Jaspreet Singh

Hector Jaime Oropesa

aasta Haukland

Jayden

Alokym ya Bassa

Joseph Greer

Catalina Olmos

George Balaskas

Ojasw Upadhyay

Taylor Robinson

Carly Hylton

Daniel Mariani

To read Hermann Hesse's fairy tales is to enter a fabulous world of dreams and visions, philosophy and passion. This landmark collection contains twenty-two of Hesse's finest stories in this genre, most translated into English here for the first time. Full of visionaries and seekers, princesses and wandering poets, his fairy tales speak to the place in our psyche that inspires us with deep spiritual longing; that compels us to leave home, and inevitably to return; and that harbors the greatest joys and most devastating wounds of our heart. Containing all the themes common in Hesse's great novels Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian—and mirroring events in his own life, these exquisite short pieces exhibit the same mystical and romantic impulses that contribute to the haunting brilliance of his major works. Several stories, including "The Poet," "The Fairy Tale About the Wicker Chair," and "The Painter," examine the dilemma of the artist, torn between the drive for perfection and the temptations of pleasure and social success. Other tales reflect changes and struggles within society: in "Faldum," a city is irrevocably transformed when each resident is granted his or her fondest wish; in "Strange News from Another Planet," "If the War Continues," and "The European," nightmarish landscapes convey Hesse's devastating critiques of nationalism, barbarism, and war. Illuminating and inspiring, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse will challenge and enchant readers of all ages. A distinguished and historic publication, this fine translation by Jack Zipes captures their subtlety and elegance for decades nto come.

The Dhammapada (Pāli; Prakrit: धम्मपद Dhammapada; Sanskrit: धर्मपद Dharmapada) is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. The original version of the Dhammapada is in the Khuddaka Nikaya, a division of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism.The Buddhist scholar and commentator Buddhaghosa explains that each saying recorded in the collection was made on a different occasion in response to a unique situation that had arisen in the life of the Buddha and his monastic community. His commentary, the Dhammapada Atthakatha, presents the details of these events and is a rich source of legend for the life and times of the Buddha.

I have a passionate hatred for William Burroughs. I think even his fans have to concede that he's a degenerate piece of shit. I admit my prior experience with him consists of 5 pages of Naked Lunch and a couple biographies of various sorts, none of which fail to mention the pedophilia and him murdering his wife (I'm from Detroit, don't think for a second I buy his bullshit story), not that I'd hold that against him when rating this book.  I went into this book expecting it to be about heroin abuse and gay sex, you know some fun light reading, instead it turns about to be a sober, heartbreaking tale of profound universal human loneliness: "In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it, you cannot complain."  The fact that this book is great somehow only makes me hate him more.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------Alright Burroughs, I don't like you and you don't like me, but I found this for .50 cents today so I'm giving you one more shot to redeem yourself . . . Don't Fuck This Up!

The Perennial Philosophy is defined by its author as "The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds." With great wit and stunning intellect, Aldous Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains them in terms that are personally meaningful.An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley"The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions."With great wit and stunning intellect—drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam—Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.

"Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever. . . . You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now."—from Become What You Are  In this collection of writings, including nine new chapters never before available in book form, Watts displays the intelligence, playfulness of thought, and simplicity of language that has made him so perennially popular as an interpreter of Eastern thought for Westerners. He draws on a variety of religious traditions, and covers topics such as the challenge of seeing one's life "just as it is," the Taoist approach to harmonious living, the limits of language in the face of ineffable spiritual truth, and the psychological symbolism of Christian thought.

Except his book on flying saucers, read in childhood, this was the first book I ever read by C.G. Jung. The experience led to a programme of study which occupied the next eight years, leading me to change college majors (history to religious studies) and to proceed to seminary upon graduation.The occasion of the reading happened accidentally. Ed, an older friend from high school, had visited Grinnell from the University of Illinois, using my library card to check out books to study while in town. The Jung volume struck my fancy. I'd heard of him, of course, heard of him of an associate of Freud, someone important, someone one ought know about. Besides, the book looked impressive: thick, lots of notes, an understated black cover. I asked to borrow it and began to read.My immediate impression was that the author was extremely erudite, his text making reference not only to psychology, but to cultural anthropology, comparative religions, philosophy, theology, ancient history, the classics etc. I knew, generally, where it was pointing, but not very clearly what it was pointing at. Gnosticism, hermeticism, alchemy--all of which he took seriously--were little more than words referring to archaic and discredited belief systems to me. Besides, he seemed to be comfortable with Latin--which I'd taken, not very successfully, in high school--and with Greek--which was still "Greek to me." Reading Jung made me painfully aware of how vast my ignorance was. Rather than being depressing, though, I took it as a challenge.Additionally, some of what Jung wrote about seemed to indicate that he and the persons and traditions he was concerned about knew something about those "altered states of consciousness" that I was exploring on almost a weekly basis--and that they took it seriously, very seriously. In other words, some of the archaic belief systems which I had previously dismissed were here being represented as stemming from experiences similar to ones very familiar and, sometimes, disturbing to me.I finished this alluring and mystifying book, then, when next home in Illinois, began the long, expensive process of buying and reading every volume of The Collected Works as well as very many books about Jung, about his "analytical psychology" and about the various, often obscure, topics he addressed.

