Robert Burton
Neurologist, Novelist
Robert Burton, MD is a neurologist, novelist, and most recently, the author of A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves. A graduate of Yale University and University of California at San Francisco medical school, he was formerly Chief of the Division of Neurology at Mt. Zion-UCSF Hospital and Associate Chief of the Department of Neurosciences. Burton’s work has appeared in Salon and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others, and he frequently is invited to speak about the brain, the mind, neuroscience, and philosophy of science. Previous books include On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not, and three novels addressing the question of personal identity (including when cloned). Website:. https://www.rburton.com/.
David Shannahoff-Khalsa
Director of The Research Group for Mind-Body Dynamics at UCSD
David Shannahoff-Khalsa is the Director of The Research Group for Mind-Body Dynamics at UCSD’s BioCircuits Institute, and a member of the UCSD Center for Integrative Medicine. He has discovered a novel step in the evolution of the nervous system that gives new insights to mind-body states and their control. He has published widely in scientific journals and conducted clinical trials using Kundalini Yoga meditation techniques for treating OCD, and pioneered the use of magnetoencephalography to study these techniques. He has taught Kundalini Yoga meditation at the American Psychiatric Association since 2003 for a wide range of psychiatric disorders, and written four books that include 100+ different meditation techniques and disorder-specific protocols for all of the major psychiatric disorders. His 3 books published by W. W. Norton and Co include: Kundalini Yoga Meditation: Techniques Specific for Psychiatric Disorders, Couples Therapy, and Personal Growth, 2006; Kundalini Yoga Meditation for Complex Psychiatric Disorders: Techniques Specific for Treating the Psychoses, Personality, and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, 2010; Sacred Therapies: The Kundalini Yoga Meditation Handbook for Mental Health, 2012. And Psychophysiological States: The Ultradian Dynamics of Mind-Body Interactions, Academic Press, 2008.www.theinternetyogi.com
James Fadiman, Ph.D.
Author/Reseacher
James Fadiman, Ph.D. author/editor of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic Journeys (Park Street Press, 2011), has been guiding and researching entheogenic journeys for decades. He cofounded The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, does management consulting, has taught at Stanford, Brandeis and San Francisco State and has written textbooks, a psychedelic novel (The Other Side of Haight), a self-help book and a play. Currently he is researching ways to use extremely low doses of psychedelics and amassing profiles of present day psychedelic drug users.
Mystic Birinder
Mystic, Messenger, Guide, Author, Engineer
Mystic Birinder, the author of the award winning book “The Supreme Being” was born in the Himalayas. At the age of 6 he was awakened to previously lived lives where he realized the Supreme Truth. Mystic Birinder graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and worked in Research & Development. With a scientific background he can reason and clarify present day minds about The Ultimate Reality of the Self to inspire seeking. His teachings are revealing, deeply transformative, and individualized to bring out the uniqueness of every Self. He shares a path of love, which he followed as a seeker. www.mysticbirinder.com
Diana Reed Slattery, Ph.D.
Novelist, scholar, and video performance artist
Diana Reed Slattery is an novelist, scholar, and video performance artist. Slattery’s science fiction novel, The Maze Game, tells the story of a game played on mazes made of the psychedelic language, Glide. She received her Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Plymouth, UK, for research in psychedelics, language, and the phenomenology of altered states of consciousness. States of extended perception were used in the conception, design, and implementation of her LiveGlide video performance software. Psychedelics provided the means to emerge from the cocoon of natural language into what could be understood as both a pre-linguistic state of direct apperception of the world around and inside us, and as a post-linguistic realm of evolutionary forms of language.
