The East-West Psychology Podcast

Complementarity and Integration: Utopian Individual and Collective Transformation with Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Today we meet EWP adjunct faculty Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith to explore her work in Utopian studies, shaped by her upbringing in Auroville and her roots in Integral Yoga. We discuss integral approaches to education and her CIIS course, Prefiguring Utopia, which asks what a utopian learning experience might look like. We discuss the limits of rational teleology in utopian praxis and the importance of integral frameworks, like the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, that emphasize the complementarity of multiple ways of knowing, harmonizing the planes and parts of the self, necessary to support collective transformation. The conversation also explores the scholar-practitioner as a site of transformation, and she shares a little about her course at CIIS, Awareness Through the Body, which guides students in exploring embodiment and contemplation, experimenting with their physical and psychic constitution, and we discuss this as a practice of cultivating conditions for transformative experiences grounded in revolutionary, evolutionary, and utopian ideals.

Book - Prefiguring Utopia: The Auroville Experiment

Book Talk - here

Dr. Suryamayi Clarence-Smith is an award-winning scholar, educator and facilitator based in Auroville, India, the largest intentional community in the world. Suryamayi holds a PhD in International Development from the University of Sussex, and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley; she is currently affiliated with the Sri Aurobindo International Institute for Educational Research (SAIIER) in Auroville. Her research on utopian and prefigurative practice has been published by leading editors and publishers in the field, notably in the Ralahine Utopian Studies series (Peter Lang), the Alternatives to Capitalism in the 21st century series (Bristol University Press), and the Antipode Book Series (Wiley). Dedicated to sharing the outcomes of her research to various audiences, she lectures internationally in both academic and activist settings.

The EWP Podcast credits

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP Phd, Adjunct Faculty)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Divine Materialism and Integral Cosmology: Consciousness, Science, and the Spiritual Turn with Marco Masi

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we explore Marco Masi’s article “The Integral Cosmology of Sri Aurobindo: An Introduction from the Perspective of Consciousness Studies.” Marco’s work sits at the intersection of the hard sciences and spirituality, advancing the provocative notion of “divine materialism.”

We examine the limitations of contemporary philosophy of mind and mainstream consciousness studies, emphasizing the need for more expansive frameworks capable of addressing the interior dimensions of experience. Drawing from Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, Marco introduces Integral Cosmology as a way to fill what is often missing in academic and scientific discourse—a vision of consciousness that is both evolutionary and spiritual.

We discuss the pitfalls of academic hyperspecialization and the inadequacy of even transdisciplinary models when confronting today’s complex, multidimensional challenges. Instead, we point toward the emergence of an integral framework—a mode of inquiry grounded in the cultivation of integral consciousness itself. We conclude with a reflection on integral education and its transformative potential. How might an integral worldview help students not only synthesize scientific and spiritual paradigms, but also develop the inner capacities required for personal, cultural, and spiritual transformation?

Marco Masi (born 1965) attended the German School of Milan, Italy. He graduated in physics at the University of Padua, and later obtained a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Trento. He worked as a postdoc in universities in Italy, France, and Germany, and as a school teacher for three years. After he had authored some scientific papers (http://ow.ly/snz6u) his interests veered towards new forms of individual learning and a new concept of free progress education originated from his activity both as a tutor in several universities and as a high school teacher, but especially from his direct, lived experience of what education should not be. This led him to author a book on ”Free progress Education”. He also wrote a two-volume series on quantum physics entitled “Quantum Physics: An Overview of a Weird World”, and which tries to close a gap between the too high-level university textbooks and a too low-level popular science approach. His interests in metaphysical and philosophical ruminations led him to the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Not only gave him this a spiritual path to follow, but also answered many questions he was looking for in science.

Spirit Calls Nature by Marco Masi- https://www.amazon.com/dp/3948295166
Blog - https://marcomasi.substack.com/
Website - https://marco-masi.com/
The Integral Cosmology of Sri Aurobindo: An Introduction from the Perspective of Consciousness Studies - https://integral-review.org/the-integral-cosmology-of-sri-aurobindo-an-introduction-from-the-perspective-of-consciousness-studies/
New book "Meaning and Purpose in a Conscious Universe": https://www.amazon.com/dp/3948295190

The EWP Podcast credits

• Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
• Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD grad)
• Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
• Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
• Music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
• Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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“Look hard enough at anything and you will eventually see everything”: Magic, Tarot, and Creativity with Lon Milo DuQuette & Cassia Elderkin

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we meet Lon Milo DuQuette, who shares his lifelong journey in the Western hermetic and magical traditions, including his initiation into the teachings of Aleister Crowley. We also hear from EWP student Cassia Elderkin, who studies under Lon and is exploring magic as a form of liberatory praxis.

The conversation centers around Lon’s new book, The Tarot Architect: How to Become the Master Builder of Your Spiritual Temple, and explores how the tarot can be understood through the mystical teachings of Kabbalah as a cosmic, archetypal structure. Lon explains how these archetypes can be internalized and brought to life in one’s psychic and spiritual practice. He situates tarot divination within a broader framework of magical and transformative practices, emphasizing its capacity to expand consciousness, attune intuition, and illuminate the messages of the unconscious.

The discussion highlights the intersections between Western occult traditions and Eastern spiritual practices, showing how ceremonial magic and meditative yoga converge as complementary paths for self-exploration and transformation. Lon frames these traditions as technologies of self-examination, offering tools for cultivating awareness, creativity, and personal evolution.

Toward the end, the conversation turns to the magical and transformative powers of art and creativity, underscoring the importance of self-observation in creative practice. Lon closes with his reflections on the future of Western esotericism, offering insights into its evolving role in contemporary spiritual and cultural life.

Lon Milo DuQuette, also known as Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford and by his neo-Gnostic bishop title of Tau Lamed, is an American writer, lecturer, musician, and occultist, best known as an author who applies humor in the field of Western Hermeticism. In 1972 he began pursuing his interest in mysticism, particularly the work of Aleister Crowley. He is on the faculty of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York where he teaches The Western Magical Tradition. Since 1975 DuQuette has been a National and International governing officer of Ordo Templi Orientis, a religious and fraternal organization founded in the early part of the 20th century. Since 1996 he has been O.T.O.'s United States Deputy Grand Master. He is also an Archbishop of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of the O.T.O. DuQuette began writing professionally in 1988 and has since published 19 books (translated in 12 languages). Many of his books have been dedicated to analyzing and exploring the works of Aleister Crowley, an English occultist, author, poet and philosopher. He has written a number of successful books on topics in the Western mystical tradition including: Freemasonry, Tarot, Qabalah, ceremonial magick, the Enochian magick of Dr. John Dee, and Goetic spirit evocation. He is perhaps best known as "an author who injects humor into the serious subjects of magick and the occult." His autobiography, My Life with the Spirits, is currently a required text for two classes at DePaul University, Chicago.

Lon’s Website

Book: The Tarot Architect: How to Become the Master Builder of Your Spiritual Temple

The EWP Podcast credits

• Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook

• Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD grad)

• Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay

• Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

• Music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala

• Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Integral Perspectives: From Kashmiri Shaivism to Tibetan Buddhism with Sean K. MacCracken

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Sean MacCracken reflects on his experience at the American Academy of Religion, noticing a shift toward more participatory, contemplative, and integrative approaches in religious studies. He discusses his course, Kashmiri Shaivism: Supreme Non-Dualism, highlighting how meditation, contemplation, and embodied practices cultivate awareness, ethical self-reflection, and creative engagement with the world.

Sean also explores how his study of Indian philosophy and Tantric traditions opens broader, integral ways of knowing that move beyond reductionist frameworks. He discusses his article, “Regarding Humanism: Some Observations Concerning the Tibetan Buddhist and Transhumanist Dialogue,” showing how Buddhist and Tantric insights deepen our understanding of humanism, development, and collective ethical responsibility.

This episode offers listeners a glimpse into how contemplative and Integralist approaches can reshape learning, thinking, and living—showing philosophy as a path toward grounded, ethically engaged, and transformative ways of being in the world.

Sean K. MacCracken is adjunct faculty at California Institute of Integral Studies. He recieved a M.A. and Ph.D in Asian and Comparative Studies from CIIS, and a M.A. in Religious Studies from University of Virginia.

“Regarding Humanism: Some Observations Concerning the Tibetan Buddhist and Transhumanist Dialogue”

https://processcenturypress.com/unprecedented-evolution-continuities-and-discontinuities-between-human-and-animal-life-and-the-future-of-humanity/

The EWP Podcast credits

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD grad)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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“Truth is a Pathless Land”: Krishnamurti and Revolutionary Spirituality with Connie Jones

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, “Truth is a Pathless Land,” we speak with Transformative Inquiry Program faculty member Connie Jones to explore the micropolitical stakes of revolutionary spirituality through Krishnamurti’s challenge to religious prescription, psychological conditioning, and egoic identification. We discuss techniqueless meditation, the primacy of awareness over truth, and the distinction between perception and cognition as a path beyond the representational mind. Our conversation engages the unknown as the ground of creativity and examines how culturally conditioned individualism is challenged by non-dual insights. We also explore Bohmian Dialogue as a transformative practice aligned with Krishnamurti’s vision—an open, non-hierarchical mode of collective inquiry that suspends judgment and cultivates shared attention. Through this lens, we consider how his praxis opens onto a micro-political awareness capable of generating new forms of being and transformation beyond all systems of conditioning.

Connie Jones, Ph.D., is a sociologist of religion who joined CIIS in 1994, having taught at several colleges and theology schools. Beginning with her doctoral dissertation on the caste system in India, she has pursued a long interest in the cultures and religions of the East, including the adoption of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and practices in the West. She researches spiritual teachers as well as the evolution of new religious movements around the world. Throughout her career in higher education, she has helped establish women’s studies departments and curricula in several colleges and has published research on women’s status in India and feminist methods. She has been a member of a multidisciplinary team of scholars that investigates new religious movements around the world and has published articles on movements that are based on Eastern religious belief and practice. At present, Constance has a book, Krishnamurti: Self-Inquiry, Awakening, and Transformation, in press with Cambridge University Press. In this volume she outlines the life and teaching of the enigmatic 20th century philosopher and teacher J. Krishnamurti. She serves in scholarly positions with the Gurdjieff Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man (2017- present) Tbilisi, Georgia and the Publications Committee of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America (2018-present), Ojai, California.

Books:

Encyclopedia of Hinduism

Contemplative Literature

The EWP Podcast credits

• Connect with EWP: Youtube • Facebook

• Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD grad)

• Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay

• Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

• Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala

• Music at the end of the episode: Tundra Immanence (blowing meditation)

• Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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A Search for Wholeness – Integral Aspirations, Reflections, and Intersections of the Scholar-Practitioner

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In this 50th episode, your hosts, Jonathan Kay and Stephen Julich, reflect on the intersections that shape the evolving path of the scholar-practitioner. This episode traces a search for wholeness through three vital crossings:

• the intersection of thinking and doing, where lived practice challenges the silos of classical knowledge production;
the intersection of the arts and knowledge-making, where expression becomes a mode of inquiry;
and the intersection of soul, creativity, and contemplative introspection, where inner life becomes central to how we know, make, and become.

We reflecting upon the themes from the last 49 episode through the central framework of the East-West Psychology Department; East–West–Earth–World and how they have lead us to better understand the scholar-practitioner model. We explore the limitations of classical knowledge production and the possibilities that emerge when we embrace a holistic approach to co-creative and participatory inquiry. We discuss how the scholar-practitioner is not a hybrid figure balancing roles—but a generative and integral site where research, art, and spirit converge. We ask: How might the humanities begin to embody the kind of quantum paradigm shift that physics once underwent? What forms of cultural practice and shared transformation emerge when we no longer separate thinking from being, or knowledge from soul? This episode is a 50th episode celebration of crossing thresholds—between disciplines, between inner and outer, and toward an integral vision of scholarship attuned to both the whole and the parts.

