Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Course Descriptions
PARP 6060: Introduction to Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (3 units)
This course is a required introduction for all master's and doctoral PCC students in their first year of coursework. It has three goals: First, it allows students to become familiar with the scholarly work and worldview of the core PCC faculty, each of whom presents the key ideas and insights that he or she most wishes to emphasize as his or her contribution to the academic content and larger vision of the PCC program. Second, students meet each other at a critical time and gain a sense of their cohort and the PCC community. Third, the course includes an introduction to essential skills in research, writing, and strategies for maximizing the learning experience throughout the course of the program.
PARP 6110: Cosmological Powers (3 units) - Prof. Brian Swimme - The Universe uses a variety of processes, laws, and powers that are identified within modern scientific discourse as electromagnetic interaction, the second law of thermodynamics, and gravity. These fundamental and ultimately mysterious activities of the Universe have given rise to all the complex beings throughout 14 billion years of evolution. The human being, from this perspective, is a new, holistic blending of these processes and powers. This course examines the way in which humanity can be understood as a "hominized" form of cosmological processes.
PARP 6116: Archetypal Cosmology (2 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - This course examines the origins, fundamental concepts, historical development, and theoretical implications of the new discipline of archetypal cosmology, which has arisen from the confluence of ancient Greek thought, astrology, depth psychology, and the new paradigm sciences. In particular, we will consider the historical evolution of the new discipline's fundamental concept, archetypal principles, starting with the concept's origin in ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, and Hellenistic thought. Building on that foundation, we will examine how major figures of Western intellectual history have contributed to our developing understanding of the nature of archetypes, including Plato, Aristotle, Ficino, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Freud, Jung, Hillman, Grof, and Tarnas. We will also explore how the theoretical contributions of the new paradigm sciences support the overall vision of archetypal cosmology. Finally, we will consider the implications of archetypal cosmology for our understanding of the relationship between the psyche and the cosmos, and the relevance of this emerging field for leading us beyond the disenchanted worldview of the modern era.
PARP 6120: Cosmology of Literature (3 units) - Prof. Brian Swimme - Poets, novelists, and writers of epic literature are among our finest philosophers, for they present penetrating metaphysical principles within the dramatic and concrete actions of particular characters in context. This course is a journey through Earth's literary cosmologies, stretching from the earliest epics to the literature of the 21st century.
PARP 6126: Spirituality and Moral Action (1 unit) - Prof. Jacob Needleman - What is the relationship between inner spiritual experience and the ethical quality of an individual's actual day-to-day life? This course will examine this question in the light of spiritual teachings and practices, ancient and contemporary-Jewish and Christian mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the work of Krishnamurti and Gurdjieff. The background text will be Why Can't We Be Good? by Jacob Needleman, and selected source readings to be announced.
PARP 6146: Birth of the Diamond Soul (3 units) - Prof. Christopher Bache - The objective in this course is to explore the impact that the planetary crisis may be having on the human soul. We will examine the hypothesis that the size and scale of the transformation taking place globally mirrors an equally profound shift taking place within the soul. This course will bring into dialogue two lines of inquiry that often appear separately in the literature: (1) the dynamics of the soul's growth through reincarnation and (2) the dynamics of humanity's evolutionary collective transformation. In this respect, it will be integrating themes from Christopher M. Bache's two earlier books-Lifecycles and Dark Night, Early Dawn. Integrating these two perspectives takes us into the nuts and bolts of the evolutionary pivot that the soul may be undergoing at this critical moment in history.
PARP 6147: Modern Cosmology through the Media (3 units) - Prof. Brian Swimme - Each era of human history has had its unique manner of expressing its deepest knowledge of the world. In southern Africa, beginning some one hundred thousand years ago, the earliest humans used cave paintings; in the Neolithic cultures and then in classical civilizations, our ancestors employed ritual and theater or else captured their cosmologies in literary masterpieces. In the twentieth century, yet another mode of expression has appeared, that of electronic media, in which a number of presentations of our modern understanding of the universe now exist, including Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man, James Burke's Connections, and Brian Swimme's Journey of the Universe. David Kennard was either director or producer of these as well as five other cosmological productions, all of which, taken together, make up the central subject matter of this course.
PARP 6225: Synchronicity and Its Implications (2 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - If synchronicity is real, the Universe must be very different from what is assumed by the conventional scientific understanding. This course investigates the implications of accepting the reality of synchronicity and the role it has come to play in the psychological and spiritual life of our time. The course begins with a discussion of C. G. Jung's original formulation of the issue, including how that differed from the approach he actually adopted in his own life and practice, and then examines the various theoretical explanations that have been proposed by scientists, philosophers, and depth psychologists.
PARP 6249: Romanticism and Philosophy (3 units) - Prof. Jacob Sherman - What is the imagination and what is its relationship to truth, goodness, and beauty? One of the most astonishing developments of modernity is the new literary, philosophical, and cultural role that Western society gave to the imagination. In this course, we will trace how the imagination emerged from its previous role as a subordinative cognitive faculty into the creative organ of meaning, the summit of artistic creation, and the mediator between spirit and matter that it seems to be today. Through a reading of key texts by figures such as Vico, Hume, Kant, Coleridge, Blake, Shelley, and Barfield, students will be led to consider not only the history of the creative imagination but also its relevance for continuing questions in contemporary philosophy and religion.
