Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. "is a psychotherapist and professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He has been involved in the study of states of consciousness and their role in psycho-spiritual transformations for over 40 years, ever since collaborating with Leary and Alpert in their Harvard research on "consciousness-expanding" substances such as psilocybin. His books include The Unfolding Self - Varieties of Transformative Experience, Ayahuasca - Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature, and Green Psychology - Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth. He is also the founding president of the Green Earth Foundation, an ecological educational organization devoted to healing and harmonizing of the relations between humanity and the Earth."

"Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. who has a B.A. in philosophy and psychology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University, has been involved in the study of transformations of consciousness ever since, as a graduate student, he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. During the 1970s, Ralph spent 10 years in the intensive study and practice of Agni Yoga, a meditative system of working with light-fire life-energies. He wrote Maps of Consciousness, one of the earliest attempts at a comparative cartography of consciousness; and Know Your Type, a comparative survey of personality typologies, ancient and modern. He was the Academic Dean for ten years, during the 1980s, at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he taught courses there on “Altered States of Consciousness” and “Developing Ecological Consciousness.” He is now Professor Emeritus. He maintains a part-time psychotherapy practice, and conducts numerous workshops on consciousness transformation, both nationally and internationally. His books include The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, and two edited collections on the science and the phenomenology of Ayahuasca and Teonanácatl."


 * Director, River Watch
 * Contributor, to the book Consciousness in Action
 * Advisory Board, Archai
 * Distinguished Advisory board, Institute of Noetic Sciences
 * Advisory Board, Albert Hoffman Foundation
 * Advisory Board, Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics

His blog is http://ralphmetznerblog.com add he is married to Cathy Coleman.

Other Books

 * Birth of a Psychedelic Culture – Conversations about Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the Sixties, by Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner, with Gary Bravo. Foreword by John Perry Barlow (Synergetic Press, 2009).

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Albert Hofmann
 * Council for Cultural and Biological Diversity