Written by a noted philosopher and former president of India, this remarkable book describes the leading ideas of Indian philosophy and religion, and traces their influence upon Western thought from classical times, through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, to the present day. The author also argues that Christianity, which arose out of an Eastern background but flourished in the Graeco-Roman culture, will eventually find its re-birth in a renewed alliance with its Eastern origins.

This sweeping study of mysticism by Jess Hollenback considers the writings and experiences of a broad range of traditional religious mystics, including Teresa of Avila, Black Elk, and Gopi Krishna. It also makes use of a new category of sources that more traditional scholars have almost entirely ignored, namely, the autobiographies and writings of contemporary clairvoyants, mediums, and out-of-body travelers. This study contributes to the current debate about the contextuality of mysticism by presenting evidence that not only are the mystic's interpretations of and responses to experiences culturally and historically conditioned, but historical context and cultural environment decisively shape both the perceptual and affective content of the mystic's experience as well.

Hollenback also explores the linkage between the mystic's practice of recollection and the onset of other unusual or supernormal manifestations such as photisms, the ability to see auras, telepathic sensitivity, clairvoyance, and out-of-body experiences. He demonstrates that these extraordinary phenomena can actually deepen our understanding of mysticism in unexpected ways.

A unique feature of this book is its in-depth analysis of "empowerment," an important phenomenon ignored by most scholars of mysticism. Empowerment is a peculiar enhancement of the imagination, thoughts, and desires that frequently accompanies mystical states of consciousness. Hollenback shows its cross-cultural persistence, its role in constructing the perceptual and existential environments within which the mystic dwells, and its linkage to the fundamental contextuality of mystical experience.

With impetus provided by the accumulated historical and textual evidence supporting reincarnation, this book first examines Gospel evidence that Jesus actually taught reincarnation and karma rather than resurrection. Deardorff's compelling analysis bolsters other studies indicating that the concept of resurrection displaced reincarnation in earliest Christianity due to its pre-belief by certain Pharisee converts, and specifies how the Gospels came to reflect this belief. Jesus in India reexamines the evidence that the "lost years" of Jesus' youth were spent in the India. Deardorff's analysis brings out the plausibility of Jesus having gained knowledge about reincarnation and related spiritual matters under certain yogis in India. With the empty tomb on Easter morning not to be explained by resurrection, the book reviews six resuscitation hypotheses and presents a seventh one that withstands previous objections. This well documented research constitutes an important addition to the existing literature on comparative religions and a thought provoking contribution to the on-going debate on the historicity of a wide range of New Testament passages.

How is it that this woman's breasts glimmer so clearly through her saree? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night?
These South Indian devotional poems show the dramatic use of erotic language to express a religious vision. Written by men during the fifteenth to eighteenth century, the poems adopt a female voice, the voice of a courtesan addressing her customer. That customer, it turns out, is the deity, whom the courtesan teases for his infidelities and cajoles into paying her more money. Brazen, autonomous, fully at home in her body, she merges her worldly knowledge with the deity's transcendent power in the act of making love.
This volume is the first substantial collection in English of these Telugu writings, which are still part of the standard repertoire of songs used by classical South Indian dancers. A foreword provides context for the poems, investigating their religious, cultural, and historical significance. Explored, too, are the attempts to contain their explicit eroticism by various apologetic and rationalizing devices.
The translators, who are poets as well as highly respected scholars, render the poems with intelligence and tenderness. Unusual for their combination of overt eroticism and devotion to God, these poems are a delight to read.

Dr. Yong Choon Kim is a distinguished scholar and educator. He wrote this book to fill the need for a concise introduction to the philosophical and religious ideas of the East. The work is analytical, comparative, and critical presentation in three parts: Indian Thougt, Chinese Thought, abd the Thoughts of Korea and Japan. It can serve for such courses as Oriental Philosophy, Eastern Religions, World Religions, Comparative Religion, and Comparative Thought. It may also be used in other introductory courses in Religion, Philosophy, and Asian Culture. The book should be very useful to the general reader interested in Oriental Thought and culture.

