"To the reader who is able to pierce the outer covering, this grand poem will reveal the deepest of esoteric teachings. Compiled and adapted from numerous old and new translations of the original Sanscrit text.

A study of Auroville, the city in India devoted to the creator of Integral Yoga Sri Aurobindo (d.1950) and his followers, as it has developed in a country that began identifying itself as a secular state with a 1976 Constitutional amendment. Minor (religious studies, U. of Kansas) gives insight

In this book the author explores Kalee Bhava, the Goddess, and her moods that were born out of torment and love crashing together to ignite life into existence.

An ethnographic study of voodoo in West Africa's Ewe populations of coastal Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

Ever since her early days at the Findhorn Community in Scotland, Dorothy Maclean has been helping people attune to nature and connect with their inner divinity. Now, in Choices of Love, she discusses the nature of divine love and how each of us can avail ourselves of its power to enrich any aspect of our lives.

The immensity of divine love, how to contact it, the nature of the Divine, blocks to understanding, the nature of good and evil, and the angelic world of nature and of human groupings such as cities, states, and nations, are among the topics Dorothy Maclean addresses.

The reader of Choices of Love will come away with a clearer understanding of themselves and the universal love of which we are all a part.

"At a time when the New Age movement is starting to make good on the Spiritualists' vision of America as a 'grand clairvoyant nation', Carroll's work raises provocative questions about the tension betwen freedom and authority in the harmonial religions of today." Church History

..". offers the most comprehensive, sane examination of its topic yet available, no mean achievement for a subject long afflicted by religious partisanship and now perhaps in danger of sympathetic attraction." Journal of American History

..". fascinating reading it will be for those with a taste for good scholarly writing and a love of the American past and the manifold varieties of the spiritual quest." The Quest

"In addition to being an excellent introduction to mid-19th-century Spiritualism, Carroll s work also offers scholars a new vantage point from which to view the religious creativity that was so prominent in antebellum America in general." Choice

During the decade before the Civil War, a growing number of Americans gathered around tables in dimly lit rooms, joined hands, and sought enlightening contact with spirits. The result was Spiritualism, a distinctly colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. Spiritualism in Antebellum America analyzes the attempt by spiritually restless Americans of the 1840s and 1850s to negotiate a satisfying combination of freedom and authority as they sought a sense of harmony with the universe."

The following essay is an effort towards the freeing of our consciousness from the limitation in which it habitually dwells, and which exits only by means of certain illusions that are common to all men.

This jewel of which I am writing is no diamond dug out of the darkness of the earth, but is no less a thing than the mind of man when it has been drawn from the darkness of material life and become perfectly clear. This book is important to anyone interested in yoga.

John Gardner has worked in anthroposophy and Waldorf education for close to sixty years. The present volume collects some of his most striking thoughts on various aspects of education and adolescence viewed from the perspective of spiritual science. "It is a characteristic of youth, " he writes, "that what will later be accomplishment appears first as longing." This longing, which appears in manifold guises, is above all a longing for true forms of knowing. At the deepest levels, young people's thinking seeks to become imagination, their life of feeling to become inspiration, while in their sexuality, they experience the burgeoning seed of intuition. The leading question of education is how these longings are to be nurtured and cultivated so thai they fulfill their promise, and we grow up as free, responsible human beings able to care for each other and the greater life that sustains us. Such are the issues that John Gardner considers in this wise collection, which also includes reflections on such topics as discipline and the importance of play.

In the spiritual language of the 20th century few names raise such varied reactions as that of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949). Much of what is considered New Age spirituality can be attributed to Gurdjieff. This book is a tribute not only to the scope and power of Gurdjieff's ideas, but to the special "atmosphere" that surrounded his work with pupils.

Ever since nature and consciousness were separated in the late Middle Ages, giving rise to a science of matter alone, the spiritual beings who are the universe have felt abandoned and unable to complete their work, for this work depends for its success on human collaboration. At the same time, human beings have also felt abandoned, condemned to a speck of dust in an infinitely decaying universe. In these remarkable lectures, Rudolf Steiner reestablishes the human being as a participant in an evolving, dynamic universe of living spiritual beings: a living universe, whole and divine. And he does so in concrete images, capable of being grasped by human consciousness as if from within. How is this possible? Implicit in Rudolf Steiner's view is the fact that, fundamentally, the universe consists of consciousness. Everything else is illusion. Hence to understand the evolution of the cosmos and humanity in any terms other than consciousness is also illusion. Whenever we have to do with mighty cosmic facts, we have to do with states of consciousness. But states of consciousness never exist apart from the beings who embody them. Therefore, the only true realities are beings in different states of consciousness. In this sense, Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science is a science of states of consciousness and the beings who embody them. Indeed, rightly considered, all science-physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, geology, psychology, astronomy, etc.-is a science of beings. And the sensory perception, the physical trace, is but the outer vestment of the activity of beings in different states of consciousness. To describe these beings, Steiner uses the names made familiar by the wisdom tradition of theWest. He speaks of the evolutionary states of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan; and the nine "choirs" of angels (Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; Principalities, Archangels, and Angels); as well as of elemental beings and nature spirits; and the elements of fire, earth, air, and water.

