Tag Archives: Matthew Ingram

Varieties of Meditative Experience with Matthew Ingram

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Jul 6, 2026 Matthew Ingram is author of Retreat: How the Counterculture Invented Wellness. In this 2020 video, he describes two major styles of meditation that he, himself, practices – Vipassana or mindfulness meditation, based on pure awareness, and Vedic mantra meditation. The cultural context for meditation practice is crucial. There is a close relationship between Eastern meditative practices and western forms of psychotherapy. Other western disciplines, such as self-hypnosis are akin to meditation. The discussion also focuses on abuses that can occur between teachers of meditation and their students. His website is http://www.woebot.com. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on December 19, 2020)

Revisiting the Counterculture with Matthew Ingram

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Nov 3, 2020 Matthew Ingram is known for throwing raves in West Africa in 1993, writing for Teletubbies, his cult music blog Woebot, writing for the Wire and FACT magazines, setting up the Dissensus forum and putting out a series of LPs. His “Vitamin C” animated documentary was shown at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. He is author of Retreat: How the Counterculture Invented Wellness. His website is http://www.woebot.com/ Here the discussion focuses on the many personalities who contributed to the cultural wave that swept the western world, particularly the United States, during the 1960s (many of whom have been interviewed by Jeffrey Mishlove). Matthew’s book specifically focuses on the period from 1955 to 1975. Topics include the role of the Vietnam war, LSD, new psychotherapies, eastern religions and the idea of enlightenment, the anti-establishment protests, the sexual revolution, and feminism. There were, of course, important historical antecedents as well as consequences. (Recorded on October 19, 2020.)

The Human Potential Movement & the Esalen Institute with Matthew Ingram

New Thinkin Nov 17, 2020 Matthew Ingram is known for throwing raves in West Africa in 1993, writing for Teletubbies, his cult music blog Woebot, writing for the Wire and FACT magazines, setting up the Dissensus forum and putting out a series of LPs. His “Vitamin C” animated documentary was shown at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. He is author of Retreat: How the Counterculture Invented Wellness. His website is http://www.woebot.com/. Here the discussion focuses on the Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California, as an important hub of the human potential movement that began in the 1960s and continues to the present day. Topics include gestalt therapy, holotropic breathing, kundalini and the Spiritual Emergence Network, sensory isolation, rebirthing, encounter groups, Rolfing and body work, as well as explorations of physics and consciousness. (Recorded on November 2, 2020.)