American Veda by Philip Goldberg
A fascinating look at India's remarkable impact on Western culture, this eye-opening popular history shows how the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the mind-body methods of Yoga have profoundly affected the worldview of millions of Americans and radically altered the religious landscape.What exploded in the 1960s, following the Beatles trip to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, actually began more than two hundred years earlier, when the United States started importing knowledge--as well as tangy spices and colorful fabrics--from Asia. The first translations of Hindu texts found their way into the libraries of John Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From there the ideas spread to Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and succeeding generations of receptive Americans, who absorbed India's "science of consciousness" and wove it into the fabric of their lives. Charismatic teachers like Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda came west in waves, prompting leading intellectuals, artists, and scientists such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, John Coltrane, Dean Ornish, and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass, to adapt and disseminate what they learned from them. The impact has been enormous, enlarging our current understanding of the mind and body and dramatically changing how we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos.
Goldberg paints a compelling picture of this remarkable East-to-West transmission, showing how it accelerated through the decades and eventually moved from the counterculture into our laboratories, libraries, and living rooms. Now physicians and therapists routinely recommend meditation, words like karma and mantra are part of our everyday vocabulary, and Yoga studios are as ubiquitous as Starbuckses. The insights of India's sages permeate so much of what we think, believe, and do that they have redefined the meaning of life for millions of Americans--and continue to do so every day.
Rich in detail and expansive in scope, American Veda shows how we have come to accept and live by the central teaching of Vedic wisdom: "Truth is one, the wise call it by many names."
Philip Goldberg was born in Brooklyn and now makes his home in Los Angeles. After receiving a BA in Psychology from the City University of New York, he did graduate studies at the New School for Social Research and was a teaching associate at Northeastern University.He has authored or coauthored 16 nonfiction books, including The Intuitive Edge, which has been called the definitive book on intuition, Executive Health, Making Peace with Your Past, the best-selling Get Out of Your Own Way, and Making Peace with God, about overcoming the psychospiritual obstacles to intimacy with the Divine. His work has been featured in leading magazines and newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, Prevention, Cosmopolitan, and Ladies' Home Journal. He also writes fiction and screenplays; his novel, This is Next Year, published in 1992, is now in development as a feature film. Over the years, Phil has lectured widely on topics related to spirituality, health, and human development, and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including The Today Show. He founded Spiritual Wellness Associates Network (SWAN), which is dedicated to helping individuals create healthy, vital spiritual lives. He maintains a spiritual counseling practice in Los Angeles and he teaches meditation and a variety of mind-body practices geared to each client's developmental needs.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780385521352 |
| ISBN 10 | 0385521359 |
| Title | American Veda |
| Author | Philip Goldberg |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 2013-05-14 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |