Trance Formation: The Spiritual Dimensions of Global Rave Culture
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".
“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.
Over the course of nearly two decades, the rave scene has evolved
into much more than simply an electronic dance music party. For
thousands of people around the world, it has become an important
source of spirituality and the closest thing they have to a religion.
Trance Formation is the first book to comprehensively explore
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.