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Author: Andre van der Braak
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
ISBN: 1939681758
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
Enlightenment Blues is Andre van der Braak’s compelling first hand account of his relationship with a prominent spiritual teacher. It chronicles both the author’s spiritual journey and disenchantment as well the development of a missionary and controversial community around the teacher. It powerfully exposes the problems and necessities of disentanglement from a spiritual path. “Enlightenment Blues is the account of a young man's sincere and protracted struggle to transform his life according to the teachings of the American guru Andrew Cohen. Ruthlessly honest and unsettling, Andre van der Braak gives a vivid first-hand account of an uncompromising experiment in establishing Indian spirituality in a modern Western setting. This story is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the allure and pitfalls of surrendering one's authority in the hope of spiritually transforming the world” Stephen Batchelor, Author Buddhism without Beliefs “Narrated with the psychological subtlety and drama of a good novel, Enlightenment Blues is a precise, profound dissection of the guru-devotee relationship. It should be required reading for all who are currently engaged in or considering studying under a spiritual teacher.” John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism "A profound contribution. The maturity and balance of this book place it at the front rank of works on contemporary spirituality. All the major themes of the spiritual quest are here - reason versus emotion, the problem of the ego, the guru, self-doubt, the place of altered states. Andre van der Braak has the creative gift of being able to hold opposing ideas in his mind without moving towards premature closure. Hence this heartfelt account of his eleven years in the Cohen movement is a beautiful testament to one man's quest to discover his own reality. Enlightenment Blues deserves the widest readership." Len Oakes, Prophetic Charisma “Enlightenment Blues is the personal story of one man’s eleven year journey into and out of a group of seekers of enlightenment with a charismatic leader who claims to be an exemplar of perfection. What distinguishes this book are the writer’s insights and honesty in portraying the workings of an authoritarian belief system that operates under the guise of spiritual revelations. Anyone who has ever belonged to such a group, or knows anyone who has, or who wants to understand what the appeals and dangers of surrendering to a guru consist of, would benefit from reading this book.” Joel Kramer, author, The Guru Papers "Andre van der Braak’s story is our own story. We walked the ‘yellow brick road’ whether it was Zen or Yoga or Advaita. We desperately wished for or found a Guru who could help us find our way home and we wholly gave ourselves. Andre’s talk of it is fresh and innocent. He takes us by the hand through a hazardous trail. Neither bitter nor estranged, nor having lost his passion for the way, he remembers with us what really happened, and why.” Orit Sen-Gupta, Author, Dancing the Body of Light – The Future of Yoga Andre van der Braak lived in Andrew Cohen’s spiritual community for 11 years, an involvement initiated shortly after Cohen had begun teaching. He was one of the original editors for “What is Enlightenment Magazine”. He was also an editor for Cohen’s first teaching text, Enlightenment is a Secret, which entailed reading over 4,000 pages of transcribed talks, and editing them into book form. Today, he lives in Amsterdam where he teaches philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and at Luzac College in Alkmaar.
Author: Andre van der Braak
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
ISBN: 1939681758
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Get Book Here
Book Description
Enlightenment Blues is Andre van der Braak’s compelling first hand account of his relationship with a prominent spiritual teacher. It chronicles both the author’s spiritual journey and disenchantment as well the development of a missionary and controversial community around the teacher. It powerfully exposes the problems and necessities of disentanglement from a spiritual path. “Enlightenment Blues is the account of a young man's sincere and protracted struggle to transform his life according to the teachings of the American guru Andrew Cohen. Ruthlessly honest and unsettling, Andre van der Braak gives a vivid first-hand account of an uncompromising experiment in establishing Indian spirituality in a modern Western setting. This story is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the allure and pitfalls of surrendering one's authority in the hope of spiritually transforming the world” Stephen Batchelor, Author Buddhism without Beliefs “Narrated with the psychological subtlety and drama of a good novel, Enlightenment Blues is a precise, profound dissection of the guru-devotee relationship. It should be required reading for all who are currently engaged in or considering studying under a spiritual teacher.” John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism "A profound contribution. The maturity and balance of this book place it at the front rank of works on contemporary spirituality. All the major themes of the spiritual quest are here - reason versus emotion, the problem of the ego, the guru, self-doubt, the place of altered states. Andre van der Braak has the creative gift of being able to hold opposing ideas in his mind without moving towards premature closure. Hence this heartfelt account of his eleven years in the Cohen movement is a beautiful testament to one man's quest to discover his own reality. Enlightenment Blues deserves the widest readership." Len Oakes, Prophetic Charisma “Enlightenment Blues is the personal story of one man’s eleven year journey into and out of a group of seekers of enlightenment with a charismatic leader who claims to be an exemplar of perfection. What distinguishes this book are the writer’s insights and honesty in portraying the workings of an authoritarian belief system that operates under the guise of spiritual revelations. Anyone who has ever belonged to such a group, or knows anyone who has, or who wants to understand what the appeals and dangers of surrendering to a guru consist of, would benefit from reading this book.” Joel Kramer, author, The Guru Papers "Andre van der Braak’s story is our own story. We walked the ‘yellow brick road’ whether it was Zen or Yoga or Advaita. We desperately wished for or found a Guru who could help us find our way home and we wholly gave ourselves. Andre’s talk of it is fresh and innocent. He takes us by the hand through a hazardous trail. Neither bitter nor estranged, nor having lost his passion for the way, he remembers with us what really happened, and why.” Orit Sen-Gupta, Author, Dancing the Body of Light – The Future of Yoga Andre van der Braak lived in Andrew Cohen’s spiritual community for 11 years, an involvement initiated shortly after Cohen had begun teaching. He was one of the original editors for “What is Enlightenment Magazine”. He was also an editor for Cohen’s first teaching text, Enlightenment is a Secret, which entailed reading over 4,000 pages of transcribed talks, and editing them into book form. Today, he lives in Amsterdam where he teaches philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and at Luzac College in Alkmaar.
