In the sixties, Transcendental Meditation, a Hindu-based movement, became fashionable as a way to therapy and psychological well-being -- especially after being endorsed by the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Its influence waned, ironically, after the courts decided that TM was a religion rather than a form of therapy, as TM had claimed. But its popularity helped open the doors to a wider acceptance of Eastern philosophy and religions in mainstream America. Another Americanized form of Hinduism is Hare Krishna. This volume and the volume on Buddhism in this series together present a comprehensive overview of Eastern religions, their views, and their impact on contemporary North America. Why this series? This is an age when countless groups and movements, old and new, mark the religious landscape in our culture, leaving many people confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to research these movements fully, these books provide essential information and insights for their spiritual journeys. All books but the summary volume, Truth and Error, contain five sections: -A concise introduction to the group being surveyed -An overview of the group s theology --- in its own words -Tips for witnessing effectively to members of the group -A bibliography with sources for further study -A comparison chart that shows the essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group -Truth and Error, the last book in the series, consists of parallel doctrinal charts compiled from all the other volumes. -Three distinctives make this series especially useful to readers: -Information is carefully distilled to bring out truly essential points, rather than requiring readers to sift their way through a sea of secondary details. -Information is presented in a clear, easy-to-follow outline form with menu bar running heads. This format greatly assists the reader in quickly locating topics and details of interest. -Each book meets the needs and skill levels of both nontechnical and technical readers, providing an elementary level of refutation and progressing to a more advanced level using arguments based on the biblical text. The writers of these volumes are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and help readers to discern truth from falsehood."

Intended to be a treatise on life itself, this epic poem embraces religion and ethics, polity and government, philosophy and the pursuit of salvation. This collection of more than 4,000 verses is supplemented by a glossary, genealogical tables, and an index correlating the verses with the original Sanskrit text.

Once known as "Pariahs," Dalits are primarily descendants of unfree agrarian laborers. They belong to India's most subordinated castes, face overwhelming poverty and discrimination, and provoke public anxiety. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, this book follows the conception and evolution of the "Pariah Problem" in public consciousness in the 1890s. It shows how high-caste landlords, state officials, and well-intentioned missionaries conceived of Dalit oppression, and effectively foreclosed the emergence of substantive solutions to the "Problem"-with consequences that continue to be felt today. Rupa Viswanath begins with a description of the everyday lives of Dalit laborers in the 1890s and highlights the systematic efforts made by the state and Indian elites to protect Indian slavery from public scrutiny. Protestant missionaries were the first non-Dalits to draw attention to their plight. The missionaries' vision of the Pariahs' suffering as being a result of Hindu religious prejudice, however, obscured the fact that the entire agrarian political-economic system depended on unfree Pariah labor. Both the Indian public and colonial officials came to share a view compatible with missionary explanations, which meant all subsequent welfare efforts directed at Dalits focused on religious and social transformation rather than on structural reform. Methodologically, theoretically, and empirically, this book breaks new ground to demonstrate how events in the early decades of state-sponsored welfare directed at Dalits laid the groundwork for the present day, where the postcolonial state and well-meaning social and religious reformers continue to downplay Dalits' landlessness, violent suppression, and political subordination.

For those who wonder what relation actual Tantric practices bear to the "Tantric sex" currently being marketed so successfully in the West, David Gordon White has a simple answer: there is none. Sweeping away centuries of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, White returns to original texts, images, and ritual practices to reconstruct the history of South Asian Tantra from the medieval period to the present day.
"Kiss of the Yogini" focuses on what White identifies as the sole truly distinctive feature of South Asian Tantra: sexualized ritual practices, especially as expressed in the medieval Kaula rites. Such practices centered on the exchange of powerful, transformative sexual fluids between male practitioners and wild female bird and animal spirits known as Yoginis. It was only by "drinking" the sexual fluids of the Yoginis that men could enter the family of the supreme godhead and thereby obtain supernatural powers and transform themselves into gods. By focusing on sexual rituals, White resituates South Asian Tantra, in its precolonial form, at the center of religious, social, and political life, arguing that Tantra was the mainstream, and that in many ways it continues to influence contemporary Hinduism, even if reformist misunderstandings relegate it to a marginal position.
"Kiss of the Yogini" contains White's own translations from over a dozen Tantras that have never before been translated into any European language. It will prove to be the definitive work for persons seeking to understand Tantra and the crucial role it has played in South Asian history, society, culture, and religion.

Recorded in sacred Sanskrit texts, including the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, Hindu Myths are thought to date back as far as the tenth century BCE. Here in these seventy-five seminal myths are the many incarnations of Vishnu, who saves mankind from destruction, and the mischievous child Krishna, alongside stories of the minor gods, demons, rivers and animals including boars, buffalo, serpents and monkeys. Immensely varied and bursting with colour and life, they demonstrate the Hindu belief in the limitless possibilities of the world - from the teeming miracles of creation to the origins of the incarnation of Death who eventually touches them all.

This book provides a summarization of the most essential spiritual knowledge that will give you the key to spiritual awakening. The descriptions will give you greater insights and a new look at who and what you really are as a spiritual being. The idea that we are more than merely these material bodies is pervasive. It is established in every religion and spiritual path in this world. However, many religions only hint at the details of this knowledge, but if we look around we will find that practically the deepest and clearest descriptions of the soul and its characteristics are found in the ancient Vedic texts of India. Herein you will find some of the most insightful spiritual knowledge and wisdom known to mankind. Some of the topics include: How you are more than your body The purpose of life Spiritual ignorance of the soul is the basis of illusion and suffering The path of spiritual realization How the soul is eternal The unbounded nature of the soul What is the Supersoul Attaining direct spiritual perception and experience of our real identity This book will give you a deeper look into the ancient wisdom of India's Vedic, spiritual culture, and the means to recognize your real identity.

