Over the last three decades an interest in thecontemplative practices of world wisdom traditions, or “inner sciences,” as they are often called, has been steadily expanding in Western culture. There is a burgeoning literature (both academic and popular) on these practices, and an unprecedented number of Western teachers, scholars, and students are exploring how they might be incorporated into the academy. In the 2003 survey on the transformative and spiritual dimensions of higher education run by the Fetzer Institute, 90% of the respondents, from a wide variety of post-secondary institutions, stated that contemplative and spiritual dimensions of learning were “important” to “very important.”