Anthony P. Bossis, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, an Investigator at The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at UCLA, and an adjunct professor of religious studies at University of Ottawa. Since 2006, he has conducted FDA-approved clinical research with the psychedelic, psilocybin, focusing on the treatment of existential and psychospiritual distress in palliative and end-of-life care, as well as the study of consciousness, meaning-making, and spirituality. Dr. Bossis was a lead investigator on the landmark 2016 clinical trial demonstrating significant reductions in cancer-related emotional distress following a single psilocybin session and on the 2025 study investigating psilocybin-induced mystical experiences among religious leaders from the world’s major religious traditions.  He is a training supervisor of psychotherapy at NYU-Bellevue Hospital and co-founder of the Bellevue Hospital Palliative Care Service. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and is a guest editor for the journal’s Special Series on Psychedelics. He maintains a private psychotherapy and consulting practice in New York City.

PRESENTATION

Douglas Christie, PhD, Meditating Upon the Nothing
Inhabiting the Place of Prayer
Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector has described profound prayer as a “meditation upon the nothing.” In this, she gestures toward an intuition that has long guided the thought of mystics in the apophatic tradition: namely that every human effort to speak about or conceptualize God will always fall far short of the infinite mystery toward which the soul is yearning. And that prayer therefore will always depend on negation – emptiness, silence, and nothingness – for its meaning. This presentation examines how the apophatic spiritual tradition understands the work of searching out and getting lost in “the nothing.” And how prayer in emptiness or nothingness comes to be understood as a kind of “place” – characterized by “inaccessible heights” and “unfathomable depths” – which the praying soul gradually learns to inhabit.

BIOGRAPHY

Douglas E. Christie, PhD, is Professor Emeritus in the Theological Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is the author of The Word in The Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford, 1993), The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Note for a Contemplative Ecology (Oxford, 2013), and The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss and the Common Life (Oxford, 2022). He has been awarded fellowships from the Luce Foundation, the Lilly Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 2013-2015 he served as Co-director of the Casa de la Mateada study abroad program in Córdoba, Argentina, a program rooted in the Jesuit vision of education for solidarity. He lives with his family in Los Angeles. He is currently working on a book on the landscape of prayer.

Charlotte C. Radler, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Theological Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in Theology from Lund University, Sweden, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago. Her area of expertise is the History of Christianity from antiquity to the Middle Ages with a special focus on ancient and medieval mysticism, especially Meister Eckhart. She has written several articles on the topic of mysticism and is currently working on a book on the role of love in Meister Eckhart’s thought. She has presented papers and lectured widely in North America and Europe to both professional and more general audiences.

PRESENTATION

Sam Shonkoff, PhD, “The Least Mystical of All”
Exploring Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy through Jewish Lenses
There is perhaps no work on mysticism that has been cited more ubiquitously in psychedelic science than Walter Terence Stace’s 1960 book, Mysticism and Philosophy. That Anglican philosopher’s period-piece definition of mystical experience has shaped the field of psychedelic studies to extraordinary degrees, most notably as the theoretical foundation for Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment (1962) and eventually the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire and MEQ-30, which continue to inform not only the methods of psychedelic research but also the modalities of psychedelic assisted therapy. In his book, Stace declared, “Judaism is perhaps the least mystical of all the great world religions,” and he went so far as to suggest that Christian resistance to mystical experience was only because “Christianity inherited it from Judaism.” Pahnke himself integrated these claims into his dissertation under the supervision of Timothy Leary. Of course, such anti-Jewish elements in the soil of psychedelic studies reflect age-old tropes in Christian thought, yet Sam Shonkoff proposes that they also raise rich questions about the culturally specific caricature of mysticism that remains hegemonic in the field. Jewish tradition does indeed contradict tenets of modern Protestant mysticism, particularly through its emphases on communal spirituality, embodied practice, and hermeneutical indeterminacy. However, such supposedly anti-mystical sensibilities might, in fact, illuminate alternative approaches to psychedelic assisted therapy that are more culturally sensitive and socially engaged.

