Reality’s Fugue

“For the student or teacher of cross-cultural philosophy and theology, and even the scientist, mathematician, and psychologist, Dr. Brainard’s work offers a fresh, penetrating interdisciplinary approach to studying the nature and products of human awareness. In a clear and rigorous manner, this work weaves together the themes of reality, consciousness, and existence with various frameworks of interpretation, challenging us to rethink our referential fields and the meanings we attach to terms such as ‘objective,’ ‘subjective,’ ‘universal,’ ‘particular,’ ‘atom,’ and ‘void.’”

—Stephanie Theodorou, coeditor of Animal Experience: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World

“This book invites you into the music of the world religions and the richness of timeless philosophical questions. Rather than siding with one answer or another, Brainard combines them together, each one dancing with the others like melodies in a classical fugue. The interplay of all the perspectives, he suggests, creates a new and richer level of awareness. Come join the dance …”

—Philip Clayton, author of In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World

“Brainard presents a series of compelling arguments concerning the nature of reality and, more importantly, the connections between reality and awareness. In doing so, he engages with several important philosophical problems—among them Cartesian dualism, free will, and the problem of evil.”

—Ian Alexander Cuthbertson Reading Religion

F. Samuel Brainard is an independent scholar of Asian and Western religion and philosophy. He is the author of Reality and Mystical Experience, also published by Penn State University Press.