Category: Mysticism

By Richard Burton, Vātsyāyana

Sir Richard F. Burton's translation of The Kama Sutra is still the best English interpretations of this early Indian treatise on politics, social customs, love, and intimacy. Its crisp variety set a brand new normal for Sanskrit translation.

The Kama Sutra stands uniquely as a piece of psychology, sociology, Hindu dogma, and sexology. it's been a celebrated vintage of Indian literature for 1,700 years and a window for the West into the tradition and mysticism of the East.

This smooth Library Paperback vintage reprints the authoritative textual content of Sir Richard F. Burton's 1883 translation.

By J. C. Cleary

This publication makes a speciality of the lessons of 13th-century chinese language Zen grasp Shiqui Xinyue. The koans, tales, and poems of the Zen grasp followed by way of explanatory notes from the editor contain the majority of the textual content, that's preceded by way of an inadequately short ancient evaluate of chinese language Buddhism. these looking extra complete details may be urged towards Arthur F. Wright's Buddhism in chinese language historical past (Stanford Univ. Pr., 1971). additionally, the editor doesn't identify the explicit resource rfile for his translation, easily calling it a "collection of Zen teachings." besides the fact that, the 141 anecdotal teachings are in transparent, concise English and the explanatory notes support with the paradoxical statements and allusions.

By Annie Dillard

Nationwide Bestseller

"Beautifully written and delightfully strange--. As earthy because it is classy, For the Time Being is, within the truest feel, a watch- opener."--Daily News

From Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and probably the most compelling writers of our time, comes For the Time Being, her so much profound narrative up to now. together with her willing eye, penchant for paradox, and craving for fact, Dillard renews our skill to find ask yourself in life's smallest--and frequently darkest--corners.

Why will we exist? the place did we come from? How can one individual topic? Dillard searches for solutions in a strong array of pictures: photographs of bird-headed dwarfs within the normal reference of human beginning defects; 10000 terra-cotta figures shaped for a chinese language emperor rather than the human courtroom that will have him into loss of life; the paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin crossing the Gobi desolate tract; the dizzying number of clouds. shiny, eloquent, haunting, For the Time Being conjures up at the least the terrifying grandeur of all that continues to be tantalizingly and troublingly past our understanding.

"Stimulating, humbling, original--. [Dillard] illuminate[s] the human viewpoint of the realm, previous, current and destiny, and the individual's fairly inconsequential yet ever so specific position in it."--Rocky Mountain News

By Leo Hartong, Tony Parsons

Awakening to the dream is a really transparent, approachable evaluate of the usually complicated and rarefied philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, often referred to as non-dualism.

Essentially, this can be a publication approximately you. It issues to and from the resource of your actual identification. The transparent considering it refers to is neither advanced nor easy. it's not whatever unique for highbrow or religious elite, neither is it distant or hiding sooner or later. it's all inclusive, natural presence, nearer than your breath. it's the middle of hearts, your birthright and innermost self. this can be your invitation to recollect what was once by no means rather forgotten.

By Richard H. Jones

In this selection of revised released articles, Richard Jones examines a variety of themes regarding the philosophy of mysticism: 

By Dana Greene

Evelyn Underhill used to be a pioneer in revitalizing curiosity in mysticism and within the non secular lifestyles as lived through traditional humans. listed below are a few of her articles that reveal the diversity and improvement of her idea over 40 years. the topics of magic and mysticism, prayer and pacifism are all thought of, with specific emphasis on Underhill's specialise in own spiritual adventure, its nurturance in prayer, its safeguard via institutional faith, and its implications for all elements of lifestyles. jointly, the items light up the author's movement from Platonism to the incarnational spirituality lived out through the years among the area wars.

