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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > General
Theosophy is a key work for anyone seeking a solid grounding in
spiritual reality as described by Rudolf Steiner. The book is
organized in four parts. First, Steiner builds up a comprehensive
understanding of human nature, beginning with the physical bodily
nature and moving up through the soul nature to our spiritual
being: the I and the higher spiritual aspects of our being.This
then leads to the experience of the human being as a sevenfold
interpenetrated being of body, soul, and spirit. In the next
section Steiner gives an extraordinary overview of the laws of
reincarnation and the workings of karma as we pass from one life to
the next. This prepares us for the third section where Steiner
shows the different ways in which we live, during this life on
earth and after death, in the three worlds of body, soul, and
spirit, as well as the ways in which these worlds in turn live into
us.Finally, a succinct description is given of the path of
knowledge by which each one of us can begin to understand the
marvelous and harmonious complexity of the psycho-spiritual worlds
in their fullness.
Winner of the 2022 Association for the Study of Japanese Mountain
Religion Book Prize Defining Shugendo brings together leading
international experts on Japanese mountain asceticism to discuss
what has been an essential component of Japanese religions for more
than a thousand years. Contributors explore how mountains have been
abodes of deities, a resting place for the dead, sources of natural
bounty and calamities, places of religious activities, and a vast
repository of symbols. The book shows that many peoples have chosen
them as sites for ascetic practices, claiming the potential to
attain supernatural powers there. This book discusses the history
of scholarship on Shugendo, the development process of mountain
worship, and the religious and philosophical features of devotion
at specific sacred mountains. Moreover, it reveals the rich
material and visual culture associated with Shugendo, from statues
and steles, to talismans and written oaths.
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