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neutralrobotboy wrote:Tried to get into hieroglyph reading before, and I'm finding this book keeps my attention and presents it in an easily-comprehended way. Actually, I wonder if it's been submitted yet... I'll have to check that one of these days.

Around the turn of the century, renegade Russian aristocrat Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky declared herself the chosen vessel of the wisdom of the East through her reputed contact with a dematerializing Tibetan master, who unveiled a Hidden Brotherhood located in the Himalayas and Egypt. The Theosophical Society, which she cofounded in 1875 in New York City with Civil War veteran Col. Henry Olcott, attracted a wide following with its amalgam of Hinduism, Buddhism and occultism. In this enormously entertaining, witheringly skeptical, highly colorful chronicle, British journalist Washington deflates the self-mythologizing and woolly philosophizing of theosophists and rival schools and gurus, including flamboyant Armenian-Greek mystic George Gurdjieff, Austrian philosopher/holistic healer Rudolf Steiner and Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian ex-theosophist turned California sage. Those who came under their influence include Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield, Christopher Isherwood, W.B. Yeats and Frank Lloyd Wright, making this a heady intellectual adventure as well as a clear-sighted saga of human foibles, charlatanry, bizarre antics and genuine spiritual hunger extending to New Age cults from the 1950s to the present.

Khephra wrote:Somewhat appropriate, given the recent discussion on Theosophy...

The authors have been collaborators for many years, during the human potential movement of the 1960s, and most recently regarding women’s studies (Alstad) and yoga (Kramer). This book, which is about "authoritarianism," grew from a few chapters "mainly for friends" into the present 385-page, 20-chapter paperback. There is a 9-page preface, a 6-page introduction, and a 13-page section called "Authority, Hierarchy, and Power" before the book itself begins. An impressive and thorough index is a helpful aid to readers, but there is no bibliography of sources.

This book delivers what it promises in the preface and introduction, describing the many settings and situations in which overt and covert authoritarianism can intrude into social, political, and religious beliefs and interfere with normal personality development. Part I examines destructive relationships between one person and others, the guru-disciple dynamic broadly applied not only to political and religious leaders but also to parents, close friends, and lovers. Part II explores subtle, indirect forces in values and beliefs both personal and global concealed in what people assume and take for granted, most of the time unknowingly.

The Guru Papers continues in the vein of the exposition of such writers as Packard (The Hidden Persuaders), Hoffer (The True Believer), and Sargant (The Battle for the Mind). It is a worthy addition to these other sources. It provides continuity with useful information about current negative influences and destructive forces. It does so without injecting the authors’ bias or beliefs, seeking only to increase awareness and sharpen perception, objectively and in the spirit of freedom that is espoused as a goal of the book. That it does so merits wide readership; The Guru Papers, therefore, is highly recommended. (International Cultic Stuies Association)

Why do fools fall in love? Why does a man's annual salary, on average, increase $600 with each inch of his height? When a crack dealer guns down a rival, how is he just like Alexander Hamilton, whose face is on the ten-dollar bill? How do optical illusions function as windows on the human soul? Cheerful, cheeky, occasionally outrageous MIT psychologist Steven Pinker answers all of the above and more in his marvelously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science. Pinker argues that Darwin plus canny computer programs are the key to understanding ourselves--but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W. C. Fields, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology, and Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty and his 888 children. If How the Mind Works were a rock show, tickets would be scalped for $100. This book deserved its spot as Number One on bestseller lists. It belongs on a short shelf alongside such classics as Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C. Dennett, and The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, by Robert Wright. Pinker's startling ideas pop out as dramatically as those hidden pictures in a Magic Eye 3D stereogram poster, which he also explains in brilliantly lucid prose.

Gay Watson, Stephen Batchelor,and Guy Claxtonhave compiled a wide-ranging and penetrating selection of articles on the relevance and application of Buddhist philosophy and practice in the modern Western world. Divided into four parts, the book explores the philosophical issues in Buddhism and the contemporary mind; the scientific perspective of Buddhist concepts of the development of body, mind, and spirit; Buddhism and psychotherapy; and practical applications of Buddhism in contemporary life. (Amazon)

A collection of works bridging the Buddhist view of mind and its contemporary application by psychologists and scientists.

