Transcript from John Churchill AMA: You Can't Have Waking Up Without Cleaning Up

A live recorded conversation on UpTrust between Jordan Myska Allen and John Churchill, co-founder of Planetary Dharma.

Watch the recording or see the original AMA post, where the live questions came from.

The Family Business Is Dharma

[00:00:00]

Jordan: Let’s start with something wacky. What’s surprised you recently?

John: My daughter surprised me. She’s eighteen, and she just left for a three-month meditation retreat. This is the daughter who used to say she wanted nothing to do with the family business — and now she’s like, Well, Dad… You never know. She’s always had her own mind about everything, which I love. She’s doing this contemplative semester — three months of retreat, deep we-space work, ecological work, plugging into the sacred world.

Jordan: Incredible.

John: I’m just really surprised she took a year off. It came out of nowhere. I spoke to her today and she’s digging it. That’s everything a dad wants right now.

Jordan: So what’s the family business, in your own words? Especially for people who don’t know you.

John: Good question. We raised the kids on it only lightly — if you push it too hard, they immediately react. But the family business is Dharma. Love, wisdom, and where psychology, spirituality, and cultural transformation intersect.

Jordan: For people who don’t know you — I feel like you’re so accomplished that you can’t really introduce yourself, so other people have to do it for you. You sit at this rare intersection of a deep lineage practice — Mahamudra — and teaching, though I’m not sure you’d even call it a lineage anymore, since you’ve built your own fourth turning of it. This thousand-year-old tradition of awakening on one side, and a doctorate in psychology on the other. And you’ve been at that intersection for decades, actually living and applying it.

John: Yeah, that’s right. More than three decades now. That’s why I was laughing about my daughter being off on her own path — it’s been a while.

Jordan: And I think the thing that’s most beautiful and surprising about you is the humor and lightheartedness — the irreverence — that comes with such deep skill and capacity.

John: And an amazing sense of humor, and dashing looks. Quite the package.

Jordan: Does your wife agree?

John: No, definitely not.

Jordan: How is it, teaching together?

John: We’ve been together twenty-six years. Business partners, organizational partners — we teach together within the larger program. Nicole has her own program too, called Medicine Dharma, integrating psycholytic and psychedelic therapy with group practice through the cycle of the year. She has her own thing, I have my own thing, and then we collaborate.

Jordan: I’m tempted to ask more, but there’s so much compression in that’s quite a journey and that laugh — I just want to leave it as its own object.

John: The relationship — yes. As you know, Jordan, humans are relational beings. In my view, the whole of human development is stages of relational capacity, all the way through the stack. That’s central to who we are. And my understanding of things like Mahamudra, and these sophisticated contemplative practices, is that they’re all relational technologies — really just about dimensions of relationship we might not ordinarily be aware of.

That Might Be Your Life’s Work, Kiddo

[00:07:00]

Jordan: I don’t quite know what to do with this yet, but I think it’ll come back — given the history you have, the lineage, what made you go, I think we need something new?

John: Sure — unfortunately that started at the beginning. I was a bit precocious. My first memories are as a kid doing out-of-body stuff. So I had a sense of the sacred — as those trailing clouds of glory faded away, there was also a recognition that there really is a sacred world. And I think immediately I was like, well, what the fuck is this mess? Why, if these traditions were so on top of it, is this going on? I mean, why is probably a good question that every thirteen- or fourteen-year-old should ask after smoking a couple of joints.

It was pretty clear — I was like, oh my gosh, something is missing here. I was super interested in the contemplative traditions, but I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t able to bring them into modernity, or through modernity. I was really disappointed that I couldn’t find anything, as a kid, as a teenager — I was really looking, looking, looking. And then it became apparent: okay, that might be your life’s work, kiddo.

I had a series of awakening experiences — without cannabis, I’d say — with a real non-conceptual dimension and a deep relational dimension. But there was also an awakening of cognitive capacities related to this field. It’s easy to look back now, I’m like fifty-something, and go, that’s not usual. But as a teen I didn’t know any better. By the time I was seventeen I probably had a library of a thousand books on consciousness, and was imagining what it would be like to design initiatory systems — looking at the Tao, the Visuddhimagga, the yoga. There was a conceptual piece to it too. I frankly just thought this was really cool. I’m sure some people have that with computer programming — it was a little bit like that. This is cool, this is cool, nerdy stuff.

