Forget Broadway’s Reopening—The Nation’s Artistic Heartbeat Is at Its Center

Production of Oklahoma! at Discoveryland, near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dave Thomas/Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

by JAKE JOHNSON | SEPTEMBER 13, 2021 (zocalopublicsquare.org)

If there’s a more rambunctious and promiscuous genre than musical theater, I haven’t met it yet.

Musicals are an everywhere phenomenon. They touch an enormously broad swath of American lives, unapologetically building worlds that don’t yet exist. I see this commitment to the not-yet as an aspiration for the rest of us stuck living in the here-and-now.

I recently wrote a book about musicals, and visited communities in the heartland that were using musical theater to help understand their place in this country. I watched an original musical about Samson and Delilah in Branson, Missouri; took note of the prestigious musical theater training centers in Cincinnati, Ohio and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and discovered traces of musical theater cultures in remote corners of Oklahoma, Arizona, and beyond. I chose to focus on the middle of the country because that’s where so many of America’s favorite stories about itself take place, the characters here extreme in either their moral winnings or their moral failures. It’s no surprise that this is where so many of America’s iconic musicals like Oklahoma!, The Wizard of Oz, or The Music Man spin their clever fantasies, the Professor Harold Hills hopping off trains and stealing their way into our hearts again and again. But ya gotta know the territory.

In musicals as in real life, the middle is a powerful idea in this country. Caught between reality and fiction, truth and fantasy, and the amateur and professional, musical theater in the middle of America captures the heart of what this place can be on its best-dressed days. Musicals break through class and political strata in America better than any other style of entertainment; and because these productions often involve whole communities, audiences and performers in the heartland reflect a more dynamic mix of race, class, gender, and religion than any Times Square theater has been able to manage. It may be that musical theater in the middle of America, with school performances of The Little Mermaid and church sermons expounding the traditional family values of Fiddler on the Roof, captures wide-eyed American possibility better than Broadway ever could.Caught between reality and fiction, truth and fantasy, and the amateur and professional, musical theater in the middle of America captures the heart of what this place can be on its best-dressed days.

I grew up in rural Oklahoma, and always knew first-hand that musical theater mattered here. Middle school and high school productions were frequent even in my small town, and the several churches in the area put on musicals regularly, to say nothing of the ease with which Broadway tunes like Carousel’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and Godspell’s “Day by Day” made their way into weddings, funerals, parades, and revival meetings. It wasn’t until I scanned wider that I discovered how it mattered in these overlooked, under-examined spaces. Musicals spread across the geography of this place in ways that illuminate how we believe and imagine. In place after place, musicals matter because they help us practice belonging to America and continue believing in it.

Take the fundamentalist Mormon community in rural Arizona who adapted The Sound of Music into a polygamous propaganda piece where songs and dances swapped from other musicals made sure the governess Maria fell not for a grieving captain with seven children but rather for a multi-wived captain happily seeking yet another. The production was shocking and also touching. Its creators crafted an idea of America in their own image by crafting a musical where they belonged. Their example shows how musicals help communities of all kinds rehearse living in better versions of America. How can you belong in America, they ask, if you don’t first find yourself in an American musical?

It’s no surprise, really, that you find musical theater mattering in profound ways within religious settings, in those American communities where faith matters most. A performance of the musical Samson in Branson, Missouri, used the magic of the stage to make Samson and Delilah’s distant (if not mythical) past align with values of today’s evangelical Christianity—the musical providing the enchanted spackling to cover gaps and cracks in a modern religious façade troubled by secular reasoning. Through strange rituals and performative customs, musicals, like many religions, look beyond this world with bleary-eyed anticipation. All things will work out in the end, they celebrate. And in the end, we can live in a world that has been fully remade, with villains banished and problems resolved.

