Bill provides an autobiographical landscape of his early training and matriculation. Following his history, we begin exploring the limitations of the various therapeutic worldviews. We discuss how psychology and religion have been interwoven, specifically not the psychology of religion, but psychology and religion. Bill describes how the various psychological models illuminate religion. In particular, he references figures such as William James, Sigmund Freud, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Jung, emphasizing how the psychological worldview of these figures influences their understanding of religion. Bill has a way of challenging any worldview and asking questions about how any particular worldview affects how and what one may “see” as a result. Bill calls his approach dialogical whereby individuals are invited to place all of these psychological technologies, and others, into conversation with each other. He desires to bring to light, what he calls, an Ethnopsychospiritualy a view that incorporates and understands that the personal and cultural wisdom in the various religious traditions is inseparable from each tradition. Looking at the models carefully differing between the projection models of psychospiritualities versus recognizing that there is cultural refraction on the light, although there is an objective light. Through the conversation, there is an undertone of attending to how the worldview we adopt can both expand and limit an individual’s perspective unless each of us is conscious of this fact. Bio: William B. Parsons is Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He has written and edited several books, including The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling (Oxford, 1999), Teaching Mysticism (Oxford, 2011), Religion and Psychology: Mapping the Terrain (Routledge, 2001), Mourning Religion (Virginia, 2008), Freud in Dialogue with Augustine: Psychoanalysis, Mysticism, and the Culture of Modern Spirituality (Virginia, 2013) as well as dozens of essays in multiple journals and books. He has served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies (Rice University), as Director of the Humanities Research Center (Rice University), as Editor (the psychology of religion section) with Religious Studies Review and is Associate Editor of the International Series in the Psychology of Religion. He has been a Fellow at the Martin Marty Center of the University of Chicago and at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Hebrew University. Music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/

Episode 5: Religion and Psychology. A conversation with Pittman McGehee In today’s episode, Pittman unpacks the definition of religion and broadens the traditional limiting assumptions many immediately experience in relationship to religion. We discuss how many of the actions that have been in the name of religion are not religious. We begin by defining religion, the philosophy of materialism, psychological wholeness, good and evil, individuation, and the Self. Pittman discusses where religion goes wrong and how the human stewards of the various traditions affect the search for wholeness with human impulses, ideologies, and dominance. He defines spirituality as the deep human longing to transfer the transcendent into the immanent through experience and reflection upon it. We explore the profoundly powerful sacred aspects of human sexuality and the assault by the organize structures and the misinterpretation of each tradition that has been destructive of sexuality. Biography: Pittman became was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1969, The Very Reverend J. Pittman McGehee served, for 11 years, as Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, located in the center of downtown Houston. Since moving to Houston in 1980, Mr. McGehee has been in demand as a lecturer and speaker in the fields of psychology and religion. He lectures regularly at the C. G. Jung Center and has published two papers through that Center: “Water as a Symbol of Transformation” (1985), and “The Healing Wound and the Wounded Healer” (1986). He is a regular book reviewer for The Living Church. Dr. McGehee has held many distinguished lectureships, including the 1987 Harvey Lecture at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, where he received an honorary Doctorate of Divinity; the 1988 Perkins Lecture in Wichita Falls; the 1990 Woodhull Lectures in Dayton, Ohio, and the 1991 St. Luke’s Lectures in Birmingham. He was the 1994 Rockwell visiting Theologian at the University of Houston and 1996 Carolyn Fay Lecturer in Analytical Psychology also at the University of Houston. He is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Texas, an Adjunct Instructor at Saybrook University, and a Faculty Member of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. His books are: The Invisible Church: Finding Spirituality Where You Are, Praeger Press, 2008; Raising Lazarus: The Science of Healing the Soul, 2009; Words Made Flesh: Selected Sermons by The Very Reverend J. Pittman McGehee, D.D., 2011; The Paradox of Love, (available 10/1/2011); and Slender Threads: An Interview with Robert Johnson (DVD). In addition to his teaching and prose writing, Mr. McGehee is known for his poetry. His work has been chosen for the juried Houston Poetry Fest (1985, 1987, 1988), and his poems “Ash Wednesday,” “Pegasus,” and “Semination” were published in the Poetry Fest Anthology. His poems also have appeared in the Cimarron Review, the Anglican Theological Review, the St. Luke’s Journal, In Art magazine, Cite magazine, Windhover, and New Texas magazine. In 1991, Dr. McGehee resigned from Christ Church Cathedral to become the director of The Institute for the Advancement of Psychology and Spirituality. The Institute joins the disciplines of psychology and religion by exploring the concept that mental health comes with the integration of the biological, psychological, and spiritual elements of the human condition. In 1996, the C. G. Jung Institute of Dallas awarded him a diploma in Analytical Psychology. In addition, he is currently in private practice as a priest/psychoanalyst and teacher/lecturer. www.jpittmanmcgehee.com Music provided by: www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: www.thesacredspeaks.com www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/

