Exploring the Labyrinth: Making Sense of the New Spirituality

For the initiated, Exploring the Labyrinth provides a much-needed context and history for their spiritual practices and beliefs; for the novice it introduces a rich and exciting world of new spiritual research and experimentation; for the sceptic it offers an overview of the respectable philosophical and scientific traditions that form the basis of the new spirituality.

Drury, a much-published author on shamanism and other subjects, has written a brief history and guide to the array of spiritualities that have developed in this century, beginning with the transpersonal psychology of Abraham Maslow and taking in yoga, Chinese medicine, contemporary science, and other influences. His careful and nonevaluative study should engage any student of religion or New Age spirituality. For most collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One could object that this spirituality is not really "new," for its roots are deep in human culture, extending back as far, perhaps, as the Paleolithic period, with its nature animism and shamanism. What is new is the way contemporary spiritual seekers draw from many spiritual traditions and mix in psychological ideas from such thinkers as Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow. Drury's intelligent, insightful book reveals the historical and theoretical underpinnings of contemporary spiritual movements in an authoritative but never authoritarian manner. Drury, an expert in shamanism, seems genuinely open to and curious about various traditions and movements, and Shirley MacLaine, Aldous Huxley, bardo consciousness, and the Buddha share pages without the sound of axes being ground anywhere in the vicinity. A good, solid treatment of the subject. Patricia Monaghan