In her 1966 book, Purity and Danger, the anthropologist Mary Douglas noted that communities decide what makes dirt dirty, that describing something as “dirty” has little to do with impurity; rather, dirt is, as she put it, “matter out of place.” I’ve come to think of musicals in similar ways. Musicals lie about the world—they smooth over our reality with their alternate one, where people burst into song and dance and strangers know one another’s choreography. They rush to simplified and tidy endings, and unlikely reconciliations. I saw this in a homemade production by the Oklahoma Senior Follies in which senior citizens portrayed youthful scenes of lust, danced suggestively, and good-humoredly essentialized the older years as the best time of their lives. Americans often conflate increased aging with decreased value. But through the musical stage, aging performers created a not-yet world where this was not the case. Our here-and-now world doesn’t work that way.

Musicals are clever lies—and we need more of their deceptions. Lies have a bad reputation. With truth a fluid concept these days, it sometimes feels as if we are stuck pitting one set of truths against another and battling it out indefinitely. Lies offer a way out. They open space for stories about worlds that don’t yet exist. They give us a chance to invent the kind of idylls we want to live in, places more committed to justice, community, and healing. Don’t get me wrong, truth does matter. But there are times when telling a lie is more righteous than being honest: when doctors recommend a harmless placebo for an anxious patient, for instance, or when one flatters a friend with exaggerated feedback they want to hear. Lies are exercises in imagination, hotbeds of creativity, projections of promise. Lies, like musicals, to borrow Douglas’s phrase, are stories out of place.

This lesson gets lost if we crease musical theater’s map to only one city—New York—and chart performances only as some escapade of selling silliness. The pandemic has given America an opportunity to rethink where, how, and why musicals happen. Broadway may be returning with ticker tape but my experiences in the middle of America suggest that musical theater ought to be re-placed—reimagined as powerful, multi-sited performances of an America that might be.

I am happy for the return to normalcy Broadway’s reopening signals. I am glad for my friends and former students whose livelihoods depend on the theater industry. And I’m glad for the laughs, tears, and thrills audiences can once again come to expect night after night. But I also keep it in perspective. Musical theater is bigger than Times Square. Its hopes and dreams and fantasies and deceptions spill the banks of New York, flowing through the hills and cities of America’s middle lands and into the hearts and minds of people most would never think to associate with musical theater. Musicals are as big and wide as America, and America can only be as big and wide as our musicals help us to imagine.

JAKE JOHNSON is a musicologist at Oklahoma City University, and the author of Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America and Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America.

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings

by Paul Reps (Editor), Nyogen Senzaki (Editor) 

When Zen Flesh, Zen Bones was published in 1957 it became an instant sensation with an entire generation of readers who were just beginning to experiment with Zen. Over the years it has inspired leading American Zen teachers, students, and practitioners. Its popularity is as high today as ever.

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a book that offers a collection of accessible, primary Zen sources so that readers can struggle over the meaning of Zen for themselves. It includes 101 Zen Stories, a collection of tales that recount actual experiences of Chinese and Japanese Zen teachers over a period of more than five centuries; The Gateless Gate, the famous thirteenth-century collection of Zen koans; Ten Bulls, a twelfth century commentary on the stages of awareness leading to enlightenment; and Centering, a 4,000 year-old teaching from India that some consider to be the roots of Zen.

(Goodreads.com)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Astrology
New millennium astrological chart
Background
History of astrologyAstrology and scienceAstrology and astronomyTraditions, types, and systemsAstrologersAstrological organizationsPlanets
Traditions
BabylonianHellenisticIslamicWesternHinduChinese
Branches
NatalElectionalHoraryMedicalFinancialLocationalPsychologicalMeteorological
Astrological signs
AriesTaurusGeminiCancerLeoVirgoLibraScorpioSagittariusCapricornAquariusPisces
vte

Jyotisha or Jyotishya (from Sanskrit jyotiṣa, from jyóti- “light, heavenly body”) is the traditional Hindu system of astrology, also known as Hindu astrology, Indian astrology and more recently Vedic astrology. The term Hindu astrology has been in use as the English equivalent of Jyotiṣa since the early 19th century, whereas Vedic astrology is a relatively recent term, entering common usage in the 1970s with self-help publications on Āyurveda or yoga.

