Unified Reality Theory: The Evolution of Existence into Experience

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Summary: Unified Reality
Review: As for Kaufman's book, I'd rather sit under the Boa tree. Can someone step up to the plate here? He goes on and on and on with words and diagrams to explain what surely must be a simple message for everyone to understand. There is a book called "The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts (1966) that in three pages (14, 15, 16) describes (as if to children) how the uiverse came into being and since he refers to the game of "hide and seek" I would have thought Mr. Kaufman would have acknowledged Mr. Watts' contribution to his own description of "hide and seek". Mr. Kaufman makes an admirable attempt, but please! simplify, simplify, simplify. The answer must be palatable for everyone to understand...so who will usher forth the message for the masses? Batter on deck?

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Summary: Must read on consciousness!
Review: I have read this book while it was available on-line from the author's Internet pages. I had had no clue that the material was meant for the publication so I mailed the author to strongly encourage him to do it.

I found it important, because author's name has not been so far uttered on the same breath with the likes of Capra, Chalmers or Deikman. And as it usually happens with the works of this magnitude, when written by the new name, the path to the publication may be especially long and frustrating.

Why I did it? Because the book is an excellent read on its own. The author has the natural skill to express himself by way of a comprehensive, communicative language and exceptional ability to present the complex concepts in a simple way. And most importantly, the material in the book charts a very coherent model of reality with clearly stated assumptions and logically drawn conclusions. The author does not play with words and the book is not a typical contemporary philosophical exercise in linguistics.

If the reader is interested in the models of reality developed by the Eastern philosophy and Western science - then this book would deliver a surprising bonus - it is neither the rewrite nor the reference to all that has been written so far. The model presented in the book is absolutely original and not based on any obvious sources other than author's own powerful thinking process validated by personal experience.

The spotting of the difference between the awareness and consciousness, the reflection on the reality as the existence's experience of itself are the brightest and most interesting threads of the book. All of these subjects are communicated with the simplicity of the sage. And illustrated with appealing graphics.

The reader will appreciate that the author does not forget that he is presenting the model - usually the writers dealing with the Big Questions related to the nature of reality turn into the patronizing mode of the all and the only wise. The author of this material is gloriously free from the self-exaltation and pompousness.

The on-line book was composed of two parts. The second one, focused on the model of reality as the existence's experience of itself is a must read for everybody eager to extend his conceptual horizon and deepen the understanding of his consciousness. I warmly recommend this book...

Rating:
Summary: Very highly recommended reading for dedicated students
Review: In Unified Reality Theory: The Evolution Of Existence Into Experience, Steven Kaufman presents a persuasively argued, philosophically profound, and aptly presented original study, centering upon the hypothesis that "reality is a state of existential self-relation". Consciousness and awareness is truly the source of physical reality, rather than a byproduct, and physical reality is merely one facet of a universal consciousness. Unified Reality Theory is very highly recommended reading for dedicated students of metaphysics and the philosophical underpinnings of the human experience.

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Summary: Lao Tzu, Newton, Einstein, Kaufman
Review: Most people do not question how reality all comes together, they just accept it as it appears. I began questioning at about age 14 when I dropped out of Sunday School and started to investigate Eastern philosophies. I was introduced to the "new" physics by Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters. That book ignited in me a hunger for a greater understanding of this field. The Tao of Physics confirmed my belief that all the answers could be found in this "hard science"; quantum physics.

When I became seriously ill a couple of years ago, my reading list changed emphasis. I read Deepak Chopra's Quantum Healing, some Caroline Myss and Louise Hay among others. Each book was helpful it its own way, especially Chopra's works and I found no reason to believe that any of these mystical, spiritual or alternative approaches to illness, or to life in general, would be denounced by Grand Unified Theories or Theories of Everything (GUTs and TOEs). On my road to recovery I came across a pre-publication copy of Steven Kaufman's Unified Reality Theory. I devoured it and it was delicious.

In my quest for understanding the nature of reality I have read quite a few good books on quantum physics and how it relates to the world in which we live. I even finished A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking. Newton, Einstein and Lao Tzu have nothing to argue about; Mr. Kaufman has brought it all together beautifully. I truly believe that hundreds of years from now he will be listed among the great thinkers of all time. I understand why this book took ten years to write; Unified Reality Theory is a masterpiece. I hope his next work doesn't take nearly as long.

Rating:
Summary: Our Beauty-filled Mind
Review: Steven Kaufman has thought through, written down and just recently published what is to me the best book ever written on human wholistic understanding of our personalities and our physical world. There are those of us who have a good understanding of physics. Many there are who can appreciate the mind. Many more have nestled specializing in understanding our feelings tangled as they may sometimes be. Few are those who like Venus rise from the sea of mental, emotional and physical expression and care enough to concentrate, meditate and contemplate the ancient and perennial philosophy, find the root source within our heart of hearts and labor for ten years to write it down so lucidly, so accurately and with so much love. Here is an expression of an extremely high quality view of the entire mental, emotional and physical worlds integrated seemingly seamlessly saying, to me, perhaps to others, we are thinkers, all together, we have constructed this world-view we now live in. Here is one way we have constructed it. Here is a key to understanding our way of liberation from our illusions, glamours and bad habits.