Author: Ann Gleig
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438447914
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Exploring homegrown movements and figures, proclaims American Hinduism as a distinct religious tradition. Today, a new stage in the development of Hinduism in America is taking shape. After a century of experimentation during which Americans welcomed Indian gurus who adjusted their teachings to accommodate the New World context, American Hinduism can now rightly be called its own tradition rather than an imported religion. Accordingly, this spiritual path is now headed by leaders born in North America. Homegrown Gurus explores this phenomenon in essays about these figures and their networks. A variety of teachers and movements are considered, including Ram Dass, Siddha Yoga, and Amrit Desai and Kripalu Yoga, among others. Two contradictory trends quickly become apparent: an increasing Westernization of Hindu practices and values alongside a renewed interest in traditional forms of Hinduism. These opposed sensibilitiesinnovation and preservation, radicalism and recoveryare characteristic of postmodernity and denote a new chapter in the American assimilation of Hinduism.
Author: Arthur Versluis
Publisher: OUP Us
ISBN: 0199368139
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Versluis shows how the convergence of Asian religions and Western mysticism produce the contemporary phenomenon of "spontaneously enlightened" gurus in America.
Author: Beth Singler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351851225
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
All religions undergo continuous change, but minority religions tend to be less anchored in their ways than mainstream, traditional religions. This volume examines radical transformations undergone by a variety of minority religions, including the Children of God/ Family International; Gnosticism; Jediism; various manifestations of Paganism; LGBT Muslim groups; the Plymouth Brethren; Santa Muerte; and Satanism. As with other books in the Routledge/Inform series, the contributors approach the subject from a wide range of perspectives: professional scholars include legal experts and sociologists specialising in new religious movements, but there are also chapters from those who have experienced a personal involvement. The volume is divided into four thematic parts that focus on different impetuses for radical change: interactions with society, technology and institutions, efforts at legitimation, and new revelations. This book will be a useful source of information for social scientists, historians, theologians and other scholars with an interest in social change, minority religions and ‘cults’. It will also be of interest to a wider readership including lawyers, journalists, theologians and members of the general public.
Author: James A. Beverley
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 1418577464
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 711
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Book Description
A comprehensive introduction to the religions of the world analyzed from a Christian perspective Nelson's Illustrated Guide to Religions covers more than 200 religions, sects, and cults, most of them ones the reader might encounter on any given day. It is the most complete and up-to-date Christian guide to world religions. Perfect for the student as well as the layperson. Written by leading expert in religions, James A. Beverley.
Author: Will Pirone
Publisher: Salem House Press
ISBN: 0983666563
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 79
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Book Description
My favorite spot is a seat by a window. If it is a barstool and the street is active, so much the better. Behind the counter in a store looking through an open door works just as well. So does a bedroom overlooking a park. A bus or plane will also do, as long as the seat or scene is moving. They are all metaphors for a curious, restless mind. I started writing poetry as a boy after discovering my father's high school text of One Hundred Narrative Poems. In my early teens an older cousin sent me a copy of The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men. That same year I stumbled on a facing page bilingual edition of Baudelaire which I thought would help my French studies. These random events pointed the way to a whole new world. I have been gone ever since. Open up to any page, and have a look.