PARP 6256: Rilke: A Poetic Introduction (1 unit) - Prof. Daniel Polikoff - We will endeavor to open doors to Rainer Maria Rilke's world by looking at his art through the lens of his life and availing ourselves of the light that modern depth psychology may shed on both. Rilke's formative struggle with Christianity, his romance with Russia and the brilliant Lou Andreas-Salomé, his apprenticeship to the sculptor Auguste Rodin: these and other crucial biographical developments will provide the context for close readings of key poems (often in the instructor's own translation) spanning virtually the whole of Rilke's oeuvre. In the course of this compact odyssey, we'll see how basic depth psychological concepts play out on the stage of poetic life, and gain a glimpse of Rilke's complex and compelling vision of the nature and destiny of the human soul.
PARP 6270: Asian Spiritual Masters (3 units) - Prof. Robert McDermott - A companion course to Western Spiritual Masters, this course studies twentieth-century spiritual teachers and activists rooted in Asian spiritual traditions. The course introduces Indian/neo-Hindu ideals and focuses on M. K. Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
PARP 6275: Plato and Platonism (3 units) - Prof. Jacob Sherman - This course is an exploration of the writings, thought, and legacy of Plato, from its roots in his encounter with Socrates through the development of his own writings, and into the continuous tradition that his writings inspired, a tradition that continues to be debated in philosophy and other disciplines to this day. The first half of the course is devoted to a careful reading of and philosophical engagement with central Platonic dialogues. In the latter half of the course, attention turns to the consideration of some of Plato's 'Neoplatonic' successors, before concluding by considering the ways that Plato's thought continues to be debated, appropriated, and a creatively retrieved as a means of addressing central concerns of our own day.
PARP 6279: Christian Contemplative Traditions: History, Theology, Practice and Theory (3 units) - Prof. Jacob Sherman - This course is an introduction to some of the central figures, theories, practices and texts that contributed to the development of the Christian contemplative tradition from its beginnings through to our own twenty-first century. Through primary readings of classical sources, alongside key readings drawn from the secondary literature, students will become familiar with a variety of central voices in the history of Christian spirituality and contemplative practice. Because of the interdisciplinary and integral nature involved in contemplative studies, the course may additionally address various aspects of the history of theology and philosophy, women's history, politics and spirituality, and the psychology and cognitive science of religion.
PARP 6282: Implications of Modern Consciousness Research for Psychiatry and Psychology (2 units) - Prof. Stanislav Grof - In the last five decades, psychedelic therapy and other avenues of modern consciousness research have revealed a rich array of "anomalous" phenomena that have undermined some of the most basic assumptions of modern psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy concerning consciousness and the human psyche in health and disease. Many of these observations are so radical that they question the basic philosophical assumptions of materialistic science. In this course, we will review these remarkable data and explore the most important major revisions that would have to be made in our understanding of consciousness, of the human psyche, and of the nature of reality to respond to these conceptual challenges. These radical changes in our thinking would fall into the following categories: the cartography of the human psyche; the architecture of emotional and psychosomatic disorders; effective therapeutic mechanisms; the strategy of psychotherapy and self-exploration; the role of spirituality in human life; the nature of reality: psyche, cosmos, and consciousness; and the relevance archetypal psychology and astrology.
PARP 6283: Merleau-Ponty: The Body and the Earth (3 units) - Prof. Don Johnson - In this course, we will read several texts from Merleau-Ponty and his heirs, focusing on how his work builds a strong matrix for understanding how our very souls are intertwined with the earth, the foundation for a more passionate environmental sensibility. We will engage in various experiential exercises, inspired by clues from Merleau-Ponty, designed to extricate us from residues of the dualistic thinking that infects so many of us, making it difficult for us to feel fully at home ... here.
PARP 6315: The Epic of the Universe (3 units) - Prof. Brian Swimme - In the modern form of consciousness, the connotation of "Universe" is "stars and galaxies and planets and life." But this objectivism no longer serves to orient us in the quantum evolutionary Universe we have discovered through contemporary scientific methods. Though it is approximately true to say that we can store within us an objective knowledge of a Universe out there, it is even more accurate to say that our knowledge of the Universe is one of the ways in which the Universe awakens to its own ongoing creative development. In our post-Heisenberg, post-Einstein world, each human is the autobiography of the Universe. Similarly, each rosebud is the epic of the Universe. This course is an inquiry into the ways in which the Universe has developed. Our overall aim is to participate in the awakening of a nondual, integral form of humanity.
PARP 6339: Subtle Activism: The Role of Consciousness in Planetary Transformation (2 units) - Profs. Sean Kelly and David Nicol - Set within our current context of unparalleled planetary crisis and the call to participate in the Great Turning toward a life-sustaining civilization, this course considers the historical, scientific, and spiritual dimensions of the emerging field of subtle activism. Traditional methods of front-line activism (e.g., marches, demonstrations, putting one's body in front of bulldozers), essential as they are, represent only the most immediate and direct expressions of activism. A synchronized global meditation and prayer event, in which thousands or millions of people around the planet unite in silence and prayers for world peace, is a prime example of subtle activism. Along with the lectures, shared readings, and dialogue, this course includes practice in Gaiafield Attunement, a subtle activism practice that has emerged from several years of experimentation by members of the Center for Subtle Activism at CIIS.
