Episode 13: Learning from our Collective Evolution with Kurt Johnson
MAY 10, 2021
Charles Vogl welcomes Dr. Kurt Johnson to a conversation about how to recognize truth and how both science and spiritual traditions reveal profound interconnectedness. Dr. Kurt Johnson is an accomplished scholar, author of 5 books, and teacher across the relationship between science and religion. He has a Ph.D. in Evolution and Ecology and he is the host of VoiceAmerica’s Convergence series broadcast worldwide.
Dr. Kurt Johnson is an accomplished scholar, author of 5 books, and teacher across the relationship between science and religion. He has a Ph.D. in Evolution and Ecology and he is the host of VoiceAmerica’s Convergence series broadcast worldwide.
His books include Our Moment of Choice (2020), The Coming Interspiritual Age (2013), Nabokov’s Blues (2000), and Fine Lines (2015), which won the Brian Boyd Prize only awarded every five years (2019).
He has a PhD in Evolution and Ecology and is ordained or certified in five spiritual traditions including Contemplative Christianity, Hinduism, and Sikhism. As a contemplative Christian he was ordained into a monastic order for more than 10 years. Then he went on professionally as an evolutionary biologist at the American Museum of Natural History where he published over 200 scientific articles. He then went on to become one of the founders of the contemporary interspiritual movement.
He is also the publisher of three magazines and co-founder of the Light on Light Book Press. He serves on three international committees at the United Nations.
SHARED WISDOM:
WISDOM #1 Respect how we know truth in both subjective and objective ways.
Objective and subjective experiences are complementary inner and outer ways of knowing and they must be combined.
WISDOM #2 Recognize how both modern science and the world’s spiritual traditions reveal profound inter-connectedness.
The only way our world can work with conscious species is with both complexity and inclusivity. This leads us to love. We can’t succeed with a system fighting itself. All major mystical traditions point to profound unity or interconnectedness.
WISDOM #3 We must elevate people who serve interconnectedness.
We must stop glorifying people who try to “win” or exploit the most. They are like cancer that takes all it can and leaves the host dead.
Until next time, take it slower than you think you should.