This book brings together scholars of a variety of the world's major civilizations to focus on the universal theme of inner transformation. The idea of the "self" is a cultural formation like any other, and models and conceptions of the inner world of the person vary widely from onecivilization to another. Nonetheless, all the world's great religions insist on the need to transform this inner world. Such transformations, often ritually enacted, reveal the primary intuitions, drives, and conflicts active within the culture. The individual essays study dramatic examples ofthese processes in a wide range of cultures, including China, India, Tibet, Greece and Rome, Late Antiquity, Islam, Judaism, and medieval and early-modern Christian Europe. | Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions by David Shulman, Paperback | Indigo Chapters