PARP 6391: The Alchemy of Permaculture (4 units) - Prof. Blair Carter - This ten-day off-site residential field course investigates the psychocultural origins of the planetary crisis and pursues direct practical solutions to it. Utilizing the ethic and practice of deep ecology and permaculture, we aim to envision, create, and live a sustainable way of being, and, most important, explore a playful and joyous kinship with the wild and natural world. Readings include selections by E. O. Wilson on the ecological crisis, C. G. Jung, and a variety of readings on permaculture and deep ecology.
PARP 6392: Plants and People: Understanding the Plant World through Relationships (3 units) - Prof. Kathren Murrell Stevenson - Through this course you will learn about the plant world from an interdisciplinary, relationship-based perspective. Doorways into relationship include gardening, farming, conservation, and restoration; philosophies rooted in indigenous wisdom, bioregionalism, deep ecology, and Gaia; and celebrations of these relationships found in imaginal practices, Earth-based rituals, and direct communion/meditation with the plant world. The above relationships and philosophies form a rich tapestry of experience from which we will draw inspiration and tools for connecting to ourselves and the Earth. Explored concepts will find embodied expression as you cultivate your own unique relationship with the plant world and express that relationship through direct engagement and creative expression.
PARP 6403: Spirit and Nature (3 units) - Profs. Robert McDermott and Sean Kelly - This course explores the application to nature of an anthroposophical worldview and practice. It is situated within the broadly Romantic tradition and esoteric research advanced by Goethe and Emerson in the 19th century and by Rudolf Steiner and his followers in the 20th century. It includes a study of teh Aristotle-Aquinas-Steiner tradition, Steiner's spiritual ecology, Pagacnik's esoteric Gaia research, Zoeteman's Gaiasophy, and Steiner's directions for Biodynamic farming. The course will include a visit to one or more Biodynamic farms and one or more guest classes taught by Biodynamic gardeners or farmers.
PARP 6407: Karma and Biography (3 units) - Prof. Robert McDermott - This course will join the study of karma to the biographies and autobiographies of individuals who were influential in the 20th century and whose lives reveal an ideal blend of thinking, writing, spiritual striving, and activism. The class will attempt to find critical destiny moments in the lives of each individual studied. The final paper will be a 30-page spiritual-intellectual autobiography.
PARP 6455: Becoming Intimate with Nature (3 units) - Prof. James Inabinet - This course begins with field explorations of nature in the natural attitude, our normal, everyday mode of seeing/interpreting the world. Further explorations will be conducted in the phenomenological attitude, accomplished by a "bracketing" or putting aside that everyday mode for one that investigates the way observed phenomena are constituted in consciousness. Explorations conclude with an introduction to the participatory mode, one that seeks direct perception of the Other, ostensibly unmitigated by the senses. The course will take place over six days in the Oakland hills near Holy Names College and/or the Berkeley hills near UC Berkeley. All classes will be conducted in the field.
PARP 6499: A Brief History of Western Thought (1 unit) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - This course presents a brief introductory survey of the evolution of the Western worldview, beginning with its roots in Greco-Roman culture and the Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Following its development through the medieval period to the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution, the course explores the gradual transformation of the modern worldview, established during the Enlightenment and counterbalanced by Romanticism, into the radically pluralistic postmodern sensibility and increasingly global civilization of the present period. Familiarity with the grand lines of Western intellectual and spiritual history was long considered the mark of an educated person in the West, and to a crucial extent this is still the case. Such knowledge is a necessary part of what we require to comprehend the larger context of our own critical moment in history, which has been fundamentally shaped, for better and for worse, by the powerfully dynamic character of the Western mind and its evolution.
PARP 6506: The Great Turning (2 units) - Profs. Joanna Macy and Sean Kelly - Inspired by the philosopher-activist Joanna Macy's "work that reconnects," this intensive is devoted to facilitating the Great Turning-that is, the shift toward a life-sustaining society and a culture in harmony with the long-term interests of the wider Earth community. Through experiential exercises, lectures, and dialogue, students gain insight into such topics as deep time, ecological guardianship, and the systems view of life.
PARP 6517: History of Western Thought and Culture: An Archetypal Perspective (3 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - This course explores and analyzes the history of Western thought and culture from the ancient Greeks to the present. Using the narrative provided by The Passion of the Western Mind as the basic text, we will examine the major figures, ideas, and eras of Western intellectual and cultural history both on their own terms and as aspects of a larger unfolding drama that has shaped our own historical moment. To help illuminate that history, this course will apply the insights of archetypal astrological analysis, examining the correlations between planetary alignments and the archetypal patterns of history and biography. Each week we will explore a particular era (such as the Hellenistic age, the Renaissance, or the scientific revolution) in terms of the major planetary cycles of the time, the birth charts of leading figures (Descartes, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir), and personal transits for major turning points (Augustine's conversion experience, Petrarch's climbing Mont Ventoux, Galileo's turning his telescope to the heavens). We will also strive to discern the deeper significance of this long historical trajectory when seen through the lens of an archetypal evolutional perspective. Prerequisite: PARP 7001 or PARP 7002 or permission of instructor.