Disinformation's "wicked warlock" Richard Metzger gathers an unprecedented cabal of modern occultists, magicians, and forward thinkers in this large format Disinformation Guide. Just as Russ Kick's Guides focusing on secrets and lies from the mainstream media, government, and other establishment institutions rethought what a political science book could look like and whom it would appeal to, Book of Lies redefines occult anthologies, packaging and presenting a huge array of magical essays for a pop culture audience. Just some of the contents:An introduction by comics genius Grant Morrison, who also contributes a threepart article on Pop Magick.Mark Pesce, author of The Playful World, compares computer programming and spellcasting.Genesis POrridge, father of Industrial Music and Rave culture explains how samples in a rave song can have magical consequences.Paul Laffoley discusses his magical artistic strategies (Metzger compares Laffoley to Merlin the Magician).Magical Thinking--an extended excerpt from Daniel Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head.William Burroughs and the occult.Nevill Drury, Australia's most noted occult writer, tells of Dion Fortune, Austin Spare, and Rosaleen Norton.Why Does Aleister Crowley Still Matter?Donald Tyson's "The Enochian Apocalypse Working." Were the seeds of the end of the world sown in the Elizabethan era?.The first ever biographical essay on Marjorie Cameron, the fascinating character from Los Angeles' occult and beatnik scene.Hitler and the occult--Peter Levenda interview by Tracy Twyman.Robert Temple on how his book The Sirius Mystery's, controversial thesis (for which he was ridiculed) was proven by the Hubble telescope twentyfive years late.An exclusive Anton LaVey interview by Michael Moynihan, author of bestselling book Lords of Chaos.Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis, looks at H. P. Lovecraft's Magick Realism.

A new paradigm that delivers a genuine transformation of occultism. The author assumes no previous knowledge, only a willingness to explore what magick offers, yet its apparent to anyone with a background in the subject that Alan Chapman is drawing on a wide range of experience, from classical Crowleyean Magick, to eastern metaphysics, and back again to Discordianism and Chaos Magick. Chapmans writing-style is humorous, direct, seductively logical, and his enthusiasm for the benefits of magick is both tangible and infectious. The novice magician will indeed find themselves equipped to commence all sorts of magickal operations: trance work, enchantment, divination, and even some of the higher forms of spiritual development. To experienced magicians, Chapman offers a subtler challenge: he revitalises magick by cutting it free from the extreme relativism Chaos Magick bequeathed, provocatively redefining it as: the art, science and culture of experiencing truth.

Long considered the best single introduction to the Qabalah for magicians, the third edition of Israel Regardie's A Garden of Pomegranates is now better than ever, thanks to the extensive annotations and new material by Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero. Their work has made A Garden of Pomegranateseasier to understand, more complete, and up to date. It now includes over 300 pages of never-before-published information from two Senior Adepts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.Expands Regardie's definitive text into a practical manual for Qabalistic magic Includes pathworkings and guided visualizations for the 32 Paths of Wisdom Suggests a course of study for learning the Qabalah and incorporating its teachings into daily life Shows how to create your own personal Qabalistic mantra using gematria or Hebrew numerology Includes a technique for Rising on the Planes, so you can explore different Qabalistic worlds Features a Middle Pillar-style exercise for exploring and activating different parts of the soul Written by one of the most influential magical teachers of modern times and two of his personal students The Qabalah is the ancient system of Hebrew mysticism that is the foundation of Western magical and esoteric studies. Its primary symbol is the Tree of Life, a diagram that can aid in the study of the nature of the Universe, the essence of God, and the human mind, spirit, and soul. A Garden of Pomegranates is the clearest introductory guide on this subject.When Israel Regardie wrote A Garden of Pomegranates in 1932, he designed it to be a simple yet comprehensive guidebook outlining the complex system of the Qabalah and providing a key to its symbolism. Since then, it has achieved the status of a classic among texts on the Qabalah. The full annotations, critical commentary, and explanatory notes now make this book the ultimate single resource on the subject. The new material, including pathworkings, exercises, daily affirmations, rituals, meditations, and more, not only complement the original, full text included in this edition, but also make A Garden of Pomegranates indispensable for modern magicians.