Jordan: So you’re having these out-of-body experiences really young. You smoke some joints and it amplifies this sense that something’s fucked up here — this manifest realm feels disconnected from something. And you go on a search for how to find that, and you find it in this literature of wisdom traditions, mystical practices, meditation. Very early on there’s a calling — the way somebody who’s a great musician, or programmer, or dancer just has an aptitude for it right away. You have these weird psychic powers that are hard to explain, that feel normal to you because you haven’t seen that many humans yet. And then, boom — fast forward thirty or forty years, and you’re initiating people this way, with hundreds of people coming to learn about… something.

John: Something, something. Yeah, that’s right. I think I was also really stubborn — give that dog a bone and it’s just gonna keep working at it.

The Seer, the Seeing, and the Seen Are a Single Whole

[00:12:00]

Jordan: What do you think of humans? Which is kind of weird, since we’re all humans here.

John: I’ve heard about them, apparently. Apparently they’re a lot of fun.

Jordan: What do you think of humans from all this study? What are we? How are we doing?

John: What are we — wow. So, seriously, what are we?

Jordan: Maybe I can bring you into my inquiry. There’s something confusing where I look and I’m pretty sure I am — but then when I look beyond that, all those standard ways of making sense of things feel a little inadequate. They’re fine for different uses, but I’m like, what’s up with that?

John: What comes to mind is that we’re definitely a mystery. So the question is how do we learn to deepen into the mystery — and we also have to recognize that’s scary. Part of why we grab onto things is because we want something to hold onto, rather than really making friends with the great, intimate unknown. My own orientation isn’t so much about intelligence or mind when I think of what’s human. It’s more about the heart-mind itself — a certain kind of intimacy with experience that seems to be what’s intrinsic, what’s deeply human.

Jordan: So you’re saying one thing we are is intimacy with experience. There’s a quality — like you said, everything is relational — where everyone has an experience, and everyone has a sense of experiencing, and you’re locating the person almost as the intersection between them. Question mark?

John: Question mark. My orientation — I can spin it around, but it’s significantly phenomenological. From that perspective, we are our experience. And my experience of that is that subjectivity is as much in front of the camera as it is behind the camera — particularly as you open up those levels of awareness where you begin to realize that the seer and the seeing and the seen are a single whole, which is way cool. I’m just super curious about the nature of human experience, inside and outside, with no inside and outside, and how that deepens and opens, deepens and deepens, into what we might call the sacred.

Because a lot of these divisions are conceptual — they’re not there in our perceptual system. You can’t find a boundary between the world you see and the seeing, or between the sound you hear and the listener. There’s no boundary between inside and outside if you’re honest with yourself.

And as that deepens, the sense of love, of wisdom, of bliss deepens too. There’s also a sense of goodness that’s innate to our human experience.

Jordan: I have, at least, a preference for it.

John: Yeah, I have a preference for intimacy and for connectivity. And I do feel like human consciousness — the mind — operates much better when it can function with that kind of platform.

Jordan: What kind of platform?

John: Think of the unbounded open ground of experience, and then the heart within that — like a black hole and the sun, if you will. When there are no boundaries, and yet the heart-mind is really strong, then intelligence can work in really curious, creative ways, because it’s able to access what the Buddhist tradition would call direct non-conceptual valid cognition — which means you just know shit. We all know things without having to think about it. I don’t like thinking. It’s a lot of hard work.

Jordan: I’m taking that as an invitation — I’m trying, I’m with you, I’m following you. Although I notice that even saying I’m following you, I’m using conceptual building blocks that aren’t phenomenological in the way you’re talking about, which is interesting. So I’m holding those lightly, entering into the inquiry, and seeing if I can calm the sense that I need to do anything, or respond to questions on the thread, or take us anywhere — and see what kind of knowing wants to happen here, whatever this interaction is.

John: That’s some good aikido, mate — real aikido shit. I don’t know what you said, but it sounded like you’d done a lot of circling.

Jordan: That’s true.

John: Where are we—

Jordan: —exactly?

John: Do you have other questions?

Jordan: Sure, sure, we can go to questions.

John: Who the fuck are these people?

Jordan: Did they do drugs beforehand? Okay — so one question I have is about cleaning up, shadow work, psychodynamic fuckery. How does that relate to this phenomenological recognition of the seer, the seeing, the seen?

You Can’t Have Waking Up Without Cleaning Up

[00:20:00]

John: I think that’s great. We could look at it structurally — first, second, third, fourth person perspectives, and the kinds of traumas that happen there, whether birth trauma, attachment-based, early relational, or self-structure based. How does cleaning up relate?

