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).

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 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.

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.

A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 37 mins)
• By Ayelet Waldman
• Narrated By Ayelet Waldman

When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from "Lewis Carroll", Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD.

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.

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.

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.

What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 37 mins)
• By Scott Carney
• Narrated By Scott Carney
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Our ancestors crossed deserts, mountains, and oceans without even a whisper of what anyone today might consider modern technology. Those feats of endurance now seem impossible in an age where we take comfort for granted. But what if we could regain some of our lost evolutionary strength by simulating the environmental conditions of our forbears? Investigative journalist and anthropologist Scott Carney takes up the challenge to find out: Can we hack our bodies and use the environment to stimulate our inner biology?

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.

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.