Conscious Academics (Spiritual people with a Phd)

[Gabriel Joy]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if anyone knew academics (people with Phds) who are also enlightened or at least conscious and contributing to the world. I'm looking to see if there are role models that I can share with others and aspire to be like.

If you know any, it would be greatly appreciated that you can share them here on this forum.

[toasty7718]

Martin W. Ball, PhD.

 

He was an adjunct professor at the university of Ashland, Oregon teaching religious studies.

 

His entheological paradigm framework is turquoise in it's values and interpretation of reality. Highly recommend checking him out. 
 

 

Note: the signature of my profile is an excerpt from one of his poems entitled "my love."

Edited November 2, 2023 by toasty7718

[Gabriel Joy]

14 hours ago, toasty7718 said:

Martin W. Ball, PhD.

 

He was an adjunct professor at the university of Ashland, Oregon teaching religious studies.

 

His entheological paradigm framework is turquoise in it's values and interpretation of reality. Highly recommend checking him out. 
 

 

Note: the signature of my profile is an excerpt from one of his poems entitled "my love."

Thank you for answering! I greatly appreciate it!

I'll make sure to check out his work. 

[Vibroverse]

Rupert Sheldrake, John Hagelin, Fred Alan Wolf, Bernardo Kastrup, Neil Theise, Rudolph Tanzi, Dean Radin, Jude Currivan, Tom Campbell, Fritjof Capra, Bruce Lipton, many names, really. 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Vibroverse

[UnbornTao]

David Loy.

[byte]

53 minutes ago, Vibroverse said:

Rupert Sheldrake, John Hagelin, Fred Alan Wolf, Bernardo Kastrup, Neil Theise, Rudolph Tanzi, Dean Radin, Jude Currivan, Tom Campbell, Fritjof Capra, Bruce Lipton, many names, really. 

 

Don't know about the others but Tom Campbell doesn't have a PhD and worked in applied physics (risk modeling etc.) after his time at Robert Monroe's institute. So he should be considered more of an engineer than an (academic) researcher. His consciousness research was also in the private sector or by himself, rather than academic.

Edited November 2, 2023 by byte

[Vibroverse]

5 minutes ago, byte said:

Don't know about the others but Tom Campbell doesn't have a PhD and worked in applied physics (risk modeling etc.) after his time at Robert Monroe's institute. So he should be considered more of an engineer than an (academic) researcher. His consciousness research was also in the private sector or by himself, rather than academic.

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/38522

He has a phd in experimental nuclear physics according to this website, and i also remember him to be someone with a phd. 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Vibroverse

[byte]

2 minutes ago, Vibroverse said:

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/38522

He has a phd in experimental nuclear physics according to this website, and i also remember him to be someone with a phd. 

 

He worked on a PhD but didn't finish it. The phrasing in the link is a bit misleading but if you read closely it doesn't say that he has a PhD, just the Masters.

[Vibroverse]

9 minutes ago, byte said:

He worked on a PhD but didn't finish it. The phrasing in the link is a bit misleading but if you read closely it doesn't say that he has a PhD, just the Masters.

Okay, i see. He stopped caring about finishing it after his out of body experiences, i guess, haha. 

 

[byte]

Haha, perhaps. Btw, he is funding some research at the moment though, to see if his TOE can be supported via experimentally testing some predictions he has made.

See here: https://cusac.org/

Edited November 2, 2023 by byte

[SeaMonster]

There are plenty of college professors of eastern religion/philosophy who tend to be practicing meditators/spiritual seekers.

[toasty7718]

David Tian PH.D. too

[Gabriel Joy]

On 2023-11-02 at 11:32 AM, Vibroverse said:

Rupert Sheldrake, John Hagelin, Fred Alan Wolf, Bernardo Kastrup, Neil Theise, Rudolph Tanzi, Dean Radin, Jude Currivan, Tom Campbell, Fritjof Capra, Bruce Lipton, many names, really. 

 

Thank you for the short list! I needed that. I wanted see and explore some inspiring figures as were not exactly exposed to these scientists.

[Gabriel Joy]

On 2023-11-02 at 0:04 PM, UnbornTao said:

David Loy.

I'll keep him in mind too! Thank you for responding!

[Gabriel Joy]

On 2023-11-03 at 6:32 PM, SeaMonster said:

There are plenty of college professors of eastern religion/philosophy who tend to be practicing meditators/spiritual seekers.

I'll see if I can find them. Thank you for the suggestion!

[Carl-Richard]

 

[UnbornTao]

16 hours ago, Gabriel Joy said:

I'll keep him in mind too! Thank you for responding!

Welcome. By the way, I've heard that David is enlightened, so worth checking out.

Edited November 13, 2023 by UnbornTao

[Osaid]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

Don't know if he achieved enlightenment or not, but I don't jive with his description at all, especially when he is asked about good thoughts and bad thoughts. He talks about "learning to parse through bad thoughts" and that a certain region of the brain is much more "sweeter" and "useful", which would be the region which does not deal with thoughts. But this is still pretty much an avoidance of thoughts rather than a realization of how thoughts work. "It" is not something you learn or get better at. Enlightenment is like a crystal clear realization that you cannot think of yourself at all, to the point where you are not afflicted by thoughts about yourself at all. There is no point in avoiding thoughts because there is nothing to avoid. I definitely agree though that there is probably a measurable change in the brain and it certainly feels that way, and the idea that it has something to do with the default node network is probably accurate.