You could look at the path as a structural process — stages of development, very much a Wilberian kind of stages. There’s a lot to be said for that. You can also look at the path from an essence perspective, where we’re playing with pure phenomenology and how that blossoms and unfolds. And you can look at the path from an alchemical perspective — I don’t actually like the term cleaning up, because the heart of the alchemical work is the transmutation of matter, and the resolution of opposites. By that I mean the Jungian integrative work — cleaning the personal shadow, integrating the polarities within the psyche.

But the truth is, the highest wisdom is a wisdom that penetrates through matter. It’s a wisdom of descent, because the mystery is the mystery of the incarnation, not the discarnation. So in my view there’s a direct relationship between awakening and depth — how deep into matter it penetrates. The more it penetrates into matter, the more it liberates the parts caught in traumatic subroutines.

The other way to think of it structurally: I work with a seventh-person-perspective model, which puts fourth person right at the center. That’s the heart, but it’s also the integral cognition. There’s a direct relationship between seventh-person perspective — which is pure holonic, basically logoic consciousness, being the whole — and first-person perspective. Just as there’s a relationship between six and two, five and three, and then one, with four sitting at the center. So for that seventh-person perspective to fully flower, it has to descend as deep as it possibly can into first person. You can’t have waking up without cleaning up, and you can’t have cleaning up without waking up, at least at that depth.

You wouldn’t be able to penetrate that deep into the body-mind without a mind that has that degree of penetration — you can only penetrate psychodynamically into layers based on the power tool you have to penetrate with. Don’t tell me everyone can access multi-generational trauma just by feeling it. You’re going to feel whatever your capacity is — how bright the light is, and what perspectives or lenses you can bring to bear on matter itself, on your embodied, direct physical and emotional experience.

I Need a Beer

[00:25:00]

Jordan: Let me see if I can frame that back.

John: That’s great.

Jordan: Okay. For those following along at home who don’t have the model: first person is this egocentric development. Second person is where, at a certain point, if you’re lucky and not a narcissist, you develop the ability to take on another point of view — you can build a relationship, you have shame, belonging, all that. Third person, again if you’re lucky, you get a sense of objective facts of reality. And at fourth person and beyond, we start to lose common language for it. If that’s a normal developmental sequence, you could potentially keep going — that’s one way to understand what’s happening.

But part of what makes it hard to talk about — correct me if I’m wrong — is that you’re often speaking from this phenomenological place. There’s a quality of timelessness to it, a kind of depersonalization. You’re obviously a person, you have a body, you talk about the heart, but it’s hard for people following along if they’re trying to reference their own experience as a thing instantiated in time, as an individuated body — because that’s not actually where you’re speaking from.

You’re speaking from: look, there’s a moment, and in this moment a thing is happening. We could call it a trauma, but it has a structure reminiscent of some cycle playing out in one of these perspectives — if you didn’t get to self-express as a kid, maybe it’s a narcissistic loop playing over and over. So as far as you can tell, you’re just describing a moment happening. And as development continues, people get more access to the whole stack, until at the seventh-person perspective there’s a sense of fully holistic embrace — a quality of awareness available to itself, in the moment, at any and all levels of happening, in any given body-mind context.

Is that an accurate reflection, John?

John: I need a beer.

Jordan: I hope I just confused everyone more.

John: No, no — let’s talk about what we’re actually talking about here. The first thing to say is that human development, the unfolding of human consciousness, needs to become central to our culture and civilization — the fact that people don’t know about perspective-taking, when those are the developmental rungs we’re all going through, is a real problem.

Understanding what it means to be human, to be a whole human — at least as far as we’re capable of knowing now. I don’t know if there’s anything beyond seventh-person perspective, and frankly it doesn’t interest me. What interests me is how we help people heal, awaken, and be able to serve the world.

And how does perspective-taking, phenomenological liberation, help? The liberation side releases you from the necessity to identify with any particular structure — that gives you freedom. But the structures, in my mind, are related to care and love. What I mean is: to the extent that you really do care about the world, and its complexity, and addressing its challenges, it will force a developmental process — what the Buddhist tradition calls the path of the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva is that which evolves, develops, organizes, becomes more sophisticated — and yet there’s also a place where the bodhisattva is free from all of that, even as she’s making the journey.

