Assesses Mircea Eliade's contribution to the contemporary understanding of religion and the academic study of religion.

Explores the human condition in a range of world religions and discusses the issue and philosophical implications of comparison itself.

Reveals the effects of the cultural unconscious or "world soul" in human experience.

An accessible translation of the songs of the saints from the Adi Granth, the Sikh holy book.

Traces the decentered formulation of self at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy from his earliest works to his most recent.

Drawing on textual and anthropological research, this book demonstrates how popular ritual texts and stories have shaped the religion and culture of the only surviving Mahayana Buddhist society, the Newars of Kathmandu.

Discusses the issue of christological pluralism--the panoply of competing visions of Christ that exist today--and provides criteria for evaluating these.

The freshest and most respected thinkers in transpersonal psychology explore the myriad pathways to knowledge.

Explores a new Christian identity in which churches reclaim their roles as communities of disciples to constitute a countercultural reality and challenge to secular society and existing power relations.

Explores the many factors shaping the level of political involvement displayed by urban Protestant clergy.

An examination of bodhicitta, a key concept in Mahauyauna Buddhism.

Discusses the relationship between the secularization of American society and Supreme Court decisions regarding the separation of church and state and offers a judicial alternative.

A systematic study of Wang Bi's (226-249) commentary on the Laozi, this book provides the first systematic study of a Chinese commentator's scholarly craft and introduces a highly sophisticated Chinese way of reading the Taoist classic, one that differs greatly from Western interpretations.

Examines the history, philosophy and hermeneutics, and law and literature of formative Judaism.

Based on a close reading of New Testament passages, Choi counters the theses on repentance and restitution proposed by New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders.

Explores what is meant by the concept of religion.

Explores early Palestinian Judaic traditions.

The thirty-fourth volume published on this foundation.

Explores why the Christian basilica emerged.

Analyzes the early presence of Franciscan monastic houses in Abruzzo in the thirteenth century.

New perspectives on the bond between religion and economics.

Characterize several lines of intellectual development by which some of the fundamental features of ancient, medieval, and modern pictures of God, Nature, Beauty, the State, and the Self came to be accepted as common knowledge in the Mediterranean world today.

This exhilarating tale of natural history illuminates the evolution of matter, life, and consciousness. In Everybody’s Story, Loyal Rue finds the means for global solidarity and cooperation in the shared story of humanity.

Approaches recent innovations in argumentation theory from a primarily rhetorical perspective.

Provides an in-depth introduction to the Christian theosophic tradition that began with Jacob Bo¬hme, bringing us into a startling new world of Christian experiential spirituality that is the Christian equivalent of Sufism and Kabbalism.

A practical manual for evaluating bias that will be useful to anyone who has to deal with arguments, whether in academic reading or writing, or in everyday conversation.

Explores the concept of Spirit in the postmodern age.

Provides a comparative philosophical study of the thought of the two principle theorists of monistic Kashmiri Shaivism, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, and also formulates a conception of the nature of philosophy as a means of intercultural and interreligious dialogue.

Comparing paradise imagery in two Persian religions, early Syriac Christianity and the Baha'i Faith, this work contributes to religious studies methodology by introducing "symbolic paradigm analysis. "

Illuminates the lives and thought of women in Buddhist cultures, integrating them more fully into the feminist conversation.

Explores the cultures, ideologies, traditions, and the material and political conditions that influence the writing and publishing of textbooks.

Demonstrates how Rene Daumal, author of Mount Analogue, (a study of Hindu philosophy and poetics) and the teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff combined with Daumal's early surrealist tendencies in determining the quality of his writing.

A concise guide to the key practice systems of the East Asian Meditational schools Ch'an, Son, and Zen.

Examines the contemporary workings of property law in India through the lives and thoughts of middle-class and poor women.

Provides an alternative to the traditional psychoanalytic explanation of mystical experience by viewing unitive thinking as a line of cognitive development and mystical moments as creative inspirations on unitive ideas.

Six internationally renowned intellectuals are brought together in a cross-disciplinary dialogue that addresses rhetoric, writing, race, feminist theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory.

Provides an introduction to the world of the Kabbalah, focusing on both the Kabbalist as a person and the major teachings of the Kabbalah.

Explores a fourteenth-century debate over man’s knowledge of God.

Maintains that the Yoga-Sutras do not advocate abandonment of the world, but rather support a stance that enables one to live more fully in the world without being enslaved by worldly identification.

