A New Vision of Ourselves. A New Dream of America. A New Religion for the World

EL CERRITO, Calif. - July 9, 2015 - PRLog -- A new vision of ourselves.  A new dream of America.  A new religion for the World.

This is the bold agenda served up by author James Hilgendorf in his books and talks, calling for a deep transformation in the way we look at ourselves and our relation to the universe around us.

The range of his titles reflects the range of his interests:
A New Myth for America
The New Superpower
Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective
Forever Here
Handbook for Youth in a Muddied Age
The Buddha and the Dream of America
The Great New Emerging Civilization
Maybe We Need A New Religion
Poems of Death: Time for Eternity

His latest book, “A New Myth for the World” calls for a clearing away of the debris of the past few thousand years that have cluttered our lives and minds - the religions that have governed our thoughts about ourselves, our potential, our place in this vast universe - and for a new story that is already taking shape around the world in the lives of ordinary men and women today.

Hilgendorf writes:

“Religion is a worldview, a way of shaping and perceiving reality.  Atheism is a religion as much as Catholicism.  Each structures the way we perceive ourselves and others, and our relationship to the stars; and this has consequences.  For as we believe, so do we act; and as we act, so do we create our destinies and the happiness or unhappiness not only of ourselves, but of the world.

“The world today is being torn apart by religion.  There is something basically wrong when our institutionalized religions - which advocate peace and brotherhood and love - become, instead, the agents of separation, hatred and war, and the disempowerment of people.  This has gone on for millennia.”

Hilgendorf is a Buddhist, a longtime member of the SGI, or Soka Gakkai International, the largest Buddhist lay organization in the world now, with 12,000,000 members in 192 countries and territories around the globe.

He sees the Soka Gakkai at the forefront of a great new religious revolution - one centered on individual human empowerment and respect for the sanctity of all life; a religion committed to and capable of relieving the sufferings of humanity in the here and now, yet a religion tied to the mystery of the cosmos itself.  A religion totally in sync with the revelations of science.

Of one of his books, “Life & Death: A Buddhist Perspective”, one reviewer wrote:

“Having read all or parts of nearly a thousand books dealing with spiritual matters, I cannot recall another that so simply and effectively blends the fundamentals of religion and science.” - Michael E. Tymn, Journal of Religion and Psychical Research.

His talks, more than anything else, Hilgendorf says, are aimed at making people aware of who they really are, of their tremendous potential, and of the power they have to change their circumstances - whatever they happen to be - into happier, more fulfilling lives.

Of America, he writes:

“America is one person.

“America is not the crowd.  America is not a hundred million people.

“America has never been more than one person.

“That person can rule the universe, and send shockwaves of change across the plains and mountains and seashores, and loose mega-nuclear explosions of light and understanding reverberating through the bones and marrow and blood of an infinite chain of friends and ancestors and progenitors and unknown neural connections of an infinite number of cosmic galaxies reaching to the heart of everything that is or ever was or ever will be.

“Your heart moves everything around you.  You heart can change the shape of the very cosmos itself, because you are the cosmos, you have that power.

“Believe in yourself.”

Hilgendorf lives in El Cerrito, California, with Elizabeth, his wife of forty-three years. He is a filmmaker also, and the producer of a highly-acclaimed series of travel films, as well as other documentaries.

His website is at http://www.jameshilgendorf.org.