The EWP Podcast credits

Connect with EWP: Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD grad)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Sound-Space Entanglement (4x+1), by Jonathan Kay
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Tantra, Religious Studies, Methodology and the Practitioner-Scholar Turn

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0000

In this podcast we meet CIIS faculty member Sundari Johansen and speak about how her academic background in religious studies informs the critical perspective and frameworks she brings into her course on Hindu Tantra. We discuss research as deep listening and self-transformation, and get into the problems of traditional western ethnographic methodologies based upon the distinction between the insider and outsider. Sundari also shares why she was lead to invert the scholar-practitioner model into the practitioner-scholar model as a way of problematizing and making productive the entangledness of subjective engagement in the subject of one’s study. We end by taking a deep dive into her paper titled, (In)conspicuous Consumption: Food, the Child Body, and Inversion of Hard-Core Rituals in Hindu Tantras.

Sundari Johansen Hurwitt, PhD, specializes in gender, the body, ritual, power, and secrecy in religion. While her interest in these themes encompasses a variety of religious traditions, her research work currently focuses on ritual studies in South Asia, especially Hinduism, Śāktism (goddess-focused Hindu traditions) and Tantra in India. A practitioner and scholar, Dr. Johansen comparatively explores representations of the young female in the Tantric literature of Bengal and the Northeast as well as in the living Tantric traditions of Northeast India, using extensive textual research and in-depth ethnographic fieldwork.

Her dissertation, “The Voracious Virgin: The Concept and Worship of the Kumārī in Kaula Tantrism” (CIIS, 2019) is the first comprehensive study of the kumārī (pre-menarche virgin girls worshipped as goddesses) in India. She is particularly interested in representations of gender and the body in late medieval and early modern Tantric texts, the development of Tantrism in Bengal and the northeast, and in continuities and differences between textual and modern living traditions. Her work is deeply rooted in post-colonial and decolonial, transnational, feminist, and integrative philosophies, as well as exploration of non-Western philosophical and theoretical traditions. Dr. Johansen is a strong proponent of integral feminist pedagogies and research methods and interested in furthering the development of immersive, cooperative, and collaborative educational models in online education.

During her dissertation fieldwork in Assam, Dr. Johansen assisted in the development of a library and digital archive with the Foundation for History and Heritage Studies at Kāmākhyā Dhām in Guwahati, which was established to preserve endangered manuscripts and other documentation from the local community at the Kāmākhyā temple complex. Part of this work included video and audio documentation of local women’s devotional music, as well as assistance with digital restoration of archival materials. Dr. Johansen received an MA and PhD in Philosophy and Religion with a concentration in Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her research has received support from the American Institute of Indian Studies.

The EWP Podcast credits

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Rise from Justin Gray’s Synthesis
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Spiritual Activism, Liberation Magic, and the Great Mystery with Lou Florez

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0000

Today we speak with Lou Florez about his life as a diviner and metaphysical reader who facilitates spiritual connectivity and transformational empowerment throughout his myriad roles as a Priest, lecturer, author, medicine maker, and activist. We speak about afro-carribean diasporic magical traditions and the problems of their systemic exclusion in the Euro-Western knowledge academy. Lou speaks of the importance of unknown, called the great mystery in world wisdom traditions, and we go on to discuss this in relation to the transformative powers of the arts, specifically music, and how the embodiment of this mystery can become a liberatory and revolutionary practice. We share magical stories and end by talking about the fundamentals of cleansing practices from Lou’s most recent book The Modern Art of Brujería: A Beginner’s Guide to Spellcraft, Medicine Making, and Other Traditions of the Global South (Ulysses Press, 2022).

Lou Florez (Awo Ifadunsin) is a diviner and metaphysical reader who facilitates spiritual connectivity and transformational empowerment throughout his myriad roles as a Priest, lecturer, author, medicine maker, and activist. His work is inherently interdisciplinary and intersectional—bridging the fields of herbalism, ecology, divination, poetry, psychology, religious studies, gender and sexual studies, mixed-media art, and perfumery. Lou investigates the emanating Spirit present within all these fields and incorporates them into experiences that activate the Spirit within.

Lou is the cofounder and executive director of Water Has No Enemy (WHNE), a nonprofit committed to healing justice. WHNE seeks to honor the timeless and enduring indigenous wisdom stolen from communities of color through centuries of slavery, colonization, and institutionalized oppression and reclaim it for today’s world. The organization offers a collaborative space for changemakers to explore healing justice because we believe that true healing occurs at all levels—from the individual and social levels to our relationship to the natural world. We promote services and programming that intersectionally addresses social change, community activism, and transformation through indigenous, Yoruba, and African diasporic perspectives.

The EWP Podcast credits

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: New Horizons by Justin Gray’s Synthesis
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Liminal Objects of Attraction

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet Krysti Keener, a student in the East-West Psychology/MFA Masters Program, and hear of how she came to cultivate a transformative and healing artistic practice through opening to the liminal power of found objects. We discuss the problem of how we conventionally frame artistic practice and identity in relation to the culture industries and share strategies of exit which aim to liberate the practitioner from artistic labour to artistic transformation. We discuss how such a change of milieu based upon spiritual and holistic world views can produce new forms of creativity and subjectivity which facilitate individual and collective transformation and wellbeing. Krysti ends the podcast by sharing her current EWP community building project based upon creating an artist in residency program for people with traumatic brain injuries.

Bio: Krysti Keener’s life changed instantly when she suffered a traumatic brain injury in her late forties. A portal opened, and her art practice slowly developed as her brain healed. She is the Founder and Executive Director of The Neuro: Community, Artist Residency & Mentorship, a non-profit founded to support the flourishing of neuro-disrupted individuals by providing services that connect them to community, art, and nature, with an emphasis on integrating these aspects into their lives. She is an artist, Spiritual Herbalist, founder of the herbal brand Soul Topophilia, hypnosis practitioner, and Hakomi certified coach working with people whose lives have been upended. She holds a dual MBA from Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a student at CIIS in the joint Masters degree program in East-West Psychology and an MFA.

Website: https://www.theneurocommunity.org/
Substack: https://theneurocommunity.substack.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/theneurocommunity/

Connect with Krysti:

email: krysti@theneurocommunity.org - The Neuro: Community, Artist Residency & Mentorship
https://www.instagram.com/krystik/ IG - Art and Soul Topophilia
http://www.krystikeener.com/ - Art
https://www.ohk.agency/ - Coaching and Soul Topophilia

Teachers Mentioned:

Empress Karen Rose - Sacred Vibes Apothecary Founder, Master Herbalist and Author
Michelle Greene - Welder, Artist, Art and Welding Educator

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Migration by Justin Gray’s Synthesis
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Consciousness Studies Beyond Disciplines: The Metaphysics of Transdisciplinarity

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:00:00 -0000

In this podcast we meet Matt Segall, core faculty in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness Program at CIIS. We discuss the need for new methods of research beyond the limits of siloed disciplines producing interdisciplinary knowledge. In research, Matt speaks of the importance of disclosing one’s own metaphysical groundings and epistemological assumptions in order to build frameworks of transdisciplinary engagement, which are spaces of discovery, creation and the invention of new concepts and languages. We also speak about Carl Jung, Rudolf Steiner relations to transdisciplinary pedagogy and end by discussing Matt’s new book Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead.

Matthew D. Segall, Ph.D, is a transdisciplinary researcher who teaches courses applying process-relational philosophy across various disciplines, including religious studies, philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind, and social and political theory. He has published on these and a wide range of other topics, including German idealism, the philosophy of time, psychedelics, theoretical biology, architecture, and media theory.

Publications:

The EWP Podcast credits:

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Expansion, on the album Experiments of Truth, by Kayos Theory
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Earth-bound Spirituality, the Ethics of Care, and Indigenous Song as Medicine

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0000

Today we speak to East-West Psychology adjunct faculty Susana Bustos, about growing up in Chile and how her roots in music and psychology lead her to study music therapy. We then discuss how South American Indigenous healing practices can be considered as a forms of earth-bound spirituality, and how that gives rise to alternative notions of relationality bound by a local ethics of care. Susana speaks about plant medicine as psycho-integrators and we discuss the importance of integration in Indigenous healing practices. The discussion ends developing ideas about sonic ecology in which Susana shares an experience of singing as mystical encounter with sentience, and we explore immanent approaches to learning the ethics of cross-cultural confluence through deep listening.

Susana Bustos, Ph.D. (CIIS, 2008), M.A in Clinical Psychology and in Music Therapy from Chilean universities, is adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and other schools in the Bay Area and abroad. Susana also conducts independent research on entheogenic shamanic traditions of the Americas and holds a private practice in Berkeley, CA. Her teaching, research, and clinical work focus mainly on the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness, their integration into ordinary life, and on the quest for adequately bridging Amerindian cosmologies and practices into the West. Susana has written articles and book contributions on the interphase of shamanic song and healing and on entheogenic integration, and she lectures internationally on these topics. She directed the Spiritual Emergence Network in the US between 2016 and 2020.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Magic Stones, on the album Forest Dwellers by Jonathan Kay and Andrew Kay
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Polyphonic Becoming: Creative Spirituality, the Arts, and the Essence of Freedom in Education

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 08:00:00 -0000

In this podcast we meet CIIS student Lucian Dante Lazar to discuss his research at the intersections of spirituality and the arts, aiming towards the cultivation of a holistic science of creative becoming inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. We discuss esoteric approaches towards a pedagogy of creative education based upon experimental methods of radical freedom and epistemologies of spiritual identity.

Lucien Dante Lazar (b. June 24th, 1994 in Evanston, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist whose praxis is founded in the intersections of art, science, and spirituality. He received his BA from Bard College (2016), his MFA from California College of the Arts (2020), and is currently working on his PhD in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies. His dissertation will concern the pedagogy of spiritual development through the diversity of the arts. Art, for Lucien Dante Lazar, is a deeply introspective and spiritual process. As a result, his work is both intimate and universal, both for the individual human being as well as for humanity as a whole. His paintings, music, sculptures, poetry, prose, as well as his interpersonal creative therapies are opportunities for healing and profound, transformative reflection. “My ultimate goal as an artist is to discover, through art, the meaning of the human being, and through this creative process, to encounter and cultivate the reality of freedom.” Lazar said. “For me, an artwork may be witnessed as a being born of, and in service to, the development of human consciousness. The more a work of art is imbued with the wide awake consciousness of humanity, the more it is capable of inviting the human being who witnesses it into a sense of one's own universality.” Lazar utilizes many mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, and a plethora of fiber arts. He also works as a poet, an essayist, and a multi-disciplinary musician. Additionally, Lazar incorporates various therapeutic healing modalities and meditative practices into his work, which he describes under the term spiritual bodywork. Each individual work of art Lazar creates lives within this multi-dimensional creative context.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Other music by Lucien Dante Lazar: Center of the Flute, 12 Apostles
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Bodies of Culture: Introducing the Center for Black and Indigenous Praxis with Preston Vargas and Deanna Jimenez

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet Preston Vargas, the director of the Center for Black and Indigenous Praxis, and Deanna Jimenez, Assistant Professor in the Somatic Psychology Department and head of the Emerging Black Clinician Fellowship. We discuss strategies of navigating white academic space as a black scholar, the notion of bodies of culture, the importance of Afrocentric Healing modalities, scholar-activism, the importance of arts, as well some fundamental ideas in the emerging field of Black Psychology.

Preston Varvas earned an M.A. in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness as well as a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies from CIIS. He also worked at CIIS as a Teaching Fellow. Preston joins us from the San Francisco Aids Foundation, where he was the Senior Director, Community Partnerships & Engagement. We are thrilled that he will be coming on board to establish the CBIP as a hub for Black and Indigenous thought, wisdoms, and ways of being.

