Spiritual Awakening with Marjorie Woollacott

Marjorie Woollacott, PhD, is emeritus professor of Neuroscience and Human Physiology at the University of Oregon. She is coauthor of the textbook, Motor Control: Translating Research Into Clinical Practice. She is author of Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind.

Here she describes her early years as a scientific materialist. However, she experienced an extraordinary awakening at her first meditation retreat over forty years ago. Since then she has been a regular meditator and student of Kashmir Shaivism. She describes the schizophrenic feeling of living in two worlds as a practicing scientist and practicing mystic. She discusses the process of integrating these different realities.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is a past vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology; and is the recipient of the Pathfinder Award from that Association for his contributions to the field of human consciousness exploration.

(Recorded on April 12, 2018)

[FallGuy-]

I love how you know when your guest are on a roll, and you let them shine.

[krisscanlon]

This show among many other spiritual recovery oriented works has been my guidepost past these 4 walled walls. I'll never live from my lower self ever again. I've nowhere to go but through to a higher life.

[powderstone]

Dr. Mishlove, you are a great benefit to our lives. I so appreciate your interviews. You and your guests are such a source of inspiration. Thank you so much for spending time with us like this. <3

[aclearlight]

Having read her wonderful book a few years ago, it was a true delight to witness her sparkle and deep, wise joie de vivre as revealed in this great interview. Thank you for having her on your show!

[Hugatree]

She is absolutely brilliant, but so beautiful and charming as well!

[johnpaul]

Excellent. It's good to see highly rational and well educated people having these experiences. Reminds me of Colin Wilson's ideas about effort and focus and concentration and "Faculty X." Thanks to you and your guest.

[Vafini]

Ms. Woollacott’s descriptions jive with everything I have experienced at times while engaged in performing and even sometimes simply rehearsing music together with others during the heightened vibrational moment of sound and presence; even when alone and focused on something of personal transcendent significance is it possible to have such experiences if one is aware.

[geoffreynhill]

An attractive, articulate and persuasive guest! (What IS that stone thing on the pedestal?!) 🌈🦉
(from Green Fire UK)

[StevenDLightspring]

Thank you SO much, for such rich morsels for the mind, heart, soul and spirit shared so beautifully and freely here...thanks to your vibrant spirit so warmly and freely welcoming these bearers of much light and delight for us. Just so refreshing...expansive... so helpful to hear someone of her educational credentials and intellectual background ...also speak so freely of energy dynamics and consciousness so far beyond what we tend to process more comfortably within our logic and cultural and education-processed experiential assumptions. Many of us who work in "alternative" fields with hopes to bring "well-being" at many levels to others as our way of serving those who cross our path...often find ourselves challenged to present our deeper intuitive instincts and inspiration in more seasoned-for-reason ways. Your program has always been a deep well of refreshment for me, and, for once, I felt that it was high time to express my deep glad-itude for all of the amazing oasis you continue to create for us here.

This particular episode, after providing such deep, meaningful delight for me, I have chosen to add to my public playlist for "effervescent and visionary communicators" on my channel. I will no doubt begin to add others from your channel...to make sure that those who stop by my little channel (for hopeful spirit wing-lifts from meaningful music and "healing sound") will also be given every opportunity to take in such "sound" worded riches that I feel I just "have to" overflow and share! I will look forward to...as I am able... to begin to support your work in other ways as well...especially as these past 6 years of seed-sowing here by this so-very-blessed e-LATE-d BLOOMER...hopefully begins to flourish all the more in the next few years.

Your truly effervescent presence here...and the way you so embody the deepest "namaste" to each one you bring to our attention as you warmly welcome them...never fails to refresh...for which I'm "more than words" grateful...yet I hope these words help a little to begin to express this! All the very blessed to you, Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove...and all those who work with you... as you continue to do what is so clear ...from the obvious love, passion, peace and joy of your spirit...and all that you bring to your "labor of love" here, you are "called" to do!

[desertportal]

Well this is very encouraging. What a great person to have working in the field of Neuroscience. Thanks to both of you.

[keepitsimple]

So very interesting. Really enjoyed learning about Marjorie. Terrific interview.

[donnysandley]

Great interview and very enlightening 🤔😊👍👍👍👍

[vicproulx]

Lots of real information, thank you. And thank you for posting the date of the interview. I wish all of You Tube would do that, the date can - over time - become important.

[Flanalb]

I think it's interesting how different experiences can be. In meditation (TM), I feel like I am going into a very deep sleep. My local instructor says I am "transcending", but most of the time, it feels like a very deep sleep (after which I return in a quite rested state). There is no sense of higher consciousness (or any consciousness at all, for that matter), nor are there any cool lights or vibes. I actually find mindfulness meditation much more useful than TM, probably because I am not giving myself (my attention) up to something else (mantra). I certainly never found any sort of experience of out-of-the-ordinary sensations. At the same time, I would have to say that my life has become much more ordered and intentional since I started trying to be regular in _some_ sort of meditation.

As far as watching the mind is concerned, I think that Huxley and McKenna have been more useful to me than either Maharishi or Yogananda (not to say that they haven't been helpful). I _will_ have to say that Ouspensky was more helpful than the others. It just goes to show we are all different.

I, too, started out in a materialist frame of reference, but my mother was a dyed-in-the-wool mystic (although I don't think she knew it). Trying to reconcile the worldly-scientific view with the devotional belief system of Christianity is how I got started in my career. My first foray into the world of mystical literature was Brother Lawrence's _The Practice of the Presence of God_ which is simply recommending (from my point of view) that the devotee become suffused with the spirit to the point that one is absorbed in meditation all the time (much the same way Marjorie describes it). Anyway, as you point out, personal experience makes all the difference as to which frame of reference you settle into, and being comfortable in more than one is a great gift for the student of life.

Thank you for these interviews.

[adc]

One of the most wonderful video of this series . Thank you, you are really amazing.

[luissosa]

I have the same intense experience but inducted created by myself because every single human being can do it by itself just need to know and follow the right steps to achieve that experience, after my first experience I started to remember and analize everything before, during and after the experience to understand exactly the process that caused that experience and later one use that knowledge from my analysis and try to achieve that same experience again and I achieve it again so now I know everything about it by myself we all humans have the same capacity to create by ourselfs this trascendental metaphysical spiritual personal and collective experiences, that's why is very important to develop the COGNITIVE ANALYTICAL CRITICAL THINKING SCIENTIFIC SKILLS

[adamkaplancs]

LiveStream w Marjorie Woollacott?

I have so many questions, including... What motivated her to go get a Masters in Asian Studies? I ask bc the moment she said it, I wanted one too. It sounded so romantic to study Sanskrit and Vedantic philosophy.

[claudiochianese]

It was an interesting interview, but I would have liked dr. Woollacott to explain a bit more how she reconciles her spiritual worldview with hard neuroscience data.

[nigelericogden]

From my own experience ... the best way to quiet the mind ... is to relax and allow it to be and do what it wants ... to have a initial period of just allowing the thinking conceptual mind to do what it wants, simply allowing and observing that, and certainly not fighting that ...

[SindhiScienceChannel]

The meditation experience described by her is actually called hallucinations by neurologists.