This book is an attempt to spread awareness among Indian people about their culture, heritage, and history. Several topics like scientific heritage, literary heritage, Indian yoga, religious beliefs, and convictions have been discussed in the book. And most important, the views of foreigners about our fabulous culture and heritage have been given in 'Waking Hindu'. Being Hindu you will feel proud after reading this book.

"A history-making manual,interreligious study and names list, with stories by Westerners who entered Hinduism and Hindus who deepened their faith"--Cove

Spirituality.The search for happiness --Religion, East and West --Mindfulness --The truth of suffering --Enlightenment --The mystery of consciousness.The mind divided --Structure and function --Are our minds already split? --Conscious and unconscious processing in the brain --Consciousness is what matters --The riddle of the self.What are we calling "I"? --Consciousness without self --Lost in thought --The challenge of studying the self --Penetrating the illusion --Meditation.Gradual versus sudden realization --Dzogchen: taking the goal as the path --Having no head --The paradox of acceptance --Gurus, death, drugs, and other puzzles.Mind on the brink of death --The spiritual uses of pharmacology.

What remains of the “national” when the nation unravels at the birth of the independent state? The political truncation of India at the end of British colonial rule in 1947 led to a social cataclysm in which roughly one million people died and ten to twelve million were displaced. Combining film studies, trauma theory, and South Asian cultural history, Bhaskar Sarkar follows the shifting traces of this event in Indian cinema over the next six decades. He argues that Partition remains a wound in the collective psyche of South Asia and that its representation on screen enables forms of historical engagement that are largely opaque to standard historiography. Sarkar tracks the initial reticence to engage with the trauma of 1947 and the subsequent emergence of a strong Partition discourse, revealing both the silence and the eventual “return of the repressed” as strands of one complex process. Connecting the relative silence of the early decades after Partition to a project of postcolonial nation-building and to trauma’s disjunctive temporal structure, Sarkar develops an allegorical reading of the silence as a form of mourning. He relates the proliferation of explicit Partition narratives in films made since the mid-1980s to disillusionment with post-independence achievements, and he discusses how current cinematic memorializations of 1947 are influenced by economic liberalization and the rise of a Hindu-chauvinist nationalism. Traversing Hindi and Bengali commercial cinema, art cinema, and television, Sarkar provides a history of Indian cinema that interrogates the national (a central category organizing cinema studies) and participates in a wider process of mourning the modernist promises of the nation form.

Hindu Mysticism provides an engaging introduction to the various mystical traditions that evolved over the centuries in India, including the sacrificial (Vedic), Upanishadic, Yogic, Buddhist, Classical Bhakti (Devotional) and Popular Bhakti. Given its sweeping scope, the text also serves as a useful overview to Indian thought for newcomers to this ancient philosophical and spiritual tradition.

The Hindu World is the most complete, authoritative and up-to-date one-volume guide to Hindu faith and culture available today. With twenty-four dedicated chapters written by the world's leading Hinduism scholars, it elucidates the history, philosophy and practice of one of the world's great religious traditions. The perfect reference for all students of Hinduism, it is ideal for both for introductory-level study and for use as a definitive reference source. Proving invaluable for its wealth of historical material, in addition, The Hindu World also offers new insights into all aspects of Hindu life, ranging from the devotional texts of the Vedas and Ramayana to current perspectives on dharma and kama, temple architecture, sacred food, ritual, caste, cosmic philosophy, history and modernization. The Hindu World emphasizes Hinduism's classical heritage and daily practice as well as contemporary approaches to Hindu scholarship. Exploring the enormous diversity of Hindu devotion whilst considering Hinduism's academic status as a category for analysis, the book achieves a distinctive creative balance between the beliefs and values of Hindus themselves, and scholarly 'outsider' perspectives.

Indian philosophy bases itself on three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. Deep sleep, or susupti, plays an important role in Advaita Vedanta, the major philosophical school that advocates a doctrine of pure consciousness. Explaining and savoring this paradox, this book shows how the concept of deep sleep can be used in Advaita Vedanta to reveal a philosophical insight, validate an argument, illustrate a moral, or adorn a tale. Arvind Sharma explores why sleep is a phenomenon that philosophers should be interested in and examines it in classical Hindu religious texts, including the Upanisads, and in foundational, early, and modern Advaita Vedanta.