Café de Flore

Addressing the escalating global issue of mental health and suicide, Café de Flore is a serious book that provides inspiration and relief to those caught in the net of despair. Identifying the critical error made by mankind over the centuries. Café de Flore points towards an escape from the madness of the human condition.

An easily digestible form of philosophy, written with graceful authority, the book takes the reader on a journey that captures the sublime messages contained in the wreck of literature, poetry and prose.

Dostoevsky once said: “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” What more does it take?

Encouraging the world to stop thinking, to entertain a degree of madness, to live with passion and to laugh more. This book provides a fresh perspective on the perceived struggles and difficulties we find ourselves trapped in, in this sad and lonely world.

Deep Deceit

Andy Bonner, an ex-Special Forces soldier, is struggling in the civilian world after a dangerous life on the edge. Consequently, he loses his boring office job with a bang after a very steamy encounter with his superior. Along with a younger colleague and friend, Paul Brown, he embarks on a new venture, salvaging cargoes from shipwrecks and diving for lobsters off a popular east coast resort.

Two young unattached men, they relish in the abundance of female holiday makers. But the witty camaraderie and carefree life they are enjoying abruptly ends when they find a downed plane and discover evidence of a sinister plot implicating government, cabinet ministers and the PM himself. Brown is picked up and tortured in an attempt to repossess the damming documents. Bonner escapes to London in a last-ditch attempt to expose the plot and save his friend. On the run from the security services he once worked alongside, he has to use every trick in the book and more to survive. On a near impossible quest, Bonner learns that deep deceit is all around him in the form of venal civil servants and greedy corrupt politicians. However, when all seems hopelessly lost, help comes from a most unexpected source… and heads roll.

Duality & Non-Duality

Alberto Martín has spent many years studying and practicing Christianity, Sufism, Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta (in that sequence) plus, at one time, the religion of the Crows (a native tribe of N. America). “For me, it has been universalism all along ever since I read Plato when I was 15 years old. Lately my attention has been focused on Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta and non-duality.”

For this author, Plato and Shankara say practically all that can be said about reality and the way towards its assimilation and exemplification.

In this work Martín answers many of the probing questions anyone of us is led to ask along our lives.

Enlightened Living: A Book of Being

Have you ever wondered about how best to live your life? Religions claim to have answers, but they are couched in faith and constrained by rituals that make each religion different from the next. The inevitable result has been conflict and war. Enlightened Living is neither religious nor spiritual, offering instead a rational and practical path that is available to everyone. Enlightenment isn’t found by austerity or following rituals but by the sustained practice of observing attachments and letting them go.

Fragile, Fragile Philosophy

This fragile, fragile philosophy unexpectedly developed an enormous power of conviction and direction.

It invented individual rights, it founded our way of thinking, it created science in the third century B.C. in Alexandria, it invented democracy.

From what characteristics does all this power, the fragile philosophy, derive? These ancestors of ours, the classical philosophers, had postulated three things, then forgotten.

a) The word is not the thing, the sentence is not the fact, the language is not the world. Not even an image of them.

b) Our thinking is groundless, because the initial concepts, let’s say the axioms from which we start to think, are not based on anything, because they are precisely the first.

c) Thought, rational discursive intellect, and language are the same, logos, one word indicates one and the other. Thought and language are the same thing.

Free Will and Determinism: Unraveling the Paradox

The worth of a book is rarely determined by its title but the class of a reader is surely determined by what title he or she reads. Although hundreds of books have already been written on this issue, yet the thirst of the people who are curious to its deepest sense have hardly been quenched, for the topic is no less than an abyss where a reader keeps free floating but never in vain; he keeps new layers of meaning and touches new horizons every moment. The book following the Islamic perspective of the issue Free Will and Determinism on the footprints of stalwarts like Al-Ghazzali, Shah Wali Allah and others, nevertheless, has taken the problem to its uniquely newest horizons where it opens new vistas of research by connecting the divine determinism with philosophical, psychological and genetic determinism in mosaic of free will.

Have Not Charity - Volume 1: Sins and Volume 2: Virtues

Have Not Charity is a fascinating and profound investigation into deep and important concepts which have become obscure in modern times: sin and virtue. Alexandr Korol examines what motivates people in their actions, how goals and behaviours align, and how these are all affected both for good and ill both by virtue and by sin. He seeks to show that many ‘good’ deeds are in fact motivated by sin.

This is a true modern work of ethics, in the classical sense, a guide for a better life. If you have ever hoped to gain a clearer and fuller understanding of how society and life work, this book will prove invaluable.

