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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead (2023) Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead's Adventure in Cosmology (2021) 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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). 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. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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: New Horizons, by Justin Gray and Synthesis, released on Monsoon-Music Online Record Label. Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. 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 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices