Robert K.C. Forman
Dr. Robert K.C. Forman is uniquely qualified, both personally and professionally, to re-imagine the spiritual goal and the path to it. Personally, Dr. Forman hasn't missed a day of meditation in 40 years. He broke through to the first major life shift he sought during a nine-month meditation retreat, just two years after beginning Transcendental Meditation. Further developments have continued through his lifetime of yearly solo meditation retreats, self-reflection, 18 years of psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic training, his marital work, his teaching, writing and leading of workshops, and his research into and national leadership role in the grassroots spirituality movement.
His curiosity and confusion about his early spiritual breakthroughs led him to a Ph.D in Comparative Religions (Columbia U), where he specialized in the nature of and philosophical issues around mystical experiences and the spiritual life. He has often been called 'one of the leading voices in the academic debates on mysticism', because of his work in the international scholarly debate about mystical experiences, which came to be known as The Katz-Forman debates, the work for which he has been awarded numerous grants and, just this year, an honorary doctorate. A tenured professor of religions at Hunter College of the City University of New York and a professor at Vassar College, Union Theological Seminary and the New School for Social Research, he often taught courses on mystical experiences and spiritual goals in every tradition, and his books are used in classes around the world.
Many of his insights about the spiritual goal came from his work as founder and Executive Director of the Forge Institute: Soul to Soul Living and the Forge Guild of Spiritual Professionals, a non profit dedicated to helping people from any religion or spiritual path live soul to soul. He routinely gives lectures, trainings and workshops around the world.
He was the co-founder and is executive editor of The Journal of Consciousness Studies , which has become the principle journal in the field. He is also the author of ten scholarly books on spirituality, mysticism, consciousness and world religions: Grassroots Spirituality: What It Is, Why It Is Here, Where It Is Going (Imprint Academic), which won the prestigious Bross Prize for the Best Manuscript in Religion, 2000; The Problem of Pure Consciousness (which has become an evergreen “classic in the field†for Oxford University Press); and a second evergreen The Innate Capacity (still in print from Oxford University Press); Meister Eckhart: Mystic as Theologian (Element Books); Mysticism, Mind Consciousness (SUNY Press); Religions of the World and Religions of Asia (both from St. Martin's Press); and others. He has had more than 30 scholarly articles in the best peer-reviewed journals in the field such as The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of Religion, Philosophy East and West, Religious Studies, Sophia , etc.
Dr. Forman was the founding director of the One Spirit Conscious Leadership Institute and was the lead professor for its Ancient Wisdom for Modern Life, Through the Lens of Modern Psychology, which covered the full range of spiritual pathways and modern psychological insights plus the nature of the complete spiritual path and goal.
The leitmotif and teachings of Enlightenment ain't what it's cracked up to be concerns living with effortless breadth and depth in the full range of life. Dr. Forman walks his talk, for he weaves his spiritual commitments into his life marriage of 35 years, two well launched adult children, a 300 year-old house in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., a motorcycle his wife calls jinormous, and his work as a lead singer in The Effengees, a New Hampshire rock-till-you-drop band. And, oh yeah, he laughs a lot!
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