This book is one of a kind. It traces the history of human awareness of God and belief back to its earliest roots, long before the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads and other writings. It shows how the foundation for belief in God was contained within the instant of creation itself. Scientists call this the big bang. It shows that as the universe developed there came a point in human development where we had the capability to begin to be aware of an afterlife. These ideas were primitive by our standards today but they served to create a solid foundation for increasing complex and more thorough understandings of who God is and our relationship with Him. This book covers the well known axial age where there was a watershed or flood of prophets and holy men who advanced understandings of both philosophy and theology and science in the hundreds of years before the coming of Jesus Christ. In a real sense they prepared the way for God’s son and His gospel. It is these men who changed the course of human understanding of God with new revolutionary ideas that advanced the self revelation of God to humankind. The last part of the book looks at religion today and how we got here and ends with God’s view of humanity as we constantly strive toward God on our individual spiritual journeys.

In our current era of holy terror, passionate faith has come to seem like a present danger. Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have been happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare that the danger is in religion itself. God, Hitchens writes, is not great. But man, according to George E. Vaillant, M.D., is great. In Spiritual Evolution, Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion but of man’s inherent spirituality. Our spirituality, he shows, resides in our uniquely human brain design and in our innate capacity for emotions like love, hope, joy, forgiveness, and compassion, which are selected for by evolution and located in a different part of the brain than dogmatic religious belief. Evolution has made us spiritual creatures over time, he argues, and we are destined to become even more so. Spiritual Evolution makes the scientific case for spirituality as a positive force in human evolution, and he predicts for our species an even more loving future. Vaillant traces this positive force in three different kinds of “evolution”: the natural selection of genes over millennia, of course, but also the cultural evolution within recorded history of ideas about the value of human life, and the development of spirituality within the lifetime of each individual. For thirty-five years, Dr. Vaillant directed Harvard’s famous longitudinal study of adult development, which has followed hundreds of men over seven decades of life. The study has yielded important insights into human spirituality, and Dr. Vaillant has drawn on these and on a range of psychological research, behavioral studies, and neuroscience, and on history, anecdote, and quotation to produce a book that is at once a work of scientific argument and a lyrical meditation on what it means to be human. Spiritual Evolution is a life’s work, and it will restore our belief in faith as an essential human striving.

Nikki Patillo speaks to angels. And, the angels speak to Nikki. In fact, they have hasked her to speak to you. That message from the angels is found in this book. Elements of the message from the angels include: - We are not humans on a spiritual journey, but are spiritual beings on a human journey. - We are in the midst of a spiritual evolution in which our auras and vibrational frequencies are changing for the better. - Life is often filled with pain. Embrace the pain. It is what binds us to one another, helps us to grow, and teaches us spiritual lessons. In a sense, this could be called the Angels' Manifesto. Their message here is everything each of us needs to know about ascension, reincarnation, karma, living in abundance, manifesting our dreams, and waking up. It is a cosmic manifesto filled with practical insights for daily living and cosmic truth for the next evolutionary leap.

These personal essays by esteemed scientists worldwide describe the spiritual journeys they have taken. Autohirs share their own experiences of learning to blend an understanding of the Divine with scientific perspectives.

This book is one of a kind. It traces the history of human awareness of God and belief back to its earliest roots, long before the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads and other writings. It shows how the foundation for belief in God was contained within the instant of creation itself. Scientists call this the big bang. It shows that as the universe developed there came a point in human development where we had the capability to begin to be aware of an afterlife. These ideas were primitive by our standards today but they served to create a solid foundation for increasing complex and more thorough understandings of who God is and our relationship with Him. This book covers the well known axial age where there was a watershed or flood of prophets and holy men who advanced understandings of both philosophy and theology and science in the hundreds of years before the coming of Jesus Christ. In a real sense they prepared the way for God s son and His gospel. It is these men who changed the course of human understanding of God with new revolutionary ideas that advanced the self revelation of God to humankind. The last part of the book looks at religion today and how we got here and ends with God s view of humanity as we constantly strive toward God on our individual spiritual journeys.

In Evolutionary Enlightenment, Andrew Cohen redefines spiritual awakening for our contemporary world—a world characterized by exponential change and an ever-expanding appreciation for the processes of evolution. Cohen’s message is simple, yet profound: Life is evolution, and enlightenment is about waking up to this fundamentally creative impulse as your own deepest, most authentic self. Through five tenets for living an enlightened life, Cohen will empower you to wholeheartedly participate in the process of change as your own spiritual practice. Evolutionary Enlightenment not only makes deep sense of life today; it will show you how to play an active role in shaping the world of tomorrow.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Zealot and host of Believer explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Pleiadian Emissaries of Light provide this fascinating chronicle of human spiritual evolution from a galactic perspective. This wider history of our solar system restores the long-forgotten connection of humankind with Venus, Mars, Maldek, and Earth. The truth about our ancient past is uncovered, helping us to remember the experiences that have caused us to function dualistically, and guiding us toward karmic wholeness as unified and divine beings.