I have been thinking for hours and hours everyday for twenty-five years. I've read and intensely studied all of Blavaksky, all of Alice Bailey and would love to read all of Sri Auribindo. These are some of those who start one to think. Such are they who give us the courage to initiate ourselves into the life of contemplation and the inevitable compassion for ourselves and for all others. I now have my professionally trained intensely laboured board-certified behind sitting still on the threshold of someday becoming a real thinker and a real loving human being. I've run through the amazing maze of metaphysical literature and revelled in the popular books on cosmology and physics and yelled and screamed on the sidelines for my favorite interpretations of quantum mechanics. Is it Copenhagen or Many Worlds or both?!

Now I'm am happily stunned. Now that which I have dreamed of doing has been done. I'm jealous. I'm hurt. I want to put Steven down. How pretentious and self-inflated to claim to have come up with a nonmathematical explanation of everything. I wanted to do that. I wanted to be the new western buddha. I love George Spencer-Brown alot. I wanted to be His friend and peer. Now Steven, me thinks, has done it. Oh! We wish for "a Mozart" and when a likely candidate appears we might rather just sweep the S.O.B. under some rug somewhere. It's not that the truth hurts in anyway one might expect. It's that THE TRUTH HAS BEEN RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR NOSES AND WE COULDN'T SEE IT BECAUSE OF OUR OWN SELF-INFLATED DEFENDING EGO PRETENTIOUSNESS. George has reminded us that we are trained to be proud of our great educations and resultant knowledge (to me, allowing much a better chance to get laid). Then proud of how smart we are we search and search for the truth, or at least some advance toward the truth, and can't find it. We fail. And when someone succeeds we are subjected to such humiliation and shame. OH OF COURSE. I KNEW THAT. WHY THAT'S OBVIOUS!(now).

Steven. Congratulations!(but watch your back, my friend).

Leibniz wrote something like. . . . true knowledge is gained using the intuition to make step by step logical deductions from the self-evident truth. Steven Kaufman starts with a likely candidate for the self-evident truth, Absolute Exsistence. I, being so very smart myself, can recognize this "before-the-beginning" as the the Parabrahman of the Hindu philosophy and the Ain-Soph of the Eastern Kaballah. For me it is my precious secret love, really not so secret to my friends. . .Sunya . . .Zero .. .the ground of being of Meister Eckart and Leibniz. Now I've been up this tree of life for twenty-five years contemplating the void, being the void, going on and on about the void, the undefined transcendental all . . .but, alas, not getting down to earth, not starting with the Transcendental, Yes!, and then working downward, step by step, as initiates do, through the transpersonal states of consciousness and then explaining the illusion within which most personalities find themselves caught, secretly happily.

This book has something for everyone. Afterall it IS a perfectly good and clear explanation of everything. Philosophers can marvel at the clear, nonmathematical explanation of the United Reality Model or integrated world view, at the beginning of the book. Scientists can find great joy in the wonderful spirit of original thinking and understanding and substantiation and the great usefulness of the model in explaning relativity and quantum mechanics. I even think and feel I understand such now, really for the first time. Ah! But my favorite part is the application of this "new" world view to understanding the mind body relationship and then the emotions(the key problem area in the new energy medicine)(see Esoteric Healing by Alice A. Bailey)(And I should know, I'm an all-important-godlike-super-specialized doctor)Here the Kaufman reasoning process is sublime yet clear; simple yet not too simple; loving, inclusive, healing and the key to a new and more solid foundation stone on which to build a logically deduced psychology the new and true basic science to the new medicine: Emotional problems effecting the energy body effecting the nervous system effecting the endocrine system effecting the regulation of regional metabolism and stressing, perhaps straining the genetic constitutional supply of vital enzymes.

Please read this book. Join us in this simple quantum leap into new understanding. Join us in the joy of being one mind, one heart, one divine creative will. Think. Love. Be-With-Us, the one loving and thinking humanity.(N.B. I'm a wanna-be, but included none the less. We all are.)

And lastly . . .thankyou Steven Kaufman and Karin Kaufman, from the bottom of my heart of hearts.

Rating:
Summary: heavy truckin
Review: This just might be TOE???
My brain-mind burns 1000 kalories per.hour reading this.
This book must be STUDIED. So far have found no conflict with presently tentatively held belief systems.

Rating:
Summary: I never dreamed I would say this in my lifetime -
Review: World-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, in the concluding paragraph of his book "A Brief History of Time" writes, "if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason for then we would know the mind of God.

After reading Unified Reality Theory, it is my experience that the information contained in Steven Kaufman's book is closer to providing Mr. Hawking and humanity a complete answer than any other work I have read to date by any other philosopher, scientist, or ordinary person.

Thank you, Mr. Kaufman, for being an exceptionally logical ordinary person.