Saturday, March 26, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #217 - 26MAR16

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with with Sonoma county Zen practitioners and teachers Elizabeth Sawyer and Barton Stone. Elizabeth is an Interfaith Minister, co-founded Back Porch Zendo, and is a lay ordained dharma teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi. Myozen Barton Stone studied with Suzuki-Roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center, and was ordained by Jisho Warner Roshi of Stone Creek Zen Center in 2010.
More information about Elizabeth Sawyer and Barton Stone's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, March 19, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #216 - 19MAR16

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:
  • An in-studio conversation with Leza Lowitz, author or co-translator of a wide-ranging set of over twenty books, including Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By; Sacred Sanskrit Words: For Yoga, Chant, and Meditation; Yoga Heart: Lines on the Six Perfections; Designing With Kanji: Japanese Character Motifs for Surface, Skin and Spirit; Jet Black and The Ninja Wind, and more. Our discussion today will focus on her two latest books: Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras, a personal memoir about how she fell in love with and married a Japanese man, and came to adopt a child with him in Japan; and Up From The Sea, a young adult novel in verse about a Japanese boy whose life was overturned by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

    Leza is a California girl who lives in Tokyo. Always willing to go to any length and travel any distance to discover who she was and how to be happy, she met her soulmate at a jazz club in Yokohama, and moved to Japan to be with him. Ten years later, Leza and Shogo undertook the crazy project of opening a yoga studio in Tokyo. Three years after that, they adopted a beautiful boy and rescued two dogs, starting a family in their mid-forties.

    Leza and Shogo often write together, and only occasionally drive each other crazy. Building a bridge from East to West, they’ve collaborated on a book about kanji, a collection of poetry by a pacifist Japanese soldier, and a trilogy about a young female ninja. Other couples finish each other’s sentences. They finish each other’s books.

    From an early age Leza dreamed of being Bruce Lee or Joan Didion. She’s still working on that combination.

    For over two decades, she’s been bringing together the worlds of writing and spirituality, charting her quest in over seventeen books and in the New York Times online, Yoga Journal, Shambhala Sun, The Best Buddhist Writing 2011, The Huffington Post, The Japan Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Her award-winning poetry has been translated into Japanese, French, Spanish, Burmese and Farsi. Leza is a long-term member of SCBWI Japan (the Society for Children’s Books Writers and Editors, Japan).
More information about Leza Lowitz's can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, February 27, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #215 - 27FEB16

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:
  • A recording of a live talk given at Many Rivers Books & Tea on Thursday January 28, 2016 by your Mystical Positivist hosts, Stuart Goodnick and Rob Schmidt, on the topic of Choice: The Dance of Free Will. The question of Free Will has challenged the human imagination for centuries. In light of contemporary scientific findings on the neurological operation of the brain, arguments about free will have run up against some apparently stark realities. This new evidence begs a number of questions: To what extent do mechanical or deterministic factors give birth to our perceptions and actions in the material world? On what basis can we invoke choice to ensure that we avoid the slavery of unconscious perception and behavior? These questions become even more acute if we posit the existence of an underlying spiritual impulse to be free. If genuinely non-mechanical choices determine our destiny, how can we give ourselves fully to the spontaneous freedom of the moment—and what would it mean to do that? Join us for an exploration of what choice means in relation to spiritual and existential freedom.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, February 20, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #214 - 20FEB16

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:
  • A conversation by telephone with Tarini Bauliya, author of Saved From Enlightenment: The Memoir of an Unlikely Devotee. The book describes the actualization of her spiritual yearnings throughout her life, and particularly as she came to work with and learn from western spiritual master Lee Lozowick. Along the way, Tarini experienced the obstacles that most spiritual practitioners face. Her book is a funny and poignant recounting of those experiences from the perspective of a hard-won greater maturity.
More information about Tarini Bauliya's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, February 13, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #213 - 13FEB16