He also describes it as "letting go of all your attachments one by one", and I think this is a common misconception which seriously misleads people. This would be similar to belief-changing or therapy, but enlightenment is not a changing of beliefs or therapy, it is an uprooting which completely and permanently disables the necessity for beliefs altogether. You don't need to examine every single attachment and the context that comes with those attachments, that is something you could do forever because you can generate attachments forever. All those attachments naturally dissipate when you realize that you truly cannot think of yourself. As an analogy, attachments and beliefs are like branches on a tree, and then self-image/ego is the root of the tree. What needs to be questioned is the root, which is "What am I?", not the branches that stem from the existence of that self-image, like "I should really stop being attached to this thing because it is bad for me." 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Osaid

[Carl-Richard]

15 hours ago, Osaid said:

Don't know if he achieved enlightenment or not, but I don't jive with his description at all, especially when he is asked about good thoughts and bad thoughts.

I have an energetic radar for these things, and he certain has something going on

 

15 hours ago, Osaid said:

He talks about "learning to parse through bad thoughts" and that a certain region of the brain is much more "sweeter" and "useful", which would be the region which does not deal with thoughts. But this is still pretty much an avoidance of thoughts rather than a realization of how thoughts work. "It" is not something you learn or get better at. Enlightenment is like a crystal clear realization that you cannot think of yourself at all, to the point where you are not afflicted by thoughts about yourself at all. There is no point in avoiding thoughts because there is nothing to avoid. I definitely agree though that there is probably a measurable change in the brain and it certainly feels that way, and the idea that it has something to do with the default node network is probably accurate.

I don't think the "good vs bad thought" thing was recommended as a sort of practice of actively parsing out good vs. bad thoughts. It's simply an insight about the nature of thoughts: some thoughts are self-referential while some aren't, and it's just the self-referential thoughts that will go away, not all thoughts. Some people hear "no thoughts" and fear that they will become a dysfunctional rock, and he is dispelling that notion. You'll only lose thoughts that constantly tell you stories about yourself, as a consequence of doing proper spiritual practice.

 

15 hours ago, Osaid said:

He also describes it as "letting go of all your attachments one by one", and I think this is a common misconception which seriously misleads people. This would be similar to belief-changing or therapy, but enlightenment is not a changing of beliefs or therapy, it is an uprooting which completely and permanently disables the necessity for beliefs altogether. You don't need to examine every single attachment and the context that comes with those attachments, that is something you could do forever because you can generate attachments forever. All those attachments naturally dissipate when you realize that you truly cannot think of yourself. As an analogy, attachments and beliefs are like branches on a tree, and then self-image/ego is the root of the tree. What needs to be questioned is the root, which is "What am I?", not the branches that stem from the existence of that self-image, like "I should really stop being attached to this thing because it is bad for me." 

Yet when you investigate this root (in meditation), the branches may pop up as thoughts ("here I am!") and seem to obscure your path towards the root. If you then remember that the branches are just in the way and you need to keep digging, in a sense you have to "drop" each attachment, or not be discouraged by their emotional salience (that is, if you're consciously confronted with them, which is probably not always the case). In other words, the thoughts that pop up in meditation will have the ability to distract you from finding the root, and you just have to let those thoughts go if you want to find the root.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Osaid]

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I don't think the "good vs bad thought" thing was recommended as a sort of practice of actively parsing out good vs. bad thoughts. It's simply an insight about the nature of thoughts: some thoughts are self-referential while some aren't, and it's just the self-referential thoughts that will go away, not all thoughts. Some people hear "no thoughts" and fear that they will become a dysfunctional rock, and he is dispelling that notion. You'll only lose thoughts that constantly tell you stories about yourself, as a consequence of doing proper spiritual practice.

That's fair, I kinda skimmed through it.

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Yet when you investigate this root (in meditation), the branches may pop up as thoughts ("here I am!") and seem to obscure your path towards the root. If you then remember that the branches are just in the way and you need to keep digging, in a sense you have to "drop" each attachment, or not be discouraged by their emotional salience (that is, if you're consciously confronted with them, which is probably not always the case). In other words, the thoughts that pop up in meditation will have the ability to distract you from finding the root, and you just have to let those thoughts go if you want to find the root.

I don't like the terminology of "letting go" and "dropping" because I feel that is interpreted as "stop imagining thoughts", which is, again, avoidance. It creates this idea that thoughts are inherently creating issues, when the only issue is the way you are using those thoughts to point to yourself. It is not a matter of how good you are at handling emotions or building some kind of cumulative strength against emotional thoughts, the error actually has absolutely nothing to do with emotions, it has to do with the thing you are having an emotional reaction to, which is a misconception of yourself. Your emotions are perfectly in tune with what you believe you are perceiving, which is an imagined version of yourself. The way he described "letting go" of his attachment to his kids really reminded me of this sort of "emotional bodybuilding" sentiment I see a lot, which is this idea that you have to sacrifice all your desires and go through emotional hardship to become enlightened or something, which I find misleading. Not wrong depending on how you look at it, just misleading in my opinion. 

I guess the main contention really comes down to "letting thoughts go in order to find the root" and how you wish to accomplish that, and I simply find his verbiage in this section inefficient and misleading for accomplishing that, but that might just be me and how I like to communicate things. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Osaid