Showing results by author "David Lane" in All Categories

I am fortunate to be able to publish Baba Faqir Chand's satsangs as presented to Harjit Singh Sandhu and skillfully translated by Pulkit Bose. First as a series in Sach Khand: The Journal of Radhasoami Studies and now in book form. These talks that were given in London, England, in 1980 are genuinely remarkable for their utmost clarity and penetrating insights into the nature of spirituality. Baba Faqir Chand is unique amongst masters, since he was exceptionally honest about his experiences and what he learned from them over the course of his long life.

This audiobook explores Nick Bostrom's idea that a computer could theoretically create self-conscious programs within its own hardware, with parallels to the “Blind Watchmaker” idea, where amaurotic processes produce an opened eye-consciousness that can ruminate about its origins. 

What Faqir Chand has discovered is that religious visions, no matter how profound or uplifting, are self-generated and are not due to the miraculous energies of a saint or a master. Yet, disciples worldwide tend to believe otherwise and thereby project power and omniscience on their respective gurus who, in truth, have neither. Therein lies the great religious trap. An unscrupulous guru is akin to a parasitic vampire who psychically lives off the deepest yearnings and sincerest intentions of their devotees, never letting on that they are completely devoid of power.

This book focuses on a number of cults and their respective leaders, including Paul Twitchell and Eckankar, John-Roger Hinkins and MSIA, Gary Olsen and MasterPath, Andrew Cohen, Sathya Sai Baba, Father Yod, and the Brotherhood of the Source presents a critical and inside look at how these groups operate. Also included our essays on UFOs, Edgar Cayce, and the politics of mysticism. This is a new edition of Professor Lane's 1993 book of the same title. Controversial and quite original.

Describes the famous 14 dreams of Queen Trishala, the mother of Mahavira, one of the key spiritual figures in Jainism. 

August Weismann is regarded by many biologists, including Ernst Mayr from Harvard University, to be second only to Charles Darwin for progressing our understanding of evolution by natural selection. In this book, excerpted from the larger commemorative tome Darwin and Modern Science, edited by A. C. Seward and others, Weismann tackles many of the difficult questions confronting natural selection. In the process, Weismann offers a penetrating critique of Lamarck and provides the listener with rich and robust understanding of evolutionary theory.

I recently came upon an old book entitled Famous Men in Science by Sarah Knowles Bolton that was first published in 1889. In her enjoyable and easy to read text, Bolton provides a glimpse of 14 distinguished thinkers, ranging from such luminaries as Carl Linnaeus to Louis Agassiz. Since the book is not readily available, here at the MSAC Philosophy Group we thought it might be helpful to select four biographies from Famous Men in Science and republish them in a new and readable format.

I suffer from a most incurable disease. It is technically known as bibliomania, which simply translated means “book madness.” I love books too much. My family is convinced that I got it from my father, Warren, who also suffered from it but to a lesser degree.

This small book explores four main topics: Professor Hoffmann's user interface theory of consciousness, Professor Lane's virtual simulation hypothesis of consciousness, Brandon Gillet's quantum mind understanding of consciousness, and the future implications of virtual reality and augmented reality.

This is a brief narration commemorating the life and work of Acharya Sushil Kumar (1926-1994), the great Jain monk who spread the teachings of "ahimsa" (non-violence) worldwide. 

This is the first in a series of very short books focusing on mystics of the world. Charan Singh was one of the most well-known masters of shabd yoga in the 20th century. For nearly 40 years, Charan Singh served the needs of millions of spiritual seekers. This audiobook contains excerpts which come from a series of unpublished letters by Charan Singh, focus on overcoming the desires and attachments of the lower mind and attuning one’s attention to the inner sound current during daily meditation.

This little book explores the projective nature of consciousness by using various rides at Disneyland to explain how awareness works as a virtual simulator.

This text contains a number of timeless essays from several classic (and mostly out of print) works focusing on the love of books, collecting books, organizing one's library, and how books become lost over time. It is a judicious selection on bibliomania from such distinguished authors as Eugene Field, Christopher Morley, and Issac Disraeli

This audiobook contains distinct essays on Darwinian epistemology, the future of shabd yoga, Ken Wilber's Atman Project, Clarence Darrow's agnostic philosophy, and the debate between Richard Feynman and John Lilly over the reality/non-reality of out-of-body experiences. Excerpt from one of the chapters: I think it is important to distinguish methodological naturalism from a philosophically absolutist position, since trying to ground all things down to the empirical realm and testable realm is a practical process and doesn't necessarily mean that nothing else exists beyond what we can scientifically discern.

This book presents a glimpse into the fascinating life and work of Baba Faqir Chand, the famous "unknowing" sage of India. Faqir explains in vivid details how gurus do not know about the miracles and visions attributed to them. He also explains the secrets behind surat shabd yoga practice and provides a detailed description of how to transcend visionary phenomena.

What is matter anyways? - From organisms to cells to proteins to molecules to atoms to electrons to light? The most famous equation in modern physics is Einstein's E=MC2, which, if we pause for a second, is as mysterious as anything written in our ancient religious scriptures and measurably more radical. My point is that the resistance we have to reductionists who say we are "just matter" is because we tend to think of matter as flat. It is, of course, anything but.

Perhaps the study of consciousness has an inherent limitation, similar in import to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics or Gödel’s incompleteness theorem in mathematics. Perhaps we are like seasoned travelers on a Mobius strip in quest of the “other” side of the band who after long and arduous circular travels come to realize that no matter what route we take we will always only be touching the same surface.

This is the story of how one young scholar from America discovered a new the ancient astrological book in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains and found that a treatise written thousands of years ago had pinpointed details about his present life. Millenniums ago, during an untraceable time in India's history, the renowned sage Bhrigu reigned as the world's greatest astrologer. His mastery of astrology was so profound that he was able to dictate certain parts of the Akashic Records from the astral worlds onto special scrolls in the sacred language of Sanskrit.

This audiobook contains four original papers that are fundamental to our understanding of modern biology, including Mendel's "Experiments in Plant Hybridization", Wallace's "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type", Huxley's initial review of On the Origin of Species, and Watson and Crick's groundbreaking paper, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids". Professor David Christopher Lane explains why these papers are so elemental in the history of science.

This little meditational audiobook focuses on Salig Ram's very pertinent advice on how to meditate.