Practical guide promotes Rajayoga and compares its essential features with other systems. First of two parts deals with yoga metaphysics, delineating characteristics and functions of Prakrti and Purusa, reality of the external world, and process of evolution. Second part expounds yoga ethics and practice, with emphasis on yoga method, stages of samadhi, and related topics.

Novelist, essayist, dramatist, and philosopher, Count Leo Tolstoy is most famous for his sprawling portraits of nineteenth-century Russian life, as recounted in Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But at the age of fifty, he endured a spiritual crisis that prompted him to seek answers from learned men on "the problem of life." When they were unable to offer solutions, he turned to the study of Christianity. Dazzled by the light of truth that illuminated...

Concise guide describes the art of spiritualizing one's sexuality and offers efficient methods for transmuting fear and attachment into love and universal power. Step-by-step instructions demonstrate how to perform traditional yoga exercises and provide practical applications for expanding and liberating one's consciousness. A wealth of information for students of religion.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience is William James's classic survey of religious belief. With psychological insight and philosophical rigor, James wrote a truly foundational text for modern belief. Matthew Bradley's wide-ranging new edition--the most critically up-to-date and inclusive edition of James's masterpiece available in paperback--showcases ideas that continue to fuel modern debates on atheism and faith. His introduction stresses the...

All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness -- to be steady while the world spins around you. Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche,...

While European intellectual, cultural, and commercial life stagnated during the early medieval period, Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of religious, commercial, and intellectual connections, the different regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with commerce, international diplomacy, and the brisk exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a look at Asia...

"The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late seventeenth century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy, from the Tale of the Heike to the kabuki retellings of the 47 Ronin. This legacy remains with us today in the legendary Akira Kurosawa films, the shoguns of HBO's Westworld, and countless...