Category: Spirituality

Some books:

Vedanta Gantha (1815)

A Defence of Hindu Theism (1820)

The Universal Religion (1829)

History of Indian Philosophy (1829)

The Teachings of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Swami Shantanand Saraswati, & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Premanand, 2026

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Yoga Meditation & Dharma: The Teachings of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Swami Shantanand, Saraswati & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is an illustrated view of the lineage of teachers who shared techniques through which the state of yoga can be experienced by those living in accord with the ideals of dharma, the lifestyle dedicated to right action supported by natural law.

Indian texts composed some 2,500 years ago and more contain many references to the word ‘yoga’, a term that can best be understood as meaning ‘a state beyond thinking’, ‘a transcendental state of awareness’, ‘a state in which the mind can enjoy awareness of just being, without the distraction of the churning of mental activity’.

Yoga meditation is an ancient practice, yet until the mid-20th century the word ‘yoga’ was seldom heard of in the West.

Swami Brahmananda Saraswati was the Indian guru who from 1941-53 served as Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, one of four such posts in India each filled by an eminent spiritual teacher. During his years as Shankaracharya, Swami Brahmananda revived spiritual teachings in Northern India and popularised the practice of meditation. His successor, Swami Shantanand Saraswati, together with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, his gurubhaiee (brother disciple of the same guru), set themselves the task of spreading the teaching of meditation worldwide.

Yoga meditation is a practice aimed at attaining a state of inner stillness wherein one is fully awake and in a state of profound inner alertness, stillness and silence.

Dharma is a way of life, of right action in accordance with nature. Practised together Yoga meditation and Dharma provide the essential ingredients for a balanced, stable, and satisfying lifestyle.

About the Author:

Paul Mason was introduced to the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in 1970 after having hitchhiked from Britain and visited Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s centre at Rishikesh, India, and after meeting with sadhus, swamis and spiritual seekers, Paul felt spurred to dig deeper into the history of the teaching of meditation, leading to his being commissioned to write Maharishi’s lifestory. This highly informative work has since been revised, expanded, and re-published as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World.

Sustained interest in meditation prompted Paul to also research the lifestory and teachings of Maharishi’s master, ‘Guru Dev’, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, the title being that of the most senior and authoritative religious position in Northern India. Paul Mason has produced several books on Guru Dev based on his translation of Hindi works, and has for many years been gathering material for another more expansive volume on the guru.

Invited to give a talk about Guru Dev to students of Swami Shantanand Saraswati at Townley Hall in Ireland, Paul felt inspired to compile this brief illustrated account of how Guru Dev and his disciples set about spreading the teaching of meditation.

State University of New York Press (SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions), 1997

Amazon.com

Back Cover:

The Only Tradition examines the first principles of the perennial philosophy or ancient wisdom tradition as expressed in the writings of René Guénon and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and the current breakdown of value, meaning, and culture in the West due to the decline of these principles since the thirteenth century. The book further focuses on the relationship or reciprocity between the first principles and Western and Eastern culture, and discusses the future development of a homogenous, worldwide system of belief that would restore value and meaning to people’s lives.

Quinn argues for a return to the first principles inherent in the perennial philosophy, which constitute the sacred primordial Tradition and which inform all the world’s great religious traditions. His book makes an excellent introduction to this powerful current of European esoteric thought – primordial tradition.

“I cannot recall reading as clear a statement of the perennial philosophy, nor one as solidly based on empirical research, as I have read in this book. The topic of ‘primordial tradition’ or ‘perennial philosophy’ is important in the area of the history of religions, and there are precious few books that deal with it in a sympathetic and yet critical way. Coomaraswamy is mentioned often and honorably in religious studies literature without telling us much about why. Guénon usually is idolized or vilified, if he is acknowledged at all. Books such as Quinn’s, that treat these influential figures honestly and fairly but with an open and critical eye, fill a real need.”

James Burnell Robinson, University of Northern Iowa

William W. Quinn, Jr. is an attorney with the firm of Shea and Wilks in Phoenix, Arizona.