A complete, advanced magical training course for the individual or for groups, with details of the author's magical order, an outline for setting up a temple, and instructions for carrying out the essential rituals of Chaos Magic. Includes a fresh look at aeonics, cosmogenesis, auric magic, and shadow time, as well as discloses the technical aspects of spells and equations. Illustrated. Appendices. References.

In 1971 Dr. Theodore Kaczynski rejected modern society and moved to a primitive cabin in the woods of Montana. There, he began building bombs, which he sent to professors and executives to express his disdain for modern society, and to work on his magnum opus, Industrial Society and Its Future, forever known to the world as the Unabomber Manifesto. Responsible for three deaths and more than twenty casualties over two decades, he was finally identifed and apprehended when his brother recognized his writing style while reading the 'Unabomber Manifesto.' The piece, written under the pseudonym FC (Freedom Club) was published in the New York Times after his promise to cease the bombing if a major publication printed it in its entirety.

The central theory of 'synchronicity' relies on an unfortunate combination of flawed research and misapplied statistics. Jung hems and haws but is never able to demonstrate that any acausal connection between events exists.The first problem is his reliance on research by Joseph Rhine, who coined the term 'parapsychology' to describe his studies. Throughout his career, Rhine's work was plagued with errors, and his ESP experiments were so poorly-designed as to be useless.To produce good results means setting up a good test. If there are flaws in the test, the results will be useless. When Rhine began to speak about the 'remarkable findings' in his research, he gained interest and his papers were widely read. Sadly, it was immediately clear to professionals in the field that the results were unreliable.Through the course of his early experiments, Rhine did not lay out a system by which the testing took place. He used a set of twenty-five Zener cards to test his subjects, but never specified any method by which the cards be randomized or presented. One of the most successful tests took place in a moving car.The expected outcomes were also underestimated, so that subjects reported as performing 'above chance' were in fact quite average. Each deck contained five symbols with five cards each, and Rhine reported this meant a one-in-five (20%) chance of guessing the correct card. However, the cards were not returned to the deck and reshuffled after each one was drawn, so every card after the first had a greater than 20% chance of being guessed.If the first card drawn is a star, the subject knows that only four star cards remain. That means the other symbols in the deck now have a greater than 20% chance of being drawn. If eight cards have been drawn and none of them are a cross, the subject now has a 30% chance of being correct if he guesses a cross, since there are more crosses remaining in the deck than any other card. The odds of guessing correctly increase for every card drawn.Beyond counting cards, it was later discovered that several of Rhine's assistants were helping certain subjects to cheat, that subjects were often allowed to handle the cards, and that the original cards were often thin enough that the symbols could be seen through them when backlit.After changing the tests to make cheating more difficult and getting rid of assistants caught cheating, Rhine never again produced any meaningful results. Sadly, he revealed his prejudice when he refused to publish any experiment that did not support his theories.He then tried to excuse his lack of evidence by the so-called 'Decline Effect', which is just another misunderstanding of how statistics operate. Imagine you roll a large number of dice, then get rid of any that roll five or lower. You continue rolling, and continue keeping only those that roll high. Eventually, you're down to a handful of dice. If you keep rolling them, they will average out.They were never super dice, after all, we just happened to decide to keep the ones that rolled high--which some of the dice were bound to do, by sheer chance. That's not an anomaly, it's our own selection bias. It's like someone who doesn't like red skittles, and so only eats the other ones, and then is surprised when the bag has only red skittles remaining by the end.Rhine did the same thing: he tested large numbers of people, and kept only those who scored highly. He was selecting only the data that confirmed his theory. Then, when he retested them, they averaged out. This is not a magic 'decline effect', it is the natural correction of his own selection bias averaging out over time.The fact that Jung did not recognize the flawed methodology throughout the experiments troubled me. A theorist needs to be able to recognize and avoid using flawed data, and the fact that Jung has so quickly embraced it suggests a lack of rigor in his own approach.Besides these contentious studies, Jung often relies on anecdotes--examples from his life, or from other people which suggest that coincidences are in some way important. For example, he remarks that one patient was telling of a dream she had about a beetle, at which point a beetle flew into the window of his office.Anecdotes are like metaphors: they are useful for illustrating an idea, but only a fool mistakes the illustration for the idea. One can 'burn the midnight oil' without actually having any oil at hand, and just because a man gets attacked by an escaped tiger in NYC, that is not evidence of an urban tiger epidemic. Beyond that, memory is an untrustworthy thing, and human beings assign more importance to events which confirm what they already believe, tending not to remember things that conflict with their beliefs.In this specific case, coincidences like the kind he describes are not actually uncommon. While it is unlikely that a bug would fly in while a woman spoke about bugs, that is only one of many coincidences that might have happened that day. If a person has a thousand small moments in a day where a coincidence might happen, then statistically, each person will experience a one-in-a-thousand coincidence every day.Given enough time, the coincidence actually becomes more likely to occur than not to occur. It is unlikely that a roulette wheel will land on seven if you spin it once. If you spin it a thousand times, it would be miraculous if it didn't eventually land on seven. With a world population of 6.8 billion, 6,800 people are experiencing a one-in-a-million coincidence right now.Unfortunately, Jung never overcomes either the flawed studies or the vague arguments which undermine his theory. He speaks back and forth at some length about various suppositions and possibilities, but never develops any convincing insight. A good piece of philosophy contains