The Spiritual Quest: Transcendence in Myth, Religion, and Science Book

	Preface
	Acknowledgments
Pt. 1	Animal Quaerens: The Quest as a Dimension of Human Experience	1
1	Religion and the Spiritual Quest: From Closure to Openness	3
2	Biological and Psychological Foundations of the Quest	18
3	Linguistic Foundations of the Quest	32
4	The Questing Animal	50
Pt. 2	The Spiritual Quest in Ritual and Myth	59
5	Ritual as Affirmation and Transformation	61
6	Myth and the Journey beyond the Self	82
7	Mobility and Its Limits in Communal Ritual and Myth	94
Pt. 3	Spirit Possession as a Form of the Spiritual Quest	101
8	The Varieties of Spirit Possession	103
9	Possession and Transformation	117
Pt. 4	Forms of the Shamanic Quest	133
10	Shamanism, Possession, and Ecstasy: Australia and the Tropics	135
11	Shamanic Heartland: Central and Northern Eurasia	149
Pt. 5	Forms of the Quest in Native America	169
12	The Arctic and Western North America	171
13	Mesoamerica and South America	196
14	Eastern North America and the Great Plains	228
Pt. 6	The Theory of the Quest: Some Closing Considerations	259
15	A Ternary Process	261
16	The Reality of Transcendence	278
	Bibliography	295
	Index	341