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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Introduction: A Changing View of the Spiritual World | |
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| Spiritual Changes: A New Age of Belief? | |
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| Bestsellers and Blockbusters: Spirituality Goes Public | |
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| Talking About Spirituality | |
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| The Revealed Word and the New Religious Synthesis | |
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| Goals of the Study | |
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| Antecedents of the New Religious Synthesis: A Brief History of Alternative Spirituality in the West | |
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| Spiritual Communities in the Middle Ages | |
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| Magic and the Hermetic Tradition | |
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| Kabbalah: Secrets in the Pentateuch | |
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| Neo-Platonism and Magical Science | |
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| European Mysticism | |
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| Humanism and the Rise of Biblical Criticism | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Rise of Biblical Criticism: Allegory, Myth, Codes and the End of History | |
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| Thomas Woolston and the English Deists | |
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| Lessing, Strauss and German Criticism | |
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| John Shelby Spong Rescues the Bible | |
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| Michael Drosnin's The Bible Code | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Ascent of Reason: Birth of a Deity | |
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| Peter Annet | |
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| Voltaire and Liberated Reason | |
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| Thomas De Quincey | |
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| American New Thought: Mind as Divine Healing Force | |
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| Ayn Rand's Argument for Reason | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Science and Shifting Paradigms: Salvation in a New Cosmos | |
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| Thomas Paine on the Hope of Science | |
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| Robert Green Ingersoll: Science and Deliverance | |
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| Carl Sagan: From The Demon-Haunted World to Alien Contact | |
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| The New Physics: Science and Ancient Wisdom | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Evolution and Advancement: The Darwins' Spiritual Legacy | |
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| Erasmus Darwin | |
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| Lamarck and Spencer | |
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| Charles Darwin: Naturalist Prophet | |
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| The Spiritual Vision of Darwin's Early Defenders | |
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| Julian Huxley: Transhumanism and the Moral Elite | |
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| Pierre Tilhard de Chardin: Reaching the Omega Point | |
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| James H. Austin: Evolving Brain, Evolving Spirit | |
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| James Redfield: The Celestine Prophet | |
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| Science Fiction and Human Evolutionary Destiny | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Pantheism in the Modern World: Nature or God | |
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| Spinoza and Toland | |
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson | |
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| Ernst Haeckel and The Riddle of the Universe | |
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| Bergson and Shaw | |
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| A New Pantheistic Physics | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Rebirth of Gnosticism: The Secret Path to Self-Salvation | |
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| The Fundamentals of Gnosticism | |
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| Jacob Illive: Enlightenment Gnostic | |
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| Joseph Smith's Yankee Gnosticism | |
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| Carl Jung and the Gnostic Impulse | |
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| Jean Houston: Gnosticism and the New Age | |
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| Science Fiction: The Final Gnostic Frontier | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Modern Shamanism: Spirit Contact and Spiritual Progress | |
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| Emanuel Swedenborg | |
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| Victorian Shamans: Occultism, Theosophy and Spiritualism | |
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| John Mack and UFO Abduction | |
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| Paul Ferrini and the Jesus Phenomenon | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Mystical Path to Pluralism: Discovering That All Is One in Religion | |
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| An Original Religion | |
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| R. M. Bucke | |
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| Frithjof Schuon and Transcendent Religious Unity | |
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| Joseph Campbell: The Perennial Philosophy as Pluralistic Hope | |
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| Marcus Borg and Jesus the Spirit Person | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Conclusion: A New Spirituality for a New Age | |
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| Taking Leave of History | |
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| The Advent of Reason | |
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| Theological Science | |
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| Spiritual Evolution | |
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| Pantheism | |
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| The New Gnosis | |
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| Shamans and the Spiritual Future | |
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| Mystical Pluralism | |
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| Final Considerations: A New and Better Way? | |
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| Notes | |
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| Index of Names | |
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| Index of Subjects | |