not only an interesting theory, but also presents the flaws and contradictions which that theory must overcome in order to be relevant. It is impossible to discuss the necessity of an idea without first dealing with the problems amassed against it. Only if its power and accuracy prove greater than these problems can the idea truly emerge as a workable concept. Jung never manages to cross this important threshold.It is clear that he has passion, and that there is a great desire within him to explore and understand, but this is simply not enough. He tells us that there have been many ideas throughout history which were considered unpalatable, which were rejected outright, and only accepted as truth later. He reminds us that it is vital to keep pushing the boundary--yet again he forgets statistics--for every great idea that was rejected for being before its time, there are ten or a hundred ideas which ended up being flat out wrong. The lesson of history is that the odds are against the radical idea. We might think of great successes like Kepler or Newton, who changed our conception of the world with radical notions--but both men also had passionate ideas which they worked on their whole lives, and which turned out to be baseless--for Kepler, the notion that the orbits of the planets were based on the platonic solids, and for Newton the study of alchemy.While reading, I had my own moment of synchronous coincidence, when Jung quoted Kepler's notion of 'Geometric Unity' as an example of a philosophy of synchronicity--despite the fact that it turned out to be incorrect. Mankind is better served by thinkers who work on likely theories rather than ones who chase white rabbits. Yet, I am not numb to the passion that drives a man who works to prove the impossible. There is a part of me that has always wanted magic to exist. A world with magic seems a more interesting and wonderful world. Part of the reason I am skeptical, the reason that I searched so hard for truth, for proofs, was that I wanted to believe. But a simple desire does not make reality:\
  "Do you want a piece of cake?""Yes!""Then have one.""I don't see it . . .""You aren't looking hard enough.""I've checked the whole kitchen and I still don't see any cake.""You just don't want the cake enough. If you really wanted the cake, you'd be eating it already.""But there isn't any cake here!""Well, you can't expect to find the cake with a negative outlook like that. Cakes don't respond well to negative energy.""I'm pretty sure that even if I wanted this cake more than I ever wanted anything, it still wouldn't be here.""What a hopeless cynic!"\
One of my favorite articles is a piece by Dr. Susan Blackmore, entitled 'Why I Have Given Up", which goes into great detail about how difficult it is to try to study unusual theories. She searched in vain for evidence of fantastical claims for a quarter century. In the beginning, she hoped they were true--that she would find something definitive, and that the way we look at the world might be changed forever. By the end, she had still not found a single shred of evidence.Believers attacked her. They said she didn't have an open mind. All the people who had contacted her over the years, sure that they had proof, blamed her when they couldn't demonstrate it. People have a passion for wondrous notions, even when there is nothing to suggest they might be true. It's important to have an open mind as a student of the world, but it's also important to make sure you don't open it so wide that your brain falls out.A place with unicorns and psychic powers where all things are connected and directed by fate seems exciting and interesting. Yet these things are only interesting because they are impossible. They are only fantastical because they do not exist. If they did exist, we would come to expect them. They would be normal to us, and we would no longer find them wondrous.Yet that would not decrease how remarkable they were. The ability to communicate one's thoughts remotely and immediately to a person across the world is terribly fantastical--yet it is something we can now do at a whim. It is no less fantastical to do it with a cellphone, rather than psychic energies, and the only reason the psychic power seems interesting is because we cannot do it. It is the lure of the thing we cannot possess.Instead of losing the self in the contemplation of things that are wondrous because they are impossible, why not contemplate things which are wondrous, but which are all around us all the time? Is it not fantastical that we can see and measure stars as they were countless years before our race was born? Is it not fantastical that we can comprehend the invisible particles which make up all substance in the world?God is a fantastical impossibility: contemplating him means withdrawing from the world and wishing for another existence. Natural laws are a fantastical reality: to contemplate them is to come closer to a grand understanding.If you were walking in the middle of the woods with a friend and came across an arched bridge of stone that gracefully spanned a deep ravine, it would be a beautiful and awing thing to behold. If you asked your friend where it came from, which would be the more fantastical answer: that the natural laws which govern the depositing and erosion of stone naturally created this wonder, or that some guy built it? And yet what is god besides the notion that 'some guy built it'?To me, the notions of gods, angels, psychic powers, magic, astrology, and all the rest do not make the world a more remarkable place, because they are all of man, not of the world. They are not explanations, they provide no understanding, and they indicate no grander existence. They are attempts to make the world more like us.We are programmed to see ourselves everywhere--we see a face in the light socket, we yell at the car for breaking down, we apply complex psychological motivations to our cat. What is god but the attempt to make the universe more like us--to make it living, breathing, thinking, moral, creative, thoughtful, emotional, and answerable? It allows us to pretend for a moment that we are important, that we are in control in some grand, real way. The man-shaped universe does not appeal to me. It is not necessary, nor is it remarkable. It does not make things grander and more wonderful, it makes it small and personal and simple. This world is already magical and fantastical to me. I already find it beautiful and surprising and beyond comprehension. To sit and study the tiny fraction of what we know and understand delights and overwhelms me. Why obsess over a world of false fantasies when there is a world of real, living, breathing miracles out there waiting for you, every day?When a thinker creates and inhabits an empty world of hopes and sympathies, he murders everything sublime and touching in life. It is a tragic thing to kill real wonder in the name of false ones.

