The writer Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) played a significant intellectual role in the American counterculture in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Drawing from a wide range of discourses, as well as his own occultural fictions and personal experiments in “hedonic engineering,” Wilson presented a pluralistic view of reality that combined a pragmatic skepticism with a creative and esoteric...
Since its publication in 1975, A Course in Miracles (ACIM) has continued to grow in popularity as a major feature of New Age spirituality. While the text of the Course is not a direct imitation of any particular form of ancient Gnosticism, A Course in Miracles represents an example of the emergence, reception, and popularity of gnosticizing trajectories of thought in the New Age movement. As a...
Abstract After relating a dramatic near-death experience of a Houston woman named Elizabeth Krohn, this essay explores some of the themes of her near-death experience, particularly the invisible presence of a being of unconditional love in a paradisiacal garden and various direct transmissions of some traditional religious convictions. The essay then discusses some of the obvious New Age...