The Nature of Consciousness: An Interview with Francis X. Charet

Francis X. Charet, faculty member in the Individualized MA program and coordinator of Consciousness Studies, speaks about the conditions of time, mind and the soul on the Single Eye Movement website. Drop by and listen to what he has to say. Here's an excerpt:

My own view is that there is a fundamental unity underlying "body" and "mind" and yet a distinction has emerged seemingly to initiate a dialectical process for the purpose of the differentiation of consciousness. Some have resisted this distinction in favor of one side or the other; there are others who have seen and experienced the unity behind it all and these are the visionaries. But to attain this level of consciousness, and not experience it as the consequence of regression into unconsciousness, is exceptional, transpersonal, and probably the work of several centuries on the collective level.

Read more here.

Speaking of consciousness, here is Francis with the very conscious Grace Paley several years ago on the Goddard campus.

Deena Chappell: Voices of the Archetypes

Deena Chappell, a IMA graduation who specialized in consciousness studies, came to Goddard as an accomplished musician who has performed widely for years. Listen to an interview with Deena on the Carl Jung Gateway radio show on Blog radio. Her new album, "Voices of the Archetypes," was the central part of her thesis, bringing together Jungian studies, spiritual exploration, and her astonishing and provocative voice and instrumentation. You can also see more about Deena at her website.

Born into a family of musicians, Deena has been performing bluegrass, rock, folk, swing and jazz since she was 14. A well-known bass player, she also plays mandolin, sings in a popular swing/jazz duo with Nathan Knowles, and plays in a bluegrass trio, Dirty Old Strings. She's worked with the Vermont Arts Exchange for six years, offering music therapy sessions with vets, songwriting workshops for children throughout Bennington County, and other workshops throughout the area.

Francis Charet: Graduation Talk on Ganesha

Graduation talk delivered by Francis Charet, IMA faculty and coordinator of Consciousness Studies, at the Individualized MA graduation ceremony on Feb. 14, 2010.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Goddard community, families and friends. I am honored to have been invited to say a few words at this commencement. When I received the email from Jaes asking me, on behalf of the graduates, to be the commencement speaker I was sitting at my desk at home in Montreal. I began to remember my own graduate studies and all the things I was interested in and pursued, my ambitions, hopes and dreams and what I had attained in the years in which I studied. As I thought about all of this, I looked up over my computer and starred as I often do at a wooden image that sits on a shelf. It is a small statue of the Indian deity and mythological elephant headed figure, Ganesha. It found its way there, like other objects I have accumulated, because of my interest in the cultures and religions of the planet and of India in particular. In fact, it was really my encounter with Indian culture that first awakened in me a sense of the largeness of the world, how small and western I was, and how much we all have to learn from each other and yet we often miss the opportunity to do so.

As I thought about all of this it occurred to me that the figure of Ganesha represents a combination of the things that might be of value to try to briefly speak about to our graduates. Lost in work and other things I thought I would pick up on these ideas sometime later. As fate would have it, when I arrived at Goddard with as yet not entirely worked out thoughts, I ran into Sowbel, acting director of the HAS program, who said she wanted to show me something. This turned out to be this statue of Ganesha sitting on a figure with three elephant heads. Bemused, I took this as a sign that, indeed, my brief talk should be about the qualities that Ganesha embodies and clearly, to fit the symbolism of the three heads, there had to be three of them namely strength, wisdom, and responsibility, all qualities that are attributed to Ganesha.

Now Ganesha is one of those remarkable combinations of human and non human elements that India has characteristically produced in great abundance, flourish and wonderful variation. He has a human body, usually with a nice rounded and very full pot belly, and his torso is crowned with an oversized elephant head. In the earlier fateful encounter of East and West, he ran afoul of the colonizing Europeans and their aesthetic ideals and entered the list of what one contemporary historian of Indian art has called “much maligned monsters”.

Yet, since medieval times, Ganesha has attained an audience in India that surpasses them all. This elephant headed figure is found in greater numbers in statue, relief, painting and poster form than the rest. There are now monographs written on this figure and various stories to explain his emergence and I won’t detain us by looking at these as interesting and entertaining as they might be. Instead, I simply want to acknowledge that this figure has become an object of interest and popularity and now even migrated to the west and it might also have something to say to us and to our graduates in particular. In order to do this I would like to focus on the three things that I mentioned, namely strength, wisdom and responsibility.

Let me add that one of the interesting parallels between the figure of Ganesha and Goddard is that we, like the figure, combine together things that often are not combined elsewhere and in that sense we, too, are unusual and maybe even a bit exotic. In Indian myth and culture Ganesha is an archetypal auspicious figure who is known by his chief attributes as the remover of obstacles, patron of scholars and protector of the community. Obstacles Ganesha, the great and powerful elephant headed god, is often displayed as using his strength to move seemingly immovable objects and does so with considerable determination and patience. He is especially venerated for this attribute for the obvious reason that life is chock full of obstacles, big ones and small ones, some easily overcome others not. Graduates, I know that all of you have faced such obstacles in your lives but here, at Goddard, we also know that not infrequently, the greatest obstacles are those we ourselves have created. Getting out of our own way is a challenge and requires similar resources such as strength of character, determination of will, patience and kindness. Learning this has been an important part of your experience here at Goddard.

