CIIS Faculty Publications
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Radiance of Being: Understanding the Grand Integral Vision; Living the Integral Life
Allan Combs
With the possible exception of the rise of the great Idealist movements two centuries ago, today is the most gripping period of research in consciousness that we have ever seen. For the first time in history we have access to almost all accumulated information about human consciousness and its potential. Zen Buddhism, shamanism, body/mind disciplines, the great contemplative traditions, mysticism, and many more have given us an extraordinary map of human consciousness based on direct meditative experience, right up to contemporary marvels of scientific research, giving the enquiring mind an all-inclusive model of human consciousness and its unfolding.
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The Bostons
Carolyn Cooke
Mr. Sargent, the aging Brahmin aesthete of the title story, scribbles his epiphanies on cocktail napkins and covers them up with his drinks. A Maine innkeeper shoots his wife, who remains bitterly loyal to him until the death of their son. A whole family conspires to keep the birth of yet another dirt-poor relation a secret from his grandmother. On the icy cobblestone streets of Boston and the rockbound coast of Maine, these vividly realized characters try to reconcile habits of obedience and self-reliance with the urgent desire to capture the wild core of life. The result is an explosion of exquisitely tuned voices, as authentic as they are unforgettable.
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According to Luke: The Gospel of Compassion and Love Revealed
Robert McDermott
Rudolf Steiner was born with clairvoyant capacities, but it was not until he was forty that he could connect his inner experiences with Jesus Christ. After that “solemn festival of knowledge,” as he described it in his Autobiography, Steiner received ceaseless revelations about the significance of the Christ’s incarnation. For the next twenty years, he spoke of the hidden background to all four gospels, the Book of Revelations, and even what he called the Fifth Gospel, read directly from the spirit worlds. These lectures present the most accessible and illuminating of Steiner’s revelations about the significance of the Christ for the spiritual development of humanity. He discusses the link between the Buddha and the Christ, which unites Buddhism and Christianity―not in theory but in the spiritual activities of those two beings. Steiner also describes the relationship between the Greek Mystery traditions and the Mystery of Golgotha: "A sign was to be placed before them as well, a sign that would now be enacted before the eyes of all humankind. The 'mystical death,' which had been a ceremonial act in the Mystery temples for hundreds and thousands of years, would now be presented on the great stage of world history. Everything that had taken place in the secrecy of initiation temples was brought into the open as a single event on Golgotha." Utilizing a historical overview, revealing the relationship between the great religious traditions, and how they have conspired together for the good of humanity, Steiner never loses sight of the Gospel’s great inner meaning, as echoed in the Gospel of St. Luke: “The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from human hearts brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to develop good will.”
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The Essential Aurobindo: Writings of Sri Aurobindo
Robert McDermott
"The coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital, and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to it, and to make it the recognized goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed, and to the degree to which they carry this evolution, the yet unrealized potentiality which they represent will become the actual possibility of the future." ―Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle
Sri Aurobindo stands out as one of the deepest and most profoundly relevant of contemporary Asian spiritual masters speaking to the West. His vision transcends the distinctive strengths and weaknesses of India and the West, and his discipline brings the yogas of the Gita to the task of world transformation. His collaborator, The Mother, offers a blueprint for the utopian community Auroville, giving sage advice on the ideal of a spiritually based approach to education. Robert McDermott's afterword in this revised edition recounts the increased significance of Aurobindo's message in the West―especially for America―since the book was first published in 1973. Here is an invaluable resource for understanding the underlying connections and common ground between Eastern and Western teachings and traditions for modern thinkers and spiritual seekers.
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Synchronicity : Through the Eyes of Science, Myth and the Trickster
Allan Combs and Mark Holland
Carl Jung coined the term "synchronicity" to describe meaningful coincidences that conventional notions of time and causality cannot explain. Working with the great quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung sought to reveal these coincidences as phenomena that involve mind and matter, science and spirit, thus providing rational explanations for parapsychological events like telepathy, precognition, and intuition. Synchronicity examines the work of Jung and Pauli, as well as noted scientists Werner Heisenberg and David Bohm; identifies the phenomena in ancient and modern mythologies, particularly the Greek legend of Hermes the Trickster; and illustrates it with engaging anecdotes from everyday life and literature.
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Social Creativity, Vol. 1
Alfonso Montuori and Ronald Purser
An interdisciplinary collection of essays on the social dimensions of creativity from eminent scholars in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and systems science. Includes essays from Frank Barron, Morris Berman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Mary Catherine Bateson, Jay Ogilvy, Ervin Laszlo, Richard Kearney and others.
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Social Creativity, Vol. 2
Ronald Purser and Alfonso Montuori
Social Creativity Volume 2 explores the nature of creativity in innovation in business, with in-depth essays from leading thinkers such as Teresa Amabile, Fred Emery, Charles Hampden-Turner, David Loye, Tudor Rickards, Ralph Stacey, Richard Woodman and others.
