The Mystical Positivist

Podcast: This week on The Mystical Positivist, we feature a pre-recorded conversation with returning guest Stephen Aronson about his new book, The Search for Meaning and the Mystery of Consciousness – A Psychologist’s Journey Through Gurdjieff and Jung, published by Karnak Press in 2022. This book explores the existential questions of reality, one’s purpose for existing, attention, consciousness, and the nature of the Universe all from a scientific and psychological perspective grounded in over 40 years of practice in the Gurdjieff work. Stephen Aronson is a psychotherapist with an eclectic training background ranging from cognitive behavioral therapy to the alchemical approach of Carl Jung. His spiritual life has been a search for verification of a deeper reality underlying the ordinary world of our senses. His personal aim has been to find a reconciliation between science and spirituality which would allow reconciling the concepts of Universal Intelligence with rationality. The arcane language of specialized methods, although necessary for advanced training, is often a barrier for those seeking an initial understanding. After dozens of years in Jungian analysis and four decades of study and practice in the system of transformational psychology introduced to the West by G. I. Gurdjieff, he has sought to find an approach to illustrate these deep and complex ideas and methods in common language and universally shared experiences. Steve lives in rural Maine where he retired in 2013 from forty-three years in the private practice of psychotherapy, education, and training. He has published on the work for G. I. Gurdjieff in Proceedings of the Annual All and Everything International Humanities Conference as well as in Parabola, a magazine dedicated to myth, tradition, and search for meaning. More information about Stephen Aronson's work can be found at: The Seekers Café website: seekerscafe.org, Stephen Aronson at The Gurdjieff Club: Preparation for the Third Line of Work, Stephen Aronson on The Mystical Positivist: Show 350 - 08FEB20, and Show 332 - 20JUL19.

Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with returning guest Ken McLeod in which we delve more deeply into the nature of the Vertical and Horizontal dimensions of life, what this means in the context of spiritual practice, the nature of transaction as the currency of the Horizontal realm, how we might relate to a spiritual practice in non-transactional terms, and what it means to say that a spiritual path is a “way of living”. This episode is another installment in an extended conversation that we have been having with Ken over the last couple of years. After learning Tibetan, Ken McLeod translated for his principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, and helped to develop Rinpoche’s centers in North America and Europe. In 1985, Kalu Rinpoche authorized Ken to teach and placed him in charge of his Los Angeles center. Faced with the challenges of teaching in a major metropolis, he began exploring different methods and formats for working with students. He moved away from both the teacher-center model and the minister-church model and developed a consultant-client model. Ken is the founder and director of UnfetteredMind.org. He is the author of Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention, The Great Path of Awakening, An Arrow to the Heart, Reflections on Silver River, and his most recent book, A Trackless Path. More information about Ken McLeod's work can be found at:  Unfettered Mind website: www.unfetteredmind.org.

Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Michael Allswang, author of Symbolism: Modern Thought and Ancient Egypt. After much study, reflection, and also visits to many ancient Egyptian monuments, Michael has come to the conclusion that the development of consciousness was the essential project of the priests of ancient Egypt, and that one of the means they used to achieve this end was the expression of spiritual truths by means of symbolism. Modern thought and ancient Egypt are both based on symbolism. Michael Allswang, after obtaining degrees from UCLA and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, made his career as manager of Documentation Services for software companies in the U.S. and France. At the same time, he was, and still is, an independent writer, translator, and researcher in the fields of ancient civilizations, Egyptology, psychology, and spirituality. He has published various articles on these themes in European periodicals. He is also the translator of Pierre Gordon's The Original Revelation. He now makes his home in both Paris and Provence in France. More information about Michael Allswang's work can be found at:  Michael Allswang on BookBaby: store.bookbaby.com, Michael Allswang on Facebook.com: www.facebook.com.

Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Elliot Cohen, author of The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions: Colonisation, Translation and Commodification. This essential book critically examines the various ways in which Eastern spiritual traditions have been typically stripped of their spiritual roots, content, and context, to be more readily assimilated into secular Western frames of Psychology. Dr. Elliot Cohen is a Chartered Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Social and Interdisciplinary Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He worked as a Psychotherapist for several years and then worked in Psychiatric units and therapeutic communities in and around Manchester; specializing in Psychodrama, Dramatherapy, Music Therapy and Mindfulness-Based Therapies. He is the current Secretary of the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Section and an active member of the Discourse Unit, which promotes more critical/radical approaches to Psychology. Elliott has traveled extensively around the Far East where he studied Daoist, Buddhist, and Hindu philosophy. He is an authorized teacher of Buddhist meditation and Mindfulness-Based Approaches from the Dhamma Nikethanaya Buddhist Academy. More information about Elliot Cohen's work can be found at:  Elliot Cohen at Leeds: www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk, Elliot Cohen on Academia.edu: leedsbeckett.academia.edu, Elliot Cohen on Facebook.com: www.facebook.com, The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions at Routledge: www.routledge.com.

Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Steve Taylor, author of Extraordinary Awakenings: When Trauma Leads to Transformation. In this book Steve shares dozens of amazing stories of individuals who “woke up” to profound transformation following bereavement, deep depression, suicide attempts, addiction, military combat, imprisonment, or other intense encounters with mortality. Along with the amazing stories of shifters he shares throughout the book, Taylor uncovers the psychological processes that help explain these miraculous awakenings. Steve Taylor is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University, and the author of several best-selling books on psychology and spirituality. He is a past chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. His other books include The Clear Light, Out of the Darkness, Back to Sanity, The Calm Center, The Leap, and Spiritual Science. He also writes blog articles for Scientific American and Psychology Today. More information about Steve Taylor's work can be found at:  Steve Taylor's Website: www.stevenmtaylor.com, Steve Taylor on Facebook: www.facebook.com, Extraordinary Awakenings at New World Library: www.newworldlibrary.com.

Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Richard Payne, editor and contributor to the 2021 Shambhala publication, Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition. This collection of essays explores how secular values impact Buddhism in the modern world, what versions of Buddhism are actually being transmitted to the West, whether it is possible to know if a given interpretation of the Buddha's words is correct, and whether "Secular Buddhism" is purely a Western invention. Contributors to this volume include Bhikkhu Bodhi, Kate Crosby, Gil Fronsdal, Kathleen Gregory, Funie Hsu, Roger R. Jackson, Charles B. Jones, David L. McMahan, Richard K. Payne, Ron Purser, Sarah Shaw, Philippe Turenne, and Pamela D. Winfield. Richard K. Payne is the Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. During his dissertation research into tantric fire ritual (Homa) on Mt. Koya in Japan, he also completed training as a Shingon priest (ajari). Clustering around his core research program on tantric ritual are broader theoretical concerns about the conduct of such research. This includes the study of ritual across cultural boundaries and over long durations, and the use of language in tantric Buddhist ritual. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the institute's annual journal, Pacific World, and is the chair of the Editorial Committee of the Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series. His other publications include, Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts: An Anthology, co-edited with Georgios Halkias (2019); Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan: Indic Roots of Mantra (2018); and Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual across the Longue Durée, co-edited with Michael Witzel (2016). More information about Richard Payne's work can be found at:  Richard Payne at the Institute of Buddhist Studies: www.shin-ibs.edu, Richard Payne's Blog: criticalreflectionsonbuddhistthought.org, Secularizing Buddhism at Shambhala: www.shambhala.com, Mystical Positivist episodes with contributors to Secularizing Buddhism and related guests:  Gil Fronsdal, Stephen Batchelor, Roger R. Jackson, Kate Crosby.

Podcast: This week on the show we feature a pre-recorded conversation with returning guest Ken McLeod in which we discuss the role of Imagination in spiritual practice, the distinction between the Vertical and Horizontal dimensions of life and the modern struggle to imagine the Vertical dimension, how we might imagine a non-transactional embodiment of spiritual practice, and much more. After learning Tibetan, Ken McLeod translated for his principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, and helped to develop Rinpoche’s centers in North America and Europe. In 1985, Kalu Rinpoche authorized Ken to teach and placed him in charge of his Los Angeles center. Faced with the challenges of teaching in a major metropolis, he began exploring different methods and formats for working with students. He moved away from both the teacher-center model and the minister-church model and developed a consultant-client model. Ken is the founder and director of UnfetteredMind.org. He is the author of Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention, The Great Path of Awakening, An Arrow to the Heart, Reflections on Silver River, and his most recent book, A Trackless Path. More information about Ken McLeod's work can be found at:  Unfettered Mind website: www.unfetteredmind.org.