Author: Amir Freimann
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
ISBN: 1939681960
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
The term “spiritual transmission” refers to the passing of the state of enlightenment from teacher to student, which takes place in many spiritual traditions. In itself, the transmission is synonymous with the experience of enlightenment. But the fact that the student’s experience is rooted in a relationship with a human teacher who is perceived to possess absolute knowledge lends the experience much of its intrinsic, yet hidden, nature. Following the breakup of his 21-year relationship with his own spiritual teacher, Amir Freimann launched a quest to discover the deeper realities of the student teacher relationship, logging over 1,000 hours of interviews with students and teachers. These interviews reveal the promises and perils of the guru-to-student relationship and explore hot-button topics such as the differences and similarities between therapists and gurus; the role of trust vs. rationality in the spiritual quest; and how money, power and sex are dealt with during the course of a student’s training. Spiritual Transmission includes never-before-published dialogues with many prominent spiritual teachers, plus a revelatory afterword by renowned integral theorist Ken Wilber. If you have ever been involved with a spiritual teacher or know someone who has, you need this book. Interviewees in Spiritual Transmission include Peter (Hakim) Young, Andrew Cohen, Stephen Fulder, Christopher Titmuss, James Finley, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, Saniel Bonder, Mariana Caplan, Mooji, Lakshmi, Barry Magid, Claire Slemmer, James Swartz, Diane Hamilton, Bill Epperly, Aliya Haeri, Thomas Steininger, Peter Bampton, Carolyn Lee, Terry Patten, Steve Brett and Mary Adams.
Author: James R. Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317545133
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Cults examines the history and current status of cults across the United States, Europe, and East Asia. Focusing on the principal controversial religions and movements that have attracted major media attention, the book also includes profiles of hundreds of minority religions, from Jesus People and Rastafarians to voodoo practitioners and the human-cloning Raelians. All the issues central to the practice and the fear of cults are examined - apocalypticism, deprogramming, social isolation, cults and the media, the use and threat of violence, child custody, libel, tax evasion, solicitation, and the techniques of persuasion and conviction - as are the many charismatic cult leaders. Cults presents a comprehensive and authoritative reference, offering a balanced view of the controversy surrounding these new religious movements, assessing the movements themselves as well as the legal and governmental responses to them, including attempts to quantify membership.
Author: Jeffrey Melnick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040902
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
All too often an incident or accident, such as the eruption in Crown Heights with its legacy of bitterness and recrimination, thrusts Black-Jewish relations into the news. A volley of discussion follows, but little in the way of progress or enlightenment results--and this is how things will remain until we radically revise the way we think about the complex interactions between African Americans and Jews. A Right to Sing the Blues offers just such a revision. Black-Jewish relations, Jeffrey Melnick argues, has mostly been a way for American Jews to talk about their ambivalent racial status, a narrative collectively constructed at critical moments, when particular conflicts demand an explanation. Remarkably flexible, this narrative can organize diffuse materials into a coherent story that has a powerful hold on our imagination. Melnick elaborates this idea through an in-depth look at Jewish songwriters, composers, and perfomers who made Black music in the first few decades of this century. He shows how Jews such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, and others were able to portray their natural affinity for producing Black music as a product of their Jewishness while simultaneously depicting Jewishness as a stable white identity. Melnick also contends that this cultural activity competed directly with Harlem Renaissance attempts to define Blackness. Moving beyond the narrow focus of advocacy group politics, this book complicates and enriches our understanding of the cultural terrain shared by African Americans and Jews.
Author: Eric C. Hendriks
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004319581
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
In Life Advice from Below, Eric C. Hendriks offers the first systematic, comparative study of the globalization of American-style self-help culture and the cultural conflicts this creates in different national contexts. The self-help guru is an archetypical American figure associated with individualism, materialism and the American Dream. Nonetheless, the self-help industry is spreading globally, thriving in China and other seemingly unlikely places. Controversy follows in its wake, as the self-help industry, operating outside of formal education and state institutions, outflanks philosophical, religious and political elites who have their own visions of the Good Life. Through a comparison of Germany and China, Hendriks analyzes how the competition between self-help gurus and institutional authorities unfolds under radically different politico-cultural regimes. “This witty book charms its way through a very serious sociology of the seriously quirky field of self-help books. Read it for its fascinating pop-culture insights and you’ll come away with a deep understanding of contemporary sociological theory. Highly recommended.” - Salvatore Babones, University of Sydney “Hendriks’ finding that Germany rather than China is more resistant to self-help gurus offers a powerful corrective to the assumption in much of the globalization literature that the greatest cultural divide is between the Anglo-Western European sphere and the rest of the globe.” - Rodney Benson, New York University
