By way of a personal note, I can reveal to the reader that I was led to Sanskrit by an exposure to Indian philosophy while still a child. These early mystical interests gave way in the university to scholarly pursuits and, through reading the works of Franklin Edgerton, Louis Renou and Etienne Lamotte, I was introduced to the scientific study of the· past, to philology and the academic study of an ancient literature. In this period I wrote a number of books on Sanskrit aesthetics, concentrating on the sophisticated Indian notions of suggestion. This work has culminated in a three-volume study of the Dhvanyaloka and the Dhvanyalokalocana, for the Harvard Oriental Series. Eventually I found that I wanted to broaden my concern with India, to learn what was at the universal core of my studies and what could be of interest to everyone. In reading Indian literature, I came across so many bizarre tales and ideas that seemed incomprehensible and removed from the concerns of everyday life that I became troubled. Vedantic ideas of the world as a dream, for example, to which I had been particularly partial, seemed grandiose and megalomanic. I turned away with increasing scepticism from what I felt to be the hysterical outpourings of mystical and religious fanaticism.

(Dover thrift editions).

This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "oceanic feeling." Providing a corrective to current views which frame psychoanalysis as pathologizing mysticism, Parsons reveals the existence of three models entertained by Freud and Rolland: the classical reductive, ego-adaptive, and transformational (which allows for a transcendent dimension to mysticism). Then, reconstructing Rolland's personal mysticism (the "oceanic feeling") through texts and letters unavailable to Freud, Parsons argues that Freud misinterpreted the oceanic feeling. In offering a fresh interpretation of Rolland's mysticism, Parsons constructs a new dialogical approach for psychoanalytic theory of mysticism which integrates culture studies, developmental perspectives, and the deep epistemological and transcendent claims of the mystics.

This groundbreaking collection focuses on what may be, for cultural studies, the most intriguing aspect of contemporary globalization—the ways in which the postnational restructuring of the world in an era of transnational capitalism has altered how we must think about cultural production. Mapping a "new world space" that is simultaneously more globalized and localized than before, these essays examine the dynamic between the movement of capital, images, and technologies without regard to national borders and the tendency toward fragmentation of the world into increasingly contentious enclaves of difference, ethnicity, and resistance. Ranging across issues involving film, literature, and theory, as well as history, politics, economics, sociology, and anthropology, these deeply interdisciplinary essays explore the interwoven forces of globalism and localism in a variety of cultural settings, with a particular emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. Powerful readings of the new image culture, transnational film genre, and the politics of spectacle are offered as is a critique of globalization as the latest guise of colonization. Articles that unravel the complex links between the global and local in terms of the unfolding narrative of capital are joined by work that illuminates phenomena as diverse as "yellow cab" interracial sex in Japan, machinic desire in Robocop movies, and the Pacific Rim city. An interview with Fredric Jameson by Paik Nak-Chung on globalization and Pacific Rim responses is also featured, as is a critical afterword by Paul Bové. Positioned at the crossroads of an altered global terrain, this volume, the first of its kind, analyzes the evolving transnational imaginary—the full scope of contemporary cultural production by which national identities of political allegiance and economic regulation are being undone, and in which imagined communities are being reshaped at both the global and local levels of everyday existence.

A captivating memoir that explores the lure of the sea and the author's love affair with surfing.

This book explores the unprecedented surge or oceanic feeling in the aesthetic expression of the romantic century. As secular thought began to displace the certainties of a sacral universe, the oceans that give life to our planet offered a symbol of eternity, rooted in the experience of nature rather than Biblical tradition. Images of the sea permeated the minds of the early Romantics, became a significant ingredient of romantic expression, and continued to emerge in the language, literature, art, and music of the nineteenth century. These pages document the evidence for this oceanic consciousness in some of the most creative minds of that century.