The Metamorphosis of the Subject in Foucault and Castaneda: The Way to Experience the Spirit

This book presents techniques and practices of self-knowledge and self-control and examines how their applying can lead people to acquire knowledge about high experiences, such as the experience of knowing the existence of the Spirit. These actions aim at breaking the continuity of people's usual actions, resulting in the personal metamorphosis of their perception. All that, both as theories and practices, at a first stage, originates from ancient Greek and Roman philosophical tradition, starting with Pythagoras, and through the Stoics, Epictetus and Epicurus, reaches Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. This is achieved with the help of a book by French philosopher Michel Foucault who studied and presented the related knowledge in Hermeneutics of the Subject. At a second stage, those self-knowledge techniques and practices originate from the gnoseotheory of ancient Mexico's shamans which is described wonderfully and thoroughly in Carlos Castaneda's books. To our big surprise, for both sources, it's the exact same techniques and practices - they even have the same names. The surprise reaches the limits of the wondrous and the magical, considering the huge distance between them and the certain impossibility of the people practicing them getting in contact. On a first level, the book studies the theoretical didascaly concerning the dominant opinion about perception and ways for people to reach that knowledge. On a second level, it treats and describes said techniques and practices whose application can help us change the view and the perception we have about ourselves, the world and the reality, and through all that, the metamorphosis of an individual.

Author: Demetrios Thanasoulas

Publisher: Independently Published

Publication Date: Jul 17, 2018

Number of Pages: 278 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 1717806678

ISBN-13: 9781717806673