The International Consortium for Academic and Societal Transformation

The array of crises in the world are manifestations of an underlying spiritual crisis. Humanity has become disconnected from its soul, which makes disconnect between individuals, cultures, environment and cosmos inevitable. A post-materialist (or trans-materialist) understanding of consciousness and corresponding educational paradigm is key to the healing process.

(Note: The terms trans-materialist and post-materialist may be used interchangeably, with both problematic in reifing materialism as the presumed norm from which post/transmaterialist models have emerged. In fact, materialism, at least to the extent it has dominated the academy, has a much shorter history than its competitors._

Materialism views consciousness as either reducible to, or an emergent property of a neurobiological substrate, leaving little room for notions such as soul, nonlocal consciousness (including collective consciousness) and the inextricable link between individual and cosmos—all of which are central tenets of age-old worldviews and coherent with leading edge scientific findings. Confined by materialism’s limited epistemic scope, conventional education is thus riddled by science/spirituality polarization—with the first privileged, the second categorically excluded, and the arts confined to the academic margins.

The post/trans-materialist perspective situates consciousness as primary in the broader scheme of creation, which promotes spirituality/art/science synthesis amid its expanded epistemological range.

The perrenial tenet of wisdom traditions across the globe, and from time immemorial–that the individual “I” is a direct manifesation of the cosmic “I,” thus illuminating the “I” of ICAST– moves to the forefront in socio-educational reform visioning.  .

The driving purpose of human existence—oneness with cosmic wholeness, via creative and spiritual engagement—becomes the driving purpose of education.

Developmental continuum

Here it is significant to identify a trans-materialist developmental continuum that aligns with the overarching purpose (or human and cosmic existence) to underscore key differences with materialist thought (which posits no such developmental model nor overarching purupose/s).

Beginning iwth the experience of pure consciousness–or awarneess of nothing but awareness itself–which now can be identified as the new educational foundation:

The coexistence of, on one hand, the most pristine silence, mind-body stillness, completely empty, devoid of mental content save for awareness itself along with, on the other hand, the most radiant, wakeful and  blissful condition of consciousness, where sheer emptiness and utter fullness unite, can be considered the basis for broader consciousness development (and as we will see, the “core of the core” when it comes to curricular deliberations).

Integration of pure consciousness as an enduring quality within waking, dreaming and sleeping existence is key to higher developmental stages. Liberation from binding attachments to, and transformed perception of, objective reality, radically expanded capacities for love, creativity and interconnecteness are aspects of this growth, which culminates in the above-mentioned individual/cosmic unity.

The post/trans-materialist consciousness-as-primary premise thus becomes not only a theoretical/philosphical conviction but a central aspect of one’s direct experience of reality.

Epistemology, phenomenoloy and ontology thus intersect, a unity for which materialism 0ffers no counterpart.

The consciousness-as-primary principle lays groundwork for paradigmatically new approaches to the remaining pillars, including the reframing of creativity atop improvisation (Pillar #2), recognizing Black music and aesthetics (Pillar #3) as unique embodiment of the creativity-consciousness relationship; new models of  transdisciplinarity, critical thinking and rigor (Pillar #4) harnessing the transformative power of collective consciousness (Pillar #6) and many other topics.

Scientific research  supports the trans-materialist paradigm

While materialist models depend largely on research that illuminates mind-body correlation, the argument that correlation constitutes causation–that brain is the source of consciousness–represents an extraordinary leap of logic; the same research could just as readily be used to support post-materialist conclusions.

Meanwhile, a growing body of emperical findings, with a few listed below, significantly augment the philosophical/epistemological case for the trans-materialist paradigm.

Research on the benefits of individual meditation practice can be traced back to at least the 1970s. This includes not only neurobiological changes in the brain during meditation that are associated with a range of creativity/consciousness-related benefits, but also changes in the brain over time–and thus examples of neuroplasticity–with regular practice. While a new dimension, research into higher stage consciousness development has begun to appear that further supports the post-materialist transformative vision.

While meditation per se does not require embrace of post-materialist views of consciousness to reap or understand many of its benefits, the more far reaching dimensions of the ICAST noetic/integral paradigm are based in principles that challenge academic thinking and thus call for corresponding empirical support. Here a body of findings often referred to as psi are significant in filling this void.  Although often marginalized in the academic sciences, research into nonlocal, discarnate (consciousness that survives bodily death) and intersubjective dimensions of consciousness is steadily growing and supports the post-materialist turn.  Duke University, Princeton University, the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies, Maimanaides Hospital, Institute for Noetic Sciences, International Consciousness Studies Laboratory and Maharishi International University are among the sites where this research has been conducted.  Society for Scientific Exploration, Science and Medical Network, and the Association for Post-Materialist Science are among the professional organizations that have emerged to promote this kind of open and rigorous inquiry into consciousness.

Many colleagues involved in this work believe that it is only a matter of time before materialism collapses.

Sources

Transcendent Mind. Imants Baruss, Julia Mossbridge (American Psychological Association).

Jenny Wade, 1996, Changes of Mind (Albany: State University of New York Press).

Charles Alexander and Ellen Langer, eds., 1990, Higher Stages of Human Development. (New York: Oxford University Press).

Dean Radin. 1997. The Conscious Universe. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

________Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experience in a Quantum Reality

________ Real Magic:Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe

University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies.     https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/

See https://noetic.org/science/publications/ for further readings on post-materialist consciousness exploration.

Stephan Schwartz, leading consciousness researcher and post-materialist advocate https://stephanaschwartz.com

Tony Nader,  Consciousness Is All There Is

Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science https://opensciences.org/files/pdfs/Manifesto-for-a-Post-Materialist-Science.pdf

University of Michigan Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies https://smtd.umich.edu/research-initiatives/creativity-and-conciousness-studies/

Recent years have seen increased attention to the arts as important to a 21^st century education, even if actual implementation has been elusive. Unfortunately, the very materialist-driven epistemic crisis that besets the sciences has also taken hold in much of academic arts practice, with music studies a primary example.

Colleagues outside of the field are often startled to learn that a significant majority of students and faculty focus exclusively on interpretive performance of the European canon, at the expense of the creative processes that gave rise to the canon in the first place and which also, when cast in a contemporary framework, offers powerful tools for broader musical navigation and understanding.

