Pain, Sex and Time at Vedanta Press and Catalog

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Pain, Sex and Time

by Gerald Heard

This book was first published in 1939. It was written by Gerald Heard, a then well-known British polymath and science commentator for the BBC. In later years he was a regular lecturer at the Vedanta Society of Southern California.

What's noteworthy about this book is that it influenced a generation of leading thinkers from the scientific world view to the perspective of the mystic. The list of thinkers includes Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith. H.G.Wells said that Gerald Heard was the only person he was willing to listen to on the "wireless." The book was even actor James Dean's favorite book.

294 pages US paperback $18.95

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Rating	Name	City / State / Country	Date
	John Roger Barrie	Nevada City CA US	Feb 14, 2008
	"History may be interpreted as the symptoms of a mental evolution," writes Gerald Heard in PAIN, SEX AND TIME. "Man's civilization is the shadow cast by his evolving consciousness." The evolution of his psyche is the sequel to the evolution of his physique. This mutation in his psyche, in consciousness, is a spiral of ascent, of continuing evolution. He must leap forward or sink. "In man is a store of evolutionary energy and that energy can give rise to his further, purely psychical evolution. Pain and pleasure, agony and lust, are the two fundamental polar sensations which lie at an equally rudimentary level. Only when this dazing sensationalism is transcended, can consciousness experience sustained intensity of being. This process indicates a possible ending of pain, a possible solving of the problem of sex, and also the possibility of a completely new step in evolution." By means of "a specific training" this evolutionary change can occur. Then humankind's purpose will be revealed: "The only possible meaning of life is that here, under Time, human consciousness discovers itself. The Universe exists for the emergence and development of free creative consciousness." By this advance in consciousness we, "are able to reinterpret correctly the experience which we call Time and, doing so, we see Reality no longer distorted, but as it is. Then we shall have fulfilled the purpose of our Being, the meaning of evolution," concludes Gerald Heard in PAIN, SEX AND TIME.