The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: The Numinous Experience
   Introduction
     I. The Numinous Experience
     II. The First Pole: Mysterium Tremendum in the Numen
     III. The Second Pole: Fascination, Desire, Love, and Bliss in Our experience of the Numen
     IV. The Unity and Opposition of Both Poles in Our Experience of the Numen
     V. The Fullness of Christian Revelation
     VI. Is the Numen Really a Transcendent Other?
     VII. Conclusion
Chapter Two: The Sacred and the Cosmic Struggle
   Introduction
     I. Mircea Eliade—Religion as Hierophany
          A. Common Elements in Cross-Cultural Religious Expression
          B. Homo Religiosus
          C. The Anxiety of “Nonreligious Man”
     II. Kant and Newman on the Divine Origin of Conscience
          A. Kant and the Divine Origin of Conscience
          B. Newman and the Divine Origin of Conscience
          C. An Initial Conclusion about “the Soul”
     III. Eliade, Tolkien, and Jung on the Myth of the Cosmic Struggle between Good and Evil
     IV. Conclusion
Chapter Three: Mind and the Transcendent
   Introduction
     I. The Desire for Perfect Truth-Being
     II. Clues to Our Transcendence from the Question Why
     III. Lonergan’s Proof of God
          A. Proof of the Minor Premise: “The Totality of Reality Is Completely Intelligible”
          B. Proof of the Major Premise: “If the Totality of Reality Is Completely Intelligible, God Exists”
          C. A Reality That Is Unrestricted in Intelligibility Must Be Completely Unique
          D. The One Necessary Reality Is the Ultimate Cause of Everything Else in Reality
     IV. God Is an “Unrestricted Act of Thinking”
     V. The Presence of God as Source of the Notion of Completely Intelligible Reality
          A. The Notion of the Complete Intelligibility of Reality
          B. Universal and Unrestricted Heuristic Anticipation
          C. Universal Heuristic Anticipation Is Unrestricted
          D. Human Intelligence versus Artificial Intelligence
     VI. Human Intelligence versus Animal Intelligence
     VII. Conclusion
Chapter Four: The Substance of Things Yearned For
   Introduction
     I. The Desire for Perfect Love
          A. The Source of Perfect Unity Is the Source of Perfect Love, Goodness, and Beauty
          B. There Can Be Only One Perfect Unity
          C. Perfect Love Is Perfect Unity
     II. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional Justice or Goodness
     III. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional Beauty
     IV. The Unity, Meaning, and Depth of Our Transcendental Desires
          A. Reason and Revelation
          B. Using One Transcendental Desire as an Interpretive Lens for the Others
     V. Our Transcendent Nature: A Review of the Evidence
Chapter Five: Clues to a Life Beyond
   Introduction
     I. Definitions and Descriptions
     II. Important Studies
          A. The Parnia-Southampton University Study
          B. The Van Lommel Study
          C. Dr. Kenneth Ring’s Studies of the Blind
          D. The Moody Study and Its Consistency of Data with Ring and Van Lommel
          E. Dr. Janice Holden’s Assessment of Thirty-Nine NDE Studies
     III. Three Kinds of Verifiable Evidence
          A. Reported Veridical Data
          B. Visual Perception of the Blind during Clinical Death
          C. Meeting Deceased Persons in a Transphysical Domain
     IV. Response to Physicalist Explanations
     V. Near-Death Experiences, Love, and Resurrection
Chapter Six: The Soul and Its Brain: Toward a Theory of Transphysical Self-Consciousness
   Introduction
     I. Clues to Transphysical Consciousness
          A. Heuristic Notions, Gödel’s Theorem, and Transphysical Consciousness
          B. A Quantum Physicalist Explanation—Penrose and Hameroff
     II. The Hard Problem of Self-Consciousness
          A. Living Systems
          B. Lonergan’s Levels of Reality—“Conjugates” and “Things”
          C. Protomentalist Solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness
     III. Sensate Consciousness and Self-Consciousness
          A. Animals, Sensate Consciousness, and the “Feeling” of Self
          B. Human Self-Apprehension and Self-Consciousness
          C. The Transphysical Nature of Human Self-Consciousness
     IV. Dualism, Trialism, and Hylomorphism
          A. Trialist Interactionism—Eccles, Popper, Beck, and Stapp
          B. Contemporary Hylomorphism—Polanyi and Lonergan
     V. Comparisons and Contrasts
     VI. Conclusion: The Impact of Transphysical Self-Consciousness
Conclusion
Appendix One: Evidence for an Intelligent Creator from Contemporary Science
   Introduction
     I. Can Science Indicate Creation?
     II. Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Big Bang Theory, and the Modern Universe
     III. Space-Time Geometry Proofs and the Beginning of Physical Reality
     IV. Entropy and the Beginning of Our Universe
     V. From Physics to Metaphysics
     VI. Fine-Tuning “for Life” at the Big Bang: Implications of Supernatural Intelligence
          A. The High Improbability of Our Low-Entropy Universe
          B. The High Improbability of Anthropic Conditions (Based on Universal Constants)
     VII. Conclusion
Appendix Two: A Thomistic Metaphysical Proof of God: A Response to Richard Dawkins’ “Complexity Error”
   Introduction
     I. An Eight-Step Thomistic Metaphysical Proof of God
     II. A Response to Richard Dawkins’ “Complexity Error”
     III. Conclusion: Combining the Physical and Metaphysical Evidence
Bibliography
Notes