What happens at seventh-person perspective, and the relationship between seven and one, is that to the extent you begin to awaken to wholeness — what the old good book would call logoic, like the logos — to the extent you become aware of the wholeness of oneself, that’s resonant with all wholes. That includes the planetary whole, the solar system. You begin to plug into that kind of intelligence. There’s a relationship between that and first-person perspective, because then what the bodhisattva does is take full responsibility for the whole. Full responsibility meaning: if this is a single whole, then Jordan, our listeners, and John are directly responsible for everything arising within the field of that psyche.

The World Loves a Good Story

[00:31:00]

John: And then what begins is the quest — the hero’s journey — to bring peace, beauty, truth, and goodness to the kingdom, because you’ve taken responsibility, because it’s all on your shoulders. That’s the mythopoetic dimension of this — what I like to call the Lotus Fusion Drive. Once you put the psyche under that kind of pressure — and it is significant pressure — you also need a sense of fundamental openness, so there’s nobody to be pressurized. Then the hero’s journey starts to unfold. It’s already unfolding, but it goes through stages. And because the anima mundi — the soul of the world — isn’t outside, what begins to happen, and everybody here has a little taste of it, is you begin to get synchronicity: movement, response, from the anima mundi, from the outside so to speak, to the nature of the hero and heroine as they engage the world, realizing the world isn’t out there. That’s the narrative, because to some extent the world loves a good story. It responds — whatever causes synchronicity doesn’t respond to some highfalutin philosophy. It responds to something like, oh, that’s a good story, I want to join in.

Jordan: And there’s cool things like the Lotus Fusion Drive in that story.

John: [laughs]

Jordan: Who wouldn’t want to be in that story?

John: That’s right. So what I’ve been working on with the Lotus Fusion Drive is — how do you build a mythopoetic core? There’s a lot to unpack, but essentially: how do you create synchronicity for groups?

Jordan: Oh, brilliant.

John: It’s got to do with understanding how that works with an individual first — it’s actually quite well understood in the traditions, there are certain dynamics related to the heart I’ve been describing. Then, what kind of structures facilitate pooling that? Once you have people who understand the heart is harmonic, you’re no longer working within a resonant-field model — you’re working with a holographic model, and you can stack hearts on top of one another, if they have alignment. Once they get alignment, you can build what I’d call a fusion drive. The heart works through fusion — it has a magnetic field, which is what coheres the brain, and from the point of view of the traditions, that’s also what causes synchronicity. If you can harness that as a drive mechanism for collective mythopoetic processes in the human psyche — because from seventh-person perspective, you can hold the psyche of humanity in your hand, since time and space become relative constructs — if you can engineer from that level, you can engineer some cool shit.

Jordan: Like a collective synchronicity engine.

John: That’s right. And in many ways, that’s what all the traditions do. But the problem is the egregore. The egregore is the subtle energy structure it’s built upon, and that’s usually self-serving.

Most Traditions Weren’t Built to Change the World

[00:36:00]

John: Rather than naturally building that lotus drive into the actual structure of the planet itself — using a mythic egregore structure — you’d be building something in resonance with the noosphere, or the deep structures of the planet, the objective sacred world.

The problem is that all these great traditions have been wired into mythic structures. So if you’re doing advanced meditation, but doing it within the egregore of Dzogchen, or contemplative Christianity, it’s not actually impacting the world system the way we need it to — because it wasn’t designed to. It was designed to get you the fuck out. You’re in third-century India, and all you want is to get out, because you’re getting eaten by mosquitoes. So a lot of those psycho-technologies are built with an underlying egregore, an underlying subtle energy system, a collective energy system — and that’s not what we need anymore. What we need is something sacred-secular, rather than something still feeding mythic, essentially feudal structures.

Jordan: Okay, so we have these egregores — collective, subtle energy structures. You could think of them almost as ideologies that perpetuate themselves through humans adopting and carrying them over time. And you’re saying most of the egregores we have — these ancient egregores — are basically self-preserving, self-promoting. They exist like little evolutionary entities that find their niche. But there’s a potential for these subtle energy forms to become more aware of their environment and serve the holistic health of the environment they’re in — to use a biological evolutionary metaphor.

John: Exactly, exactly. Because they work at a mythopoetic level in the collective psyche, which is what moves the masses. The problem is, right now, they’re not. I don’t think the Christian egregore, for instance, is aligning us toward a unitive planet of truth, beauty, and goodness. These egregores are attacking one another, because most of them are based on images — wired into teachers, into grand poobahs — rather than the deep structure of the planet itself.

Jordan: I’m loving this. You’re answering my first question.