BIOGRAPHY

Sam Shonkoff, PhD, is the Taube Family Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His recent publications include “Hasidism through the Prism of Psychedelics, Psychedelics through the Prism of Hasidism: A Case Study,” “Child Mind in Hasidic Spirituality,” “Gender in Martin Buber’s Hasidic Tales,” and “‘We Shall Do and We Shall Understand’: Embodied Theology in Modern Judaism.” Sam is co-editor of Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community, and Life in the Modern World (with Ariel Mayse), and he is currently completing a book on themes of embodiment in Buber’s interpretations of Hasidic sources.

PRESENTATION

Mansoor Abidi, PhD, The Alchemy of the Heart
Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Transformation of Consciousness
Drawing on the metaphysical vision of Ibn al-‘Arabi, this presentation explores the relationship between Islamic mysticism, alchemical symbolism, and the transformation of consciousness. Centering on Ibn al-‘Arabi’s understanding of the heart (qalb) as a locus of perception, receptivity, and transformation, the talk examines alchemy as a symbolic language of inner refinement and participatory awareness. Attention will be given to the contemporary Western crisis of fragmentation, literalism, and dissociation from symbolic depth, and to how the recovery of symbolic consciousness may restore meaning, presence, and sacred orientation in contemporary life.

BIOGRAPHY

Mansoor H. Abidi, PhD, is an adjunct professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute, author of The Alchemist Within, and founder of Inner Opus—an educational and coaching platform devoted to self-transformation through depth psychology, alchemy, Hermetic philosophy, and contemplative traditions. His work explores the intersection of Islamic Sufism, creative imagination, and perennial philosophy, with a particular interest in symbolic consciousness.

PRESENTATION

Pamela Ayo Yetunde, ThD, The Sacred Heart of Jesus,
the Brahma Viharas, and Mother Cabrini
Not a Catholic, yet having practiced Buddhist meditation for twenty-five years, an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus appeared to me one morning at my home in Chicago during the conclusion of my meditation on the Buddhist Brahma Viharas (lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and sympathetic joy). Why did this happen?  My investigation into this shocking experience led to my learning about Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of orphans and immigrants. Cabrini was an Italian immigrant to the United States whose shrine is located in Chicago.  As someone concerned about how immigrants are being dehumanized in the U.S., her image became an inspiration to me – a Buddhist with a Catholic icon.  This resulted in a co-led Buddhist-Catholic online “service” with Catholic scholar C. Vanessa White where we honored Haitian immigrants at risk of losing their Temporary Protected Status (TPS).  This presentation explores the intersection of Buddhist practice inspired by a Catholic religious saint, and the inspiration that Mother Cabrini offers me as well as others.

BIOGRAPHY

Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Th.D. is a pastoral counselor and scholar.  She is the author of Dearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, & This Thing Called Life and Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community.  Her website address is www.pamelaayoyetunde.com.

PRESENTATION

Kali Nyima Cape, PhD, Bodies Full of Bodies
Transformation of Consciousness in the Dzogchen Nyingthig (snying thig) 
At the heart of Tibetan Great Perfection (Dzogchen) lies a transformation of consciousness achieved not by leaving the body behind but by discovering its transcorporeal nature, porous and open onto a world of other bodies. This is detailed in classical Heart Essence (snying thig) literature from the fourteenth century, wherein the awakened body is never singular. This paper develops the concept of transcorporeality to read three facets of Dzogchen in which the boundaries of the body open onto other bodies, demonstrating that the transformation of consciousness is enacted through a reimagining of what a body is. It begins with buddha couple (yab yum) cosmologies, in which reality is figured as the union of two principles. It turns next to deity yoga and the visionary experience of bodies full of buddha bodies. It then reads buddha nature itself as transcorporeal, as presented in Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings (tshig don mdzod), where the ground of awareness is inseparable from the bodies and worlds that spontaneously arise within it. Across cosmology, visualization, and ontology, the paper theorizes consciousness as transformed not by leaving the body behind but by recognizing its porous, world-spanning nature. It closes by asking what this Dzogchen account of aware, interpenetrating embodiment might contribute to new materialist thought.

