The Sacred Speaks

Dr. Ferrari, one of the trailblazers of nanotechnology, the current President Designate of the European Research Council of the E.U., and the recently retired President and CEO of Houston Methodist Research Institute begins by explaining how he views math as a creative art. He maps theorem and proof onto the creative endeavor and posits that in the same way that the artist envisions the work, a mathematician envisions or intuits the theorem and then has to discover how to get there. He argues that this process of intuition provides the map, and the proof is the, potentially, frustrating process of bringing the inner world into the outer world. Dr. Ferrari, a medical doctor and engineer speaks of concepts such as awe, infinity, creativity, intuition, and dreams. This conversation explores what Dr. Ferrari identifies as the three phases of his life – his training and early history, the many academic languages that he speaks, the descent into personal chaos, and how dark moments such as these paved the way for him to seek to join in the fight for humanity as we seek to end the power that cancer has had over our lives. Bio: Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D. – Biosketch (Updated June 2, 2019) Current Positions (Selected): President Designate, European Research Council of the European Union (primary funding agency for research in the 28 member Countries of EU); Director, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ARWR); Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Community Partnerships, and Professor, University of St. Thomas; Advisor, Houston Methodist Hospital and Research Institute. Education: Mathematics (Padova, Italy, 1985, Dottore); Mechanical Engineering (University of California Berkeley, 1987, MS and 1989, PhD); Medicine (Ohio State University, 2002-2003, no degree); Business Administration (Wharton, 2016, Harvard Business School, 2017, no degree). Professional History (Selected): 1988-1990 Universita’ di Udine, Italy (Ricercatore, Assistant Professor Civil Engineering); 1991-1998 University of California Berkeley (Assistant and Associate Professor with tenure, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Bioengineering); 1998-2006 The Ohio State University (Full Professor with tenure and endowed chair, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Internal Medicine, Director of Biomedical Engineering, Associate Director Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute, Associate Vice President Health Science Technology Commercialization); 2003-2005 National Cancer Institute (Special Expert on Nanomedicine and Advisor to Director, concurrent with OSU); 2006-2010 University of Texas Medical School Houston, and MD Anderson Cancer Center (Full Professor with tenure and endowed chair, Internal Medicine, Experimental Therapeutics, Biomedical Engineering and Nanomedicine); 2010-2019 Houston Methodist Hospital (HMH) and Research Institute (HMRI) (Full professor with presidential endowed chair, President and CEO of HMRI, Executive Vice President of HMH, Chief Commercialization Officer). Publications: About 500 publications in leading archival journals, including 27 primary papers, reviews, and features in Nature journals (4 covers). Bibliometrics as of February 6, 2019: 57471 citations, h-index = 107, i10-index = 836 (Google Scholar); 21699 citations, h-index = 69 (SCOPUS); 22546 citations, h-index = 72 (ISI Web of Science). Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Alan Album: Alan, the Universal answer is both https://music.apple.com/us/album/alan-the-universal-answer-is-both/425467149 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

Dr. Kauffman, theoretical biologist, complex systems researcher, author of six books and numerous papers, begins the conversation recalling the ancient world and how the original split between the religions and the sciences influences the struggles and projections between the sciences and the arts/humanities today. Stuart begins this by providing scientific reasons why the possibilities of the world and our evolution are indefinite and anything that comes next in this evolution cannot be prestated – and he offers fascinating insight as to why this makes sense. He makes the case that any attempt to find a theory of everything or a final theory is false. Therefore, he connects this with the argument that reductionism, from an evolutionary perspective, fails – including Newton’s laws. Next, we move into how philosophers, beginning with Descartes’ notion of substance dualism, have made sense of reality, from Stuart’s perspective, dual nature – mind stuff and matter stuff. Here we use dual-aspect theory to begin to bring together the split that has permeated philosophy, religion, science, and even human biology, thus starting what we call today “the mind-body problem” – how mind stuff and matter stuff can interact. Dr. Kauffman suggests a new, quantum answer for this mind/body problem in a paper he titles, Beyond the Stalemate: Conscious Mind-Body - Quantum Mechanics - Free Will - Possible Panpsychism - Possible Interpretation of Quantum Enigma. He explains what is meant by the term “quantum mind” and its relationship to private experience termed “qualia.” Stuart posits that his definition for the term “god” is not the creator of the universe but creativity as a force and infinite pattern of the universe. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=stuart+kauffman&i=stripbooks&crid=LSORSEFY7Z9N&sprefix=stuart+kau%2Caps%2C388&ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_10 Books by Dr. Stuart Kauffman YouTube links: “The Shape of History” Evolution of Human Culture and Technology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Mn1bppV7U A Simple Combinatorial Model of Economic History Papers: Res potentia and Res extensa, non-locality - Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.04502 Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Bob Schneider Music page: http://www.bobschneider.com Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

