As a Westerner brought up in a culture that separates sexuality from spirituality, it had never occurred to me there could be gay mystics who could be identified. Quite frankly, I had never given much thought about any kind of sexuality of the mystics. I knew that St. Augustine regretted his profligate youth, and that St. Francis of Assisi was a notorious hoodlum, but the idea that they had had sexual desires never occurred to me. Perhaps I was naive, and probably the closest I came to such thoughts were from Nikos Kazantzakis' book, Zorba the Greek, (the movie starred Anthony Quinn), which underlined the conflict between flesh and spirit,
between Dionysus (sometimes called Bacchus) and Apollo. In his greatest film, Kazantzakis also carried this conflict into the life of Jesus called The Last Temptation of Christ. Those who did not understand this theme picketed the movie houses at the time of its release. Look at Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. You may remember that Sean Connery won a British Academy award for best actor in this story of 14th century monks in an Italian abbey where someone is committing many murders. Both of these stories have homosexual incidents in them. Yet, somehow, I could understand that; after all, these were sequestered men living alone without women, similar to military or prison life and homosexual tensions are unbearable for some.

The evolution of psychological theories since Freud, Jung, and Adler has moved to an "integral approach," linking body, mind and soul in balance as a holistic unit. In the past, spiritual and other psychologists have treated body, mind and soul as if they were separate entities, whereas, in order to reach the wholeness of spirit, the oneness of the universe, and we must include our bodies and minds. The desires of the flesh, the ideas of the mind, and the luminosities of the soul--all are perfect expressions of the radiant Spirit that alone inhabits the universe. Physical exercise, vitamins, if necessary, sufficient sleep, a time for relaxation, and a healthy sexual life for the body; good reading and challenging creative ideas for the mind; and the joy of the here and now for the soul as observer.

The word "mysticism" means a direct intuition or experience of God, what Abraham Maslow called a "peak experience." This will frequently happen to almost everyone who is taken breathless at a sunset, a soaring mountain, or just waking up one day feeling exhilarated for no reason at all. A mystic is a person who has had such a direct experience, not merely from accepted religious beliefs but from first-hand personal knowledge. There is no intermediary of priest, rabbi, or shaman. In addition, mysticism
need not be religious or theistic, but can express itself in art,
literature, music or poetry.

The other word, "gay," is slightly more difficult to define because it is understood in such a narrow and usually limited construct. Gay usually refers to a middle-class homosexual male living in the West in the late 20th century. "Lesbian" comes from the name of the island of Lesbos where Sappho, the poet, wrote her inspiring works. Cultural and historical evidence shows that not only has same-sex desire always existed and been known to exist, but that in many cultures those who followed this path were seen as connected to the sacred. To give only one example, the berdache, the cross-dressing shaman of various American Indian tribes, holds an esteemed and fundamental place in the life of a tribe.

The book, Gay Mystics, is set forth on the hypothesis that sin and sex do not need to be approved and that gay sexuality is as innately spiritual as heterosexuality. In the East, Tantra considers all seemingly lesser occasions (errors, stumbling blocks, sin) not as distractions from the Spirit, but celebrations of Spirit's exuberant, wild, overflowing, ever-present creativity. For there is only God, only Spirit, only Goddess, only Tao. More simply, every single thing and event in this universe, high or low, sacred or profane, has the same feeling or taste, the taste of the Divine.

Excerpting passages from 60 gay and lesbian writers--covering 20 centuries and at least a dozen traditions including classical Greek, Native American, Sufi, and Christian, Andrew Harvey explores a variety of religious and sexual experiences. He includes texts from Sappho, Plato, Vergil, Basho, Attar, Hafiz, Michaelangelo, Emily Dickinson, Jean Cocteau, Audre Lorde, and many others. His extensive research, empathetic perspective, and compelling grasp of spirituality make this book not only unique, but also vital to an understanding of contemporary theology,
religion and psychology.

