The Rise of New Religions: Nietzsche, Wilber, and Meme Theory

How to Study the Sacred: An Introduction to Religious Studies

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Dr. Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By Susan Soriano

This is an informative and easy to understand introduction to the academic study of religion. Touches upon such topics as "Where did religion come from?" to "What is the social function of religion?" Covers such notable theorists as Ninian Smart, Peter Berger, and Mark Juergensmeyer. Excellent for the general listener as well as the scholar. Also useful as an introductory text for both high school and college courses.

The Sikhs: A Brief Introduction

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 40 mins)
• By Dr. Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By Clay Lomakayu
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This is an introductory text to the Sikh religion. It covers the early Sant tradition and the 10 Sikh Gurus starting from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh. Covers the evolution of the Sikhs until the present day, touching upon the evolution of the Sikh community and its emergence as a world religion. Professor Andrea Diem, PhD, has been studying Sikhism for over three decades and is current with the latest scholarship on the religion.

The Jain Path: An Annotated Guide

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 20 mins)
• By Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By Scott R. Smith

Professor Andrea Diem-Lane, PhD, provides an in-depth analysis and summary of 10 key books on the religion of Jainism, providing the listener with a deeper grasp of this ancient Indian religion and its compassionate practice of ahimsa, or nonviolence. Serves as a general introduction to the Jain religion.

Conference of the Birds: A Mystic Allegory

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 8 mins)
• By Farid ud-Din Attar
• Narrated By Dean Sluyter

Farid ud-Din Attar occupies a prominent place in the roll of distinguished Persian poets. His most famous work on Sufism, written eight centuries ago, is the Mantiq-ut-Tayr, or the "Colloquy of the Birds," an allegorical poem in which the gifted mystic describes the quest of the birds (symbolizing Sufi pilgrims) for the Simurg (the Lord of Creation).

The Gnostic Mystery: A Connection Between Ancient and Modern Mysticism

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 29 mins)
• By Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By Jim D. Johnston

Comparative studies often reveal similarities between greatly different cultures, even if those cultures are geographically separated by thousands of miles or historically distinct by thousands of years. This has been especially true in religion where similar ideas have been propounded by tribes or clans that have on the surface no contact historically or geographically with one another. For the phenomenologist, this kind of transcultural link or synchronicity is important because it raises the question of how religious ideas emerge and develop over time.

Ahimsa: A Brief Guide to Jainism

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 15 mins)
• By Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By John Feather

This book is a brief introduction to the Jain religion, including a close look at its inception and how it evolved over time to its present day status. Special attention will be given to how Jain ideals such as ahimsa and anekantavada (the doctrine of non one-sidedness) can serve as a much needed and welcome panacea to the world's strife and misery. Although Jainism is perhaps the smallest of the world's religions, what it has to offer humankind is of inestimable value.

The Enchanted Land: A Journey with the Mystics of India

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 54 mins)
• By David Christopher Lane
• Narrated By Cliff Truesdell
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This book describes the life and work of eight Indian mystics, including Ramana Maharshi, Sawan Singh, Paramahansa Yogananda, Baba Faqir Chand, Sushil Kumar, Tripta Devi, and Pratap Singh. Includes the author's personal interaction with several of them, as well as a detailed account of shabd yoga and the inner journey that occurs during meditation.

Mind-Body Philosophy

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 21 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Patrick Grim PhD

How is it that our brain creates all the subjective experiences of our lives every single day - the experiences we call reality? That is the mind-body problem. In Mind-Body Philosophy, Professor Patrick Grim of the State University of New York at Stony Brook leads an intellectually exhilarating tour through millennia of philosophy and science addressing one of life's greatest conundrums. But you won't just be a spectator as Dr. Grim engages and encourages each of us to come to our own conclusions.

The Foundations of Western Civilization

• ORIGINAL (24 hrs and 54 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Thomas F. X. Noble

What is Western Civilization? According to Professor Noble, it is "much more than human and political geography," encompassing myriad forms of political and institutional structures - from monarchies to participatory republics - and its own traditions of political discourse. It involves choices about who gets to participate in any given society and the ways in which societies have resolved the tension between individual self-interest and the common good.

The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 34 mins)
• By Thor Hanson
• Narrated By Marc Vietor

We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.

The Consolation of Philosophy

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 54 mins)
• By Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
• Narrated By David Rintoul

The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then master of offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524, and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution.

