Description
About this workshop
This workshop is based on a paper I published for the astrological Archai Journal, “Raising Plato’s Curriculum from the Dead: the Myth of Er in Light of Susskind’s String Theory, Tarnas’s Archetypal Astrology, and Jung’s NDE of the Cosmic Horizon.” I also draw from my book, Psyche and Singularity: Jungian Psychology and Holographic String Theory. After a heart attack in 1944, which triggered an out-of-body experience, Jung said that it seemed to him as if the material world is an illusion projected by strings from the spherical horizon of the cosmos, where the past, present, and future are interwoven. Surprisingly, that strange claim agrees with what string theorists say today. Jung’s NDE is furthermore very similar to the NDE Plato described at the end of the Republic in the myth of Er, which also contains allusions to astrology. In light of Richard Tarnas’ Cosmos and Psyche, I explain how the cosmic horizon provides a platform for explaining synchronicities in general, and astrological synchronicities in particular. Finally, I explain how regularly studying astrology can gradually open the eye of the soul to what Plato called the Idea of the Good, which Jung called the ultimate archetype of the Self.
About the Speaker
Timothy Desmond is an adjunct professor at The College of Southern Maryland, where he has been teaching introductory classes in philosophy, ethics, and religion since 2013. In 2014 he earned a PhD in Philosophy and Religion, with a concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he studied with Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Since reading that book in 2007, he has been studying astrology as a daily part of his quest for self-awareness. You can check out Timothy’s work, as well as a link to a free YouTube series, here: https://psycheandsingularity.com/.