BIOGRAPHY

Kali Nyima Cape, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Mythology and Religious Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She received her doctorate from the University of Virginia. A lifelong practitioner and teacher of Tibetan contemplative traditions, she studies Buddhism in monasteries, caves, and temples throughout Asia and North America. Her scholarship centers on the history of Buddhist meditation curricula and Dzogchen philosophy, the Heart Essence (snying thig) literature of fourteenth-century Tibet, with particular attention to women and yoginīs in the Great Perfection tradition. She is currently completing the book based on her dissertation, Yoginīs in Tibet: Women in the Great Perfection (Dzogchen). This research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the Tsadra Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. 

PRESENTATION

Matthew Dillon, PhD, Gnostic and Mystical Afterlives
of The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 sayings attributed to the “Living Jesus,” compiled in the period of Christian origins, buried in the sands of Egypt, and rediscovered in 1945. The text promises transformation and salvation to anyone who can interpret the sayings correctly. This paper explores how contemporary Christian leaders interpret The Gospel of Thomas to theorize – and offer techniques to realize – a radical transformation of consciousness. There will be two case studies. The first, Cynthia Bourgeault, is an Episcopal priest, spiritual leader, and popular author. Bourgeault looks to Thomas as a source for her Wisdom Christianity: a lived mysticism that combines centering prayer, the Gurdjieffian work, and Lectio Divinia in pursuit of nondual, heart-centered awareness. The second, Tau Malachi (née Brett Cagle), is Bishop of the Ecclesia Pistis Sophia, a Gnostic-Catholic Church within the Independent Sacramental Movement. Malachi reads The Gospel of Thomas as a guide to achieving Christ Consciousness and the conscious survival of bodily death. Together, the two cases represent distinct mystical and gnostic modes of reimagining Christian practice in the 21^st century.

BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Dillon, PhD, is a historian of religions working at the intersection of depth psychology, Gnostic Studies, reception history, and theory and method. His first monograph, The Kingdom is Within You: The Nag Hammadi Library and Post-Christianity in America, is under contract with University of Virginia Press, while his edited volume, The Varieties of Mystical Experience, will be published by Harvard University Press later this year. From 2021-26, Matt served as Postdoctoral Scholar and Research Associate in the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the Center for World Religions, Harvard Divinity School. While there, he conceived and launched the Archive of Mystical Experiences. Matt is also the host of the Pop Apocalypse podcast. He is currently Adjunct Lecturer at Pacifica Graduate Institute after holding teaching positions at Harvard Divinity School, DePauw University, Rice University, and California Institute of Integral Studies. 

PRESENTATION

Naamleela Free Jones, PhD, Getting to the Point: Center, Depth,
and an Alternative Phenomenology of Unity
Our familiar mystical metaphors are often expansive: an oceanic feeling, infinity, union, ascent, light, boundlessness. But a smaller body of mystical literature also invokes another image: the infinitesimal point, a tiny spark, small, deep, singular, centered. In this study, I start with a question: what happens when consciousness is experienced—or imagined—as a point? I suggest that “the point” offers an alternative phenomenological structure for mystical experience—one that is not reducible to the familiar category of unity yet offers its own geometry for understanding the phenomenology of non-separateness. From this perspective, “the point” describes a particular way that consciousness may reorganize the structure of perception, as well as providing a contemplative orientation toward self, world, and others. I argue that attending to the point as a recurring mystical image across traditions offers a rich comparative framework for bringing mysticism into dialogue with phenomenology and consciousness studies.

BIOGRAPHY

Naamleela Free Jones, PhD, is a historian of religions whose research focuses on contemporary esotericism, mysticism, nonduality, and consciousness studies. Her work explores the intersections of Western esotericism, South Asian nondual traditions, and American metaphysical religion, with particular attention to how these cross-cultural transmissions challenge conventional paradigms and shape the global, post-traditional landscape. Her teaching integrates contemplative pedagogies and reflective ways of learning, bringing religious studies into dialogue with depth psychology, philosophy, and contemporary consciousness research. Beyond the classroom, Naamleela is a musical composer, producer, and pianist, and has performed in private venues across North America, Europe, and the South Pacific. She has taught at the University of Houston, the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance, the Jung Center of Houston, and Naropa University, and is an associate editor of Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism.

