The Awakened Ones

The Awakened Ones is the most sustained and powerful treatment since William James of the forms of knowledge and life that visionary experience makes possible. It is a remarkable combination of panoramic reference, detached analysis, and the most personal intensity of feeling and style. -- Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University In his impeccable style, with an unmatched eloquence, a series of sparking, sparkling insights, and an expansive comparative vision, Gananath Obeyesekere gives us what can only be called a spiritual-intellectual testament. In the process, he calls on us to unite the rational and the nonrational at the highest levels of scholarship and cultural work and to envision a cross-cultural enlightenment that is as indebted to the visionary teachings of a Buddha or a William Blake as to the humanities and social sciences. A stunning and edifying achievement from a major intellectual. -- Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University, author of <i>The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion</i> In a world subjugated by the reification, if not deification, of rationality and science, this is a sorely needed antidote.... Highly recommended. * Choice * A stunning scholarly achievement. * The Ecclesial University * The Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience is Gananath Obeyesekere's magnum opus, his summa, his valedictory volume, to use three Latinate terms that come down to, it's a great big book into which he's put all the wisdom of his long lifetime. -- Wendy Doniger * Current Anthropology * [Obeyesekere's] cultural and historical range is as impressive as his epistemological thesis is focused and tight. -- Jeffrey J. Kripal * History of Religions * In this finely written, massive essay, ethnographer Obeyesekere elucidates a dialectic epistemology that utilizes both rational-scientific thinking and what he calls passive cerebration. * Religious Studies Review *