Who:  Sally Kempton, also known as Swami Durgananda, is among the most dynamic, insightful, and sought-after teachers of Siddha Yoga, and is author of the celebrated guide to spiritual practice, The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience.

Summary:  Sally Kempton is one of the most extraordinary pioneers in more integral, comprehensive forms of spiritual teaching, and she is also the last one who would ever make a big fuss about it.  But Sally is worth getting excited about, and we want to let you in on the secret. 

Born to socially-conscious parents (her father was a Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal news columnist), Sally went on to an amazing career as a feminist activist and writer for publications such as The New York Times, Esquire, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and Harpers.  She was a brilliant example of what it meant to be at the leading edge of the socially-consciousness political Left, where religion and spirituality was generally seen as "the opiate of the masses," and one of the most oppressive forces in human history.

That all changed when Sally experienced for herself an insight so powerful that only spiritual or mystical terms seemed to apply.  Here, Sally and Ken talk about the absolutely crucial distinction between mythic, dogmatic pre-rational forms of religion and spirituality (think Crusades, homophobia, etc.), and the direct, experience-it-for-yourself trans-rational forms of religion and spirituality (think liberation, enlightenment, etc.)  The tragedy is that the social and political Left—not that the Right does any better—can almost never make this distinction: all they see is the conservative, traditional, literalistic form of religion that is probably responsible for more suffering than any other element of human existence, and therefore miss entirely the core mystical truths at the contemplative center of every major religion, whereby liberation is a direct experience of ever-present Spirit, not the salvation promised by strict belief in a mythic god. 

What makes Sally such an extraordinary teacher is that she started as one of the leading exemplars of spirituality's chief opponent—the social-activist Left—and then through direct experience and years of training she came to know personally what the heart of spirituality really is.  She has lived, and excelled, on "both sides of the street."  Together, Sally and Ken explore what a 21st-century spirituality might look like, a truly Integral spirituality, and the exciting steps each one is making towards making this vision come to life.  This new expression of spirituality can be adorned—if one chooses—with the beloved symbols of the sacred tradition one feels most drawn to.  Integral Spirituality is both a bold new path into the future of spiritual meaning, but resting always on, and transcending and including, the work and devotion of all who have come before us, clearing the path so that we could see all the more clearly who we really are….

An Integral Approach to spirituality introduces and applies the revolutionary synthesis of both structures of consciousness (archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral, super-integral) and states of consciousness (gross-waking, subtle-dreaming, causal-deep-sleep, witnessing-turiya, nondual-turiyatita).  Nearly any state of consciousness can be experienced at any stage or structure of consciousness, which is why, for example, one can have a genuine mystical experience of nondual unity consciousness, and then interpret that to mean that Jesus Christ is the one true savior, and only those who believe in him will be saved.  To find out more about this unprecedented synthesis and exploration of the good, the bad, and the ugly in religion and spirituality, check out Ken's essay "What Is Integral Spirituality," and Ken's book Integral Spirituality.