As compelling, therefore, that arguments may be for the arts as an important source of creativity for practitioners across fields, it is important to recognize an important step in realizing this principle is the restoration of creativity in an art form as predominant as music.

This restoration can be thought of as a parallel trans-materialist turn, taking hold in creativity discourse, to that considered earlier in nature of consciousness debates.

ICAST takes this thinking further in grounding creativity in consciousness, with improvisation a central connecting thread.

To be explored more fully in commentary around the next pillar (post-DEI pluralism), the jazz tradition boasts a long legacy of practitioners who combined robust improvisatory excursions with significant grounding in meditation and related contemplative disciplines. This provides a conduct for creativity and consciousness to flow from deep within the soul to all areas of learning and life.

Of particular emphasis is that rebuilding arts advocacy atop improvisation (and improvisation/meditation) foundations does not jettison conventional modes of engagement.

There will still be a place for symphony orchestras, string quartets, conventional dance and theatre productions and visual art exhibits in the emergent paradigm

However, when these are reintegrated within an epistemically broadened, contemporaneous framework in which improvisation, typically marginalized if not excluded from prevailing performing arts models (with music and dance most conspicuous) is central, entirely new kinds of collaborations across all the arts are possible.

Just as noetic science gateways—as part of the post-materialist consciousness turn—help galvanize areas within the sciences into a unified voice for creativity/consciousness-based change, noetic arts advocacy—as noted above, a parallel post-materialist creativity turn—accomplishes the same thing in the arts. 

A key step is to identify where–as in cultural location– within the arts noetic principles most robustly exist.

As will be seen through the lens of jazz in Pillar 3, this gives rise to a new pluralism paradigm.

Claims of commitment to welcoming individuals from diverse cultural (ethnology) and other backgrounds  without celebrating and foundationally integrating their diverse approaches to  knowing, being, and creative/spiritual expression (epistemologies) are not only incomplete, but amount to tokenism and thus exacerbate the racial justice crisis that DEI programs aim to solve.

When epistemology becomes central, a chain of developments come into focus (not at the expense of ethnological diversity) that fundamentally change, rectify and further evolve the pluralism narrative.

A New Pluralism Model

First is recognition of the arts, the arts/spirituality relationship, and its constituent creativity/consciousness relationship as a key epistemic gateway.

Within this framework, moreover, jazz and a Black aesthetic, loom large as robust embodiments of the epistemological (and thus ethno/epistemic) expanse in question. 

Here the Jazz-Vedanta Nexus, as noted (Pillar #2) inspired by the life and work of Alice Coltrane, takes on greater significance in upholding evolutionary and diagnostic functions.

Recall, on the first account, the principle of lila, or cosmic play (which from an integral/noetic perspective is improvisatory), and thus the analysis of improvisation as a primordial epistemology,

As stated, human improvisation can be seen as a subset of universal improvisation, with human beings co-evolutionary participants in the cosmic improvisatory unfolding.

Improvisation is thus an anchoring epistemology along the creativity line, meditation a parallel epistemic anchor along the consciousness line–with both lines of engagement spawning applications not only in music and the arts but across all disciplines.

An important application of this thinking is a burgeoning improvisation-across-fields movement, where practitioners in business, athletics, law, medicine, education, philosophy and the sciences recognize the “jazz” within their disciplines, that has gained traction in recent decades.

The jazz-Vedanta nexus enables this work to take its next evolutionary strides as the cross-disciplinary improvisation movement (and thus the entire socio-educational enterprise) is resituated atope improvisation/meditation (creativity/consciousness) foundations.

Tales of Two Epistemologies

The jazz-Vedanta nexus, in ushering in a new, post-DEI pluralism conversation, also expands the diagnostic lens into the epistemic shortcomings of conventional DEI and related discourse.

Here parallels between the twin, anchoring epistemologies–again, improvisation and meditation–come into focus that speak volumes about fundamental limitations of the prevailing (creativity/consciousness-weak) academic model.

Just as improvisation was once central in the European musical tradition, only to fall to the wayside (but then to make its return in the West through Black American Music), meditation was once central in the ancient Greco-Roman philosophical traditions upon which such cornerstones of academic excellence–including systems of logic and critical inquiry–continue to occupy central stage. In both instances, the interior processes that enabled the resultant structures to come into being have been lopped off and only the surface byproducts (repertory, rational thought) retained.

The way forward is to rebuild on new epistemological foundations–creativity (improvisation) and consicousness (meditation)–that provide the best of both worlds.

An intricate epistemological circuitry will thus take hold through which creativity and consciousness flow from the innermost dimensions of the soul–where individuals connect most profoundly with themselves, others, the natural world and the cosmic wholeness–through all areas of living and learning.

The Jazz/Vedanta nexus thus not only redefines pluralism discourse, shifting prevailing deficit thinking to an evolutionary narrative, but lays groundwork for forthcoming topics such as collective consciousness, ecosustainabiity/ecoflourishing, mental health, transdisciplinarity, transcending political/ideological divides and more.

On the last account, ICAST views the post-DEI framework as a potential vehicle for circumventing political controversies that surround America’s (and much of the world’s) pluralism quest.

Music Education as Grond Zero

If the Jazz-Vedanta nexus lies at the heart of the arts-driven creativity/consciousness revolution, then the question ariss–where in the educational world will this shift most fundamentally take hold?

The answer rings loud and clear–in music studies, and as considered later, that branch that prepares K-12 music teachers in America’s public schools. Music Education is thus Ground Zero wihtin the arts for the broader revolution. This in no way diminishes the importance of the other pillars, or paradigmatic change gaeways. Rather it fulfills a key aspect of change leadership and activism that is often elusive–that of topography. The paradigmatic change landscape is always broad and multi-facited, but is never flat–meaning, devoid of key landmarks. Identification of Music Education as such a landmark breaks through the spell of flat progressivism and illuminates an important gateway through which the Jazz-Vedanta Nexus (and as consdered later, the Integral Jazz Ecosystem), and the trans=materialist consciousness turn may take hold in education and society at large.

 Reading

Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, eds Robert O”Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, Farah Jasmine Griffen (Columbia University)

Ed Sarath, Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education and Society (SUNY 2012).

Ed Sarath, Music Studies and its Moment of Truth.