Preston carries the blessings, wisdoms, and joys of his ancestors. He was born from the land of his grandmother's ancestral Wampanoag people. It is a place where his liberated Black ancestors found family and home with the local Indigenous communities. It is also the land where his mother's Cape Verdean immigrant ancestors cultivated cranberry bogs and blueberry bushes amidst deciduous forests. Though he lives on the Pacific coast, Preston honors his ancestors, the land-water spirits of Massachusetts who periodically draw him back home.

Deanna Jimenez is a somatic/transpersonal psychotherapist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is Assistant Professor in the Somatic Psychology Department at California Institute of Integral Studies and has a private practice supporting individuals, couples, and organizations.

Her clinical work is centered in the dialogue of mental health as it intersects with race, culture, and spirituality. She received a B.A. in International Relations from UC Berkeley studying the efficacy of conflict resolution and cultural awareness in the international workplace. Following a career in corporate and non-profit fields, Deanna received her M.A. from JFK University in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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African Cosmologies with Dr. Butterfly

Sat, 11 May 2024 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we speak with EWP adjunct professor Dr. Butterfly, along with students, Tayina Fenelus and Cameron Rice, who both took his class on African Cosmologies last semester. We speak of intergenerational transfer of knowledge in African traditions, and other important ideas in African cosmologies such as consubstantiation, ritual, story and song, and practices of divination. Dr. Butterfly shares his views on how African cosmologies can “help one rediscover ways in which one can be soulfully attached, reconnected, and participating in activities that enrich our lives, give them meaning, and restore value to kinds of relationships to each other.”

Anthony “Butterfly” Williams, MFA, PhD, (we/us) is the Executive Director of Iruke Institute International. Dr. Butterfly is a cultural alchemist whose work manifests in performance art, community organizing, and transformative education. He is an expert on the decolonization of culture through the arts. Creativity, compassion and collaboration inspire the transformation of self and society that he calls “the work.” Dr. Butterfly is a thought leader who has presented papers, lectures, workshops and symposia on creativity, culture and spirituality in academic, professional and community settings, including the U.C. Berkeley School of Social Welfare, the American Psychological Association, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, among others.

Dr. Butterfly is a community builder who has designed and produced arts-based community events on men’s healing, African-centered psychology, creative leadership, police brutality, affordable housing and gay literature. His community-based collaborations include projects with Community Housing Partnership, Bayview Association for Youth, Center for Political Education, and Urban Healers, among others. Dr. Butterfly is a multimedia performance artist who has directed or acted in numerous theater productions, including original multimedia works about mass incarceration, Blaxploitation films, and the writer James Baldwin. He sings live in art galleries, where he exhibits music videos that feature his psychedelic art pop band OLOKUN. His performances have also been presented at Herbst Theater, Bayview Opera House, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the San Francisco International Arts Festival, among others.

Contact: awilliams1@ciis.edu

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Dusk-Dawn Suite, by The Coltrane Sutras
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Art Practice as Research, Creative Pathways and New Directions between East-WestPsychology and the MFA at CIIS

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we speak to Cindy Shearer, head of the MFA, and Debashish Banerji, chair of East-West Psychology about how their ideas on the vision of interdisciplinary education and creative scholarship lead them to create joint EWP and MFA degrees, as well as creative pathway dissertation track. We speak about transdisciplinary methods of arts-based research from the perspective of a scholar-artist, and the importance of art-making in forming new approaches to academic inquiry, practice, and research.

Joint EWP/MFA Degrees and Creative Pathway Dissertation

Cindy Shearer, DA, is the founding director for the MFA programs at CIIS. She serves as Department Chair for Interdisciplinary Arts and Professor in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing. She also chairs the PhD in Integral Transpersonal Psychology. A writer, text/image artist, and curator, she practices and teaches writing as art, a process she writes “reconfigures the boundaries of writing and visual art.” She created Ten Not-So-Tangible Tools for Writers, a meditation on the writing process in text and image. Cindy has also worked extensively in program development and curriculum design and as a developmental editor, consultant, and writing coach.

Debashish Banerji is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Program Chair for the East-West Psychology department. Previously, he was the Professor of Indian Studies and Dean of Academics at the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles. He holds the Aurobindo Puraskar Award for international excellence in Sri Aurobindo studies from the Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Kolkata (2017) and the Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM) Book Award for Constructive Philosophy. Recent books include Meditations on the Isha Upanishad: Tracing the Philosophical Vision of Sri Aurobindo (Pink Integer Books, 2020) and Philo-Sophia: Wisdom Goddess Traditions (Lotus Press, 2021), co-edited with CIIS emeritus President, Robert McDermott. More updated information on his talks, publications and other academic activities may be found at his website www.debashishbanerji.com.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: breathing space, by Lopez/Kay/Wick, released on Monsoon-Music Online Record Label
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Order and Disorder in South Asia with Christopher Chapple and Debashish Banerji

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 09:00:00 -0000

This episode is dedicated to introducing the South Asian Studies Association (SASA) and their annual academic conference being co-hosted by the Asian Contemplative and Transcultural Studies Concentration (ACTS) being held at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) on March 1st-3rd, 2024. We are joined by Chris Chapple, the president of SASA, and Debashish Banerji, board member of SASA, as well as the chair of ACTS, who describe this years hybrid, in-person and online, conference, which is called Order and Disorder in South Asia. We also discuss Chris’s new book, Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas, as well as scholar-practitioner approaches to South Asian Studies.

Conference Information

Join us for the Order and Disorder in South Asia conference, where leading experts and scholars will explore the delicate balance between stability and chaos in one of the world’s most diverse and dynamic regions. Delve into the historical, political, and socio-cultural complexities that have shaped South Asia, examining the forces that foster order and those that disrupt it. Gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing this vibrant part of the world. This conference promises to be a thought-provoking journey through the fascinating tapestry called South Asia.

You can register here.

Christopher Key Chapple is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and founding Director of the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A specialist in the religions of India, he has published more than twenty books, including the recent Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas (SUNY Press). He serves as advisor to multiple organizations including the Forum on Religion and Ecology (Yale), the Ahimsa Center (Pomona), the Dharma Academy of North America (Berkeley), the Jain Studies Centre (SOAS, London), the South Asian Studies Association, and the International School for Jain Studies (New Delhi).

EWP Podcast Credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD candidate)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Migration, by Justin Gray’s Synthesis on Monsoon-Music Online Record Label
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Cultivating Contemplative Civilization and a New Civilization of Love and Ahimsa (Non-Violence)

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 09:00:00 -0000

This episode we speak with Dr. Ananta Giri Kumar, a professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, who was recently a guest speaker at the conference hosted at CIIS called Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization: The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo. We will be joined by Hemalatha Swaminathan, an EWP Phd student, to discuss with Ananta his presentation topic at the conference titled, Cultivating Contemplative Civilization and a New Civilization of Love and Ahimsa.

Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. He has been a Visiting Professor and Researcher at many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of philosophy and literature. Professor Giri has written and edited around two dozen books in Odia and English.

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
East-West Psychology Credits
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Eventide, by Justin Gray’s Synthesis on Monsoon-Music Online Record Label
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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The Emergence of Integral Consciousness and Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:00:00 -0000

This is a special podcast to introduce two upcoming sister conferences at California Institute of Integral Studies this September, to celebrate 150 Years of Sri Aurobindo, the pioneer of Integral Consciousness. The first conference is organized by the East-West Psychology Department (EWP) and the Asian Contemplative and Transcultural Studies concentration (ACTS) called Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization: The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo. The second conference is organized by the Jean Gebser Society called, The Emergence of Integral Consciousness: Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, Carl Jung, Teilhard De Chardain. Stephen and I will speak to the conference organizers Debashish Banerji, and Glenn Aparicio Parry, about the conferences and emergence of an integral consciousness in the work and vision of Sri Aurobindo and Gebser and specially why it is important in todays world.

Conferences Overview and Registration
The Jean Gebser Society website
East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Unity, by Justin Gray’s Synthesis on Monsoon-Music Online Record Label
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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The Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0000

In this episode we speak with Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness core faculty, Jack Bagby about his engagement with the philosophy of music, from Socrates, to Schopenhauer, and Bergson. We discuss Jack’s recent PCC class called The Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul and dive into the complex ideas of these thinkers regarding the transformative powers of music. Jack explains how the ancient Greek’s developed a complex set of tuning systems and alternative temperaments with powerful attributes and psychic properties, in which one can attune themselves to through the development of an affective psychology. Jack, and myself have been experimenting composing and improvising in these these modes and we share 3 pieces based on ancient Greek modes.

PCC Forum with Jack Bagby: Tuning, Caring for, and Recollecting the Soul in Socrates' Swansongs

Musical Compositions in the Episode by Jack Bagby and Jonathan Kay

1. A Paean of Apollo the Healer in Archytas' Dorian Diatonic

2. Ptolemy soft diatonic

3. A prelude to the compromises of universality. Ptolemy's Even Diatonic

John (Jack) Bagby received his PhD. in philosophy from Boston College in 2021, and a B.A. in philosophy and ancient Greek language, from the Pennsylvania State University in 2013. Professor Bagby conducts research on the history of philosophy, focusing on problems related to consciousness, nature, and evolution. He has published in Epoché and Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, on ancient Greek philosophy and phenomenology (especially Henri Bergson) and has strong research interests in Baruch Spinoza, 19th-20th century European philosophy, process philosophy, philosophy of music, and aesthetics. He is currently working on a translation of Bergson's 1902-3 Lectures at the Collège de France The History of The Idea of Time (Bloomsbury Press), and finishing up the manuscript of his monograph Integrals of Experience: Aristotle and Bergson. When thinking about complex concepts or solving textual problems, Jack loves to construct diagrams and concept maps. Between 2016-2018 he combined his love for creating visualizations with his love of Spinoza to create a website that maps the complex textual citations used in his magnum opus, the Ethics.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Contemplative Psychotherapy: Intersections of Science, Spirituality and Buddhism

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet Joseph Loizzo, MD, PhD, who is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar with over forty years’ experience studying the beneficial effects of contemplative practices on healing, learning and development. Joe shares his story of founding the Nalanda Institute, in NYC, as an intersection between contemplative approaches from Buddhism, Psychology and Psychotherapy. The discussion focuses on the benefits and challenges of the practitioner model and Joe shares his approaches to rigorous engagement between his training as an MD and his practice in the Tantric Buddhist tradition. The discussion turns to cross-cultural research frameworks and we discuss his article, "Contemplative Psychotherapy," which is the introduction to a new volume he is the editor of called, Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Healing and Transformation (Routledge, 2023). In this article Joe speaks of the central importance of transformation of the body and how it can be beneficial to start approaching the idea of embodiment through the principals of spaciousness and light, based upon the Buddhist notions of the subtle bodies.

Joseph (Joe) Loizzo is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he researches and teaches contemplative self-healing and optimal health. He has taught the philosophy of science and religion, the scientific study of contemplative states, and the Indo-Tibetan mind and health sciences at Columbia University, where he is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies.

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Music at the end of the episode: Eventide, by Justin Gray and Synthesis, released on Monsoon-Music Online Record Community
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Inside the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Integral Education, and the Politics of Spiritual Anarchy (Part 2)

Mon, 15 May 2023 08:00:00 -0000

This episode is a continuation of our conversation with ACTS student Devdip Ganguli. We discuss principals and politics of spiritual anarchy and Devdip speaks about Peter Heehs’ controversial book “The Lives of Sri Aurobindo”. Devdip discusses a new book he edited called “Reading Sri Aurobindo”, and also shares his academic projects related to Sri Aurobindo with universities in India, China, and now France. We next explore the life and transcultural work of Chinese scholar-practitioner-artist Hu Hsu, who lived in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for 27 years, and the conversation ends with Devdip sharing his transformative experiences with senior sadhaks in the Ashram community.

Devdip Ganguli teaches undergraduate students at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, where he offers courses on the social and political philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, as well as on ancient Indian history, art and culture. He is frequently invited to speak in universities in India and abroad on topics related to Sri Aurobindo’s writings. He also works in one of the administrative departments of Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

“Reading Sri Aurobindo” available here.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Reflections, by Justin Gray and Synthesis, released on Monsoon-Music Onkine Record Community
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Inside the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Integral Education, and the Politics of Spiritual Anarchy (Part 1)

Mon, 08 May 2023 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we meet ACTS student Devdip Ganguli and learn about his upbringing in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Devdip discusses his experiences growing up in an intentional yogic community and shares his perspectives on integral education, as both a student growing up in the ashram school, and as a teacher in the school for over a decade . This episode, which is the first part of our conversation, ends discussing the differences and similarities between the Ashram in Pondicherry, and Auroville, a close by experimental spiritual township founded on the principals of spiritual anarchy by the Mother in 1968.

“Reading Sri Aurobindo” available here.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: New Horizons, by Justin Gray and Synthesis, released on Monsoon-Music Online Record Label.
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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How to Manifest a Posthuman Existence not only in Theory, but in Practice?

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 08:00:00 -0000

This episode is a continuation from our previous reading of Francesca Ferrando’s new text Existential Posthumanism: A Manifesto. We will take a deep dive into unpacking this text section by section, discussing it’s the main questions:

When did existential posthumanism arise?
What is existential posthumanism?
How to enact existential posthumanism?
What is the difference between spirituality and existential posthumanism?

We will also address the importance of introducing posthumanist approaches to pedagogy in institutions like CIIS.

Dr. Ferrando (pronouns: they/them) teaches Philosophy at New York University (US), NYU-Program of Liberal Studies, as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. Dr. Ferrando holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (University of Roma Tre, Italy), to which the European Doctoral Fellowship was granted. They received an M.A. in Gender Studies (Utrecht University, Holland), Director of the Program: Prof. Rosi Braidotti. Dr. Ferrando was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University (US) twice, and an Independent Researcher at the University of Reading (England), working on Cyborg Theory with Prof. Kevin Warwick. Recipient of the Philosophical Prize "Premio Sainati", with the Acknowledgment of the President of the Italian Republic, Dr. Ferrando is the author of several publications; their latest book is Philosophical Posthumanism (Bloomsbury). Their work has been translated into a dozen languages, including (in alphabetic order): Chinese, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Spanish and Urdu. Dr. Ferrando is the Founder of the Global Posthuman Network. In the history of TED talks, they were the first speaker to give a talk on the subject of the posthuman.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: tundra immanence (blowing meditation), on the album becoming - song: contemplative transnomadic sono - fictioning, by Jonathan Kay
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Arts-Based Collective Reading of Existential Posthumanism: A Manifesto with Francesca Ferrando

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 08:00:00 -0000

Today’s podcast features a collective reading of Francesca Ferrando’s new text Existential Posthumanism: A Manifesto. It is set to a drone instrument called a sound bed, made up on a hundred strings, with live musical interludes played on the esraj by myself. The podcast ends with my own transcultural re-imagination of the jazz standard Nature Boy. In the next episode of the podcast we take a deep dive in unpacking this text with Francesca.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Music at the beginning and end of the episode: Nature Boy, from the album becoming - song: contemplative transnomadic sono - fictioning, by Jonathan Kay
Music clips throughout the episode by Jonathan Kay, played on the esraj (Indian stringed instrument)
Sound Bed audio recording generously provided by Aurelio from Svaram, Auroville, South India.
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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The Supramental Ship and Mothership Earth Conference

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:00:00 -0000

In episode 27, we met Dr. Sangeeta Sahi and discussed her innovative approaches to integrative health and wholeness, focusing on the individual. In this episode we extend the scope of the conversation to social, cultural and cosmic perspectives of integral evolution and spirituality. Sangeeta shares a visionary yogic experience by Mirra Alfassa, known as the Mother to devotees of Integral Yoga, of a supramental ship which comes to earth to expedite the evolutionary process of the spiritualization of material substance. Inspired by this, Sangeeta has organized a conference called the Mothership Summit, which is an experiment in designing a new planetary narrative, and will be featuring world leading scholars in integral theory and evolutionary spirituality. We collectively discuss themes to be covered in this summit and focus in on the importance of spiritual technologies of cultivating yogic equanimity, acceptance, receptivity and sincerity. Rather than being a passive vessel of divinity, we discuss the narrative of becoming an active participant and co-creator in the emergence of a supramental evolution and divinization of the earth and world.

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
The East-West Psychology Podcast credits
Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: The Great Mandala, by Monsoon, from their album Live at the Toronto Indo-Jazz Festival

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Towards the Integral Pluralism of Vijnana Vedanta through the lineage of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 05:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet Swami Medhananda, ordained monk in the order of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. He is also an extremely well respected scholar working in the fields of cross-cultural philosophy and religious studies. Medhananda shares about his background as a cultural Indian born in the USA, and the journey which led him to become a monk and live in India for over a decade . We discuss his approach to the scholar-practitioner model of academic research and the challenges of bringing together spiritual commitment with academic rigor. The conversation then focuses on material from Medhananda’s book “Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion”, which argues for a rigorous religious and salvific pluralism which can avoid the pitfalls of relativism if it is based on a doctrinal inclusivism. The conversation turns to explore the lineage of vijnana vedanta, based upon Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo’s engagement with an integral theology in which the Divine is personal and impersonal, transcendent and immanent. We discuss the implications of such a paradoxical approach to the Divine, and its importance in cultivating pluralism in our contemporary times.

Swami Medhananda (Ayon Maharaj) is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. He also serves as Hindu Religious Director at the University of Southern California and as Section Editor for the International Journal of Hindu Studies (Springer), overseeing submissions in Hindu and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. From 2010 to 2021, he was Associate Professor and Head of the Program in Philosophy at the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute in Belur Math, West Bengal. His current research focuses on global philosophy of religion, cosmopolitan approaches to consciousness, Indian scriptural hermeneutics, and Vedāntic philosophical traditions, especially the philosophies of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo.

Publications: Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press, 2022; South Asian edition now available at Amazon.in), Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), and The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (Bloomsbury, 2013).

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP core faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

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ID: Identity Dialogues with Debashish Banerji and Leslie Combs

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 09:00:00 -0000

Understanding theories and notions of identity, self-making, personhood, transpersonal relationality between self and other, self and cosmos, are questions of central importance to the East-West Psychology department. Throughout history, cultures have come to define themselves through unique approaches to cultivating subjective knowledge as well as constructing shared structures of collective experience. Yet, in the intensifying and accelerating conditions of global digital capitalism, corporate data-mining and dawn of AI, the question of identity is of more importance then ever and how we grapple with these questions will deeply influence the quality of life for generations to come. EWP approaches these questions through the 4 cardinal points of our discourse community; East, West, Earth and World, which brings together Western notions of individuation and the psyche from Jungian Depth Psychology, Eastern notions of the soul and the Eternal Self, Earth-based and animistic understandings of the all-pervading spirit, and contemporary critical understandings based on posthuman possibilities of new futures. Delving into this rich topic in her studies in the EWP MA program, Dana Lichtstrahl hosts a conversation between two CIIS professors, Debashish Banerji and Leslie Combs, for a special edition of the podcast.

Introduction to ID: Identity Dialogues by host Dana Lichtstrahl, EWP MA Student

Information is serious business. We buy it and sell it daily. It’s what we start to accrue in this social reality when we come from the womb. Meaning is made from information, specifically, who we understand ourselves to be—in relation to all that’s here. Our understanding of our “identity” can drive our psychology, emotion and action. And, since information and knowledge is perpetually changing, our identity understanding may change too.

The Identity Dialogue Roundtable podcast is in hot pursuit of how information—new and ancient—might change who we believe we are. Identity Dialogue explores, gives voice to, and asks, “How does the information today’s guests offer, inform me of my identity, and does this effect my current identity understanding, and therefore, my life experience?

Dana Lichtstrahl, whose interest in identity set her in motion to apply to CIIS’ EWP MA program to learn more.

Allan Leslie Combs, PhD, is a consciousness researcher, neuropsychologist, author, and systems theorist at The California Institute of Integral Studies where he is the Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies.

Debashish Banerji, PhD, is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook

Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP core faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay

Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala

Music at the end of the episode:

Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Postcolonial and Posthuman World-Making: Introducing Asian Contemplative and Transcultural Studies (ACTS)

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 09:00:00 -0000

In this episode we speak with East-West Psychology chair Debashish Banerji to discuss the foundations of a new concentration in the EWP department titled Asian Contemplative and Transcultural Studies (ACTS). Debashish shares his vision of a postcolonial pedagogy in which to ground this discourse, and we discuss how this concentration can situate academic and creative approaches to posthuman world-making. He shares the importance of understanding Asian contemplative traditions in critical relationships to the forces of western globalization and neoliberal capitalism which overdetermine Asian cultures through unconscious structures such as orientalist essentialization, reduction, and projection. Debashish illustrates this idea by describing how a western understanding of Yoga asana within the holistic health and well-being culture industry has been largely appropriated, co-oped by capital, and deterritorialized from its historical roots in which Indian yogasana was initially a micro-political praxis of subjective freedom and self-making based on the goals of anti-colonialist struggles. We ask how the potentials and traces of previous cultural renaissances and revolutions can productively aid in an aspiration to build a new posthuman habitus while avoiding the dangers of being folded back into dependance upon regimes of capital. Debashish speaks of the importance of the arts in ACTS, and shares how the arts can provide affective experiences which can open one to new liminal languages and performative and experimental concepts which can aid in psycho-cosmological world-making.

Debashish Banerji is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is also the Program Chair for the East-West Psychology department. Prior to CIIS, he served as Professor of Indian Studies and Dean of Academics at the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles. He has taught as adjunct faculty at the Pasadena City College, University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Irvine. His interests lie in postmodern, postcolonial and cross-cultural approaches to Indian philosophy, psychology and culture. Banerji has curated close to fifteen exhibitions of Indian and Japanese art. He has authored and edited around ten books and art catalogs on major figures of "the Bengal Renaissance" such as the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, the artist Abanindranath Tagore and the spiritual thinker Sri Aurobindo; on Critical Posthumanism, Yoga Psychology and on a variety of creative and art-related projects. His most recent books are Integral Yoga Psychology: Metaphysics and Transformation as Taught by Sri Aurobindo (Lotus Press, 2020) and Meditations on the Isha Upanishad: Tracing the Philosophical Vision of Sri Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo Samity and Maha Bodhi Publishers, 2019), and Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo (DK Printworld, 2012).

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook

Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay

Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala

Music at the end of the episode: Prologue: The Symbols Dawn & Canto One: Sages Creation, from the album Experiments of Truth, by Kayos Theory

Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Sri Aurobindo, the Psychic Being, and Integrative Medicine

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 05:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet Dr. Sangeeta Sahi, who during her medical training found that “scientifically unexplainable healing instances” lead her to formulate a framework called Integrative Medicine. Sangeeta shares how she arrived at the intersection of modern medicine and Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga to formulate alternative and holistic healing modalities. We start our discussion with a reading from Sri Aurobindo about idea of the evolutionary soul, called the psychic being, and discuss its central role in personality development, and its integral importance in the cultivation of holistic health. We discuss how one can experience Divine attributes and cosmic archetypes through cultivating yogic equanimity, and the possibilities of cultivating an intuitive knowing, as knowledge by identity, through bringing the psychic being forward in the heart center. We discuss holistic health in relation to the Buddha’s 4 noble truths, as well as how to integrally approaches other problems of our times, such as technology and the climate change crisis. The podcast concludes with Sangeeta speaking about the foundations and goals of her most recent project, the Unified Human Foundation.

