Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Integral Approach To Philosophy Of Nature, Carol Richardson

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Abstract

Quantum physicists and quantum biologists enjoy a mathematically-inspired romance with the wonders of nature at the quantum level. Recognizing the romance of mathematics and the quantum-to-cosmic level relational energetics of Nature can lead to a more integral, romantic, and even embodied phenomenology of the intelligence inherent within Nature’s relational and embodied energies. Approaching this quantum nature of Nature from the more romantic, wholistic views of the right hemisphere of the brain, rather than from the fragmenting views of the left hemisphere of the brain, one can begin to discover the self-organizing abilities of the energies of Nature at all …

Buddhism, Daoism, And Jeet Kune Do: A Contemporary Analysis Of Nondual Traditions In A New Age Martial Art, James H. Sutton

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Traditional martial arts are known for their focus on spiritual cultivation through a combination of self-defense training and contemplative practices like meditation. Traditional martial art systems tend to utilize nondual traditions commonly associated with Buddhism and Daoism; however, modern martial art practices, particularly those of MMA, no longer place a strong emphasis on such traditions. In turn, this has led to the development of high-performance sport athletes who emphasize self-defense efficiency in combat (usually combat sports) over all other attributes while also mixing “arts” or “styles” as necessary for the individual’s own self growth. I dub these as “new age” …

Consciousness And The Reality Of Monsters In Horror Movies: Dehumanization And What Monsters In Horror Films Say About Us, Leila Kincaid

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This essay responds to Carroll’s The Nature of Horror from the perspective of transdisciplinary phenomenological film theory, largely developed by Edgar Morin in the 1950s. It argues that Carrolls’s reduction of the phenomenological value of horror films to an unreal category minimizes and even dismisses the inherent value of horror films. Morin, Allan Combs, and others offer more integral and transdisciplinary methods for art interpretation and functionality. They help us understand how monsters in horror films can stand as mirrors and reflections of the monstrous in ourselves and society. Thus, the transformational function and value of film is revealed and …

Review Of Steve Taylor’S Disconnected, Zeke Floro

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article presents a review of Steve Taylor’s (2023) book, DisConnected: The Roots of Human Cruelty and How Connection Can Heal the World. Taylor makes a significant contribution to the study of psychological development, spiritual growth, and the overall evolution of consciousness by thoughtfully examining the disconnection that underlies violent crime, terrorism, dishonest business practices, authoritarianism, religious extremism, surrender of autonomy, culture wars, and polarized politics. He convincingly argues that disconnection is not the default state of humanity, but rather an aberration, and that dark aspects of human nature emerge from an environmentally conditioned sense of separation and inability to …

How Film Influences And Reflects States Of Consciousness - Through Films Of Julian Sands, Leila Kincaid

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Film, as a multivalent art form, uses archetypal themes and symbols that have the power to affect the consciousness of its viewers. The stories that play out on the screen through plot, setting, character, and the elements of storytelling through film carry rich and deep archetypal meaning for our culture and our psyches. This is how film can impact us on deep, subconscious levels and influence and change our consciousness, for good or ill. A look at two key films with the actor Julian Sands illustrates the way we, as viewers, experience a shift and even transformation in consciousness through …

The Joy Of Watching The Film Arrival With Whitehead And O’Donohue, Tricia Mayer

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper offers a discussion of the film Arrival that is situated in the perspective of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and John O’Donohue. The themes discussed include language, communication, context, time, and reality and includes a speculative perspective that the philosophers may have contributed to interpretation of the film’s meaning. It concludes with a view of the relevance of the film in light of current technology advances in artificial intelligence and with the authors own reflection on how this film is relevant to her current research inquiry on the topic of joy

New Perspectives: How A Dancefloor Of Paradigms Can Save The World, Gill R. Hall

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper explores how the consciousness of Indigenous peoples can facilitate the development of new paradigms to address global issues like climate change and adaptation to global warming. It explores how Indigenous and Western notions of consciousness differ and cannot be reconciled in contemporary models of consciousness without colonising Indigenous ways of knowing. It differentiates maternal and patriarchal consciousnesses and contrasts the body/heart pathway found in many Indigenous cultures with the mental field activity of the Western psyche. Using the concept of a multi-paradigmatic dancefloor, I propose a new model for developing global thinking on complex problems, inviting academics and …