In this episode, Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, and John explore the ideas that she has been working through in her books Learning to Walk in the Dark (2015) and Holy Envy (2019). She eloquently guides the listener through many of the hurdles that one encounters when grounding one’s self in a particular religious tradition. She encourages all of us to not only look on the other side of the fence over at another tradition but to experience the freedom one may acquire once we open ourselves to the other and see our own worldviews anew. Barbara has a gentle ability to challenges one’s assumptions about the world and her books provide a pathway to learn how to love more and also how to connect with and challenge those aspects of each of us that we often choose not to see. Bio: Barbara Brown Taylor is a best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. Her first memoir, Leaving Church, won an Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association in 2006. Her next two books, An Altar in the World (2010) and Learning to Walk in the Dark (2015), earned places on the New York Times bestseller list. She has served on the faculties of Piedmont College, Columbia Theological Seminary, Candler School of Theology at Emory University, McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University, and the Certificate in Theological Studies program at Arrendale State Prison for Women in Alto, Georgia. In 2014 TIME included her on its annual list of Most Influential People; in 2015 she was named Georgia Woman of the Year; in 2016 she received the President’s Medal at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Her fourteenth book, Holy Envy, was released by HarperOne in March 2019. https://barbarabrowntaylor.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Patrice Pike Music page: https://www.patricepike.com Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

Pastor Juanita Rasmus recounts a life of service to others and then the reality that no one is free from being drawn into a fight for their life. This fight felt more like a decent which landed in a depressive episode that she describes in great detail. Juanita recounts how she was able to both emerge from the depths and work to make sense of how her mind and body could have been so completely taken over by this decent. She could not laugh, get out of bed, or take care of herself, and while she had already been leading the life of someone who had committed her life to help those in need, this reality has provided her with a life-changing orientation. She was learning to take care of her soul. After laying out her personal experiences through this conversation, she begins to explain some of the contemplative practices that have clarified her thinking and have become reflections of her heart. Following Pastor Juanita's move through her depression, she became more connected with her environment and the act of contemplation as a means by which she can engage in a more profound and more mystical presence with her life and God. She discusses the mystical teaching of Jesus and also a few black mystics that have been omitted from the general history of Christianity. Bio: Juanita Rasmus is a pastor, Spiritual Director, and contemplative with a passion for outreach to our world’s most impoverished citizens. Pastor Juanita co-pastors the St. John’s United Methodist Church located in Downtown Houston with her husband Rudy. In 2009, Juanita was diagnosed with kidney cancer, but she wasn’t afraid. Instead, she waited to see what lesson the disease would bring. Years later Juanita and Rudy have continued their mission of bringing life to those who struggle on a daily basis and they created a nonprofit called The Bread of Life which has changed the landscape of Downtown Houston providing an array of services to families in peril and homeless individuals. The project also distributes over 9 tons of fresh produce weekly to hungry families. The project has been on the forefront of HIV/AIDS prevention, providing solutions to food insufficiency, housing the homeless, and disaster relief. Today, with a focus on social impact investing, the Bread of Life owns and operates Eco Life Employment LLC, a digital employment and staffing agency for men and women with troubled past lives and the Amazing KMAZ 102.5fm radio station Thanks to generous support from a collaboration of government agencies and a significant donation from Tina, Beyoncé, and Solange Knowles the St. John’s Downtown campus includes the Knowles-Temenos Apartments, a 43-unit Single Room Occupancy development designed to provide permanent living accommodations for formerly homeless women and men. Temenos CDC portfolio also includes an 80-unit apartment community to meet the growing need for permanent supportive housing for the previously homeless in Houston, Texas and a 15-unit apartment project for chronic inebriates and the most vulnerable homeless individuals in the Houston community. Eighteen years ago Kelly Rowland teamed up with Beyoncé and Tina Knowles to build the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth where community empowerment activities for the young and old take place every week. The facility is currently serving as the base of operations for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. https://www.stjohnsdowntown.org https://breadoflifeinc.org Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Todd Pipes Music page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/todd-pipes/26246004 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

