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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Contemporary non-Christian & para-Christian cults & sects
Who are we? What is our place in this vast and ever-evolving
universe? Where do science and spirituality meet? If you've
pondered these questions, you're not alone. Join some of the most
spiritually curious and renowned minds of our time for an
exploration into the mystery of being. From founders of the Science
and Nonduality (SAND) conference, Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo, On the
Mystery of Being brings together an array of visionary spiritual
leaders, psychologists, philosophers, scientists, teachers,
authors, and healers to celebrate and explore what it means to be
human. This beautifully arranged collection of essays and insights
highlight topics on the convergence of spirituality and science,
weaving scientific theory and spiritual wisdom from some of the
most influential thinkers of our time-including Deepak Chopra,
Rupert Spira, Adyashanti, and many more-with pieces that get
straight to the heart of the matter. As a powerful antidote to our
chaotic and materialist modern world, this dazzling volume offers
timeless wisdom and new insight into humanity's age-old questions.
On the Mystery of Being also reveals the cutting-edge explorations
at the intersection of science and spirituality today. May it
encourage your spirit, challenge your mind, and deepen your
understanding of our interconnectedness.
A Reader for Navigating the Depths of Our Lives The Universe holds
us and tosses us about, only to hold us again. With Things That
Join the Sea and the Sky, Mark Nepo brings us a compelling treasury
of short prose reflections to turn to when struggling to keep our
heads above water, and to breathe into all of our sorrows and joys.
Inspired by his own journal writing across 15 years, this book
shares with us some of Mark's most personal work. Many passages
arise from accounts of his own life events-moments of "sinking and
being lifted"-and the insights they yielded. Through these
passages, we're encouraged to navigate our own currents of sea and
sky, and to discover something fundamental yet elusive: How,
simply, to be here. To be enjoyed in many ways-individually, by
topic, or as an unfolding sequence-Things That Join the Sea and the
Sky presents 145 contemplations gathered into 17 themes, each
intended to illuminate specific situations. The themes include:
Unraveling Our Fear, Beyond What Goes Wrong, The Gift of Deepening,
The Practice of Relationship, What Holds Us Up, Right-Sizing Our
Pain, The Reach of Kindness, Burning Off What's Unnecessary, How We
Make Our Way and many more. For those interested in either
beginning or expanding their own journaling explorations, this
reader also provides a guide to the practice of daily writing, with
100 compelling questions to get us started. "Joy is the sea that
holds all," writes Mark, "the Unity of Being where feelings don't
separate, but surface like waves to remind us we are alive." Here,
he helps us swim in those waters until we are held in the mystery
of their buoyancy.
In Book Two of The Law of One, the nature of each of the densities
or dimensions of this octave of creation is explored in detail with
special emphasis given to how evolution for our third density to
the fourth density is accomplished. The relationship between the
densities of creation and the energy centres of the body is
investigated so that each experience can be used as catalyst for
growth to balance and crystallise the energy centres of chakras of
the student of evolution. Wanderers, sexual energy transfers, the
physics of Dewey B. Larson, Polarization in consciousness, ritual
magic, and the nature and function of the Higher Self are all
explored as they are related to the Law of One. Book Two contains
Sessions #27 through to #50.
"All will find here much reality, much wisdom, much encouragement,
and much to praise God for."--J.I. Packer
This popular book from respected leader Charles H. Kraft shows
believers how to exercise the authority they have from God through
Jesus Christ. When Christians recognize and use the amazing gift of
spiritual authority, they position themselves to provide protection
and bring transformation, not only in their lives but in the lives
of family members, friends, even coworkers. Now fully revised and
updated.
An exploration of the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality
in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton
Wilson. A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the
work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson,
High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic
spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the
1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers
thought, dreamed, and experienced reality-but how did their
writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts
taking place in America? In High Weirdness, Erik Davis-America's
leading scholar of high strangeness-examines the published and
unpublished writings of these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well
as their own life-changing mystical experiences. Davis explores the
complex lattice of the strange that flowed through America's West
Coast at a time of radical technological, political, and social
upheaval to present a new theory of the weird as a viable mode for
a renewed engagement with reality.
Heaven and hell - are they real places, or are they fantasies
invented to inspire good behavior and overcome our fear of dying?