Evolution Of Women’S Consciousness: Toward Integral Consciousness, Katherine T. Ziemke

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article presents research materials which demonstrate historical consciousness for women of ancient European descent, the cultural heritage of the author. Awareness is examined from various historical angles in a transdisciplinary approach to the work. I explore the possibility that women’s historical and continued oppression may be a sign of the disintegration of the mental and a re-emergence of the integral structure of consciousness. A broad examination of women’s historical roles and corresponding thought shows how ancient consciousness may be used to accelerate a path toward integral consciousness today. Finally, this essay proposes that women’s historical consciousness and primordial memories …

On The Topology Of The Noosphere, Julie A. Yusupova

Journal of Conscious Evolution

As a young child I had a certain set of dreams, the enigma of which remained mysteriously hovering in my memories to this day. In one of these earliest dreams of my life, I am playing hide-and-seek with my friends, but am observing myself from an external third-person perspective, just as all my dreams had regularly been until then. I remember that the next morning, my waking conscious mind had noticed this split between self and observer and judged it unusual, and so in the following night’s dream, I somehow willed my observer self to merge into the body of …

Mediumship And Mental Health: Investigating Spirit Communication And The Importance Of Integration, Daniel A. Seda Ph.D.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Sensitivity to paranormal phenomena can be a source of emotional, mental and psychospiritual stress for individuals demonstrating verified mediumistic abilities, yet integrating these anomalous experiences in a healthy, affirming manner can reduce distress and potentially deflect egodystonic diagnoses of pathology. Because mediums can relay information which appear to be otherworldly from meditation, during trance, or by automatic writing and painting, health professionals have diagnosed mediums with mental disorders such as dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia. This overreliance on pathology to explain anomalous experiences is troublesome and can cause severe distress to individuals demonstrating extrasensory capabilities. This paper was written to …

Reflections On Panpsychism, Pantheism, Panentheism And The Hard Problem Of Consciousness, Barbara Engelhardt

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article discusses the concepts of panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism with the intention of formulating a theory and response to what is referred to as the Hard Problem of Consciousness, the question put forth in the latter 20th century by the philosopher David Chalmers (and by many others historically) concerning why and how we have phenomenal experiences. Panpsychism is the view that the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is an elemental principium of the natural world. Pantheism is defined as a philosophy which equates divinity with all reality. Panentheism asserts that God is intrinsic in all things in the known universe, …

Consciousness-Centered Education: An Innovative Approach To Art And Design Curriculum

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper introduces and discusses a consciousness-centered, integrated education model, implemented at the College for Creative Studies. Consciousness, Creativity, and Identity, a liberal-arts course offering, is designed to offer students a greater understanding of human connectivity and empowerment through empathy for themselves and others. This result is achieved in part through the inclusion of meditation training as a core component of the course. By integrating the skills of introspection, silence, and reflection with intellectual engagement, consciousness-centered education initiatives encourage the relationship between compassion, connectivity, inclusion, and wellness as key pedagogic themes in art and design curriculum. This paper offers evidence …

Psychic Cartography: A Review Of Tantric Psychophysics: A Structural Map Of Altered States And The Dynamics Of Consciousness, Michael Pdryzdia

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In 1920 Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture entitled Healing of the Social Organism which is collected in a small and fairly obscure book (Oswald Spengler: Prophet of World Chaos). The lecture was given after Spengler’s The Decline of the West had become a best-seller. In the lecture, Rudolf Steiner takes it upon himself to “deconstruct” his fellow German scholar/intellectual. In the piece, Steiner attacks Spengler’s opposition between “the man of blood” – the man who gets things done, the man of action -- versus “the man of contemplation” -- the theologian, the priest, the scientist with his concept …

What Will Happen If Science Will Develop A Theory Of Consciousness? Negative Ramifications., Sam S.. Rakover

