A highly original study that examines the central role played by women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian era, "The Darkened Room" is more than a meditation on women mediums--it's an exploration of the era's gender relations.
The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead, offered female mediums a new independence, authority, and potential to undermine conventional class and gender relations in the home and in society.
Using previously unexamined sources and an innovative approach, Alex Owen invokes the Victorian world of darkened seance rooms, theatrical apparitions, and moving episodes of happiness lost and regained. She charts the struggles between spiritualists and the medical and legal establishments over the issue of female mediumship, and provides new insights into the gendered dynamics of Victorian society.

Imagine an age where the predictability of science and the wisdom of religion combine. Scientology is called a spiritual technology for a reason. Scientology provides tools to assist you to find your own answers to your questions about existence, your own truth about your life and you. The word Scientology comes from: Scio (Latin) 'knowing, in the fullest sense of the word', logos (Greek) 'study of'. Thus Scientology means 'knowing how to know'. Although modern life seems to pose an infinitely complex array of problems, Scientology maintains that the solutions to those problems are basically simple and within every man's reach. Difficulties with communication and interpersonal relationships, nagging insecurities, self-doubt and despair each man innately possesses the potential to be free of these and many other concerns. This book was designated by L. Ron Hubbard as the Book One of Scientology. It gives the basic philosophical principles of Scientology, and shows practical application how to improve conditions in life. It covers concepts like the relation of mind body and spirit, it gives you the analysis of what understanding consists of and how understanding can be mended or achieved, and all other essential concepts of this amazing study, merging science and spirituality.

James Van Praagh is a spiritual medium--someone who is able to bridge the physical and spiritual worlds. Unaware of his spiritual gifts until he was in his twenties, he slowly came to terms with his unique abilities. In addition, many of his sessions with grieving people who came to him looking to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones are explored. From a devastated mother recieving a message of hope from her deceased little girl to communicating with a young man, killed in Vietnam, who doesn't realize he's dead, the theme of hope and peace in the afterlife is affirmed. Van Praagh also helps the reader recognize and positively deal with the pain of grief in a healthy, honest manner. Part spiritual memoir, part case study, part instrumental guide, Talking to Heaven will change the way you perceive death...and life.

Simon Mollat woke up in the dunes of Arambol Beach, Goa, India with an agonizing hangover. The year was 2000 and the apocalypse was still a figment of collective imagination - the millennium celebration had lasted Simon for four consecutive months. A more enlightened soul would have enjoyed the sunrise, but not Simon. He was being pissed on by a stray dog, and somewhere in the back of his mind Pink Floyd wandered in and around his aching head. Is there anybody out there? Once he had been a promising young man from the land of the midnight sun. Current status? Man on the lam suffering from depression and aimlessness, a stray dog's pissing post. His thoughts turned to the stones he'd stuffed in his pocket during the night, the boat he could easily "borrow" that could take him away, far into the water. He would slip out of the boat and dive downward and away from all of his suffering. Something intervened and took Simon out of his suicidal head and the recurring Pink Floyd soundtrack; it was something itchy and stuffed in the neck opening of his t-shirt. It was a balled up piece of paper with the photograph of a withered Indian man and a message that read, "Freedom from this 'me'" and signed by someone named Raman Kavalam. It smelled of incense and made Simon think of sects, robes, and cultist brainwashing. Simon was by no means a religious person, he didn't even believe in God. But something compelled him forward to seek out this Raman Kavalam, something much larger than himself. And, so begins the odyssey of Simon Mollat's spiritual awakening. Within the Space of the Moment takes readers on an unforgettable journey from despair and outer pleasure to inner peace and the feeling of being intensely alive.