Gerald Heard (1889-1971) was a British historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher, who was one of the early progenitors of the human potential movement in the United States.  A a mentor to Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and other luminaries, he was instrumental in co-leading the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, the film...Read More

Romano Guardini (1885-1968) was a German Catholic priest and philosopher who was one of the most important influences on Catholic intellectual life in the 20th century.  His work influenced Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict) and Jorge Mario Bergoglio (later Pope Francis), who made Guardini’s work the focus of his doctoral dissertation (which was never completed). ...Read More

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) did not formulate a specific stage theory of the human life cycle as did his mentor Sigmund Freud who theorized about the stages of psycho-sexual development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital). However, throughout his life he gave us hints and insights into the chronological features of the human...Read More

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a German philosopher, linguist, poet, and autodidact who wrote The Ever-Present Origin, an interdisciplinary survey of human and cultural consciousness that was decades ahead of its time.  His integral perspective did not deal with the stages of a human life per se (e.g. birth to death), but rather focused on the...Read More

Ken Wilber is known as one of the founders of ”integral psychology” which refers to an attempt to formulate a theory of the psyche that incorporates ideas from both psychology and spirituality.  Perhaps Wilber’s most well-known model of human development, or ”spectrum of consciousness” is rather simple, based as it is on three different levels: ...Read More