Note to reader: we gently recommend that you track the provided links, which supply in-depth information and context to this bio-page.
Dr. Marc Gafni has been described as a world philosopher — a kind of galaxy heart brain — integrating wisdom from across multiple disciplines into what he has called a New Story of Value in response to the meta-crisis.
One cultural critic described Gafni as a cross between Einstein, Da Vinci, and Rumi, with a dash of Robin Williams working at the cutting edge of the new narrative, collaborating with a team of leading-edge thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
Another wrote, “Gafni thinks in terms of panoramic vision but with an attention to intricate nuance and detail, which together generate a level of beauty and truth that, as Michael Murphy wrote, changes the game. And yet, he has the capacity to speak to virtually any audience with a direct sincerity, passion, and simple precision that melts hearts and blows open minds.”
The renowned feminist theorist, cultural critic, and spiritual teacher Sally Kempton described Gafni as one of the great heart masters of this generation.
Gafni is playing a pivotal role in evolving a new dharma or meta-theory of meaning overflowing with heart — a new set of distinctions that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture.
Gafni’s doctorate is from Oxford University with a masters degree from Bar Ilan University. He holds an orthodox rabbinic certification from the Chief Rabbinate in Israel and non-denominational rabbinic ordination.
He is the author of forty books, of which only the first twelve have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.
The Great Library of CosmoErotic Humanism
In 2010, Gafni co-initiated the Center for World Spirituality with his close friend, leading Integral philosopher Ken Wilber. [Read Wilber about Gafni here.] The Center, which changed its name in 2023 to Center for World Philosophy and Religion, has evolved over the last twelve years into one of the most creative and audacious voices on the world scene. The mission of the Center is to articulate a download into the source code of culture and consciousness, what Gafni, together with the Center’s co-president Dr. Zachary Stein, has called a shared grammar of value — a New Story of Value — in response to existential risk. The name that they have given this New Story of Value is CosmoErotic Humanism.
Aubrey Marcus, the new board chair of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, has called his encounter with Gafni and CosmoErotic Humanism “the most paradigm shifting podcast I have ever recorded.”
Marcus, Gafni, Stein, the board of directors of the Center, and its leadership teams have founded the World Spirituality and Religion Press, which will be the primary publisher of the New Story of Value, with a commitment to deliver the New Story into the very heart of culture.
His present writing is fully focused on the Great Library of CosmoErotic Humanism, which focuses on the emergence of a new human civilization in response to the meta-crisis. His core writing and intellectual partner in these books is Dr. Zachary Stein. Marc works closely as well in this regard and others with Editorial Director and research associate Kerstin Tuschik. A second key project is the Phenomenology of Eros, together with Stephanie Valcke and Aubrey Marcus. The project director is Dr. Kristina Kincaid.
Marc, in visionary partnership with Aubrey Marcus, is preparing key popular, co-authored presentations of CosmoErotic Humanism for the mainstream public. Marcus is also the founding publisher and co-initiator of World Philosophy and Religion Press.
All four of the aforementioned interlocutors are dear friends and have engaged in extensive private study with Gafni, which is referred to as Holy of Holies study, generally for over ten years and minimally for hundreds of sessions. Holy of Holies is a sacred term, drawn from the Solomon Temple tradition, referring to the direct experience and study of the interior sciences. This is true of many of Gafni’s collaborators, who are both partners, close friends, and have also participated in Holy of Holies study in great depth. We mention this only to indicate the depth of the shared effort and collaborations, which is not project-based but rather emerges from a far deeper partnership, practice, study, commitment, and vision.
The core writings of CosmoErotic Humanism emerge from Gafni’s earlier work. These volumes are described as the first six stages in Gafni’s work on his author page on the Integral Publisher website.They include the Hebrew volumes, Reclaiming Certainty (The Certain Spirit), Reclaiming Uncertainty as a Spiritual Value (The Uncertain Spirit), Soul Prints, The Mystery of Love, The Erotic and the Holy, Tears: Reclaiming Ritual, Integral Religion, and Rosh Hashanah, and the two volumes of Radical Kabbalah. The books were widely recognized as seminal. Radical Kabbalah is introduced with a letter by the leading Kabbalah scholar Moshe Idel, who was Gafni’s doctoral supervisor at Oxford University, and was described by Dr. Zak Stein as “Works like this come along once in a generation.”
