TY - MANSCPT AU - Hart,David Bentley TI - The experience of God: being, consciousness, bliss SN - 9780300166842 (cloth : alk. paper) AV - BL473 .H37 2013 U1 - 211 23 PY - 2013///] CY - New Haven, London PB - Yale University Press KW - God KW - Experience (Religion) N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-342) and index; God, gods, and the world -- God is not a proper name -- Pictures of the world -- Being, consciousness, bliss -- Being (Sat) -- Consciousness (Chit) -- Bliss (Ananda) -- Reality of God -- Illusion and reality N2 - Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion "God" frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word "God" functions in the world's great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity's knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical "moments" -being, consciousness, and bliss- the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points ER -