Igor Kufayev
Artist and Advaita Tantra Teacher
Igor Kufayev has been sharing his revelations into the essence of Being since 2002. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and classically trained in art from an early age, he was recognized as something of a prodigy. A one time student at the St Petersburg’s Academy of Fine Arts, he had his first solo exhibition at the age of twenty five and by his early thirties enjoyed an international art career in London. At the age of thirty six Igor had undergone a radical transformation of consciousness which subsequently blossomed into spontaneous unfoldment of Grace. He abandoned his art career and for the next few years continued long hours of meditation, integrating expanded state of awareness throughout all his interactions. Igor points to the integral process of Self-realization where all cognitive and mental processes are orchestrated by awakened Latent Energy – the Creative Potentiality of Pure Awareness – and it is the physiology with its nervous system, that acts as a support for individual consciousness to mature into full Enlightenment. It could be said that his methods are rooted in Tantra, having studied such diverse traditions as Vedanta, Tantra, Sufi and Zen he remains elusive to categorization. Saying that: ”Abiding in a state of spontaneous absorption transcends the boundaries of any given truth based on intellectual grasp of ultimate reality… https://igorkufayev-vamadeva.com
Jay Kumar
Professor of Comparative Religion, Chapman University Jay Kumar, Ph.D. is a professor of comparative religion, Yoga philosophy, global healing traditions and neuro-cognitive studies at Chapman University and at Loyola Marymount University. His research interests encompass mind-body medicine, contemplative neuroscience, and the neuropsychology of health and happiness. He is also a certified Yoga and meditation instructor, motivational speaker, author, and appears as a weekly contributor on national radio. His forthcoming book Brain, Body & Being will be available in 2014. Learn more at www.drjaykumar.com
EMMANUEL DROUET
Emmanuel Drouet, is professor of Virology at the University of Grenoble (France), and previously served as a biomedical pathologist in the Institut Pasteur (Lyon, France). As scientist in EMBL laboratory (European Molecular Biology Laboratory), Dr Drouet’s research investigates the persisting viruses in human (RNA and DNA viruses) and the balance with our host immune system. He focuses on their effects on humans (both their impact in pathology and their symbiotic relationships in humans). Relying on clinical observations, Drouet pioneered experiments about the positive role of some viruses (human herpesviruses, human endogenous retroviruses) on human health. His studies shed a new light on microbial agents, behaving alternatively in a cooperative or destructive way depending on the environment they find themselves in. Drouet explains how this shows us the same life living the ‘universality’ of biological patterns manifesting in nature throughout all the magnitudes. He says the deeper he looks the more he sees a similarity between the “viral” world and ourselves; he will try to demonstrate that the play of life is what it is before the labeling of good or bad. He has published over 65 book chapters and journal articles in clinical microbiology and immunology as well as fundamental biology.
Meriel Gold
What Meriel Gold (Hoare) finds she loves about drawing and painting is the “stop” as her brush or hand touches the canvas or paper, like a kind of rest. It seems in this pause or rest that we are, as it were, drawn home into the quietness of ourself, which she feels is what we are all really yearning for, and which infact, is always here, just waiting to be noticed!
Meriel has been painting and drawing all her life. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London, with Oscar Kokoshka in his School of Seeing in Salzburg and with Cecil Collins.
ALLAN COMBS, PHD
Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA
Allan Combs is a Professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His background is in consciousness studies, neuropsychology, and systems science. Professor Combs is author of over 100 articles, chapters, and books on consciousness and the brain, including The Radiance of Being (2ed), winner of the best-book award of the Scientific and Medical Network of the UK, and Mind in Time: The Dynamics of Thought, Reality, and Consciousness, with Mark Germine and Ben Geortzel and the recent book, Consciousness Explained Better.
John Prendergast, ph.d.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies
Senior Editor of The Sacred Mirror and Listening from the Heart of Silence
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is a retired professor of psychology at CIIS and the senior editor of The Sacred Mirror (with P. Fenner and S. Krystal) and Listening From the Heart of Silence (with K. Bradford). He is currently at work on a book about the sense of inner knowing for Sounds True Publications. He is in private practice in San Rafael, Ca., and facilitates two ongoing self-inquiry groups. His main teachers have been Jean Klein and Adyashanti. Dorothy Hunt, a teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti, has recently invited him to share the dharma. www.listeningfromsilence.com
Robert Dittler, ph.d.
Once upon a time there was a guy named Robert M. Dittler. He entered this realm in San Francisco, California, USA and has since lived in many parts Earth. The universe is his home. He earned a Classical Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, making him somewhat “competent” till the 12th Century CE or so. Later, he finished a Masters of Arts program in Counseling and Guidance. Finally, he received a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophical Psychology. He has taught in many different levels and settings: Home-Hospital, US Navy Air Craft carriers and ships at-sea, typical classrooms (high school and college), serving the Learning Handicapped as well as educating in Latin, English, and Psychology. Currently, when not visiting India or Nepal, he may be found in a seminar room facilitating a communication workshop for the general public or corporate types. He is a Yoga and Soto Zen practitioner. His main interest is belief systems: their creation, reformulation, and replacement in the service of increasing one’s own integrity. Robert’s wide and varied experience and his personable manner make his workshops challenging, memorable and delightful.
Marlies Cocheret de la MoriniEre
Marlies Cocheret de la Morinière, MA: With love, directness, and humor, Marlies invites our spirituality down from the clouds right into this human body experience. For more than 15 years she has been ushering seekers into the mysteries of living the divine in the body. She has been offering satsangs and retreats since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies works as a spiritual teacher, psychologist, a certified Hakomi therapist and a certified tantric educator internationally. She has spoken on different subjects at many non-dual conferences. Marlies is interviewed in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdomby R.M. Robinson.
Seán ÓLaoire
Fr. Seán ÓLaoire has a B.Sc. degree (major in Mathematics). Ordained a catholic priest in 1972, he spent 14 years working in Kenya. He is multi-lingual and has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology; he is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice. He is co-founder and the Spiritual Director of a non-denominational community called “Companions on the Journey” based in Palo Alto. He is the author of four books: 1. “Ukweli ni Nini?” (What is truth?) – written in Swahili 2. “Spirits in Spacesuits – A Manual for Everyday Mystics” 3. “Souls on Safari” 4. “A Sensible God”
Bentinho Massaro
Founder of Free Awareness
Bentinho has founded the Free Awareness Foundation, which aims to tailor and package these teachings in such a way that they can become integrated into the different pillars of our society, by being made available for free to, and then presented by inspired people around the world (wisdom going viral) into our education systems, corporate worlds, troubled youth programs, prison programs, etc.
To get a taste of these teachings for yourself, go to: https://www.bentinhomassaro.com
Laura Inserra
Laura Inserra is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and artistic director. She is a classically trained musician with a strong improvisational background. A native of Sicily, her work in Italy is well-known, including integral participation in the composition of numerous movie scores and the artistic direction of innovative live productions. Inserra performed internationally in prestigious festivals and theaters in Italy and the US that include: The Colosseum (Rome), Auditorium Parco della Musica (Rome), Teatro Olimpico (Rome), The Chapel of the Chimes (Oakland), CounterPULSE (SF), NOHSpace (SF) and San Francisco City Hall among others. An internationally acclaimed Hang player, Inserra has collaborated with various artists globally. The Hang has been dubbed as “the new instrument of this Millennium”. Her performances are infused with a unique blend of musical inspiration and melodic harmonies which deeply resonate with audiences worldwide. In 2007 she moved to the Bay Area and she founded Samavesha, a non-profit multidisciplinary performing arts organization. Audiences worldwide are not only mesmerized by this woman but also captivated by her virtuosity, profound musicality, and the passion that she brings on the stage. More info: www.laurainserra.com
Anasuya Krishnaswamy
Anasuya Krishnaswamy, Ph.D/M.F.A., a scientist and writer, has done research in experimental solid-state physics, earned a yoga teacher certification, and is a graduate of the Peruvian based Light Body School of the Four Winds Society. www.chartyourjourney.com
Damien Rose
Damien Rose has been adding the magic of his Tibetan Singing Bowls to the Chopra Center, Yoga Conferences, Deva Premal in concert, GATE, BhaktiFest, and Agape Spiritual Center. His extensive set of bowls, which he collected over ten years, had their recording debut in 2008 with Damien’s highly acclaimed CD, Liquid Bells. The CD was featured nationwide on National Public Radio. Damien has been deepening his sensitivity to sound for many decades leading him to work with vibrational Tone as a direct connection to our own healing and spirituality. It is a special treat to be able to experience Damien playing these beautiful instruments live, absorbing their sound through the openness of body and soul.
