Table of Contents

Spirituality and the Mythic Structure of Consciousness; The Transcendence of Consciousness; Unification as a Bipolar Process; Life as Suffering; Escaping the Cycle of Life and Death; The Ascetic Flight from Time; The Alchemy of Renunciation; Dismantling the Ego-personality; The Crisis of Inner Awakening; Initiation as Spiritual Rebirth; The Path from Multiplicity to Unity; The Puritan Ethic; The Denial of Eros; Self-discipline as Energy management; The Immobilised Body; The Transformative Function of the Breath; The Tortoise-like Withdrawal of Attention; The One-Pointed Consciousness; The Vertical Path of Absorption; The Ecstatic Consciousness Going Beyond Subject and Object; Allurement Through Magical Powers; The Final Leap into Transcendence; The Goal: Perfect Isolation; In Retrospect: The Spirituality of Shiva; From Transcendence to Wholeness; The Yogin on the Battlefield; Love, Human and Divine; Liberation in the Embodied State; Integral Breakthroughs in Mahayana Buddhism; The Tantric Revolution; The Secret Teaching of the Indestructible Body; Index.

About the Author

Georg Feuerstein, PhD. is a preeminent living authority on Yoga in the West. He has written over thirty books, including The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy. His works in progress include Aha! Reflections on the Meaning of Everything. He offers distance-learning courses on Yoga philosophy and history through Traditional Yoga Studies