In his last years, Mark Twain had become a respected literary figure whose opinions were widely sought by the press. He had also suffered a series of painful physical, economic, and emotional losses.The Mysterious Stranger, published posthumously in 1916 and belonging to Twain's "dark" period, belies the popular image of the affable American humorist. In this anti-religious tale, Twain denies the existence of a benign Providence, a soul, an after-life, and even reality itself. As the Stranger in the story asserts, "nothing exists; all is a dream."

Philosophy of Existence was first presented to the public as a series of lectures invited by The German Academy of Frankfurt. In preparing these lectures Jaspers, whom the Nazis had already dismissed from his professorship at Heidelberg, knew that he was speaking in Germany for the last time. Jaspers used the occasion to offer an account of the cultural and intellectual situation from which existentialism emerged as well as a summary of his own philosophy.The book serves three purposes today: it brings the many strands of the existential movement into focus; it provides an overview of Jaspers's own philosophical position; and it demonstrates by example that philosophy need not be irrational, antiscientific, journalistic, or homiletic in order to be existential and engage. In this short book Jaspers provides a corrective for the popular view of existentialism as a pessimistic, irrationalist philosophy. He maintains that it is, rather part of mainstream of Western philosophy--the form that philosophy has taken in our day.

Since its first publication in two volumes between 1918-1923, The Decline of the West has ranked as one of the most widely read and most talked about books of our time. In all its various editions, it has sold nearly 100,000 copies. A twentieth-century Cassandra, Oswald Spengler thoroughly probed the origin and "fate" of our civilization, and the result can be (and has been) read as a prophesy of the Nazi regime. His challenging views have led to harsh criticism over the years, but the knowledge and eloquence that went into his sweeping study of Western culture have kept The Decline of the West alive. As the face of Germany and Europe as a whole continues to change each day, The Decline of the West cannot be ignored. The abridgment, prepared by the German scholar Helmut Werner, with the blessing of the Spengler estate, consists of selections from the original (translated into English by Charles Francis Atkinson) linked by explanatory passages which have been put into English by Arthur Helps. H. Stuart Hughes has written a new introduction for this edition. In this engrossing and highly controversial philosophy of history, Spengler describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity. Guided by the philosophies of Goethe and Nietzsche, he rejects linear progression, and instead presents a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations. He argues that a culture blossoms from the soil of a definable landscape and dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities. Despite Spengler's reputation today as an extreme pessimist, The Decline of the West remains essential reading for anyone interested in the history of civilization.

