Going Beyond the Jesus Story

Book excerpt: Who am I? Why am I? Where am I headed and where have I been? These are just some of the questions that concern the author of Going Beyond the Jesus Story, a book that ranges freely across complex and intriguing subject areas such as the nature of religious belief, contemplative and meditative experience, lucid dreaming, the role of feeling in our appreciation of reality, the inherently spiritual nature of asking questions, and our need to go beyond not only the Jesus story as it has come down to us, but also the ingrained notion that self is an ongoing, uninterrupted experience of the conscious mind that can be taken for granted. Directing our attention to the nature of attention itself, we are introduced, step by carefully constructed step, to the idea that consciousness is not what we have assumed it to be, or conscious awareness quite as conscious as we like to think it is. Delving into history, theology and philosophy in an attempt to reach an integrated understanding of the religious and secular problems we face as human beings, the author examines ideas that confront and challenge on just about every level, ideas that carry us towards an appreciation of what it means to presence the self to the self as an experience in its own right. At this point theory gives way to experiment, to methodology, to a knowing or seeing that makes this book a unique contribution to the study of human sentience and its evolved, and evolving structures.