideas would permit. In a few instances a lecture appears almost word for word as it was delivered, but for reasons already stated, about twenty lectures have been employed in the formation of the twelve here presented. The publisher cannot hope to have succeeded to any great extent in making a very valuable book for study and reference, still without in any degree overestimating the value of its contents, it is only true to declare that the essential sum and substance of the teachings given in the classes will be found in the following pages. Those whose minds are fertile as well as receptive, those to whom one idea suggests another and who have the gift of tracing conclusions to their sources, and following thought further than its outward dress can convey it, will doubtless be able to successfully treat themselves and others, if they carefully read and meditate upon the contents of this volume, as a perfect system of treatment is definitely outlined in its pages. The main object of the work is, however, to stimulate inquiry, awaken earnest thought, and remove prejudice and misconception. To the liberal, fair-minded and aspiring elements in the world's population, this little work is earnestly and lovingly dedicated and addressed. The prayer of the publisher is, that it may stimulate in some degree the noblest aspirations of men, women and children, to help each other and assist in some slight measure in turning the thoughts of old and young alike from the perishable unrealities of sense to the true realities of spirit. As the author is not a dogmatist, claims no right, and has no wish to force others to his conclusions, the hope is not expressed that his words shall be regarded as a criterion for the efforts of others. The reader's sincere friend, W. J. Colville

It is often assumed that there are two ways of interpreting the world: a rational scientific way, or an irrational religious way. Spiritual Science offers a third alternative: a spiritual view of reality that transcends both conventional science and religion, and answers many of the riddles that neither can explain. The standard model of science has had little success in explaining such areas as human consciousness, the connection between the mind and the body, altruism and ‘anomalous’ phenomena such as near-death experiences, psi phenomena (such as telepathy) and spiritual experiences. But from a ‘panspiritist’ point of view – which sees spirit or consciousness as a fundamental essence of reality – it is possible to make sense of all these things. Steve Taylor puts forward the evidence for a spiritual view of reality, drawing on the insights of philosophers, physicists, mystics, as well as spiritual traditions and indigenous cultures. He systematically shows how a ‘panspiritist’ view can explain many puzzling aspects of science and the world, including evolution and the origins of life, and a wide range of other phenomena such as quantum physics, the placebo effect, precognition and neuroplasticity. Spiritual Science offers a new vision of the world that is compatible with both modern science and ancient spiritual teachings. It provides a more accurate and holistic account of reality than conventional science or religion, integrating a wide range of phenomena that are excluded from both. After showing how the materialist worldview demeans the world and human life, Spiritual Science offers a brighter alternative – a vision of the world as sacred and interconnected, and of human life as meaningful and purposeful. Spiritual Science explains how the standard materialist model of reality developed, and turned into a belief system. This belief system can only function by denying (or explaining away) a whole range of phenomena that are part of human experience. It is possible to be scientific without adopting this belief system – in fact, it is much more rational to do so.