 163. Terminology |
OTHERING: Michael Foucault's name for the way people distinguish themselves from other people, usually in a pejorative way.
OVERSELF: The soul, super consciousness, spirit. In Sanskrit, called adhyatma.
PADMASANA: The "lotus position" used in meditation.
PANDIT/PUNDIT: An eastern name for a person who has thoroughly studied the scriptures and various religions, but is not a teacher.
PANTHEISM: The belief that God is all things. This means that people and Nature are aspects of God and have divine power in and of themselves.
PARADIGM SHIFT: A drastic change in the way the human race lives and thinks as a result of an important new discovery or development.
PARADOX: A seemingly contradictory concept that, upon close examination, is not contradictory at all.
PARAMATA: The supreme self, the supreme atman. Also called the overself, consciousness prior to the body and mind.
PAROLE: The French word for speech. Saussure used the term to refer to individual speech acts made possible by langue, or language.
PATRIARCHY: The system of thinking and acting that sees fatherhood as a special source of power and authority.
PENIS ENVY: A very questionable Freudian idea that women are jealous of men. It has been used to try and discredit women's thinking and behavior.
PHENOMENAL WORLD: The world as it appears to our senses.
PHENOMENOLOGY: Philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl that says that "intentionality," or attitude, always goes along with consciousness.
PHILOSOPHER: One who is in a state of divine-self realization (one's first love) and uses "intuition" along with unconditional love to lead others "back home."
PHILOSOPHIES: The philosophers of the French Enlightenment. They believed that philosophy was an important means of bringing about progress.
PHILOSOPHY: Literally the "love of wisdom," from the Greek words philos and sophia.
PHONEME: In linguistics, a consonant or a vowel sound that is recognizably different from other sounds used to make words. It is the smallest unit of sound in language.
PHYSIS: The ancient Greed word for the natural world.
PINGALA: A channel on the right side of the spinal cord. It contains sensors and motor fibers which effect physical life and one's metaphysical life.