Dr. Sangeeta Sahi is an Integrative Medical Doctor and Anti-aging Consultant, who graduated from the Christian Medical College in India, and Whipps Cross Hospital, London, UK. In addition, she received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from ESSEC in Paris, France. Dr. Sahi is a pioneering medical physician who combines her formal medical training with a host of dynamic complementary and alternative therapies in her practice of Integrative Medicine. She has created a specific program for individuals experiencing Cancer and autoimmune diseases using her particular integrated approach. This program is called Conscious Cancer®. Integrative Medicine reaffirms the importance of the relationship between the practitioner and patient, and emphasizes wellness and healing of the whole person. The physical, mental, social, spiritual, environmental, and other states of being are considered as primary goals. Conventional and Complementary Alternative Medical approaches are used to deliver the most comprehensive patient care. Dr. Sahi uses conventional and complementary alternative medical approaches to deliver the most appropriate and integral patient care. Individuals are made responsible and involved in their own health.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Ocean of Light by Jonathan Kay and Hania Luthufi, from the album Eternal Tides: A Musical Offering to the Oceans
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Faith Seeking Understanding: Scholar-Practitioner approaches to Theology, Religious Studies, and Symbols in Integral Transformation

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 09:00:00 -0000

In this episode we speak to Patrick Beldio, academic professor, sculptor, devotee of Mehar Baba and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, about the intersection of theology and religious studies in his work. We discuss the nuances of the scholar-practitioner model of scholarship and how one can approach an integral pedagogy from this perspective. Stephen and I read a chapter from Patrick’s upcoming book Mirra Alfassa: Divine Mother and Child of Tomorrow, titled Spiritual Dualite: Mirra’s Intellectual and Spiritual Influence on Sri Aurobindo, and we discuss with Patrick how he approached building a methodology for this work. The conversation explores the deep rooted Western influences in the formation of Integral Yoga and cross-cultural approaches to symbology in the Mother’s life. We end by briefly discussing Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s vision of the supramental manifestation and the transformation of the human into a radially new androgynous sexless being.

Patrick Beldio is a scholar of comparative religion and theology with a focus on Hindu-Christian studies, the Integral Yoga of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Meher Baba and the Chishti Sufi lineage in the West, and Franciscan Spirituality, with sub-interests in art, gender, and sustainability studies. His current book project is Mirra Alfassa: Mother & Child of the Divine of Tomorrow (working title), which critically analyzes the role and influence of Mirra (aka the Mother, 1878-1973) on the Integral Yoga that she and Aurobindo Ghose (aka Sri Aurobindo, 1872-1950) co-created. The book evaluates Mirra’s influence on Aurobindo’s spiritual practice and teaching and critically describes the nature of their relationship, intellectually and spiritually. It also focuses on how Aurobindo influenced Mirra’s teaching in Pondicherry, India and how she developed their yoga tradition after his passing and then explores her relevance today. Beldio is also a professional sacred artist with a studio at the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC. His sculptures are in private and public collections across the USA. www.reunionstudios.com

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website

Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook

Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay

Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala

Music at the end of the episode: Sound - Space Entanglement (4x + 1), from becoming - song: contemplative transnomadic sono - fictioning by Jonathan Kay

Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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"Thinking as Thanking”: From Original Thinking to Original Love with Glenn Aparicio Parry

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today, the podcast starts with a prayer from our guest, Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD (Humanities); East-West Psychology MA (both from CIIS), and now adjunct faculty at CIIS. Glenn speaks about his time as a student at CIIS in the 1980’s and shares ideas that have gone into his current EWP course Original Thinking: Land, Language, and Consciousness from East-West and Indigenous Perspectives. We discuss foundational cosmological, psychological and philosophical ideas from Glenn’s trilogy of books Original Thinking, Original Politics, and he reads from his forthcoming book Original Love. Glenn states that western thought places origin in a point in time, as in the temporal event of the Big Bang, while North American Indigenous thought identifies origin as a place, the latter being the eco-psychological basis of Glenn’s work. We discuss Glenn’s idea that “originally all thoughts were prayers” and ask how in contemporary times we can reconnect with the cosmogenesis of our culture as an unfolding spiritual journey of interconnectedness. The conversation goes deep, asking what our collective prayers are in contemporary times, grappling with how to overcome the shadow of modernity and colonialism, and begins to formulate holistic Indigenous and ecological models of how to create new future potentials.

Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, of Basque, Aragon Spanish, and Jewish descent, is an educator, ecopsychologist, and two-time Nautilus award winning author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) and Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Press, 2015) and is currently writing Original Love, the third book in the trilogy. The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently an adjunct faculty member of the California Institute of Integral Studies, the president of the think tank: Circle for Original Thinking www.originalthinking.us and the host of the Circle for Original Thinking podcast. Parry organized and participated in the groundbreaking Language of Spirit Conferences from 1999 – 2011 that brought together Native and Western scientists in dialogue, moderated by Leroy Little Bear.

Parry now regularly moderates dialogues for various organizations and has appeared in several documentaries, including SEEDing Change: A Retrospective of the Language of Spirit Dialogues and Journeying to Turtle Island, a biographic film exploring David Peat’s life and participation in the dialogue circles by Spanish filmmaker Miryam Servet. He is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys hiking and fly fishing. He writes from a fairly remote location in northern New Mexico, where he lives amid wild horses, coyote and mountain lion with his wife Tomoko, dog Momo, and cat Cappuccino.

East-West Psychology Podcast Website

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The EWP Podcast credits

Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay

Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala

Music at the end of the episode: Compassion, by Kelly Thoma, Marijia Katsouna, on the album Eternal Tides: A Musical Offering to the Oceans, Released on Monsoon-Music Records

Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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“Don’t follow leaders, watch your parking meters”

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 08:00:00 -0000

This episode features a monologue by Jim Ryan, long time California Institute of Integral Studies faculty, about his journey to India which inspired him to do a PhD in Tamil Literature. He describes his cross-cultural journey into the heart of the Tamil culture and language, and shares the experiences which brought him to teach at CIIS. Jim reflects on his time working at CIIS and shares how he thinks CIIS founder Haridas Chaudhuri cultivated a sustainable model for spiritual and integral education.

Jim Ryan received his Ph.D. (1985) in South Asian Literature (Tamil) from the University of California, Berkeley. He began teaching at CIIS in 1981, and became core faculty in 1986. He is the former Director of the Asian and Comparative Studies program in the Philosophy and Religion department. Jim’s general interests are in the culture, history, and philosophies of India. He is specifically interested in the various forms of Hindu tantra, particularly the Kashmir Shaiva traditions, the tradition of Sri Aurobindo, and the “modernized” tantra of Haridas Chaudhuri. A secondary interest is in Jainism and the historical interplay between the non-theistic philosophical traditions and Hinduism. He is currently working with G. Vijayavenugopal on the third volume of his complete translation of Cīvakacintāmaṇi: The Hero Cīvakaṉ, the Gem that Fulfills All Wishes, by Tiruttakkatēvar, the first time this highly revered 9th century Tamil epic has been translated into any language.

East-West Psychology Podcast Website

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Produced and Edited by: Jonathan Kay

Music at the end of the episode: Imagination I, by Eleftheria Daoultzi from the album Eternal Tides: A Musical Offering to the Oceans.

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Mandala of Individuation: An Integral Jungian Reinterpretation of Art History with Olena Provencher

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this podcast, we meet Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness Ph.D. Olena Provencher, who shares her journey from Russia to the USA and eventually being called to CIIS to pursue her unique vision to reinterpret her training in art history through a Jungian archetypal depth psychological lens. Olena is a painter and evolutionary thinker and describes her insights into how the Jungian notion of the mandala can help us reimagine artistic symbology through an integral psychological and philosophical framework. We discuss the philosophical lineage of Carl Jung and how Jung’s later thought helped Olena activate a change of vision in approaching art history through an archetypal vision of the structure of the psyche which emphasizes the importance of the integrative point at the center of the mandala representing the transformative potential of human consciousness. Olena then shares examples of her Jungian interpretation of historical artworks and myths according to the mandalic four-point structure, or quaternity, as a skeleton-key of sorts, that opens and illuminates a deeper, archetypal dimension of art, activating individuation and alchemical transformation. The conversation ends by discussing the place and role of art in the 21st century and discusses how art can help overturn the dominant paradigm of capital consumption. We speculate upon the future of art and how one can re-enchant our postmodern Western view of art, re-envisioning art as an integral vision of the human Soul, radically open to the infinite.

Olena (Olga) Provencher is a teacher, philosopher, depth psychologist, art history scholar, and artist. Born in Moscow, Russia, in 1967, Olena studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical University with a double major in painting and art history. In her Master’s thesis, she explored the idea of the mandala as the archetypal structure at the foundation of ancient artworks. After graduation, she worked as a senior lecturer at the Moscow Academy of teachers’ training and retraining and a middle school art teacher, while studying Russian philosophy and sophiology in the Academy’s Candidate of Science program until her immigration to the United States in 1999. She received her Master’s in philosophy from the University of North Florida, and a doctorate in philosophy and religion, with a concentration in philosophy, cosmology, and consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies. In her ongoing academic research, she works at the crossfield of art history and Jungian (Analytical) psychology. As a way to serve the community, she gives consultations as a Jungian Life coach. Olena lives in San Francisco, CA with her husband and younger son.

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Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Music end of episode: Chatur Vyuha (Four Emanations) - Contemporary Raga creation by Jonathan Kay from the album Early Evening Odyssey

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“What is a Word?”: Language Beyond Language, Wisdom Mind Poems, and Zen Koans with Gail Sher

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet Gail Sher, an award-winning poet, writer, teacher, psychotherapist, and Zen practitioner. We discuss Gail's cross-cultural spiritual and artistic life, including forty years of her Zen practice, the way of poetry, and more recently learning clawhammer banjo (she was a serious student of harpsichord before becoming a Zen student). The conversation discusses aspects of constructing a non-monastic contemplative lifestyle through conscious daily practice. Gail reads her late wisdom mind poem, The tethering of the mind to its five permanent qualities and we consider her writing practice as an exploration into the nature of what a word is, and how she has attempted to activate "language beyond language" in her poems.

Gail has authored over thirty books of poetry, six book-length haiku sequences, three books on writing as a practice and a book on bread-making. Her work has appeared in over 40 literary journals, and her haiku have won awards both in the United States and Japan. Gail received lay ordination from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1970. She practiced Zen at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and San Francisco City Center alternately for 11 years. She is also a licensed Marriage and Family therapist, and has taught and supervised students in the ICP program at CIIS. Gail is currently offering weekly dharma talks on Zen practice for lay people at gailsherdharmatalks.com

gailsher.com

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Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Music set to Gail's poem recitation, Yaksha, by Jonathan and Andrew Kay from the album Forest Dwellers, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

Music at the end of the episode Butoh, by Jonathan and Andrew Kay from the album Forest Dwellers, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Becoming-Animal, Primal Metaphysics, and Transdisciplinary Approaches to Scholar-Activism in the Environmental Humanities

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today we speak with Chantal Noa Forbes, PhD from the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Department at CIIS. Chantal talks about her roots growing up in South Africa and how attending film school led her to explore the intersection between ecology and religion, which emerged from a growing concern regarding the environmental crisis and the state of the world religions. Chantal discusses her transdisciplinary approaches to activism through the environmental humanities. She confronts epistemological challenges born from western categorizations of knowledge, such as differences between spirituality, religion, ecology, and anthropology. We discuss her dissertation on the San Bushman of South Africa, titled “The Primal Metaphysics of Becoming-Animal During the Chasing Hunt in the Kalahari Desert,” which grapples with these epistemological challenges by utilizing a synthetic framework that draws upon structural and poststructural approaches to the exploration of ontogenetic fluidity, liminality, and multi-species subjectivities of San Bushman cosmology. Chantal shares how her research led her to articulate the novel concepts of eco-exegesis and a vision of primal metaphysics and religion. We discuss challenges working at the intersection of western academics and non-western indigenous ways of knowing. Chantal also sheds light on the importance of the scholar-activist model and how, through decolonial scholarship, one can move beyond mere interdisciplinary dialogue to more actively engage marginalized philosophical, religious, and indigenous perspectives.