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with with Karl Young, Ph.D, on the history of the materialist perspective in scientific inquiry, and the limitations that strict material realism imposes. We discuss how a broader empirical perspective on science avoids a necessary commitment to a realist interpretation of the material entities that serve as the basis for current scientific models. Such an approach opens the doors to a genuine scientific inquiry into matters of consciousness and spirit. A native of San Francisco, Karl Young received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He worked as a research physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator and was an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California, San Francisco. His research focuses include the study and simulation of complex systems, applied information theory, image informatics, statistical image processing, parallel processing, and magnetic resonance physics. Karl is an accomplished jazz musician, as well as an avid student of the Shakuhachi or Japanese Bamboo Flute, and has studied intensively with such notable teachers as Kaoru Kakizakai and Riley Lee. In addition, Karl has maintained a longstanding interest and practice in Zen Buddhist Meditation.
More information about Karl Young's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, February 6, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #212 - 06FEB16

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 present a pre-recorded interview with Rose Volckhausen, Vijaya Fedorschak and Karuna Fedorschak on the topic of spiritual lineage and how to embody lineage as disciples of a teacher no longer in his or her body. All three guests are disciples of spiritual teacher Lee Lozowick. Using the pen name Janet Rose, Rose Volckhausen is the author of Journey: From Political Activism to The Work. Vijaya Fedorschak is the author of Father & Son: The Indian Beggar King Yogi Ramsuratkumar and the American Master and Poet Lee Lozowick. Karuna Fedorschak is author of Parenting: A Sacred Task.
More information about Rose Volckhausen, Vijaya Fedorschak, and Karuna Fedorschak's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, January 23, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #211 - 23JAN16

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with spiritual teacher Kenny Johnson, author of the autobiographical book The Last Hustle, wherein Johnson recounts his early and middle life, during which period Kenny was arrested thirty-seven times and spent much of his life in prison, or on the run. Each time behind bars sent him into a deep and profound despair. Eventually his desire for lasting freedom would drive him to find a power that could not only get him through his final sentence, but free him from prison forever. That new direction opened when he met spiritual teacher Gangaji in prison.

    About that spiritual awakening, Kenny has written:

    “I had to find a power that would not only get me through my current sentence, but would free me from prison forever.

    "During my early years in prison, I spent most of my time participating in religious and substance abuse groups. It was my inner desire for freedom that led me and a band of truth-seekers to a meeting in the prison chapel.

    "There, Gangaji, a spiritual teacher, answered my most pressing question:

    “It is my understanding that we have to wait until we die before we can receive God’s Grace. Is that so?” Gangaji replied, “Kenny, God’s Grace is here now! Kenny you think you are a convict, you think you are your name, you think you are a black man. Kenny you are none of these things.

    "Instantly I knew I would never be a thief again. But how do you re-enter the world outside without resorting to old weaknesses? How would I survive and how would it be possible to maintain this newly found experience of grace?

    “This ever present Grace supports me in each moment now.”

    After his release, Kenny set up a foundation called This Sacred Space to bring the message of spiritual clarity and freedom to those still incarcerated. Today he offers satsang to everyone struggling to escape the prisons of their hearts and minds.
More information about Kenny Johnson's work can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, January 16, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #210 - 16JAN16

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:
  • Today hosts Stuart Goodnick and Robert Schmidt converse with one another in the studio on the subject: do ideas about God take us away from God? Given the focus of the show, that rationality can be an ally in the mystical quest, this question is right up our alley. We consider this topic in light of hot-off-the-presses news developments, as well as texts like The Mystical Theology of Dionysus the Areopagite, an early Christian work .

    Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

    Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for October 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

    Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the electronics and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

    A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2016.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, January 9, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #209 - 09JAN16

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with Sufi practitioner and poet Raphael Block. Born and raised on a kibbutz in Israel to pioneering parents, Raphael grew up playing on the hills of Haifa. Just before turning 9, his family moved to London. Learning English shaped his ear for sound, and the British climate and temperament fashioned his life for the next 25 years. At age 27 he became a student of the great 20th century Sufi mystic Irina Tweedie, author of one of the greatest spiritual autobiographies, Daughter of Fire. After her death, Block eventually moved from London to northern California with his second wife, who was born in San Francisco, to continue his Sufi studies with Tweedie’s successor in the Naqshbandi Sufi Order Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee. After his wife’s death from cancer in 2002, Raphael continued with the work of raising their daughter. Raphael Block’s poetry volumes include Songs From A Small Universe and Spangling Darkness. His latest volume of poetry, Strings of Shining Silence, will be published later in 2016.