JOB’s Comment:

Quinn sharply criticizes Guénon’s rejection of modern theosophy, most extensively set forth in his early book Le Théosophisme: Histoire d’une pseudo-religion from 1921.

Ordförande Haz fastslår:

“Any Marxist who does not undergo 5 years minimum of isolated meditation will not make it.

The revolution demands Leninist Sufi Orders dedicated to spiritual purification because most radicals are just disguising inner psychological turmoil in ideological language.”

En utmärkt början.

Men därutöver måste dessa ordnar förstås också omforma hela marxismen i enlighet med sufismens verklighetsförståelse.

De måste själva bli det mest centrala i revolutionen och dess ledarskap.

Jag har kort förklarat mitt principiella förhållningssätt (som också implicerar förklaringen av hur ett sådant, d.v.s. det självt, är möjligt) till den omfattande, hårda och detaljerade personliga kritik som författare och tänkare av Bruntons slag åtminstone tidigare nästan undantagslöst blev föremål för. Det är möjligt att jag bör återkomma med en utförligare redovisning av det.

Dålig bokbild denna gång, med ljusreflexer.

Paul Brunton: The Quest of the Overself

Oxford University Press, 2022

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Description:

Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedanta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India’s most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta or as a “Neo-Vedantin” influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. In Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Swami Medhananda rejects these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda’s philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedantin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers.

Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedanta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with numerous philosophers past and present, Medhananda demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda’s views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness.

Reviews:

“I conclude that Medhananda has done an excellent job presenting the thought of Vivekananda and locating it in the debates of both his Indian and British contemporaries.”

Peter Forrest, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

“Swami Medhananda’s most recent book promises to revolutionize the study of the thought of Swami Vivekananda. In this volume, Medhananda, among other things, argues that Swami Vivekananda, like his revered guru, Sri Ramakrishna, was a highly original thinker who did not simply restate Advaita Vedānta, but put forth a radically new model of religious pluralism whose implications are not yet fully grasped or appreciated by philosophers of religion today … Swami Medhananda’s is the first which has been attentive to the chronology of Swami Vivekananda’s writings and lectures. When these materials are viewed chronologically, one can see an unfolding of Swami Vivekananda’s thought in a way that is not otherwise possible.”

Jeffery D. Long , Samvit

“In his lucid and accessible book, Swami Medhananda expounds Vivekananda’s philosophy, locating it in both the Indian and Western intellectual debates, and establishing his originality and enduring relevance … Medhananda is a meticulous scholar, engaging not merely with those in the canon, such as Kant and John Stuart Mill, but many other philosophers, such as William Hamilton and Herbert Spencer, who are not as widely read as they should be … Medhananda exhibits Vivekananda as an original epistemologist anticipating later trends … In the last section … Medhananda makes a good case that contemporary epistemologists of religion should take note of Vivekananda’s contributions … Medhananda has done an excellent job presenting the thought of Vivekananda and locating it in the debates of both his Indian and British contemporaries. Even when his philosophy is open to objection it is original and thought-provoking.”

Peter Forrest, University of New England, Australia

“Medhananda also demonstrates that Vivekananda makes vital contributions to current philosophical debates … He offers an original solution to the hard problem of consciousness.”

J. M. Fritzman, CHOICE

“Swami Medhananda’s Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press) is an extraordinary achievement. A brilliant, deep and searching exploration of Swami Vivekananda, this may be the best book in English on philosophical debates in modern Hinduism, and philosophy of religion more generally.”

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Princeton University

“This is the first, and by far the best, analytical study of the original philosophy of Swami Vivekananda – who was not just a preacher, mystic, and orator, but a critical Kantian Vedāntist. Meticulously engaging with cutting-edge twenty-first century epistemological debates on testimony of spiritual experiences and with late nineteenth-century metaphysical debates about the relation between God and the world, this work establishes Vivekananda as a major modern systematic philosopher and perhaps the first ‘fusion philosopher’ of the world. Combining profound textual scholarship with lucid, argument-rich writing, it should become a must-read textbook of world philosophy.”

