Gurus in America provides an excellent introduction to the guru phenomenon in the United States, with in-depth analyses of nine important Hindu gurus—Adi Da, Ammachi, Mayi Chidvilasananda, Gurani Anjali, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Osho, Ramana Maharshi, Sai Baba, and Swami Bhaktivedanta. All of these gurus have attracted significant followings in the U.S. and nearly all have lived here for considerable periods of time. The book's contributors discuss the characteristics of each guru's teachings, the history of each movement, and the particular construction of Hinduism each guru offers. Contributors also address the religious and cultural interaction, translation, and transplantation that occurs when gurus offer their teachings in America. This is a fascinating guide that will elucidate an important element in America's diverse and ever-changing spiritual landscape.

By the early twenty-first century, a phenomenon that once was inconceivable had become nearly commonplace in American society: the public spiritual teacher who neither belongs to, nor is authorized by a major religious tradition. From the Oprah Winfrey-endorsed Eckhart Tolle to figures like Gangaji and Adhyashanti, there are now countless spiritual teachers who claim and teach variants of instant or immediate enlightenment. American Gurus tells the story of how this phenomenon emerged. Through an examination of the broader literary and religious context of the subject, Arthur Versluis shows that a characteristic feature of the Western esoteric tradition is the claim that every person can achieve "spontaneous, direct, unmediated spiritual insight." This claim was articulated with special clarity by the New England Transcendentalists Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Versluis explores Transcendentalism, Walt Whitman, the Beat movement, Timothy Leary, and the New Age movement to shed light on the emergence of the contemporary American guru. This insightful study is the first to show how Asian religions and Western mysticism converged to produce the phenomenon of "spontaneously enlightened" American gurus.

This is the definitive and complete book about a phenomenon which did not exist a hundred years ago, but is now growing rapidly and dramatically changing Western culture -- the rise of Western (mostly American) teachers, who fill the role of guru or master. A few books have appeared on some narrow aspects of this astounding phenomenon; this is the first book to survey the entire field. Encyclopedic in its scope, The Book of Enlightened Masters includes biographical essays on 140 spiritual teachers, giving their life stories and an account of their teachings. Yet it is also a user-friendly introduction, with a survey of the teachers and their teachings, a historical narrative of how and when the movement developed, and an evaluation of the issues raised by it. A century ago, there were no Western masters-no Westerners who were, for instance, Hindu swamis, Zen roshis, or Sufi sheikhs. Now there are many such teachers, with millions of followers. Starting from scratch, the West has produced its own spiritual teachers in traditions that until recently were utterly alien. And in the last quarter-century, a number of independent teachers have appeared, who belong to no single identifiable tradition. The Western masters have not merely transplanted the Eastern spiritual traditions to the West, they have transformed these traditions by their distinctively Western approach: innovative, entrepreneurial, and combining elements from previously unconnected Eastern traditions. The new teachers are changing Western culture by making available a view of the human condition which is new in the West but very attractive to large and growing numbers of Westerners, an approach Dr. Rawlinson calls"spiritual psychology". Spiritual psychology holds that human beings are best understood in terms of consciousness and its modifications, that consciousness can be changed by spiritual practice, and that there are enlightened masters who have done this and can teach others.

Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (1928) is Professor and Head of the department of Linguistics at Osmania University, Hyderabad. He received a B.A. (Hons.) Degree (1948) in Telugu language and literature at Andhra University Waltair and an M.A. (1955) and Ph.D. (1957) in linguistics from the university of Pennsylvania U.S.A.

"This book will serve to inspire millions...and balance masculine and feminine for a more healthy and rewarding existence on earth!"--Shelley Ackerman, astrologer and founder of Karmic Relief Every woman could use some Goddess wisdom in her life. From scoring your dream job to going after that hard-earned raise to finding the right guy and keeping the romance alive, the Divine Feminine is there to help you achieve the love, success, and happiness that you deserve. Get ready to feel empowered: you are about to meet thirty-six of the most revered spiritual heroines from faiths and traditions around the world. Use this book of goddesses to call upon each one for support, guidance, and inspiration in all areas of your life. Evoke their unique energies and strengths through rituals, meditations, gatherings, prayers, blessings, and many more fun and creative activities. Celebrate your true beauty with Hathor Unleash your dark and wild side with Lilith Free yourself from unhealthy relationships with Persephone Take aim at your career goals with Artemis Own and explore your sensuality with Oshun The Goddess Pages, a unique and empowering book of goddesses, helps you connect with the strength and beauty of the Goddess--and experience the divine within you.

Name’s Inori Takafuji. I’m not really much of a “go-getter,” if you catch my drift—sleep’s more my style—but getting summoned to another world kinda messed things up. Bit hard to chill when you’ve got a king in your face telling you there’s a bad guy you’ve gotta go slay or whatever, you know? Plot twist, though—it’s actually not so bad. Getting the hero treatment sounds pretty nice, right? But then it happens again! Some other clown summons me, I get my obligatory superpower, and off I go. And sure, that’s fine. It happens, sometimes you get isekai’d to the wrong place. But then it happens AGAIN! Someone ELSE summons me, I get ANOTHER superpower, and then I’m somewhere totally new. Repeat ad nauseam. All right, goddess, where to next? And lemme just say this—the next time I get summoned better be my last, because I am so over this! Also available in manga form from J-Novel Club!

Goddess characters are revered as feminist heroes in the popular media of many cultures. However, these goddess characters often prove to be less promising and more regressive than most people initially perceive. Goddesses in film, television, and fiction project worldviews and messages that reflect mostly patriarchal culture (included essentialized gender assumptions), in contrast to the feminist, empowering levels many fans and critics observe. Building on critiques of other skeptical scholars, this feminist, folkloristic approach deepens how our remythologizing of the ancient past reflects a contemporary worldview and rhetoric. Structures of contemporary goddess myths often fit typical extremes as either vilified, destructive, dark, and chaotic (typical in film or television); or romanticized, positive, even utopian (typical in women’s speculative fiction). This goddess spectrum persistently essentializes gender, stereotyping women as emotional, intuitive, sexual, motherly beings (good or bad), precluded from complex potential and fuller natures. Within apparent good-over-evil, pop-culture narrative frames, these goddesses all suffer significantly. However, a few recent intersectional writers, like N. K. Jemisin, break through these dark reflections of contemporary power dynamics to offer complex characters who evince “hopepunk.” They resist typical simplified, reductionist absolutes to offer messages that resonate with potential for today’s world. Mythic narratives featuring goddesses often do, but need not, serve merely as ideological mirrors of our culture’s still problematically reductionist approach to women and all humanity.

Through an examination of the poetry of Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa, We Heal From Memory paints a vivid picture of how our culture carries a history of traumatic violence - child sexual abuse, the ownership and enforcement of women's sexuality under slavery, the transmission of violence through generations, and the destruction of non-white cultures and their histories through colonization. According to Cassie Premo Steele, the poetry of Sexton, Lorde, and Anzaldúa allows us to witness and to heal from such disparate traumatic events.