Quote:This DVD package documents a full-day workshop in which Richard Tarnas provided an in-depth look at writing not just as an intellectual and artistic discipline, but as a spiritual path. Presented to a sold-out audience at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in November 2007, Tarnas' lecture treats writing as a calling, and a cultural mandate. Tarnas' perspective springs from his 30 years of teaching and writing as a professor of philosophy and psychology, and author of such books as "The Passion of the Western Mind," and "Cosmos and Psyche." Tarnas believes that because we live in a time of extraordinary urgency, when we must contemplate the future of the Earth community. As a result, he believes, it is essential that those with relevant information speak and be heard, received, and understood. Writing in service of such a goal involves the development of certain skills, disciplines, and knowledge, as well as other less tangible but perhaps even more important capacities. Tarnas' workshop illuminates the writer's path with both practical tips and a larger vision of the writer's noble calling. Tarnas is a Harvard graduate who lived and worked at California's legendary Esalen Insitute for 10 years. There, he studied with and befriended such greats as Joseph Campbell, Gregory Bateson, Huston Smith, and Stanislov Grof. Tarnas is now Founding Director of the gradaute program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.