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The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story
Brian Swimme
Following the most recent scientific discoveries about the birth of the universe, this text shows how these new insights replace outmoded ways of seeing the world, bridging the chasm between science and spirituality, the physical realm and the soul. This book will help readers to grasp the larger significance of the human enterprise in this evolving universe.
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Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers
Sean Kelly and Donald J. Rothberg
A passionate conversation among the best minds in transpersonal studies about the ideas of Ken Wilber, the prominent contemporary thinker whose first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, published by Quest in 1977, launched the transpersonal psychology movement. Transpersonal thinkers taking part in this dynamic dialogue combine Eastern and Western spirituality with mainstream fields such as psychology, medicine, physics, and ecology to map the human drive toward Spirit.
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Medea's Folly: Women, Relationships and the Search for Intimacy
Tanya Wilkinson
Why is the search for intimacy so important for women? What does real intimacy feel like? These questions and others are explored and answered in Dr. Tanya Wilkinson's book on the Medea myth, which has brought new insight to our understanding of how relationships really work for women. She unravels the mysteries of women's commitment to establishing, maintaining, and improving intimate relationships. She also explores the troubling dark side of intimacy that is so often ignored in modern culture as she takes us on an illuminating journey through myth and fairy tale.
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Creators on Creating: Awakening and Cultivating the Imaginative Mind
Frank Barron, Alfonso Montuori, and Anthea Barron
This collection of over three dozen essays ponders the essence of creativity. Includes selections from Henry Miller, Federico Fellini, Rainer Maria Rilke, Isadora Duncan, Frank Zappa, and Mary Shelley
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Psychotherapy and Spirit: Theory and Practice in Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Brant Cortright
This volume brings together the major developments in the field of transpersonal psychotherapy. It articulates the unifying theoretical framework and explores the centrality of consciousness for both theory and practice. It reviews the major transpersonal models of psychotherapy, including Wilber, Jung, Washburn, Grof, Ali, and existential, psychoanalytic, and body-centered approaches, and assesses the strengths and limitations of each. The book also examines the key clinical issues in the field. It concludes by synthesizing some of the overarching principles of transpersonal psychotherapy as they apply to actual clinical work.
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Groundworks: Narratives of Embodiment
Don Johnson
Groundworks gives accounts of the actual processes of working with individuals in six major schools of Somatics by either the creator of the method itself or a leading teacher of the method. The creators are Robert Hall of Lomi School, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen of Body-Mind Centering, and Emilie Conrad Da'oud of Continuum. Leading teachers of methods include Michael Salveson on Rolfing, Elizabeth Beringer on Feldenkrais work, and Darcy Elman on F. M. Alexander Technique. Each therapist describes how he or she approaches and diagnoses a patient's problem, how he or she determines what and where to work, and the progress of a session. Each therapist shows the complexity of working with somatic processes and the resulting reward for client and therapist both.
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The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology
Don Johnson
The Body in Psychotherapy explores the life of the body as a basis of psychological understanding. Its chapters describe the use of movement, awareness exercises, and bodily imagination in work with various populations and life situations. It chronicles somatic work with childhood trauma, political torture, and life transitions such as aging, the loss of parents, and the emergence of a sense of self.
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A Life for the Spirit: Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time
Robert McDermott
Few people today recognize Rudolf Steiner’s name, yet those who are aware of him know that his presence pervades every forward-looking aspect of contemporary life. Nearly all fields of life have been fructified by his insights―not abstractly or theoretically, but in a concrete way that changes lives. No wonder, then, that Steiner has been called “the best kept secret of the twentieth century.” Born in 1861 in Kraljvec, Austria, Steiner showed evidence early on of the most varied gifts―a precise and probing scientific mind combined with a natural clairvoyant ability to see into the spiritual world, a determined need to think things through for himself, and a profound reverence for the divine. He first made his mark as a philosopher and the editor of Goethe’s scientific writings. He also recognized the revolutionary spirit in Nietzsche. But Steiner’s destiny led him in a different direction. Profound cognitive experiences determined that his task would lie in service to the spirit. While recognizing the integrity of modern science’s phenomenological empiricism, he also knew that the time had come to extend the field of science to include investigation of the supersensible. Working at first within the Theosophical Society, but always speaking and writing out of his own experience, Steiner developed the foundations for a thoroughly modern spiritual-scientific discipline that would transform spiritual and cultural life. Until his death in 1925, in countless lectures and books, Steiner created the body of knowledge and practice known as “anthroposophy,” which not only challenged and extended the underlying methods of modern knowledge, but stimulated many practical cultural initiatives such as: Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, the art of eurythmy, the movement for a threefold social order, and anthroposophical medicine. Henry Barnes―the author of Into the Heart's Land: A Century of Rudolf Steiner's Work in North America―recounts the dynamic life of this remarkable man. He does so by placing Steiner in the crosscurrents of history and showing him not as a spectator or ivory-tower philosopher, but as a leading actor in the drama, one whose entire being was given in service to humanity and to the spirit.