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If consciousness is the next frontier for education and society, then collective consciousness may be an important new “frontier within that frontier.” Reminiscent of C.G. Jung’s notion of “collective unconscious,” Teillhard de Chardin’s “noosphere” and a host of parallel models across cultures, ICAST defines collective consciousness as an an overarching, intersubjective field to which all of humanity, life and creation are connected. Two manifestations of collective consciousness are of particular interest to ICAST. One involves the transformative impact of group improvisatory creativity where, as jazz musicians commonly report, performers, listeners and environment merge into a unified wholeness. Second involves the idea that collective consciousness can be enlivened through large group meditation and other practices to yield transformative effects on society and the environment. Yet again, emergent, creativity-based principles from the arts both parallel, and also help foreground, emergent spiritual/healing principles that may open up entirely new approaches to an array of challenges facing our world.

Meditators commonly report deeper experiences when meditating in groups. Improvisers commonly report connecting so deeply with other improvisers that they feel like they are reading each others’ minds and also connecting with listeners such that the audience is part of the ensemble. The Global Consciousness Project of the Institute for the Noetic Sciences has compiled research that repeatedly shows instances of mass collective attention to an event registering with surges of coherence on Random Number Generators set up to monitor such possibilities. see https://noosphere.princeton.edu. Investigators at Maharishi International University have produced research that suggests large meditation gatherings have the capacity to generate a harmonizing influence that results in decreased accidents, crime and illness (see Orme Johnson et al below).

Creativity/arts-based  approaches: Collective improvisation  across fields can have a transformative impact on performers and listeners alike. In music, an additional component involves the sound/healing relationship–an idea with a long history. For example, notions such as music of the spheres and the impact of pitch structures on human experience and behavior can be traced back milennia across the world. The Time Theory of Indian music is predicated on resonance between the intervallic structure of ragas and frequency of the daily cycle (performance of morning ragas in the am is thought to enliven this relationship and generate harmonizing effect). This impact is magnified in collective performance environments.

Intention-baesd initiatives involve participants gathering around a particular aim, such as addressing weather or climate patterns, or distance healing.

Meditative/transcendence-based approaches:  Here practitioners gather in large groups not with a specific transformative impact in mind but rather to invoke deep meditative experience and allow the personal self to dissolve into the transcendent ocean of collective consciousness. This enlivens the harmonizing impact inherent in the unbounded field of universal consciousness to which all life and creation are connected.

The latter format underscores the significance of the age-old, post-materialist consciousness-as-primary principle, particularly as illumined by the jazz/Vedanta nexus (which is predicated on both improvisation and meditation, and thus creativity and consciousness, to share cosmic roots).

In short: Enlivenment of collective consciousness may entail enlivenment, in the course of human interaction, of the very mechanics by which the cosmos creates the infinitely diverse universe.

For a civilization at the precipice of collapse, yet also brimming with potential for planetary flourishing, this may be good news indeed.

Further reading:

Global Consciousness Initiative https://www.gci.earth/contact

Orme-Johnson, D. W., Cavanaugh, K. L., Dillbeck, M. C., & Goodman, R. S. (2022). Field effects of consciousness: A seventeen-year study of the effects of group practice of Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs on reducing national stress in the United States. World Journal of Social Science, 9(2), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjss.v9n2p1

Lynne Mason, Robert P. Patterson, and Dean I. Radin, 2007, “Exploratory Study: The Random Number Generator and Group  Meditation,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 21:295–317,

Dean Radin, 2007. “A Brief History of the Potential Future.” In Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness, edited by Trish Pfeiffer and John E. Mack. Winchester, UK: O Books/John Hunt.

 McTaggart, Lynne M. 2002. The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. New York: HarperCollins. Also see her book, The Intention Experiment.

 See https://noetic.org/science/publications/

The ICAST creativity-consciousness lens expands both diagnostic and healing capacities in response to the environmental challenges that engulf our planet.

The Integral Jazz Ecosystem, particularly when viewed as a subset of the Jazz Vedanta Nexus, promotes an expanded array of principles and perspectives in response to the ecosustainability/ecoflourishing imperative.

The first-second-third person dimensions of Integral Theory provide  a framework for approaching the challenge as an overarching, multi-tiered improvisatipmn.

Beginning with the surface level of the system, or flow of information. This can be considered the “fractal” level of the ecological polycrisis, where moment-to-moment thinking, decisions and actions, which are largely improvisatory in nature, comprise the basic building blocks of the system. These building blocks over time become parts of overarching patterns, much like, as invoked in complex systems/chaos theory circles, “a butterfly flapping its wings” in Des Moines generates tiny ripples that spawn increasingly expanded systems of turbulence that culminate in major storm events in Damascus or New Delhi.

Here the polycrisis principle comes into view. Localized improvisatory decisions and circumstances are intextribly interwoven with, and fueled by, broader  factors. Just as the evolution of jazz is driven by socio-cultural, psychological, economic, political, educational and other influences, the health of the biosphere is directly dependent upon the same interconnectedness. Of particular significance in this jazz-inspired lens is the embrace of age-old indigenous/shamanic wisdom, which is very much aligned with mystical insights into the nondual relationship between subjective and objective reality, and the spirituality/art/science synthesis at the heart of the ICAST noetic vision.

Hence, the IJE lens iluminates h0w thir-person and second-person analyses open up to the first-person realm of consciousness, or subjectivity.

As considered in Pillar #6, collective consciousness–prominent in group improvisation and group spiritual practice–may be a game-changer in substainability discourse.

Three potential lines of inquiry and application come into focus.

First si that collective consciousness might serve as a backdrop against which moment-to-moment decision-making is heightened, and which patterns of greed and apathy open up to heartfelt atruism and dynamic action.

Second is the idea that collective consciousness may be enlivened to generate a harmonizing effect in the environment (see Pillar 6 large-ground meditation research).

Third is the more ambitious proposition, though one that organically unfolds from that of socio-cultural impact, it that collective consciousness may be enlivened to also impact the physical environment, as in weather patterns and climate, in positive, more regenerative ways.

The pertinent area of inquiry within psi research is psychokinesis, involving mind-matter interaction.

Might, as leading researcher Dean Radin has surmised, teams of intention experts through enlivened collective consciousness with ecological focus, be able to mitigate climate and weather patterns?