These earlier writings and their relationship to CosmoErotic Humanism are currently being discussed in a dialogue series with Layman Pascal.
At present, some of Gafni’s key books are published by the prestigious Integral Publishers and other titles by Simon and Schuster. Future volumes are slated for publication with World Philosophy and Religion Press.
The Three Great Questions of CosmoErotic Humanism
At the core of the New Story of Value are what Gafni and Stein call the three great questions of CosmoErotic Humanism.
The first question is Where are we? This is the great question of the Universe Story.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling The Universe: A Love Story. [See also a second contextual essay on the Universe: A Love Story and how that includes and transcends the classical religious and scientific Universe Stories.]
The second question is Who are you? This is the great question of personal identity.
The Your Unique Self, and Unique Self Theory, is CosmoErotic Humanism’s response to this question. Here is a link to Marc Gafni discussing Unique Self Theory with Ken Wilber and, in a more popular context, with Aubrey Marcus (Who are you? Part 1 and Who are you? Part 2).
The third great question of CosmoErotic Humanism is What is there to do? Or said differently: What is our deepest desire and deepest need? (see also Who are you? Part 1 and Who are you? Part 2)
The responses to these three questions are the ground for the emergence of a New Story of Value that has the capacity to generate a New Human and a New Humanity in response to the meta-crisis. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo amor.
This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization in response to the meta-crisis.
We Live in a Time Between Stories
The key argument of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion is that we live — like in the Renaissance — in a time between worlds and a time between stories.
As the world broke down around them, Da Vinci and a small band in the Renaissance told a New Story of Value. That new story — to the extent that its plotlines were accurate, good, true, and beautiful, and firmly rooted in both the interior and exterior sciences — raised all boats and birthed all the great dignities of modernity. To the extent, however, that they ignored key plotlines in the Universe Story, for example, the articulation of a universal shared grammar of value, they seeded what have now become the disasters of modernity — which are the root causes for the meta-crisis of existential risk. [See Aubrey Marcus’ podcast featuring Marc Gafni on Responding to the Meta-Crisis.]
In this new time between worlds and time between stories, where the challenges and risks, as well as the potentials, are exponentially greater than those of the Renaissance, the only response that will change the vector of history is the one that lifted humanity out of the dark ages into the Renaissance: To tell a New Story of Value. It is only a New Story of Value that has the power to change the vector of history.
And this time, we must integrate the best of all the new stories and not leave any core plotlines out. We need interior sciences and wisdom teachings as well exterior sciences, merged together into a larger whole, to be the ground of our shared grammar of value.
The core mission of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion is the research, articulation, and writing of the Great Library, which tells this New Story of Value. The Great Library is a collection of books and media projects to function as a strange attractor toward our memory of the future.
The Great Library is made up of two kinds of books — foundational books and impact books. The synergistic introduction of these books into public culture is aimed directly at catalyzing a crucial, pivotal evolution of today’s consciousness and culture. At this phase-shift inflection in human history, without this conscious evolving of the source code of consciousness and culture, humanity will likely not survive the existential risks now threatening our civilization.
The Great Library is an expression of our mission at the Center to evolve the source code of culture and to participate in the evolution of love. Through writing and publishing, we create what we are calling the Great Library, a body of work written as our response to the question: What do we need to give our children, so they can prosper and grow into their highest potential — even though we don’t know what kind of challenges they will face in their lives?
That Great Library provides us with a shared language, a framework, or a context, from which we can co-create together a world that works for everyone. To have shared values, a shared framework, or what we call shared memetic structures, is one of these conditions.
Key to the entire project of the New Story of Value, as articulated in the Great Library, is what Gafni and Stein call Anthro-Ontology. Anthro-Ontology answers the question of: How do we know what we know?
Citation from Gafni: Love or Die
To get a sense of Gafni’s and the work of the Center at this stage, the following slightly extended citation from a recent essay might be helpful.
However, feel free to also skip down below if you are interested in immediately following the thread of vision, books, projects, and colleagues that we will briefly unfold below.
Citation from Gafni:
Eros is life. The failure of Eros destroys life. Our lack of Eros is poised to destroy the world. We call this existential risk, or the second shock of existence.
The first shock of existence is the realization — at the dawn of human existence — that the skull grins at the banquet. Life, before it continues, is first confronted by death. The first shock of existence is the death of the individual human being.