Journal of Conscious Evolution

For a long time, philosophers and scientists have attempted without success to develop a mind-body theory, a consciousness theory (T_c) to explain the exact relation between the mind and the body, a solution which is based on an assumed connection between consciousness and the activity of the neurophysiological processes in the brain. An important concern of the present paper, then, is to address the question of why, despite the great research effort on the subject, no successful T_c has ever been developed. In response, McGinn (1989) proposes that the human being’s cognitive system is not equipped to …

Mandala: On The Logos Of Place, Michael Schwartz

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Suddenly, during the night, one awakens while dreaming – aware that this is a dream. The “rules” of action, reaction, and of form itself are not that of the waking state – one might leap in the air and fly, transform one’s body into any number of forms, reach up in the sky and grab the sun and clouds, pulling them to the side, bringing forth a canopy of moon and stars. The entire scene, in the lucid dream, has a heightened sense of radiance and joy, vitality and freedom.

Imagine this sense of lucid dreaming is occurring right here …

Consciousness, Evolution, And The Self-Organizing Brain, Karen Seymour

Journal of Conscious Evolution

While evolution is guided by natural selection, it is internally driven by self-organizing processes. The brain encompasses these complementary forces and dynamics of evolution in both its structure and dynamics by embodying a historical record of the factors that have shaped it throughout its evolutionary past, as well as by being shaped by selective parameters in real time. Self-organization is evident in not only the brain’s structure and form, but also in the processes that support consciousness. From the convergence of complex structure and the novelty-generating dynamics of chaos that both characterize the brain arises the experience of explicit consciousness, …

Remembering The Future: Wild Time And The Cosmic Imagination, Arabella Thaïs

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Entropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental …

Deconstructing Consciousness In Art, Leila Kincaid

Journal of Conscious Evolution

To the extent that art mirrors consciousness, what does the art of any age have to tell us about where we are as a species and civilization? In this paper, I suggest that modern and postmodern art reveal the tendency toward deconstruction, of our identities, as selves, as cultures, as a civilization. Through this process of deconstruction, there is a space offered to us through the experience of art, of freedom to recreate ourselves, our identities, and our sense of purpose and meaning in the cosmos. Grounding the inquiry in texts from various authors in the field of art history …

Myth, Soul, And The Feminine

Journal of Conscious Evolution

What are some of the root causes that have caused the subjugation of women? Could it all have begun with the fantastical and alluring myths we were told? If so, how does myth become truth for societies as a whole? If that does happen, then it must be true that the mythic is where the emergence of the soul is found; the soul of humanity? Thereby, creating the realities found in the society of today. Even more intriguing is how consciousness and art find their way in merging with myth producing awareness, wonder, and connection in society. Thus, revealing the …

Consciousness, Evaluation, And The Self-Organizing Brain

Journal of Conscious Evolution

While evolution is guided by natural selection, it is internally driven by self-organizing processes. The brain encompasses these complementary forces and dynamics of evolution in both its structure and dynamics by embodying a historical record of the factors that have shaped it throughout its evolutionary past, as well as by being shaped by selective parameters in real time. Self-organization is evident in not only the brain’s structure and form, but also in the processes that support consciousness. From the convergence of complex structure and the novelty-generating dynamics of chaos that both characterize the brain arises the experience of explicit consciousness, …

Reflections And Expressions, Lisa Blair

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Spiritual Intelligence And Differentiation In Predicting Marital Adjustment Of Married Iranian Students, Sedigheh Ahmadi, Richard H. Morley, Faezeh Ghalebi, Hossein Ilanloo, Christine D. Nguyen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of spiritual intelligence and differentiation in predicting marital adjustment of Iranian students. The participants of this study were 312 married students from Yazd University. The instruments used in this study were the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) to measure marital adjustment, Differentiation of Self- Inventory, and the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI). The results of the study demonstrated that spiritual intelligence predicted the marital adjustment of married students (p

How Perception Meets Hermeneutics: An Empirical Investigation Of Tasseography, Elizabeth Avetisian

