The New Age: Searching for the Spiritual Self Book

The full story told for the first time—the origins and precursors, its flowering within the American counterculture of the 1960s, and the development into an international spiritual perspective. The New Age movement may well reflect the future face of Western religion. Drawing on an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western spiritual philosophies, it embraces an extensive range of holistic mind-body and self-empowerment forms and practices. Nevill Drury presents the movement's key themes, along with numerous telling and unfamiliar illustrations: the strong influence from the East on New Age thought, linking Theosophy and Hinduism, Vivekenanda with Huxley and Esalen, Leary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead; the major "higher consciousness" models that have emerged from the Transpersonal movement; the historical progression from the precursors—Swedenborg, Blavatsky, Gurdjieff—to the psychological pioneers of the study of consciousness, from the psychedelic period to alternative health, from the emergence of the New Physics and its parallels with mysticism to the modern study of comparative mythology. Due attention is given to the role of women in the rise of the New Age, especially since the 1970s—among them Shakti Gawain, biophysicist Candace Pert, shaman Brooke Medicine-Eagle, and psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as well as high-profile personalities such as "angel therapist" Doreen Virtue or channelers Shirley MacLaine and JZ Knight. 131 illustrations, 53 in color.Read More