Pushing Ultimates: Fundamentals of Authentic Self-Knowledge - Softcover

Lew Paz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0977373398 ISBN 13: 9780977373390

Publisher: PlumBell Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

"The road to authentic self-knowledge is probably the most challenging and worthwhile journey that a human being will ever explore ... It is so very tempting to take the easy path, to believe someone else's truth as our own, or to seek comfort in beliefs that we've never really questioned. Pushing Ultimates takes a candid look at the most common obstacles to authentic self-knowledge. Probably the biggest challenge in this process is beginning a line of questioning and really trying to find the answers ... Pushing Ultimates reminds us that despite out intense need to fit in and to go with the crowd, if we as individuals truly want authentic self-knowledge, we have to dig a lot deeper than that. We have to be willing to question anything and everything. We also have to be willing to listen to the answers." Dr. Tami Brady / TCM Reviews

About this title

About the Author

During a childhood fatefully balanced between normal American boyhood and occasions in orphanage and reform school, Lew Paz became uniquely attentive to the quality of his experiences, all the while reading extensively through the classics. At seventeen he joined the Air Force, again always balancing pursuit of knowledge with worldly experience. At the age of 20 he hitchhiked about the country for a year or so, and then re-enlisted in the military. After two years as an infantry aratrooper, Paz became one of the first anti-war protesters during the build up of the Vietnam War. He spent a year in military prison, which he and a select group of other inmates used as a kind of monastery for the pursuit of significant knowledge. From there, after establishing a career, at the age of 29 he walked away from a life of lucrative success in the social arena to once again seek an existence on the edge, blending Zorba the Greek adventure with Socratic questioning of all things. His journey entailed years of hard road travel, working at every kind of labor, a year here, a semester there at varied colleges and universities, shamanistic explorations with drugs, plants and fungi, and countless sunup to sunset days in libraries great and small over half the earth, deeply delving into the quest for truth and wisdom. Paz first learned meditation from the direct tutelage of Zen Master Shunryo Suzuki, and over the past thirty years merged Zen teachings with Hatha and Jana Yoga, the psychological insights of Carl Jung, and the mental and spiritual disciplines of Aurobindo and Gurdjieff. This rich background has given him the ability to transfer scholarly and esoteric spiritual text into comprehensible terms for the layman.

Review

Lew Paz draws upon many years of his personal spiritual, philosophical, and metaphysical quest to understand human nature in general, and himself in particular. Pushing Ultimates incorporates what Paz has discovered through philosophy, science, psychology, theology, mysticism, the history of religion, and the writings of such original thinkers and scholars as Jung, Aurobindo, Heidegger, Einstein, Godel, Gurdjieff and others. Highly recommended reading, the 397-page text of Pushing Ultimates (enhanced with several pages of chapter notes) is eminently accessible for the non- specialist general reader seeking an in-depth, sophisticated, erudite, sometimes iconoclastic approach to the acquisition of genuine self-knowledge. Pushing Ultimates is "must" reading for dedicated students of philosophy, metaphysics, and those committed to the seeking of self-enlightenment in a clamoring and all-too-superficial world. --James Cox Editor in Chief Midwest Book Review

I regard this book as a scholarly achievement of formidable scope and considerable merit, a worthwhile read for any truth seeker... a valuable stepping stone to a deep and learned awareness... Lew Paz has a rare, bright, daring, and inquisitive mind that has yielded a harvest of philosophical insights that promise to be of invaluable nourishment for people who seek to reach new heights of spiritual awareness. --Laurent Grenier, author of A Reason For Living

Pushing Ultimates has the look of a text I'm going to want to read and ponder several times again, concept rich and deeply researched as it is... For a conscious pilgrim, this book is indispensable. --Ken Gatlin Northern California Mensa

Edition details

• Publisher: PlumBell Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0977373398
• ISBN 13: 9780977373390
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 397