To be sure, enlivenment of an overarching field of consciousness, to which all of life and creation are inextricably bound (and manifestations of), may be among the most radical anomalies of our times.

Yet when viewed through an ecosustainability lens, given the prospects for healing the polycrisis, the idea also looms large as among those that most warrant serious consideration.

If left outside the scope of future visioning, further questions–including how might the principle be further researched, understood and operationalized–the paradigmatic change imperative remains thwarted by default adherence to conventional norms and categories.

In sum:

If, as one can reasonably infer from the combination of indigenous wisdom and leading-edge scientific inquiry into the nature of consciousness, mind and physical reality are aspects of an undivided wholeness, the possibility that consciousness-based environmental interventions—however challenging to both conventional and progressivist academic assumptions—may be a game-changer in creativity/consciousness-based socio-educational transformation.

The Integral Jazz Ecosystem is a key agent for centering critical investigation of this and the broader scope—information, individuation, polycrisis, change dynamics—of the ecosustainability/ecoflourishing imperative.

Further reading:

Ed Sarath, Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness (SUNY, Albany 2012)

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago,1960))

Dean Radin, 2007. “A Brief History of the Potential Future.” In Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness, ed. Trish Pfeiffer and John E. Mack. Winchester, UK: O Books/John Hunt.

Jeremy Narby, The Csmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge (1998)

Martha Winona Travers, Shamanic Teachings of the Condor: Encounters with the Mystical Teachings of the Andes (Inner Worlds, 2024)

(aslo see prior literature on collective consciousness in Pillar #4 commentary)

While the term transdisciplinary is nothing new in academic reform conversations, it takes on significantly new meaning from an integral, or noetic standpoint.

The Jazz-Vedanta nexus opens up several key new avenues in this context.

First, just as boundaries between musical genres need to be understood not as ontological absolutes but provisional, academic/commercial constructions, the same holds for boundaries between disciplines.

Think of musical genres/disciplines as surface manifestations atop an ocean of consciousness that encompasses several strata of creation.

At its silent, innermost depths, is the experience of pure consciousness. Already considered as the primordial fountainhead for all knowing, pure consciousness is completely devoid of thought, mental activity and language yet brimming with radiantely wakeful self-awareness.

At a slightly more manifest or differentiated level, the first seeds of genre/disciplinary differentiation begin to appear. However, these are faint, abstract impulses that are largfely accessed at the realm of subtle feeling or intuition. This level, like the underlying pure consciousness level, is transcendent of language.

There is a point slightly more manifest at this meso-stratum where genre and disciplinary structures begin to crystallize and begin to be described in words that eventually become labels.

As communities of practitioners galvanize around the various genre and disciplinary practices and structures, the respective labels become solidified–and often, over time calcified into rigid structures with sharp boundaries.

What originated as healthy differentiation took the next step of dissociation–hence the problem of fragmentation that is so rampant in education and society.

The task of transformative practitioners is neither to reject the labels nor the practices and structures to which they refer, but rather be able to retrace the steps of genre/disicplinary genesis in order to apprehend where and why differentation succumbed to the dissociative turn that plagues so many areas.

Critical interrogation of language is enormously important to this process, a capacity that is limited by the extent to which one transcends language.

The improvisation/meditation interplay is key to this transcendence as well cultivation of broader critical inquiry capacitiies.

As much as the academy may lay claim to fostering critical thinking as among its prize achievements, the lack of adequate epistemic tools for this very purpose raises important questions about this assumption.

Indeed, the point at which a field is labelled, and thus cemented into place as a discrete area, is a relatively late stage in this process—at which point the bulk of the damage is done in epistemically weak systems when it comes to the splintering crisis.

Oblivious to the inner mechanics of disciplinary unfolding, the academy is only able, at best, to lament the crisis, the so-called “siloing” of the knowledge base, but has little grasp of how the splintering comes into being. Here we can add lapses in rigor, critical thinking, disciplinary integration to the diagnosis.
The fact these patterns even pervade the arts sheds further light on the depths of their roots.

An axiom emerges that also spwans direct implications for excellence, acievement and rigor.

The extent to which is able to master a field, or critically examine it, is directly dependent upon the extent to which one is able to transcend its boundaries and engage with it from a transdisciplinary perspective..

Trandisciplinarity, therefore, does not reject disciplinarity, but rather resituates the latter in a broader context.

The jazz-Vedanta nexus enables us to understand  transdisciplinarity from a verticalized, creativity/consciousness standpoint.

Further reading:

Nicolescou, Basarah. Transdisciplinary Manifesto (SUNY Albany, 2002).

Ed Sarath, Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness (SUNY Albany, 2012)

Charles Alexander, Ellen Langer, eds  Higher Stages of Human Development (Oxford, New York)

Robert Forman, The Problem of Pure Consciousness 

The term “noetic” refers to deep, soul-based experience and knowing. Whereas materialism is averse to the very existence of soul, noetic science is predicated on systemic inquiry into this innermost dimension of human consciousness and thus the human being and its place in the cosmic wholeness.

An important step in opening up conventional educational inquiry to the noetic realm is to identify existing sites in the academic sciences that might serve as preliminary gateways.

Just as jazz, via its broad creativity/consciousness horizons (at the heart of which is the improvisation/meditation interplay), opens up from the arts to broader musical, transcultural and transdisciplinary landscapes, a number of fields in the sciences–were they to gain from jazz-inspired epistemic breadth–are positioned to similarly serve as transdisciplinary gateways.

Psychology is a primary example, with its transpersonal psychology subet– typically defined as the branch of psychology where study of cognitive functioning opens up to include spiritual experience and related phenomena–inherently equipped to uphold this functioning.

The work of Ken Wilber, Abraham Maslow, C.G. Jung and others has been influential to the formation of the discipline, with important studies and research done at California Institute for Integral Studies https://www.ciis.edu/ and Sofia University’s Institute for Transpersonal Psychology https://catalog.sofia.edu/

Next is quantum mechanics within the physics domain, where an array of conundrums at the subatomic scale—including indeterminacy, inseparability of observed and observed, nonlocality and space-time fluidity—issue fundamental challenges to the  materialist paradigm. Paralleing jazz’s consciousness-inspired connections to Vedanta, a formidable cast of iconic quantum pioneers, including Schroedinger, Bohr, Heisenberg and Planck also expressed intereet in Vedanta due to post-materialst parallels, and particularly the possiblity that consciousness is foundational even to physical reality. Planck was explicit on this point: One cannot go beyond consciousnes” in the quest to understand reality, physical or non-physical). 