An examination of Trithemius's "magical theology," which argued for the compatibility of magic and Christian doctrines, and its influence during the Renaissance and Reformation.

A fresh interpretation of the work of Emile Durkheim, which argues that in addition to being a pioneer in sociological theory and research, Durkheim was also a major social philosopher concerned with religion, metaphysics, and knowledge.

An account of the city of Auroville, the vision of founder and well-known guru Sri Aurobindo. Auroville's eventual takeover and the promotion of its goals by the Indian government leads to a thought-provoking discussion of the meaning of "secularism" in India.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between religion and environment in Hinduism.

This translation and commentary on an important Hindu text on the Great Goddess envisions a universe created and protected by a compassionate female deity.

Examines the Hindu concept of liberation while living from the perspective of the Advaita Vedanta school from the Upanisads to modern times.

Presents the first systematic and cross-cultural examination of ideas of orthodoxy and heresy in a group of major religious traditions.

Examines the traditional and modern Western interpretations of the Tao-te-ching, and its author, Lao-tzu.

In this, his culminating work, the leading international figure in consciousness research masterfully synthesizes his vast findings, drawing not only upon psychedelic therapy and Holotropic Breathwork, ...

This is biographical material that al-T'abari appended to his History, bringing together biographies of Companions and successors of the Prophet. Many chapters are devoted to women who played a role in the transmission of knowledge.

The task of interpreting the religious significance of Jesus Christ takes shape in this book with the tension determined by two goals: fidelity to the classical Christological tradition, which draws our ...

Explicates the cosmology of Ibn al-'Arabi, the greatest mystical thinker of Islamic civilization.

An accessible introduction to the Bible.

Provides an accessible introduction to the Vedic religious world by focusing on the role of divine and human imagination in sacred texts.

Reappraises the work of Shailer Mathews, a leading but long-neglected theologian of the social gospel movement whose work prefigures contemporary liberation theologies.

Traces the historical development of Western Esotericism--religious traditions which emphasize the importance of inner enlightenment or gnosis.

This intriguing investigation of an historically embedded cultural struggle over the possession of America's "collective memory" has significant implications for how we interpret cultural conflict in past, present, and future America.

Presents the first systematic analysis of the structure and beliefs of the New Age movement, and the historical emergence of "New Age" as a secularized version of Western esoteric traditions.

Discusses the manner in which nationalistic expression forged a new religious relevance to the American experience and the extent to which these diverse styles of religious nationalism created and reflected tension in twentieth-century America.

Asks what sorts and sources of knowing we should consider compelling as we seek to live morally responsible lives. Contends that Martin Luther's theology of the cross provides a solid theological and ethical basis for a surprisingly congenial conversation with feminist thought and scholarship on these issues.

Examines the history of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and how orientalist assumptions have caused the West to ignore this important tradition.

Demonstrates convincingly the extent to which James's psychological and philosophical perspectives also continue to be a rich resource for those specifically interested in the study of mysticism. A critically-sophisticated, yet gripping, immersion into the inner worlds of one of America's foremost thinkers.

Integrates a contemporary understanding of Jesus with the most powerful, imaginative visions of Jesus in philosophy, literature, and religion.

Examines the first principles of the perennial philosophy or ancient wisdom tradition as expressed in the writings of its great exponents, Rene Guenon and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and offers a critique of the West from the standpoint of traditional principles.

Examines the central ideas of Dharmakirti, one of the most important Indian Buddhist philosophers and their reception by Tibetan thinkers.

Illustrates changing definitions of bodily limits, integrity, transgression, sexuality, and violation in the history of the Western canon.

Explores the philosophical theology of Alfred North Whitehead.

Thomas Aquinas’s earliest major treatment of God’s simplicity.

This first book-length study in English explores the long neglected ancient Chinese treatise: the Pheasant Cap Master or He guan zi (3rd century B.C.).

Initiates and continues a dialogue regarding the concept of God in the neoclassical philosophy of Charles Hartshorne and that found in analytic philosophers who adhere to classical theism.

Collection of essays that clarifies and evaluates the various aspects of paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, psychokinesis, trance-mediumship, near-death experiences and past-life memories.

Argues that the Fourth Gospel has “political dimensions” which offer both meaning and challenge to contemporary Christians.