    Raphael has coped with and learned from a succession of health challenges in recent years, including Chron’s disease, which necessitated several major surgeries. The latest challenge is a recent diagnosis of bone marrow cancer (MDS).
More information about Raphael Block's's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, January 2, 2016

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #208 - 02JAN16

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:
  • A conversation with poet and Quaker, Jim Wilson, about the life and work of the seventeenth century French Catholic mystic Madam Guyon. Jim Wilson studied Buddhism in Korea, Japan, and the US. He was an ordained monk in the Chogye Zen Buddhist order for six years. He served as a Buddhist Prison Chaplain in an institution for the criminally insane. He also founded and conducted the Sutra Salon, a group reading and discussing the Buddhist suttas and sutras published in English translation. In addition to the Chogye Zen order, he studied in a number of other Buddhist traditions. He is one of the founders of Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol. Since becoming a Quaker, he has published a critical edition of A Guide to True Peace, a manual for the practice of Quaker Silent Prayer that draws on the work of Madam Guyon, the subject of our conversation today. Jim is in the process of preparing An Annotated Edition of A Guide to True Peace, to be published in 2016. Jim is also an accomplished poet, and author of many volumes of poetry, including some of his more recent titles, Shorter Tanka Journeys, Shorter Haiku Journeys, and Shorter Cinquain Journeys. Jim has been a frequent guest on The Mystical Positivist show, learnedly discussing a wide range of topics.
More information about Jim Wilson's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #207 - 26DEC15

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:
  • Today hosts Stuart Goodnick and Robert Schmidt provide a year-end show, looking back on some of the remarkable guests that they’ve hosted in 2015 on the Mystical Positivist. They reflect on how these radio conversations have changed and informed their own personal experiences of spiritual practice. They also celebrate their own spiritual teacher, Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis, who died in 1998, and who would have been 69 years old on the day of broadcast, December 26th, 2015.

    Dr. Robert Schmidt, spiritual director of Tayu Meditation Center, met and began intensive, 24-hour study with Tayu Meditation Center founder Robert Daniel Ennis in 1977. After five remarkable training years, he received ordination as a minister of Tayu, and co-taught with his teacher until Mr. Ennis’ death in 1998. His work with Mr. Ennis included co-writing and publishing a book entitled God Is Gay: An Evolutionary Spiritual Work. Rob succeeded Mr. Ennis as Tayu spiritual director, a post he still holds, in collaboration with yours truly. With Stuart Goodnick and Jim Wilson he co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea in Sebastopol in Sebastopol, CA, in 2002.

    Currently he’s collaborating with practitioners of many spiritual traditions to create the Conscious Family Festival, a community event scheduled for October 2016 in Santa Rosa, CA. Along the way, Rob completed a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology at UC Berkeley, where he was co-editor with his grad student colleague Barbara Voss of the award-winning Archaeologies of Sexuality, the first academic edited volume to examine the phenomenon of sexuality as a object of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

    Stuart Goodnick, the Mystical Positivist, has been a practitioner of Tayu Meditation since 1985 and a Tayu Meditation instructor since 1993. He holds degrees in Physics from Caltech and UCSC, and has been an engineering manager in the electronics and software security industries since 1989. Stuart has also been a student of the shakuhachi (Japanese Bamboo flute) under Master Masayuki Koga since 1996. In recent years Stuart has been applying the principles of spiritual practice and transformation in daily life as a senior executive in both Silicon Valley start-ups and global industrial manufacturers. He co-founded Many Rivers Books & Tea with Robert Schmidt and Jim Wilson in Sebastopol in 2002.

    A frequent writer and speaker on spiritual topics, Stuart maintains that rationality is no way the antithesis of deep mystical experience, but is in fact a necessary ally. He is currently working on a compilation of some of his essays and transcriptions of talks to be released later in 2016.
More information about Tayu Meditation Center can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, December 19, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #206 - 19DEC15

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with Ken McLeod, a senior Western translator, author and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He received traditional training mainly in the Shangpa-Kagyu lineage, through a long association with his principal teacher Kalu Rinpoche, whom he met in 1970. Under Kalu Rinpoche’s guidance McLeod learned the Tibetan language and completed two, traditional three-year retreats (1976-83). In the years that followed, he traveled and worked with Kalu Rinpoche on various projects and became a prominent translator of Buddhist texts. This includes a landmark translation of The Great Path of Awakening by Jamgon Kongtrul, a key text in the teaching of Lojong (the Seven Points of Mind Training).