The physicist Stephan Alexander, who is also a jazz saxophonist, is unique in interweaving quantum physics, jazz and Vedanta (see The Jazz of Physics, and Fear of a Black Universe). 

Third is neuroscience, which—while generating large volumes of research that show correlations between subjective experience and neurobiological activity—remains increasingly perplexed in its quest to explain how this could give rise to consciousness; hence the so-called “hard problem.” This in turn engenders receptivity to postmaterialist alternatives, including the understanding of consciousness as primary.  A less familiar body of research into the neurobiological correlates to higher stage consciousness experience and development provides further support in a post-materialist direction by uniting epistemological, phenomenological and ontological criteria. Here an expanded neuroscience program might opensup to a fourth, and closely related science domain; philosophy-of-mind. While typically constrained by academic materialist tendencies and a decidedly Western philosophical orientation, the combination of quantum paradoxes, the above-noted hard problem and the diversity (ethnological and epistemological) imperative will likely catalyze philosophical openings in a post-material direction.

Archeoastrology also warrants mention in this context. The core connection here involves research into ancient archeological sites that suggest certain cultures, dating back millennia, had highly developed understanding of planetary motions and correlations with overarching weather and climatic cycles. Close linkages between consciousness and cosmology that is central to the nondual, postmaterialist premise of consciousness as primary have been inferred in this much of this research. The case for the African origins of human civilization, with powerful analysis that supports the foundational influence of Black wisdom in Egyptian, Greco-Roman and other centers of human flourishing and knowledge, has been important in the emergence of astroarcheology. See Robert Bauval, Thomas Brophy; Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Roots of Ancient Egypt (Bear and Co/Rochester, VT; 2011) and Edward Bynum, Our Black Subconsciousness: The African Origins of  Mysticism and Psychology (Inner Traditions, Rochester VT; 2021)

Jazz-driven creativity/consciousness embrace in the sciences would help create a culture where these areas would be more readily recognized among the science mainstream (and even progressivist circles).

ICAST advances a multi-tiered view of women’s empowerment as an essential component of the revolution in creativity and consciousness. Anthropologist Heide Göttner-Abendroth’s notion of a matriarchal aesthetics offers a powerful, arts-driven aperture into this area. As she comments in her book, Dancing Goddess: Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic, study of ancient archeological sites suggests the past existence of matriarchal societies in which improvisatory, collective creativity, community ritual and other practices prevailed that stood in contrast to the male-dominated approaches that would follow.

Matriarchal art “is not a thing but a process, a praxis in which the subject speaks in actions and thereby changes the subjective and objective world.” As society became more patriarchal in orientation, “the ingenious fabric woven of social politics, psychology, science, and aesthetics . . . was unraveled into its individual threads, which became the individual formal categories of reason that replaced the ecstatic unity.”

From an integral, noetic standpoint, a matriarchal aesthetics can be seen as a manifestation of the idea of a divine, cosmic feminine principle. 

From the Hindu goddess Durga to Yemoja, the Yoruban goddess of the river, to the Ecuadoran kichwa shamanic concept of Pachamama, to the Gnostic deity Sophia, the idea of a divine feminine aspect as inherent in the nature of reality dates back to the earliest times of recorded history.

The central ICAST, integral notions of improvisation as intrinsic in the cosmos, human beings as co-evolutionary participants in the cosmic unfolding, and a collective field of consciousness to which all of life and creation are inextricably linked are directly tied the divine femine principle.

On a more day-to-day level, women’s empowerment is increasingly recognized as key  to transforming economically disadvantaged communities.

All levels of engagement work in tandem to fuel this important aspect of the broader creativity/consciousness revolution.

Heide Göttner-Abendroth. 1991. The Dancing Goddess: Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic. Trans. Maureen T. Krause. Boston: Beacon Press.

Mental health is an area of growing academic concern. Rare, however, are connections drawn between the epistemically narrow and fragmented scope of higher education’s curricula and culture and mental/emotional duress. An educational paradigm, such as that predicated on science/spirituality polarization, that neglects the interior dimensions of the human being poses grave challenges to student/faculty well being. These challenges are exacerbated by socio-ecological circumstances, including technological driven disconnect of human beings from one another and the environment. By contrast, arts driven movement toward spirituality/art/science synthesis, with a jazz/Black aesthetic at the forefront, opens up a range of interventions and understanding in response to the mental health crisis. As established with the early ICAST pillars, Improvisatory creativity, a principle that applies across all fields, combined with meditation and related contemplative disciplines, create an intricate epistemological circultry through which creativity and consciousness flow from the innermost dimensions of the soul through all realms of living and learning. This provides a basis for a matrix of features that characterize an abiding level of unconditional well-being, including heightened connectedness within oneself, to others and the natural world; enhanced self-actualization, meaning and purpose; and optimism about the future (along with enlivened commitment to action and leadership).

Readings:

Toby Zausner, The Creative Trance (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Molly Beauregard, Tuning the Student Mind: Explorations in Consciousness-driven Education. (SUNY, 2020)

Ed Sarath, Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness: Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education and Society (SUNY 2012)

John Miller, Education for the Soul: Toward a Spiritual Curriculum (SUNY, 1999)

     The fact that an enormous percentage of the world’s population lives in significant degrees of poverty at a time of unprecedented global abundance illuminates the extent to which today’s socio-educational systems are disconnected from the needs of humanity.

An arts-driven, creativity/consciousness model sheds light on the interior dynamics and highly intersectionalized forces that sustain this disparity.

Yet again, the Integral Jazz Ecosystem–just as it did for the ecological polycrisis–has important contributions to make in diagnosing and addressing the problem.

Recall analysis of the flow of information, highly improvisatory moment-to-moment decision-making and overarching evolution of the individual voice that is central to the jazz ecosystem’. Invokving principles of the Jazz Vedanta Nexus, the deeper the grounding in consciousness, the more robust the broader creativity.

Recall, too, that the vast array of factors that define the individuation process in jazz, heance a transformative trajectory, also work in a pathological direction when a system is disconnected at the soul level, in/from the underlying field of consciousness that is the cosmic source of creation.

