Routledge Trance Formation: The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of Global Rave Culture

Robin Sylvan combines colorful firsthand accounts, extensive interviews with ravers, and cutting edge scholarly analysis to paint a compelling portrait of global rave culture as an important new religious and spiritual phenomenon that also serves as a template for mapping the future evolution of new forms of religion and spirituality in the twenty-first century. Review "Millions of people on every continent of planet Earth, regularly coming together in ecstatic trance-dance celebrations held and energized by pulsing electronic beats, are having the deepest spiritual experience of their lives. In this thoroughly fascinating study, religious scholar Robin Sylvan makes a convincing case for regarding the global rave culture as an authentic expression of a unifying spiritual vision that integrates across all languages, religions and nationalities. Reading this book, as well as going to a rave, will leave you inspired and hopeful for our sadly fractured world." -- Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., co-author of The Psychedelic Experience and author of The Unfolding Self About the Author Robin Sylvan, Ph.D., is the founder and director of The Sacred Center, a nonprofit educational organization in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music.