PARP 6522: Science, Ecology, and Contested Knowledge(s) (3 units)- Prof. Elizabeth Allison - A critical examination of the social construction of scientific and ecological knowledge, through frameworks from science, technology, and society (STS) studies, reveals Western scientific knowledge as a contingent cultural phenomenon, vulnerable to critique from alternative epistemologies. This course compares the dominant forms of scientific knowledge about the natural world with countervailing epistemological understandings, such as situated knowledge, indigenous knowledge, citizen science, and traditional ecological knowledge, examining the ways that the social construction of knowledge shapes our understanding of the natural world. Applying feminist and non-Western epistemologies to environmental issues, it will seek to generate alternative ways of understanding ecological crises, which may, in turn, generate healing alternatives.
PARP 6523: Environmental Ethics (3 units) - Prof. Elizabeth Allison - This course surveys ethical approaches to the natural environment, with particular focus on the American context. It will trace the ways in which the natural environment has been theorized over time and the ethical approaches that derive from various views of the natural environment. The goal of the course is for students to construct, articulate, and defend a theoretically rigorous environmental ethics.
PARP 6525: Towards an Integral Ecological Consciousness (3 units) - Prof. Elizabeth Allison - How can the study of ecology become more integral? Can ecology embrace the realm of ideas, philosophy, spirituality, poetry, and religion, along with the dynamic currents of politics, economics, and culture that shape human interactions on and with the Earth? How might it be possible to enter into a more personal relationship with a living Earth? This foundational course for students in the Integral Ecology track begins with a review of the state of the Earth and myriad factors threatening ecological resilience. It considers the responses that may arise in the face of eco-crisis, and explores how religious and philosophical worldviews are expanding to incorporate new ecological understandings. Readings, lectures, and dialogue examine the spectrum of eco-activism, and the search for more harmonious and just ways forward. Students are encouraged to articulate the meaning of "integral ecology" through both philosophy and practice.
PARP 6532: Christianity and Ecology (3 units) - Prof. Jacob Sherman - What is the relationship between Christianity and ecology? How have various aspects of Christian thought and theology contributed to the present ecological crisis? In what ways might Christian thought and practice help to heal our present crisis? By focusing both on the scriptural, theological, and spiritual background as well as on recent articles and monographs, this course seeks to provide students with an introduction to the way that Christians respond to the current concern over the human relationship to the Creation in order to come to a fuller understanding of some of the spiritual, philosophical, social, and economic forces that have shaped this relationship and to imagine how Christian wisdom might contribute to answering many of the pressing ecological concerns of our time.
PARP 6533: Touch the Earth (3 units) - Prof. Elizabeth Allison - Through practical engagement with the larger San Francisco Bay Area socio-ecological community, students apply theoretical tools developed during coursework and gain experience in the practice of Integral Ecology. Students receive guidance in selecting a practicum site that suits their unique gifts and interests, and spend most of the semester engaged with projects at the practicum site. Monthly seminar meetings offer an opportunity to analyze experience in the context of literature on leadership, social change, service-learning, activism, compassion, ecological restoration, and resilience.
PARP 6538: Krishna, Buddha, and Christ (3 units) - Prof. Robert McDermott - This course provides an opportunity for students to deepen their relationship to Krishna, to Buddha, and to Christ. To this end, the course includes a study of the Bhagavad Gita according to Sri Aurobindo; His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Tibetan Buddhism and in dialogue with Catholic contemplatives; a Jungian interpretation of Christ as a symbol of the Self; and Rudolf Steiner's lectures on esoteric relationships among Krishna, Buddha, and Christ.
PARP 6541: Wisdom and the Sacred: An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (3 units) - Prof. Jacob Sherman - This course will explore the sometimes surprising way that a range of Western philosophers have sought to respond to these questions and the implications that these different responses hold for our intellectual, sociopolitical, and spiritual lives. The course is roughly divided into two halves, one historical, the other contemporary. Beginning with the birth of modern philosophy of religion in the seventeenth century, the historical half looks at key philosophers from early modernity through the Romantic period in order to consider three approaches to the philosophy of religion: integration, opposition, and separation. Historical readings will include primary and secondary sources on the Cambridge Platonist Anne Conway, the Enlightenment thinkers Immanuel Kant and David Hume, and the Romantic philosopher and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the second half of the course, we turn our attention to contemporary twentieth- and twenty-first-century options, paying special attention to questions of politics, gender, secularity, violence, language, truth, and metaphysics within the philosophy of religion.