The fact that today’s ecopathological polycrsis can be thus analyzed in terms of the same psychological, somatic, societal, cultural, religious/spiritual, educational, political, geographic and other factors that fuel individuation not only enhances diagnosis of the problem but the mulit-dimensional strategies needed to address it.

On one account, the Integral Jazz Ecosystem/Jazz Vedanta Nexus lens illuminates not only the horizontal nature of the expanse, which is formidable, but also its vertical dimensions.

Surface crises are manifestations of an underlying split in consciousness–the soul disconnect.

Symptoms such as poor resource distribution, where wealthy nations, if not intranational regions/populations, enjoy concentrations of assets while poor nations/regions/populations remain impoverished as well as the rampant greed and apathy (that accompany ecopathology) are inevitable atop the interior fissure in consciousness.

If there is credence to economist Jeffrey Sachs’ assessment that the extraordinary disparity of wealth (or absence thereof) across the globe will require wealthy nations to step up and compensate through direct subsidies (grants, not loans), socio-educational systems will need overall upon a dramaticlaly expanded, creativity/consciousness-based epistemological scope.

Harkening back to the expanded attributes of well-being under the Mental Health pillar (#9), this will require enlivenment of qualities such as empathy, altruism, and compassion (to combat greed and apathy). 

This does not in any way rule out other levels of intervention. 

Collective consciousness and related modalities for enlivenment thereof represent another important level of intervention. 

Engaging communities in creative artmaking and corresponding spiritual development is central, enlivening a sense of meaning and purpose that in turn motivates individuals to take charge of their lives and those of people around them.

In sum: The flow of creativity and consciousness from the innermost dimensions of soul must happen in both privileged and underserved populations in order to address the global poverty polycrisis. 

The arts–and jazz-inspired wisdom and interventions within the arts–have imporatnt contributions to make toward toward these ends.

Ed Sarath, Black Music Matters

Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen

Jazz musicians are among the most technically virtuosic practitioners across musical genres, at least in the West. However, this is not to overlook the place of expression that comes from deep within the soul, and the need for technical virtuosity to serve that purpose, rather then succumb to the all-too-familiar pattern of  technique for technique’s sake.

The same holds for all fields, with the sciences–given explosive developments in Artifical Intelligence as a primary example–a site in urgent need of this wisdom.

Striking indeed are admonishments from the high tech sector–including AI designers themselves–about the possibiity for machine intelligence to take on a life of its own. While concerns about proliferation of misinformationa and disinformation are increasingly voiced, more far-reaching consequences–such as self-replicating technology with destructive capabilites (including on a nano-scale, as in nanoviruses)–give all the more reason for caution. 

ICAST advocates a spirituality/art/science approach to AI, where contemplatives and artists play an equally vital role alongside engineers and technologists in diagnosing and addressing the challenge.

The Jazz Vedanta Nexus is particularly significant in expanding the lens and situating AI inquiry within the biggest questions surrounding human nature and potential and the place of the human being in the cosmic wholeness.

Can machine intelligence achieve the degree of self-awareness that is inherent in human consciousness, particularly when it comes to reflecting on one’s place in the cosmos? While machines can be taught to create, including types of improvisatory creativity, can they reflect on the meaning and purpose of that creativity? Can they contemplate an improvisatory aesthetics and distinguish it from, say, a compositional aesthetics? Can machine intelligence fathom the creativity-consciousness relationship, and discern between superficial creative expression and that which, as Alice Coltrane reminded us, “comes from the soul?” Might, in fact, the soul principle (and here is where the post-materialist consciousness turn may be pivotal) be among the most key distinguishing features between human and machine intelligence? And if one views soul as a kind of individual/cosmos interface, might this futher illuminate parameters that distinguish human and machine creativity/consciousness?

What, furthermore, about the collective consciousness principle?

Jazz and its improvisation/meditation nexus thus brings arts-based creativity/consciousness insights into the mix that may be integral to dealing with both harnessing the benefits of AI and illuminating its challenges.

When all is said and done, the Science/Technology issue may represent the most dramatic example of where humanity’s quest to harness the resources of the exterior world at the expanse of inner development has reached the end of the line. 

Readings:

Marcus Anthony, Power and Presence: Reclaiming Your Authentic Self in a Digitized World.

Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence:  Insights from the Science of Consciousness.https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708

(the above article, constrained by matreialist assumptions about consciousess, is included as an example  of limted perspecctives on the very question and dialogue itself).

While religious extremism is commonly recognized, scientific and aesthetic extremism often go unnoticed, despite their equally harmful impact.  ICAST’s spirituality/art/science paradigm emphasizes the interconnectedness and co-evolutionary relationship of these realms.

Religious extremism both privileges one particular religious perspective over others and above the discoveries of science. This might be understood as subjective absolutism (as opposed to subject-process-object, or spirituality-art-science interaction) Scientific extremism, or scientism, privileges objective understanding at the expense of the spiritual/religious and artistic. Hence, materialist views of human consciousness. Both forms of extremism or fundamentalism are notably incomplete and unsustainable.

The same holds for aesthetic extremism, which privileges a particular aesthetic account over others. The foregrounding of a Eurocanonic aesthetic in music studies is a primary example. As with religious and scientific fundamentalism, where the problem is not inherent in religion or science per se, the problem with academic aesthetic fundamentalism is not with European classical music per se.

Rather, the problem is of a knowledge system splitting away from its intrinsic relationship with the whole and not only viewing itself as superior to the other realms, but viewing them as a threat.

ICAST views all three forms of fundamentalism as manifestations of the academy’s epistemic crisis, with the science/spirituality divide at its core.

Diagnosis of the problem is an important step toward spirituality/arts/science synthesis, where—in place of division and conflict—all domains, grounded in creativity/consciousness interiors—coexist and co-evolve.