PRESENTATION

Paul M. Pearson, PhD, A Hidden Wholeness
The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton
For Thomas Merton, his discovery of photography in the final decade of his life, became a new way for him to explore and express his relationship with God and with the world. This presentation will explore Merton’s discovery of contemplative photography, what he would call Zen photography, and how he came to create images that can cause us to pause, to stop, to see, to encounter the hidden wholeness, images that can awaken us to contemplation, mindfulness and to peace.

BIOGRAPHY

Paul M. Pearson, PhD, is Director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky and Chief of Research for the Merton Legacy Trust. He is Resident Secretary of the International Thomas Merton Society, and served as President for the 10th administration. Paul is a founding member of the Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He edited Seeking Paradise: Thomas Merton and the Shakers, A Meeting of Angels: The Correspondence of Thomas Merton with Edward Deming and Faith Andrews, Thomas Merton on Christian Contemplation and, most recently, Beholding Paradise: The Photographs of Thomas Merton.

Rev. Cassidy Hall, PhD, is an author, award-winning filmmaker, podcaster, and leading voice in contemplative spirituality. She is the cohost of the Encountering Silence podcast and the creator of the Contemplating Now and Queering Contemplation podcasts. Her films include In Pursuit of Silence and Day of a Stranger. Her book, Queering Contemplation, Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality was released in May of 2024. Cassidy is widely published and resides in Indianapolis.

Glen Slater, PhD, has been a long time member of the core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently Co-Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program. He is the author of Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age (2024), winner of the International Association of Jungian Studies (IAJS) 2025 Book of the Year Award. He is also the editor of the third volume of James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer (2005), the co-editor of the essay collection, Varieties of Mythic Experience (2007), and has written a number of articles and book chapters for Jungian publications.  His research and writing interests concern Jung and film, the psychology of religion, and depth psychology and technology.

PRESENTATION

Emily Lord-Kambitsch, PhD, Mysteries of Descent in C.G. Jung’s
Black Books and Beyond
Near the end of his life, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C.G. Jung claimed that his “confrontation with the unconscious” (roughly 1913-1917) constituted the foundations of all his later theoretical works. The therapeutic modality of active imagination he developed from this period has since initiated many into sustained, transformative dialogue with inner archetypal figures. This talk will emphasize the remarkably central place ancient Mediterranean underworld mythology and ritual, from Orphism, Platonism, and Gnosticism, occupies in Jung’s map of the psyche forged through a combination of his scholarly reading and his firsthand encounters with the unconscious he first recorded in the Black Books and reconstituted in Liber Novus. Jung’s research during this period into the devotional texts, ritual objects, and philosophical writings produced in the ancient Mediterranean over centuries that emphasize preparation for navigating the afterlife appear in the iconography and ministrations of his Soul in his dialogues with beings in his unconscious. We will look to sources from Jung’s personal library, correspondence, and published works, to read his confrontation with the unconscious in the Black Books as a metaphorical descent to the underworld that carries a potent kinship with Orphic, Gnostic, and Platonic approaches to the soul, and ritual practices as we know them. From this perspective, those of us who practice active imagination or another means of dialogue with the unconscious can appreciate our own participation in a compelling lineage of ancient mystery traditions.

BIOGRAPHY

Emily Lord-Kambitsch, PhD, is a scholar and poet-storyteller, serving as Assistant Professor and Research Coordinator of the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her lifelong exploration of classical mythology is rooted in the study of Greek and Latin language and literature at UC Santa Barbara, University of Oxford, and University College London. At Pacifica she teaches courses in Greco-Roman myth, memoir and self-writing, and dissertation formulation. Her research has recently been published in the Journal of Cognitive Historiography, the Classical Journal, and the edited volume, Depth Psychology, Myth, and Artificial Intelligence: Soul and the Machine. She is currently working on a volume co-edited with Devon Deimler on Carl Jung’s approaches to ancient Mediterranean myth and philosophy.

