Divine Or Demoniac?: Spiritual Movements and the Enemies Within

Divine Or Demoniac?: Spiritual Movements and the Enemies Within PDF Author: Dhanesvara Das
Publisher: Shastra-Chakshusa Press
ISBN: 9781733774444
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Divine Or Demoniac? examines the eerily parallel histories of two spiritual movements, one ancient and one modern, exposing the infiltration of demoniac elements camouflaged as saints within them. This book examines the differences between a spiritual movement and a religious institution, explaining why and how spiritual movements tend to become institutionalized, and why spiritual institutions inevitably deviate from their original intended purpose. Divine Or Demoniac? specifically reveals the actual truths of the Eternal Religion that Jesus and his followers believed, the practices they followed, as well as how the Roman powers infiltrated the group, and replaced its original teachings with a religion subservient to the State. When the Eternal Religion manifests in 1960s in America as the Hare Krishna Movement, again the agents of the state infiltrate to destroy its truths, its followers, and its message. The author as an early follower and has witnessed, and reports, the transformation of the group to uninspired followers of the status quo from its inception as once enthusiastic spiritual revolutionaries determined to raise up the world so that everyone could be happy and fulfilled. The opposition of the political powers to that happy life for all is explained.Divine Or Demoniac? is a valuable guidebook for those pursuing a connection to God free from interpretations of a priestly class. Anyone on a path to establish their eternal relationship with the Absolute Truth will find this book a revolutionary boost to their journey.

Divine Or Demoniac?: Spiritual Movements and the Enemies Within

Divine Or Demoniac?: Spiritual Movements and the Enemies Within PDF Author: Dhanesvara Das
Publisher: Shastra-Chakshusa Press
ISBN: 9781733774444
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book Here

Book Description
Divine Or Demoniac? examines the eerily parallel histories of two spiritual movements, one ancient and one modern, exposing the infiltration of demoniac elements camouflaged as saints within them. This book examines the differences between a spiritual movement and a religious institution, explaining why and how spiritual movements tend to become institutionalized, and why spiritual institutions inevitably deviate from their original intended purpose. Divine Or Demoniac? specifically reveals the actual truths of the Eternal Religion that Jesus and his followers believed, the practices they followed, as well as how the Roman powers infiltrated the group, and replaced its original teachings with a religion subservient to the State. When the Eternal Religion manifests in 1960s in America as the Hare Krishna Movement, again the agents of the state infiltrate to destroy its truths, its followers, and its message. The author as an early follower and has witnessed, and reports, the transformation of the group to uninspired followers of the status quo from its inception as once enthusiastic spiritual revolutionaries determined to raise up the world so that everyone could be happy and fulfilled. The opposition of the political powers to that happy life for all is explained.Divine Or Demoniac? is a valuable guidebook for those pursuing a connection to God free from interpretations of a priestly class. Anyone on a path to establish their eternal relationship with the Absolute Truth will find this book a revolutionary boost to their journey.

Discerning Spirits

Discerning Spirits PDF Author: Nancy Mandeville Caciola
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501702173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Trance states, prophesying, convulsions, fasting, and other physical manifestations were often regarded as signs that a person was seized by spirits. In a book that sets out the prehistory of the early modern European witch craze, Nancy Caciola shows how medieval people decided whom to venerate as a saint infused with the spirit of God and whom to avoid as a demoniac possessed of an unclean spirit. This process of discrimination, known as the discernment of spirits, was central to the religious culture of Western Europe between 1200 and 1500.Since the outward manifestations of benign and malign possession were indistinguishable, a highly ambiguous set of bodily features and behaviors were carefully scrutinized by observers. Attempts to make decisions about individuals who exhibited supernatural powers were complicated by the fact that the most intense exemplars of lay spirituality were women, and the "fragile sex" was deemed especially vulnerable to the snares of the devil. Assessments of women's spirit possessions often oscillated between divine and demonic interpretations. Ultimately, although a few late medieval women visionaries achieved the prestige of canonization, many more were accused of possession by demons.Caciola analyzes a broad array of sources from saints' lives to medical treatises, exorcists' manuals to miracle accounts, to find that observers came to rely on the discernment of bodies rather than seeking to distinguish between divine and demonic possession in purely spiritual terms.

Divine, Demonic, and Disordered

Divine, Demonic, and Disordered PDF Author: Hsiao-wen Cheng
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295748320
Category : Celibacy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"A variety of Chinese writings-medical texts, religious treatises, fiction, and anecdotes-from the Song period (960-1279) depict women who were considered peculiar because their sexual bodies did not belong to men. These were women who refused to marry, were considered unmarriageable, or were married but denied their husbands sexual access, thereby removing themselves from social constructs of female sexuality defined in relation to men. As elite male authors attempted to make sense of these incomprehensible women whose sexual bodies were unavailable to them, they were forced to contemplate the purpose of women's bodies and lives apart from wifehood and motherhood. This raised troubling new questions about normalcy, desire, sexuality, and identity. In Divine, Demonic, and Disordered Hsiao-wen Cheng considers accounts of "manless women," many of which depict women who suffered from "enchantment disorder" or who engaged in "intercourse with ghosts"-conditions with specific symptoms and behavioral patterns. Through her questioning of conventional binary gender analyses and heteronormative assumptions, she shifts attention away from women's reproductive bodies and familial roles and offers historians of China and readers interested in women, gender, sexuality, medicine, and religion a fresh look at the unstable meanings attached to women's behaviors and lives even in a time of codified patriarchy"--

Bhagavad-Gita as it is

Bhagavad-Gita as it is PDF Author: A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Bhagavad Geeta

Bhagavad Geeta PDF Author: Swami Mukundananda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983396727
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Commentary on 'The Bhagavad Geeta' by Swami Mukundananda

Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine

Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine PDF Author: Christopher C. H. Cook
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429750943
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license. Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before. The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God’s perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.

The Sinister Way

The Sinister Way PDF Author: Richard von Glahn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520928776
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon of noble qualities but rather as an embodiment of humanity's basest vices, greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In The Sinister Way, Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion—as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture.

Colors Demonic and Divine

Colors Demonic and Divine PDF Author: Herman Pleij
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231130226
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Including a wealth of vivid detail and ranging over theology, poetry, painting, heraldry, fashion, and daily life, this book elucidates the attitudes toward color in medieval times and the effect these attitudes still have on modern society.

Demon Divine: A Novel of the Demon Accords

Demon Divine: A Novel of the Demon Accords PDF Author: John Conroe
Publisher: Demon Accords
ISBN: 9781793180018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Something unholy is hunting the streets of Burlington, Vermont, stalking the campus of the local university. Chris Gordon and his contingent of demon hunters is drawn to the northern Vermont city by a brutal murder of hellish proportions, ready to banish it from Earth.But this Hellion is direct from the Abyss, incarnate and fully possessed of all the powers of high Hell royalty - female royalty at that. It's been said that the female of the species is deadlier than the male, and this one might be the deadliest of all.How do you flush out such dangerous prey without recreating the chaos that befell Washington such a short time ago? The answer: bait. The bait: Declan O'Carroll, witch prodigy with powers so sweet it's like candy for the Devil's own. Can Chris and company catch this monster before any harm comes to their friend and colleague? Or will Hell have its way? Can they see all the angles or does this Abyss bitch have the edge?

The Divine and the Demonic

The Divine and the Demonic PDF Author: Dr Graham Dwyer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134431104
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Focuses on supernatural affliction - illness and misfortune ascribed to demonic spirits or ghosts and to other mystical agents, such as sorcerers and witches.