Jazz has not been immune from its own fundamentalist/extremist tendencies, where sharp boundaries are drawn between what does, and does not, constitute genuine jazz.  For example, bebop was revolutionary in its time (late 1940s and 1950s) and rejected by then-jazz purists, whereas now the genre is synonymous with the jazz mainstream.  Nonetheless, when one recognizes that jazz’s evolution from its inception has been driven by the interplay between, on one hand, embrace of new influences and expansion of its boundaries, and on the other hand continual return and rediscovery of the past; a template emerges that is applicable across fields.  Knowledge systems (including musical genres and subgenres) evolve in co-evolutionary relationship with one another and the broader knowledge base. Academics–driven by often-unexamined materialist ideology–who seek to distance science from spirituality actually impede this co-evolutionary relationship, and perpetuate dire challenges to education and society.

Particularly noteworthy in this conversation is that, unlike topics such as ecosustainability, mental health and social justice (which from ICAST’s noetic perspective are in any case approached superficially), the topic of transcending political/ideological divides largely eludes any kind of formal attention or interventions on college and university campuses.

The academy is also oblivious to how its unexamined scientific extremism, particularly when fueled by its religious counterpart, exacerbates political/ideological tensions..

.A jazz-inspired noetic standpoint offers much in the way of guidance for addressing the divide. Recalling creativity/consciousness-based capacities for critically interrogating language, new perspectives on highly charged and divisive terminology such as conservative and liberal, closely related to spirituality and science, come into focus. Conservative and liberal impulses originate deep in the structure of the cosmos itself, and thus coexist and coevolve at the innermost dimensions of the soul and overlying levels of individual and collective life. The same holds for spirituality/religion and science. Surface tensions are thus the product of disconnection from the soul level—among the seminal contributions of conventional education to the decline of human civilization—and can be healed through arts-driven spirituality/art/science synthesis.

Penetrating, post-materialist inquiry (Pillar 1) into the nature of consciousness, and thus the eternal connection between self, soul and cosmos that is at the basis of spiritual/religious traditions (and coherent with noetic science), could lay groundwork for entirely new discourse between liberal and conservative constituencies that defuse the highly charged politics surrounding an array of issues, including the choice to terminate a pregnancy, ecosustainability/flourishing, immigration and other flashpoint topics.

An initial step will be for the academy to critially interrogate the extent to which its internal epistemological crisis (see Pillar 4) actually fuels political/ideological polarization. Integral Jazz Ecosystem also offers a helpful lens, as it did for ecosustainability, mental health and poverty, for diagnosing the polycrisis nature of the polarization. The Jazz Vedanta Nexus in turn contributes significantly by reframing any sort of inquiry and exchange not around politics but the creativity and soul-based strata of human experience that transcend politics. When creativity and consciousness begin to flow from the innermsot dimensions of soul and inform even the most seemingly irreconilable disputes, extraordinary breakthroughs are possible.

Under the heading Healing a Nation Divided, ICAST is developing a dialogic protocal for this purpse as well as leadership training programs to prepare individuals to facilitate such conversation.

Peace building is another example of a pressing topic that eludes academic attention, particularly when it comes to analysis and interventions that go beyond the norm. The Integral Jazz Ecosystem illuminates the polycrisis nature of  violence and military conflict, and thus the need for paradigmatically new approaches. The Jazz-Vedanta Nexus sheds further light on such approaches, with particular emphasis on enlivening collecctive consciousness (see Pillar #4). This in no way replaces conventional peace-based modalities (diplomacy, negotiations, etc.) but in fact works in tandem with, and expands such modalities. A new model for arts/spirituality-based cultural exchange, through Creativity-Consciousness Symposia, is part of the emergent ICAST approach (see ICAST Action Steps).

K-12 educators and administrators play a vital role in transmitting creativity/consciousness-driven education principles to society. While there is no denying that ICAST places great emphasis on transformation of higher education, the rationale for this can be thought of in terms of a continuum. Transformed K-12 teacher and administrator education and licensing programs at the higher education level serve as a a direcdt conduit through which the assumptions and practices of the conventional paradigm are transmitted to public schools, which in turn uphold a transformative function and transmit a creativity/consciousness vision and practices to the world.

Schools of education, while often not enjoying the same status on college/university campuses as other disciplines (e.g. schools of engineering, medicine, law, business) must therefore be recognized as of enormous importance in the creativity/consciousness revolution.

Within the arts, moreover,, the transformation of K-12 music teacher education around noetic premises may be the most impactful site in all of education for the revolution.

Jazz in particular offers a robust epistemological template that, were it to take hold in music teacher licensing programs, could powerfully radiate its transformative impact throughout education and society.

Here the transformative chain principle unites with the transformative topography principle: It is not enough to argue for the importance of the arts in 21st century education. It is equally essential to identify sites with the arts that loom large on the horizon (thus topography) due to their transformative potential were change to take hold within the site. 

K-12 music teacher education rooted in the expanded epistemological scope jazz foundations would offer it could launch a chain of transformation that extends far into education and society at large due to the sheer volumes of students music teachers would contact in their schools.

While the arts and athletics are securely positioned on college/university campuses, neither significantly inform the academic mission, let alone are recognized as transformative catalysts. The arts are recognized as a cultural enhancement, athletics is largely relegated to an entertainment/school spirit function. ICAST takes important further steps in recognizing the deeper contributions of the two domains.

First involves recognizing the athlete as a creative artist and spiritual visionary, thus conjoining two areas that are not commonly approached in tandem interact.  Artists/athletes invoke performance-driven transcendence as well as frequently engage in formal consciousness-based spiritual practices and have much to offer challenging conversations such as healing political/ideological divides, racial justice, peace building, mental health and educational reform.

The ICAST Jazz, Sport and Spirit initiative, currently in development, is rooted in these principles.

More information coming soon

Further commentary in progress

At a moment when cultivation of the imagination has never been more urgently needed, conventional education often annihilates this basic facet of human nature and potential. ICAST promotes exploration of phenomena and capacities at the outer edges of the imagination in order to cultivate wonder and awe, nurture openness to new possibilities and plant possible seeds for expanded understanding, and direct experience, of the deeper dimensions of reality.

What is the purpose of human existence? What happens after death? What is the place of the human being in the cosmic wholeness? Is there intelligent life in the universe beyond Earth?

The recent wave of attention to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena is a fertile gateway to this kind of inquiry, which ICAST approaches in terms of thought experiments.

Triggered by increased attention among governmental, military, religious, corporate and other leaders, the idea of consciousness-based UAP inquiry, however, remains elusive and respresents a new and vital frontier in this inquiry.

