The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit: A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart »

Joseph Chilton Pearce is the author of The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of the Spirit, The Biology of Transcendence, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child, and Evolution’s End. For the past 35 years, he has lectured and led workshops teaching about the changing needs of children and the development of human society. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Pearce explains that beneath our awareness, culture imprints a negative force-field that blocks the natural rise of the spirit toward its innate nature of love and altruism. He shows that if we can allow the intelligence of the heart to take hold and flourish, we can reverse this unconscious loss of our true being.

Publishers Weekly

Building on Darwin, Pearce pleads that humanity rise above its lower, instinctual "brain" to allow "our newest brain" the "fourth brain" to flourish. This will bring about a higher stage in evolution that prizes love and altruism. According to Pearce (The Biology of Transcendence), the biggest roadblocks to this new order are religion and science, which together promote violence and arrogance. These "two mongrels" of culture have long forced civilized people into a false either/or choice, one that Pearce characterizes as a choice "between being hanged or shot." For Pearce, the two disciplines have produced "a single monoculture sweeping the globe and bringing a mounting tide of irrational and ever more intense violence," and leaving us and especially our children "spiritually starved." To overcome the terrible evils of science and religion and fulfill the promises of the fourth brain, we must cultivate what Pearce calls "the dynamic of the heart-brain-mind relationship," literally listening to our heart as a kind of brain itself that prioritizes love and intimate relationship above all else. Heavy on the science, Pearce's overall argument is slow going but worthwhile because of his fluid prose and intriguing understanding of human evolution. (Apr.)

Part One Culture as a Negative Field Effect and the Phenomenon of Mind

Introduction to Part One

1 Culture and Darkness of Mind
2 Culture and War
3 Marghanita Laski and the Tautology of Field Phenomena
4 Mind and Fields of Mind
5 Mind and Intuitive Perception
6 Penfield and Steiner

Part Two The Conflict of Biology and Culture

Introduction to Part Two

7 Nature’s Biological Plan
8 Bonding: Nature’s Imperative
9 The Biology of Relationship
10 Imperatives in Conflict
11 The Death of Play and Birth of Religion

Part Three The Rebirth of Spirit and Resumption of Evolution

Introduction to Part Three

12 Life’s Strange Loops of Mind and Nature
13 Brain Change
14 Voices in the Wilderness
15 Eureka! Moments and Cracks
16 Origin and Field

Bibliography

Index