Faculty Members of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness MA Program

Program Chair

Robert McDermott, PhD

The PCC curriculum was designed in the early 1990s by a group of distinguished scholars, teachers, and activists who shared a sense of the unique gravity and promise of our moment in history. Several of those original founders are still teaching in the program; all faculty members embrace and support the overarching goals of PCC from their unique areas of expertise.

Core Faculty

Elizabeth Allison received her PhD (2009) in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and her MA in Forestry from Yale University. She is a Fellow in Transformational Ecology with the Garrison Institute.

She has taught environmental studies in academic settings at UC Berkeley, Yale, and Williams College, and through experiential modes in youth development programs in Vermont and California.

Elizabeth's current research explores the role of religious and spiritual discourse and practice in environmental action through case studies of natural resource management in the Himalayas, where she has lived and conducted field research for more than two years. Additional research interests include environmental ethics, political ecology, religion and ecology, the politics of knowledge, biodiversity conservation, and climate change.

Her writing has appeared in Mountain Research and Development, The Progressive Christian, and The Spider and the Piglet, an anthology of studies of Bhutan. She was a Fulbright fellow in Nepal in 2003-04, conducting research on natural sacred places in the Khumbu region near Mount Everest.

Previously, she directed a national program called Experience Corps, which mobilizes retired people to share their skills and wisdom with needy schoolchildren, coordinated a California- wide AmeriCorps program focused on environmental education and restoration, and led teams of young people restoring parks and trails in California and Vermont.  

Download Elizabeth Allison's Selected Essays>>

Sean Kelly received his PhD (1988) in Religious Studies from the University of Ottawa and has taught in the departments of Religious Studies at the University of Windsor, the University of Ottawa, and Carleton University. He has published articles on Jung, Hegel, transpersonal theory, and the new science and is the author of Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung, and the Path toward Wholeness (Paulist Press, 1993).

Sean is also coeditor, with Donald Rothberg, of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers (Quest Books, 1998) and co-translator, with Roger Lapointe, of French thinker Edgar Morin's book Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium (Hampton Press, 1998).

He is writing a book titled Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era (forthcoming). Along with his academic work, Sean has trained intensively in the Chinese internal arts (T'ai Chi, Pa Kua, and Hsing-I) and has been teaching T'ai Chi since 1990. His current interests focus on the intersection of consciousness and ecology in the Planetary Era.

Robert McDermott, PhD in philosophy, Boston University (1969), program chair, is president emeritus and professor of philosophy and religion at CIIS. He taught at Manhattanville College (1964-71) and is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Philosophy at Baruch College, CUNY (1971-90).

His publications include Radhakrishnan (1970), The Essential Aurobindo (1974), The Essential Steiner (1984), and the "Introduction" to William James, Essays in Psychical Research (Harvard University Press, 1986).

Robert's essays have appeared in International Philosophical Quarterly, Cross Currents, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Philosophy East and West. He has recently completed two books, both to be published by Steinerbooks: The Bhagavad Gita for India and the West (2009) and The New Essential Steiner (2009).

He was secretary of the American Academy  of Religion (1968-71) and secretary-treasurer of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (1972-76). In 1975-76, he was a Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the Open University, where he coproduced an OU-BBC film, Avatar: Concept and Example.

In 1978-80, he was director of a National Endowment for the Humanities project for the review of audiovisual materials for the study of Hinduism and Buddhism. He is the founding chair of the board of Sophia Project (two homes in Oakland, CA, for mothers and children at risk of homelessness), and has been chair of the board and president of many other institutions.

Download Robert McDermott's Selected Essays>>

Brian Swimme received his PhD (1978) from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon for work in gravitational dynamics. In his books, courses, and international lectures he explores a meaningful interpretation of the human within an evolutionary universe.

He was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, from 1978 to 1981, and at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, from 1983 to 1990.

He is the author of The Universe Is a Green Dragon (Bear and Company, 1984); The Universe Story (Harper, 1992), in collaboration with cultural historian Thomas Berry; and The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (Orbis, 1996).

Brian produced a 12-part video series, Canticle to the Cosmos (Tides Foundation of San Francisco, 1990); participated in the BBC television series Soul of the Universe and the PBS series The Sacred Balance; and most recently produced the DVD series The Powers of the Universe (Center for the Story of the Universe, 2005).

Richard Tarnas is the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. A graduate of Harvard University (AB, 1972) and Saybrook Institute (PhD, 1976), he was formerly director of programs and education at Esalen Institute.

He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind (Random House, 1991) and Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View (Viking, 2006), which received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network in Great Britain.

Richard's research interests include the history of Western thought and culture, the evolution of consciousness, the interface of philosophy and psychology, epistemology
and cosmology, new paradigm studies, depth psychology (psychoanalytic, Jungian, archetypal, transpersonal), psychedelic research, and astrology.

Selected Adjunct Faculty Profiles

Christopher Bache received his PhD (1978) in Philosophy and Religion from Brown University. He is the author of Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life, and Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. He has also published numerous articles on consciousness studies, the psychology of mysticism, and near-death studies.  
Blair Carter, who received his MA (2003) from CIIS, is currently a doctoral student in the PCC program. He is a certified Permaculture teacher and designer, environmental educator, wilderness guide, and experienced deep ecology workshop leader.

Stanislav Grof received his MD (1956) from Charles University, Prague, and completed his  in Medicine (1965) from the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology, and founding president of the International Transpersonal Association.

For the past 35 years he has conducted research on therapeutic and heuristic aspects of non-ordinary states of consciousness; experiential psychotherapy using psychedelics and nondrug techniques; alternative approaches to psychoses; the problem of spiritual emergencies and treatment of transpersonal crises; and the implications of new developments in quantum physics, information and systems theory, biology, brain research and consciousness studies for psychiatric theory and the emerging scientific paradigm.

He is the author of Realms of the Human Unconscious (Viking Press, 1976), Beyond the Brain (State University of New York Press, 1985), The Holotropic Mind (Harper Collins, 1992), The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (SUNY Press, 1998), and Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research (SUNY Press, 2000).

Joanna Macy received her PhD (1978) from the State University of New York, Syracuse. She is a visionary activist and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology.

Weaving these threads together, she has created both a groundbreaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change, and a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science.

This work is described in her books Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age; Dharma and Development; Thinking Like a Mountain (coedited with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess); Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory; World as Lover, World as Self; Rilke's Book of Hours (with Anita Barrows); and Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown).

Eric Weiss, MFT, a psychotherapist in private practice, received his PhD in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness from CIIS. His dissertation was titled "The Doctrine of the Subtle Worlds: Sri Aurobindo's Cosmology, Modern Science, and the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead."

He is now teaching advanced courses on Alfred North Whitehead and Sri Aurobindo at CIIS. He is also a distinguished scholar at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research, where he is engaged in the study of reincarnation and the survival, by the personality, of bodily death.