Yoga classes and Zen meditation, New-Age retreats and nature mysticism—all are part of an ongoing religious experimentation that has surprisingly deep roots in American history. Tracing out the country’s Transcendentalist and cosmopolitan religious impulses over the last two centuries, Restless Souls explores America’s abiding romance with spirituality as religion’s better half. Now in its second edition, including a new preface, Leigh Eric Schmidt's fascinating book provides a rich account of how this open-road spirituality developed in American culture in the first place as well as a sweeping survey of the liberal religious movements that touted it and ensured its continued vitality.

In the twenty-first century, the concept of internationalisation remains a crucial tool for understanding the dynamics of globalising processes. It draws attention to the dimensions of conscious action in inter- and trans-national phenomena, connecting globalisation with individuals’ experience of everyday life. This book explores how internationalisation is imagined, discussed and operationalised in Japan and surrounding countries. The chapters focus on educational, leisure and cultural activities, fields which are often overlooked in favour of economic and political developments in the literature. The conclusion reflects on the concept of internationalisation and assesses how it is likely to develop in Japan in future, taking into account the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.

In volume 2 of Birding and Mysticism: Enlightenment Through Bird Watching, there is no traditional table of contents; rather, there are the five main parts and their sections and subsections, which contain the substantive ideas and memes of volume 2, followed by six appendices. The main thrust of volume 2 concerns the many aspects, faces, and forms of mysticism: religious, spiritual, rational, scientific, personal, and practical.

What are we to make of direct spiritual experience? Of accounts of going to heaven or meeting angels? Traditional science would call these hallucinations or delusions. Clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Yama argues the opposite. Through interviews with his patients, he shows that underneath the visions and experiences there is a unifying spiritual reality apart from the material world. One of the stories recounted in this book is the experience of a woman who could see the future. In a spiritual transport, she was taken to heaven where truths were revealed to her that she later discovered were already written in Gnostic scripture. Another woman lived a life marked by a spiritual sensitivity that defied materialist explanation. After she passed away of cancer, she came to inhabit the consciousness of another of Dr. Yama's patients in the form of a benign possession. These stories, and many others, argue for a deeper reality that places spirituality on an equal footing with the material world.

Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.

This last work of Edith Stein offers St. John in the unity of his being as it is expressed in his life and work from a point of view that enables us to envisage that unity. Hers is a unique approach to St. John, seeking the essence of his person in relation to the divine pursuit of his soul. This is also a spiritual confession of the author's last days.

Originally published in 1951, this volume gives a general survey of the Golden Age of Spanish mysticism, following this with translations of extracts from 15 leading authors in this field. The selections from each author are preceded by details of editions and studies, thereby making this not only an authoritative study on the treasures of Spanish mysticism but also a valuable anthology and starting point for further reading.