This is a study of the Bengali Kartabhaja sect and its place in the broader movement of Tantrism, an Indian religious movement employing purposely shocking sexual language and rituals. Urban looks closely at the relationship between the rise of the Kartabhajas, who flourished at the turn of the 19th century, and the changing economic context of colonial Bengal. Made up of the poor lower classes laboring in the marketplaces and factories of Calcutta, the Kartabhajas represent "the underworld of the imperial city." Urban shows that their esoteric poetry and songs are in fact saturated with the...
This is a study of the Bengali Kartabhaja sect and its place in the broader movement of Tantrism, an Indian religious movement employing purposely sho...
A complex body of religious practices that spread throughout the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions; a form of spirituality that seemingly combines sexuality, sensual pleasure, and the full range of physical experience with the religious life--Tantra has held a central yet conflicted role within the Western imagination ever since the first "discovery" of Indian religions by European scholars. Always radical, always extremely Other, Tantra has proven a key factor in the imagining of India. This book offers a critical account of how the phenomenon has come to be. Tracing the complex...
A complex body of religious practices that spread throughout the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions; a form of spirituality that seemingly combines ...
Sexuality and the occult arts have long been associated in the western imagination, but it was not until the nineteenth century that a large and sophisticated body of literature on sexual magic--the use of sex as a source of magical power--emerged. This book, the first history of western sexual magic as a modern spiritual tradition, places these practices in the context of the larger discourse surrounding sexuality in American and European society over the last 150 years to discover how sexual magic was transformed from a terrifying medieval nightmare of heresy and social subversion into a...
Sexuality and the occult arts have long been associated in the western imagination, but it was not until the nineteenth century that a large and sophi...
The presidency of George W. Bush contains, at its very heart, a fundamental paradox and apparent contradiction. On the one hand, this is the most outspokenly religious president in U.S. history -- a man who claims to be called by God to lead our country. Yet at the same time, this is also the most secretive administration in U.S. history, displaying an intense preoccupation with information-control, an obsession with secrecy more extreme than the Nixon White House. The Secrets of the Kingdom is the first book to critically examine the complex relationship between faith and concealment in the...
The presidency of George W. Bush contains, at its very heart, a fundamental paradox and apparent contradiction. On the one hand, this is the most outs...
The presidency of George W. Bush contains, at its very heart, a fundamental paradox and apparent contradiction. On the one hand, this is the most outspokenly religious president in U.S. history -- a man who claims to be called by God to lead our country. Yet at the same time, this is also the most secretive administration in U.S. history, displaying an intense preoccupation with information-control, an obsession with secrecy more extreme than the Nixon White House. The Secrets of the Kingdom is the first book to critically examine the complex relationship between faith and concealment in the...
The presidency of George W. Bush contains, at its very heart, a fundamental paradox and apparent contradiction. On the one hand, this is the most outs...
Zorba the Buddha is the first comprehensive study of the life, teachings, and following of the controversial Indian guru known in his youth as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and in his later years as Osho (1931-1990). Most Americans today remember him only as the "sex guru" and the "Rolls Royce guru," who built a hugely successful but scandal-ridden utopian community in central Oregon during the 1980s. Yet Osho was arguably the first truly global guru of the twentieth century, creating a large transnational movement that traced a complex global circuit from post-Independence India of the 1960s...
Zorba the Buddha is the first comprehensive study of the life, teachings, and following of the controversial Indian guru known in his youth as ...
Zorba the Buddha is the first comprehensive study of the life, teachings, and following of the controversial Indian guru known in his youth as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and in his later years as Osho (1931-1990). Most Americans today remember him only as the "sex guru" and the "Rolls Royce guru," who built a hugely successful but scandal-ridden utopian community in central Oregon during the 1980s. Yet Osho was arguably the first truly global guru of the twentieth century, creating a large transnational movement that traced a complex global circuit from post-Independence India of the 1960s...
Zorba the Buddha is the first comprehensive study of the life, teachings, and following of the controversial Indian guru known in his youth as ...
