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.

The inaugural volume of Princeton Readings in Religions brings together the work of thirty scholars of the religions of India in a new anthology designed to reshape the ways in which the religious traditions of India are understood. The book contains translations of forty-five works, most of which have never before been available in a Western language. Many of these highlight types of discourse (especially ritual manuals, folktales, and oral narratives) and voices (vernacular, esoteric, domestic, and female) that have not been sufficiently represented in previous anthologies and standard accounts of Indian religions.

The selections are drawn from ancient texts, medieval manuscripts, modern pamphlets, and contemporary fieldwork in rural and urban India. They represent every region in South Asia and include Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Muslim materials. Some are written texts reflecting elite concerns, while others are transcriptions of oral narratives told by nonliterate peasants. Some texts are addressed to a public and pan-Indian audience, others to a limited coterie of initiates in an esoteric sect, and still others are intended for a few women gathered in the courtyard for a household ceremony. The editor has reinforced this diversity by arranging the selections within several overarching themes and categories of discourse (hymns, rituals, narratives, and religious interactions), and encourages us to make our own connections.

In this theoretically rich work, Mason Kamana Allred unearths the ways Mormons have employed a wide range of technologies to translate events, beliefs, anxieties, and hopes into reproducible experiences that contribute to the growth of their religious systems of meaning. Drawing on methods from cultural history, media studies, and religious studies, Allred focuses specifically on technologies of vision that have shaped Mormonism as a culture of seeing. These technologies, he argues, were as essential to the making of Mormonism as the humans who received, interpreted, and practiced their faith. While Mormons' uses of television and the internet are recent examples of the tradition's use of visual technology, Allred excavates older practices and technologies for negotiating the spirit, such as panorama displays and magic lantern shows. Fusing media theory with feminist new materialism, he employs media archaeology to examine Mormons' ways of performing distinctions, beholding as a way to engender radical visions, and standardizing vision to effect assimilation. Allred's analysis reveals Mormonism as always materially mediated and argues that religious history is likewise inherently entangled with media.

On February 3, 1913, the first General Meeting of the newly formed Anthroposophical Society was convened in Berlin. Six weeks later, in Holland, Rudolf Steiner spoke for the first time to an anthroposophical audience in a detailed, intimate way of the esoteric schooling of the individual human being in earthly life. Hence the fundamental importance of these lectures for anthroposophical inner development. Steiner deals here with the subtle effects of spiritual development at every level of the human being. Beginning with straightforward questions relating to the body's experience of foodstuff - meat, coffee, alcohol, and so forth - he unfolds the universe of anthroposophical spiritual striving until it includes direct perception of Paradise and the Holy Grail, as well as the role of the human being as evolving between the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. This edition also includes as a prologue Steiner's crucial lecture on "The Being of Anthroposophy," which has never before appeared in English. In this, Steiner says: Sophia will become objective again, but she will take with her what humanity is, and objectively present herself in this form. Thus, she will present herself not only as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia - as the Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the very being of the human being, henceforth bears that being within her, and in this form she will confront enlightened human beings as the objective being Sophia who once stood before the Greeks.

Diverse and pluralistic in scope, this book provides an overview of the complex debate between religion and science. This volume is unique in that it incorporates discussions and interviews with leading academics in the field. The informal and accessible tone will be appealing to those approaching the topic for the first time.

The official journal of the Brigham Young pioneer company is made available for the first time in this book. The arrival of Latter-day Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake is one of the major events in the history of the LDS church and the West. Thomas Bullock, the author of this account, was the official journal keeper of that party of pioneers.Bullock was the "Clerk of the Camp of Israel," an English scribe who is perhaps more responsible than any other person for the vast documentary record of the LDS church in the the mid-nineteenth century. Though he wrote thousands of pages ultimately released under other men's names, he remains a relatively obscure figure in Western History. An intensely personal document, Bullock's account rises above its status as the "official" journal. He shares his doubts, his complaints, his personal assessments of his fellow travelers throughout the pages of the journal. This remarkable record presents in detail the daily reality of a journey that has become an American legend. From Nauvoo to Salt Lake and back to the Missouri River, Bullock's journals from September 1846 to October 1847 paint a colorful and personal picture of both the Mormon Trail and the suffering of the poverty-stricken Saints during their struggle across Iowa in 1846. They tell the legendary tale of Brigham Young's pioneer company-the beginning of a great exodus across the Plains and Rockies to the Great Basin Kingdom. Life at Winter Quarters, the renowned "miracle of the Quail" at the Poor Camp on the Mississippi River, detailed accounts of buffalo hunts, dances and celebrations, and other trail events are recorded. Jim Bridger's famous meeting with Brigham Young and other leaders of the pioneer party was described in detail by Bullock. Bridger's comments on the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, the Indians, agriculture and the West in general show the breadth of knowledge of mountain men like Bridger. The interview also gives evidence of the unanswered questions still plaguing the Saints as they neared their destination. With maps, illustrations, bibliography and index, this work is a major contribution to the history of overland migration, the LDS church, and the wider West. The book provides insight into the impressions of a devout European immigrant of the great American West. An appendix containing biographical data on Mormon pioneers is included.

The South has been the standard focus of Reconstruction, but reconstruction following the Civil War was not a distinctly Southern experience. In the post-Civil War West, American Indians also experienced reconstruction through removal to reservations and assimilation to Christianity, and Latter-day Saints-Mormons-saw government actions to force the end of polygamy under threat of disestablishing the church. These efforts to bring nonconformist Mormons into the American mainstream figure in the more familiar scheme of the federal government's reconstruction-aimed at rebellious white Southerners and uncontrolled American Indians. In this volume, more than a dozen contributors look anew at the scope of the reconstruction narrative and offer a unique perspective on the history of the Latter-day Saints. Marshaled by editors Clyde A. Milner II and Brian Q. Cannon, these writers explore why the federal government wanted to reconstruct Latter-day Saints, when such efforts began, and how the initiatives compare with what happened with white Southerners and American Indians. Other contributions examine the effect of the government's policies on Mormon identity and sense of history. Why, for example, do Latter-day Saints not have a Lost Cause? Do they share a resentment with American Indians over the loss of sovereignty? And were nineteenth-century Mormons considered to be on the "wrong" side of a religious line, but not a "race line"? The authors consider these and other vital questions and topics here. Together, and in dialogue with one another, their work suggests a new way of understanding the regional, racial, and religious dynamics of reconstruction-and, within this framework, a new way of thinking about the creation of a Mormon historical identity.