Ramakrishna was a Bengali mystic who had a huge impact on the development of modern Hinduism. His chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda, not only helped revive Hinduism in India, but also introduced Hinduism to the West. Ramakrishna was a non-dualist worshippper of the Goddess Kali. However, he also experimented with Christianity and Islam, and repeatedly preached the diversity of paths to God. This is the story of Ramakrishna told first-hand as a series of days and nights spent with his disciples and lay followers. --Sacred Texts

Providing a unique and intimate view of Hindu marriage, the essays in this collection explore points at which the margins of marriage are traversed or transgressed. Rather than focus on normative expectations within marriage, they examine times in which norms are tested or rejected. Using stories, songs, and narrated accounts, the essays treat such topics as widowhood, adultery, levirate, divorce, and suttee, as well as the subversion of marriage by devotion to deities and by alternative constructions of conjugal duty and marital experience.

The stories of the Swami Purana comprise an anthology of the wisdom of the Sanatana Dharma-the eternal Ideal of Perfection, a treasure chest of the folklore of ancient India, and a modern day application of these classical teachings. This collection represents a small bucket drawn from the immense ocean of spiritual wisdom.

Philosophy of The Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction presents a complete philosophical guide and new translation of the most celebrated text of Hinduism. While usually treated as mystical and religious poetry, this new translation focuses on the philosophy underpinning the story of a battle between two sets of cousins of the Aryan clan. Designed for use in the classroom, this lively and readable translation: - Situates the text in its philosophical and cultural contexts - Features summaries and chapter analyses and questions at the opening and end of each of the eighteen chapters encouraging further study - Highlights points of comparison and overlap between Indian and Western philosophical concepts and themes such as just war, care ethics, integrity and authenticity - Includes a glossary allowing the reader to determine the meaning of central concepts Written with clarity and without presupposing any prior knowledge of Hinduism, Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction reveals the importance and value of reading the Gita philosophically.

The three-thousand-year-old epic Ramayana chronicles Lord Rama's physical voyage from one end of the Indian subcontinent to the other and his spiritual voyage from Man to God. In Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, anthropologist and journalist Jonah Blank gives a new perspective to this Hindu classic -- retelling the ancient tale while following the course of Rama's journey through present-day India and Sri Lanka. Ultimately, Blank's journey -- like that of Lord Rama -- evolves into a quest: to understand the chimerical essence of India itself, in all its overwhelming beauty and paradox. Quite possibly the most perceptive book that I have come across on India since the British Raj ended. -- Pranay Gupte, The Washington Post; What Hollywood attempted on the big screen with casts of thousands in Gandhi and A Passage to India, Jonah Blank has achieved in 350 stylistically rich pages. -- Los Angeles Times; This informative and entertaining book is something to be thankful for. -- The New York Times Book Review

THIS 22 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Vedanta Philosophy: Lectures by the Swami Vivekananda on Raja Yoga Also Pantanjali's Yoga Aphorisms, with Commentaries, and Glossary of Sanskrit Terms, by Swami Vivekananda. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 1564597970.

THIS 28 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Mystic Christianity or the Inner Teachings of the Master, by Yogi Ramacharaka. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766101681.

THIS 34 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism, by Yogi Ramacharaka. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 076610169X.

The first book to analyze why India's caste system has authoritatively endured for so long, this path-breaking text provides, for the first time anywhere, an exhaustive analysis of the historical predecessor to caste: the ancient Indian varna system as it was laid out in the Vedic literature. Presenting a revisionist overview of the way the religion of the Veda is to be understood, Classifying the Universe demonstrates that social classes were systematically reduplicated in taxonomies that organized the universe as a whole. The classification of society, in which some groups were accorded rights and privileges withheld from others, could thus be represented as part of a primordial and universally applicable order of things. Social hierarchy, argues the author, was in this way subtly but powerfully justified by recourse to other realms of the cosmos that were similarly ordered, and this essentially religious understanding of varna is the key to comprehending the Vedic world-view in all its complexity, and the persistence of its power in the social realm.

H.W.L. Poonja - affectionately known as Papaji - was only nine years old when he experienced his first samadhi, an altered state of consciousness where observer and object merge. As an adult, he sat in devotion with Sri Ramana Maharshi, and went on to become a master teacher in his own right, whose followers trekked across the world to sit in his presence. Wake Up and Roar is a collector's edition of teachings delivered throughout his life, edited by Eli Jaxon-Bear, a longtime student of Papaji. Originally published in two volumes, here is Papaji's landmark work bound in one elegant book with previously unreleased photographs and a new foreword from Gangaji, his best-known student. Presented in a question-and-answer format, Wake Up and Roar offers you an opportunity to awaken, here and now, regardless of background, practice, or personal circumstance. ''The Self contains everything, '' teaches Papaji. ''There is nothing apart from it. This is why you can call it emptiness. There is nothing beyond emptiness.'' Blending humor, logic, and eye-opening storytelling, Papaji extends a gracious wisdom that speaks to the earnest seeker investigating the nature of mind, enlightenment, and ''how to be in the world.'' In Wake up and Roar, he brings comfort and encouragement to practitioners from all traditions, at any stage of their inquiry into awakening