Essentia Readings
Hosted by Lebanese artist Nadia Hassan, Essentia Readings podcasts high-quality but accessible essays on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, mythology, foundations of physics and much more. This podcast is produced by Essentia Foundation (www.essentiafoundation.org).
Episodes
16 episodes
How Idealism saved Leo Tolstoy’s life
Today’s article sheds light on the personal journey of one of the world’s most renowned authors, and the impact of idealism on his development and growth. It shows us what joins humanity together in its suffering, but also what joins it in the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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37:46
The march towards Eastern idealism
Today’s article dives into the Western world’s history with consciousness and its still evolving relationship with this subject. It goes on to chart a seeming progression within this region towards Eastern idealist thought, while drawing what t...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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43:13
How can you be me? The answer is time
Today’s article explains, in a very elegant manner, how universal consciousness can indeed present as individual alters, simultaneously. With the help of a few real life examples, a powerful metaphor takes shape, allowing us to visualize how di...
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24:07
Whirlpools in Universal Consciousness
The article I’ll be reading today unpacks what makes a good metaphor, why metaphors are so valuable to our pursuit of Truth, and invites us to appreciate the simple elegance and explanatory power of one metaphor in particular, favored both in E...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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23:45
The Copernican Revolution of the human mind
Today’s article calls for a revolution. And like a number of revolutions in history, it is an attempt to dethrone a controversial king; one the author thinks has long outstayed his welcome, and led us all rather astray. He presents the way to o...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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30:44
There is no personal self
Today’s article challenges our currently held notion of self and how we typically define experience, as well as consciousness itself. It argues that the concept of an isolated self is an illusion, and drawing from the Buddhist teachings, ...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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29:31
Dissociation and complexity: A psychiatrist’s perspective
The article I’ll be reading today is a master class on dissociation, from the field of psychiatry. It breaks down the complexity of this phenomenon, and shows us that it is a much more common process in life than is generally thought. Furthermo...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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36:20
Contact with universal consciousness
Today’s article examines our decidedly limited mental representation of the world, and how it is fundamentally linked to the systems of meaning available to us, to our perceptual constructs. It lays out incredible data to show just how much and...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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41:53
Is the human brain a model of the universe?
The article I’ll be reading today presents documented similarities between the human brain and the cosmos, and poses the question: can either be modeled after the other? This very exciting possibility might allow as of yet undiscovered truths a...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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26:33
The Three Minds: A framework beyond biopsychosocial medicine
The article I’ll be reading today shines an important light on the field of medicine, allopathic medicine in particular, and questions the largely biomedical approach underpinning mainstream practice. It argues for a more connected and balanced...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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35:32
The ethics of Idealism
Welcome back everyone! Today’s article is a fascinating deep dive into the subject of morality and the neurological mechanics of our joint human condition. It is an eye-opening presentation of how we actually relate to each other, and what this...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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27:44
Re-thinking identity: Children’s experiences of self
In the best episode of 'Essentia Readings' yet, Nadia Hassan reads Dr. Donna Thomas's 'Re-thinking identity: Children’s experiences of self.' Nadia also introduces us to her young niece, a child who very matter-of-factly states that she is awar...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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18:26
Near-Death Experiences during cardiac arrest
Today’s article delves into a phenomenon that has been largely dismissed. One’s position regarding these events tends to encapsulate a person’s view on the fundamental nature of life, as it deals with its apparent end: death, or a close brush w...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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29:16
What is consciousness?
Today’s article poses the million-dollar question: “What is consciousness”? A much debated matter among academics, scientists, and thinkers the world over for centuries, but the burning curiosity germinates in us all and from quite a y...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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28:34
Communicating through the 'collective unconscious'
The article I’ll be presenting today is by an author whose work has been focused, in part, on the psychology of consciousness and psycho-semantics, problems of the unconscious, altered states of consciousness, ethnic and cross-cultural psycholo...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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37:52
Seeing things: The daimonic nature of reality
Hello and welcome to the Essentia Readings podcast. My name is Nadia and I’ll be bringing you content from a wide range of contributors: scholars, journalists, philosophers, scientists, and academics. All to do with that ineffable thing we call...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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29:28