Hope on the Brinks: Dreams and Nightmares Crossing Borders

Much writing and popular media coverage of forced migration portrays refugees in a frame of helplessness and vulnerability. Focusing on the ‘suffering refugee’ obscures our ability to recognize the collective strength of refugee communities and how these strengths allow displaced persons to reorganize their lives in informal settlements in growing cities of the developing world. This book sheds light on how a growing population of urban refugees from Rwanda rebuilt their lives and communities after conflict and displacement in Cameroon, and how quickly things can change when their legal situation is called into question. Turmoil in the Central Africa region has led to over 500,000 refugees and asylum seekers arriving over the past several decades in Cameroon, the safe haven of the Central Africa region. This book aims to present human faces to the sea of refugees dominating our television screens, illustrate the range of their experiences rather than boiling the trajectories down to simple flight and displacement, and underline how their situations demonstrate resilience and hope in their ability to endure extreme hardship in chaotic urban environments. Indeed, even under the guise of rapidly changing and exclusive immigration policy, displaced persons try to keep their lives moving forward. A better understanding of hope and practice that lead to desired outcomes of refugees within growing urban centers in developing countries is imperative to inform these resilience building programs that humanitarian agencies are still grappling to design.

How the Universe Operates

Why do the heavenly bodies behave in a contrary fashion to what we are familiar with on earth?
Before a wheel can turn, we must ensure rim is joined to axle; before a couple can dance in circle, their hands must be joined. In contrast, the planets circle the sun and the moons circle the planets without any securing mechanism, and so precisely that their movements can be predicted to a millisecond. Again, why is it that, released from the effects of gravity, emollient matter like water or molten lead forms spontaneously into tiny globes, copying the form found in stars, planets and the sun? Are the tides satisfactorily explained by the thesis of gravitational ‘pull’ of moon and sun? If so, why does modern science have such difficulty reconciling the relative influences of these two bodies? What sort of reality is light, and why is the speed of light fixed and not infinite, at least in space?
Answers to these and other questions may be found through recourse to the philosophy of Aristotle. The thinkers of the Enlightenment chose to discard Aristotle’s limited natural science. That was understandable. But they chose to discard his philosophy as well. This was unwise, as fresh study of Aristotle’s thinking will show.

Language and Consciousness

The earth is home for countless species and has been for many millions of years. Man is probably one of the most recent arrivals, but in a remarkably short time has so changed the world to make its future uncertain.

It has been only about 400 years since this change appeared when science, using language differently, became a significant part of our intellectual make-up. At the same time language, in the hands of writers, became the manipulator of human consciousness, as David Lodge has discussed in Consciousness and the Novel.

This book attempts to establish a new platform to understand the nature of human consciousness based on language, without the need for the concept of ‘neural correlates’, for which many currently search.

Life As We Speak

Step into a world where words hold unimaginable power and unlock the gateway to our desired reality. In Life As We Speak, the profound connection between our speech and the very fabric of existence comes to light. Delve into the realization that life itself is a pure reflection of the way we harness and employ language.

This transformative book reveals the awe-inspiring potential of intention-oriented speech patterns. By consciously shaping our words, we generate thought forms that act as guiding forces, directing every activity and event toward our initial vision. Life As We Speak empowers readers to harness this ultimate ability, unlocking the keys to success, health, wealth, and whatever else their hearts yearn for, simply by becoming aware of their speech patterns and making conscious adjustments.

Within the pages of this captivating work, the mysteries of spoken and written words are unraveled, allowing readers to master the mechanism of life-creation through the power of their own voices. This book serves as a profound tool, dedicated to enhancing readers’ lives by revealing the immense power hidden within their spoken words. Through enlightening teachings, readers learn to cultivate constructive and beneficial verbal expression habits, forever transforming the way they interact with the world.

Who Will Bury The Dead God?

Imagine a man straddling both sides of good and evil, struggling to regain his balance. He clutches onto both aspects with his bewildered mind, pondering his own senses. As he stands there, his mind races with questions. What is the meaning of his existence? Why has he been placed in this moment, at this time, with these thoughts and feelings? Is there a purpose to his life, or is it all just a random series of events?

‘I know God smells terribly bad, and I’m ready to bury him deep in the ground. But is this really the right thing to do? Is there a better solution? Should I try to make the smell more bearable, or is this the only course of action? I’m torn between doing what’s best for God and the reality of the situation,’ he thinks.

Has he fallen into the river of dilemma and been washed away from his suffering? Will this man unravel the mystery of his existence, or will he be swallowed up by the abyss of his own mind?