Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science

Edited by Stanislav Grof

Subjects: Philosophy Of Science
Series: SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology
Paperback : 9780873958493, 285 pages, June 1984
Hardcover : 9780873958486, 285 pages, June 1984

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Table of contents

Preface

Part I Introduction

1 East and West: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science

Stanislav Grof

2 The Transpersonal Perspective

Frances Vaughan

Part II Ancient Spiritual Traditions

3 Understanding Your Own Mind

Swami Muktananda

4 Love until It Hurts

Mother Teresa

5 The Cows Are Many Colors, but the Milk Is the Same

Dastoor Minocher Homji

6 Science Today and the New Creation

Father Bede Griffiths

7 The Evolution of Consciousness and Human Survival

Karan Singh

8 The Mystery of Karma

Swami Prajnananda

9 Kundalini: The Energy of Transformation

Swami Kripananda

10 The Smile of the Buddha: Paradigms in Perspective

Jack Kornfield

11 Search Within

Yashpal Jain

12 Kundalini: The Awakening of the Inner Cosmic Energy

Ajit Mookerjee

Part III New Paradigms in Western Science

13 The New Vision of Reality: Toward a Synthesis of Eastern Wisdom and Modern Science

Fritjof Capra

14 Morphic Resonance

Rupert Sheldrake

15 The Holographic Hypothesis of Brain Function: A Meeting of Minds

Karl Pribram

16 Role Models and Human Development

Joseph Chilton Pearce

17 The Yoga of Androgyny

June Singer

18 Jung's Active Imagination: A Technique of Western Meditation

Cecil E. Burney

19 Psychophysiology and Health: Personal and Transpersonal

Alyce M. Green

20 Science and Psychophysiology, Psychophysics and Mythology

Elmer E. Green

21 Bringing Eastern Meditation into Western Psychotherapy

Claudio Naranjo

22 Women's Place in Today's World

Swami Sivananda Radha

Biographical Notes

Description

Recent advances in a variety of scientific disciplines have revealed the limitations of the Newtonian-Cartesian model of the universe. One of the interesting aspects of this development is the increasing convergence of science and the "perennial philosophy. " The new research has led to a critical revaluation of ancient spiritual systems long ignored or rejected because of their assumed incompatibility with science.

Here are Swami Muktananda on the mind. Swami Prajnananda on Karma. Swami Kripananda on the Kundalini. Ajit Mookerjee on the Kundalini. Joseph Chilton Pearce on spiritual development. Mother Teresa on love and service. Jack Kornfield on Buddhism for Americans. Fritjof Capra on the new paradigms. Rupert Sheldrake on morphic resonance. Karl Pribram on the holographic model. Claudio Naranjo on meditation, and more.

The papers in this book were presented at the seventh Conference of the International Transpersonal Association held in Bombay. The ITA is a non-profit organization that brings together individuals of different nationalities, professions, and philosophical or spiritual preferences who share in the view that there is a fundamental unity underlying all of humanity and the material world.

The cover photo is from the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri.

Stanislav Grof, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years of experience in research of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He has been Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia; Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center; Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University; and Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, conducts professional training programs in holotropic breathwork, and gives lectures and seminars worldwide. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology and the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). In 2007, he was granted the prestigious Vision 97 award from the Vaclav and Dagmar Havel Foundation in Prague. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy; The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness; Human Survival and Consciousness Evolution; and Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research; all published by SUNY Press.