The Vedanga Jyotisha is one of the earliest texts about astronomy within the Vedas.^[1][2][3][4] Some scholars believe that the horoscopic astrology practiced in the Indian subcontinent came from Hellenistic influences, ^[5][6] however, this is a point of intense debate and other scholars believe that Jyotisha developed independently although it may have interacted with Greek astrology.^[7]

Following a judgement of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2001 which favoured astrology, some Indian universities now offer advanced degrees in Hindu astrology. The scientific consensus is that astrology is a pseudoscience.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

Etymology

Jyotisha, states Monier-Williams, is rooted in the word Jyotish, which means light, such as that of the sun or the moon or heavenly body. The term Jyotisha includes the study of astronomy, astrology and the science of timekeeping using the movements of astronomical bodies.^[13][14] It aimed to keep time, maintain calendar, and predict auspicious times for Vedic rituals.^[13][14][15]

History and core principles

Further information: Indian astronomy

Jyotiṣa is one of the Vedāṅga, the six auxiliary disciplines used to support Vedic rituals.^[16]: 376 Early jyotiṣa is concerned with the preparation of a calendar to determine dates for sacrificial rituals,^[16]: 377 with nothing written regarding planets.^[16]: 377 There are mentions of eclipse-causing “demons” in the Atharvaveda and Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the latter mentioning Rāhu (a shadow entity believed responsible for eclipses and meteors).^[16]: 382 The term graha, which is now taken to mean planet, originally meant demon.^[16]: 381 The Ṛigveda also mentions an eclipse-causing demon, Svarbhānu, however the specific term graha was not applied to Svarbhānu until the later Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.^[16]: 382

The foundation of Hindu astrology is the notion of bandhu of the Vedas (scriptures), which is the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Practice relies primarily on the sidereal zodiac, which differs from the tropical zodiac used in Western (Hellenistic) astrology in that an ayanāṁśa adjustment is made for the gradual precession of the vernal equinox. Hindu astrology includes several nuanced sub-systems of interpretation and prediction with elements not found in Hellenistic astrology, such as its system of lunar mansions (Nakṣatra). It was only after the transmission of Hellenistic astrology that the order of planets in India was fixed in that of the seven-day week.^{[16]: 383 [17]} Hellenistic astrology and astronomy also transmitted the twelve zodiacal signs beginning with Aries and the twelve astrological places beginning with the ascendant.^[16]: 384 The first evidence of the introduction of Greek astrology to India is the Yavanajātaka which dates to the early centuries CE.^[16]: 383 The Yavanajātaka (lit. “Sayings of the Greeks”) was translated from Greek to Sanskrit by Yavaneśvara during the 2nd century CE, and is considered the first Indian astrological treatise in the Sanskrit language.^[18] However the only version that survives is the verse version of Sphujidhvaja which dates to AD 270.^[16]: 383 The first Indian astronomical text to define the weekday was the Āryabhaṭīya of Āryabhaṭa (born AD 476).^[16]: 383

According to Michio Yano, Indian astronomers must have been occupied with the task of Indianizing and Sanskritizing Greek astronomy during the 300 or so years between the first Yavanajataka and the Āryabhaṭīya.^[16]: 388 The astronomical texts of these 300 years are lost.^[16]: 388 The later Pañcasiddhāntikā of Varāhamihira summarizes the five known Indian astronomical schools of the sixth century.^[16]: 388 Indian astronomy preserved some of the older pre-Ptolemaic elements of Greek astronomy.^{[16]: 389 [19][20][21][14]}

The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations, notably the Bṛhat Parāśara Horāśāstra, and Sārāvalī by Kalyāṇavarma. The Horāshastra is a composite work of 71 chapters, of which the first part (chapters 1–51) dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries and the second part (chapters 52–71) to the later 8th century.^{[citation needed]} The Sārāvalī likewise dates to around 800 CE.^[22] English translations of these texts were published by N. N. Krishna Rau and V. B. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively.

