Richard Tarnas
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Richard Theodore Tarnas
(1950-)
Richard Theodore Tarnas, a psychologist and intellectual historian best known for his work with the Esalen Institute, was born on February 21, 1950, in Geneva, Switzerland. His parents were Americans and he grew up in Michigan. His father, a professor of law, encouraged his intellectual pursuits and he completed his high school work at the University of Detroit Preparatory School, operated by the Jesuits. He entered Harvard in 1968 and graduated with an A.B. (cum laude) in 1972. He then entered the doctoral program at Saybrook Institute, the graduate school of psychology in San Francisco, California, and completed his Ph.D. in 1976.
Tarnas was able to travel for several years before settling at Esalen, where he was able to interact with some of the leading minds of the human potentials movement including Stanislav Grof, James Hillman, and Rupert Sheldrake. In 1979 he became Esalen's director of programs and education. While at Esalen he became known for his work on psychedelic therapy. In 1982 he married Heather Malcolm, a Canadian, and the following year left Esalen to enter private practice and to write. The major product of this period was The Passion of the Western Mind (1991), a narrative history of the Western worldview from the ancient Greek to the postmodern.
More recently Tarnas has joined the faculty of the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he became the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. The program is indicative of his broad eclectic interests which include the evolution of consciousness, depth psychology, psychedelic research, astrology, and gnosticism. He has, for example, contributed essays furthering the psychological interpretation of astrology and arguing for the importance of astrology in understanding the evolution of the Western mind.
Sources:
Tarnas, Richard T. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York: Harmony Books/Random House, 1991.
——. "The Western Mind at the Threshold." The Astrotherapy Newsletter 3, no.4 (November 1990).
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Richard Tarnas
| Richard Tarnas | |
|---|---|
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| Born | February 21, 1950 Geneva, Switzerland, |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard Saybrook Institute |
| Occupation | professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, philosopher |
| Known for | The Passion of the Western Mind (1991) |
Richard Theodore Tarnas (born February 21, 1950) is a cultural historian known for his 1991 book The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, published in 2006. Tarnas is professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is the founding director of its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.
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Biography
Tarnas was born on February 21, 1950 in Geneva, Switzerland, of American parents. His father, also Richard Tarnas, was a government contract attorney, former president of the Michigan Federal Bar Association, and professor of law. His mother, Mary Louise, was a teacher and homemaker. The eldest of eight children, he grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where he studied Greek, Latin, and the Classics at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy.
In 1968 Tarnas entered Harvard, graduating with an A.B. cum laude in 1972. He received his Ph.D. from Saybrook Institute in 1976. His thesis was on psychedelic therapy.[1][2] In 1974, Tarnas went to Esalen in order to study psychotherapy with Stanislav Grof.[3] From 1974 to 1984, he lived and worked at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, teaching and studying with Grof, Joseph Campbell, Gregory Bateson, Huston Smith, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and James Hillman. He also served as director of programs and education.[4] Jeffrey Kripal writes that Tarnas was both the literal and figurative gate-keeper of Esalen.[5]
From 1980 to 1990, Tarnas wrote The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, a narrative history of Western thought which became a bestseller and continues to be a widely-used text in colleges.[6][7] Passion was highly acclaimed by Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, Stanislav Grof, John E. Mack, Stanley Krippner, Georg Feuerstein, David Steindl-Rast, John Sculley, Robert A. McDermott, Jeffrey Hart, Gary Lachman, and others.
Tarnas is the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies and he remains a core faculty member.
Tarnas' second book, Prometheus the Awakener, was published in 1995 and focuses on the astrological properties of the planet Uranus, and is a "description of the uncanny way astrological patterns appear to coincide with events or destiny patterns in the lives of both individuals and societies..."[8] Tarnas suggests that the characteristics associated with the mythological figure Uranus do not match the astrological properties of the planet Uranus, and that a more appropriate identification would be with the mythological figure Prometheus.
In 2006, Tarnas' third book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, was published. It was awarded the Book of the Year Prize by the Scientific and Medical Network in the UK.[9][10] The core argument of Cosmos and Psyche rests on the claim that the major events of Western cultural history are consistently and meaningfully correlated with the observed angular positions of the planets.[11]
Tarnas was featured in the 2006 film Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within, a documentary about rediscovering an enchanted cosmos in the modern world.[12]
In 2007, a group of fifty scholars and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Archetypal Research Collective for pursuing research in archetypal cosmology. An online journal, Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology, edited by Keiron LeGrice and Rod O'Neal, was begun a year later, based on the research orientation and methodology established in Cosmos and Psyche.[13] Advisory board members include Christopher Bache, Jorge Ferrer, Stanislav Grof, Robert A. McDermott, Ralph Metzner, and Brian Swimme. Contributors have included Keiron Le Grice, Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, and Rod O'Neal.
