The full story told for the first time—the origins and precursors, its flowering within the American counterculture of the 1960s, and the development into an international spiritual perspective.

The New Age movement may well reflect the future face of Western religion. Drawing on an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western spiritual philosophies, it embraces an extensive range of holistic mind-body and self-empowerment forms and practices. Nevill Drury presents the movement's key themes, along with numerous telling and unfamiliar illustrations:

* the strong influence from the East on New Age thought, linking Theosophy and Hinduism, Vivekenanda with Huxley and Esalen, Leary and The Tibetan Book of the Dead;

* the major "higher consciousness" models that have emerged from the Transpersonal movement;

* the historical progression from the precursors—Swedenborg, Blavatsky, Gurdjieff—to the psychological pioneers of the study of consciousness, from the psychedelic period to alternative health, from the emergence of the New Physics and its parallels with mysticism to the modern study of comparative mythology.

(Amazon)