    In 1985 he settled in Los Angeles to run Kalu Rinpoche’s dharma center. He did so until 1990, when he founded his own organization, Unfettered Mind. He teaches strictly traditional material but is recognized (1) for having pioneered a new teacher-student model, based upon ongoing, one-on-one consultations and upon small teaching groups that have a high degree of teacher-student interaction; and (2) for his “pragmatic” approach to teaching, translation and practice.

    The intent of “pragmatic Buddhism” is to preserve the essence of the teachings, unchanged, but to make them more directly accessible to the Westerner. It does so by bypassing the Eastern cultural overlay and using simple, clear language and methods that elicit direct experience in the practitioner. Also, it emphasizes an individualized practice path – with a key element being ongoing practice consults that allow the teacher to shape a path that’s tailored to each practitioner’s specific needs and makeup. McLeod has made this model available for others to use via the Unfettered Mind website, his teacher development program, and his publications – especially in his 2001 book Wake Up To Your Life, which lays out the Buddhist path & practices. His non-traditional commentary on the Heart Sutra, An Arrow to the Heart, presents a way into the material that’s poetic and experiential. His latest book, just published, is titled A Trackless Path, a commentary on the Great Completion (or Dzogchen) teaching of Jigmé Lingpa’s Revelations of Ever-Present Good.
More information about Ken McLeod's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #205 - 12DEC15

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with Amy Kittelstrom, author of the recently published Penguin Press book The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition. Amy Kittelstrom is an associate professor of history at Sonoma State University, and has published articles and reviews in the Journal of American History, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She received her Ph.D. in history from Boston University and is a past fellow of the Center for Religion and American Life at Yale, the Charles Warren Center at Harvard, and the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton. Professor Kittelstrom is an historian of modern thought and culture who specializes in nineteenth-century American thinkers and their contexts. She is particularly interested in the lived intellectual connections between individuals and cultures of the past, how their ideas on religion and democracy informed one another, and how Americans engaged with books and thinkers from India, Great Britain, and the Romantic Movement.
More information about Amy Kittelstrom's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, December 5, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #204 - 05DEC15

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with Arnaud Delorme, Ph.D., , currently a research scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California, and a CNRS principal investigator in Toulouse, France, as well as a faculty project scientist at the University of San Diego California. In 2000, Dr. Delorme completed his PhD Thesis on visual categorization in humans, monkeys, and machines. Based on the results of his modeling work, he co-created with Simon Thorpe the Spikenet Technology Company, now a successful start-up. Dr. Delorme then moved to the Salk Institute for a post-doc in Terry Sejnowski and Francis Crick’s laboratory where he focused on statistical analysis of electro-encephalographic (EEG) signal recorded during various cognitive tasks. He developed the free EEGLAB software for advanced analysis of EEG signals in collaboration with Scott Makeig, software which is now amongst the most used software in EEG research worldwide. He was awarded a Brettencourt-Schueller young investigator award and a 10-year anniversary ANT young investigator award for his contributions to the field of EEG research.

    Dr. Delorme has a keen interest in the scientific study of consciousness and spirituality. He is a long term Zen meditator, and has taught in India on the neural correlates of conscious experience in a Master's degree program for the Birla Institute of Technology. Starting in 2002, he has developed a strong ongoing collaboration with Dr. Rael Cahn to look at brain dynamical changes underlying extra-ordinary states of consciousness as experienced during meditation and due to the effects of psycho-active agents. He is the co-director in Rishikesh, India of the Meditation Research Institute. In 2010, he started collaborating with Dean Radin on analysis of electro-encephalographic (EEG) signal recorded during presentiment tasks.
More information about Arnaud Delorme's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, November 28, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #203 - 28NOV15

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:
  • A conversation by telephone with William Mistele, author of Mermaids, Sylphs, Gnomes, and Salamanders: Dialogues with the Kings and Queens of Nature, as well as Undines and the forthcoming Mermaid Tales. Since 1975 he has been a student of Franz Bardon’s teachings on Hermetic magic, a system of training that includes the evocation of and communication with nature spirits. Mistele is devoted to integrating the wisdom of all spiritual traditions, along with transpersonal psychology, into Bardon’s system, which seeks to maximize the power and creativity of the individual.

