Gerald Heard

Henry Fitzgerald Heard commonly called Gerald Heard (October 6, 1889 - August 14, 1971) was an historian, science writer, educator, and philosopher. Heard wrote many articles and authored over 35 books. Heard?s work was a forerunner of, and influence on, the consciousness-development movement that has spread in the Western world since the 1960s. He was initiated into Vedanta.

Related Topics:
October - 6 - 1889 - August - 14 - 1971 - Vedanta

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Heard was born of Irish ancestry in London. He studied history and theology at the University of Cambridge. After working in other roles, he lectured from 1926 to 1929 for Oxford University's extra-mural studies program. Heard took a strong interest in developments in the sciences. In 1929, he edited "The Realist," a short-lived monthly journal of scientific humanism (its sponsors included H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Julian Huxley, and Aldous Huxley). In 1927 Heard began lecturing for South Place Ethical Society, and from 1932 to 1942 he was a council member of the Society for Psychical Research.

Related Topics:
University of Cambridge - H.G. Wells - Arnold Bennett - Julian Huxley - Aldous Huxley - Society for Psychical Research

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He first embarked as a book author in 1924, but The Ascent of Humanity, published in 1929, marked his first foray into public acclaim as it received the British Academy?s Hertz Prize. From 1930 to 1934 he served as a science and current-affairs commentator for the BBC. In 1937 he emigrated to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, to accept the chair of historical anthropology at Duke University. In the U.S., Heard's main activities were writing, lecturing, and the occasional radio and TV appearance. His pattern was set as an informed individual who recognized no conflict among history, science, literature, and theology.

Related Topics:
Aldous Huxley - Duke University

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Heard left this post at Duke, settling in California. In 1942 he began founding, soon building, Trabuco College as a facility where comparative-religion studies and practices could be pursued.

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Like his friend Aldous Huxley, the essence of Heard?s mature outlook was that a human being can effectively pursue intentional evolution of consciousness. He maintained a regular discipline of meditation, along the lines of yoga, for many years.

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In the 1950s, Heard tried LSD and felt that, used properly, it had strong potential to 'enlarge Man's mind' by allowing a person to see beyond his ego. In late August 1956, Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson first took LSD ? under Heard's guidance and with the officiating presence of Dr. Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist then with the California Veterans Administration Hospital. According to Wilson, the session allowed him to re-experience a spontaneous spiritual experience he had had years before, which had enabled him to overcome his own alcoholism.

Related Topics:
LSD - Alcoholics Anonymous - Bill Wilson - Sidney Cohen

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In 1963, what some consider to be Heard's opus, a book titled The Five Ages of Man, was published.

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According to Heard, the prevalent developmental stage among humans in today?s well-industrialized societies is the fourth: the ?total individual,? who is mentally dominated, feeling him- or herself to be autonomous, separate from other persons. However, according to Heard ? based on his many years of studies, his intuition, and his many years of reflection ? a fifth stage is in the process of emerging: a post-individual phase of persons and of culture. Heard termed this stage 'leptoid man' because humans will increasingly 'take a leap' into a considerably expanded consciousness, in which the various aspects of the psyche will be integrated, without any aspects being repressed or seeming foreign. A society that recognizes this stage of development will honor and support individuals entering a "second maturity." Further, instead of simply enjoying biological and psychological health, as Freud and other important psychiatric or psychological philosophers of the ?total-individual? phase conceived, Leptoid man (having entered the second maturity) will be a human of developed spirituality, similar to the mystics of the past.

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