Time and the Soul - Hardcover

Needleman, Jacob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385481772 ISBN 13: 9780385481779

Publisher: Doubleday Business, 1997

Synopsis

Time is the greatest modern scarcity. What used to be considered signs of success--being busy, having many responsibilities, being involved in many projects or activities--are today being felt as afflictions. The bestselling author of Money and the Meaning of Life, philosopher Jacob Needleman, shows how to take a bold and unconventional approach to time. The aim: to get more out of it by breaking free of our illusions about it. Needleman dispenses with tricks and techniques that only serve to make our obsessiveness more "efficient." Instead he shows how we can understand what our days are for. It's this understanding that allows time to finally begin to "breathe" in our lives.

People can learn to experience time more purposefully and meaningfully. We need not be at time's mercy. Needleman rejects time-management techniques in order to reveal ancient and little-known modern practices for exploring one's internal clock. He reveals how time is experienced by the soul. Drawing on the wisdom literature that chronicles the ways of Buddhists, poets, and philosophers, one learns:

What it could mean to chart one's real past, unclouded by emotions
How memory can lie to us
Why we need not be obsessed with the future
How to experience time so that it is not an enemy robbing us of the joy of life
How to have more "nonpsychological time," or "time of the heart [that] does not move," such as moments of ecstasy or joy in which time is cut off from the physical world
How to experience the gifts of time

About this title

From the Publisher:

Praise for Jacob Needleman:

"Socrates would have liked [Money and the Meaning of Life]."
--Whole Earth Review

"Money and the Meaning of Life reads like a spiritual detective story. [Needleman] shows us how to redeem ourselves through probing what this down-and-dirty deity means to us."
--Mel Ziegler, cofounder, Banana Republic

"Needleman is great."
--Commonwealth

"Charismatic."
--Los Angeles Times

"Needleman is much loved and respected by his hundreds of inquiring students. He himself is a sower of spiritual seeds."
--San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle

About the Author:

Jacob Needleman is professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University. He is the author of many bestselling books, including, most recently, A Little Book on Love.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday Business
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385481772
• ISBN 13: 9780385481779
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176