PARP 6549: Toward an Ecological Economics (1 unit) - Prof. Bruce Thompson - The empirical evidence makes it increasingly apparent that our industrial society, with its emphasis on permanent growth, is unsustainable. Can the human project continue under a single economic ideology-capitalism-that distorts wealth and devours resources, while destroying the biosphere? Can we just "green" capitalism, or do we need to create a new system with different guiding principles? This course examines our current economic system and its free-market ideology through the lens of ecology and explores new economic models that support the reinventing of the human-and the economic system-as part of the larger Earth community. We will explore how modernity is trapped by its adherence to eighteenth-century economic principles that are mechanistic and abstract in origin yet are accepted as immutable laws of nature. In particular, we will examine why the chimera of economic growth must end, and what the underlying principles might be for an economy that is sustainable as well as fair and spiritually fulfilling for all members of the Earth community.
PARP 6554: Foundations of Integral Philosophy: Sri Aurobindo (3 units)- Prof. Robert McDermott - Sri Aurobindo was one of the greatest yogis of the twentieth century. His spiritual realizations were vast and are reflected in everything he wrote. He was educated at Cambridge, and English is his native language. Thus his works are the only writings we have from a realized Vedic master that are not diminished by translation. Sri Aurobindo was also a great philosopher and cosmologist. He (like Teilhard) articulated a cosmological vision that is evolutionary and spiritual at once. His particular story is interesting because it accounts for mystical and occult experiences very clearly, and makes way for reincarnation and life after death. In this class, we will begin with a general introduction to his ideas, and then we will get as far as we can in his book Essays on the Gita. We will, of course, read the Gita text on which Sri Aurobindo is commenting as well.
PARP 6562: The Ecology and Poetry of Trees (1 unit) - Prof. Kathren Murrell Stevenson - The aim of this course is to delve into the ecology of native California trees and their habitats: forests, woodlands, and savannas. Topics will include succession, disturbance, conservation, restoration, and global climate change. The spirit dimension of trees will be explored concurrently through weekly exercises and creative projects.
PARP 6563: Buddhism and Ecology (3 units) - Prof. Elizabeth Allison - In this course, we will examine Buddhist perspectives on nature along with Buddhist responses to Asian and global environmental issues. We begin with historical texts that frame the Buddhist perspective on nature. We examine Buddhist foundations for ecological thought, the role of Buddhism in the development of the American environmental movement, and challenges in reconciling Buddhist positions with modern science. Works by Buddhist leaders and scholars, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sulak Sivaraksa, Joanna Macy, and poet Gary Snyder, illuminate the role of modern Buddhism in environmental discourse.
PARP 6574: Wordsworth's "The Prelude" (1 unit) - Prof. Fred Amrine - Arguably a Faust for the English-speaking world, William Wordsworth's long autobiographical poem "The Prelude" stands as a true modern human epic. In this course, we will read and discuss "The Prelude" as a meditation on the evolution of consciousness, spiritual striving, and imagination as a mode of cognition.
PARP 6582: Art, Psyche, and Cosmos (3 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - This course explores deeper understandings of major works of art through the insights of depth psychology and archetypal astrology. In turn, we will study how such works of art can illuminate deeper aspects of the human psyche. The multimedia-illustrated lectures offer the opportunity to compare insights of different schools of depth psychology and to clarify fundamental principles of both psychological and archetypal astrological analysis.
PARP 6584: Comic Genius: A Multidisciplinary Approach (3 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas and John Cleese - In this three-weekend intensive, we will explore the nature of comedic creativity from several overlapping perspectives: cultural history, biography, depth psychology, archetypal astrology, performance, and writing. We will examine the complex role that comedy plays in cultural life, from broad popular entertainment to subversive social critique, and its unusual capacity to express archetypal complexes, both individual and collective, in ways that articulate otherwise suppressed energies and tensions. Films will be assigned in advance and clips of individual performances viewed in class as a basis for the analysis. The focus will be on major figures in the history of modern comedy, beginning with Chaplin, Keaton, W. C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers, and including Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Woody Allen, Lily Tomlin, Monty Python, Robin Williams, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert.
PARP 6589: Gurdjieff and the Crisis of Our World (1 unit) - Prof. Jacob Needleman - Although there is increasing recognition of the importance of G. I. Gurdjieff in the spiritual landscape of the modern world, the main elements of his teaching remain largely unknown. This brief course will seek to clarify some of the essential ideas and principles of this teaching especially as they bear directly on the hopes and fears of our present moment in history.
PARP 6651: Integral Gaia: Ecology for the Planetary Era (3 units) - Prof. Sean Kelly - Though we are now in the sixth century of the planetary era, it is only in our own times that a wider consciousness of the fact has begun to emerge. Global climate change, a looming mass extinction of species, widespread habitat loss, and increasing pressures of global economic and political interdependence are all forcing us as never before to "think (and sense, feel, and imagine) globally." Standard Gaia theory and established schools of ecology are the most important attempts to do so from the perspective of contemporary science. The unparalleled character of our historical moment, however, also calls for more integral approaches to ecology and to Gaia.
