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Advaita Vedanta and the Search for Wholeness
January 17, 2009 @ 10:00 am - 3:00 pm PST
According to Advaita (Nondual) Vedanta, it is the superimposition of the Self on the psyche and world that is the root cause of suffering, and as long as the Self remains undifferentiated from these causes, true psychological health cannot be attained. Until the Self is known, one takes the Self to be other than what it is and therefore never truly feels comfortable. The Vedantic Self, when added to Jung’s model of the psyche, allows for completion of the psyche’s natural quest for wholeness that is sought through the individuation process. The Vedantic Self can be seen as both the source of and the fulfillment of the religious function of the psyche, in that it fulfills the psyche’s search for union with God. The workshop will allow participants to explore in depth their personal integration of these themes through meditation and spiritual exercises that will allow experiential understanding of these concepts. We will also discuss how these insights can be applied to therapeutic practice.
Related Lecture: Jung and the Path to Individuation through Indian Spirituality
CAROL WHITFIELD, Ph.D., has an M.A. in Sanskrit from the University of California, Berkeley (1982), a Ph.D. in Phenomenology of Religions from the Graduate Theological Union (1992), and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the San Francisco School of Psychology (1997). During the 1970s Carol lived a monastic life in India where she studied Advaita Vedanta. Since her return from India, she has taught Vedanta extensively on both coasts and was one of the founders and the administrative manager of Sandeepany West, Institute for the Study of Vedanta and Sanskrit, located in Piercy, California, and later, of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Institute for the Study of Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit, in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. One of her primary interests is the synthesis of Western psychology and Eastern spirituality. She is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Berkeley, California.