Modern Hindu astrology

Nomenclature of the last two centuries

Astrology remains an important facet of folk belief in the contemporary lives of many Hindus. In Hindu culture, newborns are traditionally named based on their jyotiṣa charts (Kundali), and astrological concepts are pervasive in the organization of the calendar and holidays, and in making major decisions such as those about marriage, opening a new business, or moving into a new home. Many Hindus believe that heavenly bodies, including the planets, have an influence throughout the life of a human being, and these planetary influences are the “fruit of karma“. The Navagraha, planetary deities, are considered subordinate to Ishvara (the Hindu concept of a supreme being) in the administration of justice. Thus, it is believed that these planets can influence earthly life.^[23]

Astrology as a (pseudo)science

See also: Astrology and science

Astrology has been rejected by the scientific community as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Scientific testing of astrology has been conducted, and no evidence has been found to support any of the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions.^[24]: 424 There is no mechanism proposed by astrologers through which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on Earth. In spite of its status as a pseudoscience, in certain religious, political, and legal contexts, astrology retains a position among the sciences in modern India.^[25]

India’s University Grants Commission and Ministry of Human Resource Development decided to introduce “Jyotir Vigyan” (i.e. jyotir vijñāna) or “Vedic astrology” as a discipline of study in Indian universities, stating that “vedic astrology is not only one of the main subjects of our traditional and classical knowledge but this is the discipline, which lets us know the events happening in human life and in universe on time scale”^[26] in spite of the complete lack of evidence that astrology actually does allow for such accurate predictions.^[27] The decision was backed by a 2001 judgement of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, and some Indian universities offer advanced degrees in astrology.^[28][29] This was met with widespread protests from the scientific community in India and Indian scientists working abroad.^[30] A petition sent to the Supreme Court of India stated that the introduction of astrology to university curricula is “a giant leap backwards, undermining whatever scientific credibility the country has achieved so far”.^[26]

In 2004, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition,^[31][32] concluding that the teaching of astrology did not qualify as the promotion of religion.^[33][34] In February 2011, the Bombay High Court referred to the 2004 Supreme Court ruling when it dismissed a case which had challenged astrology’s status as a science.^[35] As of 2014, despite continuing complaints by scientists,^[36][37] astrology continues to be taught at various universities in India,^[34][38] and there is a movement in progress to establish a national Vedic University to teach astrology together with the study of tantra, mantra, and yoga.^[39]

Indian astrologers have consistently made claims that have been thoroughly debunked by skeptics. For example, although the planet Saturn is in the constellation Aries roughly every 30 years (e.g. 1909, 1939, 1968), the astrologer Bangalore Venkata Raman claimed that “when Saturn was in Aries in 1939 England had to declare war against Germany”, ignoring all the other dates.^[40] Astrologers regularly fail in attempts to predict election results in India, and fail to predict major events such as the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Predictions by the head of the Indian Astrologers Federation about war between India and Pakistan in 1982 also failed.^[40]

In 2000, when several planets happened to be close to one another, astrologers predicted that there would be catastrophes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. This caused an entire sea-side village in the Indian state of Gujarat to panic and abandon their houses. The predicted events did not occur and the vacant houses were burgled.^[41]

Texts

Time keeping

[The current year] minus one,
multiplied by twelve,
multiplied by two,
added to the elapsed [half months of current year],
increased by two for every sixty [in the sun],
is the quantity of half-months (syzygies).

— Rigveda Jyotisha-vedanga 4
Translator: Kim Plofker^[42]

The ancient extant text on Jyotisha is the Vedanga-Jyotisha, which exists in two editions, one linked to Rigveda and other to Yajurveda.^[43] The Rigveda version consists of 36 verses, while the Yajurveda recension has 43 verses of which 29 verses are borrowed from the Rigveda.^[44][45] The Rigveda version is variously attributed to sage Lagadha, and sometimes to sage Shuci.^[45] The Yajurveda version credits no particular sage, has survived into the modern era with a commentary of Somakara, and is the more studied version.^[45]

The Jyotisha text Brahma-siddhanta, probably composed in the 5th century CE, discusses how to use the movement of planets, sun and moon to keep time and calendar.^[46] This text also lists trigonometry and mathematical formulae to support its theory of orbits, predict planetary positions and calculate relative mean positions of celestial nodes and apsides.^[46] The text is notable for presenting very large integers, such as 4.32 billion years as the lifetime of the current universe.^[47]