The second shock of existence is the death of humanity, or in a second form, the death of our humanity.
All civilizations have fallen because the stories that they lived in were, in some sense, stories based on rivalrous conflict governed by win-lose metrics. Every civilization was weakened by interior polarization caused by the lack of a shared story of value.
We now have a global civilization, but we haven’t created a shared story of value. We haven’t solved the generator functions that caused all civilizations to fall. Our global civilization has exponential technologies and extraction models depleting the earth of resources that it took billions of years to create, which is going to lead to a civilizational collapse.
Existential risk: risk to our very existence.
The choice is clear: love or die.
It is that simple. Eros is no longer a luxury. It is an absolute necessity for the survival of the individual and the planet.
In the last half a century modern psychology has documented an age old truth: a fully nourished baby who is not held in loving arms will die. So too our world, personal and global — even with all the resources of intelligence and technology at our disposal — will die without being held in love. In the embrace of Eros.
We must embrace a personal path of love and a global politics of love.
Not ordinary love. Not love which is mere human sentiment — but Eros, or what we sometimes call Outrageous Love, which is the heart of existence itself.
We live in a world of outrageous pain. The only response to outrageous pain is Outrageous Love.
…
We stand in this moment poised between utopia and dystopia. We are at a time between worlds and a time between stories. We need a New Story of Value, eternal yet evolving, rooted in First Principles and First Values, which would become a universal grammar of value, a context for our diversity.
This is exactly what the Renaissance was — it was a time between worlds and a time between stories. In the Renaissance, we were swept with and challenged by the Black Death, a pandemic that swept Europe. The Black Death destroyed between a third to half of Europe and a huge part of Asia. It killed everyone. People died horrifically, brutally, in the streets. They had no idea how to meet this challenge, and so, in response to the Black Death, da Vinci and Ficino and their cohorts understood that they have to tell a new story of value — and that story was the story of modernity.
Did they get the story right? They got part of it right, and this birthed, to use Jürgen Habermas’ phrase, the dignities of modernity, the new way of information-gathering and universal human rights — but they deconstructed the source of value.
They lost the basis for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
The basis used to be divine revelation: God told us. But it was owned by every religion, and every religion had overreached and over-claimed. The revelation was often mediated through cultural categories and wasn’t fully accurate — so modernity threw out revelation, but was unable able to establish a new basis for value. Value was just assumed to be real; as it says in the founding document of American revolution, we hold these truths to be self-evident — that is, we don’t really have a basis for value, but we just take that as a given. In other words, modernity took out a loan of social capital from the traditional world.
The source of value has never been worked out, and then, gradually, value began to collapse. The Universe story began to collapse. The belief that the good, the true, and the beautiful are real began to collapse. The belief that love is real began to collapse. As Bertrand Russell is reported to have said,
“I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values, but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I do not like it.”
What do you do if you grew up in a world in which value is not real? A world without a source of value, without a Universe story, without a story of human identity, without a story of desire, without a narrative of power? In the words of W.B.Yeats, the center does not hold. We become the hollow men and the stuffed men, gesture without form. You have a collapse at the very center of society, because you no longer have Eros. You no longer have a reality in which value is real — and so you have this lingering sense of emptiness. You have a complete collapse at the very center — and that’s the source of existential risk.
…
We are faced with global challenges. The only way we can meet them is through genuine global coordination.
- Global coordination requires shared global will — political will and moral will.
- We cannot arouse global will without global resonance — we need to resonate with each other like instruments resonate in the symphony.
- We cannot have global resonance without global coherence.
- We cannot have global coherence without global intimacy — but we are confronted with a global intimacy disorder.
We define intimacy as shared identity in the context of relative otherness. This is expressed in what we call the Intimacy equation:
Intimacy = shared identity in the context of [relative] otherness x mutuality of recognition x mutuality of pathos x mutuality of value x mutuality of purpose.
…
The global intimacy disorder is the root cause for existential risk, underlying its core generator functions. The global intimacy disorder is rooted in the failure to experience ourselves in a field of shared intrinsic value, which derives from the deconstruction of value.
Indeed, it is wholly accurate to say that the root cause of the two generator functions of existential risk is the failed story of intrinsic value, or what we might also call the breakdown of Eros.
