2010 Reprint of 1962 edition. In this work Goldsmith develops the theme that God is the substance and essence of all forms, whether that form appears as man, animal, vegetable or mineral. Spirit underlies all effects, and the recognition of this truth shifts the emphasis from dependence on persons or things to a complete dependence on spirit. Because God is individual consciousness, your consciousness is infinite, and as you become more aware of the infinite nature of your consciousness, that consciousness begins to appear in infinite forms of good. Then you understand the great truth that nothing can be added to you, and nothing can be taken from you: you are eternally complete and whole because embodied within you is the substance of all life.

This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.

This book, first published in 1984, examines the whole range of new religious movements which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in the West. It develops a wide-ranging theory of these new religions which explains many of their major characteristics. Some of the movements are well-known, such as Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church. Others such as the Process, Meher Baba, and 3-HO are much less known. While some became international, others remained local; in other ways, too, such as style, belief, organisation, they exhibit enormous diversity. The movements studied here are classified under three ideal types, world-rejecting, world-affirming and world-accommodating, and from here the author develops a theory of the origins, recruitment base, characteristics, and development patterns which they display. The book offers a critical exploration of the theories of the new religions and analyses the highly contentious issue of whether they reflect the process of secularisation, or whether they are a countervailing trend marking the resurgence of religion in the West.

This introduction to the writings of Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998), the pre-eminent spokesman of the Perennialist or Traditionalist school of comparative religious thought, is the first book to present a comprehensive study of his intellectual and spiritual message. In addition to a clear explanation of Schuon's message of metaphysics and the great religions, Oldmeadow includes an overview of Schuon's paintings and poetry, and insights on prayer and virtue in the spiritual life.

Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.