    By way of self-description, he writes: “I graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois with a BA in philosophy and a minor in economics. At that time, I began studying esoteric, oral traditions. In genuine mythology, individuals come into contact with the creative powers of the human spirit. Words and language possess a symbolic and imaginative quality that is magical. To understand an idea is to experience it from within. This involves a lifelong, transforming journey--if you change the self, you change the world.

    “As part of my field research, I lived in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Berkeley, California. I next studied Hopi Indian culture and language at the University of Arizona where I received a Masters degree in linguistics. At that time I became the only accepted student of a Hopi Indian shaman.

    “While living in Tucson, Arizona I began studying the Western hermetic traditions and the nature religions of Wiccans and Druids. I worked with a number of extremely gifted psychics and parapsychologists whose primary focus was on experimentation and research. I also practiced evocation with a Sufi master.

    “I then moved to Hawaii in 1982. There I studied with the relocated abbot of a Taoist monastery that existed for over two thousand years in China, a Vietnamese Zen master, and one of the foremost Tai Chi Chuan masters of China.

    “I consider myself a spiritual anthropologist. Expanding on Bardon’s purposes, I am integrating into his system the wisdom of all traditions. To this end, I have created a new genre of modern fairy tales. These stories are not about belief or faith but direct experience. They open gates to other realms where we discover the keys to what is missing from life.
More information about William Mistele's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Sebastopol, CA, USA

Saturday, November 14, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #202 - 14NOV15

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:
  • A conversation by telephone with Alex Tsakiris, an engineer turned podcaster, and author of Why Science is Wrong… About Almost Everything. In 2007 Tsakiris founded the podcast Skeptiko.com, an interview-centered podcast addressing the science of human consciousness. It covers Near-death experience science; Parapsychology; Consciousness research and the every expanding scientific understanding of who we are; Spirituality and the implications of new scientific discoveries to our understanding of it; Skepticism and what we should make of material reductionist sceptics.
More information about Alex Tsakiris' work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, November 7, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #201 - 07NOV15

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:
  • A conversation by telephone with C.W. Huntington, Jr., a translator and interpreter of classical Sanskrit and Tibetan texts, and a professor at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. He is the author of The Emptiness of Emptiness, and of his recently published debut novel Maya, an extended meditation on the unravelling of identity, set in the turmoil of northern India in the mid-1970s. The novel recounts the experience of a young American scholar who is drawn to India not just to translate religious texts, but also to wrestle with his own internal demons. With an entertaining cast of hippies, expats, Tibetans, and Indians of all walks of life, Maya has a compelling authenticity that draws the reader in.
More information about C.W. Huntinton's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, October 31, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #200 - 31OCT15

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with Sam Webster, founder of the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn. Sam Webster is a writer, Thelemite, a member of the Golden Dawn tradition, as well as an initiate of Wicca. Webster holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Starr King School for the Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and a Ph.D in History from the University of Bristol. He is notable as one of the pioneers of open source religion - the use of the open source paradigm in the field of spirituality. He has authored a number of articles and essays on occult and Pagan topics, publishing both online and in periodicals such as Green Egg, Mezlim, Gnosis, and PanGaea. Many of his essays on PaganDharma and Thelema have also been made available online. In 2001, he was one of a number of Neopagans interviewed in Modern Pagans - An Investigation of Contemporary Pagan Ritual, a feature article in the counter-cultural journal RE/Search.

    He has founded (or cofounded) several occult and Pagan organizations, including the Chthonic-Ouranian OTO (1985), and the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn (2002). Webster's book Tantric Thelema was published in 2010. His Ph.D dissertation, The History of Theurgy from Iamblichus to the Golden Dawn, was published in 2014.
More information about Sam Webster's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #199 - 10OCT15

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with This week our guests in the studio are Laura Morgan, MD, and Jim Sullivan. Laura Morgan is the author of Three Jewels, a natural history/field guide to three trail systems in west Sonoma County. Jim Sullivan teaches animal tracking, is a landscape painter, and is writing a book combining the newest information in the cognitive sciences with what he has learned from daily practice of our species' most ancient pursuit—animal tracking.

    Laura Morgan describes her spiritual background this way: “My father's father was to be the next "Mirshimun", the spiritual and secular head of the Assyrians and their Orthodox Church at the time of the Armenian/Assyrian massacre in northern Iran in 1915.