By Emil Homerin

Via a close exam of a well known Arab mystical poet, Th. Emil Homerin presents one of many first case reports to demonstrate an vague point of renowned Islamic faith--the sanctification of saints and the construction of shrines in medieval occasions. although Muslims have commemorated saints for greater than one thousand years, Islam hasn't ever built a proper technique of canonization, and the method of sanctification continues to be an enormous yet principally missed measurement of Islamic scholarship. In "From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint", Homerin explores this uncharted territory via following the fortunes of a unmarried Sufi saint over seven and a part centuries. considered as a saint inside of a iteration of his dying, 'Umar Ibn al-Farid (1181-1235) remains to be commemorated at his shrine in Cairo. modern non secular singers and writers, together with Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, proceed to quote the poet's verse. utilizing biographies, hagiographies, polemics, felony rulings, histories, and novels, Homerin strains the process Ibn al-Farid's saintly popularity. He relates the increase and fall of Ibn al-Farid's attractiveness to Egypt's altering non secular, cultural, and political setting.

By Francis King

Sexuality, Magic, and Perversion surveys such outre topics as intercourse magic, left-hand Tantrism, and the initiates of Aleister Crowley’s Order of Oriental Templars. This attention-grabbing and hugely readable booklet additionally discusses the function of magical myth in modern pornography. Appendices conceal obscurities equivalent to Ralph Chubb’s homoerotic mysticism and the ladies bishops of the Mariavite Church in Poland.

By Russell Johnson

* The list of a religious trip via a unprecedented land, and of the committed pilgrims who search to climb Mount Kailas. * american citizens recount their stories in the course of the sacred pilgrimage to at least one of the main overseas in the world. * With greater than a hundred colour photos that trap the awe-inspiring panorama and the tireless decision of the pilgrims.

In a distant nook of western Tibet, in a single of the top, such a lot pristine locations in the world, rises an elegant snow-clad pyramid of rock and snow--Mount Kailas. To Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims this 22,028-foot mountain is the throne of the gods, the "Navel of the Earth," where the place the divine takes earthly shape. For greater than one thousand years those pilgrims have journeyed the following to pay homage to the mountain's secret, circumambulating it in an historic ritual of devotion that keeps to the current day. Spinning prayer wheels, chanting mantras, and prostrating themselves at shrines, the pilgrims make the laborious climb towards the actual and emotional excessive aspect of the adventure, the lofty move often called the Dolma l. a..

With stunning colour images and bright shuttle writing, The Sacred Mountain of Tibet presents a gorgeous account of this awe-inspiring panorama, and of the diversity, energy, and sheer selection of the pilgrims who enterprise there. either photographer Russell Johnson and author Kerry Moran have made the tough pilgrimage round the mountain a number of instances. The Sacred Mountain of Tibet is the list in their inspiring trip that opens a window on a mystical land of natural gentle and mind-blowing colour the place the temporal and the everlasting unite and the place each function of the panorama holds its personal divinity.

By Simon G. Powell

How psilocybin mushrooms facilitate an instantaneous hyperlink to the knowledge of Nature and the which means of lifestyles

• Examines the neurochemistry underlying the visionary psilocybin adventure

• Explains how sacred mushrooms aid repair our connection to the traditional intelligence of Nature

• experiences the learn on psilocybin’s skill to dispel nervousness within the terminally ailing and its worthy results on obsessive-compulsive sickness

It has been greater than 50 years due to the fact sacred mushrooms have been plucked from the shamanic backwaters of Mexico and awarded to the trendy global by way of R. Gordon Wasson. After sparking the psychedelic period of the Sixties, even though, the divine mushroom back underground from whence it mysteriously originated. but at the present time, the mushroom’s notable impression is once more being felt by way of huge numbers of individuals, as a result of discovery of 1000s of untamed psilocybin species transforming into around the globe.

In The Psilocybin Solution, Simon G. Powell strains the background of the sacred psilocybin mushroom and discusses the shamanic visionary results it could actually set off. Detailing how psilocybin acts as a profound enhancer of attention and reviewing the study played by way of the Multidisciplinary organization for Psychedelic experiences (MAPS), Johns Hopkins collage, and the Heffter examine Institute on psilocybin’s skill to dispel nervousness within the terminally unwell and its invaluable results on obsessive-compulsive illness, he examines the neurochemistry, psychology, and spirituality underlying the visionary psilocybin adventure, revealing the interface the place actual mind and awake brain meet. exhibiting that the life of existence and the functioning of brain are the results of a certainly clever, self-organizing Universe, he explains how sacred mushrooms offer an immediate hyperlink to the knowledge of Nature and the that means of lifestyles.