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Dream-Spirits and Innovation in Aboriginal Australia’s Western Desert
Get PDFAmong the Mardu Aborigines, dreams (kapukurri; jukurrpa) may carry at least the same weight as the events of waking life. ‘Travelling’ in dream-spirit form enhances the possibility of revelations both dangerous and enlightening. In the Australian case, a major cultural dilemma is to accommodate and rationalize an inevitable dynamism when the dominant ideology is one of timelessness and stasis. Two key cultural symbols, the Dreaming and the Law, still substantially shape worldviews and behaviour of the Martu people, who live in the remote Western Desert region. Much of my focus is on a category of popular, largely public contemporary ritual called partunjarrijanu ‘from the dream-spirit’. Discussion of how such rituals come into being highlights the notable importance of altered states of consciousness in creativity. However, in role and status individuals are positioned as conduits for the flow of knowledge and power from the spiritual into the earthly realm. Thus distanced from their own creativity, they are not perceived as creators in their own right. I also show that, in Western Desert society, cultural capital accrues to groups through playing the advantageous role of host to neighboring groups, using new dream-spirit rituals as a kind of currency within broader regional systems of exchange
Integrative Health Studies Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the Fall 2013 issue of the Integrative Health Studies Newsletter at CIIS.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integrative-healthnewsletter/1007/thumbnail.jp
CIIS Alumni Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the October 2013 Issue of the CIIS Alumni Newsletterhttps://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/alumninewsletter/1013/thumbnail.jp
The Spectacle of Ourselves: A Chronology of Key Events in World History from Big Bang to 2012
No full textThis book tells the human story over the entire span of time up to today. Events from every continent receive brief but interesting explanation throughout.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/facultypublications/1034/thumbnail.jp
Shamanic Cosmology as an Evolutionary Neurocognitive Epistemology
Get PDFThe biological foundation for a shamanic epistemology is indicated by the cross-cultural distribution of a shamanic cosmology derived from knowledge obtained during altered consciousness. These special forms of consciousness involve integrative brain conditions that access ancient ways of knowing, expressive systems which have evolutionary roots in the communicative and social processes involved in animal displays or rituals. These were augmented over the course of hominid evolution into expressive and mimetic activities that provided a basis for significant epistemological expansions of consciousness exemplified in shamanic out-of-body (OBE) experiences. These manifestations of consciousness involved new modes of self and processes of knowing, reflecting selection for expanded symbolic brain processes that enhanced psychological, cognitive integration and extra-personal cognition. Shamanic alterations of consciousness also contributed to experiences of personal spirit essences and encounters with extrapersonal spirit presences that reflected activation of innate brain operators involving self-structures and psyche. The evolution of the hominid capacity for knowing involved new understandings of nature (animism), mind (spirits), self (power animals) and others (gods) that were elicited by shamanic practices and expressed though a shamanistic ideology. These phenomena reflect activation of innate aspects of consciousness, illustrating features of shamanism as a neuroepistemology
Integral Counseling Psychology Newsletter
Get PDFThis is the Spring 2013 issue of ICP Newsletterhttps://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/integralcounselingpsychologynewsletter/1006/thumbnail.jp
California Institute of Integral Studies--Catalog 2013-2014
Get PDFThis is the 2013-2014 catalog of courses, staff and faculty for the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/academiccatalogs/1027/thumbnail.jp
The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of transpersonal psychology
No full textThe Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology presents the most inclusive resource yet published on this topic - which seeks to benefit humanity by integrating ancient wisdom and modern knowledge.https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/facultypublications/1001/thumbnail.jp
Somatics and EcoActivism Conference
No full textThis conference focused on the interface between Somatics and Ecoactivism, and invited leaders in the teaching of body practices that root us in an earthly sense of ourselves, as well as thinkers who were diagnosing the monsters at our doorway and what to do about them.
One proposed reason that the ecology movement has had trouble mobilizing the vast populations that it needs is that most people—even those in favor of ecology—don’t deeply feel that their souls and levels of consciousness are entwined with the earth; that the pressing dangers to the earth are dangers to their own sensibilities.
On the one hand, there are tens of thousands of gifted workers with the body who are very halting in how to bring forth their earthly concerns. On the other, are the activists who are too often rooted mainly in discourse and concept. Something effective might come from their joining.
Conference participants included Bill McKibben, Steven Harper, David Abram, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and Emilie Conrad
Founding CIIS: How the Vision Became a Reality
No full textTwo Founding members bring to this panel the great excitement of daring to manifest the profound vision with Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri of launching an audacious experiment— the founding of a new Graduate School, CIIS! This was done at the huge financial risk of no funding, no academic institutional connection and the squeeze of space into one small building! The promise was fulfilled and the vision became a magnificent reality! Bring questions, points of view for discussion and dialogue in honor of this 45 year old achievement—our unique CIIS