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- The first generator function is the success story. Our modern success story is rivalrous conflict governed by win-lose metics, which violates all the terms of the Intimacy equation: there is no shared identity and no mutuality of recognition, feeling, value or purpose, and instead of relative otherness, there is alienated otherness. Such a story generates complicated fragile systems with no allurement or intimacy between the parts, systems which optimize for efficiency (as an expression of win-lose metric) and not for resiliency and life.
- The second generator function is the deconstruction of intrinsic value The deconstruction of value means that human value does not participate in any sense in the intrinsic value of the real, for the real is dogmatically declared to have no intrinsic value. Thus, there is no shared identity between the interior of the human being and reality. There is no common participation in a field of shared intrinsic value. Instead of intimacy with value we are alienated from value — and only intrinsic value can arouse will — political, moral, and social will.
To sum up, without a shared grammar of value there is no global intimacy, and therefore no global coherence, and no global coordination in response to catastrophic and existential risk, which means — put simply — there will be, quite literally, no future.
…
If the global intimacy disorder is the root cause of the generator functions of existential risk then the root cause of the global intimacy disorder is the collapse of First Principles and First Values embedded in a Story of Value.
…
To solve Russell’s challenge, the apparent argument for the subjectivity of ethical values, we have to reground value theory in eternal yet evolving First Principles and First Values, and articulate a New Story of Value as a context of our diversity, which we call CosmoErotic Humanism.
…
A New Story doesn’t mean a made-up story. It means doing the hard work of integrating the validated insights of the traditional world, the modern world, and the postmodern world. This is the intention at the heart of CosmoErotic Humanism. CosmoErotic Humanism, together with other emergent strands, needs to become the ground of a world religion as a context for our diversity. We need religion even as we need science to articulate a shared global grammar of value.
At the core of this New Story of Value is what we term the interior sciences, which engage Value as Eros, or what we term ErosValue, as the primary structure of Reality and form the ground for CosmoErotic Humanism, the New Story of Value, and the shared grammar of evolving value as a context for our diversity.
Now we return to our thread from above.
Organizations that Partner with the Center for World Philosophy and Religion
Homo Amor Project
The science-based vision of Homo amor takes issue with the dogmatic materialism that lies at the core of the popular vision of the human being presented in works like Sapiens and Homo Deus. It offers a coherent vision of humanity — a new science-based story grounded in First Principles — which rejects the dogmas of both religious and scientific fundamentalism. Homo amor is a new set of evolutionary frameworks that offer an evolving new-story vision of identity, the Universe, community, and power, without which we cannot successfully confront the magnitude of risks with which we are confronted.
David J. Temple
David J. Temple is a fictional personality created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. The two primary authors behind David J. Temple are Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. For different projects specific additional luminary writers may be named as part of the collaboration.
Great works that change the course of history are rarely attributed to a sole author, think the Upanishads, the Zohar, of the Bible. Or they are attributed to a single author as a fictional figure who holds the energy of that transmission into culture, think the Zohar or, according to many scholars, William Shakespeare. Such an authorship allows the writing to transcend the rivalrous conflict governed by win/lose dynamic that often drives writing projects and is itself one of the primary generator functions of the meta-crisis.
Such authorship also grounds the writing to be rooted in a broader community of leading thinkers and teachers who come together to evolve culture as a collective, what we refer to at the Center as a Unique Self Symphony.
The foundational Homo amor books — eight in total — will be authored by David J. Temple. Other key works in CosmoErotic Humanism will be authored by Marc and Zak, including key works around the Universe: A Love Story, metapsychology, personal myth, and more.
The Eros Project | Phenomenology of Eros Books
The Eros Project is researching and writing an opus-magnum, game-changing, twelve-volume New Phenomenology of Eros. The director of the project is Dr. Kristina Kincaid. The premise of the Eros Project is the reclaiming of a scientific vision of Eros and its First Principles as the animating lifeforce and information that is the source code for the self-actualizing Cosmos as well as the ethical driver of our lives. Eros, scientifically understood as the animating energy of evolution living uniquely in each of us, is an indispensable building block in the articulation of shared global ethos for a global civilization.
One Mountain, Many Paths
Together with the late Barbara Marx Hubbard, Gafni co-founded One Mountain, Many Paths. The group gathers weekly every Sunday as a Global Communion of Pioneering Souls committed to articulating First Principles and First Values and a New Story for a New Humanity. Or, as Marc and Barbara said together, a Planetary Awakening in Love through Unique Self Symphonies. One Mountain is held by an excellent leadership team, constantly innovating and upleveling the vision and its delivery.