Ken Wilber, psychologist, has said "Andrew Harvey has pulled together some of the most passionate and touching works in all of mystical literature, and as it happens, the authors are all gay. But the words speak for themselves: that is, the Divine directly speaks through the words in this volume, words that flowed through gay hearts and gay minds and gay love, but words which speak
profoundly, eloquently, gorgeously, to the same Divine in all of us. A mystic is not one who sees God as an object, but one who is immersed in God as an atmosphere, and the works collected here are a radiant testament to that all-encompassing condition. Harvey has given us a cornucopia of mystical wisdom, tender as tears and gentle as fog, but also passionately ablaze with the relentless fire of the very Divine."

At age twenty-one Andrew Harvey attended Oxford, and received England's highest academic honor, becoming the youngest Fellow of All Soul's College in its history. He is now a visiting professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He lives with his husband, writer and photographer Eryk Hanut, in Nevada.

A prolific writer, Harvey is the author of over ten books, including Journey to Ladakh. He collaborated with Sogyal Rinpoche on the best-selling Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Harvey is the subject of a 1993 BBC documentary, The Making of a Mystic.

Andrew Harvey has assembled an amazing collection of Gay mystics and their writings. His arrangement of mystics throughtout history and by culture is well suited to this type of study. I enjoyed the profiles of each mystic and sailed from one to the next. The writing of these ecstatics and enlightned ones was truly a blessing to find. I told a co-worker I was reading about gay mystics and she said "I didn't know there were any". The next day, I was able to show a deluge of them via the book and her own androgenous currents broke through. Thanks Andrew.

Most books and publications focus on the bodybuilding side of weight lifting. This book is all about getting more explosive power, not about growing muscle. Unfortunately, when most people think about strength training, bodybuilding techniques come to mind. This is one of not many books that focus on lifting for purely functional purposes. You will not be doing any concentration curls 10 sets of 10 reps with programs offered by this book. Instead you'll be doing dynamic lifts that are guaranteed to increase your "core" body explosive strength.

So much training in the U.S. is dominated by bodybuilding practices and principles. In "Explosive Lifiting for Sports," Newton breaks down the ONLY way to train athletes, EXPLOSIVELY, with much of the training being dominated by Olympic Lifting (the Clean and Jerk and the Snatch.) It is a refreshing read and is a must have for any coach who wants to decrease a teams susceptibility to injury and improve their performance.

Kite (as Crenshaw in his new book) were so closely attached to Harvey Penick. His calm, relaxed approach to golf and life certainly produced two of golf's finest in Kite and Crenshaw.

Here Kite adoringly relates his life and the influence that Penick had, "take dead aim." As Kite relates, it meant to him to be calm yet aware, to focus on what one is doing at the time, blocking out all the rest.

This guy is so consistent! One learns much here from this book about practice, persistence and taking dead aim.

This book really touches that special feeling that comes with really loving the game. There is so much that goes along with the words in this book, if you can read between the lines, you can learn an immense amount about life.

Extremely readable story of how Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt came to write "The Fantasticks," the longest-running musical in history. Full of interesting back-stage stories and details on how the famous songs and lines came to be written. It's about the show, but it's also about the people who made it happen. It's a little portrait of life among theatre people and beatniks in late 1950s Greenwich Village.

There are many reasons America has fallen in love with this play. The most obvious being the story. It is a play bringing simple innocence into a seemingly scandelous love affair. It is a heart-warming musical not quickly to be forgotten. Yet, what i love most about the play is who Luisa is and can be made to be. Her monologue preceeding "Much More" has served me well in audition after audition and this play will go on as a classic in musical theatres everywhere. A must-read for play lovers.

I've been collecting paper dolls for years, and this is one of the best books I've found. There are 6 dolls (4 women and 2 men) with a nice variety of costumes. The clothes are beautifully drawn and obviously well-researched (but kind of tricky to cut out). As an easterner, I know almost nothing about western history, and the diary entries that tell the stories of two sisters who become Harvey Girls are very interesting and definitely made me want to learn more about them.