In 2008, Tarnas was invited to address members of the Dutch Parliament about creating a sustainable society.[14]
In 2007-8 John Cleese and Tarnas gave some public lectures together at Esalen and in Santa Barbara. The lectures were about regaining a connection to the sacred in the modern world. [15] Cleese and Tarnas then taught a seminar at CIIS called "The Comic Genius: A Multidisciplinary Approach."[16]
Quotations
- "Above all, we must awaken to and overcome the great hidden anthropocentric projection that has virtually defined the modern mind: the pervasive projection of soullessness onto the cosmos by the modern self's own will to power."[17]
Bibliography
By Tarnas
Books
- LSD psychotherapy, theoretical implications for the study of psychology, 1976
- The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, 1991; Ballantine
- Prometheus the Awakener: An Essay on the Archetypal Meaning of the Planet Uranus, 1995; Spring Publications, Woodstock, CT
- Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006; Viking (ISBN 0-670-03292-1)
Articles
- "Uranus and Prometheus" Spring, 1983 psycnet.apa.org
- "The Transfiguration of the Western Mind in Philosophy and the Human Future" Cross currents ISSN 0011-1953 1989, vol. 39, no3, pp. 258-280 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, New Rochelle, NY
- "The Transfiguration of the Westem Mind" ReVision, 1990
- "The Masculine Mind" Only Connect: Soil, Soul and Society, 1990
- "The Western Mind at the Threshold," The Quest, Summer 1993 (also published in Re-vision, Vol. 16, 1993)
- "The Great Initiation", Noetic Sciences Review, Vol. 47, Winter 1998
- "A new birth in freedom: A (p)review of Jorge Ferrer's Revisioning transpersonal theory: A participatory vision of human spirituality" Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2001
- R Tarnas, E Laszlo, S Gablik, "The Cosmic World-How We Participate in Thee and Thou in Us" Revision 2001
- Foreword to Revisioning Transpersonal Theory by Jorge Ferrer, 2002; SUNY
- "Two Suitors: A Parable" ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness 2007 Heldref Publications
- "The modern self and our planetary future: a participatory view" symposium De Binnenkant van Duurzaamheid 2008
- "The Planets" Theoretical Foundations of Archetypal Cosmology, 2009 - archaijournal.org
- "The Ideal and the Real" Theoretical Foundations of Archetypal Cosmology 2009
- "World Transits 2000–2020" archaijournal.org
Video
- Jung, Cosmology, and the Transformation of the Modern Self three-DVD recording of an Eranos conference [6]
About Tarnas
- Sean M. Kelly, "The Rebirth of Wisdom" Review of The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal pp. 33-44 [7]
- Geoffrey Dean, "Saving a Disenchanted World with Astrology?" Skeptical Inquirer Volume 30.4, July / August 2006 Review of Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.
See also
- Participatory theory
- Archetypal astrology
- Archetypal cosmology
- Hermeticism
- List of American philosophers
References
- ^ LSD psychotherapy, theoretical implications for the study of psychology, 1976 [1]
- ^ ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation/Abstract
- ^ Stanislav Grof, When The Impossible Happens, 337
- ^ Jeffrey Kripal, Esalen: America and the religion of no religion, 265, 378 University of Chicago Press, 2007 ISBN 0-226-45369-3, ISBN 978-0-226-45369-9
- ^ Jeffrey Kripal, Esalen: America and the religion of no religion, 378 University of Chicago Press, 2007 ISBN 0-226-45369-3, ISBN 978-0-226-45369-9
- ^ http://ce.sbcc.edu/news_events_MSM_spr09.pdf
- ^ Janet Kane, "A New View of Depth Psychology's Link to the Astrological Tradition"[2]
- ^ Ray Grasse, untitled book review, Quest Winter 1995
- ^ http://www.scimednet.org/
- ^ http://cosmosandpsyche.com/AboutTheAuthor.php
- ^ Sean Kelly, Coming Home [np] SteinerBooks
- ^ http://www.entheogen.tv/bios.php
- ^ http://www.archaijournal.org
- ^ Alice Klein, "The Intelligent Universe: Is nature trying to change our minds?"[3] Now Magazine
- ^ Zack Lynch, Byron Laursen, The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World 137 [4]
- ^ CIIS Staff, "And Now For Something Completely Different" Spring 2009 CIIS Today
- ^ Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche [5]
External links
- Richard Tarnas at California Institute of Integral Studies
- Cosmos and Psyche website
- California Institute of Integral Studies graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness
Articles and interview
- Epilogue to The Passion of the Western Mind
- Understanding Our Moment in History: An Interview with Richard Tarnas by Scott London
- The Enchanted Universe Interview by Shelley Ackerman, beliefnet
- An Interview with Richard Tarnas by Ray Grasse Reprinted from The Mountain Astrologer, issue #124, Dec/Jan 2006
- "Afterword" from Tarnas' Prometheus the Awakener
- An Introduction to Archetypal Astrological Analysis by Tarnas
- Radio interview CBC program "Tapestry"
- "The Intelligent Universe: Is Nature Trying To Change Our Minds?" by Alice Klein Now Magazine April 17–24, 2008 Vol 27 No 33
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