Widely regarded as one of the most profound critics of our time, René Girard has pursued a powerful line of inquiry across the fields of the humanities and the social sciences. His theories, which the French press has termed "l'hypothèse girardienne," have sparked interdisciplinary, even international, controversy. In The Scapegoat, Girard applies his approach to "texts of persecution," documents that recount phenomena of collective violence from the standpoint of the persecutor--documents such as the medieval poet Guillaume de Machaut's Judgement of the King of Navarre, which blames the Jews for the Black Death and describes their mass murder.Girard compares persecution texts with myths, most notably with the myth of Oedipus, and finds strikingly similar themes and structures. Could myths regularly conceal texts of persecution? Girard's answers lies in a study of the Christian Passion, which represents the same central event, the same collective violence, found in all mythology, but which is read from the point of view of the innocent victim. The Passion text provides the model interpretation that has enabled Western culture to demystify its own violence--a demystification Girard now extends to mythology.Underlying Girard's daring textual hypothesis is a powerful theory of history and culture. Christ's rejection of all guilt breaks the mythic cycle of violence and the sacred. The scapegoat becomes the Lamb of God; "the foolish genesis of blood-stained idols and the false gods of superstition, politics, and ideologies" are revealed.

Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. This landmark study of Western thought takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions many pieces of conventional wisdom. The book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's monumental History of Western Philosophy, "but Gottlieb's book is less idiosyncratic and based on more recent scholarship" (Colin McGinn, Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2001.

"Was ist Metaphysik?" ist der Titel der öffentlichen Antrittsvorlesung Martin Heidegger an der Universität Freiburg i.Br. am 24. Juli 1929. Der Vortrag stellt einen wichtigen Übergang zwischen der fundamentalontologisch-existenzialen Konzeption von „Sein und Zeit“ und dem seinsgeschichtlichen Denken in Heideggers Spätwerk dar. In diesem Vortrag bestimmt Heidegger das "Nichts" als die Grundfrage der Philosophie, die den Menschen in seiner Existenz als immer schon in der Metaphysik stehendes Wesen eigentlich angeht: "Das menschliche Dasein kann sich nur zu Seiendem verhalten, wenn es sich in das Nichts hinaushält". Erst wenn die Frage nach dem Nichts als dem Grund des Daseins eigens gefragt wird, kann der Mensch den "Einsprung" in das Dasein vollziehen.

Still haunted by that fateful wartime incident and the nearly catastrophic events of

Lieutenant Frank Drebbin returns to save the day once again. This time he's out to foil the "big boys" in the energy business. A top scientist (Dr. Mainheimer) is about to publish his report on energy supply for the future. Things don't look good for the traditional suppliers; oil, coal, and nuclear. To save their industries, the suppliers kidnap Mainheimer and replace him with a decoy with a more favorable report. Jane, the doctor's secretary, is Drebin's old flame. Their passionate love affair is thus rekindled.

Tasting the fruit of his labor with his wife Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), the maladroit and now retired Police Squad Lieutenant, Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), secretly dreams of getting back in action. Before long, his old partners, Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), will have to enlist the help of their loose-cannon friend, when Rocco (Fred Ward), the deranged terrorist, intends on blowing the annual Academy Awards ceremony to smithereens. Once more, Drebin goes undercover, interrogating dangerous blonde bombshells, and putting his precious, but fragile marriage in jeopardy. Are this year's Oscars doomed to disaster?

Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all out nuclear war with the Soviets. Against Turgidson's wishes, Muffley brings Soviet Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky into the War Room, and get his boss, Soviet Premier Dimitri Kisov, on the hot line to inform him of what's going on. The Americans in the War Room are dismayed to learn that the Soviets have an as yet unannounced Doomsday Device to detonate if any of their key targets are hit. As Ripper, Mandrake and those in the War Room try and work the situation to their end goal, Major T.J. "King" Kong, one of the B-52 bomber pilots, is working on his own agenda of deploying his bomb where ever he can on enemy soil if he can't make it to his intended target.

1964 British satire film directed by Stanley Kubrick

On the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events.

"2001" is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past, someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith on Earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well). Evolution then enabled humankind to reach the moon's surface, where yet another monolith is found, one that signals the monolith placers that humankind has evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and human (Bowman) to reach the monolith placers. The winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be.