Episode 4: A life worth living. A conversation with James Hollis In this episode, Jim and I discuss how elements of his personal history positioned his interest in depth psychology specifically and learning in general. Jim defines depth psychology and discusses how a relationship to one’s inner world orients one’s self to meaning and purpose. We explore how the relationship to a vocation or calling will either enhance or limit each of our life experience. He frames the price of being separated from one’s inner voice as “the problem of our time.” We discuss how the poet’s life and interest investigate the cosmos and psyche, as Jim believes that the poet is depth psychology. We investigate the difference between learning and thinking and evaluate how making a living and making money have contributed to the unbalancing of our culture. We explore the imagination and reason as working together to image possibilities. We frame addiction as a consequence of ego consciousness clinging to a management system believed to palliate the suffering of living. He eloquently identifies the core struggle shared amongst men and the related consequences of this struggle. We converse about the nature of transcendence and how attending to our symptoms, dreams, and fantasies place us into relationship with mysteries beyond our conscious sense of “I.” James Hollis, Ph. D. was born in Springfield, Illinois, and graduated from Manchester University in 1962 and Drew University in 1967. He taught Humanities 26 years in various colleges and universities before retraining as a Jungian analyst at the Jung Institute of Zurich, Switzerland (1977-82). He is presently a licensed Jungian analyst in private practice in Washington, D.C. He served as Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center in Houston, Texas for many years and now is Executive Director of the Jung Society of Washington. He is a retired Senior Training Analyst for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, was first Director of Training of the Philadelphia Jung Institute, and is Vice-President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation. Additionally, he is a Professor of Jungian Studies for Saybrook University of San Francisco/Houston. He lives with his wife Jill, an artist and retired therapist, in Washington, DC. Together they have three living children and eight grand-children. He has written a total of fifteen books and over fifty articles. The books have been translated into Swedish, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Korean, Finnish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Farsi, Japanese, Greek, Chinese, and Czech. www.jameshollis.net Music provided by: www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: www.thesacredspeaks.com

