American gurus : from American transcendentalism to new age religion / Arthur Versluis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Versluis, Arthur, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religious leaders--United States.

Religious leaders.

United States--Religion--History.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 th

Contents:

Cover; American Gurus; Copyright; Contents; 1 Introduction; PART ONE Nineteenth-Century Enlightenments; 2 Revivalism, Romanticism, and the Protestant Principle; 3 The Sage of Concord; 4 Emerson and Platonism; 5 The Concord School of Philosophy and American Platonism; 6 Walt Whitman's Cosmic Consciousness; PART TWO Enlightened Literature; 7 American (Literary) Spiritual Teachers; 8 Beat Religion and the Choice; 9 Enter Psychedelics; 10 Dogmas, Catmas, and Spiritual Anarchism; 11 Oh, Ho, Ho, It's Magic......; 12 Spiritual Anarchy, Tantra, and Islamic Heterodoxy; 13 On the Counterculture

PART THREE American Gurus14 From Europe to America; 15 Varieties of Modern American Mysticism; 16 The Sage on the Stage; 17 The American Guru Enters, Stage Left; 18 The Immediatist Wave; 19 Conclusions; Notes; Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-306-79769-1

0-19-936814-7

OCLC:

880531012