Kenneth D. Johnson
www.ThisSacredSpace.org
www.thelasthustle.com
For thirty-one years Kenny Johnson’s most fervent desire was to hear his name “ringing in the streets” as a hustler, thief, and pimp. Beginning in his early teens, he was arrested thirty-seven times and spent the majority of those years in prison. Running parallel with that desire was a persistent seed of spiritual longing that would not leave him alone. In 1995, while still behind prison walls, Kenny experienced a spiritual awakening so profound that it transformed not only his prior conditioning as a criminal but his very field of consciousness. In the vast stillness that overwhelmed his mind and heart, he witnessed with intimate clarity the bondage the entire human experience is subject to and exactly where eternal freedom can be found. As a speaker and an author, he now shares that understanding intimately with his audiences. Kenny is currently the founder of “This Sacred Space,” a non-profit organization that facilitates meditation and self-inquiry groups both in and out of prisons. Kenny is the author of the newly relsead book “The Last Hustle“.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D
Clinical Psychologist and Writer
Gail’s work as a therapist emanates from aware presence overflowing with possibility. Problems are seen as opportunities; the illusion of the separate self as a doorway to enduring happiness. Stories are honored, while fierce and loving investigation invites their dissolution. Gail has special expertise working with older adults and their families, bringing clear seeing and compassion to the transitions of aging, death, and dying. As a member of the clinical faculty at University of California, San Francisco, she helped physicians develop communication skills and learn to address psychosocial issues with their patients. Gail has authored many published articles on coping with stress and chronic medical illness. She consults with staff of assisted living and skilled nursing facilities about aging, dementia, and caregiving and has given numerous presentations to the community at large on these topics.
Gail blogs at AFlourishingLife.com where she invites readers to see through the confusion of separation and discover reality, which is true, alive, and undeniable. Her core offering is to bring non-dual understanding to the moments of suffering in everyday life. AFlourishingLife.com GailBrenner.com
Theresa Bullard, Ph.D.
Theresa Bullard, Ph.D. is a pioneer in the integration of science, consciousness, and transformative technologies. Theresa obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington, where she conducted interdisciplinary research in neutrino physics, crystal chemistry, nanotechnology, and origin of life studies. Theresa then went on to found QUANTUM LEAP ALCHEMY, has become an accomplished change agent, with a solid background in personal and process development, and a strong track record of achieving sustainable results that rest on a core shift in conscious awareness. For the past 12 years, Theresa has been an international speaker, facilitator and consultant in Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States. www.QuantumLeapAlchemy.com
Thomas J. McFarlane
Author of Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings Teacher, Center for Sacred Sciences
Thomas J. McFarlane is the author of Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings and is a teacher at the Center for Sacred Sciences, a spiritual organization drawing from the teachings of the nondual traditions of the world. His research focuses on the foundational roots of science and its compatibility with nondual reality. Thomas graduated in physics with distinction from Stanford University and also has graduate degrees in mathematics and in philosophy and religion. He has presented at numerous conferences and has been the keynote speaker several times at the annual Franklin Merrell-Wolff conference.
Emma Devi
Dancer
Emma is a professionally trained dancer however her favorite dance has always been the free style trance-dance experienced beyond the steps and routine moves. She sees dance as a tool to embrace and rekindle the inner radiance and how to allow the body to realign within. Emma’s spiritual quest began in her late teens when she was introduced to meditation and holistic way of life. She is a certified kids yoga teacher, nutritionist and a mother of two. Emma is a keen chef who implements her interests in Ayurveda and conscious eating, which she skillfully combines with her daily chores whilst traveling Central Asia, Europe and Central America with her spouse and teacher Igor Kufayev.
DJ Dragonfly
DJ
As one of the West Coast’s most notable and sought after DJs in the festival scene, Dragonfly brings his deepest selection of bass-bumpin’ trans-globalized grooves, featuring smoldering rhythms and beats that reference the Gypsy, Balkan, Afro-Latino and Indo-Arabic sounds, samples and idioms. Integrating Bass Music’s sound design and the steadfast genres of Glitch, Dubstep, Drum n Bass, House, Breaks, Funk Dragonfly’s sets are one-of-a-kind around the global journey on a dancefloor!
Meike Schuett
My passion is the freshness that lies in the exploration of this moment. What excites me is Living This with everything I AM.?? All that matters to me is how we are with each other, how we are? with everything, in this moment.