This podcast episode explores how one mystical experience can bring an individual to question the nature of reality enough so that they devote their life to answering questions that often time seem unanswerable: What is the nature of reality? What is a self? What is identity? Also, how do people approach their lives after they have an experience that challenges the way they see the world; yet because that same experience seems so outside of their cultural norms, they keep it to themselves? Although with that said, Dr. Linda Ceriello began to notice that at the turn of the millennium many more people seemed free to start a public discussion about these radical personal experiences that seem to shatter and destabilize one’s worldview. We discuss the millennials and the plural generations as challenging the boundaries of these cultural identities, and how these younger generations are dealing with the grand narratives, they have been provided — the birth of the “spiritual but not religious” movement. We explore the differences between modernism, postmodernism, and the development of what some call metamodern; popular culture and the various depictions of mystical narratives; and she examines how Russell Brand has become such a significant figure in popular culture, fulfilling roles ranging from social advocate to spiritual teacher, and comedian. Bio: Linda Ceriello is a scholar of religions, specializing in Asian religions in America, mystical experience, contemplative studies, and critical theory of popular culture. She recently received her Ph.D. in Religion from Rice University, and also has a Master's degree in Education from Antioch University Seattle. Some of her favorite lecture topics include awe and wonder, the history of yoga, metamodern monsters, and the gnostic attributes of transgressive comedy. Publications include “Encoded Ambiguities, Embodied Ontologies: The Transformative Speech of Transgressive Female Figures in Gnosticism and Tantra” in (European Journal of Esotericism) La Rosa di Paracelso, and the forthcoming chapters, “Toward a Metamodern Reading of Spiritual-but-Not-Religious Mysticisms” in Being Spiritual But Not Religious: Past, Present, Future(s), and “"The Big Bad and the Big “Aha!”: Metamodern Monsters as Transformational Figures of Instability" in Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the U.S. She is co-founder and editor, with Greg Dember, of the website, What Is Metamodern? www.whatismetamodern.com. Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Greg Dember Music page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/greg-dember/292921755 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

This podcast episode explores the stories that help us understand our reality, our place in that reality, and how humans both cling to and challenge these same stories. Jeffrey Kripal has been a keeper of many extraordinary stories, and as a professor of religion, he is positioned to question the stories that we believe serve us, but the reality is that we often serve the story. This conversation is anchored in Dr. Kripal’s newest book, The Flip, wherein he challenges many of the assumptions of materialist science and posits that the sciences are not wrong, but that they are incomplete and therefore we need a change in our worldview. His arguments are well articulated and well informed by many scientists, including neuroscientists and physicists, who have, as a result of their research into reality, moved away from the materialist worldview into an approach to reality that chips away at many of the assumptions in which many of us have been educated – for example, the fact that we don’t really know what matter and consciousness are in the first place. Really. From Jeff’s book: A “flip,” writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is “a reversal of perspective,””a new real,” often born of an extreme, life-changing experience. The Flip is Kripal’s ambitious, visionary program for unifying the sciences and the humanities to expand our minds, open our hearts, and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the culture wars. Combining accounts of rationalists’ spiritual awakenings and consciousness explorations by philosophers, neuroscientists, and mystics within a framework of history of science and religion, Kripal compellingly signals a path to mending our fractured world. Bio: Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world. He is the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he also serves as Chair of the Board. Jeff is the author of numerous books, seven of which are with The University of Chicago Press, including, most recently a memoir-manifesto entitled Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions(Chicago, 2017). He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes, 2015-2016). He specializes in the study of extreme religious states and the re-visioning of a New Comparativism, particularly as both involve putting “the impossible” back on the academic table again. He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of religions and the sciences for The University of Chicago Press, collectively entitled The Super Story. http://jeffreyjkripal.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Chomsky Music page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/chomsky/5662475 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