There Is No Outside

[00:40:00]

Jordan: So what is the deep structure of the planet itself, and why align new egregores to it?

John: That question’s obviously coming from a rather deprived place — but that’s okay. Why would we not want to be interconnected more deeply with the evolutionary intelligence of the planet? From my perspective, I don’t see humanity as separate from the planet, and I see all our problems as based on the view that we think we are. We’re running some whacked-out calendar that says it’s 2026 — what does that even mean? It doesn’t tell us anything about what this planetary system is actually going through. Contextualize human consciousness as an expression of that evolving system, and what we’re being asked to evolve into, as part of a larger living entity.

So when I think of sacred secular, or sacred world, I think of aligning ourselves with the timing — what the Buddhist tradition calls Kalachakra, the time wheel. Aligning with the unfolding of the world system is aligning with the unfolding of our own consciousness, because there is no outside.

If you understand the direct phenomenological experience of there being no inside or outside, then you understand that everything you are is built within this planetary system. How could it be separate — even your thinking, your thought processes, are made from some kind of matter that’s part of this single whole we’re part of. So alignment with the evolutionary process itself is what facilitates our own unfolding.

What Would You Die For?

[00:43:00]

Jordan: So it’s almost like — one thing I think I’m getting is…

John: Maybe we should have prepared more.

Jordan: No, this is wonderful. One thing I’m getting is: earlier you said that when you get to this phenomenological inquiry, and you’re really honest with yourself about what’s happening, there isn’t division between anything at all. And there’s a natural quality of care or love that comes with that.

John: The feeling tone. The feeling tone of that realization is deep love, compassion, and care for the whole system. And to the extent that realization is open, the feeling tone is strong — the stronger it is, the more you’re pulled to do something about it.

Jordan: So in the quality of that feeling tone, that openness, there’s a kind of movement that happens — and it’s not without will, but it’s not personal.

John: It’s really, really fucking personal at the same time. That’s the paradox — what the transpersonal allows you to do is to be even more personal. What would you die for, Jordan? Isn’t that pretty personal — you are going to die. What would you die for? I don’t think there’s anything more personal than that — you and your death. So it’s both.

Because it touches you in such a deep, intimate human way — to weave some of these pieces together: from this fundamental, open phenomenological experience — the essence traditions recognizing the unboundedness and openness of experience — comes a fundamental, deep feeling tone of compassion. Because you really feel the connection of everything as that comes online, the psyche naturally wants to become involved, and complexification and perspective-taking start to evolve. Complexity happens. The complexity itself is an expression of the compassion of wanting to be of benefit — which fundamentally has to do with that openness, and the tenderness and warmth that comes from it.

Jordan: I love that.

John: That’s right. I think that’s where we all need to head.

Jordan: Sounds good to me. And it kind of answers this question — what’s the relationship between states, or essence, and structures, or stages, these perspectives? You’re saying the perspectives emerge as a way to more fully love what’s already here. From the wholeness, it’s a way for the whole to love itself more.

It’s Where It All Comes Together

[00:47:00]

John: Exactly — to love itself more, to deepen its care, because each perspective allows a deeper level of tenderness, a deeper level of metacognition, and a greater capacity to see, and therefore to feel and to relate.

Jordan: Right — and this is part of the resolution of the personal/transpersonal paradox. In my language: the transpersonal is actually the person that you are, as wholeness. That’s deeply personal — every single thing, though thing isn’t quite right, since it presumes separateness. But we need some language. Everything is part of the self, part of the person. Everything is personal.

John: Exactly. If the transpersonal is just transpersonal, and it hasn’t deepened in its intimacy, then something’s wrong.

Jordan: It’s dissociative.

John: Yeah, and that’s super common — because how scary is it to be told you need to be more, be bigger? Whatever that Melania Trump be best thing is — that just popped into my head. It’s more scary, in my mind, because of the relationality and the conditioning. The higher up the stack, the less conditioning, but it’s more demanding, in some ways, to strip naked and be seen naked than it is to be nobody. That’s much more challenging.

Jordan: Yeah.

John: I think that’s probably why you stay in the relational —

Jordan: Keep going, if you want.

John: We’ll wrap it up — well, it’s where it all comes together. It’s where we all meet. That’s why, the way I think of it, fourth-person perspective is what I’m actually interested in building — that world. It has to be architected from higher, but what we’re interested in is a world that is relational. At least I am, because in my mind, that’s what a human being is. I think that’s how we began — what is a human being? My sense is we’re relational beings. We’re mammalian relational beings, with the capacity for deep sharing. That’s the journey we’re on.