This work includes: Foundations of a Buddhist Psychology of Awakening by Geshe Thubten Jinpa; the Agnostic Buddhist by Stephen Batchelor; Unfolding the Dharma Implicit in Modern Cognitive Science by Francisco Varela; Buddhism, Cognitive Science and the Mystical Experience by Guy Claxton; Waking from the Meme Dream by Susan Blackmore; Realisation and Embodiment by John Welwood; a Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness by Mark Epstein; Licking Honey from the Razor`s Edge by Maura Sills; Zen: the challenge of Dependency by John Crook; How Does Liberating Self-Insight Become Tacit Understanding by Leslie Todres; Inquiry into Awakening by Christopher Titmus; I, Mine and Views of the Self by Gay Watson; Subjects Without Selves by Fred Pfeil; Compassion in the Age of Global Economy by Helena Norberg-Hodge; the Development of Personhood and the Brain by Terence Gausen; Buddhist Psychotherapy by David Brazier; Indra`s Net at Work by Jon Kabat-Zinn; the Structures of Suffering by James Low; Lucid Dreaming by Tarab Tulku; Contemporary Breathwork Techniques by Joy Manne; Hospitality Beyond Ego by Karen K Wegela; and the Four Noble Truths for Counselling by Eric Hall. (Wisdom Books.com)

ankh_f_n_khonsu wrote:So far, IMO, this isn't Pinker's best...

Hadrianswall wrote:I have always found Pinker a bit of a twit. I wouldnt mind a lot of his speculative stuff if he wasnt so keen on sticking the boot into people for exactly the same. (sometimes on the same page).

Been a long time since I read any of his stuff though, but the little I do stumble across these days still stinks of self reverence.

Written in 1919 by Isya Joseph, "Devil Worship: The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidis" remains the most comprehensive and informative volume ever written about the Yezidi, a legendary tribe of Devil worshippers that have existed in the Middle East for over a thousand years. This volume contains, as the title suggests, all of their once secret holy texts as well as detailed accounts of virtually every aspect of Yezidi life and culture.

In The Cosmic Serpent, anthropologist Narby hypothesized that Amazonian shamans can "gain access in their visions to information related to DNA" comparable to what molecular biologists know. In this intriguing treatise, he carries his project of syncretizing all forms of knowledge a step further, arguing that animals and plants exhibit intelligence comparable in many ways to that of humans. His shaman friends heartily endorse the idea, regaling him, over a friendly pot of hallucinogenic ayahuasca brew, with conversations they have had in the trance state with animal and plant spirits. For further confirmation, he talks to Western scientists who have done remarkable research on cases of nonhuman intelligence, like bees with abstract reasoning, crows that manufacture standardized tools, pigeons that distinguish between the works of Van Gogh and Chagall about as well as college students do, octopuses that break out of and into their tanks and slime molds that solve mazes. Scientists may find Narby's ongoing efforts to assimilate shamanic mysticism to Western science - he associates, for example, Amazonian legends about humans turning into jaguars with Darwin's theory of evolution - naïve and illogical. But Narby has done his homework - the endnotes themselves make excellent reading - and his well-researched and engagingly presented account of the "braininess" of even literally brainless creatures raises fascinating questions about the boundaries between man and nature.

Surprisingly little appears to have changed in shamanic practices throughout the world in the last 500 years. Most rely on plant hallucinogens to communicate with otherworldly spirits for guidance and for enhanced perceptions of diseases and the identities of enemies. And most can choose whether to direct their energies for good or for evil purposes, an ability that provoked much hostility among their early observers. Scholarly treatments of shamanism, however, have changed dramatically over the centuries. In this excellent volume, anthropologists Narby (The Cosmic Serpent) and Huxley (Affable Savages) have collected observations about and interviews with shamans from more than 60 missionaries, botanists, anthropologists, ethnographers and psychologists spanning from 1535 to 2000. The contributors convey everything from fear, suspicion and condescension to respect, fascination and adulation. Many contemporary anthropologists lament shamanism's recent popularization and its likely degeneration in global culture. Anthropologist Michael F. Brown writes, "Tribal lore is a supermarket from which [New Age Americans] choose some tidbits while spurning others." As an example of shamanism-as-commodity, British anthropologist Piers Vitebsky cites a dumbed-down version of traditional healing that is part of a compulsory course for schoolchildren in northeast Siberia, where 50 years ago shamans were put to death. On the positive side, ethobotanist Glenn H. Shepard believes that shamans will become the ethnobotanists of the future.

Google Books

A belief in magic is one of the most powerful and enduring traits of the human race, surviving from the dawn of time to the present day. Mysteries and Secrets of Magic documents the science of the occult and the supernatural as practiced throughout the world - including Babylon and Ancient Egypt, and among Celts and Arabs, Hindus and Japanese.

Magical spirits have been described as riding on storm clouds, or 'creeping like a snake on their bellies,' whilst the devil - 'the hairy one' - was said to stalk the earth. The ancient art of necromancy revealed the future through communion with the dead; the most infallible charm for unrequited love was to draw down the moon; and the fallen angel Azael brought women the art of witchcraft - along with the use of cosmetics!

Spells and curses, the Black Mass and the Evil Eye, Druids and jinns, demons and oracles and mysterious initiations - this book encompasses them all, giving a valuable insight into a fascinating and important subject.