Chantal is a comparative cultural and religious studies scholar at the intersection of ecology and culture. Her current academic interests explore metaphysical expressions of ontological ambiguity from a multispecies and transspecies perspective of personhood. In 2021 Chantal graduated with a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) with a concentration in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion. Using ethnographic and filmographic materials, her research inquiry undertook a metaphysical narrative-based analysis of Indigenous and decolonial approaches to environmental engagement, focused on the ontological ambiguity of human-animal relationships in hunter-gatherer cosmology in southern Africa. South African born and raised, her professional background spans twenty years of experience in educational film and media, communications, and business development relations. Chantal is also the co-founder of the educational non-profit, the Deep-Water Initiative. She received a B.A. in film production from the internationally award-winning film school AFDA in South Africa and an M.A. in Middle Eastern History from Tel-Aviv University, where I studied the evolution of modern media in the Middle East.

Chantal’s Webpage • Deep Water Initiative

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Music at the end of the episode are Canto 8: Sacrifice/Canto 9: Liberation, from the album Experiments of Truth, by Kayos Theory, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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“Living One’s Own Experiment”: Heretical Individuation, Alchemical Hermeneutics, and Cross-Cultural Mytho-Poetics

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 04:00:00 -0000

Today we speak with David Odorisio, East-West Psychology PhD, about Eastern and Western wisdom traditions, searching for wholeness, and the integration of monasticism and contemplative spirituality with relationship and partnership. David’s academic work is steeped in religious studies and we speak of the benefits and challenges of interfaith dialogue through the work of Carl Jung and Thomas Merton. We ask David about his dissertation titled, “Alchemical Hermeneutics: Re-Visioning the Yoga Sutras, Dark Night, and Heart Center in the Upanishads and Eastern Christian Prayer through a Jungian Lens”, and we unpack the concept of alchemical hermeneutics based on Jung’s transformative praxis of cross-culturally and comparatively mapping psychic stages and developments in consciousness. We talk about David’s book “Depth Psychology and Mysticism”, and discuss Jung’s gnostic approach to religious studies and his vision of hermeneutics beyond mere textual interpretation, but more importantly as spiritual transmission which facilitates and activates one’s individuation, which can be considered an immanent and contemplative approach to existential hermeneutics based on the mytho-poetics of sacred wisdom texts. As we discuss the intersection of poststructural thought and Jungian notions of individuation, David quotes Jung’s advise, “don’t follow the teachings, follow the unfolding of your own path”, and we agree on the importance of the notion of a heretical approach to individuation. The discussion ends briefly considering comic books as mystical text and opens to the contemporary intersection of the paranormal and the sacred.

David M. Odorisio, PhD is Associate Core Faculty in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies graduate degree program. David received his PhD in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and teaches in the areas of theory and method in the study of religion, psychology and religion, and comparative mysticism. He is editor of A New Gnosis: Comic Books, Comparative Mythology, and Depth Psychology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Merton and Hinduism: The Yoga of the Heart (Fons Vitae, 2021), and co-editor of Depth Psychology and Mysticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and has published in numerous scholarly and peer-reviewed journals, including: Quadrant: Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, Jung Journal, Philosophy East and West, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, and The Merton Seasonal.For further information, please visit David’s website: www.ahomeforsoul.com.

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Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Music at the end of the episode titled The World in You, by Jonathan and Andrew Kay, from the album Temple Meditations, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Spiritual Evolution, the Problem of Suffering, and the Birth of the Future Human

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today Judson Davis, East-West Psychology PhD, takes us on a guided meditation and the conversation emerges from themes that arose in this liminal space. Through integral frameworks we discuss the meaning and purpose behind the world of suffering, the role of evolution and reincarnation, and the need for expanding our awareness beyond the purely human dimension. Judson shares his thoughts about the evolutionary mission of the future human and how it is tied to the original goal of CIIS based on the spiritual and evolutionary vision of Sri Aurobindo, as brought to the west by Haridas Chaudhuri. He also calls for a transformation of our existing paradigm that includes the radical emergence of what he calls a diamond luminosity consciousness based on the vision of evolutionary philosopher Christopher Bache. We discuss the nature of original unity as a basis for individuation and the need for surrendering to a wisdom of complete openness and conceptual insecurity in the face of the great mystery of cosmic unfolding. The conversation then explores the intersection of Jungian Psychology and Tibetan Buddhist Tantra in Judson’s own path, and we end by discussing the problems of transcendental idealism, teleology, and the limits of scientific materialism, as well as a future in which one is a co-creator in birthing the divine potential here on Earth.

Judson Davis,PhD,is a university educator, author, spiritual counselor, filmmaker, and world traveler. He holds a Doctorate in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (2012) and a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology (with emphasis in Jungian Depth Psychology; 2006) from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has taught on the university, college, and corporate levels in California, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, has produced documentary films, and has presented his work in a variety of public venues. Dr. Davis is the author of the book The Sacred Image: C. G. Jung and the Western Embrace of Tibetan Buddhism as well as numerous peer-reviewed journal publications. He also provides online coursework and spiritual counseling through The Institute of East-West Interdisciplinary Studies, which can be accessed at the following web address: www.east-westinstitute.com

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Music at the end of the episode titled Tantrika, by Jonathan and Andrew Kay, from the album Forest Dwellers, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Classroom as a Sacred Space and Presence as Radical Respect

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we speak to EWP PhD graduate and EWP and ITP adjunct faculty Holly Adler from her classroom in Oakland, CA. As a teacher of underprivileged and marginalized youth, Holly discusses alternative approaches to education beyond the mythos and narratives of neoliberal normativity, which aims to help students critically engage with culturally constructed values systems based on commercial production and consumption. Holly shares her approach to an experimental pedagogy based on cultivating the classroom as a sacred space, and she considers experiences of how conscious and engaged presence in their lives can create structures of unconditional support and radical respect, an essential factor in empowering students to reconstruct themselves in their own image based on their own goals of becoming. Our discussion addresses contemporary problems of cultural disillusionment, the role of technology, and the importance of spiritual self-transcendence in overcoming hegemonic regimes of discipline and control. The podcast ends discussing how music can offer alternative models of individual and collective becoming.

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Music at the end of the episode titled The Architect, from Monsoon’s Arrival by the band Monsoon, released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Micro-Presencing: Psycho-Somatic Soul Work as Movement, Expression, and Improvisation through Connection with the Small

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet East-West Psychology MA Graduate, Shannon Gray, a trapeze artist and circus performer who after a devastating fall, came to EWP to process and explore this physical and psychological rupture in her life through studying the nature of injury and somatic psycho-spirituality. Shannon speaks about how one can fall back into their senses rooted in our bodies as a way to connect us to the natural world, as well as the body’s capacity and potential to connect with soul. She shares her approaches to overcoming problems of disembodiment through confronting death and doing grief-work, as well as inner healing through deep relationality with animals. The conversation turns to the potential of artistic creativity to transcend the limitations of human conditioning by opening to cosmic forces beyond forms of traditional representation, and we discuss the contemplative practice of deep awareness of the small, or micro, which can lead to moments of radical presence, embodiment, and authentic creative expression.

From the time she could remember, Shannon Gray’s relationship with dreams and the unseen world was profound; as was her relationship with movement, creativity, and animals. The merging of these passions led her to discover circus arts at the age of 22. Over the years, Shannon has cultivated her unique and emotionally poignant approach to dance trapeze and has performed and taught internationally through circus festivals, aerial dance companies, and social circus organizations.

In 2014, Shannon suffered a life-altering injury. This rupture of both body and spirit led her to seek out a masters in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The result of her studies became The Sentience Project: an embodied inquiry into injury, healing, and our connection to non-human animals. Shannon currently lives in Bolinas, California where she is completing her short film, The Sentience Project. Her performance life is deeply inspired by collaborations with other artists such as videographer, Lawrence Martinez, and musician, Mia Pixley. Shannon is a youth mentor, a surfer, and an animal rights activist.

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Music at the end of the episode titled Braided Fate, by Jonathan Kay and Andrew Kay, from Temple Meditations released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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"Every Step a Prayer”: Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous Wisdom Traditions and Decolonizing Shamanism

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we meet East-West Psychology adjunct faculty member, Chief Philip Scott, who recounts his journey from learning ballet in his youth to becoming a professional ballet dancer and, through apprenticeship with Traditional Medicine people from various Indigenous Nations, finds his way to the Lakota Sundance. Phillip has been Sundancing in the Lakota Tradition for the past 31 consecutive years, and he speaks of the cross-cultural nuances of how he was welcomed and accepted into this Indigenous tradition. The discussion turns to Truth and Reconciliation Day, which happened just before this recording, so we discuss modern issues of appropriation and commodification, the necessity of respect in relation to Indigenous peoples and cultures and the cultivation of patience and humility in the pursuit of embodied transformation on the Medicine Path. Phillip offers counsel on ways to approach Indigenous wisdom traditions with reverence as well as the means to decolonize contemporary shamanism. The conversation ends with the Chief speaking about Dance as a collective Prayer with our Ancestors, the Earth, and the Great Mystery.

Of mixed Ancestry and thrice struck by Lightning, Phillip Scott has faithfully walked the Native Path for forty years, learning from and sanctioned by traditional Medicine/Holy people, tribal Spiritual leaders, Wisdomkeepers and Elders from several Indigenous cultures. Annually Sundancing in the Lakota tradition for over three decades and a member of the Native American Church, he is a Ceremonial leader and Traditional healer, entrusted to share Indigenous wisdom and Medicine practices with the contemporary world. An advisor and presenter on various Sacred matters, he is a consultant for educational, spiritual/religious, medical and environmental institutions as well as for corporations. Interviewed both nationally and internationally, his life, experience and writings have been featured in journals and books. In addition to directing and teaching the programs at Ancestral Voice - Institute for Indigenous Lifeways in Northern California, which he founded in 1994, he maintains a private healing practice, performs Ceremonies. conducts intensives, gives lectures and leads pilgrimages worldwide. He is skilled in survival and primitive technologies, has received a Masters degree from Naropa University and is also a licensed EMT.

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Music at the end of the episode titled Lonely River, by Jonathan Kay and Andrew Kay, from Temple Meditations released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Sitting in Forgetfulness, Alchemical Transformation, and Spiritual Homeland

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet East-West Psychology Phd student, Qi Ge, who recalls early hardships in her life and how through a spiritual crisis she left her roots in China to come to the West. Qi shares experiences of inner alchemical transformation, finding what she calls her spiritual homeland through, dream work, expressive art and ancestral remembrance. Qi shares how she came into embodied spiritual practices, such as 5 animal Tai-chi she learnt from her Grandmother, and how the Daoist practice of the tea ceremony has allowed her to cultivate sitting in forgetfulness. Qi speaks of the need to cultivate an internal sense of home, stating “I used to search for groundedness externally, but now I know I am deeply rooted from within,” and our conversation discusses her psycho-spiritual journey of coming to this realization for herself.

Qi Ge, also known as Brigitte, is a Spiritual Counselor and a PhD student in the department of East-West Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies. She is also a teaching assistant in the EWP department, as well as a bilingual neuroscience-based coaching program teacher. Qi has been studying in East-West Psychology for three years and found out that this is the true path of her heart that bridges western psycho-spiritual healing theories to eastern ancestral and philosophical traditions of inner and outer life-cultivation. Inspired by the teachings from Daoist meditative sitting in forgetting—坐忘 (zuò-wàng), Chan-Buddhist equanimity and wisdom—定慧 (ding-huì), and the Chinese traditional tea ceremony of non-doing—無為 (wú-wèi), Qi’s research direction focuses initially on the healing manifestations by effortlessly emptying both the teacup and the heart of the ceremonial practitioner to be one with nature. Based on inquiries of cultural roots of liberation and today’s world issues, Qi’s Tea Ceremony of Sitting in Forgetting explores possibilities of an ancient tradition that is on its sacred Dao and unfolding life to be translated into a contemporary and future method of healing.

