Richard Tarnas
The Arc of the Transcendent
June 21, 2026 — 10 AM PT/ 1 PM ET/ 6 PM GMT
To understand our contemporary cultural world view with its tendency to sharply separate the immanent world from a transcendent dimension of being—indeed to question or negate the existence of any transcendent dimension at all—will require a sense of the history that brought forth this unprecedented world view. How has humanity’s experience of the relationship of nature with spirit evolved over the centuries —of cosmos and psyche, the human and the divine, the secular and the sacred, the literal and the archetypal?
Gaining historical perspective is not just an academic exercise, it is essential. The present is deep, not a simple point in a linear continuum of time. The current state of our cultural psyche has layered within itself all of the historical stages and twists and turns that led to it. Those layers are living, dynamic factors that profoundly shape our contemporary consciousness. A complex, multi-layered, unfolding narrative is at work at every moment. When those deep layers are not articulated, differentiated, and brought into consciousness, we lack self-lucidity. The powerful complexes assert themselves from the unconscious and subvert self-aware human agency. Unconsciousness can be dangerous even in the individual life, but at the collective civilizational level, especially in a titanically empowered technological society, the consequences can be catastrophic.
For this initial lecture of the Kosmos Colloquium Series, I believe it will be useful to explore the history of how the immanent and transcendent and their relationship to each other and to the human have evolved across the millennia, hopefully to provide a clarifying overview and historical context for subsequent presentations in this series. My talk will draw on the insights of depth psychology, the history of ideas, the evolution of religion, the history of science, and moral philosophy. Ultimately, I hope to shed light on our current critical moment in human evolution, a threshold of transformation in which articulating and bringing to consciousness this underlying dynamic reality could play a helpful role in shaping our future.
Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he was the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness department. During his thirty years there, he taught courses in the history of ideas, depth psychology, archetypal cosmology, cultural history, and the evolution of consciousness. He has also frequently lectured on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a narrative history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern that is widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network. He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and was a long-time member of the Board of Governors for the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.