The title of the John Horgan’s book, The Mind-Body Problems, with the addition of the “s”articulates the core of the mind-body problem – that it is plural. John Horgan is not content with one story that solves for the myriad problems we humans encounter when we explore reality and hunt to discover who we are and what matters most. John has been a scientific journalist for over 35 years and as someone who is paid to be curious he has commented on, written about, queried, and learned about some of the most ubiquitous and obscure scientific theories and discoveries science and human thought have brought to the foreground. Bio: John Horgan is a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. A former senior writer at Scientific American (1986-1997), he has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Slate and other publications. He writes the "Cross-check" blog for Scientific American and produces "Mind-Body Problems" for the online talk show Bloggingheads.tv. He tweets as @horganism. Horgan's most recent book, Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity and Who We Really Are, takes a radical new approach to the deepest and oldest of all mysteries, the mind-body problem. Published in September 2018, it is available for free online at mindbodyproblems.com, for $5 as an Amazon e-book and for $15 as a paperback. Horgan's first book was The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Science in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, which was republished with a new preface in 2015 by Basic Books. Originally published in 1996, it became a U.S. bestseller and was translated into 13 languages. Horgan's other books include The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, 1999, translated into eight languages; Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment, 2003, which The New York Times called "marvelous" (see outtakes from the book posted on this site); and The End of War, published in paperback in 2014, which novelist Nicholson Baker described as "thoughtful, unflappable, closely argued." Horgan's publications have received international coverage. He has been interviewed hundreds of times for print, radio, and television media, including The Lehrer News Hour, Charlie Rose, and National Public Radio's Science Friday. He has lectured at dozens of institutions in North America and Europe, including MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Dartmouth, McGill, the University of Amsterdam, and England's National Physical Laboratory. His awards include the 2005 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion; the American Psychiatric Association Certificate of Commendation for Outstanding Reporting on Psychiatric Issues (1997); the Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992 and 1994); and the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award (1993). His articles have been selected for the anthologies The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Science Writing. Horgan was an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum, the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, from 1983 to 1986. He received a B.A. in English from Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1982 and an M.S. from Columbia's School of Journalism in 1983. http://www.johnhorgan.org https://meaningoflife.tv/programs/current/mind-body-problems https://mindbodyproblems.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: The Deathray Davies Music page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-deathray-davies/6557498 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

