Emanuel Swedenborg

Moving beyond views of European Romanticism as an essentially poetic development, Lessons of Romanticism strives to strengthen a critical awareness of the genres, historical institutions, and material practices that composed the culture of the period. This anthology - in recasting Romanticism in its broader cultural context - ranges across literary studies, art history, musicology, and political science and combines a variety of critical approaches, including gender studies, Lacanian analysis, and postcolonial studies.

By practicing different types of meditation, teachers, students, or employees can gain personal strength and character. Miller describes the techniques of meditation taught in the great world religions and shows how they can be adapted to student and professional life. He describes the lives of five great contemplatives--Buddha, St. Teresa, Merton, Gandhi, and Emerson--and relates their spiritual practices, doubts and tests to the individual growth of ordinary students and citizens.

The term "Western esotericism" refers to a wide range of spiritual currents including alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbala, Rosicrucianism, and Christian theosophy, as well as several practical forms of esotericism like cartomancy, geomancy, necromancy, alchemy, astrology, herbalism, and magic. The early presence of esotericism in North America has not been much studied, and even less so the indebtedness to esotericism of some major American literary figures. In this book, Arthur Versluis breaks new ground, showing that many writers of the so-called American Renaissance drew extensively on and were inspired by Western esoteric currents.

Eve Zelle, a single mother of two, long out of work and in despair over her situation, extended her hand in a moment of desperate prayer and said to God, "If I could only touch you, if I could only touch your hand"--and when she opened her eyes, she was startled to see Jesus in front of her. "He was on his knees holding both my hands with the most compassionate warm eyes that I had ever seen, with strength behind them." Eve had this vision in the late 1980s. Of course, visions of Jesus have been experienced since the earliest days of Christianity, and have been reported throughout the ages--by Catherine of Siena, Ignatius Loyola, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and many others. But what are we to make of contemporary instances? Are they hallucinations? The result of temporary insanity? Or are they genuine visions, comparable to the appearances of Christ recorded in the Bible? In this thought-provoking volume, Phillip H. Wiebe provides the first critical study of visions of Jesus reported in recent years. Here are intriguing accounts of visions as told by thirty people, most of them ordinary men and women without prior or subsequent experiences of this kind, who remain mystified about having had such experiences. Ernie Hollands, a career criminal born in the slums of Halifax, Nova Scotia, said Christ appeared to him while he was in his cell in Millhaven Penetentiary. Maria Martinez saw Jesus at a busy intersection in Miami, Florida, in 1964. Rose Fairs was lying in bed one morning, wide awake, when the Venetian blinds opened up and the head of Jesus materialized before her. Wiebe recounts each of the visions in vivid detail, and examines the often dramatic changes the apparitions brought about in the lives and beliefs of the subjects. He then explores why these individuals believe their visions were of Jesus, and why they typically believe them to be objective happenings, rather than hallucinations or dreams. Wiebe does weigh the possibility that the experiences could be hallucinatory, and to that end he discusses these phenomena in light of recent literature on the psychology and neurology of visual hallucinations. Additionally, he regards these occurrences from perspectives as diverse as those of biblical scholarship and parapsychology, asking such questions as: Were the subjects only imagining a figure that seemed as real as life? How do these experiences differ from dreams? Could they be imaginative visions produced by angels? How does the Church traditionally regard such phenomena? Wiebe concludes that these contemporary visions of Jesus may well represent genuine religious experiences of a mystical character, the implications of which call out for further study and analysis. The fascinating nature of these visions and Wiebe's thoughtful and evenhanded approach to these reports add up to a book that will make provocative reading for skeptics and the faithful alike.