A story/paperdoll book that even adults love

If you are at all interested in learning how to have complete and total control of your own health and how to confidently and easily live a sickness, pain and disease free life this book is definitely for you. In a climate of ever increasing statistics of disease and ill-health the clear and simple ideas of this book are nothing short of a Godsend. Since the medical profession, the single biggest industry in this country, makes the enormous amount of money that it does by the population being and remaining sick and full of disease they would have us believe that living a healthy disease free life is totally beyond our control. Well, thanks to the brilliant, yet extremely simple methods put forth by this author, the reader is able to take his/her health back into their own hands and truly live without sickness pain or worry of most, if not all diseases. The information in this book is as simple and easy to understand as it is groundbreaking. This book could and should change the world and the way people view cancer, sickness, pain and other diseases. The author explains in remarkably common sense and simple terms exactly how to take total control of your health, vitality and weight by using your body's lymph system (which the author explains is the body's garbage collector). He clearly points out that like a car, our body is a machine, a complex living machine and that after a while due to residue of foods we eat, toxins, chemicals and pollutants in foods, spent cellular material, and other wastes our bodies become "silted up" and require an "oil change" so to speak just like our cars do, otherwise sickness plagues us and disease begins to form. Not only is the information in the book groundbreaking and life changing, but the author, Harvey Diamond, who is known for his humorous and entertaining writing style, delights and entertains the reader with a book that I could not put down until I found myself finishing the last page. I recommend this book to absolutely everyone who can read and who desires to be healthy, energetic and disease free and truly feel this book could turn around the entire cancer and disease epidemic in this country and put the power of your own health back into people's own hands where it belongs! Not reading this book is just like turning your back on a pile of gold the size of a mountain. Thank you Harvey Diamond!

The Fit For Life Solution: How To Identify And Successfully Eradicate The Causes Of Pain, Fatigue And Disease -- Now! is a superbly presented guide to a wealth of natural remedies and information on balancing one's diet so as to improve health and well-being. Individual chapters address a range of pertinent issues including the importance of a nutritious diet and faithful exercise regimen, evading life-threatening conditions (including cancer), as well as offering a "participant friendly" program called CARE that involves simple health principles to improve one's look and feel. The Fit For Life Solution is a solid, informationally packed and recommended guide to self-betterment.

I was given this book by my dad when I made my high school golf team and I can honestly say it's the one thing that got my game on track. From the minute I read the first page, I was hooked. His lessons make so much sense, and his love for the game enlightens you as you read it. From the greenside bunker shots, to the "waggle" before a swing, this book has it all. The choice of words Penick uses and his approach to teaching are very unique, yet beautiful. He teaches the person, not the swing. I reccommend this book to anyone who wants to better their game as well as their life. A MUSTREAD FOR GOLFERS!

If you enjoyed Harvey's other books, you'll also enjoy this one. My wife ordered it for my birthday, and I couldn't put it down. There are more interesting anecdotes and golf wisdoms from golf's greatest all-time teacher. Like his other books, you feel as if you're sitting with him in his golf cart under the shade of a big old pecan tree at his beloved Austin Country Club. It's a quick read, and the stories he tells will stay with you on the golf course forever. Thanks, Harvey.

In his "History of the Conquest of Mexico" and it's companion volume, the "History of the Conquest of Peru", William Prescott achieves the remarkable feat of portraying the action and adventures of the Spanish cavaliers in a highly readable format for those with little prior knowledge of the Conquests. The subject matter for these books is basically the clash of cultures that occurred between the Old World (in the form of Catholic Spain) and the New (in the form of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru). It is interesting to note that these books were written by in the early 19th century by a partially sighted American author who had never visited the countries but who had access to all available historical documents. The style of writing is such that the reader is never overwhelmed by detail and is continually impressed by the heroic feats of the Spanish and at the same time shocked by their cruelty to the indigenous poeples.