Religion and Culture in Native America will provide a comprehensive introduction to the variety of Native cultures and religious practices in North America, while concentrating on those issues in which tribal communities themselves are currently invested. The book will emphasize current research in the area of Native American studies and Native American religious studies. This textbook locates contemporary challenges facing Native communities within their historical, religious, and cultural contexts. As such, it reflects current methods of scholarship and the kinds of questions, concerns, and issues that dominate conversations within scholarly and tribal circles today. Written in an engaging, conversational and narrative style, the intended audience would be upper level high school students, undergraduate university students, and the interested general reader.

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.

After driving the Japanese out of Papua New Guinea during World War II, the U.S. military forces left their gear -- and the makings of a cargo cult -- to the native Kaliai. CULTURES OF SECRECY offers a close look at how, for fifty years, the bush Kaliai in Melanesia have worked these tailings of the western world into their indigenous culture. Lattas shows how cargo cults in general bring together past, present, and future in their curious blending of traditional myths, imported folklore, borrowed state practices and ideologies, and reworked Christian stories. The result is a richly interdisciplinary work that uses ethnography to explore questions of racial experience, gender relations, space, time, death, and the politics of human relations.

Never passive imitators, the Kaliai as Andrew Lattas portrays them actively incorporate and transform western beliefs and practices into their own narratives of life, sexuality, and death. The consequences are new myths and histories, new relationships with the ancestral dead -- an alternative world of power and knowledge through which the Kaliai accommodate the dominant white culture and its institutions. Lattas examines the racial conflict that has riddled the recent history of the cargo cults. He also describes the cults' demonization by the New Tribes missionaries from the United States, who disapprove of the villagers' unorthodox miming of European symbols and practices. His book allows us to see behind the villagers' ambivalence toward "waitskin" (white-skins) as they continue to reinvent their social world.

Since its publication in 2000, The Early Christian World has come to be regarded by scholars, students and the general reader as one of the most informative and accessible works in English on the origins, development, character and major figures of early Christianity. In this new edition, the strengths of the first edition are retained. These include the book's attractive architecture that initially takes a reader through the context and historical development of early Christianity; the essays in critical areas such as community formation, everyday experience, the intellectual and artistic heritage, and external and internal challenges; and the profiles on the most influential early Christian figures. The book also preserves its strong stress on the social reality of early Christianity and continues its distinctive use of hundreds of illustrations and maps to bring that world to life. Yet the years that have passed since the first edition was published have seen great advances made in our understanding of early Christianity in its world. This new edition fully reflects these developments and provides the reader with authoritative, lively and up-to-date access to the early Christian world. A quarter of the text is entirely new and the remaining essays have all been carefully revised and updated by their authors. Some of the new material relates to Christian culture (including book culture, canonical and non-canonical scriptures, saints and hagiography, and translation across cultures). But there are also new essays on: Jewish and Christian interaction in the early centuries; ritual; the New Testament in Roman Britain; Manichaeism; Pachomius the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. This new edition will serve its readers for many years to come.

"In Marxist anthropological theory, shamanism represented one of the early forms of religion that later gave rise to more sophisticated beliefs in the course of human advancement ... The premise of Marxism was that eventually, at the highest levels of civilization, the sacred and religion would eventually die out" (Znamenski, 2007, p.322). Though history has of course since disproved this, the theory clearly had a great bearing on what was written in the former Soviet Union about shamanism, and also on people's attitudes in the former Soviet Republics towards such practices. On the other hand, it has been suggested that "all intellectuals driven by nationalist sentiments directly or indirectly are always preoccupied with searching for the most ancient roots of their budding nations in order to ground their compatriots in particular soil and to make them more indigenous" (Znamenski, 2007, p.28). Although this might apply to searching for the roots of Christianity in Armenia, when it comes to searching for the roots of pagan practices, interest on the part of the people of Armenia is generally speaking not so forthcoming. This impasse, coupled with the effects of the repressions against religions, including shamanism, unleashed by the Soviet government between the 1930s and 1950s, along with the recent surge of interest in the Armenian Orthodox church, a backlash to the seventy years of officially sanctioned atheism, makes research into the subject no easy business. However, hopefully this study will at least in some small way help to set the process in motion.