Participants observe Noble Silence. It will examine self, society and nature in the contemporary existential context of a severely degraded biosphere. It will explore the role of human consciousness in generating or impeding solutions to the threat of mass extinction. Through case studies, lecture, field trips, poetry, film, dialogue, and experiential exercises we will study ancient and modern ways of restoring, revitalizing and protecting planetary diversity. The term synchronicity was coined by Carl Jung to refer to those seemingly random but strangely meaningful coincidences that insert themselves all unanticipated into the everyday events of our lives.
Synchronicities often have a symbolic quality that they share with dreams and deep imagination.
To take a step in the direction of understanding synchronicity we must be prepared to face the miraculous, revising our traditional views of mind, as well as our understanding of nature itself. This course takes that step, examining the parts played by synchronicity in the events of our own individual lives, our dreams, and our fantasies, as well as exploring it in terms of modern physics and depth psychology. In this class the cosmologies, epistemologies, teleologies and modes of ethical reasoning of each of the seven major human worldviews will be discussed and elucidated in detail. This course offers an exciting and accessible introduction to world religions through the visual arts. We will look at the politics of religious identity in Jerusalem and among the California Chicano's allegiance to Gaudelupe through slide lectures, films, field trips and class discussion.