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Koneru Ramakrishna Rao has played a leading role in advancing parapsychology in the United States, India, and around the world--serving as president of both the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology and the U.S.-based Parapsychological Association. He founded the Journal of Indian Psychology and served as editor of the Journal of Parapsychology for nearly two decades. He has authored many books, including Basic Research in Parapsychology (second edition, 2001, $39.95) and Consciousness Studies (2002, $75). Thirteen essays collected here honor his contributions to the field; they are written by Raos colleagues, students, and protgs on such topics as psychical research, prayer and healing, consciousness, dreams and clairvoyance. Also provided is a complete bibliography of Raos published writings.
Psychic phenomena, recorded throughout human history, remained a mystery or a matter of faith rather than a subject of serious study until scientists began to investigate them roughly a century and a half ago. Systematic experimentation began with the work of J.B. Rhine at Duke University, resulting in the publication of Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) followed by Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940). Rhine and researchers who came after him struggled to present sufficient evidence to gain scientific credibility for the existence of extrasensory abilities. Yet despite tight experimental controls and numerous significant results the subject remains controversial. Parapsychologists argue that the impasse is not due to a lack of evidence but to the challenge their claims pose to the worldview of science in general. This comprehensive overview of the discipline of parapsychology, written by one of its most notable investigators, offers the reader a full understanding of both its concepts, theories and methods, and its controversies, problems and prospects.
Professors Ramakrishna Rao and Anand Paranjpe are two distinguished psychologist-philosophers who pioneered what has come to be known as Indian psychology. In this authoritative volume, they draw the contours of Indian psychology, describe the methods of study, define the critical concepts, explain the central ideas, and discuss their implications to psychological study and application to life. The main theme is organized around the theme that psychology is the study of the person. They go on to present a model of the person as a unique composite of body, mind, and consciousness. Consciousness is conceived to be qualitatively and ontologically different from all material forms. The goal of the person is self-realization, which consists in the realization of the true self as distinct and separate from the manifest ego. It is facilitated by cultivating consciousness, which leads to some kind of psycho-spiritual symbiosis, personal transformation, and flowering of one’s hidden human potentials.
Indian psychology is a distinct psychological tradition rooted in the native Indian ethos. It manifests in the multitude of practices prevailing in the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Unlike the mainstream psychology, Indian psychology is not overwhelmingly materialist-reductionist in character. It goes beyond the conventional third-person forms of observation to include the study of first-person phenomena such as subjective experience in its various manifestations and associated cognitive phenomena. It does not exclude the investigation of extraordinary states of consciousness and exceptional human abilities. The quintessence of Indian nature is its synthetic stance that results in a mag...
About the Author Prof. Koneru Ramakrishna Rao, PhD, DLitt, is currently Chancellor of GITAM (deemed to be) University. He has the rare distinction of being National Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research and the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, and Distinguished Honorary Professor at Andhra University. His earlier academic appointments include Professor of Psychology and Vice-Chancellor at Andhra University; Executive Director, Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, USA; Chairman, A.P. State Council of Higher Education, and Advisor on Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh. He published 26 plus books and nearly 300 research papers. Prof. Rao received numero...
Consciousness is perplexing: too familiar and intimate to ignore, too complex and elusive to understand. Although consciousness is embedded in all our experience and is considered basic to all our knowing, no one seems to know what exactly it is, and the concept is both widely used and much abused. For the better part of the twentieth century, the study of consciousness was viewed as unworthy of scholarly and scientific pursuit. Research has consequently suffered. This cross-cultural examination first explores the varieties of conscious experience and reflects on the attempts to understand and explain consciousness in the Western scholarly and scientific tradition. The next section deals with Eastern spiritual traditions and how they differ with and complement the Western viewpoints. In the final chapters the author reconciles the two traditions for a comprehensive understanding of what consciousness is, and considers how such an understanding may be helpful for a cross-cultural assessment of behavior, as well as for enhancing human abilities and wellness.
This book discusses the profound philosophy and practical psychology behind yoga, beyond its popular body-culture aspect. It pays particular attention to the psychological principles involved and their implications for the consummate understanding of human nature. It explores the psychological aspects of yoga theory and practice and discusses the aphorisms in Patanjali’s treatise on Yoga with necessary commentary in current psychological terminology to make them intelligible to students of psychology and other interested readers. Importantly, the author draws out the implications of these aphorisms for future psychological study and research. The book discusses the author’s concept of yoga of nonviolence which brings in Gandhian ideas into the framework of yoga. The author’s own vast experience in creating interfaces of yoga research with practice also informs the discussions in this book. This authoritative and topical book by an eminent academic like Professor Ramakrishna Rao is of interest to scholars and students of diverse disciplines, including but not limited to psychology, philosophy and wellbeing research.
A Conference on the life and work of Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine was held at the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man on November 28, 1980. Family members, friends and scholars who knew J.B.R. spoke to the great diversity of his interests, the determination and genius with which he pursued his investigations, the warmth and incisiveness with which he encouraged others. The papers on that day were collected, expanded, revised and referenced and are presented in this book. Includes a career chronology and an exhaustive bibliography of Dr. Rhine's published work, along with a listing of words about him.