In the "History of the Conquest of Mexico", Prescott provides an excellent acount of the origin and nature of Mexican civilization at the time of the conquest, describing how the Aztecs dominated the many races of Mexico with savage brutality, indulging in regular human sacrifices. He then goes on to describe the key player in this adventure, Hernando Cortes, and how he and a small party of cavaliers overcame overwhelming odds to defeat the armies of the Aztecs. While it is impossible not to admire the genius of Cortes, the reader is left in no doubt that the Spaniards were motivated by the promise of Aztec gold and not by the desire to "spread the word of God to the heathen". However, Prescott excuses the means by which Cortes overthrew the Aztec empire as it put an end to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. In the second book, "History of the Conquest of Peru", Prescott finds no excuse for the manner in which Pizarro and Almagro conquered the relatively peaceful empire of the Incas. As with the first book, an interesting description of the Inca way of life precedes the action. While equally enthralling as the conquest of Mexico, Pizzaro accomplished the overthrow of the Incas by brute force, without the finesse of Cortes. The second half of this book deals with the remarkable events which followed the conquest; the two civil wars and their resolution by Pedro de la Gasca on behalf of the Spanish crown. It is difficult to find fault with Prescott's scientific approach to his writings; all of the events are backed up by references to documents written at the time of, or shortly after the conquests and these are given as valuable footnotes on each page. In addition, at the end of some of the chapters, Prescott writes short essays about his sources, describing which are trustworthy and which are prejudiced. If there were to be a fault with Prescott's approach, then it would his sympathy with the Catholic church during the years of the Conquest and his excusing of the Spanish atrocities as a means of spreading Christianity. But then we should bear in mind that Prescott was writing in the 1840s and was obviously a serious Christian. A second problem is that some of the footnotes are left in their original text, i.e. Spanish, Latin or sometimes Greek which presents problems to non-polyglots. The publishers have obviously not thought to translate these. In conclusion, these two books are essential reading for anyone interested in the empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and their overthrow by the Spanish Conquestadors. I have not read any other books on the subject which compare to Prescott's masterpieces.

Prescott shows why Cortes stands beside Alexander the III as a leader of epic campaigns; and he knows that, as with Alexander, there is more substance to the story than more 'pure-bred' academic historians will allow. This book also, obliquely, sheds light on U.S. American history in ways the reader may not expect from the title. Prescott does for America south of the Rio Grande what Francis Parkman (another great, unknown American historian) does for the northern forests. The works of both are treasures to be mined.

This is an inspirational read about something that many people dream of, but feel is simply not something they could do. If you are someone who comes up with ideas, but has done nothing but wait for someone else to cash in on them. This is a book for you. You don't have to spend thousands to make and sell your invention, you can get someone else to spend it for you! They take the big risk and you get cut of the profits. Harvey Reese takes you from idea creation to the final deal, in a positive and informative way. Here is a guy who has licensed hundreds of his own products letting you know how you can do it too!

Harvey Reese gives excellent and straightforward advice on what I used to think was an awesomely complex topic. Structurally, the book is well organized, simple to follow and written in language anyone can understand. His style is intelligent and interspersed with humor, examples, and concrete information. He not only details the steps, (he loves lists) he also tells the reader what to avoid and why. And he addresses the human issues. He talks about frustration, disappointment, commitment.

Reese demystifies the legal mumbo-jumbo and makes the subject of licensing understandable to anyone. I've read hundreds of "how-tos" in the business genre, many that vastly oversimplify difficult subjects. This one tells it all - the good, the bad and the ridiculous. Ultimately, it is both believable and usable. Reese's book is an outstanding and inspiring resource for anyone with ideas.

Hi, I'm Alan, the author of How to Make a Chemical Volcano and Other Mysterious Experiments. The book is aimed at children in 4th - 8th grades; however, I've received mail from readers between the ages of 5 and 15. The book contains many experiments that can be done at home--with items commonly found around the house. Each experiment is preceeded by a short mystery story to entice the reader to perform the experiment, because the experiment solves the mystery!

For the story about how I wound up having a published book at the ripe old age of 13, or to have your copy autographed please e-mail me at the address above.

Hi, I'm Alan, the author of How to Make a Chemical Volcano and Other Mysterious Experiments. The book is aimed at children in 4th - 8th grades; however, I've received mail from readers between the ages of 5 and 15. The book contains many experiments that can be done at home--with items commonly found around the house. Each experiment is preceeded by a short mystery story to entice the reader to perform the experiment, because the experiment solves the mystery!

For the story about how I wound up having a published book at the ripe old age of 13, or to have your copy autographed please e-mail me at the address above.