The Mystical Positivist: The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #301

Saturday, September 8, 2018

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #301 - 08SEP18

The Mystical Positivist is now a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP 107.3 FM, Occidental, CA. Listen live on Saturday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00pm, PST, via the web at KOWS Live Stream.

This week's podcast features:

This week we feature a conversation by telephone with Philip Goldberg, author or co-author of numerous books, including Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path: Living at the Heart of Paradox, American Veda, and The Life of Yogananda. He is a public speaker and workshop leader; a spiritual counselor, meditation teacher and ordained Interfaith Minister, and he co-hosts the Spirit Matters podcast.

He was born and raised in Brooklyn and moved to Los Angeles with stops along the way. As a college student in the 1960’s, he shuttled uncertainly from one major to another while relentlessly searching for higher truths, scratching his way to passions that would mark his adult life: spirituality and writing. Despite having been raised by atheists who disdained religion — or maybe because of it — he was drawn to the pragmatic mysticism of the East, at first through public thinkers like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, and then directly from the texts of Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism — especially Vedanta and Yoga.

This led inexorably to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. Philip spent much of the 1970’s teaching TM (changing the world, one mantra at a time, as he thought of it) and working for that organization in other capacities.

That affiliation led to an independent spiritual path as a pragmatic mystic —a yogi for whom transcendence is a means, not an end — and also catalyzed his career as a professional writer. Phil’s spiritual pursuits and his writing career ran on separate tracks, coming together only on occasion. In his books, he was able to indulge his interests in psychology, human potential and holistic health. Early on, to pay the bills, he accepted offers to collaborate with experts with good ideas but neither the capacity nor inclination to write. That led to his version of a day job — ghosting, collaborating, editing — while working on his own books screenwriting. Then in 2010, American Veda was published. The book earned good reviews, won awards and spawned related ventures like American Veda Tours, the Spirit Matters podcast, a documentary film project (now in the development and fundraising stage), satisfying lecture and workshop gigs and, of course, more and more writing. Earlier this year (2018) his latest book The Life of Yogananda was published by Hay House.

More information about Philip Goldberg's work can be found at:

Philip Goldberg's website: philipgoldberg.com
Spirit Matters podcast: spiritmatterstalk.com
Philip Goldberg on YouTube: www.youtube.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

"The Mystical Positivist" Radio Show

The Mystical Positivist is a weekly radio show on KOWS-LP FM 107.3 Occidental, CA, and on the web at KOWS-LP Live Feed, Saturdays from 4 - 6pm PST. Coming up on The Mystical Positivist:

April 20: A pre-recorded conversation with Ken McLeod, Buddhist teacher and author of the newly released book, The Magic of Vajrayana. In this conversation, we plan to explore a compelling quote from Ian McGilchrist's The Matter with Things: If you had set out to destroy the happiness and stability of a people, it would have been hard to improve on our current formula: remove yourself as far as possible from the natural world; repudiate the continuity of your culture; believe you are wise enough to do whatever you happen to want and not only get away with it, but have a right to it—and a right to silence those who disagree; minimise the role played by a common body of belief; actively attack and dismantle every social structure as a potential source of oppression; reject the idea of a transcendent set of values.

One of the more innovative Buddhist teachers today, Ken McLeod is known for his clear explanations, poetic translations, and pragmatic approach to practice. He is one of the first generation of Western teachers in the Tibetan tradition and one of the few to be authorized to transmit the full scope of these teachings to students. In particular, his approach resonates strongly with those whose path lies outside established institutions.

After graduating with a degree in mathematics, Ken cycled across Europe to Istanbul and then continued his journey overland to India. In 1970 he met his principal teacher Kalu Rinpoche at his monastery near Darjeeling. There Ken began a study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism that lasted more than twenty years. He completed the traditional three-year retreat program two times, translated for many teachers, and helped set up Buddhist centers in Canada and the United States. After his teacher's passing, Ken moved away from the hierarchical structures of Asian Buddhism to explore new approaches.

In 1990, he founded Unfettered Mind in Los Angeles. His approach of one-on-one consultations roiled the Buddhist world in the early '90s, but was quickly recognized as a viable way to teach and guide students in the West. He made individual interviews a central feature of the many retreats he taught in California, New Mexico, and British Columbia. Through numerous small groups in Southern California, he developed the materials that became the encyclopedic meditation manual, Wake Up to Your Life.

Now retired from formal teaching, he lives in Northern California where he hikes and writes. His writings and translations include The Great Path of Awakening (1987), Wake Up to Your Life (2001), An Arrow to the Heart (2007), Reflections on Silver River (2014), A Trackless Path (2017), and The Magic of Vajrayana (2022), as well as a corpus of articles and translations in Tricycle and other Buddhist magazines.