Unique Self Institute
Gafni is co-founder of the Unique Self Institute with Claire Molinard. The Unique Self Institute, directed by Claire Molinard, is committed to answering the questions of Who am I and Who Are You? — and in doing so, to articulate a shared narrative of identity that transforms both our experience of ourselves and of each other in a fundamental way. Claire is joined by David Cicerchii at the helm of Unique Self Institute. Claire and David have been deep in study of CosmoErotic Humanism and Unique Self Theory with Gafni for over ten years. This new theory of self is core to the way we do education, politics, relationships, economics, psychology, and everything else.
Outrageous Love Project
Gafni is co-founder of the Integral Evolutionary Tantra Institute and the Outrageous Love Project with his evolutionary partner Dr. Kristina Kincaid.
Foundation for Conscious Evolution
Dr. Gafni is the Evolutionary Scholar in Residence and — since Barbara’s Marx Hubbard’s passing — the Director at the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.
The Foundation for Conscious Evolution was founded by Barbara Marx Hubbard and continued by Dr. Marc Gafni. The purpose of the books and activist projects of this division is to articulate the momentous idea of Conscious Evolution: that Conscious Evolution is rooted in the tradition of Evolutionary Spirituality, itself sources in crystallizations of the interior sciences that appeared in the renaissance.
Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, Dr. Marc Gafni has been working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.
In parallel, Marc Gafni and Andrew Cohen are actively dialoguing to establish the parameters of an emergent Evolutionary World Spirituality.
Eros Mystery School
Creating Evolutionary We-Space to practice Outrageous Love in community remains one of our core missions at the Eros Mystery School. Krista Steenbergen is the Co-Director of the Eros Mystery School, together with Dr. Marc Gafni. The Mystery School is an evolutionary educational platform that acts as a source of both renewal and inspiration, as we combine our individual transformation with taking an active stand in the world, for the healing and transformation of the collective whole.
It is intellectually challenging and spiritually incorrect. It stands out from the spiritual clichés and speaks truth to power with laughter, delight, integrity, and “Outrageous Love”, a core term in Unique Self theory and in Cosmo Erotic Humanism as developed by Marc Gafni.
For a taste of Eros Mystery School, read this beautiful poem.
The Crossing
A three-day journey that transforms you and society. From Homo sapiens to Homo Amor. There is outrageous pain in the world… this is an invitation to outrageous love and courageous action. You will learn to love in a way you have never loved before, you will find a resolve for a better world you didn’t know you had. You will undergo an identity shift that brings a new sense of meaning and purpose to your life.
The Crossing is our response to the meta-crisis looming over us, our children, and our children’s children. Our goal is to create a new cultural meme which can spread round the globe.
The Symposium Series
The Center for World Philosophy and Religion has recently initiated a symposium series in conjunction with the Monastic Academy.
This is how it has been described: Motive is to create an intensification of Spirit adequate to the historical moment. The goal is to work towards resolving the meta-crisis at the level of superstructure — to collaborate in the shaping and telling of a new World Philosophy.
In the context of planetary meta-crisis, we will convene a select group to work at the level of worldview foundations. We have an interest in articulating a philosophical and religious vision adequate to our times.
This symposium series focuses on the system of First Principles and First Values that are at the core of this work. The frameworks and distinctions offered weave together a Story of Value capable of reviving our faltering civilization, and thus offer a vision of the future beyond the metacrisis.
The Leadership of the Center
There are different groups of individuals who provide leadership or vision for the organization in different capacities.
The Center for World Philosophy and Religion and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution each has a distinct legal board which makes its decisions. All the decisions are made collectively by the appropriate board and board leadership. This listing includes present and former board members, advisory board members, research fellows, faculty, and officers of the organizations. The leadership group gathered around the Office for the Future brings together a leading group of committed thought leaders, civic and business leaders and activists.
Former Board Chairs include in order of their service:
- Lori Galperin
- Barbara Marx Hubbard
- John P. Mackey of Whole Foods
- Kate Maloney
- Carrie Kish
- Adam Bellow
- Shareef Malnik
- Gabrielle Anwar.
Our current Board Chair is Aubrey Marcus.
The Holding Container for All the Projects: The Office for the Future
The holding ground for the entire vision and all of the aforementioned entities and projects is the Office for the Future.
