Dr. Arlene Mazak

I've been mystically inclined since I was a child. Raised Roman Catholic in the US, I loved Jesus as completely present in the Eucharist, but rebelled against my dogmatic and authoritarian Catholic high school education, and became a spiritual seeker. In 1967, I received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where I was most interested in philosophy, world religions, and anthropology. I studied world mythologies in classes with Joseph Campbell, and had tutorials with him on the mythologies of India, which launched my life's path.

In 1971, I completed an M.A. and Ph.D. studies in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. I was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for Research Abroad in India. I lived in Varanasi for a year and chose the topic of kundalini as discussed in many of the Tantric Hindu writings of M.M. Gopinath Kaviraj. My research mentor was his personal secretary and close disciple, Pandit Hemendra Nath Chakravarty.

I returned to Varanasi several times over the next years to further consult with my mentor due to the structural complexity and secret codings of my findings. I finally wrote my dissertation on a short sabbatical after several years in San Francisco as a full-time graduate professor in the East-West Psychology Dept. of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). I also studied part-time for an M.A. in Counseling Psychology at the University of San Francisco. I then became a full-time graduate professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP), later renamed Sofia University.

I am increasingly interested in experiencing the practices of Kashmir Shaivism. Kavirajji himself closely followed the teachings of Abhinavagupta, but when I met him, he was very old, recovering from a cancer operation, and being cared for at the Mata Anandamayi Ashram. Years later, I received shaktipat from Swami Muktananda when he was visiting the US, but I had an unfortunate experience that night with the appearance of a severe whole body rash that needed immediate medical attention. In the US, I could not find a nearby resident Hindu master to receive Tantric initiations and direct my practice.

In 1995, I decided to take refuge with a Nyingma non-monastic Tibetan lama (ngakpa) who was a Dzogchen master and had a retreat center in California. In 1998, I had a faculty sabbatical in Nepal. I lived with a small Nyingma non-monastic Tibetan sangha in the village of Pharping, and had daily discussions with their leader, Kunsang Dorje Rinpoche, a well-known mahasiddha of his time. I also learned about the Tantric Buddhism of the Newar people of Nepal from a young dance-master, Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya, who became my tour guide to Newar sacred sites throughout the Kathmandu Valley. Today he is the foremost lineage holder of the Tantric dances of the Newar priests, known as Charya Nritya, and teaches both worldwide and online at www.dancemandal.com.

In 2000, I moved to Southern California and opened a private practice as a licensed psychotherapist, and I also continued teaching courses part-time. I retired from all employment after 2010. I then studied interspiritual spiritual direction and was also
ordained as an interfaith, interspiritual minister.

I continue to be most intrigued by South Asian transformational yogas, including the various Tantric Hindu and Tantric Buddhist yogic traditions as well as Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga. I want to further study their similarities and differences in their approaches to transformation and the nature of spiritual realization.

I moved from California to Pondicherry, India in 2018 to be near the Sri Aurobindo communities, use their research libraries, and consult with local scholar-practitioners.