The Living Classroom

Christopher M. Bache

Description

This pioneering work in teaching and transpersonal psychology explores the dynamics of collective consciousness in the classroom. Combining scientific research with personal accounts collected over thirty years, Christopher M. Bache examines the subtle influences that radiate invisibly around teachers as they work—unintended, cognitive resonances that spring up between teachers and students in the classroom. While these kinds of synchronistic connections are often overlooked by traditional academics, Bache demonstrates that they occur too frequently and are too pointed to be dismissed as mere coincidence. Drawing upon Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields, Bache proposes that well-taught courses generate "learning fields" around them, forms of collective consciousness that can trigger new insights and startling personal transformations. Moving beyond theory, this book is rich with student stories and offers practical, hands-on strategies for teachers who want to begin working with these learning fields to take their teaching to a more conscious level.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART I . The Emergence of Fields of Consciousness

1. Resonance in the Classroom

2. Group Fields, Group Minds

3. The Science of Fields

PART II . Working with Fields of Consciousness

4. Working with Fields

5. Café Conversations

PART III. Teaching in a Living Universe

6. Waking Up in the Classroom

Student Stories

Introduction

7. Where We Begin

8. Healing through Writing

9. Spiritual Experiences

10. Conversion Experiences

11. Touched by Death

12. Personal Discoveries

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• System
• Education

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 28 août 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791477328
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 72 Mo

Extrait

The Living Classroom Teaching and Collective Consciousness

Christopher M. Bache

The Living Classroom

SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology Richard D. Mann, editor

The Living Classroom Teaching and Collective Consciousness

Christopher M. Bache

State University of New York Press

Cover image photo by Steve Satushek.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2008 State University of New York Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without writ- ten permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechan- ical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu

Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Design and typesetting by Jack Donner, BookType This book was printed on acid-free, 50% recycled paper.

Library of Congress of Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bache, Christopher Martin. The living classroom : teaching and collective consciousness / Christopher M. Bache. p. cm. — (SUNY series in transpersonal and humanistic psychology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–7914–7645–1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–7914–7646–8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Consciousness. 2. Transpersonal psychology. 3. Teaching. 4. Classroom environ- ment. I. Title.

BF311.B253 2008 153—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2007052827

For reasons we don’t yet understand, the tendency

to synchronize is one of the most pervasive drives in

the universe, extending from atoms to animals, from

people to planets.

—Steven Strogatz,Sync

This book dedicated to

the great circle of learning

Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction

p a r t i .

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

p a r t i i .

Chapter 4 Chapter 5

p a r t i i i .

Chapter 6

Introduction Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12

Notes Bibliography Index

C O N T E N T S

T h e E m e r g e n c e o f F i e l d s o f C o n s c i o u s n e s s

Resonance in the Classroom Group Fields, Group Minds The Science of Fields

W o r k i n g w i t h F i e l d s o f C o n s c i o u s n e s s

Working with Fields

Café Conversations

T e a c h i n g i n a L i v i n g U n i v e r s e

Waking Up in the Classroom

S t u d e n t S t o r i e s

Where We Begin

Healing through Writing

Spiritual Experiences

Conversion Experiences

Touched by Death

Personal Discoveries

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17 43 69

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141

163 167 179 189 205 217 229

237 247 251

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F O R E W O R D

William James would love this book. Because he was a vigorous empiricist, someone who trusted his own experience and the varied experience of others, James would love the courageous, patient, modest, and convincing empiricism on display in this book. For the last thirty years of his career, as founder and dedicated leader of the American Society for Psychical Research, James was in search of what he referred to as “one white crow,” one person whose experience might slay the enemies of empiricism—dogmatic religion, skepticism, materialism, and what has come to be called scientism, the dogmatic use of science to prevent the full range and variety of experience from breaking into thought and culture. James would have loved the way that the author of this book lets his surprising and significant experi- ences, and the amazing experiences of his students, chip away at the prevalent flatland, monodimensional academic worldview. Similar to James’s philosophical project, Chris Bache’s argument is primarily focused against the position that presently dominates the academy, the position that regards the human mind as singular, isolated, and incapable of either a transcendent or depth experience precisely because there is no transcendent or depth reality to experi- ence. Materialistically inclined scientists and philosophers of science typically assume that their methodologies are true to experience, truly empirical; this is the whole point of the scientific method, to observe and theorize on the basis of observation. Bache’s entire book opposes this too easy claim. Where scientism sees flatland, Bache presents and argues for multiple levels, a variety of dimensions, a rich panoply of influences and effects. Bache’s is not a very tidy worldview, but it is rich and exciting. As the methods of scientists tend to focus on potentially replicable experience and repeatedly verifiable observation, they tend to leave

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