In 1982, the legendary English heavy metal band Spinal Tap attempt an American comeback tour accompanied by a fan who is also a film-maker. The resulting documentary, interspersed with powerful performances of Tap's pivotal music and profound lyrics, candidly follows a rock group heading towards crisis, culminating in the infamous affair of the eighteen-inch-high Stonehenge stage prop.

Borat Sagdiyev is a TV reporter of a popular show in Kazakhstan as Kazakhstan's sixth most famous man and a leading journalist. He is sent from his home to America by his government to make a documentary about American society and culture. Borat takes a course in New York City to understand American humor. While watching Baywatch on TV, Borat discovers how beautiful their women are in the form of C. J. Parker, who was played by actress Pamela Anderson who hails from Malibu, California. He decides to go on a cross-country road trip to California in a quest to make her his wife and take her back to his country. On his journey Borat and his producer encounter a country full of strange and wonderful Americans, real people in real chaotic situations with hysterical consequences.

2006 mockumentary comedy film directed by Larry Charles

Drowning his sorrows after that botched mission during WWII, the traumatised former fighter pilot with a fear of flying, Ted Striker, still hasn't got over his old flame and flight attendant, Elaine Dickinson. Determined to win her back, Ted boards a domestic flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, only to come face-to-face with a severe case of in-flight food poisoning that is threatening everyone's lives. Now, with most of the passengers and the entire cockpit crew down with the food-borne illness, Striker has no other choice but to confront his inner demons and take over the control of the ungovernable aircraft with the help of a gruff air-traffic controller and his former commander. Can Ted land the plane and save them all?

1980 film directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker

Spanning over two decades of research and innovation from the 1960s to the early-1980s, the Arboria Institute--a secluded New Age commune and a state-of-the-art research facility--and the pill-popping psychiatrist, Dr Barry Nyle, are particularly interested in their newest specimen: the female patient, Elena. To begin to understand her mind-boggling telekinetic and telepathic abilities, the demented doctor keeps Elena heavily sedated and in a constant catatonic state; however, her capabilities are unfathomable. What are Dr Nyle's deeper intentions? In the end, could the institute's utopian doctrine be flawed after all?

When Dipper and Mabel Pines get sent to their great-uncle Stan's shop in Gravity Falls, Oregon for the summer, they think it will be boring. But when Dipper find a strange journal in the woods, they learn some strange secrets about the town and its strange inhabitants.

Prof. Simon Petrikoff is driven insane by an ancient magic crown the magic, which is the only thing that keeps him and his adopted demon daughter marceline alive after the human world is destroyed. 1000 years later a new world is formed a kingdom of candy run by a harsh ruler Bonnibel bubblegum and monsters and demons roam the lands. Finn and Jake two adventurers become great friends with Marceline, Bubblegum and Simon and they uncover secrets about their past as Finn (the last human) searches for that of his own. As the evil Lich resurfaces, Simon's time displaced fiance Betty goes insane and Finn's sentient grass arm becomes a conflicted volitle plant clone. Finn, Jake, Simon, Marceline and Bubblegum must do whatever they can to save the world from another apocalypse when Bonnibel's evil uncle declares war.

Sergeant Keroro, a frog-like alien invader, is captured in the line of duty by two Japanese teenagers while scouting for an invasion of Earth. After being left behind when the mission is aborted, Keroro is taken in (with some reluctance on all parties) by his captors: Fuyuki Hinata, his big sister Natsumi, and their single mom Aki. Keroro quickly begins plotting his comeback, scheming to reunite with his amphibian squad-mates (the mercurial Private Tamama, the gruff Corporal Giroro, the mischievous Sgt. Major Kururu, and the enigmatic Dororo) and renew their plan to conquer Earth (or "Pekopon", as the invaders call it)... when he's not being distracted by building Gundam model kits, or by other aspects of Earth culture.

Years ago, all of the ghosts in a haunted schoolhouse were banished by a certain student. Now, they're back-and they want revenge - Satsuki and Keiichirou Miyanoshita are two siblings recovering from the tragic loss of their mother. After moving to their mother's hometown, they learn that the local school they have transferred to is an old building-one said to be haunted. Despite initially brushing it off as a silly rumor, the two soon discover that ghosts are indeed real and that they're after them. Gakkou no Kaidan is the creepy tale of the lives of these siblings and their newfound friends as they try to survive the school's ghosts-with a little help from their pet cat along the way.

Shibuya Psychic Research Center investigates supernatural occurrences all over Japan.

An anthology series that explores the wonders and terrors of our digital age, from outrageous horror comedy to mind-bending action adventure.

