Before Religion : Remembering Ancient India's

Youre not as great as you think you areyou are far far greater.Before Religion is a treasure hunt through the oldest philosophical and spiritual texts known to humankind. This book is about how spirituality can be experienced by anyone anywhere. It is about self-realisation and the ultimate reality that exists behind a veil of illusion. And it is a rallying call to confront the conflict caused by exclusivism and the thinking that my religion is the only way.This worldview embraced many paths and accommodated different starting points. It was for everyone from the yogis meditating in the mountains to the warrior kings performing fire sacrifices. It aimed to facilitate life based on who you are where you are at and where you want to go. Before Religion explores the contribution an ancient civilisation can make to todays search for a unifying vision for spirituality and how this can help heal the fractured world we now live in.''I have always believed the wisdom of the Vedas to be universal and timeless. Nitesh Gor shares and distills their essence in a practical accessible and relevant way to our modern lives. - Jay Shetty Author of Think Like a MonkIn his book Nitesh Gor reflects deeply philosophically and practically on ancient wisdom traditions of India while seeking universal self-evident and undeniable truths. The reader can expect to move along Gor''s exploration of ideas that seek very core understandings that constitute the underpinnings of religion what is before religion as it were and will undoubtedly inspire any reader''s thinking to consider further the nature of the human situation and spiritual meaning. - Graham M. Schweig PhD Author-Translator of Bhagavad Gt: The Beloved Lord''s Secret Love Song and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Christopher Newport University Nitesh Gor mines two great treasures of Hindu spirituality the Bhagavad-gita and the Bhagavata Purana and lucidly presents their teaching of selfless love as the pathway to human fulfilment. Across twenty-two chapters Nitesh unfolds the notion of nondual consciousness as a synthetic vision which can enfold various types of religious questing. This is a deeply insightful exercise of translating ancient Hindu debates regarding reality language and self into contemporary language so that the reader who asks but what does it all mean for me? would find much in it that gives them food for thought as well as nourishment for the heart. - Ankur Barua PhD Senior Lecturer in Hindu Studies at the Faculty of Divinity University of Cambridgethere is so much here which captures and addresses some of the biggest questions of what it is to be spiritual (and indeed a truly compassionate human) in these challenging times - From the foreword by Professor Mike Younger former Dean of Education and Head of the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education