Polyphonic Becoming: Creative Spirituality, the Arts, and the Essence of Freedom in Education

The East-West Psychology Podcast

In this podcast we meet CIIS student Lucian Dante Lazar to discuss his research at the intersections of spirituality and the arts, aiming towards the cultivation of a holistic science of creative becoming inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. We discuss esoteric approaches towards a pedagogy of creative education based upon experimental methods of radical freedom and epistemologies of spiritual identity.

Lucien Dante Lazar (b. June 24th, 1994 in Evanston, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist whose praxis is founded in the intersections of art, science, and spirituality. He received his BA from Bard College (2016), his MFA from California College of the Arts (2020), and is currently working on his PhD in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at California Institute of Integral Studies. His dissertation will concern the pedagogy of spiritual development through the diversity of the arts. Art, for Lucien Dante Lazar, is a deeply introspective and spiritual process. As a result, his work is both intimate and universal, both for the individual human being as well as for humanity as a whole. His paintings, music, sculptures, poetry, prose, as well as his interpersonal creative therapies are opportunities for healing and profound, transformative reflection. “My ultimate goal as an artist is to discover, through art, the meaning of the human being, and through this creative process, to encounter and cultivate the reality of freedom.” Lazar said. “For me, an artwork may be witnessed as a being born of, and in service to, the development of human consciousness. The more a work of art is imbued with the wide awake consciousness of humanity, the more it is capable of inviting the human being who witnesses it into a sense of one's own universality.” Lazar utilizes many mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, and a plethora of fiber arts. He also works as a poet, an essayist, and a multi-disciplinary musician. Additionally, Lazar incorporates various therapeutic healing modalities and meditative practices into his work, which he describes under the term spiritual bodywork. Each individual work of art Lazar creates lives within this multi-dimensional creative context.

The EWP Podcast credits

• East-West Psychology Podcast Website
• Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
• Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (EWP PhD candidate)
• Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
• Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
• Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
• Other music by Lucien Dante Lazar: Center of the Flute, 12 Apostles
• Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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