THE NEW CENTER FOR HOLISTIC LEARNING NY

April 2024

Times have changed in major ways for me in the last few years. While my colleagues and I have been able to maintain the Esoteric Quest conferences and journeys and the Art of Dying trainings and events, the New York Open Center, which I co-founded with Walter Beebe in 1984, is no long operating. It had a 38 year run during which time 400,00 to 500,000 participants came through in buildings both in Soho and in Mid-town Manhattan. It was truly a consciousness vortex in the heart of the Big Apple.

However, the need for a center of holistic learning in New York is in no way diminished. In fact, for someone like me who has been involved in matters of transformation and spirituality for many years, it is apparent that holistic ideas and practices are busting out everywhere. A day barely goes by without me stumbling across some kind of new initiative, increasingly in mainstream culture, that embraces holistic and ecological thinking.

To superficial observation, it may appear that not much has changed. But an alert eye can see a gradual embrace of an integrative worldview in countless areas, despite the many terrible occurrences in the world that barrage our minds through most mainstream and social media, and often show us the dark side of the human experience with all its tragedy and suffering.

So, in late April, early May we will launch a new website for the New Center for Holistic Learning NY (NCNY). Its programs will be both in-person and on-line. It will have an international reach through zoom and make use of various physical locations starting with two in the East and West Villages in Manhattan.

We will also be conducting a GoFundMe campaign to help us withe initial start up costs. More information on this will be provided soon.

I hope those readers familiar with my work will see fit to support this initiative as fully as possible. New York, with all it represents in the world, really can’t be without a center of holistic consciousness dedicated to inner development, well-being, authentic spirituality, creativity and transformation to a sustainable society. We’re doing everything we can to make this happen and we look to you, the holistic community, to aid us in pulling this off.

I wrote this piece recently for a friend, Mark Lerner, who has started an online magazine. A chance encounter with an old book released a flood of memories of the unforgettable philosopher, writer, artist, and cultural pioneer Dane Rudhyar. It’s time we recalled this remarkable man with appreciation and gratitude.

DANE RUDHYAR: A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION 

Recently I came across a 1970 edition of The Astrology of Personality in a secondhand bookshop in New Haven, Connecticut. It had been years since I had opened a book by Dane Rudhyar and it brought back a flood of memories from the mid Seventies in California when I had the great good fortune of meeting and spending time with the man himself.

 I had recently moved to Berkeley after a harrowing year in Colombia, during which time Rudhyar’s work had served as a beacon of clarity for me in making my way through a rather chaotic personal life. There was something about his phrasing, the elegance of his prose, the symmetry of his sentences, that resonated with a deep, calm aspect of my mind. He combined intellectual rigor with esoteric wisdom and, after a year in the Andes often contemplating the vast and brilliant night sky, I was more than ready for a worldview that sought for the significance of the human condition amidst the vast cosmic expanse around us, the existence of which we spend most of our time ignoring.

 I wrote to Dane Rudhyar on arriving in California in 1974 and inquired about the International Committee of Humanistic Astrology, the formation of which he had recently announced. To my delight, he responded immediately and informed me of weekly meetings in Berkeley. Thrilled that they were gathering so close to my new home, I found myself in a small group of six or seven people in a cabin in a back garden, one of whom was monitoring an astronomy class. I will never forget his communication of a core insight from the course - many of the tiniest specks of light in the visible universe were not just stars or galaxies – they were galaxies of galaxies! Today with our extra-terrestrial telescopes, that is a commonplace understanding, but at that time, it certainly put things in perspective.

 Not long afterwards, Rudhyar’s 80th birthday celebrations were held at a hall on campus, and it fell to me to pop the numerous bottles of champagne available for the occasion. That remains a delightful memory of laughter, community and hope, all filled with spiritual optimism and good humor. I then had the privilege of spending an hour or so of personal time with him at his home near Palo Alto. After years of reading his elegant English prose, it came as a surprise that he still spoke with a thick French accent. Behind his bespectacled and bearded appearance, he was a warm and engaging man, interested in the life and views of this young stranger. I had wanted to convey to him my deep appreciation of his work, his integration of Jung and humanistic psychology, and the way he had introduced me to the thinking of the South African statesman Jan Smuts, the brilliant founder of holistic philosophy, and Churchill’s most valued adviser during the Second World War.

 So that encounter with an old paperback book this summer led me to write this brief recollection of a special time in my twenties when life brought me into contact with a man who spoke to my deepest spiritual and philosophical needs, and to whom I felt a deep sense of gratitude. To me, he was more than a pioneering astrological thinker. His books on cultural change, especially We Can Begin Again Together, wonderfully subtitled as A Re-evaluation of the Basic Concepts of Western Civilization in Terms of an Emergent Future for Mankind, and his idea of the Seed Man who could help shape a new civilization, gave me a sense of purpose and direction in my life that has proven of lasting value.

 Let’s hope that Astrology GPS can play a valuable role in returning to a broader audience this remarkable, brilliant, and wise writer whose books, many of which are now out of print, deserve to be reissued and read widely. His life and work encompassed avant-garde music in Paris, modern dance and painting, the beginnings of a counter-culture in California, and familiarity with numerous esoteric and artistic streams throughout the Twentieth Century. His was a unique journey in which we can truly say that he fulfilled the aim of astrology ‘to transform chaotic human nature into a microcosm’ and in so doing he became ‘a great Personage.’

 Ralph White is co-founder of the New York Open Center, the city’s leading center of holistic learning for many years. He is also director of the Esoteric Quest conference series and author of the memoir, The Jeweled Highway: On the Quest for a Life of Meaning.