PRESENTATION

Charles J. Morris, PhD, Imaginal Mysticism: Depth Psychology,
Corbin’s Mundus Imaginalis, and Tibetan Tantra
This talk traces an arc from depth psychology into mysticism through three interlocking pillars: imaginal psychology, rooted in Jung and Hillman’s view of psyche as fundamentally imaginal, with image as the primary substance of both psychological and religious life; Henry Corbin’s recovery of the mundus imaginalis, a third ontological realm in which imagination bridges spirit and matter; and “archetypal self-generation,” adapted from the Tibetan Vajrayana practice of generation stage yoga and reframed through an archetypal lens as a technology for transforming identity, embodiment, and world through living images. The presenter’s forthcoming book Practical Re-Enchantment provides the framework for this talk: that these three traditions, held in creative dialogue rather than collapsed into a single system, constitute a genuine contemporary mystical path rooted in the soul’s deepest images.

BIOGRAPHY

Charles J. Morris, PhD, is an author, teacher, and speaker working at the intersection of depth psychology, Tibetan Buddhism, and the imaginal tradition. He holds a doctorate in Depth Psychology: Jungian and Archetypal Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute and an MA in Mindfulness Studies from Lesley University. His forthcoming book Practical Re-Enchantment (Wipf & Stock, 2026) draws on Jungian psychology, Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, and the Islamic imaginal tradition. He has published in the Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies and presented at the International Association for Jungian Studies and the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies. His engagement with non-duality is grounded in fifteen years of study, practice, and teaching in the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism under Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, an immersion that preceded and continues to inform his Jungian scholarly work. He lives in Victoria, BC, Canada.

Craig E. Stephenson, PhD, IAAP, earned his diploma in analytical psychology from the C. G. Jung Institute, Küsnacht, Switzerland, and his doctorate from the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. In addition, through the Institute for Psychodrama, Zümikon, Switzerland, he completed a training in Group Psychotherapy, Sociometry and Psychodrama. He has served on the executive committee and the ethics committee of the Association of Graduate Analytical Psychologists (AGAP) and on the board of directors of the Philemon Foundation. He worked as Director of Training of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association of New York (JPA). He practises as a Licensed Psychoanalyst (LP) in New York State, a Registered Psychotherapist (RP) under the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, Canada (CRPO), and a certified Jungian analyst in Lisbon, Portugal. His books include Anteros: A Forgotten Greek Myth (2012), Jung and Moreno (2014), Possession: Jung’s Comparative Anatomy of the Psyche (2017), and Ages of Anxiety: Auden reading Jung in Times of War (2025). For Princeton University Press’s Philemon Series he edited On Psychological and Visionary Art: Notes from C. G. Jung’s Lecture on Gérard de Nerval’s Aurélia (2015). His book, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling, and C. G. Jung: Writing to the Woman who was Everything won the NAAP’s Gradiva Award for best psychoanalytic book of 2023.

PRESENTATION

James Padiliano, PhD, Set, Setting, and Silence: Mystical
Proscriptions/Prescriptions of the Good Friday Experiment of 1962
The Marsh Chapel Experiment of 1962 has gone down in psychedelic history and lore on account of its spectacular context: in this double-blind study designed by PhD student Walter Pahnke, Christian seminarians consumed psilocybin during the Good Friday noontime service to test the parameters of the set and setting framework of his advisor, Timothy Leary. In addition to Leary, Pahnke received spiritual mentorship from the Rev. Howard Thurman, the dean of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel, who gave his blessing to host the experiment and who met with the seminarians during their onset phase, when he instructed them to “maintain a reverent silence.” This talk reassesses the Marsh Chapel Experiment by refocusing the empirical question of how to induce mystical experience upon Thurman’s framework. What happens to our notions of set and setting if we amend this logic with Thurman’s injunction to “maintain a reverent silence?” And what lessons can we learn about the role of plant and fungal phytochemicals as staging the potential for transformations of consciousness that promote healing and wellness rather than the gratuity of mystical experience for its own sake?

BIOGRAPHY

James Padilioni Jr., PhD, James’s research and teaching foreground African Diasporic ritual and performative cultures, ancestral veneration and spirit liturgical traditions, and ontologies and ecologies of Blackness, with a focus on Black Atlantic herbalism and pharmacopeia, planetary ethics, and ecocritical healing justice movements.