All of these initiatives function under the larger umbrella of the Office for the Future, co-founded by Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marc Gafni, Zachary Stein, and chaired by Stephanie Valcke, with Wouter Torfs and Mathi Gijbels as co-chairs.
Earlier Contexts:
Biographical Context of Gafni’s Work
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed participating in the evolution of love.
He is a Rabbinic lineage holder in Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah, as well as a close reader and student of world philosophies. In the latter context, he has served as guest editor of the academic Journal of Integral Theory and Practice on issues of Integral spirituality and a faculty member of J.F.K. University.
Gafni self-describes as a citizen of both the new lineage of World Spirituality even as he continues to practice in the classical first practices of the Hebrew wisdom Solomon lineage. Gafni has initiated multiple leading-edge visionary programs including writing and hosting a leading National Television show on a major network in the Middle East on Ethics and Spirit.
Gafni also initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and movie with John Mackey and Kate Maloney, whose method and movement was to bring together key thought leaders and change agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Evolutionary Love.
Addendum
It is historically true that many of the great figures of history were profoundly attacked in their days. The attack almost always critiqued not only their philosophical or scientific positions or their political leadership, but always went to defame and demean their character.
One such figure is Dr. Marc Gafni. He is, according to all reports, friend and foe alike, one of the most brilliant thinkers on the scene today, with a contribution to make that, according to his friends and supporters, is critically important at this particular juncture in our political and social history. Gafni and his partner Dr. Kristina Kincaid recently met to discuss the context and the experience of public attack with Aubrey Marcus in a moving interview. A full refutation of any false claims made over the years appears at WhoIsMarcGafni.com.
Learn more about Dr. Gafni’s teaching at:
www.centerforintegralwisdom.org
PRAISE FOR RADICAL KABBALAH
Ken Wilber, Integral Philosopher
“A work of inspired, audacious scholarship. The breadth, depth and the sheer importance of this work moved me.
I immediately recognized it as a seminal work, identifying a critical lineage of enlightenment from the tradition of Kabbalah, which needed to be incorporated into the Integral model.
All this will inform the emergence of a genuine framework for a world spirituality based on Integral principles — a critical need at this moment in time.”
Zachary Stein, Integral Scholar, Metrics Theorist, Harvard University
“Gafni’s books are unrivaled in their provision of a profoundly new language of liberation. These are teachings for our time — a time to practice spirituality in the world, fearlessly, with eyes open, and to participate in a planet needing to be transformed by the power of justice and love.
Read these books. You will be compelled by the rigor and depth of the scholarship while swooning from the depth and beauty of the ideas. Works like this come once in a generation.”
Sally Kempton, Author of Meditation for the Love of It
“Marc Gafni has written a magisterial work. Like Gafni himself, it combines depth of intellect with integrity of heart and has much to teach us, both from a scholarly perspective and as a contemporary transmission of what Gafni calls Evolutionary Kabbalah.
In short, the book provides an spiritual, intellectual and existential matrix for Gafni’s teaching on Unique Self as an enlightened individual expression of the divine. This is one of Lainer’s most important and radical ideas, and it has, as Gafni describes it here, profound implications for the understanding of enlightenment in the post-traditional American spiritual community.”
Prof. Richard Mann, University of Michigan, Editor, Transpersonal Series, Suny Press
“This work by Dr. Marc Gafni makes a landmark contribution to a number of fields. I am reminded in reading of the legitimate excitement that was generated by Elaine Pagels and others as they opened up the parallel tradition of the Gnostic gospels that had been expunged from the Church’s teaching.
I expect Gafni to gradually emerge as one of the significant intellectual figures of our time, making a substantive contribution to the evolution of consciousness.”
PRAISE FOR A RETURN TO EROS
“Marc and Kristina are going where few dare to go. They are showing us what it means to live a fully erotic life.”
—John Gray, bestselling author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
“A Return to Eros is the map for the new human. Read it and be forever enlivened and transformed! I believe this is the most compelling invita-tion ever written to live the Erotic Life. It changed my life.”
—Kristen Ulmer, former professional extreme skier and author of The Art of Fear
“Surrender to this book. Erudite, provocative, and filled with lively insights, there is much to be learned from it about the sexual confusion of our times.”
—Adam Bellow, author of In Praise of Nepotism: A History of Family Enterprise from King David to George W. Bush
“A Return to Eros is a book written with no hang-ups, no compromises, and no holds barred. It rocks!”
