Monday, December 17, 2007

Gaialogues podcast interview with Dr. Ralph Metzner

Gaialogues with Joanna Harcourt-Smith
Dr. Ralph Metzner
Recorded: Dec 3, 2007
Download the podcast: HERE

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. who has a B.A. in philosophy and psychology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University, has been involved in the study of transformations of consciousness ever since, as a graduate student, he worked with Dr. Timothy Leary and Ram Dass formerly known as Richard Alpert on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review.

During the 1970s, Ralph spent 10 years in the intensive study and practice of Agni Yoga, a meditative system of working with light-fire life-energies. He wrote Maps of Consciousness, one of the earliest attempts at a comparative cartography of consciousness; and Know Your Type, a comparative survey of personality typologies, ancient and modern.

He was the Academic Dean for ten years, during the 1980s, at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he taught courses there on “Altered States of Consciousness” and “Developing Ecological Consciousness.” He is now Professor Emeritus. He maintains a part-time psychotherapy practice, and conducts numerous workshops on consciousness transformation, both nationally and internationally. His books include The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, and two edited collections on the science and the phenomenology of Ayahuasca and Teonanácatl.

He is the co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, an educational and research organization dedicated to the healing and harmonizing of the relationships between humanity and the Earth.

In this interview Dr. Metzner shares his amazing philosophies, insight and history with the listener.

Be sure to listen to the 2nd Gaialogue podcast interview with Dr. Ralph Metzner

Articles and essays by Ralph Metzner, PhD:
Ralph Metzner Links
The Green Earth Foundation
Ralph Metzner on Erowid
Alchemical Divination Training Program

2 comments:

Laura said...

ErocX1,
thank you! i will start w/ the previous podcast interview.
blessings, :L

Carl de Borhegyi said...

BREAKING THE MUSHROOM CODE: Mushroom and Venus Imagery in Pre-Columbian Art.

Despite all the evidence of the religious use of narcotic mushrooms recorded in the Pre-Columbian codices and described in the Spanish chronicles, the archaeological community, with the exception of Peter Furst, has been surprisingly reluctant to recognize and accept the important cultural and religious role played by hallucinogenic mushrooms in ancient New World society. Both my father, archaeologist Stephan de Borhegyi, and R. Gordon Wasson, a well known ethnomycologist, noted this fact over a half century ago. Though both added enormously to the body of published ethnographic and archaeological information on the subject, and a few mycologists (Gaston Guzmán, 2002:4; 2009) have continued through the years to make important contributions to the scientific literature on hallucinogenic mushrooms, the subject remains to this day virtually unknown. It is also noteworthy that almost four centuries elapsed between Spanish chronicler Fray Sahagun's description of narcotic mushroom rites and the rediscovery of this cultural phenomenon in the 1930's. My ongoing studies and the creation of my research site mushroomstone.com allows me to present to the world convincing visual evidence from the prehistoric art of the New World, that mushrooms are not only frequently depicted in this art, but that in Mesoamerica in particular, hallucinogenic mushrooms played a major role in the development of indigenous religious ideology.
Carl de Borhegyi