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Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Music at the end of the episode titled Eternal Tides, by Jonathan Kay, from Eternal Tides: A Musical Offering to the Oceans released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Kimmy Johnson: Ancestral Remembrance, Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Pedagogy

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode we meet long time East-West Psychology faculty member, Kimmy Johnson, who describes her transformative journey starting as a student of Consciousness Studies and Traditional Knowledge at CIIS, to becoming an elder in the East-West Psychology community, teaching ancestral consciousness and healing, dreams as indigenous knowledge, and shamanic and earth-based traditions. Kimmy shares pedagogical approaches, and offers insights into how ancestral remembrance and traditional knowledges can help us examine what has been absorbed from our life experiences, our families and our culture, and offer earth-based and embodied strategies to question assumptions and make choices that empower us in all aspects of our lives.

Kimmy K. Johnson, Ph.D., teaches graduate courses and workshops in ancestral consciousness and healing, dreams as indigenous knowledge, and the shamanic traditions of our ancestors at the California Institute of Integral Studies and John F. Kennedy University as well as experiential learning, essay writing, and human development theory in the LEAP Program at St. Mary's College of California. She completed doctoral work in Consciousness Studies/Traditional Knowledge at the California Institute of Indigenous Studies. Her scholarship, writing and teaching explores healing modalities within familial, cultural and earth-based traditions.

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Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Music at the end of the episode titled El Mar, by Christos Barbas, from Eternal Tides: A Musical Offering to the Oceans released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

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Monica Mody: ‘I Thought Memory Would Be Easy’: Academic and Poetic Borderlands as Decolonial Projects of Recovery

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we meet East-West Psychology PhD, Monica Mody, who is a writer, poet, and educator aligned with earth-based and decolonial feminist perspectives. Monica speaks about her approaches to writing, scholarship, and poetry as a cross-genre, transdisciplinary practitioner, and we discuss her dissertation, titled "Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-secular South Asian Borderlands: A Critical Hermeneutics and Autohistoria/teoría for Decolonial Feminist Consciousness," which received the 2020 Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology awarded by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. Monica speaks about the importance of tracing and reconstructing her motherline story and how her creative process helps to tap into the voice of her ancestral memory and the voices of the ancestresess. She shares two of her poems and we discuss the role of poetics in her academic writing and what the intersection of knowledge and creativity looks like to her. We end with discussing Monica’s ideas about what she calls earth-ecstatic spirituality.

Monica Mody is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press), the forthcoming Bright Parallel (Copper Coin), and three chapbooks including Ordinary Annals (above/ground press). Her academic writing can be found in The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature, and Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis. Her poems appear in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing, Witness: The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent, and &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing. Her poetry has also been published in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Boston Review, and other literary journals.

Besides a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology, Monica holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, and a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from the National Law School of India University. Among the awards she has received are the Sparks Prize Fellowship (Notre Dame), the Zora Neale Hurston Award (Naropa), and the Toto Award for Creative Writing. Monica has presented her work widely, including at the Parliament of World Religions, Symposia of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, American Academy of Religion Western Region, Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conferences, and Oakland Summer School. She has been invited to read her poetry at events including Poetry with Prakriti, Bengaluru Poetry Festival, the Trauma and Catharsis Symposium on Performing the Asian Avant-Garde, and the Asian American Writers' Workshop—as well as been a part of art shows including Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision. Monica was born in Ranchi, India, and currently lives in San Francisco, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone territory. She teaches as an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Monica Mody website: www.drmonicamody.com

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Reise Tanner: Reclaiming the Deep Feminine, Birthway as Sacred Activism, and Conscious Parenting

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this podcast we will be chatting with EWP PhD student Reise Tanner about her unique approaches to birthing through her work as a midwife, doula and birthing coach. She shares her experiences in learning how to hold space to help mothers feel their belonging during the birthing process, and discusses how birthing can be approached as a form of sacred activism. Reise talks about how to reclaim the deep feminine and the role of the earth as the divine feminine in holistic transformation, which leads us to discuss the necessity of honoring intuitive ways of knowing in scholarship. We end the episode exploring some problems of our times and the importance of the continual development of approaches and strategies to conscious parenting.

Reise Tanner is a PhD student in East West Psychology focused on decolonial depth psychology, ecopsychology, and applied mythology at the crossroads with feminism, indigenous traditions and liberatory methods. Her research positions birthwork as sacred activism and mothering within feminist discourse while exploring archetypes of the Feminine and centering what has been marginalized. As a seasoned doula, she views the birthing process as an initiation and believes that each birth—whether to a human or project or new version of Self— has the power to be transformative and meaningful for everyone involved.

Reise is also a perinatal educator, Certified Empowerment Coach, Birthing From Within Mentor, Birth Story Listener, and mother who has attended hundreds of births and supported thousands of people on their birth journeys and beyond through groups and classes. She has trained doulas and created two innovative postpartum programs that feature storytelling: Wild Return and Wild & Rooted. In addition to attending many midwifery and birth-related trainings in the US and abroad, she has spoken publicly on several panels, and presented to the medical community. She has been a yoga instructor since 1997, certified practitioner of Maya Abdominal Therapy, and Mindfulness Meditation Teacher. Whenever possible, Reise loves to travel, spend time in wild nature, and attend cultural events.

Professional Websites: www.seedinthegarden.com, www.reisetanner.com

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Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

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Marta Rubinart: Mystic Contemplation as Heart-Based Prayer, and Transformative Scholarship

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today we will be speaking to Marta Rubinart, EWP adjunct faculty and recent Phd graduate, about her spiritual experiences that lead her to pursue a phd through EWP on the role of the heart in personality integration and spiritual growth. We discuss her recent dissertation “The Heart-Soul Axis in the Jesus Prayer and the Integral Yoga Sadhana” and explore mystic contemplation, embodied prayer, as well as some of the academic challenges she encountered in her comparative and cross-cultural inquiry between Christianity and Integral Yoga. Marta shares her experiences as a Christian and how she approaches the Jesus prayer, emphasizing the importance of purification through the heart center, a practice shared by Integral Yoga. Marta also reflects on her transformative approach to teaching research methods and spiritual counsling in the East-West Psychology Department.

Dr. Marta Rubinart Rufach is a scholar, researcher, and clinician in the field of Clinical and Health Psychology and Spirituality. Her career as a therapist began in Spain when she was just 19 years old. She first worked as a licensed massage therapist and later, in her twenties, began her practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She has worked in private practice, hospitals, and non-profits for 25+ years.

In her mid-thirties, Marta started a long formative process involving the completion of two PhDs. In 2016, she graduated Magna Cum Laude for the Autonomous University of Barcelona with a dissertation studying Spiritual Practice and its Effects in Personality, Psychopathology and Wellbeing. In 2021, she completed her second PhD in the East West Psychology (EWP) department. Her dissertation entitled The heart-Soul Axis in the Jesus Prayer and the Integral Yoga Sadhana, elucidates the spiritual heart as the center for personality integration, purification, and divinization and the center where the human being, the divine, and the cosmos consciously interact.

Marta teaches research methods at the EWP department and works as a psychological associate for Well Stone Healing Center, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco. She enjoys supporting graduate students to refine their research topics and designs and continues developing her scholarship on the Heart-Soul Axis. Currently, she is collaborating in an art project representing the triple nature of the Divine and Creation.

Professional Webpage: https://martarubinart.com

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Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

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Sophia Reinders: The Alchemy of the Senses: From Perception to Creative Participation in the Sensuous Kinship of Body and Earth

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today we will be speaking with EWP adjunct faculty Sophia Reinders, about her academic and personal journey from phenomenology, to Jungian depth psychology, expressive arts and eco-arts therapy to ecopsychology and evolutionary cosmology. She shares with us the life changing experience of discovering her earth soul at the depth and as the depth of the psyche, embedded in earth. This led her to a deep and passionate exploration of the intricate intertwinement of the human community with the more than human earth and all its life forms. The felt-sense of this encompassing perspective now finds expression in her teaching and her pedagogy as a scholar-practitioner. Drawing on the ecological imagination and guiding students in multimodal practices of creative embodiment, she encourages a shift away from a human-centered towards an earth-cherishing consciousness within which to consider and experience the realm of the human, be this within or beyond academic pursuits.

Sophia asks us to think about our senses as a “palette of embodied languages”. Multi-modal sensory awareness, she says, deepens our experience of aliveness and discloses perception as participation with the earth. She sees participatory perception as a form of holistic, embodied understanding in which feeling, intuiting, imagining, thinking and visioning come together and enrich both academic and non-academic pursuits.

To end the podcast, Sophia guides Stephen and I through a sensory awareness practice, opening us to experience how every act of perception is a creative practice, and the transformative power of cultivating an alchemical reciprocity between psyche and nature, awakening to a deeper embodied knowing.

Sophia Reinders PhD, MFT, REAT is the founding Director of the WisdomBody Institute for Creative Psychotherapy and Expressive Arts, http://www.wisdombody.com

She is Adjunct Senior Lecturer in East-West Psychology, School of Consciousness and Transformation at CIIS and instructor at the Sky Mountain Institute of Expressive Arts and Eco-Arts Therapy in San Diego. https://www.skymountain.org

Her research interests and teaching revolve around embodied ecopsychology, strengthening the awareness of the human-earth intertwinement; creative Eco-Arts dreamwork, and the felt-sense experience of evolutionary cosmology, evoked and deepened through embodied multimodal creative practices.

Her recent publications include The Sensuous Kinship of Body and Earth. In Ecopsychology. VOL. 9 NO. 1 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/eco.2016.0035

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Silvia Nakkach: Cosmic Listening and the Sound of Integration

Mon, 30 May 2022 08:00:00 -0000

This episode features Silvia Nakkach, a Grammy® nominated musician and cross-cultural explorer of musical worlds. Silvia will enchant you as she shares her journey searching for the cosmic source of sound from her home in Brazil, to the Bay area where she learned North Indian Raga music under maestro Ali Akbar Khan for more than 30 years, as well as experimental and electronic music while at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros and Anthony Braxton. We will discuss the integrative power of the mystical sound-syllable AUM, and how she has cultivated the Yoga of Sound, Nada Yoga, and Dhrupad Chant as a form of deep listening and enhancing the sensibility of the subtle through sound. For many years teachings at CIIS, Silvia founded the Sound, Voice, Music in the Healing Arts, a certificate program that she is currently facilitating through the New York Open Center. She is an academic program consultant and the founder and artistic director of the International Vox Mundi School of the Sound and the Voice with centers and training programs across the world. In this conversation, recorded on April 5 of 2020, she shares ideas about how she has been developing an original integral framework through the practice of ancient and modern voice cultures and quantum listening.

Silvia Nakkach, MA, MMT, is a Grammy® nominated composer and a pioneer in the field of sound and consciousness transformation. A sought-after educator, vocal artist, author and a former music psychotherapist, Silvia has served on the faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies where she created the premier certificate program on Sound, Voice and Music in the Healing Arts offered by a major academic institution. She is also the founding director of the International Vox Mundi School of the Voice. For more than 30 years, Silvia studied North Indian classical music under the direction of the late Maestro Ali Akbar Khan and various masters of the Art of Dhrupad singing. She is the author of Free Your Voice (Sounds True). Silvia has released 15 CDs and her music draws upon elements from contemporary avant-garde to ancient Indian ragas. She travels extensively and resides in the San Francisco Bay area. As program facilitator of the Sound and Music Institute Silvia works closely with the students throughout the course of the program.

This podcast features 2 pieces form Silvia's albums:

• Interlude: Bliss, from album Invocation

• End music: Liminal Beauty, from album Liminality

Websites: Silvia Nakkach • Vox Mundi - School of Sound and the Voice

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Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

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Heidi Fraser Hageman: Integral Education--Spiritual, Whole Person and Transdisciplinary Approaches

Mon, 23 May 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today Stephen and I talk with EWP Phd grad and adjunct faculty, Heidi Fraser. She is also the Director of the CIIS Center for Writing and Scholarship, and was a former EWP program manager. We explore aspects of Integral Yoga as taught by Hari Das Chaudhuri and Bahman Shairazi and it’s applications in scholarship and activism. We also discuss approaches to understanding Integral education based on Heidi’s dissertation research on the nature of Integral Education at CIIS.

