Alexandra David-Neel: Portait of an Adventurer

This unique biography explores the inner journey of a woman whose outer life was a thrilling story of passion and adventure. Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969), born in Paris to a socially prominent family, once boasted, "I learned to run before I could walk" In the course of a lifetime of more than one hundred years, she was an acclaimed operatic soprano, a political anarchist, a religious reformer, an intrepid explorer who traveled in Tibet for fourteen years, a scholar of Buddhism, and the author of more than forty books. But perhaps the most intriguing of all her adventures was the spiritual search that led her from a youthful interest in socialism and Freemasonry to the teachings of the great sages of India and culminated in her initiation into the secret tantric practices of Tibetan Buddhism. This book reveals the penetrating insight and courage of a woman who surmounted physical, intellectual, and social barriers to pursue her spiritual quest.

Quantum: A Guide For The Perplexed

From Schrodinger's cat to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, this book untangles the weirdness of the quantum world. Quantum mechanics underpins modern science and provides us with a blueprint for reality itself. And yet it has been said that if you're not shocked by it, you don't understand it. But is quantum physics really so unknowable? Is reality really so strange? And just how can cats be half-alive and half-dead at the same time? Our journey into the quantum begins with nature's own conjuring trick, in which we discover that atoms -- contrary to the rules of everyday experience -- can exist in two locations at once. To understand this we travel back to the dawn of the twentieth century and witness the birth of quantum theory, which over the next one hundred years was to overthrow so many of our deeply held notions about the nature of our universe. Scientists and philosophers have been left grappling with its implications every since.

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality

Gives a dramatic history of quantum theory, a fundamental scientific revolution and the divisive debate at its core. This book shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century. It focuses on the conflict between Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science.

Magic and Mystery in Tibet

Born in 1868 to a respectable French family, Alexandra David-Neel became an occultist, anarchist and the most remarkable female travel writer of the Twentieth century. David-Neel studied at the Sorbonne at a time when women were not allowed to formally matriculate and converted to Buddhism after viewing a statue of the Buddha in the Guimet Museum. In 1911 she set off, alone, to travel around India for the second time and in 1914 she secluded herself in a cave in the Himalayas for two years, intensively studying the mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the mystic legends that surrounded Buddhist monks. From 1918 she spent three years in a Buddhist monastery translating texts into French and English. By 1924 she had travelled to the forbidden city of Lhasa and returning to France in 1927 began to write, recording her extraordinary experiences. She died in 1969, 101 years old, still travelling, and an inspiration for a generation that included Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Magic & Mystery in Tibet, like Seven Pillars of Wisdom, attempts to bring ancient wisdom into the modern age. David-Neel records the seemingly magic feats performed by Buddhist monks; telepathy, tumo breathing (the art of generating body heat to keep warm in freezing conditions), the ability to run for days at a time, the ability to defy gravity and the ability to become invisible. As a child David-Neel had wanted to search for the unknown and as an adult she went beyond the Western world, and into areas unexplained by Western science. No other Western writer has ever been so immersed in Tibetan culture and Buddhism, and few other books have entranced readers for seventy years.

Tibetan Journey

Travel diary, diary, book of reflections, informal conversations, these letters sent by Alexandra David-Néel to her husband are an invitation to follow, during the most captivating years of her life, an extraordinary woman. Orientalist, explorer, Alexandra David-Néel describes everything with a true writer's talent: her expeditions between India and China, her encounters, her astonishments, her reactions to local customs, her adherence to oriental wisdom and way of life. Here is perhaps the most personal work of this exceptional woman. Alexandra David-Néel as she was and as she told it herself!

Tibet, Land of Gentleman Brigands: Retracing the Steps of Alexandra David-Neel

Land of gentleman brigands" is the name Alexandra David-Neel gave to the region to the west of China, crossed in 1920-21 in her first attempt to reach Lhasa. The volume retraces her journey with contemporary full-color photos.

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

The fruit of an investigation carried out over twenty years, this work can be presented as a unique document concerning the philosophical conceptions of Tibetan Buddhist intellectuals. These teachings were gathered from spiritual Masters whose trust Alexandra David-Neel had gained.

My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City

An exemplary travelogue of danger and achievement by the French woman Madame Alexandra David–Neel of her 1923 expedition to Tibet, the fifth in her series of Asian travels, and her personal recounting of her journey to Lhasa, Tibet's forbidden city. In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World. With the help of her young companion, Yongden, she willingly suffered the primitive travel conditions, frequent outbreaks of disease, the ever–present danger of border control and the military to reach her goal. The determination and sheer physical fortitude it took for this woman, delicately reared in Paris and Brussels, is inspiration for men and women alike. David–Neel is famous for being the first Western woman to have been received by any Dalai Lama and as a passionate scholar and explorer of Asia, hers is one of the most remarkable of all travellersߴales.

Immortality and Reincarnation: Wisdom from the Forbidden Journey

Famed traveler and mystic Alexandra David-Neel, the first Western woman to see the forbidden city of Lhasa, Tibet, examines Eastern concepts of the afterlife in this classic study. The question of what occurs to the individual personality after death is fundamental to the human experience. In Immortality and Reincarnation Alexandra David-Neel, the first Western woman to see the forbidden city of Lhasa, Tibet, examines Taoist, Tibetan, and Hindu concepts concerning life after death. Contrary to Western belief, which sees the human being as composed of a mortal body and an immortal soul, many Easterners believe in the immortality of both the body and the soul. Alexandra David-Neel gained firsthand knowledge of these beliefs and the practices they engendered in the course of her travels at the beginning of this century. In Immortality and Reincarnation she ties them together for a unique look at reincarnation and eternal life in a region untouched by the modern world.