PRESENTATION

Dylan Francisco, PhD, C. G. Jung’s Prohibitive Stance
Toward Psychedelics
A Crossroads and Opportunity for Depth Psychology
While C. G. Jung didn’t address psychedelics in any substantive way in his Collected Works, he did write several letters in which he articulated his view of psychedelics—taking a cautionary, prohibitive stance toward them. His concern was that psychedelics open an individual to depths of the psyche they are unprepared to meet. Accordingly, psychedelic experiences potentially bypass a necessary and slower process of psycho-spiritual development that Jung called individuation, which requires a progressive movement through stages of maturation that prepare an individual to responsibly engage with the psyche as a whole. This presentation will put Jung’s position toward psychedelics under scrutiny for what it assumes about psychedelic experiences and how it relates them to depth psychology in a way that may not be congruent with either psychedelic experiences or the experiential basis of depth psychology itself. What will be proposed in this presentation is that Jung’s prohibitive stance toward psychedelics brings depth psychology to a crossroads and an opportunity to reflect on whether depth psychology will stay committed and adaptive to its experiential origins or position its psychological model as final and closed to experiences of reality, spirituality, and different states of consciousness that may not conform to or be taken into account by depth psychology. Can depth psychology develop in relationship to different experiences or does depth psychology require all experiences to comply with its model?

BIOGRAPHY

Dylan Martinez Francisco, PhD, is an assistant professor and co-chair of the Integrative Therapy and Healing Practices M.A./Ph.D. program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dylan grounds his work in depth psychology, decolonialism, and the Nahua/Indigenous/Shamanic traditions of his Mexican lineage that provide an animistic, holistic, and sacred worldview within which to understand the psyche, to embody its wholeness individually, and to live it relationally through honoring Spirit, the ancestors, and the land.

PRESENTATION

Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD, Reshaping Jung’s
“Transcendent Function” through the Lens of Yogacara Buddhism
for Psychotherapy and Everyday Life
We all have immediate access to our natural wisdom, but most of us block its influences on us in a variety of ways, including the belief that we have to “unite the opposites” that were never separated. Yogacara Buddhism, originating in India in the first through third centuries, clarifies and makes accessible many Jungian ideas connected with transcendence and intuitive wisdom. This presentation offers a fundamental understanding of the Buddha’s awakening to present-moment wisdom – transcending subject-object duality – through the profound awareness of “dependent-arising.” I then offer a condensed overview of the differences and similarities between the Yogacara Buddhist theory of the unconscious – as a “home consciousness” that reorganizes lifetime to lifetime – and Jung’s idea of a “collective unconscious” within the individual psyche. Finally, I argue that Jungian ideas of “transcendence” and “non-dualism” are often too abstract – and therefore, too vague – for people to use in a direct way in everyday life and are also difficult for therapists to incorporate into psychotherapy.

BIOGRAPHY

Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD, is a psychologist, writer, speaker, and Jungian analyst who is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Real Dialogue in Vermont. She has published 19 books including, The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance and Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path. She is the co-author, with Jean Pieniadz, Ph.D., of Dialogue Therapy for Couples and Real Dialogue for Opposing Sides: Methods Based on Psychoanalysis and Mindfulness. In 2009, Polly received the Otto Weininger Memorial Award from the Canadian Psychological Association for outstanding lifetime contributions to psychoanalysis. Her current book, under contract with Palgrave Macmillan, is Humanizing Our Conflicts through Real Dialogue, to be published in 2028. Polly hosts the popular podcasts ENEMIES: From War to Wisdom & Waking Up is Not Enough: Flourishing in the Human Space. She is a lifelong Buddhist practitioner and a Mindfulness teacher. She maintains a clinical practice in central Vermont and offers programs in person and online at www.realdialogue.org.