PARP 6667: Radical Mythospeculation: Cosmic Evolution and Deep History (3 units) - Profs. Richard Tarnas and Brian Swimme - This course essentially combines and brings into dialogue two long-time core courses of the PCC curriculum, Brian Swimme's Epic of the Universe and Richard Tarnas' Brief History of Western Thought. The lecture course will be interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, as we examine both the evolution of our cosmos and the evolution of our civilization's cosmology. "Radical mythospeculation" is the term that the sociologist and historian Robert Bellah, drawing on an insight of Eric Voegelin, used to describe an important phenomenon in the history of human thought, when the evolution of symbolic consciousness in certain societies reached a degree of critical reflexivity that transcended the traditional social-religious world of the archaic civilizations but did not reject the mythic-narrative mode of cognition, and thereby led to the emergence of the axial age. We will consider whether a new axial age might be emerging out of our own late modern and postmodern era. The two primary texts for the course will be Swimme and Thomas Berry's Universe Story and Tarnas's Passion of the Western Mind.
PARP 6741: World as Lover, World as Self: The Work That Reconnects (1 unit) - Profs. Joanna Macy and Sean Kelly - There are powers within us for the self-healing of our world. They arise from the dynamics generating the intricacy and intelligence of the living Earth. The Work That Reconnects helps us understand and open to these intrinsic powers. It draws from Buddhist teachings and living systems theory to evoke our interexistence in the web of life and our authority to act on its behalf. It has helped people around the globe to find insight, solidarity, and courage, despite rapidly deteriorating conditions. Its interactive exercises help us to see more clearly the roles we can play in the Great Turning to a life-sustaining civilization. Come prepared to fall in love again with life.
PARP 6743 and 6744: Hill of the Hawk I and II (1 unit each) - Prof. Elizabeth Allison - This course will take place on the Hill of the Hawk, an inspiring farm and retreat center between Route 1 and the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur. The surrounding farmland and coast will provide students with a context for the content of the course over the weekend intensive. Students will learn from the land, lectures, and discussion. Both of these one-weekend, 1-unit courses are independent of each other but are also continuous.
PARP 6746: The Earth Journey (3 units) - Prof. Brian Swimme - The major contribution of modern science for the emergence of a planetary civilization is the detailed articulation of the evolutionary sequence beginning with the cosmic flaring forth 13.7 billion years ago and continuing through the appearance of the stars and galaxies and all the adventures of our living planet. This new empirically based creation story is simultaneously a radical expansion of our knowledge base and a deconstruction of the very form of consciousness that gave birth to it. The dualistic, reductionistic, univocal modern consciousness can now be understood as the scaffolding that enabled the construction of an integral awareness capable of feeling in the ordinary events of one's day the vast unfolding of the Earth Journey.
PARP 6748: Nature and Eros (3 units) - Prof. Brian Swimme - This course is an engagement in holistic education. During the industrial era, education was understood primarily as the transfer of knowledge and information from teacher to student. The widely assumed world view of the industrial era regarded nature as something out there, something inferior to the human, something that humans learned about in their classrooms. But in the new evolutionary cosmology, nature is understood as both our primary matrix and our primary teacher. Nature is the source of existence and is an ongoing wellspring of wisdom for what it means to be human. This six-day intensive retreat employs conceptual, emotional, experiential, and intuitive learning processes in order to embrace nature as the multidimensional matrix, not only of our bodies, minds, and souls, but of our civilization as well.
PARP 6760: Sri Aurobindo and Rudolf Steiner (1 unit) - Prof. Robert McDermott - This course explores the biographies, vision, foundational ideas, spiritual practice, and influence of Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Aurobindo Ghose, initially a radical political leader of the Indian independence movement prior to Gandhi, evolved into Sri Aurobindo, the preeminent Indian spiritual teacher of the first half of the 20th century. His Integral Yoga philosophy is at the source of the CIIS founding vision. Rudolf Steiner, founder of anthroposophy, Waldorf education, and biodynamic agriculture, is the preeminent esoteric thinker of the twentieth century.
PARP 6762: Steiner and Jung (3 units) - Profs. Robert McDermott and Sean Kelly - This course explores the foundational contributions of two prophetic visionaries of the twentieth century: Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) and C. G. Jung (1875-1961). Situating both figures in the wider Christian, Romantic-Idealist, and esoteric traditions from which they drew and which they also advanced, the course aims to facilitate a creative dialogue between these two great figures. Major themes include multiple ways of knowing, the evolution of consciousness, the problem of evil, the influence of archetypal and spiritual powers, and a diagnosis of the ills of late modern culture.
PARP 6800: Integral T'ai Chi (1-3 units) - Prof. Sean Kelly - T'ai Chai Ch'uan is a subtle and profound "internal art" that, through embodying the Chi'i, promots greater health and vitality, psychological equanimity, and spiritual alignment. This course introduces students to T'ai Chi Ch'uan as an integral, body-based, psychospiritual discipline. The core in the first section of Yang Ch'en-fu's original version of the modern Long Form. Students also learn the fundamentals of Taoist cosmology, chi-kung, standing meditation, and of T'ai Chi as a method of self-defense.
PARP 6821: Archetypal Process: Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman (3 units) - Profs. Richard Tarnas and Brian Swimme - Two key figures in the twentieth century's engagement with the intersection of philosophy, cosmology, and consciousness were Alfred North Whitehead and C. G. Jung. This course offers an overview of their work, grounded in entirely different disciplines but approaching the same mystery. The final part of the course is devoted to Archetypal Process, based on a 1983 conference that was perhaps the fullest academic anticipation of the concerns and themes that later came to inspire the multi- and transdisciplinary focus of the PCC program.