In this book Stafford Betty, a university professor and
international expert on afterlife research, answers these
questions. He allows deceased human beings speaking through
authentic mediums to describe their actual worlds. And what they
tell us would revolutionize the world's religions if they would
listen. Our brothers and sisters in the afterlife are not
"resting," as Christian theology often asserts. They live in a
world of infinite possibility, and their wills are as free over
there as they are here. They are busy beings, and some are climbing
toward higher realms while others languish. Suffering in the
afterworld, not just joy, can be intense; it exists to awaken souls
to their errors so they will enter into the happiness of those
higher spheres, where corruption can't enter. Professor Betty
explores those heavens, those places where love reigns unchecked -
as well as those unhappy places where it doesn't. The religions
we've fashioned here on earth could all use an upgrade. They are
moons that derive their light from the central sun. This book is
about that sun.
Book Three of the Law of One builds on the information presented in
Books One and Two, continuing the exploration of the nature and
balancing of the energy centers or chakras, sexual energy
transfers, healing, reincarnation, meditation, and Wanderers. The
nature of psychic prophecy is explored in Book Three, as are the
nature and ramifications of what are usually called psychic
attacks. A good deal of information is given on the principles of
ritual magic in general and white magic in particular, and a
beginning is made in the study of the archetypical mind, which is
the mind of the Logos and serves as a kind of blueprint for our
evolutionary process and which serves as the foundation concept for
each of our individual minds.
Chinese Spirit-Medium Cults in Singapore
Gnosticism is a countercultural spirituality that forever changed
the practice of Christianity. Before it emerged in the second
century, passage to the afterlife required obedience to God and
king. Gnosticism proposed that human beings were manifestations of
the divine, unsettling the hierarchical foundations of the ancient
world. Subversive and revolutionary, Gnostics taught that prayer
and mediation could bring human beings into an ecstatic spiritual
union with a transcendent deity. This mystical strain affected not
just Christianity but many other religions, and it characterizes
our understanding of the purpose and meaning of religion today. In
The Gnostic New Age, April D. DeConick recovers this vibrant
underground history to prove that Gnosticism was not suppressed or
defeated by the Catholic Church long ago, nor was the movement a
fabrication to justify the violent repression of alternative forms
of Christianity. Gnosticism alleviated human suffering, soothing
feelings of existential brokenness and alienation through the
promise of renewal as God. DeConick begins in ancient Egypt and
follows with the rise of Gnosticism in the Middle Ages, the advent
of theosophy and other occult movements in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, and contemporary New Age spiritual
philosophies. As these theories find expression in science-fiction
and fantasy films, DeConick sees evidence of Gnosticism's next
incarnation. Her work emphasizes the universal, countercultural
appeal of a movement that embodies much more than a simple
challenge to religious authority.
The relationship between new religious movements (NRMs) and
violence has long been a topic of intense public interest--an
interest heavily fueled by multiple incidents of mass violence
involving certain groups. Some of these incidents have made
international headlines. When New Religious Movements make the
news, it's usually because of some violent episode. Some of the
most famous NRMs are known much more for the violent way they came
to an end than for anything else. Violence and New Religious
Movements offers a comprehensive examination of violence by-and
against-new religious movements. The book begins with theoretical
essays on the relationship between violence and NRMs and then moves
on to examine particular groups. There are essays on the "Big
Five"--the most well-known cases of violent incidents involving
NRMs: Jonestown, Waco, Solar Temple, the Aum Shunrikyo subway
attack, and the Heaven's Gate suicides. But the book also provides
a richer survey by examining a host of lesser-known groups. This
volume is the culmination of decades of research by scholars of New
Religious Movements.
Have you ever wondered where on earth your life is going? Are you
trying to live a spiritual life but feeling lost? The gurus and
teachers tell us that we are 'guided' - but how can we recognise
and understand this guidance? This remarkable book describes in
detail hundreds of examples of synchronicities, prophetic dreams
and readings noted by the author on an almost everyday basis. For
perhaps the first time, here is sound and documented evidence that
every one of us can receive genuine spiritual guidance. This book
asks profound questions about the true nature of human
consciousness. Nigel Peace is an author, school teacher and Reiki
Master. He has degrees in science and philosophy, and has pursued a
lifelong interest in parapsychology. But it is his very personal
experience of almost incredible spiritual phenomena that is
described in this book. Nigel lives in north London.
