This podcast episode explores how one mystical experience can bring an individual to question the nature of reality enough so that they devote their life to answering questions that often time seem unanswerable: What is the nature of reality? What is a self? What is identity? Also, how do people approach their lives after they have an experience that challenges the way they see the world; yet because that same experience seems so outside of their cultural norms, they keep it to themselves? Although with that said, Dr. Linda Ceriello began to notice that at the turn of the millennium many more people seemed free to start a public discussion about these radical personal experiences that seem to shatter and destabilize one’s worldview. We discuss the millennials and the plural generations as challenging the boundaries of these cultural identities, and how these younger generations are dealing with the grand narratives, they have been provided — the birth of the “spiritual but not religious” movement. We explore the differences between modernism, postmodernism, and the development of what some call metamodern; popular culture and the various depictions of mystical narratives; and she examines how Russell Brand has become such a significant figure in popular culture, fulfilling roles ranging from social advocate to spiritual teacher, and comedian. Bio:

Linda Ceriello is a scholar of religions, specializing in Asian religions in America, mystical experience, contemplative studies, and critical theory of popular culture. She recently received her Ph.D. in Religion from Rice University, and also has a Master's degree in Education from Antioch University Seattle. Some of her favorite lecture topics include awe and wonder, the history of yoga, metamodern monsters, and the gnostic attributes of transgressive comedy. Publications include “Encoded Ambiguities, Embodied Ontologies: The Transformative Speech of Transgressive Female Figures in Gnosticism and Tantra” in (European Journal of Esotericism) La Rosa di Paracelso, and the forthcoming chapters, “Toward a Metamodern Reading of Spiritual-but-Not-Religious Mysticisms” in Being Spiritual But Not Religious: Past, Present, Future(s), and “"The Big Bad and the Big “Aha!”: Metamodern Monsters as Transformational Figures of Instability" in Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the U.S. She is co-founder and editor, with Greg Dember, of the website, What Is Metamodern? www.whatismetamodern.com.

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