First East-West, transpersonal psychology graduate program in the world

Home >> News and Events >> CIIS President Joseph Subbiondo Speaks at Parliament of World’s Religions in Australia  Jan 12 2009

Joseph Subbiondo, president of the California Institute of Integral Studies, spoke at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne, Australia in December 2009. The gathering, just the fifth held since that body first began to meet in 1893, featured representatives and scholars of faiths from all over the globe.

The springboard for Subbiondo's presentation was the intellectual and spiritual inspiration that Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) provided for Haridas Chaudhuri (1913-1975), the founder of CIIS. Subbiondo's talk centered on Dr. Chaudhuri's adoption of Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga to develop integral studies, an innovative model of education that underlies the vision of CIIS. Subbiondo highlighted three characteristics of Dr. Chaudhuri's view of integral studies: the convergence of East and West; the integration of mind, body, and spirit; and the identity of the opposites.

Subbiondo stressed that Chaudhuri's vision for the need of integral education was based on his realization that world peace depended upon a better understanding between the East and the West. "Because most, if not all, of the world's current wars are rooted in conflicts between and among religions, Dr. Chaudhuri knew that CIIS, like all colleges and universities, needed to promote interreligious dialogue and interfaith understanding in order for us all to stand together despite our deeply held differences," said Subbiondo.

The Parliament of the World's Religions sponsors an international gathering of representatives and scholars from the various spiritual and religious traditions and engages them in interfaith/interreligious dialogue. The goal of the parliament is to cultivate harmony among the diverse traditions in order to promote social justice, global peace, and environmental sustainability.
In November, Subbiondo was a keynote speaker at an interfaith conference at Carroll College in Helena, Montana. There he emphasized that higher education needs to play a critical role in developing the quality of interfaith dialogue that can lead to religious pluralism.

PhD and MA in Philosophy and Religion, Concentration in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Voice and Vision 

Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) graduate programs are dedicated to re-imagining the human species as a mutually enhancing member of the Earth community. 

They attract intellectually engaged individuals who are in varying degrees dismayed by what they see happening in industrial societies and who are striving to find meaningful ways to develop their gifts to serve the future of the world.

We support those called to meet the Earth community's unprecedented evolutionary challenge by offering students a challenging and supportive learning community in which to find their voice and vision as leaders.

Home >> Academics >> Graduate Programs >> Integral Counseling Psychology  Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology, Concentration in Integral Counseling Psychology Educational Vision

• Transpersonal—Spiritual, greater than the individual, transcends the personal.
• Integral—Essential to wholeness, involving all aspects of a person, the synthesis of different theories.
• Transformative—Understand your own psyche in order to become a therapist and help the greater community.
• Experiential—Actually practice in real time what you are learning.
• Diversity—Awareness and process of threading cultural, gender, and sexual-orientation diversity throughout the program.

The Integral Counseling Psychology (ICP) program was the first East-West, transpersonal psychology graduate program in the world. As a transpersonally oriented program, we view psychological healing and growth within the larger context of spiritual unfolding.