We begin this conversation with Dr. April DeConick’s first exposure to Gnostic literature when she was a young student, without any real idea of what it is she was going to do with her life. The question for her was, “Why are these Gnostic texts not included in the New Testament?” This question sent her on the path of discovery, as she devoured literature from near-eastern and biblical studies. Dr. DeConick's particular interests include those aspects of the religious traditions that fell through the cracks of social, religious, and spiritual norms, while despite this still maintain a considerable influence on the dominant traditions of our current religious worldview. This conversation explores subjects ranging from early Christianity to Gnostic, Mystic, and Shamanic thought, ritual, and literature. These early communities were in large part quite transgressive; therefore much of the conversation is oriented towards understanding the nature of culture, power, societies, and the various ways that people throughout time have made meaning of the mysterious nature of reality. Bio: April DeConick holds the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professorship in New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University, and is Chair of the Department of Religion. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1994 in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Since then, she has studied, written and taught on a range of topics revolving around the silenced voices of religious people and the communities that were left behind or discarded when Christianity emerged in the first four centuries CE as a new religion. She is the co-founder and executive editor of a new academic journal called Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies published by a very prestigious publishing house in Europe. She founded and chaired for years the Mysticism, Esotericism and Gnosticism group in the Society of Biblical Literature and is now Chair of the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism group. She is most noted for her writing on the Gospel of Judas when she challenged sensationalism generated by the National Geographic Society that wrongly claimed that Judas is a gnostic hero in this text and that his heroics would rewrite our understanding of early Christianity. Instead, her work shows that Judas remains demonic in the Gospel of Judas, just as he is in the New Testament gospels. Her work on this text was so instrumental that she appeared in CNN’s documentary on the Gospel of Judas that premiered in 2015 on the TV series "Finding Jesus". Her most recent book, The Gnostic New Age, has won an award from the Figure Foundation for the best book to be published by an university press in philosophy and religion. It is tradition that the Figure Foundation composes a koan for each book to receive this award and publishes it on the front page. The koan for The Gnostic New Age reads: “that square be squared”. If you have any insight into the meaning of this koan, she would love to hear it. https://reli.rice.edu/people/faculty/april-deconick http://aprildeconick.com Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/

Dr. Murray Stein discusses initiation, directed vs. nondirected thinking, and the tension of opposites. He highlights the emergence of images beyond conscious control and the disconnect from the immaterial due to the growth of rational thinking. The conversation explores the impact of blending rational and imaginative thinking, the symbolic aspect of religion in Protestantism, and the transformative power of symbolic experiences.

After struggling through depression during medical school, Dr. Joseph Tafur was introduced to peyote by a friend who was researching psychedelics as a medical intervention. He reports that he quickly realized the connection between modern medical interventions, such as anti-depressants and psychedelics. In 2007 Dr. Tafur traveled to the Amazon and began his exploration of Ayahuasca and later began his training in Shipibo shamanism. Dr. Tafur’s medical background and his training as a Shipibo shaman position him to articulately explain the Western understanding of this spiritually-based approach to healing. Dr. Tafur’s book is full of case studies, and his use of these examples provide a first-hand account of what many know to be true: that many individuals do not feel adequately understood by the traditional western medicine. We discuss epigenetics, specifically how researchers are beginning to understand how trauma can be passed down from one generation to the other. We frame depression and other psychological issues as a disorder of the imagination, wherein the individual is cut off from their sense of creativity, and which cuts the individual off from imagining other possibilities in their life, and therefore they suffer under the burden of the discomfort and belief that change is not possible. Although Dr. Tafur can use modern medical language, he prefers to speak about love and broke-heartedness as it relates to what is missing in modern medicine. Bio: Dr. Tafur has been an Integrative Medicine activist throughout his medical career, while in medical school at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, and during his Family Medicine Residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has collaborated on research projects with the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine and the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine. After residency, Dr. Tafur subsequently completed a two-year Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the UCSD Department of Psychiatry under psychoneuroimmunology expert Dr. Paul Mills. While in San Diego, he also served on the board for the Alternative Healing Network and the Steering Committee for the UCSD Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Tafur is also dedicated to education. At Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual, Dr. Tafur supervised traditional training for allopathic medical students and medical student groups from the Southwestern College of Naturopathic Medicine and Bastyr College of Naturopathic Medicine. He has also worked as a professor for the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine’s online doctoral program. He is now developing new educational programs for Modern Spirit. Since 2007, Dr. Tafur, a has been traveling to Peru to work with Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine and to study with Master Shipibo Healers. He has completed his shamanic initiation under Maestro Ricardo Amaringo and worked alongside him for years in ayahuasca healing ceremony at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual. Here in the United States, he is working to promote the value of spiritual healing in modern healthcare and to demonstrate the intersection between traditional healing and allopathic medicine .https://drjoetafur.com https://modernspirit.org Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Band of the week: Black Tie Dynasty Music page: https://www.facebook.com/blacktiedynasty/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/black-tie-dynasty/41368471 Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/