The ancient Hindu texts on Jyotisha only discuss time keeping, and never mention astrology or prophecy.^[48] These ancient texts predominantly cover astronomy, but at a rudimentary level.^[49]Technical horoscopes and astrology ideas in India came from Greece and developed in the early centuries of the 1st millennium CE.^[50][19][20] Later medieval era texts such as the Yavana-jataka and the Siddhanta texts are more astrology-related.^[51]

Discussion

The field of Jyotisha deals with ascertaining time, particularly forecasting auspicious day and time for Vedic rituals.^[14] The field of Vedanga structured time into Yuga which was a 5-year interval,^[42] divided into multiple lunisolar intervals such as 60 solar months, 61 savana months, 62 synodic months and 67 sidereal months.^[43] A Vedic Yuga had 1,860 tithis (तिथि, dates), and it defined a savana-day (civil day) from one sunrise to another.^[52]

The Rigvedic version of Jyotisha may be a later insertion into the Veda, states David Pingree, possibly between 513 and 326 BCE, when Indus valley was occupied by the Achaemenid from Mesopotamia.^[53] The mathematics and devices for time keeping mentioned in these ancient Sanskrit texts, proposes Pingree, such as the water clock may also have arrived in India from Mesopotamia. However, Yukio Ohashi considers this proposal as incorrect,^[19] suggesting instead that the Vedic timekeeping efforts, for forecasting appropriate time for rituals, must have begun much earlier and the influence may have flowed from India to Mesopotamia.^[52] Ohashi states that it is incorrect to assume that the number of civil days in a year equal 365 in both Hindu and Egyptian–Persian year.^[54] Further, adds Ohashi, the Mesopotamian formula is different from the Indian formula for calculating time, each can only work for their respective latitude, and either would make major errors in predicting time and calendar in the other region.^[55] According to Asko Parpola, the Jyotisha and luni-solar calendar discoveries in ancient India, and similar discoveries in China in “great likelihood result from convergent parallel development”, and not from diffusion from Mesopotamia.^[56]

Kim Plofker states that while a flow of timekeeping ideas from either side is plausible, each may have instead developed independently, because the loan-words typically seen when ideas migrate are missing on both sides as far as words for various time intervals and techniques.^[57][58] Further, adds Plofker, and other scholars, that the discussion of time keeping concepts are found in the Sanskrit verses of the Shatapatha Brahmana, a 2nd millennium BCE text.^[57][59] Water clock and sun dials are mentioned in many ancient Hindu texts such as the Arthashastra.^[60][61] Some integration of Mesopotamian and Indian Jyotisha-based systems may have occurred in a roundabout way, states Plofker, after the arrival of Greek astrology ideas in India.^[62]

The Jyotisha texts present mathematical formulae to predict the length of day time, sun rise and moon cycles.^[52][63][64] For example,The length of daytime = {\displaystyle \left(12+{\frac {2}{61}}n\right)}muhurtas^[65]where n is the number of days after or before the winter solstice, and one muhurta equals ¹⁄₃₀ of a day (48 minutes).^[66]

Water clock
A prastha of water [is] the increase in day, [and] decrease in night in the [sun’s] northern motion; vice versa in the southern. [There is] a six-muhurta [difference] in a half year.

— Yajurveda Jyotisha-vedanga 8, Translator: Kim Plofker^[65]

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_astrology

The Relaxation Response

by Herbert Benson, Miriam Z. Klipper 

The medical profession recently redefined high blood pressure as greater than 130/80; this means that more than 30 million additional Americans are now considered to have high blood pressure that should be lowered, preferably without use of drugs.

Herbert Benson, M.D., first wrote about a simple, effective mind/body approach to lowering blood pressure in The Relaxation Response. When Dr. Benson introduced this approach to relieving stress over forty years ago, his book became an instant national bestseller. Since that time, millions of people have learned the secret—without high-priced lectures or prescription medicines. The Relaxation Response has become the classic reference recommended by most health care professionals and authorities to treat the harmful effects of stress and high blood pressure.