—Jonny Podell, iconic American rock ’n’ roll music agent at the Podell Talent Agency
“I’ve known Kristina for many decades . . . great to see she is sharing her life work with the world . . . Join the outrageous love train!”
—Shep Gordon, legendary rock ’n’ roll manager and New York Times bestselling author of They Call Me Supermensch
“A Return to Eros evolves our understanding of love, and does it in a way that will transform your own experience of love and Eros. It is a radi-cally inspiring and important book that can help all of us recognize more deeply how love’s energy literally drives reality.”
—Sally Kempton, author of Awakening Shakti
“A Return to Eros should be placed on the shelf next to the great works on emotional and sexual emancipation, including Marcuse’s Eros and Civi-lization and O Brown’s Life Against Death. Gafni and Kincaid remind us that eros and ethics are inseparable, that we must free the erotic from the ghetto of the merely sexual, and in so doing awaken our passion for truth and justice. There may be no more urgent lesson for our culture, which now stands on the brink of another descent into barbarism, that it is through and from love that true power flows.”
—Zak Stein, EdD (Harvard), Co-President of the Center for for World Philosophy and Religion, co-founder of Lectica, Inc.
PRAISE FOR MARC GAFNI’S YOUR UNIQUE SELF
“It is very rare that one comes across a teacher or a book that is ‘changing the game.’ My friend, Dr. Marc Gafni, is such a teacher. He is a rare com-bination of brilliance, depth, and heart. Marc’s teaching on the Unique Self in an evolutionary context is ‘changing the game.’”
—Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen Institute and author of Golf in the Kingdom
“Your Unique Self could only have been written by someone who pas-sionately lives his own uniqueness. Marc Gafni is a brilliant teacher and heart master with a rare capacity for empathy and a gift for creating com-munity. This book contains the essence of his teaching on what it means to live from an enlightened life from a ground of one’s own personal uniqueness. This is a book that deserves to become a classic.”
—Sally Kempton, author of Meditation for the Love of It
“Dr. Marc Gafni’s Unique Self teaching is seminal. What you hold in your hands is a radically exciting and groundbreaking book that will change forever not only how you think about enlightenment, but how you understand, from a post-metaphysical perspective, the very nature of human life itself. The Unique Self work is magnificent, and it belongs among the ‘great books.’
—Ken Wilber, author of A Brief History of Everything
“At last—a safe, precise, and potent infusion—Unique Self ! Not so much a book, as an antidote, Unique Self stands with spiritual teacher, scholar, and master, Marc Gafni’s Soulprints and Mystery of Love as a trilogy of love and healing for humanity. Read and be restored.”
—Lori Halperin, leading clinician and theorist in fields of marital and sexual dysfunction
“With exceptional brilliance and an awakened heart, Dr. Marc Gafni speaks to all of us who are interested in the evolution of consciousness.
His teachings on the Unique Self enlightenment are essential for the next stage in our evolution. They have emerged from his direct experience, and I highly recommend them.”
—Michael Bernard Beckwith, author of Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul’s Potential
“Marc, a fellow drinker at the holy taverns has written a fine, fine book. Kabbalists say a Day of Tikkun (evolution, soul-repair) is coming. There are great stories here from the Hasidic masters and from Marc’s own life, honoring the unique soulmaking that has brought you to this moment. This book will deepen that astonishing mystery and awaken you to the individual beauty of your path.”
—Coleman Barks, author of Rumi: The Big Red Book
“Marc Gafni’s overflowing heart and transmission of the Unique Self teaching profoundly moves me. Dr. Marc holds the lineage energy of the great Hasidic masters of Kabbalah, which he brings with him into the visionary initiative of Center for Integral Wisdom. There is little doubt in my mind that Your Unique Self: The Future of Enlightenment will become one of the classic texts that forms the World Spirit vision that our world needs so deeply.”
—Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World and founder of the Dzogchen Meditation Centers
“At this historic moment, our human mind is passing the border toward a new consciousness. Marc Gafni is far enough ahead of most of us to articulate insights he gained beyond that borderline. Yet, like all great teachers, the author becomes transparent. Here is an invitation and a great opportunity to listen—not to Marc Gafni, but to your Unique Self. Thus this book becomes an indispensable travel guide into the realm of a vast new consciousness.”
—Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk and author of The Spirit of Practice