Modern experimental techniques in exploring and understanding our brain and mind have shown that brain processes are intimately connected with the generation of states of consciousness. Against this background, near-death experiences (NDEs), including out-of-body experiences (OBEs), can be validated as phenomena generated in altered states of consciousness of the mind. In the history of research on NDE phenomena, paranormal or metaphysical explanations often included personal views and belief in a “life after life” or purely speculative quantum physical approaches to consciousness. The assurance that extraordinary experiences such as NDEs have their origin in physiology-dependent psychological processes of the brain of the experiencer, and not in an unknown, paranormal, or mystical entity, points to therapies usable by medical and psychological professionals to help all those who may suffer from confusion, disorientation, or fear as aftereffects of their experiences.

Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern are commonly grouped together as the ‘Second Viennese School’, with Berg and Webern – notwithstanding their own monumental contributions to twentieth-century music – frequently relegated to Schoenberg’s students, or even ‘disciples’. This chapter locates Berg and Webern in the huge shadow of their teacher and mentor, and considers the possibility that the Schoenberg–Webern–Berg trinity obscures a number of meaningful differences and antagonisms – musical and personal – between the three composers, and that Webern and Berg, as Schoenberg’s perpetual pupils, have become subordinate – ‘other’ – to the master in the discourses of musicology and music criticism. At the same time, it is clear that the members of the Second Viennese School – coming from a common cultural history and social and artistic milieu – understood themselves to have a unified vision for art and a shared sense of purpose.

Hailed as a model state for its performance on the human development index, the state of Kerala somewhat paradoxically enjoys a robust reputation for its extreme affinity for gold jewellery. As an object of prestation and counterprestation from birth to death, gold is ubiquitous and indispensable in Malayali life. We focus on the role of gold as an object of gendered consumption among the Muslims of the Malabar region in Kerala. Gold is worn and displayed on the body as a form of adornment; it creates a distinct public presence, including status claims, notions of self and modes of identification. Moreover, gold has long been regarded as a safe form of investment, even safer than liquid cash and modern financial instruments. We show how, among the Muslims of Malabar, gold holds a special economic significance where religious censure confines their participation in modern banking and financial institutions.

In this context, gold jewellery binds together what are typically viewed as separate fields: the realms of investment and economic security, on the one hand, and aesthetics, family linkages, concepts of self and modes of belonging, on the other (Moors 1994).

This concise and interpretative book digs under the surface events of the Wars of the Roses to explore the underlying dynamics of a typical civil war. Beginning with a demonstration of why the well-worn storylines of the Wars are so misleading, it moves on to expose the pressure for reform that animated the conflict and helped to shape its outcomes. It continues by looking at the logics of division and the reasons why the Wars, once started, were so hard to resolve. It concludes by returning to debates long discussed by historians: the role of the economy in the conflict, and the interaction between English affairs and the politics of the British Isles and the near continent. Throughout, a central concern is to emphasise the fluidity and uncertainty of these civil wars: once authority broke down, anything could happen.

Starting with three good ideas – natural equality, government resting on consent, and government limited by the terms of that consent – Hobbes derives distressing conclusions. Reason requires submission to the Sovereign even in matters of conscience. The Sovereign can do subjects no injustice. Mixed government must lead to civil war. This chapter traces and tests Hobbes’s reasoning.

‘Schoenberg the Painter’ serves as a cultural history of the early evolution of Arnold Schoenberg’s as an artist. In particular, it explores how the personal relationship between the Austrian expressionist artist, Richard Gerstl (1883–1908) and Schoenberg became key in Schoenberg’s own artistic development. In particular, this chapter examines the paths that led to the convergence of the two men’s creative output in Gmunden in July 1908, which saw Schoenberg compose his seminal Second String Quartet, op.10, and become, in the vocal fourth movement, the first to cross the bridge to atonality, and saw Gerstl produce a series of extraordinary large-scale expressionist portraits of members of Schönberg’s circle. This chapter offers new hypotheses not only regarding the evolution of Schoenberg’s works over the period of the relationship between the two men, but also the previously under-considered level of influence that Gerstl may have had on Schoenberg’s wider creative and musical output at the time.

The conclusion recapitulates the argument of the book and lays out some guidelines for further research into the instrument doctrine and related theological topics.

Performers have played a crucial role not only in communicating Schoenberg’s music and musical thought to a wider audience, but also in framing expectations and reception. This chapter places Schoenberg in a Romantic context of aesthetic, not least emotional, expectations and of exacting extension of performance possibilities and requirements, and suggests that some of the difficulties Schoenberg’s music experienced with audiences may be attributed to inadequate performance or to the unwillingness of musicians to perform it. Various performances of Schoenberg’s music are considered, starting with Schoenberg himself, taking in artists such as Alexander Zemlinsky, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, Eduard Steuermann, Marya Freund and Rudolf Kolisch, and concluding with conductor advocates such as Hans Rosbaud and, posthumously, Pierre Boulez.

Visitors to Patna in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were invariably impressed with what they found there. As “the chefest marte towne of all Bengala,” Patna was among the largest cities in India.1 It struck travelers as “a very sweet city and honoured place … a place of perpetual spring, … [among] the best of the cities of Hind” and a fitting home for “many traders and comfort-loving men.”2 By the end of the nineteenth century, though, it had become a dilapidated provincial town, merely one among several middling, semiagrarian cities lining the Ganges. In this chapter, I show what Patna's decline meant for the city and its people. Patna's shifting fortunes were molded by its place within the wider region, and they shaped every aspect of the city's geography. As Patna became increasingly provincial in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of the consequences were felt most strongly in the older part of the city. The city's social landscape was restructured amid political contestations over health and sanitation, challenges to the nature of elite patronage and neighborhood leadership, and efforts—ultimately unsuccessful—to redirect the spatial changes taking place.

Nineteenth-century Patna was organized around two poles. In the east lay the historic Patna, built in the sixteenth century and renamed Azimabad in the early 1700s.

This chapter takes a specific example from the museum's narrative—the story of Baghel Singh's conquest of Delhi—to show the use of history paintings and the museum's narrative in contemporary heritage politics. The choice of this episode is relevant for several reasons. Bhai Mati Das Museum has four paintings dedicated to this story, and the event it describes unfolds at a site very close to the Gurdwara Sisganj and the museum, the Red Fort. Similar paintings on Baghel Singh appear in other Sikh museums too, including the Central Sikh Museum, Amritsar. Another prominent Sikh museum in Delhi, the Baba Baghel Singh Sikh Heritage Multimedia Museum (Baba Baghel Singh Sikh Virasat Multimedia Ajaibghar) at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, not only includes this story but is also named after its main protagonist. Also, Dilli Fateh, or the Sikh conquest of Delhi, is a popularly known story and remembered with great pride in the Sikh community. And, in recent years, the story of Baghel Singh's victory over Delhi through his occupation of the Red Fort has acquired tremendous relevance in heritage politics. It is widely invoked and celebrated in prominent events (such as the Fateh Diwas celebrations at the Red Fort which began in 2014, and the historic Farmers’ Protests in Delhi in 2020–21). This claim and its symbolism are important to understand heritage politics in India today. This chapter includes a discussion of the different ways in which stories of the Sikh tradition are invoked. These ways of producing and consuming Sikh history offer insights into not only what the Sikhs think of their past but also what the Sikhs think of themselves today, of their place in contemporary India.