The late senator Harry Reid, speaking from a post-materialist vantage point, emphasized this point: “the UAP phenomenon cannot be seriously investigated separate from the topic of consciousness and its farther reaches.”

Here an important parallel between academic consciousness studies and academic UAP studies, both approached from either proclaimed or default materialist vantage points, may be noted:

Neuroscience, astronomy, physics and astrophysics are privileged in the former, whereas physically transcendent dimensions of consciousness and reality, nonhuman intelligence and subtle planes of existence are acknowledged (not at the expense of hte physical) in the latter.

If there is any validity to the technological capacities—which appear to defy known laws of physics—being observed by top military personnel in UAP, the possibility of advanced consciousness development, including mind-matter interaction, needs to have a place in the inquiry.

While remaining agnostic on the extraterrestrial origins of UAP, ICAST foregrounds that possibility as a kind of thought experiment that catalyzes far-reaching reflection.

If humans are not alone among intelligent life forms, how does this impact how we understand our cosmic status? What might be the impact of contact with extraterrestrial species? What would that contact look like? Might there be value in preparing for such a moment, not so much from a practical standpoint but in light of the questions it raises?

UAP are yet another catalyst for what philosopher Sean Esbjörn-Hargens calls “Enlivening the Cosmic Imagination”—a central facet of noetic education.

Jazz’s broad epistemic template catalyzes wide-ranging “swinging” from the farthest edges of the human and cosmic imagination to the most detailed intricacies of creativity and craft, in so doing dislodging academic aversion to play, insight and innovative approaches to the world’s problems and essential

Perhaps ironically, the field of music studies—which one might think to be an unmatched exemplar of paradigmatic change—underscores the change-averse assessment that pervades the academy. Colleagues outside of music schools/departments are often startled to learn of the field’s longstanding Eurocanonic entrenchment–albeit with limited modifications over the years–that continues to relegate jazz and Black American Music, among America’s quintessential cultural achievements and contribution to world culture, at the curricular and cultural margins. 

However, this very circumstance in turn invites consideration of the Jazz-Vedanta Nexus as a useful lens to guide an expanded inquiry into to change phenomenon.

Jazz’s own history of internal revolutions serves as a point of departure, with each new development spawning new paradigms that did not replace, but would coexist and coevolve with prior practice, at each step unearthing deeper principles that are core to not only the jazz universe, but in important ways, all music.

The mid-20^th century is a primary example, with bebop, free jazz, modal jazz and an escalation of global infusion comprising a series of explosions that continue to fuel the broader synthesis that defines the music to this day.  Deeper connections to the African roots of the jazz particularly in terms of rhythmic practices, syncretism and a creative/spiritual aesthetic, were prominent in these upheavals.

Paradigmatic change, then, need not mean jettisoning of the past but rather rediscovery of what has come before through new eyes and creative strategies. Radically shifting the narrative that dominates change deliberation; foundational overhaul—often perceived as a threat to the past—may be understood as key to the preservation of the past. One might even state that change efforts that fall short of restructuring may pose the gravest threats to tradition.

The Jazz-Vedanta Nexus, among the important mid 1960’s developments, sheds light on an important facet of the new change narrative that is central to ICAST’s creativity/consciousness revolution in education and society.

This involves the parallel histories of improvisation in music studies and meditation in higher education at large.

As discussed earlier (Pillars 2, 3), just as improvisation was central in earlier times in European classical music, only to fall to the wayside, the same holds for meditation in Western intellectual life. The systems of reason, logic and critical analysis that the academy continues to value as among its supreme achievements were byproducts of philosophical paradigms that involved meditation and related means for taking consciousness beyond the realm of thought. Hence, the experience of pure consciousness—without which logic, reason and critical integrity would not be possible. Similarly, without improvisatory and compositional musical practices, the repertory that occupies the central curricular and aesthetic core of music studies would not exist.

Both tertiary level music studies and the academy at large are built on major epistemological fissures, and thus contradictions when it comes to prevailing discourse on educational foundations (e.g. what constitutes a “core curriculum”).

Change discourse that fails to place front and center these “tales of two epistemologies” overlooks a huge obstacle; it is comparable to a cancer screening in which radiologists failed to notice a huge mass on the X-ray slides.

Recall, too, prior commentary on pure consciousness (Pillar 6), where access to strata of awareness completely transcendent of thought, and thus academic disciplinary boundaries, enables visionaries to directly apprehend the genesis of disciplines from undifferentiated wholeness and the potentially stifling (most often the case) impact of assigning labels to those disciplines. Only by transcending language is one able to critically interrogate the forces by which labels reify assumptions and patterns, thus the pervading stasis and fragmentation that plague higher education.

It is thus a small step to retrace the steps of disciplinary formation from a transdisciplinary standpoint and embark on programs of deep, structural change.

As noted, the same principles apply to transcultural musical navigation and understanding.

Music studies also offers a useful guide to paradigmatic (vs ornamental change) that emerges from this analysis.

It is not enough to aspire toward a single tier of paradigmatic reform (as challenging as this may be), this involving an alternative model to conventional practice.

It is also essential to have in one’s sights a second tier. having to do with a new paradigm of future change visioning.

The post-George Floyd period in music studies underscores this point. Even following a half-century-plus of efforts to expand the horizons of the field, little beyond Eurocanonic embellishments would result. The fact, moreover, that this would remain the pattern even after the Floyd murder, when music schools across the nation sprung into action, issuing fervent declarations of committment to genuine structural transformation, illuminates the depth of entrenchment and how it constrains change  The place of Black American Music in this instance is particularly instructive: even on the heels of an enlivened Black Lives Matter movement, music studies failed dramatically to advance, let alone operationalize, a corresponding Black Lives Matter agenda. Hence, not just tier one change has been elusive, but tier two change visioning has been equally challenging.

And whereas both conventional (thus change averse) and tier 1 change visioning are prone to inferring a jazz-priveling in the above commentary, the epistemologically diverse (two major lines) Jazz-Vedanta lens underscores a key tier 2 change principle: Restoration of improvisatory foundations, now in a globally-informed context, and meditative foundations not only yields a fundamentally new context for Eurocanonic engagement, now enlivened, but also broader acacemic transformation.

See Ed Sarath, Music Studies and its Moment of Truth. Leading Change on America’s Black Music Roots (Routledge, 2023)