The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis

• ORIGINAL (6 hrs and 5 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Louis Markos

What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 21 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Gary A. Rendsburg

Whether complete or only fragmentary, the 930 extant Dead Sea Scrolls irrevocably altered how we look at and understand the foundations of faith and religious practice. Now you can get a comprehensive introduction to this unique series of archaeological documents, and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance, with these 24 lectures. Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus.

No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

• ORIGINAL (12 hrs and 7 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Robert C. Solomon

What is life? What is my place in it? What choices do these questions obligate me to make? More than a half-century after it burst upon the intellectual scene - with roots that extend to the mid-19th century - Existentialism's quest to answer these most fundamental questions of individual responsibility, morality, and personal freedom, life has continued to exert a profound attraction.

You Are Probability: Surfing the Matrix

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 30 mins)
• By Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By William L. Sturdevant

I give this illustration to my students because a winning lottery number exponentially pales in comparison to the odds against them being alive and breathing (even if they nod off a bit here and there) at this very juncture in history. But in order to appreciate the anomaly of one's existence it is necessary to get a deeper understanding of the theory of large numbers.

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Peter Godfrey-Smith
• Narrated By Peter Noble
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes.

Cerebral Mirage: The Deceptive Nature of Awareness

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 5 mins)
• By Andrea Diem-Lane
• Narrated By Wanda Dixon

One of the most significant discoveries of modern science is that the world we perceive around us is not as it appears. Rather, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and quantum physics have demonstrated that our day-to-day reality is a relative construct built upon a scaffolding of information bits that betray their real origins and causations.

The Lost Art of Listening, Second Edition: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 33 mins)
• By Michael P. Nichols PhD
• Narrated By Sean Runnette
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

One person talks; the other listens. It's so basic that we take it for granted. Unfortunately, most of us think of ourselves as better listeners than we actually are. Why do we so often fail to connect when speaking with family members, romantic partners, colleagues, or friends? How do emotional reactions get in the way of real communication? This thoughtful, witty, and empathic book has already helped over 100,000 people break through conflicts and transform their personal and professional relationships.

A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 15 mins)
• By Robert Worth
• Narrated By Will Damron, Robert Worth
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In 2011 a wave of revolution spread through the Middle East as protesters demanded an end to tyranny, corruption, and economic decay. From Egypt to Yemen, a generation of young Arabs insisted on a new ethos of common citizenship. Five years later their utopian aspirations have taken on a darker cast as old divides reemerge and deepen. In one country after another, brutal terrorists and dictators have risen to the top.

The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople

• UNABRIDGED (21 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Susan Wise Bauer
• Narrated By John Lee
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume - the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World - chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition. Impressively researched and brilliantly told, The History of the Renaissance World offers not just the names, dates, and facts but the memorable characters who illuminate the years between 1100 and 1453 - years that marked a sea change in mankind's perception of the world.

Society of the Spectacle

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Guy Debord
• Narrated By Bruce T Harvey

This is the "Das Kapital" of the 20th century - an essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the 21st century. This is the original translation by Fredy Perlman, kept in print continuously for the last 50 years, keeping the flame of personal and collective autonomy alive.

The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 23 mins)
• By Pedro G. Ferreira
• Narrated By Sean Runnette
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Physicists have been exploring, debating, and questioning the general theory of relativity ever since Albert Einstein first presented itin 1915. Their work has uncovered a number of the universe's more surprising secrets, and many believe further wonders remain hidden within the theory's tangle of equations, waiting to be exposed. In this sweeping narrative of science and culture, astrophysicist Pedro Ferreira brings general relativity to life through the story of the brilliant physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers who have taken up its challenge.

The Great Mystery: Matter Vs. Spirit

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 17 mins)
• By David Christopher Lane
• Narrated By Jim D. Johnston

What is matter anyways? - From organisms to cells to proteins to molecules to atoms to electrons to light? The most famous equation in modern physics is Einstein's E=MC2, which, if we pause for a second, is as mysterious as anything written in our ancient religious scriptures and measurably more radical. My point is that the resistance we have to reductionists who say we are "just matter" is because we tend to think of matter as flat. It is, of course, anything but.

A Day's Read

• ORIGINAL (18 hrs and 24 mins)
• By The Great Courses
• Narrated By Professor Arnold Weinstein, Professor Emily Allen, Professor Grant L. Voth

Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.