PARP 6822: Hegel, Wilber, and Morin: System and Method (Advanced Seminar) (3 units) - Prof. Sean Kelly - This seminar explores selected works of three highly influential panoptic thinkers. Hegel's "Science of Wisdom," both a system of complete knowledge and a method for its (re)creation, played a generative role in such subsequent movements as existentialism, phenomenology, Marxism, and post-structuralism. Ken Wilber, though more popular in tone than Hegel, has produced a still-evolving "theory of everything" with equal pretensions to systematic completeness. While both Wilber and Edgar Morin acknowledge their debt to Hegel, Morin nevertheless renounces the possibility of such completeness, choosing instead to cultivate a "method" or way of knowing that might prove adequate to the complexity of the real. All three thinkers have valuable contributions to make to any serious and transdisciplinary inquiry that seeks to illuminate the shifting landscapes of science, politics, and culture at large in this most critical phase of the planetary era.
PARP 6823: Milarepa and Eckhart (1 unit) - Prof. Jacob Needleman - A comparative study of two spiritual masters, Milarepa (1052-1136) and Meister Eckhart (1260-1327). The aim of the course is to understand that religion serves differing purposes at different levels of human consciousness. Dealing in this course with Buddhism and Christianity, we will start by noting their striking differences at the "exoteric" level and their even more striking similarities at the contemplative or "esoteric" level. We will propose an outline of the vision of human nature and reality that lies at the "mystical" core of all the great spiritual traditions and philosophies of the world. Reading assignments will be from The Life of Milarepa and the sermons of Meister Eckhart.
PARP 6824: The Hieros Gamos: Archetype of the Sacred Marriage (3 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - This course will explore Jungian interpretations of the archetypal pattern of the sacred marriage in the world's mythologies, religions, and other products of the collective unconscious. Topics will include the interrelationship of sexuality, culture, and the psyche; the archetypal basis of polytheism and monotheism; the evolution of patriarchy; the dyadic relationship between consciousness and the unconscious and its archetypal expressions; the symbolism of the sacred marriage in art and literature; and the role of sexual and gender symbolism in esoteric systems such as alchemy, astrology, and magic.
PARP 6851: Advanced Seminar: Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy (3 units) - Prof. Robert McDermott - This course covers the core texts by Rudolf Steiner, including Philosophy of Freedom, Theosophy, How to Know Higher Worlds, An Outline of Esoteric Science, According to Luke, Start Now!, and Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric. The course includes lectures, discussion, and exercises. As an advanced seminar, the course presupposes that students will have read several books by Steiner (perhaps in PARP 8130 or at least Robert McDermott, ed., The New Essential Steiner, 2009). Prerequisite: Advanced standing or permission of instructor.
PARP 7001: Psyche and Cosmos I: Transpersonal Psychology and Archetypal Astrology (3 units) - Profs. Richard Tarnas and Stanislav Grof - This course examines the emerging understanding of the relationship between the human psyche and the cosmos, based on observed correlations between various psychological conditions and transformations and specific planetary positions. Topics include the extended cartography of the human psyche suggested by modern consciousness research and experiential therapies, analysis of birth charts and planetary transits, archetypal and perinatal patterns in art and culture, and the relevance of this evidence to both the larger tradition of depth psychology and the cultural emergence of a radically integrated worldview.
PARP 7002: Psyche and Cosmos II: Transits in Depth (Practicum) (3 units) - Profs. Richard Tarnas and Stanislav Grof - This seminar is a practicum designed to help students become skillful in the use of archetypal astrological methods of analysis for understanding the timing and character of a wide range of psychological conditions and biographical events. Classes will be devoted to detailed weekly analyses of one's own personal transits as well as representative transits for significant cultural figures and their major biographical experiences. The course focuses on the archetypal dynamics of human life, expressed both psychologically and in external events, and reflected in the coinciding planetary alignments.
PARP 7005: The Wisdom of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry (3 units) - Profs. Robert McDermott and Brian Swimme - The focus of our course will be the overall vision first developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and subsequently deepened by Thomas Berry (1914-2009). Teilhard's great contribution was his synthesis of science and spirituality, drawing especially on evolutionary biology and paleontology, in which he was a world expert. With an intellectual background in cultural history, Berry carried Teilhard's thought beyond its original Christian formulations and into the more comprehensive context of the world's religions; in addition, Berry grounded Teilhard's thought in contemporary ecology and cosmology. This course will cover the major works of Teilhard, including The Human Phenomenon, Activation of Energy, and The Heart of Matter, and the major works of Berry, including The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story (coauthored with Brian Swimme), and The Great Work.
PARP 7008: James Hillman and Archetypal Psychology: An Introduction (1 unit)- Prof. Richard Tarnas - This brief course offers an introduction to the ideas of James Hillman, the principal founder of archetypal psychology and one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary psychology and culture. From its beginnings in the late 1960s, archetypal psychology has called for depth psychology to move beyond the consulting room to engage the larger cultural, historical, and ecological issues of our time.