PRESENTATION

Thomas Cattoi, PhD, Buddhist-Christian Themes in Jung’s Red Book
The publication of the Red Book in 2009 marked the beginning of a new phase of Jungian studies, as numerous scholars of psychology and religion have increasingly turned their attention to an exploration of the religious themes present in Jung’s visionary chronicle. On one hand, the Red Book’s deployment of Christian themes has been read through the lens of Jung’s critical appraisal of Christianity. Others, however, have viewed Jung’s approach as largely congruent with a dharmic understanding of spiritual progress. This presentation reviews some of the Buddhist and Christian themes in the Red Book and then proceed to reflect on the possible theological roots of Jung’s critical take on the Christian spiritual paradigm, which will be traced back to the prevalence of Anselmian and Calvinist soteriology in the forms of Christianity Jung was most familiar with. I will then argue that what Jung takes to be the Buddhist ‘engagement’ of our shadow is in fact congruent with the kind of Christology and the accompanying theology of deification that espoused by Eastern Christian authors such as Maximos the Confessor (580-662) and Gregory Palamas (1296-1359).

BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Cattoi, PhD, holds the William and Barbara Moran Chair in Early Christian theology and Interreligious Relations at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome; between 2006 and 2024 he taught at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. His research teaching focus on early Christian theology and interreligious dialogue, with particular attention to the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Tibetan-Christian dialogue. His recent monograph is Seeking wisdom, embracing compassion: a Philokalic commentary to Tsong kha pa’s ‘Great Treatise (Brill, 2026) and he also co-edited the volume Maximos the Confessor and the Latin tradition (Leuven: Brill, 2025). He has been co-editor of the journal Buddhist-Christian studies since 2015. As of July 2026, he serves as convenor of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian studies. 

PRESENTATION

Josh Brahinsky, PhD, Comparative Paths to Self-Transcendence
Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms Associated With Mystical Experience
How do people get to mystical experience, and what carries them through it? This talk compares two paths that could hardly look more different: charismatic Christian prayer, including speaking in tongues, and jhāna, the deep absorption states of Buddhist meditation. Drawing on twenty years of fieldwork with charismatic communities, close first-person interviews with practitioners of both traditions, as well as brain and body measures taken during practice, I trace two patterns. The first is a path to surrender: a spiral of attention, arousal, and release, in which practitioners gather attention, build intensity, and then let go. The traditions differ in most everything else–one is loud and boisterous, the other serene– but the shape is similar. The second is a path through it: alliance<–>surrender–>creativity. The safer people feel, with a partner and with God, the more deeply they surrender, and that surrender opens creativity and a stronger sense of agency. More experienced folks trace a stronger path. In both cases the experience leads and the brain data follow that story: top-down control loosens, the brain relaxes its grip on its own predictions, and both practices seem to drift toward a highly flexible state, closely akin to what psychedelic research now describes. I close with what the comparison suggests about how self-transcendence is something trained and relational.

BIOGRAPHY

Josh Brahinsky, PhD, is an anthropologist and neuroscientist doing research at Stanford University (Religious Studies and Psychiatry) and McGill University (Transcultural Psychiatry). His work joins long-term ethnography with fMRI and EEG to study contemplative practices of self-transcendence, including charismatic Christian prayer and jhāna meditation. He is the author of Tongues of Fire: How Charismatic Prayer Changes Evangelical Brains and Inspires Spirit-Filled Activism (Bloomsbury, 2026). His research has appeared in PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, the American Journal of Human Biology, and Cultural Anthropology.

PRESENTATION

David M. Odorisio, PhD, Depth Psychology and Monasticism
Contemplation and the Unconscious
The late twentieth century witnessed an increase of interest and experimentation in Jungian depth psychology among North American Cistercian monastics. This presentation traces the intersection of contemplative approaches to the unconscious in the writings of three formative Cistercians: Mother Myriam Dardenne (1920-2002), founding abbess of Redwoods Monastery in Northern California; Father Matthew Kelty (1915-2011), monk and priest of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky; and Father Thomas Keating (1923-2018), abbot and co-founder of the Centering Prayer movement. Their synthesis of monastic praxis and depth psychological principles offers an innovative approach to contemplation which still resonates among contemporary practitioners. Their distinct approach to working with the psyche promotes a form of “monastic therapy” that invites surrender to the transpersonal without neglecting the reality of the unconscious.