Discovered by Dr. Benson and his colleagues in the laboratories of Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospitals, this revitalizing, therapeutic tack is now routinely recommended to treat patients suffering from stress, including heart conditions, high blood pressure, chronic pain, insomnia, and many other physical and psychological ailments. It requires only minutes to learn, and just ten minutes of practice a day.

(Goodreads.com)

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old

by Deepak Chopra (Goodreads Author)

There is nothing inevitable about aging–that is the inspiring message from Dr. Deepak Chopra. “Once again Dr. Chopra presents us with information that can help us live long, healthy lives. For all those interested in a long, full life, this book is a valuable resource.”–Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine and Miracles Over 1.5 million copies sold. National bestseller. Line drawings.

(Goodreads.com)

Spontaneous Healing

by Andrew Weil (Goodreads Author) 

The body can heal itself. Spontaneous healing is not a miracle but a fact of biology–the result of the natural healing system that each one of us is born with. Drawing on fascinating case histories as well as medical techniques from around the world, Dr. Andrew Weil shows how spontaneous healing has worked to resolve life-threatening diseases, severe trauma, and chronic pain. Weil then outlines an eight-week program in which you’ll discover:

– The truth about spontaneous healing and how it interacts with the mind
– The foods, vitamins, supplements, and tonic herbs that will help you enhance your innate healing powers
– Advice on how to avoid environmental toxins and reduce stress
– The strengths and weaknesses of conventional and alternative treatments
– Natural methods to ameliorate common kinds of illnesses
And much more!

(Goodreads.com)

Timeless Healing

by Herbert Benson, Marg Stark 

In this life-changing book, Dr. Herbert Benson draws on his twenty-five years as a physician and researcher to reveal how affirming beliefs, particularly belief in a higher power, make an important contribution to our physical health. We are not simply nourished by meditation and prayer, but are, in essence, “wired for God.”

Combining the wisdom of modem medicine and of age-old faith. Dr. Benson shows how anyone can, with the aid of a caring physician or healer, use their beliefs and other self-care methods to heal over 60 percent of medical problems.

As practical as it is spiritual, Timeless Healing is a blueprint for healing and transforming your life.

(Goodreads.com)

Healing Words

by Larry Dossey 

In this groundbreaking classic linking prayer and health, physician Larry Dossey shares the latest evidence connecting prayer, healing, and medicine. Using real-life examples and personal anecdotes, Dossey proves how prayer can be as valid a healing tool as drugs or surgery. Dossey explores which methods of prayer show the greatest potential for healing; presents compelling evidence that patients’ and doctors’ belief in a treatment increases its efficacy; explains that discoveries in modern physics allow us to integrate the spiritual and the scientific and make the power of prayer provable in the lab; and much more.

Provocative, engaging, and powerfully instructive, Healing Words restores the spiritual art of healing to the science of medicine.

(Goodreads.com)

Wednesday (theonion.com)

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—Drawing prompt backlash from activists for a complete lack of representation in leadership, the Taliban came under fire Wednesday for failing to include a diverse array of extremist perspectives in their government. “What sort of message is the Taliban sending to young extremists around the globe when they don’t include a single Hindu nationalist or Proud Boy in their cabinet?” said far-right activist Bruce Connors, bemoaning the myopic leadership that had led the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to entirely exclude KKK Grand Dragons and neo-Nazis from their newly established caliphate. “Where are the Tamil militants? How about some Buddhist extremists from Myanmar? Without a truly diverse range of white supremacists and ethno-nationalists, this government is only going to narrowly serve the interests of jihadists at the expense of millions of other murderous bigots worldwide” Connors added that he found the situation especially disappointing because the Taliban could find so much common ground with organizations like the Aryan Nation.

BuddhaAtTheGasPump Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Batga… Also see https://batgap.com/richard-tarnas/ Richard Tarnas is a professor of psychology and cultural history at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He teaches courses in the history of ideas, archetypal studies, depth psychology, and religious evolution. He frequently lectures on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network and is the basis for the upcoming documentary series The Changing of the Gods. He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and served on the Board of Governors for the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.