Heidi Fraser Hageman completed her Ph.D. in East-West Psychology (EWP) at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in May 2015. Her doctoral research focused on exploring an integral education at CIIS through surveying and interviewing alumni from the EWP program about the personal and professional value of their non-traditional graduate degree. While completing her dissertation, Heidi spent seven semesters with the Center for Writing and Scholarship working with writers across disciplines to develop reading, writing, and research skills specific to what genre they were studying in, and completed seven teaching assistantships with faculty across the Institute.

Currently, Heidi teaches at CIIS, where she also resides as Director of the Center for Writing and Scholarship. Passionate about lifelong learning, teaching that nurtures student development along multiple lines of intelligence simultaneously, research in higher education concerning student learning objectives and outcomes, and progressive models of educating, she aspires to assist students in understanding the value of their integral education and how to effectively communicate that to circles outside CIIS.

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Jim Ryan: A Deep History of the California Institute of Integral Studies

Mon, 16 May 2022 08:00:00 -0000

This installment of the EWP podcast will conclude our double episode feature on Haridas Chaudhuri and the roots of the California Institute of Integral Studies. This episode features a talk by Jim Ryan, who started teaching at CIIS in 1981, and became core faculty in 1986. He is the former Director of the Asian and Comparative Studies program in the Philosophy and Religion department. Jim takes us on a deep historical and cultural journey, recounting Haridas Chaudhuri coming from Kolkata to San Francisco with the dream of cultivating East-West dialogue and how he established the California Institute of Asian Studies- later becoming the California Institute of Integral Studies. He also speaks of the origins of the East-West Psychology department in those early days of the institution.

Jim's general interests are in the culture, history, and philosophies of India. He is specifically interested in the various forms of Hindu tantra, particularly the Kashmir Shaiva traditions, the tradition of Sri Aurobindo, and the "modernized" tantra of Haridas Chaudhuri.

A secondary interest is in Jainism and the historical interplay between the non-theistic philosophical traditions and Hinduism.

He is currently working with G. Vijayavenugopal on the third volume of his complete translation of Cīvakacintāmaṇi: The Hero Cīvakaṉ, the Gem that Fulfills All Wishes, by Tiruttakkatēvar, the first time this highly revered 9th century Tamil epic has been translated into any language.

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Bahman Shirazi: Haridas Chaudhuri and The Roots of Integral Psychology at CIIS

Mon, 09 May 2022 08:00:00 -0000

This is the first part in a series of episodes exploring the historical roots of California Institute of Integral Studies and its foundations in Integral Yoga as brought to California in the 1950’s by Haridas Chaudhuri. In this episode we speak with Bahman Shirazi, who recounts the early history of Haridas Chaudhuri coming to the west, and the academic and cultural conditions which lead to what became CIIS. Bahman speaks about his dissertation completed in EWP in the 1980’s which develops Haridas Chaudhuri’s vision of Integral Psychology, asking what is the role of personality in spiritual development. We also discuss how the East-West Psychology department was formed to situate the intersectionality of Integral Yoga, spirituality, religion and transpersonal psychology.

Bahman A.K. Shirazi, PhD, has been an adjunct faculty in the Integral Counseling Psychology, and East-West psychology programs at CIIS since 1995. His doctoral dissertation, entitled Self in Integral Psychology, was supervised by ICP founder Dr. Paul Herman.

In addition, Bahman has worked in various administrative positions at CIIS for over twenty years, including several years as Director of Graduate Studies. In recent years he has served as CIIS archivist and historian and has been involved in the production of a documentary and an online interactive website on the history of CIIS.

Bahman has published a number of book chapters and articles on various topics in integral psychology and has served as guest editor for ReVision and Integral Review journals. He has also taught in several other Bay Area schools such as JFK University, ITP/Sofia University, and Dominican University in the areas of integral and transpersonal psychology, Sufi psychology, and research methodology. He has presented at conferences in the U.S., Europe, and India and organizes the annual Founders Symposium on Integral Consciousness at CIIS.

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Craig Chalquist: Gnosticism, Enchantivism, and Terrapsychology

Mon, 02 May 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today we will be chatting with core faculty Craig Chalquist about the development of Terrapsychology and his ideas on hermeticism and gnosticism as an earth honouring path. We also discuss enchantivism, fantasy and the archetypal world of myth, as well as how Craig approaches the intersection of scholarship, activism and his thoughts on the writing process and imaginal scholarship.

Craig Chalquist, PhD is former Chair of East-West Psychology at CIIS. He is co-editor with Linda Buzzell of the anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, founding editor of Immanence: The Journal of Applied Myth, Story, and Folklore, and author of several books studying the intersection of psyche, nature, place, and myth.

Teaching and Research Interests:

Terrapsychology, Ecotherapy, Hermeticism and Gnosticism, Applied Folklore and Mythology, Depth Psychology

Recent Publications:

Terrapsychological Inquiry: Restorying Our Relationship to Nature, Place and Planet (Routledge, 2020).

Website: worldrede.com

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Jun Wang: Cultivation of Qi and Inner Alchemy in Chinese Wisdom Traditions

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Jun recounts her journey from growing up in China and learning Chinese medicine, to moving to the USA to study anthropology, to arriving here at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Jun starts the conversation by reciting Lao Tsu’s poetry from the Dao De Jing, and continues to share her holistic approaches to wellbeing through the Chinese wisdom traditions. Jun discusses the fundamental interconnection of Chinese medicine and Daoist philosophy, and the practices of inner alchemy and cultivating Qi, highlighting her special connection to the music of the guqin, the ancient Chinese stringed instrument.

Dr. Jun Wang, Research Fellow and core faculty of East-West Psychology Department at CIIS, holds a Bachelor of Chinese Medicine from the Capital University of Medical Science, Beijing, and a PhD in Medical Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Wang came to CIIS following several years as a licensed acupuncturist in the state of North Carolina and core faculty member at the Integrative Medical Program, School of Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill, and later at the Institute for Holistic Health Studies at San Francisco State University. Formerly Director of the Doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (DAOM) program of ACTCM at CIIS and president of the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences in Oakland, California, Dr. Wang has authored and co-authored a number of journal articles and books, including Cultivating Qi: An Introduction to Chinese Body-Mind Energetics(North Atlantic, 2011), and a book chapter, "Chinese Medicine: Health and Balance for the Whole Person" in Science and Religion: One World, Many Possibilities (Routledge, 2014). Dr. Wang's teaching and research interests include multidisciplinary research on traditional Chinese medicine; East Asian philosophies and psychology; Chinese body-mind energetic healing systems. She is the co-Chair of Traditional and Complementary Medicine (TCM) Research Group (since 2015), conducting several Asian community-based collaborative health research projects.

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Helge Osterhold: Transformative Pedagogy and the Dance of Individuation

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today, we will be chatting with EWP core faculty Helge Osterhold about the uniqueness of the EWP container and how he facilitates transformative pedagogy in the classroom. We then explore Jungian notions of East-West spirituality and address the importance of individuation in contemporary approaches to the activist-scholar paradigm. The interview ends with Helge outlining his recent paper “The dance between individuation and death anxiety: an interdisciplinary reflection on cultural polarization in apocalyptic times”.

Dr. Helge Osterhold is a psychotherapist and integrative educator. Teaching graduate level psychology courses since 2006, he joined the EWP department as a core faculty member in 2017 and offers courses in Jungian Psychology, Archetypal Psychology, Dreamwork, Spiritual Counseling, and the Psychology of Death and Dying. His theoretical and clinical orientation includes transpersonal, depth and humanistic-existential psychologies with a special appreciation for systemic thinking, indigenous wisdom and multiculturalism.

For 10 years, Dr. Osterhold served at the University of California San Francisco - in pediatric palliative care and as an educator on mindful caregiving and clinician resiliency at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and UCSF School of Medicine.

Originally from Germany, Dr. Osterhold received a B.A. in Human Relations, an M.A. in Integral Counseling Psychology and a PhD in East West Psychology and is licensed as a psychotherapist in California. Dr. Osterhold maintains a private psychotherapy practice with a focus on life transitions. He is the author of The Body’s Code – Synchronicity and Meaning in Illness and Injury. Through a depth psychological lens, his book explores how viewing serious health crisis as synchronistic events can provide an understanding as to how such suffering may meaningfully impact and transform psychological, spiritual, relational and professional-creative levels of a person’s life.

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Debashish Banerji: The Question of the Integral

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Today, we will be speaking with Debashish Banerji, chair of the East-West Psychology department. We will discuss the history and mission of The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), of the East-West Psychology Department, and the nature and value of Integral Education. In the conversation, Debashish develops ideas regarding Sri Aurobindo's vision of an Integral consciousness and how that can be approached through an Integral and immanent hermeneutic based on existential goals of becoming.

Debashish Banerji is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is also the Program Chair for the East-West Psychology department. Prior to CIIS, he served as Professor of Indian Studies and Dean of Academics at the University of Philosophical Research, Los Angeles. He has taught as adjunct faculty at the Pasadena City College, University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Irvine. His interests lie in postmodern, postcolonial and cross-cultural approaches to Indian philosophy, psychology and culture. Banerji has curated close to fifteen exhibitions of Indian and Japanese art. He has authored and edited around ten books and art catalogs on major figures of "the Bengal Renaissance" such as the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, the artist Abanindranath Tagore and the spiritual thinker Sri Aurobindo; on Critical Posthumanism, Yoga Psychology and on a variety of creative and art-related projects. His most recent books are Integral Yoga Psychology: Metaphysics and Transformation as Taught by Sri Aurobindo (Lotus Press, 2020) and Meditations on the Isha Upanishad: Tracing the Philosophical Vision of Sri Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo Samity and Maha Bodhi Publishers, 2019), and Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo (DK Printworld, 2012).

Debashish Banerji: Website

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Introduction to the East-West Psychology Podcast

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 08:00:00 -0000

Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP PhD, adjunct faculty, EWP program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

In this episode you will meet your podcast hosts, Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay and learn a little about their journey to the East-West Psychology Department of CIIS. They will introduce the goals and format of the podcast and present a framework which situates academic fields of study and psychological and philosophical questions important to the East-West Psychology discourse community. This can be understood as a mandala of 4 cardinal points:

Eastern philosophy, psychology and culture

Western religion, philosophy and depth psychology

Earth-based ecology, shamanism and indigenous religions

World and cross-cultural perspectives on spirituality, psychology and contemporary culture.

Stephen Julich has worked as an adjunct instructor in History and Anthropology at the City College of New York, as a lecturer in Jungian Studies at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles, and as an adjunct instructor at the California Institute of Integral Studies where he has taught classes on ensouled writing and Western Esotericism. Currently, Stephen is teaching a class on Western Magic and is preparing a class on the work of Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz. Stephen holds a BA in Comparative Religion, an MA in Anthropology, an M.Div. from the New Seminary for Interfaith Ministers, and a PhD in East-West Psychology from CIIS. His general areas of interest are in the psychology of religion and myth, dreams, symbols, and consciousness studies.

Jonathan Kay is a professional musician, and is currently a PhD student in the department of East-West Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco under the mentorship of Dr. Debashish Banerji. He has been studying East-West philosophy and psychology based on the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, and his dissertation research is focused on developing ideas about musical and transcultural hermeneutics. As a scholar-practioner in arts-based research, Jonathan is exploring the horizons between thought and sound inspired by the work of Gilles Deleuze and the non-standard philosophy of Francois Laruelle. Based on questions of cross-cultural translation and integration, Jonathan’s music is exploring transcultural possibilities through experimental and contemplative models of improvisation. www.jonathankay.ca

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