EHE Process/Spiritual Path ,Spirituality Record Type: Review   ID: 299
Spirituality and Human Nature Evans, Donald
Parts of this book are outgrowths of philosopher Evans’ classes on spirituality at the University of Toronto. However, both classwork and this book have their roots in his own exceptional human experiences. He holds, as does this Journal, that "spirituality ... includes becoming aware of spiritual presences and spiritual energies. ... [and] involves a process of personal transformation of one’s underlying motivation and orientation, but a crucial part of this process is a growing openness to spirit. And the process culminates in a mystical awareness of the soul as that which unites the whole self (body, passions, mind, and spirit at the metaphorical place where one is united with the mysterious Source of all that exists" (p. vii). This is what we call the EHE process, and in his own terms Evans describes it here—to some extent autobiographically in the first three chapters, and argues on its behalf at the level of scholarly discourse in the remaining chapters. There are 4 parts, each with 3 chapters, except the third, which has two. The parts are entitled Spirituality and Depth Psychology, Spirituality and Skepticism, Spirituality and Ethics, and Spirituality and Religion. Part 2 has a chapter on "positivism and the paranormal," in which he deals with truth-claims, as he also does in a companion chapter on "Positivism and the Genuinely Spiritual." Evans’ arguments are well worth reading. Because of his insistence that the experience of the process involved in spirituality can place the experiencer so he or she can better understand and or investigate that very process. The same applies to psychic experience. (Evans notes that over the years he has become psychic in the course of becoming spiritual.) This is an important book for both experiencers and for scholars interested in psychic and spiritual experiences.
Publisher Information:	Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. 314p. Chap. notes: 277-302; Ind: 303-314

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