Online Zoom Forum: Spiritual Eldership: Discernment, Wisdom, Leadership and Service.
Date: Wednesday 4 November 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be six talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Rev Kurt Johnson PhD:
Bio: Rev Kurt Johnson PhD has worked in professional science and comparative religion for more than fifty years. A well-known author, and co-founder of the award winning Light on Light Press (Nautilus “Best in Small Press” 2024), he is one of the editors of the recent two-volume series Interspirituality: The Heritage and Interspiritiuality: The Future. A prominent figure on international committees, particularly at the United Nations, he has published over 200 scientific articles and seven books, including co-authoring or co-editing award winners The Coming Interspiritual Age, Our Moment of Choice, Nabokov’s Blues and Fine Lines. His co-founded Light on Light Press has received nine Nautilus Awards. Ordained or certified in five spiritual traditions, Johnson served on the faculty of New York's One Spirit Interfaith Seminary for fifteen years and was on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for twenty-five years. As part of UNITY EARTH and the Interspiritual Dialogue Network he has been a part of major international events for many years, and co-edits two e-magazines: The Convergence and Light on Light. He also cohosts the ongoing Convergence podcast series, originally from VoiceAmerica. He serves on core teams of the Evolutionary Leaders, The Holomovement and Prosocial World. See EvolutionaryLeaders.net/leaders/KJohnson; lightonlight.us; issuu.com/LightonLight; isdna.org; thecominginterspiritualage.com; interspirituality.com.
Speakers:
Robert Atkinson, PhD:
Title: Spiritual Eldering With a Unitive Vision.
Description: The most vital responsibility of today’s elders may be to not only become mentors to the younger generation, but in doing so help guide youth and young adults toward and through the timeless, universal transformative process that leads from a divided worldview to a vision of wholeness and unity. This presentation, exploring wisdom as evolutionary and perennial, will address a style of leadership, or eldership, that is deigned to bring about unity, discernment as independently investigating truth for one’s self, and social action for the common good as service to humanity.
Bio: Robert Atkinson, PhD, is an award-winning author, educator, and developmental psychologist whose work bridges storytelling, transformation, and the evolution of consciousness with a unitive vision. His latest book, The Way of Unity: Essential Principles and Preconditions for Peace (2025) offers a framework and study guide for putting into action the unitive wisdom underpinning our collective evolution. He is the author of A New Story of Wholeness (2022), Our Moment of Choice (co-editor, 2020), Year of Living Deeply: A Memoir of 1969 (2019), The Story of Our Time (2017), The Gift of Stories (1995), and six other books. He is director of StoryCommons, founder of One Planet Peace Forum, and member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle. www.robertatkinson.net
Audrey E. Kitagawa, J.D.:
Title: The Role of Spiritual Elders in Creating an Ethical, Values-based Foundation For Living.
Description: The leadership and wisdom of spiritual elders are important resources that can help guide society toward peace and well being. The historic role which elders have in instilling values and a moral/ethical compass are essential foundations for developing the hearts of compassion, kindness and caring that creates stability and coherence in the face of increasing global complexities. Anchoring the individual in the responsibilities of personal agency is key to the flourishing of one’s own potential, and people everywhere.
Bio: Audrey Kitagawa is the President and Founder of the International Academy for Multicultural Cooperation, President of the Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family, Chair of the Anti-Racism Initiative, Chair of the Gender Equality Working Group, and a member of the Advisory Council of the G20 Interfaith Forum. She is the former Advisor to the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations. She is a UN Representative for United Religions Initiative, a member of the Advisory Council for the Global Security Institute, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Facta Est Lux Human Rights Institute. She has been listed in Who’s Who in American Law, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and Prominent People of Hawai‘i.
David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA:
Title: Spiritual Eldership: Maturing into Love and Wisdom.
Description: Stepping into being an elder is a stage of life, but also of awareness. In traditional societies, elders are respected, but in our own time cleverness is prioritised over wisdom. In my teaching career, I nurtured pupils in order to become who they really were, and I now understand this process as one of universalisation of one’s perspective; also ripening into the sweetness of love, a presence that can be sensed, as I did myself in the case of Boris Nikolov, a close disciple of the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov, 1864-1944).