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Tasseography is a divination method to provide insight about the seeker’s past, present, or future life by interpreting patterns in the dregs of a liquid. Although it has been practiced with coffee throughout Europe and Middle East, particularly among women, no known studies exist on the seer’s perceptual process of the ambiguous patterns or how the roles of the seeker and seer, symbols, ritual, and cultural epistemology shape the divinatory hermeneutics. This study focused on the Armenian coffee divination ritual, asking what are the processes and conditions that enable experienced cup readers to obtain divinatory insight in tasseography? Two seekers …

Emotion And Judgment In Young Women Of A Society In Transition, Maura A. E. Pilotti, Khadija El Alaoui

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The present study asked whether emotional responses to narratives of moral transgressions are shaped by the reader’s assumed relationship with the injured party (i.e., oneself, familiar other, and unfamiliar other). Its goal was to test a cultural, religious, and individualistic account of such responses in young females of a traditional society in transition towards a sustainable integration into the global economy. To this end, female college students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were asked to identify their emotional reaction to each of several moral transgressions, report its intensity and then judge the severity of the transgression. In agreement with …

Comparison Of Chinese And Western Arts Mirroring The Evolvement Of Consciousness, Rui Peng

Journal of Conscious Evolution

A few researchers of consciousness in the West demonstrate that the development of western art mirrors the evolvement of human Consciousness since human civilization emerged. This paper explores the differences in art development between China and the West by comparing the artworks in the same era. Furthermore, discussing why the Chinese scholar art over two thousand years does not reflect the same structures of Consciousness that western researchers defined.

Aesthetic Altruism: Consciousness Of Street Artists, Melanie Cheng

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In the past few decades, many street artists have gained international recognition and now straddle the worlds of actual street art – art in the streets, art in the public domain – and fine art – art that is perceived to be of a particular quality, shown in galleries or museums. Despite perhaps “transcending” the streets, most successful street artists choose to continue creating artwork in public spaces, both legally with permission, or illegally without. Street art is different from public art, which is categorically created through a public process; while some street art, if not created aesthetically or …

A Grounded Approach To Integral Art Therapy: Initial Reflections On Art Materials, Natalia Gómez-Carlier

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Art therapy has the power to bring healing and wholeness as it expands globally, an awareness of the integral structure of consciousness can benefit an adaptation of this profession that is both integrative and respectful of multiple perspectives and cultural views. The art-making process in art therapy can ground experience, and art materials can serve as vehicles through which different structures on consciousness are elicited, experienced, documented, and integrated. Integral art therapy can study the use of art materials to activate an integral structure of consciousness. Integrality is defined by its ability to play simultaneously from all structures of …

Visionary Art As Evolving Consciousness, Azul Delgrasso

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Visionary art is art that is not confined by form, it argues that the artist who creates spiritual art allows the spirit to guide them, rather than relying on traditional form or technique. This can result in art that is incredibly unique and expressive, as it comes from a place of pure creativity and intuition. It also examines the visionary art of Alex Grey whose works offer a gateway into a different state of consciousness, where the viewer can access new insights and perspectives. In in a world that is becoming increasingly disconnected from the creative body, visionary art can …

Lgbt Inclusivity In Transpersonal Psychology: A Case For Incorporating Lgbt Spiritual Experiences In Transpersonal Education, Daniel A. Seda, Phd

Journal of Conscious Evolution

After conducting three qualitative interviews on the somatic experiences of transgender individuals and finding relatively few resources with which to draw significant conclusions in the field, it is clear that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) scholarship is severely lacking in transpersonal psychology.

Method: This research revealed that an understanding and appreciation for the lived experiences of gay people––specifically that of gay men––are also limited and are not appropriately represented through the use of feminist or queer models. Therefore, an alarming number of issues affecting the transgender and gay male populations are not being adequately addressed within the discipline of …

Relative And Absolute: States Of Consciousness And Turiya, Jenna Mcdonald

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper aims to explore the phenomena of dreaming, waking, sleeping and the witness-consciousness that is exists in and through all three states. It draws from current and past literature about consciousness, helping to build a framework for both psychological and spiritual development. It correlates the pause between the inhale and exhale to the self-evident junction between dreaming, sleep and waking states.