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Integrative Health Studies Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the Spring 2013 issue of the Integrative Health Studies Newsletter at CIIS.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integrative-healthnewsletter/1008/thumbnail.jp
The Self: A Transpersonal Neuroanthropological Account
Get PDFThe anthropology of the self has gained momentum recently and has produced a significant body of research relevant to interdisciplinary transpersonal studies. The notion of self has broadened from the narrow focus on cultural and linguistic labels for self-related terms, such as person, ego, identity, soul, and so forth, to a realization that the self is a vast system that mediates all the aspects of personality. This shift in emphasis has brought anthropological notions of the self into closer accord with what is known about how the brain mediates self-as-psyche. Numerous examples from the ethnography of the self are given, as are neuroscience research reports on the structure of the self. Engagement with the self is seen as an essentially transpersonal one, as self-awareness penetrates the mysteries of the transcendental self
Contemplative Inquiry in Movement: Managing Writer´s Block in Academic Writing
No full textThis exploratory study stems from a meditation exercise in contemplative inquiry with transdisciplinary researchers. A master’s student with writers block was asked to perform body movements reflecting a thesis writing process over time. An interview with a phenomenological hermeneutic method was used to uncover the significance of the student’s experience during the exercise, including bodily sensations, feelings, and thoughts. New embodied knowledge helped the student to enable identification and acceptance of both adverse and blocking information. By systematically using a “thinking in movement” approach after applying body movements, new self-confidence was generated in the writing process. The interpretation of the study is called the “Contemplation in Movement” (CIM), and is considered as a rite of passage. Due to the use of CIM as a rite of passage, the following processes occurred: acceptance, identification of emotions/inner space, body/mind expansion, body memories, bodily metaphors, and symbols. This study suggests that non-verbal ways of learning can be applied in research writing. The conclusion is that embodied knowledge after contemplative inquiry with body movements may be helpful both in student supervision and in the research writing process to move through obstacles in the academic writing process
“Say From Whence You Owe This Strange Intelligence”: Investigating Explanatory Systems of Spiritualist Mental Mediumship Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
Get PDFWalsh and Vaughan (1993) defined transpersonal experiences as those “in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos” (p. 203). One population who regularly report such experiences are mediums. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten spiritualist mediums to explore their lived experience, such as how they communicate with the deceased, the meaning of spirit guide phenomena, and the role of mediumship, regardless of the actual ontology of mediumship. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) identified three themes: explanatory systems of mediumship, spirit guides as transcendental beings versus aspects of self, and the purpose of mediumship. These themes illuminated aspects of the mediumistic experience that have implications for an understanding of states of consciousness, transcendence, and the Higher Self
Searching for Wild Elephants in the North Georgia Forests: The Saga of Writing a Transpersonal Dissertation at a Mainstream University
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Integral Review Vol 9. no 3, September 2013 full issue
Get PDFThe articles included in this special issue of Integral Review represent a wide range of integral scholarship at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), founded in 1968 in San Francisco by Dr. Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri. Haridas Chaudhuri arrived in the United States in 1951 upon an invitation by professor Frederick Spiegelberg of Stanford University who was charged with directing a newly founded independent graduate school (American Academy of Asian Studies) devoted to introducing Asian studies to American higher education. Spiegelberg had traveled to India in the late 1940s to research the contemporary practices of the ancientspiritual traditions of India. His visit culminated in an encounter with the great spiritual figure of modern India, Sri Aurobindo, whose writings represented a grand synthesis of evolutionary spirituality with ancient Indian spiritual traditions.
Haridas Chaudhuri, one of the first to study and write about Sri Aurobindo, brought a creative and dynamic integral vision to the west which he articulated in terms of an educational framework based on integration of the highest eastern and western spiritual and cultural values aimed at educating the whole person. Later in 1968, he founded a new graduate school, the California Institute of Asian Studies (later renamed CIIS), implementing a triune approach to higher education comprising didactic, experiential and applied dimensions. The experiential dimension included the pioneering introduction of meditation, yoga and other eastern mind-body practices into American higher education
CIIS Today, Spring 2013 Issue
Get PDFThis volume is the Spring 2013 issue of CIIS Today, the Magazine of the California Institute of Integral Studies.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ciistoday/1004/thumbnail.jp
Integral Vision: Past, Present and Future (panel discussion)
No full text“The philosophy of Sri Aurobindo is all-comprehending in its integration of the past, and prophetic in its vision of the future. As a connected view of the totality of existence, it brings to light the ultimate unifying principle of life. On the basis of a balanced appreciation of the multifarious values of life, it shows how to reconcile the various conflicts of our human existence. Out of a broad survey of cosmic evolution it evolves a creative idea which bids fair to impart a new rhythm to the historical order. In reaffirming the central truths of ancient wisdom in the context of our present-day problems, it creates new values and opens up new vistas of human progress. In an endeavor to meet the challenge of the present age, it gives a new dynamic form to the spiritual heritage of the human race—a unified and integrated form to the highest cultural values of East and West. With a penetrative insight into the profound meaning of life it lays the foundation for a complete art of harmonious and creative living.”
— Haridas Chaudhuri, 196
Dreamscapes: Topography, Mind, and the Power of Simulacra in Ancient and Traditional Societies
Get PDFDream content can be influenced by external sounds, smells, touch, objects glimpsed with half-open eyes during REM sleep, and somatic signals. This paper suggests that this individual, neurologically-driven process parallels that experienced collectively by pre-industrial tribal and traditional peoples in which the land itself entered into the mental lives of whole societies, forming mythic geographies—dreamscapes. This dreamtime perception was particularly evident in the use of simulacra, in which the shapes of certain topographical features allowed them to be presented in anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, or iconic guise to both the individual and the culturally-reinforced gaze of society members. This paper further indicates that this mythologized way of seeing could theoretically, if with some effort and without embarrassment, be adopted periodically and temporarily by archaeologists and used as an investigative tool in the field, and could even have side benefits to modern societies in general