Niki is an expert on the ascetic John Cassian and the French philosopher Michel Foucault. In this episode Niki and I discuss her newest book, Sites of the Ascetic Self. Niki is most interested in daily practices of discipline that can help and enable individuals to open to certain forms of self-transformation including transformation of our bodies, our emotions and our relation to other people. She discusses how her history places her into relationship with her current areas of study. We are shaped as subjects in this world, therefore one of Niki’s core questions is: how can we become self-shaping and self-forming? Looking at the kinds of daily practices we each live and how those practices influence and inform our reality. We explore the value of recognizing the various interpretations and agencies that are present in every moment. We define the terms such as ethics, ascetic, and others. We discuss the modern understanding of mental health and the progressive pathologizing of one’s relationship with the voices, urges, and powers formed within one’s “head” or self. She is interested in the construction of one’s character as a way of life. Niki Clements works at the disciplinary intersection between the history of Christian practice, philosophy of religion, and religious ethics. She specializes in Christian asceticism and mysticism in late antiquity, highlighting its resources for thinking through contemporary ethical formation and conceptions of the self. She is currently completing the first comprehensive treatment of the ethical thought of John Cassian (c.360-c.435), a late antique Catholic architect of Latin monasticism doctrinally marginalized for his optimistic views on human agency. Engaging Michel Foucault's late work on ethics-which sees Cassian as a crucial inaugurator of modern disciplinary subjectivity-she critiques the conceptual limitations that Foucault's philosophical categories impose on his reading of Cassian, late antique Christianity, and the study of religion. She also pursues a transdisciplinary approach with cognitive neuroscience to argue that ethical formation integrates consciousness, embodiment, and affectivity. She is the volume editor for Mental Religion: The Brain, Cognition, and Culture, as part of the forthcoming Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. http://rice.academia.edu/NikiClements Specialization: History of Catholic thought and practice, Christianity in late antiquity, asceticism and mysticism, religious ethics, philosophy of religion, theories and methods in the study of religion, religion, and science Academic History: Ph.D., Brown University, Religion and Critical Thought, 2014 M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School, 2007 B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 2003 Music provided by: www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: www.thesacredspeaks.com

Have you ever wondered if someone can help you understand ways to think about the wild and, at times, frightening fantasies that we all experience throughout our lives (and sometimes on a daily basis)? Do we have fantasies, or do they have us? In this episode, Sean Fitzpatrick and I discuss the imagination and how the way each of us interprets those images and affects that seem to emerge from places whose point of origin are unknown can often influence our daily lives. From Sean’s perspective the attitude that we take to our fantasies is so important that he refers to this attitude as the ethics of the imagination; and he applies this to fantasies ranging from the murderous and the sexual to the mundane. Within this conversation Sean defines the terms “Jungian”, fantasy, imagination, spiritual, and ethical. Sean Fitzpatrick, PhD, LPC, holds master’s degrees in religious studies (Rice University) and clinical psychology (University of Houston – Clear Lake) and received his doctorate in psychology through Saybrook University’s program in Jungian studies. Sean is a psychotherapist in private practice and has been employed at The Jung Center since 1997. He has been an instructor at The Jung Center since 2001, and he lectures locally and nationally on a range of contemporary social and psychological issues. Learn more about Sean and The Houston Jung Center at: http://www.junghouston.org Music provided by: www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: www.thesacredspeaks.com

In this episode, Jeff and I discuss the nature of religion and secularism. We explore the need for culture to create a more generous science that includes experiences that are currently outside of the boundaries of the modern sciences. We define terms such as religion, belief, and gnosis, all in service of gaining a deeper understanding of the narratives that fuel and drive much of the human need to understand our lived experience. Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of Comparing Religions (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014); Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago, 2011); Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago, 2010); Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007); The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2007); Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001); and Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995). He has also co-edited volumes with: Sudhir Kakar, on the history, science, psychology, and analysis of psychical experiences, Seriously Strange: Thinking Anew about Psychical Experiences (Viking, 2012); Wouter Hanegraaff on eroticism and esotericism, Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (University of Amsterdam Press, 2008); Glenn W. Shuck on the history of Esalen and the American counterculture, On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture (Indiana, 2005); Rachel Fell McDermott on a popular Hindu goddess, Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West (California, 2003); G. William Barnard on the ethical critique of mystical traditions, Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism (Seven Bridges, 2002); and T.G. Vaidyanathan of Bangalore, India, on the dialogue between psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism (Oxford, 1999). His present areas of writing and research include the articulation of a New Comparativism within the study of religion that will put “the impossible” back on the table again, a robust and even conversation between the sciences and the humanities, and the mapping of an emergent mythology or “Super Story” within paranormal communities and individual visionaries. Learn more at: www.thesacredspeaks.com