Arindam Chakrabarti, Stony Brook University

“In Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Medhananda brilliantly spearheads a fresh appreciation of Vivekananda, a key member in a group of extremely insightful and innovative Indian philosophers active in the eve of Independence. Medhananda challenges the simplistic classification of these thinkers as ‘Neo-Hindu’ or ‘Neo-Vedāntic,’ demonstrating instead how Vivekananda is a pioneering voice in cosmopolitan philosophy, a creative intellectual who develops new philosophical theories inspired by both Indian and European materials.”

Jonardon Ganeri, University of Toronto

“Swami Vivekananda was not only an enormously influential religious leader; he was one of the pre-eminent Vedānta philosophers of the Indian renaissance. He offered a vision of Vedānta continuous with its classical history and in dialogue with modernity, and in doing so demonstrated how Indian philosophy could be pursued in a cosmopolitan voice. Swami Medhananda presents us with the first detailed exploration of Vivekananda’s entire philosophical program, setting it both in the context of classical Indian philosophy, and in the context of Indian renaissance thought. He shows that Vivekananda has a great deal to contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. This book is erudite, clear, and compelling. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about global philosophy or religion.”

Jay Garfield, University of Melbourne

“Medhananda’s work is one of the very few that locates Vivekananda in the context of important intellectual trends of his time and examines his engagement with thinkers that include Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and others … This is a welcome contribution to Vivekananda studies and Medhananda, immersed in both traditional and Western learning, is aptly qualified for such work…they certainly contribute to our better understanding of his Vedāntic commitments in a global intellectual context.”

Anantanand Rambachan, Philosophy East & West

“The book is well-written and valuable to the contemporary understanding of Vivekananda’s philosophy. It traverses vast scholarly literature from diverse philosophical schools, both classical Indian and modern western.”

A. Raghuramaraju, Journal of World Philosophies

“Medhananda’s Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism is an exceptional combination of scholarship, philosophical acumen, and cross- cultural philosophical sensitivity, which finally presents an appreciative account of Vivekananda as a representative of Hindu philosophy at its finest.”

George Adams, Nova Religio

“Swami Medhananda’s vigorous interpretations represent a new era in the academic study of Vedanta and appraisal of Vivekananda’s legacy … The insights he extracts from the persuasive examination of a wide range of topics and sources have far-reaching implications beyond the religious studies department. His rigorous and unbiased approach invites interdisciplinary dialogue across various fields and society.”

Patrick Horn, Reading Religion

About the Author:

Swami Medhananda (Ayon Maharaj) is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Ramakrishna Institute of Moral and Spiritual Education in Mysore, India. He is the author of Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018) and The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (Bloomsbury, 2013). He is also the editor of The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta (2020). He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and studied at Oxford University and Humboldt University in Berlin.

The 1994 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham

Oxford University Press, 1996

Amazon.com

Back Cover:

“The most comprehensive and intelligent treatment of its topic that has been written … Nasr is one of the major intellects of our day.”

Huston Smith, University of California, Berkeley

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred.

Nasr traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth.

About the Author:

One of the world’s leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality, Seyyed Hossein Nasr is University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. Previously, he taught at Tehran University, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Letters and as Vice Chancellor. He was also president of Aryamehr University. In 1974 Dr. Nasr founded The Iranian Academy of Philosophy, serving as its president until he immigrated to the United States in 1979. He is author of numerous books, including Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (1989) and Knowledge and the Sacred (1989).

Socialisten, men också brahmaisten, buddhisten och teosofen.

Det kristna dogmsystemet och vår tid (1914)

Brahmaismen, buddhismen och teosofin: Tre föreläsningar vintern 1922 (1923)

Viktig kännare av den mystiska (eller mystika) teologins tradition, som under sin tid som kansler för Parisuniversitetet konsoliderade det av Dionysios Areopagita lanserade begreppets användning och formaliserade traditionen som en akademisk disciplin skild från den rationellt-spekulativa skolastiken.

Tage Lindbom: Mystik