"Dr. Norman Rosenthal's Transcendence is the best-ever book on Transcendental Meditation: accessible and substantive, engaging and scientific, practical and profound. A very enjoyable read that can change your life, for good." —David Lynch "I have been meditating for over 10 years, and I found Transcendence to be a uniquely compelling introduction to the art and science of Transcendental Meditation. Dr. Norman Rosenthal's book will propel TM into the mainstream where it belongs." —Russell Simmons In this definitive book on the scientifically proven health and stress-relieving benefits of Transcendental Meditation, a renowned psychiatrist and researcher explores why TM works, what it can do for you, and how to use it for maximum effect. This New York Times bestselling paperback edition includes a new afterword by the author on the latest research and breakthroughs. Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., a twenty-year researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and the celebrated psychiatrist who pioneered the study and treatment of Season Affective Disorder (SAD), brings us the most important work on Transcendental Meditation since the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Science of Being and Art of Living -- and one of our generation's most significant books on achieving greater physical and mental health and wellness. Transcendence demystifies the practice and benefits of Transcendental Meditation for a general audience who may have heard about the method but do not necessarily know what it is, how it is learned, or what they stand to gain, physically and emotionally, from achieving transcendence. Dr. Rosenthal clearly and practically explains the basic ideas behind Transcendental Meditation: It is a nonreligious practice that involves sitting comfortably for twenty minutes twice a day while using a silent mantra, or nonverbal sound, to attain a profound state of aware relaxation. Alongside exclusive celebrity interviews-where figures like Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Martin Scorsese, Russell Brand, Laura Dern, Moby , and David Lynch openly discuss their meditation-Dr. Rosenthal draws upon experience from the lives of his patients and a wealth of clinical research amassed on TM over the past generation (340 peer-reviewed published articles). He provides the fullest and most accessible book ever on the broad range of benefits of this remarkably simple practice, from relief of anxiety, stress and depression to new hope for those experiencing addiction, attention-deficit disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

"A book of Pascalian pensees, touching on many phases of the intellectual and spiritual worlds. Written in prose which is as unadorned as a geometry theorem, it bears clear personal traces of the young genius who was half icy intellectual, half mystic."-New York Times. "In these private reflections, at once pregnant and precise, and all springing out of painful depths of experience, mental pride is transmuted into spiritual insight."-Manchester Guardian. Simone Weil, the French philosopher, political activist, and religious mystic, was little known when she died young in 1943. Four years later the philosopher-farmer Gustave Thibon compiled La pesanteur et la grbce from the notebooks she left in his keeping. In 1952 this English translation accelerated the fame and influence of Simone Weil. The striking aphorisms in Gravity and Grace reflect the religious philosophy of Weil's last years. Written at the onset of World War II, when her health was deteriorating and her left-wing social activism was giving way to spiritual introspection, this masterwork makes clear why critics have called Simone Weil "a great soul who might have become a saint" and "the Outsider as saint, in an age of alienation." Introducer Thomas R. Nevin is a professor of classical studies at John Carroll University and the author of Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew.