California Institute of Integral Studies
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Tantric Buddhist Art: Through an Integral Lens
Get PDFTantric Buddhist art is a very diverse and unique form of art. Its main goals are to reveal the nature of reality by showing the perceiver that there is a more expansive and actualized being than the one currently experienced. In this way it shares many similarities with religious art, but puts its own special non-dual twist on religious art that will engage and surprise the reader
Intimations of a Spiritual New Age: II. Wilhelm Reich as Transpersonal Psychologist. Part 2: The Futural Promise of Reich’s Naturalistic Bio-Energetic Spirituality
Get PDFThis is the second part of a consideration of the later Wilhelm Reich as anticipating a future planetary-wide “New Age” form of this-worldly spirituality in ways overlapping with figures from the same era of Western crisis from the 1930s through the 1950s, including Jung, Toynbee, Bergson, Heidegger, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil. Where the first part of this treatment of Reich as transpersonal psychologist traced his evolution from his bio-energetic psychotherapy to a Weberian this-worldly mysticism of a universal life energy, his cosmic orgone, with its attendant features of conflicted “spiritual emergency,” this second paper seeks to further develop some of its still largely unrealized implications. These include the relation of his later system to neo-shamanism; transpersonal psychologies of presence, Being-experience, and self actualization; essentializing reinterpretations of the historical Jesus; evolutionary continuities in contemporary consciousness studies; emergent system approaches in science; and the potential for a New Age planetary identity for humanity
Art and Mental Disturbance
Get PDFThis article presents a perspective on psychology that relates directly to Abraham Maslow’s focus upon studying the highest levels of human functioning, but is geared specifically toward a psychological study of what I refer to as the “successful creative artist” and the relationship between art and mental disturbance. The focus is upon what I consider to be “natural” as opposed to “normal,” i.e. individual self-motivated creative expressions vs. widespread socially approved norms and expectations. Along the lines of Thomas Szasz and R.D. Laing, what is referred to as “mental illness” is viewed from a non-judgmental perspective, but with the distinctive feature of suggesting that some people who are considered to be mentally ill may have significant creative artistic potential that can be highly therapeutic for them to engage in. To clarify and justify the main thesis, personal examples and references to current research are utilized, as well as brief descriptions of the work of Otto Rank, Ken Wilber, Howard Gardner, Jean Houston, Julia Cameron, R.D. Laing, Ayn Rand, Thomas Szasz, Ernest Schachtel, Lawrence Kubie, Marion Milner, and the phenomenon of Indigo Children
Creative States and Structures
Get PDFThis paper explores the states of consciousness associated with creative work and intimations of specific structures of consciousness that develop over the life of an artist or other creative individual. Creative states are transitory phenomenological experiences that are recurrent and predictable aspects of the creative process. Collectively they form a continuum experienced in the course of a creative work. Creative structures are developmental conditions of consciousness that emerge and incorporate one another in succession. A structure cannot be omitted in individual cognitive development, and, barring damage to the brain, structures are permanent and irreversible