Gary Weber
Gary Weber has a Ph.D. in physical sciences and worked in national labs, industry, and academia in R&D and management. Simultaneously, he completed over 20,000 hrs of self-inquiry and yoga, culminating with the sudden falling away of the “I” and the loss of self-referential thought, desires and fears. Since then, he has taught, authored “Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening”, a blog and several articles and made many presentations on nonduality and neuroscience at various conferences and universities. He has been a subject and collaborator in cognitive neuroscience and meditation studies at Baumann Institute, IONS, CSNSC, Yale and NYU. www.happiness-beyond-thought.com.
Francis Bennett
Francis Bennett was a Roman Catholic, Trappist monk for a number of years. He lived in two monasteries of the Trappist Order in the US and was also a member of an urban, contemplative monastic community originally founded in Paris, France in 1975. He has lived in France at several monasteries, and in Canada at a small monastic community in Montreal Quebec. He received a five and a half year monastic/spiritual formation with the Trappists before he made his vows as a monk at Gethsemani Abbey in 1983. He graduated from the Pontifical College Josephinum with a BA in Philosophy and completed a two year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education with Ohio Health Hospital System in Columbus, Ohio. He has worked in ministry in the area of spiritual Care in the hospice movement, as a hospital chaplain and in spiritual care of the sick and dying in parish settings. He has lead retreats in both the Vipassana Buddhist Tradition and in the Christian mystical/contemplative Tradition. In 2010, while in the middle of a Church Service in his monastery in Montreal, Francis suddenly experienced what he has come to call, “a radical perceptual shift in consciousness”, in which he discovered the ever present presence of spacious, pure awareness. He came to see that this awareness is actually the unchanging essence of who he really is and always has been; the Supreme Self, talked about by many sages and saints from many spiritual traditions down through the ages. He also came to see simultaneously, that this vast, infinite sense of presence at the center of his being (and at the center of the being of everyone else on the planet) is actually not at all separate from the presence of God, which he had been looking for during his many years as a monk and spiritual seeker..
Kurt Johnson
Dr. Kurt Johnson has worked in science and spirituality for over 40 years. His book The Coming Interspiritual Age, endorsed by leaders from across the spiritual and transformational communities, will appear in late 2012. As a Christian monk he founded (with Br. Wayne Teasdale) InterSpiritual Dialogue (www.isdna.org) for discussion of contemplative experience across traditions. He also works with The Contemplative Alliance (www.gpiw.org) and Integral communities (www.integral-dharma.org). In 2005 Kurt began giving “Satsang” associated with Pamela Wilson. In science Kurt’s PhD is in evolution, ecology, systematics and comparative biology. Associated with the American Museum of Natural History (30 yrs.) he published 200+ articles on evolution and ecology, the bestselling book Nabokov’s Blues (2000), and (as a co-author) the 2011 Harvard DNA sequence study vindicating Vladimir Nabokov’s views of evolution.
Dorothy Hunt, LCSW
Spiritual Teacher and Director, Moon Mountain Sangha, Inc.
Founder, San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy
Licensed psychotherapist in practice since 1967
Dorothy Hunt, Spiritual Director of Moon Mountain Sangha, teaches at the request of Adyashanti. She has practiced psychotherapy since 1967 and is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Self-inquiry, as taught by Ramana Maharshi, led to the first of a series of awakenings. In meeting Adyashanti, she was invited to see beyond identification with the Absolute, allowing dualities to collapse. Dorothy is the author of Only This!, a contributing author to The Sacred Mirror, Listening from the Heart of Silence, and the on-line journal Undivided. For more information, visit www.dorothyhunt.org
Yasmin Bar-Dor
Yasmin Bar-Dor, artist and Certified Breema Instructor at the Breema Center in Oakland, California, has been presenting “Breema: The Art of Being Present” for the past thirteen years at conferences, universities, and to different groups all over the U.S. and internationally. When Yasmin discovered Breema in 1998, she found that this teaching offered her a road map to truly enter into the essential questions she had been exploring all her life. As a lifelong student of Self-understanding, Yasmin is enthusiastic about introducing Breema’s practical philosophy and working with others in an atmosphere that’s supported by Breema’s principles of No Judgment and Mutual Support.
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