Knowledge Ganesha is the patron of scholars. This attribute implies that knowledge is one of the most desired and vital resources in order to understand, move through the world and make it a better place. Graduates, you have all acquired considerable knowledge in a variety of subjects and disciplines but I would venture that the most important acquisition has been knowledge of yourselves, who you are, what interests you, and what you want to take out into the world. This, too, has been an important part of your experience at Goddard.

Responsibility Ganesha is the lord of hosts and protector of the community. Knowledge of the world and oneself is both a valuable accomplishment and an indication of success that is commendable and is a shared goal of many educational institutions. Yet at Goddard you have learned something more and that is that knowledge becomes much more enriched when it can be applied in the world to make it a better place for all beings. This, too, has been an important part of your learning at Goddard. In India, invoking the presence of Ganesha and what he stands for –remover of obstacles, bearer of knowledge and wisdom, protector of the community - is common at the beginning of rituals, scripture reading, engaging in any contractual arrangements, and even in the breaking of ground for new buildings and other seemingly non religious events. Goddard graduates you are not at the end of your journey but at the beginning.

This is Ganesha time. Take the attributes associated with Ganesha, the strength you have acquired to remove obstacles, what you have learned and apply it wisely, your sense of responsibility for others and be contributors to and caretakers of the world. I should add that there is another attribute of Ganesha I have not mentioned: he is also the god of good luck.

Oṃ Gaṇeśāya Namaḥ

Pictures include Ganesha as statue and painting, Francis Charet with graduate Erica Pierce, and a graduation-Valentine's Day-Chinese New Year cake to celebrate graduation.

Jaes Seis: The Dark Mother, Shamanism and Consciousness Studies

Jaes Seis, a current Individualized MA student, has found her other path in studying shamanism with a particular focus on consciousness studies and the dark mother archetype. Listen to her describe her study, which she began at Goddard. Experienced at shamanic work, leading workshops and offering counseling, she has worked around the world, including on a recent excursion to Peru. Her thesis on the dark mother looks deeply at how we define and explain darkness in our lives, and how darkness can be a force of transformation and of life itself. Click on the title for this blog to listen to a podcast of Jaes describing her work.

Francis Charet: Consciousness Studies and Pilgrimages to India

Francis Charet, a faculty member in Goddard's Individualized MA (IMA), and BA programs, walks his talk, even if that means long treks to various ashrams in India. As founder of the Consciousness Studies Concentration in the IMA program, Charet knows the importance not just of expansive consciousness, but expansive cultural consciousness, enhanced by immersion in other cultures and spiritual traditions.


During the last year, Charet went to India twice, first in January of '08 for a conference on spirituality and psychology which Goddard College sponsored. After the conference, he traveled to the Rishikesh, the yoga capital of India, where he wandered, scouted out pilgrimage points and ashrams, and did a lot of yoga and meditation. While visiting the ashram of one of his teachers, the late Neem Karoli Baba, he met an elder, who, upon hearing Charet's Indian name of Vidura, told Charet of the Vidura Kutir (hermitage). "You must go there," the elder said. So Charet visited his namesake, where he was welcomed with open arms. Returning to India in September, Charet visited the Shivananda Ashram in Northern India along with other communities, all of which deepened spiritual practices, initially sparked by six months he spent in India in 1972.

"It reconnected me to some of the very important influences in my personal life that became part of my own teaching and research and academic work, and it was largely a rejuvenation, like going back to the holy land," Charet says. "Experiential learning for Consciousness Studies and this degree involves an engaged practice, and this arises out of the Goddard pedagogy in the program itself, but it also reflects what I felt so much in my own life. Your learning is grounded in experience." Charet has mentored students ground their MA studies in practices such as meditation, Kabbalah, chanting, dreamwork, memoir as spiritual exploration, Buddhist mindfulness practice, and shamanism.

Charet's main practice these days is yoga, which he rises early to do daily from colder climes -- his home in Montreal. He explains it's not just the physical exercise, but the spiritual practice of yoga. "It connects you to deeper resources and allows you to express this in your interactions with others, and it informs the work you do, which is, in my case, teaching. It opens you to a wider reality -- the Obama thing of "Yes, we can," there is hope, there are possibilities, the universe does cooperate even though sometimes we have grave doubts about that. I think connecting with these traditions when the connection is authentic can help bolster and give us the help we need in our lives, which are so driven by activity," he says."It also makes you calm," he adds while laughing.

See Consciousness Studies resources.