"Armed with wit, insight, and truly astonishing research, Geoffrey
Falk utterly demolishes the notion of the enlightened guru who can
lead devotees to nirvana. This entertaining and yet deadly serious
book should be read by everyone pursuing or thinking of pursuing
the path of guru devotion." --John Horgan, author of "Rational
Mysticism" "Stripping the Gurus is superb--one of the best books of
its kind I have ever read. The research is meticulous, the writing
engaging, and the overall thesis: devastatingly true. A stellar
book." --Dr. David C. Lane, California State University Ramakrishna
was a homoerotic pedophile. His chief disciple, Vivekananda,
visited brothels in India. Krishnamurti carried on an affair for
over twenty years with the wife of a good friend. Chogyam Trungpa
drank himself into an early grave. One of Adi Da's nine "wives" was
a former Playboy centerfold. Bhagwan Rajneesh sniffed laughing gas
to get high. Andrew Cohen, guru and publisher of "What Is
Enlightenment?" magazine, by his own reported admission sometimes
feels "like a god." These are typical of the "wizened sages" to
whom otherwise-sensible people give their devotion and
unquestioning obedience, surrendering their independence,
willpower, and life's savings in the hope of realizing for
themselves the same "enlightenment" as they ascribe to the
"perfect, God-realized" master. Why? Is it for being emotionally
vulnerable and "brainwashed," as the "anti-cultists" assert? Or for
being "willingly psychologically seduced," as the apologists
unsympathetically counter, confident that they themselves are "too
smart" to ever fall into the same trap? Or have devotees simply
walked, with naively open hearts and thirsty souls, into inherent
dynamics of power and obedience which have showed themselves in
classic psychological studies from Milgram to Zimbardo, and to
which each one of us is susceptible every day of our lives? Like
the proud "Rude Boy" Cohen allegedly said, with a laugh, in
response to the nervous breakdown of one of his devoted followers:
"It could happen to any one of you." Don't let it happen to you.
Don't get suckered in. Be prepared. Be informed. Find out what
reportedly goes on behind the scenes in even the best of our
world's spiritual communities. You can start by reading this book.
"The is one of the most illuminating updates on the current state
of Mormonism that I have ever seen. It brings Mormonism's unstable,
changeable truth clearly into view, and provides a convincing
warning against the most polytheistic religion ever offered to the
modern world." - Dr. Gleason Archer, Professor of Old Testament and
Semitics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
The inside story of the world's most notorious cults. The strange
and sinister world of cults is a source of endless fascination.
Their secrets, rituals and shadowy hierarchies make for some of the
most disturbing and shocking revelations in history. Most chilling
of all is the fact that many of their followers forfeit all
independence in order to carry out the often sadistic bidding of a
mysterious master manipulator - and continue to defend their leader
to this day. From Charles Manson, who instructed his followers to
murder seven people, including a heavily pregnant Sharon Tate, to
Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out deadly
terror attacks, and the People's Temple, these cults and their
leaders transfix us with their extreme ability to commit savage
acts of cruelty and depravity in the name of a self-appointed
higher power. Many shocking and international cults are brought to
life, including: - The Manson Family - People's Temple - Colonia
Dignidad - Thuggees - Aum Shinrikyo - Skopsty - Raelism - Heaven's
Gate
During the course of my quest for truth, knowledge and nature of
reality over the last 40 years or so, considerable valuable inner
knowledge has been opened to me from numerous and diverse sources,
knowledge which I have since been blessed to share with readers of
my books, newsletters and websites. When I recently discovered and
started to read Science of Being by The Baron Eugene Fersen,
originally made available to very few selected, privileged people
in the form of a series of twenty seven individual lessons, I knew
at once that these are no ordinary texts. It very soon became
apparent to me in fact that this is an extremely profound and
important collection of wisdom, knowledge and teachings, and
without doubt some of the very greatest I have personally ever seen
on these most important matters. Science of Being is not only one
of the very first texts on The Law of Attraction ever written, if
not the first, it is, in my view, one of the most profound and
important texts ever written in absolute terms, written by a true
Lightbearer for humanity, and which reach far beyond The Law of
Attraction to encompass many other Universal Principles.. It also
very soon became clear to me that many of the most well known Law
of Attraction and Metaphysics authors must, at least to some
extent, directly or indirectly have learned from this great teacher
of teachers. No other book ever published on The Law of Attraction
however goes as deeply or as clearly as Science of Being. It is now
my very great pleasure to make available to you this rare, once
almost lost collection of twenty seven lessons including exercises,
questions and answers in the form of a single powerful book, that
all who areblessed and most privileged to read it may profoundly
benefit from its valuable and indeed crucial teachings, your life
thus being blessed with health, abundance and happiness, as well as
further enhancing your own knowledge of the true nature of the
Universe, and the Universal Principles, including The Law of
Attraction, which infinitely shape our lives and reality. Adrian P.
Cooper. Author, Our Ultimate Reality, Life, the Universe and
Destiny of Mankind.
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