The Passionate Mind
A Manual for Living Creatively with One’s Self
by Joel Kramer
“Intriguing topic discussed with eloquence…. Stimulating and mind-stretching…. Subjects of elemental and universal interest: belief, pleasure, freedom, fear, death, time, analysis and the unconscious, images, love, sexuality, meditation, evolution”
— L.A. Times
“First released in 1974, The Passionate Mind explored the functions of the mind and how to divorce perception from cultural conditioning, memory, and secondhand knowledge. The book showed a new way to be clear, aware, and radically present in the world. It was, in short, a revolutionary manifesto for self-exploration and personal thinking….”
— Yoga Journal (from YJ’s 2010 review of The Passionate Mind Revisited)
“Joel Kramer, in his own unique way, shares direct ways of helping you to experience being both the Known and the Knower.”
— Alan Watts
“The Passionate Mind held my interest throughout, which for me is unusual. It presents basic verities in a way that anyone could assimilate, with beauty and simplicity.”
— Anais Nin
“A passionate and fascinating thinker”
— Marin Independent Journal
“A manual of magnitude for today’s living”
— New York Culture Review
“Perhaps Joel Kramer’s singular merit lies in his content which is so unusual, so startling, as to grip the mind and shake its foundations. He deals with simple, even commonplace subjects which have been abused again and again. Only he brings fresh impact to their understanding.”
— Gordon Sherman, former Chair of the Board, CA School of Professional Psychology
(on the back cover)
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