Bio: David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath, spiritual activist and poet, who is Founder of Character Education Scotland, Global Ambassador of the Scientific and Medical Network (https://scientificandmedical.net). He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorer since 1986. His most recent publications are his essays, A Quest for Wisdom (2021), his collection of poems Better Light a Candle (2022), Spiritual Awakenings (2022, edited with Marjorie Woollacott), The Great Upshift (2023, edited with Ervin Laszlo), and The Playful Universe (2024, edited with Marjorie Woollacott and Gary Schwartz). David is also Chair of the Galileo Commission (www.galileocommission.org) which seeks the widen a science of consciousness beyond a materialistic world view. His YouTube Channel is https://www.youtube.com/@DavidLorimer.InspiringPurpose
Kenneth R. Lakritz, Ph.D.:
Title: Elder or Older: The Midlife Crossroad and Later Life Initiation and Awakening.
Description: As the life span extends, we are faced the possibility of cultivation of meaning and the deepening of relationship with Self in the second half of life. Without essential midwifing that facilitates and nurtures awakening and conscious re-linking to our depths and ground of being, we have no social models other than to perpetuate the pre-midlife conditioned identity. The crucial role of mid-life initiation, to assist in Remembering and awakening to essential being, is a prerequisite for cultivating the ground of spiritual eldership. When there are no social structures for and value of initiation we are left with a culture of olders, or what Robert Bly referred to as a “sibling society,” and no Elders to provide initiation to the young.
Bio: Kenneth R. Lakritz, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist with four decades of experience, is the author of the new book Remembering Self: Seasons of the Soul Rediscovered Through Mystical Experience and Depth Psychology. Dr. Lakritz’s career has taken a winding path from clinical neuropsychology through his current dedication to long-term depth psychotherapy with an alchemical, Jungian orientation. He has devoted his clinical and academic life to adult developmental challenges, both with midand late-life populations, and has spent many years writing on the subjects of eldering, inter-generational dialogue, and late-life development. He is an author of books and articles about adult development, conscious aging, and elder wisdom, including the Parabola book, Elders on Love: Dialogues on the Consciousness, Cultivation, and Expression of Love.
Prof Ashok Gangadean:
Title: The Evolution of Human Mentorship in our Unprecedented Global Age.
Description: Our Human Family has been in the midst of an ongoing and deep existential evolution in our Human Enterprise, and we have now entered an unprecedented Global Age calling for an urgent maturation of what it means to be Human. Over the past 2,500+ years on a planetary scale in the context of First Philosophy, our perennial quest to gain deeper intimacy with What-is-First, our amazing diversity of Elders, First Responders, Wisdom Teachings have pioneered creative pathways to the Source of all Life and Existence.
Whether we “name” this Infinite Source as Being, Reality, Logos, Sophia, Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, Tao, Buddha Nature, to mention a select few, there is latent consensus that the Source of all Life and Existence must be boundless and infinite. Certain revered Elders such a Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohamed, Socrates, and other eminent First Responders sought to pioneer pathways for our human family to gain access our Original and Highest Human Form, our Mindful and Awakened Self which flows in communion with Primary Being or Infinite Presence.
However, through the centuries of our Human Enterprise as we emerged in an unprecedented Global Age it became clear that our great First Teachings, Enlightenment and Wisdom narratives, our Sacred Scriptures and Religious forms of life remained rather “localized” and in scattered “silos” each alleging to present an absolute and universal teaching for our human family. Is there Common Ground or Consensus across and between our diverse First Narratives and diverse Mentors of what it means to be “Human” and what it means to emerge as evolved Persons in our Global Age?
Entering a Global Age dilates a new and uncharted Evolutionary Frontier wherein our widely diverse First Narratives and First Responders, our revered Mentors and Models of our Human Genome, encounter and face each other in the open horizon of this Global Commons. In our exploration I shall focus on findings of Global First Philosophy which makes clear that What-is-First is the Source of all lives, all narratives, all beings, all cultures and worlds, and thus binding on all humans. In this context of Global First Philosophy Infinite Source is Infinite Presence and Infinitely Unum. Global Ontology reveals how and why any and all First Narratives co-arise from this Infinite Source which deepens our Human Enterprise in our Global Age.
