Essentia Readings
16 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsHosted by Lebanese artist Nadia Hassan, Essentia Readings podcasts high-quality but accessible essays on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, mythology, foundations of physics and much more. This podcast is produced by Essentia Foundation (www.essentiafoundation.org).
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Episodes
How Idealism saved Leo Tolstoy’s life
April 23, 2023 14:00 - 37 minutes - 26 MBToday’s article sheds light on the personal journey of one of the world’s most renowned authors, and the impact of idealism on his development and growth. It shows us what joins humanity together in its suffering, but also what joins it in the potential for collective healing. The power is within all of us, quietly showing us the way.
The march towards Eastern idealism
March 19, 2023 15:00 - 43 minutes - 29.7 MBToday’s article dives into the Western world’s history with consciousness and its still evolving relationship with this subject. It goes on to chart a seeming progression within this region towards Eastern idealist thought, while drawing what the author sees as key similarities and differences in these far-flung disciplines.
How can you be me? The answer is time
January 08, 2023 17:00 - 24 minutes - 16.6 MBToday’s article explains, in a very elegant manner, how universal consciousness can indeed present as individual alters, simultaneously. With the help of a few real life examples, a powerful metaphor takes shape, allowing us to visualize how dissociation fundamentally occurs, and how the interplay of our individual perspectives is basically self-talk, from across timelines.
Whirlpools in Universal Consciousness
November 13, 2022 15:00 - 23 minutes - 16.3 MBThe article I’ll be reading today unpacks what makes a good metaphor, why metaphors are so valuable to our pursuit of Truth, and invites us to appreciate the simple elegance and explanatory power of one metaphor in particular, favored both in Eastern and Western thought.
The Copernican Revolution of the human mind
October 02, 2022 14:00 - 30 minutes - 21.1 MBToday’s article calls for a revolution. And like a number of revolutions in history, it is an attempt to dethrone a controversial king; one the author thinks has long outstayed his welcome, and led us all rather astray. He presents the way to our freedom, and the promise of truths therein.
There is no personal self
August 28, 2022 15:00 - 29 minutes - 20.3 MBToday’s article challenges our currently held notion of self and how we typically define experience, as well as consciousness itself. It argues that the concept of an isolated self is an illusion, and drawing from the Buddhist teachings, illustrates what constitutes consciousness, and how we actually experience - and relate to - ourselves, the world, and others.
Dissociation and complexity: A psychiatrist’s perspective
July 24, 2022 14:00 - 36 minutes - 25 MBThe article I’ll be reading today is a master class on dissociation, from the field of psychiatry. It breaks down the complexity of this phenomenon, and shows us that it is a much more common process in life than is generally thought. Furthermore, when observed in the realm of mind and then extrapolated beyond to consciousness as a whole, it allows for a better understanding of the fundamental premise at the heart of analytic idealism.
Contact with universal consciousness
June 19, 2022 14:00 - 41 minutes - 28.8 MBToday’s article examines our decidedly limited mental representation of the world, and how it is fundamentally linked to the systems of meaning available to us, to our perceptual constructs. It lays out incredible data to show just how much and in how many ways our perception can be manipulated, and the role we often take in our own delusion. It goes on to explore the broader semiotic power of deeper levels of consciousness and how they could play an important role in communications with ali...
Is the human brain a model of the universe?
May 12, 2022 14:00 - 26 minutes - 18.3 MBThe article I’ll be reading today presents documented similarities between the human brain and the cosmos, and poses the question: can either be modeled after the other? This very exciting possibility might allow as of yet undiscovered truths about both realms, and bring us closer to the Holy Grail of modern physics, the Theory of Everything.
The Three Minds: A framework beyond biopsychosocial medicine
April 10, 2022 17:00 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBThe article I’ll be reading today shines an important light on the field of medicine, allopathic medicine in particular, and questions the largely biomedical approach underpinning mainstream practice. It argues for a more connected and balanced view, one in which the role of mind is paramount in understanding illness, and the process of healing.
The ethics of Idealism
February 02, 2022 21:00 - 27 minutes - 19.1 MBWelcome back everyone! Today’s article is a fascinating deep dive into the subject of morality and the neurological mechanics of our joint human condition. It is an eye-opening presentation of how we actually relate to each other, and what this could mean for the future of our collective consciousness. Join me, for a fittingly wholesome start to the year.
Re-thinking identity: Children’s experiences of self
December 12, 2021 16:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MBIn the best episode of 'Essentia Readings' yet, Nadia Hassan reads Dr. Donna Thomas's 'Re-thinking identity: Children’s experiences of self.' Nadia also introduces us to her young niece, a child who very matter-of-factly states that she is aware, during sleep, of the fact that she is asleep. This suggests that our original, natural sense of self and consciousness, before culture tells us how to think about both, is much different than our adult understanding.
Near-Death Experiences during cardiac arrest
November 07, 2021 20:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBToday’s article delves into a phenomenon that has been largely dismissed. One’s position regarding these events tends to encapsulate a person’s view on the fundamental nature of life, as it deals with its apparent end: death, or a close brush with it. We’ll be looking at the scientific research into the phenomena of NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) and what this can tell us about human consciousness as a whole.
What is consciousness?
October 17, 2021 14:00 - 28 minutes - 19.7 MBToday’s article poses the million-dollar question: “What is consciousness”? A much debated matter among academics, scientists, and thinkers the world over for centuries, but the burning curiosity germinates in us all and from quite a young age, as soon as we start to wonder who we are, why we’re here, and every other run of the mill existential question. Answers to these questions have been attempted by the religious, the atheist, sometimes by the downright eccentric. Many people look to sci...
Communicating through the 'collective unconscious'
September 12, 2021 20:00 - 37 minutes - 26 MBThe article I’ll be presenting today is by an author whose work has been focused, in part, on the psychology of consciousness and psycho-semantics, problems of the unconscious, altered states of consciousness, ethnic and cross-cultural psychology, and the philosophical issues of psychology. In what I’ll be reading, he explores our current understanding of the collective unconscious, how it functions, the value it presents for humanity, and what we can unlock if we are able to tune into it mo...
Seeing things: The daimonic nature of reality
August 15, 2021 16:00 - 29 minutes - 20.3 MBHello and welcome to the Essentia Readings podcast. My name is Nadia and I’ll be bringing you content from a wide range of contributors: scholars, journalists, philosophers, scientists, and academics. All to do with that ineffable thing we call consciousness. What is the underlying nature of reality? How do we explain our experience of the world and others? And what are the real implications of viewing existence from an idealist perspective, rather than the prevalent metaphysical model of ma...