PARP 7078: Teilhard and Steiner (3 units) - Profs. Robert McDermott and Brian Swimme - This is a one-semester, co-taught course on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Rudolf Steiner, with an emphasis on the evolution of consciousness and on spiritual epistemology. Steiner (1861-1925) was a comprehensive esotericist; Teilhard (1881-1955) was a mystic in the Roman Catholic tradition and a world-class paleontologist. They both wrote extensively on the evolution of consciousness, and they both exemplified and taught ways of attaining spiritual knowledge. The course will be half lecture and half discussion; both professors will participate in every class.
PARP 7079: The Mysticism of Swedenborg (1 unit) In this weekend course we will explore the place of mysticism in Swedenborg's thought, Swedenborg's design of existence, and the
relevance of Swedenborg's revelation for today's culture and our personal lives. We will use the modalities of presentation, discussion, and personal reflection. Time will be given for students to ask anything they ever wanted to know about Swedenborg, and also to have the opportunity to try on Swedenborg's view of reality as a way of exploring both one's relationship with the source of life itself and one's place in the design of existence.
PARP 7114: Advanced Seminar: C. G. Jung (3 units) - Prof. Sean Kelly - This seminar is devoted to an in-depth exploration of the ideas of C. G. Jung, a towering figure in twentieth-century intellectual and cultural history and a formative influence on the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. The course begins by setting Jung in context, in terms of Jung's life and of the broader history of ideas. It then turns to such themes as the nature of the psyche, the archetypes of the collective unconscious, the theory of psychological types, dream analysis, the process of individuation, synchronicity, and the evolution of consciousness. Along with key texts from Jung's Collected Works, selections from the recently published Red Book are also considered. Doctoral or advanced master's students only.
PARP 7153: Archetypes, Art, and Culture (2 units) -Prof. Richard Tarnas - Informed by the insights of Jungian, archetypal, and transpersonal psychology, this course uses lecture presentations and works of music, film, and literature to explore and understand the meanings of the planetary archetypes in natal charts and transits. In turn, the archetypal astrological perspective is used to illuminate and more deeply understand the deeper dimensions of major works of art and cultural epochs, from Beethoven's symphonies and the French Revolution to Fellini, the Rolling Stones, and the 1960s.
PARP 7154: Advanced Seminar in Process Philosophy (3 units) - Prof. Jacob Sherman - This course, which is intended for those already familiar with some of the basic contours of process philosophy, considers the work and legacy of two of the early twentieth century's greatest philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson. Our attention will be devoted not only to the careful reading and discussion of key texts by Bergson and Whitehead, but also to some of the more recent work by philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Isabelle Stengers, and others who have sought to continue and extend the Bergsonian and Whiteheadian legacy for the twenty-first century.
PARP 7400: Psyche and Spirit: From the Psychology of Religion to Transpersonal Theory (3 units) - Prof. Sean Kelly - This course explores the relation of psyche to spirit-that is, to religion, spirituality, and spiritual philosophies and worldviews-through a consideration of the development that leads from classic representatives of the psychology of religion to the principal paradigms of contemporary transpersonal theory. Readings include primary texts, set in their appropriate contexts, by William James, C. G. Jung, Stanislav Grof, and Ken Wilber.
PARP 7701: Integrative Seminar (2 units) (offered only in spring semester) - Prof. Elizabeth Allison - The Master's Integrative Seminar is the capstone course that guides graduating master's students summarizing, integrating, and refining their knowledge and experience in preparation for life after graduation. The course is designed to help students clarify and articulate their particular perspective and intellectual lineage, in the context of foundational texts. Working as a collaborative learning community, students review subjects and texts studied, and reflect upon classroom and community experiences, to draw together an integrated and integral conclusion to their PCC educations. The course concludes with a public Symposium, at which graduating students present their most compelling ideas. Students who plan to graduate in the summer or fall semester should plan to take the Integrative Seminar in the preceding spring.
PARP 8150: Advanced Seminar: Nietzsche's Life and Work (3 units) - Prof. Richard Tarnas - This advanced doctoral seminar explores the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche in its dramatic evolution over the course of his life. Most of his major works are covered, as well as a sampling and survey of the others. Our task is to enter into this extraordinary and immensely influential philosopher's intellectual and spiritual world, engage his ideas in dialogue, and attempt to grasp their deeper contours and larger significance. This course is intended for doctoral students; master's students need permission of the instructor.
PARP 9568: The Planetary Era: Toward a New Wisdom Culture (3 units) - Prof. Sean Kelly - This seminar considers the complex network of factors related to the birth and ongoing transformation of the planetary era. Drawing on the insights of such big-picture thinkers as Hegel and Jung, Karl Jaspers, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, or more recently of Ewert Cousins, Ken Wilber, and Edgar Morin, we seek to discern the deeper pattern of world history and the evolution of consciousness. Emphasizing the continuity among such traditions as Renaissance esotericism, Romanticism, the 1960s counterculture, and the new paradigm, we participate in the creation of a wisdom culture worthy of the planetary era.