Far From This Land:

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A Memoir About Evolution, Love, and the Afterlife

 

Presented by
Michael Gellert, MA, LCSW

link to video

 

This program will also be recorded and made available for free to anyone, along with a transcript, via a link on the Past Programs page of our website.

 

Sunday, September 19, 2021, 4-6 pm PDT (UTC -7)

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This event will consist of readings by Michael Gellert from his new book, Far From This Land, interspersed with questions and answers and an open discussion.  Program registrants will be sent a link for purchasing Michael Gellert’s signed book from the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles bookstore with a 10% discount.

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Michael Gellert’s new book is inspired by the author’s dreams and visionary experiences in response to brain surgery. Unfolding as a dialogue between different parts of his personality, its story is told from the perspective of an alter ego, a skeptical part of him that could not believe and accept these astonishing dreams and visions. Throughout his story he is resistant to accepting his near-death experience (NDE)—an extraordinary one by most standards. He has to fight his way to embracing, reluctantly, the implications this experience has for his personal development as well as his understanding of human evolution. The book explores such topics as the workings of the unconscious mind (dreams, visions, and paranormal phenomena); the evolution of consciousness and of our planet; and the psychological and spiritual dimension of climate change. It presents a portrait of the afterlife that is compatible with most NDE accounts, but also offers a unique viewpoint that has profound implications for our everyday lives.

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Learning objectives: 

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• Give examples of using Jung’s method of active imagination to work with dreams and to induce visionary experiences.

• Investigate the possible connection of the psyche to other realms, in particular to what has been traditionally conceived as the afterlife and to what modern physics hypothesizes are parallel universes.

• Explore the spiritual ideas of Carl Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin with the aim of understanding the goal of personal development and human evolution

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Michael Gellert, MA, LCSW, is a Jungian analyst practicing in Los Angeles. He was formerly Director of Training at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and a humanities professor at Vanier College, Montreal. He managed an employee assistance program for the City of New York and has been a mental health consultant for the University of Southern California and Time magazine. He has lived in Japan, where he trained with a Zen master. The author of Modern Mysticism, The Way of the Small, America’s Identity Crisis, and The Divine Mind (the latter two of which each won a Nautilus Book Award), he lectures widely on psychology, religion, and contemporary culture.

 

Visit Michael Gellert's website.