About the May 7, 2025 webinar:
Spiritual Experience: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Retreat
Presentation Overview:
IRAS will host a live session featuring conference co-chairs Dr. Calvin Chatlos and Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns with panelists to include conference speakers Dr. Kurt Johnson, Dr. Roberta Pughe, Dr. Julia Mossbridge, the Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’Alessio, and Dr. Michael Winkelman in an informal discussion about the upcoming Star Island conference on spiritual experience.
This promises to be a lively conversation!
Conference description:
Sigmund Freud popularized the awareness of our human “unconscious” but missed the discovery of our spiritual core. Recent research with psychedelics and psychology has now grounded the reality of spiritual experience and spiritual transformation in science. There is evidence that we have a spiritual core (central and innermost) biologically wired into us that is normally “outside of awareness.” Methods have been developed to open and engage that core that is associated with experience often described as mystical or numinous. Aspects of spiritual consciousness and transformation that also foster healing from trauma may even be described as a falling in love, as it encourages a comprehensive agape for the world, ourselves, others and life itself.
Topics:
Moderators:
John Calvin Chatlos is Rutgers University-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Professor of Psychiatry. An addiction, adult and child and adolescent psychiatrist, he is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He studies the nature of spiritual experience and developed a Framework of Spirituality that incorporates spiritual principles in recovery from addiction and trauma.
Barbara Whittaker-Johns is a Unitarian Universalist minister who has served almost four decades in major leadership positions in IRAS. She completed a Master’s program at Yeshiva University, NYC, and began a sixteen-year teaching career, with a focus on the neurodiversity associated with learning disabilities in youngsters. In 1984, with an MDiv from Harvard, she began a long career in UU parish ministry, later completing her DMin in theology, focusing on the power of our personal narratives of spiritual experience – at any age – to ground faith development in a scientific world view.
Spiritual Experience: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Retreat
Presentation Overview:
IRAS will host a live session featuring conference co-chairs Dr. Calvin Chatlos and Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns with panelists to include conference speakers Dr. Kurt Johnson, Dr. Roberta Pughe, Dr. Julia Mossbridge, the Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’Alessio, and Dr. Michael Winkelman in an informal discussion about the upcoming Star Island conference on spiritual experience.
This promises to be a lively conversation!
Conference description:
Sigmund Freud popularized the awareness of our human “unconscious” but missed the discovery of our spiritual core. Recent research with psychedelics and psychology has now grounded the reality of spiritual experience and spiritual transformation in science. There is evidence that we have a spiritual core (central and innermost) biologically wired into us that is normally “outside of awareness.” Methods have been developed to open and engage that core that is associated with experience often described as mystical or numinous. Aspects of spiritual consciousness and transformation that also foster healing from trauma may even be described as a falling in love, as it encourages a comprehensive agape for the world, ourselves, others and life itself.
Topics:
- What are your thoughts about the relevance and timing of this Conference?
- What do you see as some main implications of recent knowledge about spiritual experience?
- What do you see as your main contribution to this Conference?
Moderators:
John Calvin Chatlos is Rutgers University-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Professor of Psychiatry. An addiction, adult and child and adolescent psychiatrist, he is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He studies the nature of spiritual experience and developed a Framework of Spirituality that incorporates spiritual principles in recovery from addiction and trauma.
Barbara Whittaker-Johns is a Unitarian Universalist minister who has served almost four decades in major leadership positions in IRAS. She completed a Master’s program at Yeshiva University, NYC, and began a sixteen-year teaching career, with a focus on the neurodiversity associated with learning disabilities in youngsters. In 1984, with an MDiv from Harvard, she began a long career in UU parish ministry, later completing her DMin in theology, focusing on the power of our personal narratives of spiritual experience – at any age – to ground faith development in a scientific world view.
Spiritual Experience: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Retreat
with Dr. Calvin Chatlos and Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns
May 7, 2025, at
4 PM Central time
5 PM Eastern time
This IRAS webinar is FREE but
registration is required.
Please register using the link below.
If you have questions, contact
JD Stillwater: [email protected]
with Dr. Calvin Chatlos and Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns
May 7, 2025, at
4 PM Central time
5 PM Eastern time
This IRAS webinar is FREE but
registration is required.
Please register using the link below.
If you have questions, contact
JD Stillwater: [email protected]
You are invited!
Please join IRAS for the next session of our monthly webinar series, Science, Religion, and Society.
May 7, 2025 IRAS will
host a live webinar:
Spiritual Experience: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Retreat
with Dr. Calvin Chatlos and Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns
Proudly powered by Weebly