Human Being Here Together

[00:50:00]

Jordan: Awesome.

John: Awesome.

Jordan: Awesome. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it — it’s like you opened us into the way you see things, and I really appreciate that. I’m sure you’re doing a lot of translating from whatever your phenomenology is, but it felt more like: hey, here’s my house, come check it out if you like. And I’m like — sick. Thank you for being human here together with us.

John: [laughs] Absolutely. That’s so sweet. This was just fun — thanks for being a good sport and letting me jam.

Show Notes & References

Books & Texts

Pointing Out the Great Way: The Stages of Meditation in the Mahamudra Tradition — Daniel P. Brown (2006). Mahamudra (great seal) is the Indo-Tibetan Mahayana meditation lineage John trained in for fifteen years under Brown, a clinical psychologist and Harvard Medical School faculty member who spent decades working directly with Tibetan teachers. The book is Brown’s attempt to bring traditional teacher-to-student pointing out instruction into a form usable outside a monastic setting — the same modernization problem John describes wrestling with since his teens.

Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) — Buddhaghosa, 5th century CE. A foundational Theravada Buddhist manual, written in Sri Lanka, that systematizes Buddhist doctrine and meditation practice into three sections: moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom. One of the texts John recalls poring over as a teenager.

People

John Churchill — Co-founder of Planetary Dharma and Samadhi Integral, and co-director of Karuna Mandala. Holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from William James College. Trained for fifteen years in Pointing Out style Mahamudra meditation under Daniel P. Brown, and received the esoteric transmissions underlying Planetary Dharma while a monk at Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland. Has spent twenty-five years developing Fourth Turning Planetary Dharma, a practice path (Embodying the Open Ground) that integrates psychodynamic healing, adult development, and meditation. planetarydharma.com

Nicole Churchill — Co-founder of Planetary Dharma and Samadhi Integral alongside John, her husband and partner of twenty-six years. A board-certified music therapist, transpersonal counselor, and psychedelic guide, trained in Mindfulness-Based Psychedelic Therapy. A founding member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, and mentored for fourteen years by Daniel P. Brown. Runs Medicine Dharma, integrating psycholytic and psychedelic therapy with group practice across the yearly cycle.

Ken Wilber — Philosopher and founder of Integral Theory and the Integral Institute. John’s seventh-person-perspective model and his references to holonic and logoic consciousness build on Wilber’s integral framework of nested wholes (holons).

Daniel P. Brown — Clinical psychologist, former associate clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and author of Pointing Out the Great Way. Mentor to both John and Nicole Churchill in Mahamudra meditation.

Jordan Myska Allen — Founder & CEO of UpTrust; founder of The Relateful Company / Relatefulness. uptrusting.com · relateful.com

Key Concepts

Egregore — A term from Western esotericism for a non-physical thoughtform that arises from, and is sustained by, the collective attention of a group — a religion, nation, movement, or institution. John’s central claim is that most contemplative traditions carry an underlying egregore built for a different purpose than the one the world needs now: escape from a particular time and place, rather than alignment with the planet as a whole.

Bodhisattva — In Mahayana Buddhism, one who has vowed to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings, developing through stages while simultaneously remaining free of full identification with any one stage. John maps his seven-person-perspective model onto this path.

Dzogchen — Great Perfection, a central teaching of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, understood as a direct approach to recognizing one’s already-perfect primordial nature rather than a path toward some future attainment.

Kalachakra — Sanskrit for wheel of time. A Buddhist tantric system relating the cycles of the outer universe (the greater time wheel) to the cycles of an individual body and mind (the smaller time wheel). John uses it to frame his idea of aligning human consciousness with planetary unfolding.

Noosphere — Coined jointly in 1926 by Édouard Le Roy, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Vladimir Vernadsky for the emerging planetary layer of collective human thought and culture, analogous to the biosphere. John uses it as shorthand for the deep structure he thinks new egregores should align to.

Anima Mundi — Latin for world soul, a concept originating in Plato’s Timaeus: the idea that the cosmos itself is a living, ensouled whole rather than an inert mechanism. John invokes it to explain synchronicity as a kind of responsiveness from outside that isn’t actually outside at all.

Mahamudra — Sanskrit for great seal, an advanced meditation tradition within Tibetan Buddhism focused on directly recognizing the nature of awareness itself, free of conceptual elaboration.

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adult-development · mindfulness-and-spirituality · psychology