    “I was raised Episcopalian but had an enduring "born again" experience at age 16, the year I first laid eyes on the landscape of West Sonoma County. I came back to live here and attended Sonoma State, graduating with degrees in music and literature.

    “During my last year of college, I met Eknath Easwaran at the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in Tomales and subsequently lived in the community for 10 years. He asked me to become a physician, so I did, through the UCB/UCSF Joint Medical Program. He hoped to perform research studying the effects of meditation. When difficulties led to an exodus of many community members in the '80s, I continued my residency at Community Hospital of Sonoma County, in family practice.

    “During the 30 years of medical practice that ensued, I stuck with passage meditation and trail-running as my anchors. I primarily worship nature. Austin Creek backcountry is my religion of choice. Jesus, the Buddha, Aunty Pema and Uncle Eckhardt also make daily appearances in my life.

    Jim Sullivan is a 4th generation Sonoma county native who lives near Occidental, California. A long time environmental activist, he also wrote a popular column for the Bodega Bay Navigator for eight years. He is perhaps best known for having led the campaign to open California State beaches for night access, and for serving as the first president of both the Rural Alliance and of the Sonoma County Farmlands Group, and for his involvement in a number of contentious land use issues. He also served on the boards of over a dozen other non-profits, from the Sonoma Land Trust and C.O.A.A.ST, to Native Species Network.

    A graduate of Notre Dame in biology, he also studied in Vienna, Austria, and did graduate work at several other universities and still takes--and teaches-- classes and workshops at Santa Rosa Junior College and elsewhere. He served 4 years in the infantry, including an extended tour in Korea with the United Nations occupation forces, where in 1962 he resigned his commission in protest over US policies in Asia. Upon return to the States, he lived in Santa Barbara, but by the mid-60s found himself in the Haight Ashbury where he became involved in the Civil Rights and Anti-war movements. During that time he also was instrumental in launching the Natural Foods movement, got married, moved to Marin county and raised 4 kids.

    Returning to Sonoma County with the back to the land movement in 1976, he settled on Joy Ridge, near Bodega, where his ancestors settled in the early 1870s. After a career as a landscape designer/contractor, he retired in the early 90s and has been painting almost daily since.

    In May, 2010, Jim was qualified by Mark Elbroch as one of about 600 internationally certified animal trackers. Currently he is teaching two monthly tracking/bird language classes a month, as well as frequent workshops and several lectures a year.
More information about Laura Morgan's work and interests can be found at:
More information about Jim Sullivan's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA

Saturday, October 3, 2015

The Mystical Positivist - Radio Show #198 - 03OCT15

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:
  • A conversation in the studio with Sky Nelson-Isaacs. He is a singer-songwriter, physicist and speaker with a unique vision. He communicates about the physics of synchronicity, encouraging people to worry less, trust more, and keep awareness open to the opportunities that are in constant motion around us. He offers a scientific model for understanding synchronicity that can lead to a new level of problem resolution. The model focuses upon an idea called “selfless confidence”, which is relevant in business, problem-solving in politics, or relating to family, as well as accomplishing personal goals. Sky is the author of the recently released eBook, What are the Chances: Science, Serendipity, and seizing the Moment.

    Sky speaks at Sunday services and afternoon workshops for Centers for Spiritual Living and Unity Centers around the country, as well as scientific conferences and business meetings. His peer reviewed articles have appeared in the Journal for Scientific Exploration, and the Conference Proceedings for American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He has presented his work investigating quantum theory, special relativity and synchronicity at the Society for Scientific Exploration Annual Meeting (2010, 2012), Towards a Science of Consciousness (2010, 2012), SAND (2010, 2011, 2012) and the AAAS (2011). Sky’s popular writings have been published in Science of Mind Magazine and New Thought Magazine. Sky received a nomination in 2012 for the coveted Positive Music Award for his song Live in Love. His album of original music The World Ocean and his eBook What are the Chances are available for sale on his websie.

    Before studying physics at UC Berkeley, and careers in education, music, and software, Sky Nelson-Isaacs was a childhood student of Swami Satchidananda. Alongside calculus and electromagnetism, he found personal meaning and glimpses of a deeper truth in the sacred texts of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. In Fall 2015 he is returning to graduate school to study physics at San Francisco State University. Sky is a father and husband, living in Santa Rosa, CA.
More information about Sky Nelson-Isaacs's work and interests can be found at:
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Location: Occidental, CA, USA
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