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Genre Religious

Chasing the Avatar
Chasing the Avatar

Maya is a young woman with extraordinary prospects drowning in intense discontent. In the midst of this discontent, she meets Cha Ma, a guru. Immediately, she comes to believe that Cha Ma is an avatara human incarnationof the goddess Kali, the most malevolent, destructive of all Hindu deities. Spellbound, Maya runs off to India to live in Cha Mas ashram as a Hindu. Her choice hurls her parents, Paul and Marie, into a battle far beyond their wildest imagination for they must fight for their daughters life, and even her soul, as she teeters on the edge.

Living Ghita
Living Ghita

The Bhagavad Gita tells the story of how Arjuna, the great warrior, is seated in his chariot about to engage in battle, when he sees his own kinsmen and his revered teacher arrayed in battle against him, and feels that he cannot fight. It is then that Krishna, the Cosmic Lord, comes to counsel him. Arjuna represents the human soul seated in the chariot of the body and Krishna is the inner Spirit, the God within, who is there to consel him. Today we see humanity divided against itself and threatened with nuclear war and mutual destruction. No political means are adequate to deal with this problem, and many are driven to despair. It is then that the message of the Gita comes to teach us that it is only when we rise above human schemes and calculations and awake to the presence of the indwelling Spirit that we can hope to find the answer to our need.
 

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

This valuable book provides a complete manual for the study and practice of Raja Yoga, the path of concentration and meditation. This new edition of these timeless teachings is a treasure to be read and referred to again and again by seekers treading the spiritual path. The classic Sutras (thought-threads), at least 4,000 years old, cover the yogic teachings on ethics, meditation, and physical postures, and provide directions for dealing with situations in daily life. The Sutras are presented here in the purest form, with the original Sanskrit and with translation, transliteration, and commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda, one of the most respected and revered contemporary Yoga masters. In this classic context, Sri Swamiji offers practical advice based on his own experience for mastering the mind and achieving physical, mental and emotional harmony.
 

Finding God Within: Contemplative Prayer
Finding God Within: Contemplative Prayer

For nearly a decade, Ray Leonardini has been visiting the incarcerated in Folsom State Prison and other correctional facilities, where he has been teaching and facilitating contemplative prayer—the contemporary manifestation of the ancient Christian meditative tradition. In Finding God Within, Leonardini demonstrates the extraordinary power of contemplative (or centering) prayer in transforming the lives of prisoners, and offers insightful analyses of biblical passages that show the power of prayer, faith, and surrender to ease addiction, stress, and despair. Filled with testimonies of prisoners who have been helped by centering prayer, Finding God Within is an essential introduction to contemplative prayer for people of all faiths engaged in prison ministry.

Prison Yoga
Prison Yoga

Bound to be Free: The Liberating Power of Prison Yoga illustrates how yoga can be and is being used in prisons as a powerful method of prisoner reform and rehabilitation. The book is grounded in the Integral Yoga teachings of Sri Swami Satchidananda, who was a renowned yoga master, a spiritual guide to thousands of people worldwide, and one of the first yoga teachers to bring the timeless teachings of yoga into U.S. prisons. Through talks that Swami Satchidananda gave in several prisons, from interviews with other yoga teachers who have taught and are teaching in prisons, with a look at some highly successful prison yoga programs that are being carried out in the United States and abroad, and with personal stories of prisoners whose study and practice of yoga has brought peace and self-transformation, Bound to be Free offers a wide-ranging view of the benefits of yoga to incarcerated populations and demonstrates how those benefits impact society in general.

Buddhist Bootcamp
Buddhist Bootcamp

Buddhism is all about training the mind, and boot camp is an ideal training method for this generation's short attention span. The chapters in this book are a collection of eight years' worth of letters and journal entries, which is why each chapter is only a page long and can be read in any order. 

Ir-Religious
Ir-Religious

Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? Mathematician and bestselling author John Allen Paulos thinks not. In Irreligion he presents the case for his own worldview, organizing his book into twelve chapters that refute the twelve arguments most often put forward for believing in God's existence. The latter arguments, Paulos relates in his characteristically lighthearted style, "range from what might be called golden oldies to those with a more contemporary beat. On the playlist are the firstcause argument, the argument from design, the ontological argument, arguments from faith and biblical codes, the argument from the anthropic principle, the moral universality argument, and others." Interspersed among his twelve counterarguments are remarks on a variety of irreligious themes, ranging from the nature of miracles and creationist probability to cognitive illusions and prudential wagers. Special attention is paid to topics, arguments, and questions that spring from his incredulity "not only about religion but also about others' credulity." Despite the strong influence of his day job, Paulos says, there isn't a single mathematical formula in the book.

The Field
The Field

Reveals that the human body is surrounded by a field of electromagnetic energy that profoundly influences physical and mental health, identifying a link between humanity and the cosmos while investigating areas of alternative medicine.

Devil's Pulpit
Devil's Pulpit

With a sketch of his life and an astronomical introduction. This book is a collection of sermons delivered by the Rev. Robert Taylor. Everywhere he lectured he challenged the clergy to debate him. He was arrested for blasphemy and a persecution began. A Quaker banker took this opportunity to press a debt, and threw the orator into prison. It was there that he wrote the Diegesis and Syntagma. Contents: Star of Bethlehem; John the Baptist; Raising the Devil ; The Temple; Unjust Judge; Virgo Paritura; St. Peter; Judas Iscariot Vindicated; St. Thomas; St. James and John the Sons of Thunder; The Crucifixion of Christ; Cup of Salvation; Lecture on Free Masonry; The Holy Ghost; St. Philip; St. Matthew; The Redeemer.

God is Not Great
God is Not Great

With his unique brand of erudition and wit, Hitchens describes the ways in which religion is man-made. "God did not make us," he says. "We made God." He explains the ways in which religion is immoral: We damage our children by indoctrinating them. It is a cause of sexual repression, violence, and ignorance. It is a distortion of our origins and the cosmos. In the place of religion, Hitchens offers the promise of a new enlightenment through science and reason, a realm in which hope and wonder can be found through a strand of DNA or a gaze through the Hubble Telescope. As Hitchens sees it, you needn't get the blues once you discover the heavens are empty.

Atheist Manifesto
Atheist Manifesto

This tightly argued, hugely controversial work convincingly demonstrates how the world's three major monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—have attempted to suppress knowledge, science, pleasure, and desire, often condemning nonbelievers to death. If Nietzsche proclaimed the "Death of God," Onfray starts from the premise that not only is God still very much alive, but increasingly controlled by fundamentalists who pose a danger to the human race. Documenting the ravages from religious intolerance over the centuries, the author makes a strong case against the three religions for demanding faith, belief, obedience and submission, and for extolling the "next life" at the expense of the here and now. Not since Nietzsche has a work so groundbreaking and explosive appeared to question the role of the world's dominant religions.

God No!
God No!

A scathingly funny reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments from the larger, louder half of world-famous magic duo Penn and Teller reveals an atheist's experience in the world: from performing on the Vegas strip with Siegfried and Roy to children and fatherhood to his ongoing dialogue with proselytizers of the Christian Right and the joys of sex while scuba-diving, Penn has an outrageous sense of humor and a brilliantly entertaining opinion on, well, anything you care to think of.