Two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully work in an unassigned detail of the bureau called the X-Files investigating cases dealing with unexplained paranormal phenomena. Mulder, a true believer, and Scully, a skeptic, perceive their cases from stand points of science and the paranormal.

American science fiction drama television series

The gang, 5 raging alcoholic, narcissists run a failing dive bar in south philly. The gang make up some scheme for sex, money, fame or for any other terrible reason you could think of. It always goes south however, as the gang (sometimes literally) have their plans blow up in their face.

Naota is a normal student living with his abnormal father and grandfather. One day, a seemingly insane girl named Haruko blazes in from out of nowhere on her Vespa, wielding an electric guitar with a buzzsaw! Haruko moves in with Naota under the pretense of being a housekeeper, but Naota knows there's something obviously strange about her. To make matters worse, large shapes are growing out of his head, hatching into large monsters that Haruko makes her mission to kill. Who is Haruko really, and what is she after? You won't find out until the end of this bizarre story.

Marginally a "straight" police drama in the Jack Webb/Quinn Martin school, Police Squad occurs in a strange universe where everything is taken literally (when a name "rings a bell" we hear bells go off every time someone mentions it), non sequiturs occur (a mime tries to spell out a ransom note, and Officer Nordberg guesses "Theme From a Summer Place") and sight gags abound (while looking for a corpse, someone wants to know the time and the dead man's hand drops out of a tree).

Elliot is a brilliant introverted young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night. He also happens to be suffering from a strange condition similar to schizophrenia which he futilely tries to keep under control by regularly taking both legal and illegal drugs and visiting his therapist. When a strange feisty young woman named Darlene and a secretive middle-aged man calling himself Mr. Robot, who claims to be the mysterious leader of an underground hacking group known as F-Society, offer Elliot a chance to take his vigilantism to the next level and help them take down E-Corp, the corrupt multi-national financial company that Elliot works for and likes to call Evil Corp, Elliot finds himself at the crossroads. Mr. Robot, who has personal reasons for wanting to take down E-Corp, also reveals that he already has one ally, an even more mysterious, secretive and highly dangerous shadowy hacking group known only as Dark Army. Meanwhile, Elliot's childhood and only friend, Angela, who blames E-Corp for the death of their parents, tries to take down E-Corp legally by joining their ranks and trying to dig up evidence of their corruption from the inside. A wild card in this scheme becomes Tyrell Wellick, an unhinged psychopathic E-Corp yuppie, originally from Scandinavia, who has a very unusual relationship with his dominant and ambitious wife Joanna. After many twists and turns, Mr. Robot's plan is finally put in motion - with catastrophic (un)intended results. But that's just the end of the beginning of the real story.

American drama–thriller television series

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Liam Caldwell

A young, fresh-faced Hill staffer gets her first job in Washington, D.C. to discover two things: The government has stopped working, and alien spawn have come to earth and eaten the brains of a growing number of Congressmen and Hill staffers.

Described as a sort of comedic X-Files, Ghosted centers on Leroy Wright, a cynical, hilarious skeptic, and Max Jennifer, a genius "true believer" in the paranormal, who are hired by the Underground Investigative Service to look into the rampant "unexplained" activity in Los Angeles - all while uncovering a larger mystery that could threaten the existence of the human race.

Anthology of stories told via different genres that satirize social norms and flawed characters.

2018 anthology horror and comedy television series created by Bobcat Goldthwait.

maybe

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Magick

book

As only he can, Aldous Huxley explores the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. These two astounding essays are among the most profound studies of the effects of mind-expanding drugs written in this century. Contains the complete texts of \
  The Doors of Perception\
 and \
  Heaven and Hell\
, both of which became essential for the counterculture during the 1960s and influenced a generation's perception of life.

Julius Evola’s final major work, which examines the prototype of the human being who can give absolute meaning to his or her life in a world of dissolution• Presents a powerful criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our modern age• Reveals how to transform destructive processes into inner liberationThe organizations and institutions that, in a traditional civilization and society, would have allowed an individual to realize himself completely, to defend the principal values he recognizes as his own, and to structure his life in a clear and unambiguous way, no longer exist in the contemporary world. Everything that has come to predominate in the modern world is the direct antithesis of the world of Tradition, in which a society is ruled by principles that transcend the merely human and transitory.Ride the Tiger presents an implacable criticism of the idols, structures, theories, and illusions of our dissolute age examined in the light of the inner teachings of indestructible Tradition. Evola identifies the type of human capable of “riding the tiger,” who may transform destructive processes into inner liberation. He offers hope for those who wish to reembrace Traditionalism.

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