BIOGRAPHY

David M. Odorisio, PhD, Chairs the Psychology, Religion, and Consciousness MA/PhD program at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he serves as associate professor. David has edited four volumes, including, Thomas Merton in California: The Redwoods Conferences and Letters, which received the 2025 “Thomas Merton Award” from the International Thomas Meron Society, and co-editor of Depth Psychology and Mysticism, with Thomas Cattoi. David teaches courses in the areas of psychology and religion, comparative mysticism, and contemplative spirituality. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the International Thomas Merton Society and as Co-Chair of the Mysticism Unit for the American Academy of Religion.

PRESENTATION

Philip Garrity, MDiv, PhD, “Bright Abyss”
Christian Mysticism, Jungian Psychology,
and Psychedelic-assisted Therapy for End-of-Life Patients
This presentation examines how the Christian apophatic mysticism of Meister Eckhart and the analytical psychology of C. G. Jung can serve as interpretive frameworks for the psychospiritual experiences of cancer patients who have undergone psychedelic-assisted therapy. The presentation argues that psychedelic-assisted therapy, when understood through these mystical and depth-psychological lenses, offers a powerful contemporary context for psychospiritual transformation at the end of life, facilitating a reconciliation with mortality and an experiential reconnection with what Eckhart called grunt — the ground of being.

BIOGRAPHY

Philip S. Garrity, M.Div., Ph.D. is a psychologist-in-training and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Training in Research in Integrative Medicine (TRIM) program at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health whose research focuses on psychedelic-assisted therapy for cancer and palliative care patients. He is also a global health professional who helps to strengthen cancer and palliative care programs in low- and middle-income countries. He holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.

PRESENTATION

Amanda Clapp, PhD cand., Listening Sideways with the
Ear of the Heart Lectio Divina and
Lacanian Psychoanalysis
This presentation explores the mystical reading practice of lectio divina alongside Lacanian psychoanalysis. Resonances and tensions between traditions offer both theoretical and practical insights that deepen how one listens for the unknown and ineffable dimensions of what Lacan termed the Real. Turning toward the wisdom of contemplative spirituality is part of a broader effort to return to desire and Otherness as central points of focus in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

BIOGRAPHY

Amanda Clapp is a doctoral candidate in the Clinical Psychology program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is also a therapist in private practice in Santa Barbara. Her academic work is rooted in the human science tradition, blending insights from phenomenology, critical hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis. Research interests include Lacanian psychoanalysis, mystical theology, and depth-oriented approaches to psychotherapy.

PRESENTATION

Richard Alexander, PhD cand., Henry Corbin and
the Psychedelic Imagination
An Imaginal Approach to Expanded States of Consciousness
Psychedelic chemicals tend to confound the modern mind, challenging one’s ontology and opening previously unimaginable realms of experience. Gods, demons, and other mythological beings, which may have been assumed only to exist as ancient fiction or abstract symbols are regularly experienced as a lived reality. Depending on how one understands the experience, this may conjure holy terror or usher in a sublime sense of love and peace. Scholar of comparative religion Henry Corbin (1903-1978) focused his work on mapping out the terrain of what he termed the imaginal; the realm of religious experience which reveals the soul and its world. Corbin’s prolific work offers commentaries on visionary experience as well as complex maps of the subtle space that prior visionaries have explored. By viewing psychedelics as facilitating an imaginal encounter, this presentation asks how Corbin’s ideas may be used as a guide to ground psychedelic work in the 21st century.

BIOGRAPHY

Rick Alexander is a depth psychological counselor, psychedelic practitioner, and chaplain. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he studies comparative mythology and depth psychology. His written material, lectures, and personal client work draw heavily from contemplative spiritual traditions of the East and West and are centered in Depth and Archetypal psychology. He speaks and writes on psychological wellness, psychedelic integration, and the quest to find meaning in life. Recently, he’s taught workshops and lectured for organizations around the world including the United States Air Force, Bell Canada, South by Southwest, as well as the Mythologium conference in Santa Barbara, CA. 

Amy Slonaker, JD, PhD, is an independent scholar based in Santa Barbara, California. After a 20-year career as an attorney, she earned her PhD in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her doctoral dissertation is on the topic of comic books as mystical texts, and has lectured widely on the topics of Theosophy, Spiritualism, and popular religious art including Christian Hippie Comics.