Here it becomes clear that the most urgent onto-medical challenge facing our Human Family is to mind our “minding” and tend with highest priority to a more evolved human technology that opens deeper access to ((Infinite Presence)). What is the hitherto missing ((code)) or mind operating ((process)) that overcomes the patterns of existential fragmentation and opens evolved human literacy for cultures of Deep Dialogue, Human individual and collective Flourishing in our Global Age? Do we have Global Mentors and evolved Elders of Source Life and Infinite Presence? These themes elaborated in my Web TV Series: YouTube channel
Bio: Ashok Gangadean is a world renowned global philosopher, author and spiritual activist. He is the Margaret Gest Professor of Global Philosophy at Haverford College where he has taught for the past fifty eight years. He is author of several books, including Meditations of Global First Philosophy: Quest for the Missing Code of Logos and the audio book- Awakening The Global Mind: A New Philosophy for Healing Ourselves and Our World (with Sounds True). Ashok is also the Founder-Director of the ((Global Dialogue Institute)) which introduced the Seven Stages of Deep Dialogue – innovative technology of Deep Dialogue between worlds in the art of being an awakened Human. Ashok’s current book in progress – Awakening Global Enlightenment: The Maturation of our Species – reaches out to the widest possible global audience and is also being drafted as a potential feature movie script revealing the “greatest ((story)) never told” – quest for the missing Source Code of codes. Ashok just released a double CD audio presenting this project – as a “movie trailer”. www.unumbeing.com
He completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Brandeis University and his early work focused on Logic (Science of Thought) and Ontology (Science of Being). Throughout his career he has been in quest of the primal integral logic at the heart of human reason, and in bringing to the fore the deep dynamics of communication and dialogue between diverse worldviews. In this quest over four decades to clarify and excavate the common ground across and between widely diverse worlds, cultures, ideologies and disciplines he has emerged as a pioneer of the new frontier of global reason, global ethics and global wisdom. His courses range over Philosophy of Logic and Language, Global Ontology, Global Ethics, Hindu, Buddhist and Zen Thought in Global Context and Global Wisdom. See more in his website: www.awakeningmind.orgat Brandeis University and his early work focused on Logic (Science of Thought) and Ontology (Science of Being). Throughout his career he has been in quest of the primal integral logic at the heart of human reason, and in bringing to the fore the deep dynamics of communication and dialogue between diverse worldviews. In this quest over four decades to clarify and excavate the common ground across and between widely diverse worlds, cultures, ideologies and disciplines he has emerged as a pioneer of the new frontier of global reason, global ethics and global wisdom. His courses range over Philosophy of Logic and Language, Global Ontology, Global Ethics, Hindu, Buddhist and Zen Thought in Global Context and Global Wisdom.
Rev Diane Berke:
Bio: Rev. Diane Berke is the Founder and Spiritual Director of One Spirit Learning Alliance and One Spirit Interfaith Seminary. Ordained in 1988, she is a respected pioneer in the field of interfaith/interspiritual education and has trained and ordained roughly 1500 interfaith/interspiritual ministers over the course of her work.
In addition to her ordination, Diane holds advanced degrees in sociology, psychology, and therapeutic counseling, and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in New York State. She is also certified as a facilitator of the Circles of Trust® work of the Center for Courage and Renewal. In addition to her work with One Spirit, she maintains a private practice in spiritual counseling/spiritual companioning in New York City and via Zoom.
Diane is the author of three books, Love Always Answers, The Gentle Smile, and Developing and Deepening Your Spiritual Practice, as well as numerous educational manuals. She has been a member of the faculty of Andrew Harvey’s Institute for Sacred Activism, a founding member of the Contemplative Alliance of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, and is currently a member of the core team of Transformation365, an online initiative to support people in cultivating or deepening a contemplative practice.
A student and teacher of A Course in Miracles for 30 years, Diane has led retreats and workshops throughout the United States and internationally. As an educator, spiritual counselor, and therapist, she is known for her compassion, clarity, and ability to create and hold space for healing and transformation.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
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