Embracing Illusion is an interdisciplinary study of a classic Korean novel. It argues that a work of narrative fiction can be taken seriously as Buddhist philosophical discourse. The capacity of fiction ...

Argues how the notion of "canon" is used to authorize and maintain certain types of interpretive reasoning and the social institutions that employ them.

This book is about the state of embodied perfection often called enlightenment, self-realization, or liberation. It examines the types, degrees, and stages of liberation that are possible, with and without a body.

A strategy for reading Heschel's major works, as well as a new route to understanding religious writing in general: a lucid study of modern religious and ethical thought using literary criticism.

Discusses and translates important compositions by famous Nirguni poets--poets dedicated to the worship of a formless God.

Examines particular rituals (social and religious) as a special kind of cultural performance or interaction in a wide variety of traditions and locations.

This analysis of the crises in church-state relations in Argentina over the last 100 years shows that the constitutionally-established Catholic Church was progressively disenfranchised by various governments and responded by struggling to maintain the institution’s historic rights and privileges and to speak as the moral conscience of Argentina

Kim explores the religious impact, particularly that of the Korean Methodist Church, on the lives of Korean immigrant ilse (first generation) in the United States. To most of these women, America is new ...

A systematic treatment of the religious, intellectual, cultural, and social foundations of the Islamic resurgence in the modern Arab world that is grounded in the larger context of Arab and Islamic intellectual history.

Compares Rabbinic midrash and Patristic exegesis in late antiquity and provides an introduction to the various forms of Patristic literature.

Focusing on gender issues, this book compares and contrasts the treatment of the Potiphar's Wife motif--in which a woman makes vain overtures to a man and then accuses him of attempting to force himself upon her--in ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic folklore.

This book constitutes a comprehensive investigation of the life and teachings of one of the most famous Sufis of the Iranian world. Simnānī spent his early life as a courtier at the Ilkhanid Mongol ...

Examines the careers of the most distinguishes disciples of the Theosophical Masters profiled in The Masters Revealed, including George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Alexandra David-Neel, Anagarika Dharmapala, and Isabelle Eberhardt.

This is a source of reliable information on the most important new and alternative religions covering history, theology, impact on the culture, and current status. It includes a chapter on the Branch Davidians.

A selection of writings by a great nineteenth-century Sufi Shaikh in the direct lineage of Ibn 'Arabi.

Through the skillful use of a great variety of literary genres, this book explores the intimate relation and tension between religion and spirituality, evoking a wide range of responses that may awaken ...

This book deals with the issue of gender in Jewish mysticism showing the thematic correlation of eroticism and esotericism that is central to the kabbalah.

The initial years (126-145) of al-Manṣūr's reign presented several significant challenges to nascent ʿAbbāsid hegemony, and the resulting confrontations constitute the central focus of this section ...

This book presents a lost tradition of inner work, the way of the householder, which was believed by the Brotherhood of Common Life to have been the teaching of the Apostles. It focuses on the emergence, ...

This is a psychological and historical exploration of belief in a spirit world, imperceptible to the senses, as a pervasive and deeply-rooted characteristic of religion.

This book compares New Testament and Rabbinical texts in order to recover the oral tradition accompanying the written Biblical text. Although New Testament Greek is a hellenistic idiom, it reflects a ...

Studies the development of Muslim jurisprudential and theological thought by analyzing the dispute that raged from the ninth to the nineteenth century over the assessment of acts that took place before the Qur'anic Revelation.

Presents the contemporary religious crisis in India, providing historical perspective and focusing on the crises in Punjab, Kashmir, and Ayodhya.

This is a comparative treatment of the religious beliefs and practices of Chinese traditional culture.

Approaches Hasidism as an important stage in Jewish mysticism, rather than as a mere reaction to or result of historical and social forces.

Simone Weil's supernaturalist interpretations of tragedy challenge not only the philosophical skepticism but also the religious rationalism characteristic of the modern age.

This book boldly points out ...

This book presents the oral teachings of the twentieth century's great Kashmir Shaivite master. The last of his long lineage, Swami Lakshmanjoo preserved, as did his predecessors, the oral knowledge that ...

Treats the nature and ethical significance of emotions from a comparative cultural perspective emphasizing Asian traditions.

This is the first systematic treatment of esotericism to appear in English. Here is also a historical survey, beginning with the Alexandrean Period, of the various esoteric currents such as Christian ...