Translated by F. Rothwell. Contents: Krishna (India and the Brahmanic Initiation); Heroic India, the Sons of the Sun and of the Moon; King of Mathura; Virgin Devaki; Krishna's Youth; Initiation; Doctrine of the Initiates; Triumph and Death; Radiance of the Solar World. Orpheus (The Mysteries of Dionyson); Prehistoric Greece, The Bacchantes, Appearance of Orpheus; Temple of Jupiter; Dionysiac Fete in the Valley of Tempe; Evocation; Death of Orpheus.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Interpretation of "Light on the Path." Contents: Self-Conquest; The Disciple; "Attend You Unto Them"; The Masters; Sight, Hearing; Speech; Stability; The Transmutation of Desire; Work and Effort; Separateness; Sensation; The Retreat; The Advance; The Blooming of the Flower; Contemplation; The Study of Mankind; The Study of the Self; The Logos; The Gifts of the Disciple; The Victory; "I and My Father." (see also our book, "Light on the Path" by the same author.)

Sawai Jai Singh, the statesman astronomer of 18th century India, designed astronomical instruments of masonry and stone, built observatories, prepared by Zij or a text for astronomical calculations. He opted for the naked eye masonary instruments when telescope had become quiet common with European astronomers.

This work by Prof. Haridas Bhattacharyya may be considered a landmark in the study of comparative Religion. The author has created a brilliantly authoritative and comprehensive work on five major religions, Viz., Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism. The scholar has also attempted a calm and critical examination of five principal living faiths, including the faith he personally professes.

Although East Asian religion is commonly characterized as "syncretic", the historical interaction of Buddhist, Confucian, and other traditions is often neglected by scholars of mainstream religious thought. In this thought-provoking study, Janine Sawada moves beyond conventional approaches to the history of Japanese religion by analyzing the ways in which Neo-Confucianism and Zen formed a popular synthesis in early modern Japan. She shows how Shingaku, a teaching founded by merchant Ishida Baigan, blossomed after his death into a widespread religious movement that selectively combined ideas and practices from these traditions. Drawing on new research into original Shingaku sources, Sawada challenges the view that the teaching was a facile "merchant ethic" by illuminating the importance of Shingaku mystical experience and its intimate relation to moral cultivation in the program developed by Baigan's successor, Teshima Toan. This book also suggests the need for an approach to the history of Japanese education that accounts for the informal transmission of ideas as well as institutional schooling. Shingaku contributed to the development of Japanese education by effectively disseminating moral and religious knowledge on a large scale to the less-educated sectors of Tokugawa society. Sawada interprets the popularity of the movement as part of a general trend in early modern Japan in which ordinary people sought forms of learning that could be pursued in the context of daily life.

In this interdisciplinary work, William L. Davis examines Joseph Smith's 1829 creation of the Book of Mormon, the foundational text of the Latter-Day Saint movement. Positioning the text in the history of early American oratorical techniques, sermon culture, educational practices, and the passion for self-improvement, Davis elucidates both the fascinating cultural context for the creation of the Book of Mormon and the central role of oral culture in early nineteenth-century America. Drawing on performance studies, religious studies, literary culture, and the history of early American education, Davis analyzes Smith's process of oral composition. How did he produce a history spanning a period of 1,000 years, filled with hundreds of distinct characters and episodes, all cohesively tied together in an overarching narrative? Eyewitnesses claimed that Smith never looked at notes, manuscripts, or books-he simply spoke the words of this American religious epic into existence. Judging the truth of this process is not Davis's interest. Rather, he reveals a kaleidoscope of practices and styles that converged around Smith's creation, with an emphasis on the evangelical preaching styles popularized by the renowned George Whitefield and John Wesley.

This is a textbook dealing with the living religions of India. It has been written by a scholar who has devoted more than fifty years in pondering over the subject. The account of each religion is accurate and reliable. The book aims at establishing harmony between religions.