Podcast: This week on the show, we present a pre-recorded conversation with author, Peter Russell, about his latest book, Letting Go of Nothing: Relax Your Mind and Discover the Wonder of Your True Nature (An Eckhart Tolle Edition). Peter Russell is an author, speaker, and leading thinker on consciousness and contemporary spirituality. He believes the critical challenge today is freeing human thinking from the limited beliefs and attitudes that lie behind many of our problems — personal, social, and global. His mission is to distill the essential wisdom on human consciousness found in the world’s various spiritual traditions and to disseminate it in contemporary and compelling ways. Russell earned a first-class honors degree in theoretical physics and psychology — as well as a master’s degree in computer science — at the University of Cambridge, England. He also studied meditation and Eastern philosophy in India. He coined the term global brain with his 1980s bestseller by the same name in which he predicted the internet and the impact it would have on humanity. He is the author of twelve books including Waking Up in Time and From Science to God. More information about Peter Russell's work can be found at: Peter Russell's Website: www.peterrussell.com, Letting Go of Nothing page: Letting Go of Nothing, Online course on Meditation: How to Meditate - Without Even Trying.

Podcast: This week on the show, we present a pre-recorded conversation with author, Pamela Logan, about her latest book, Compassion Mandala – The Odyssey of an American Charity in Contemporary Tibet. Pamela Logan can usually be found with her head in the clouds, moving uphill. At the age of 19 she took up karate while pursuing an engineering degree at Caltech. She later got an aerospace PhD from Stanford; but then left her career as a scientist to investigate the warrior tribes of the eastern Tibetan plateau, in a region known as Kham. Not long after that, she worked for the China Exploration & Research Society restoring Tibetan temples and probing Silk Road ruins. In 1996, Dr. Logan was named Woman Explorer of the Year. The following year she started Kham Aid Foundation, a nonprofit that operated for 14 years assisting people in eastern Tibet with their needs for education, health care, cultural preservation, and economic opportunity. In 2007, Logan started a third career when she took a job with the US federal government as a cleaner-upper of radioactive contamination at the Hanford site in Washington State. Later she moved to a different agency where she her job is to stop federal contractors from gouging American taxpayers. In her spare time, she still teaches karate and continues to advance the cause of assistance to Tibet through publication of books and articles that raise awareness of the needs of Tibetans. She now holds the rank of fifth degree black belt and teaches at Boulder Shotokan Karate. In 2020, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Logan began producing a series of training videos called “Karate at Home, Alone.” Logan is also the author Among Warriors and Tibetan Rescue. She is an accomplished public speaker, having delivered invited lectures at Columbia University, Wellesley College, Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong, Asia Society, Explorers Club, Foreign Correspondents Clubs in Hong Kong and Beijing, and others. More information about Pamela Logan's work can be found at: Pamela Logan's Website: www.pamela-logan.com.

Podcast: This week on the show, we present a pre-recorded conversation with Zimbabwan healer, Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa. Mandaza is a spirit medium and medicine man from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. In Shona, his native tongue, he is known as a Mhondora, Svikiro, and Gombwa. He was initiated through the tradition of the njuzu, the water spirits. Mandaza carries with him in his heart the Central African spiritual tradition of healing and peacemaking. He is known internationally for his loving presence and for his preservation of the old ways. He stands for Truth, Love, Justice, and Peace in this world. Mandaza was raised in a Christian home, trained as an educator, school administrator, and police officer in Apartheid Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. During this time, he became actively involved in the liberation struggle. Currently, Mandaza travels internationally offering teachings and healing counsel in churches, schools, prisons, and hospitals. He co-authored, with Michael Ortiz-Hill, Twins From Another Tribe, one of the few books that discuss Shona cosmology and traditional practices. More information about Mandaza Kandemwa's work can be found at: Mandaza's Website: www.mandaza.com, Mandaza on Dharmagiri: www.dharmagiri.org, Mandaza online seminar series: www.pathwayteaching.com.