Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo host this captivating conversation into divine and personal love with two modern-day mystics, held dear by SAND.

Love, a powerful catalyst for transformation on the spiritual path, resonates at the core of our being. Through this dialogue, we will transcend the limitations of a narrow, individualized perception of love, immersing ourselves in the boundless realm of our true nature—a universal expression of pure love.

Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader, Cynthia Bourgeault divides her time between solitude at her coastal home in Maine and a demanding schedule traveling globally to teach and spread the recovery of the Christian contemplative path. She is the founding Director of both The Contemplative Society and the Aspen Wisdom School.

Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas), Founder of the Diamond Approach, was born in the Middle East, but at age 18 he moved to the USA to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics, where he was studying Einstein’s theory of general relativity and nuclear physics, when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him more and more into inquiring into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature. Hameed is the founder of the Diamond Approach®—a spiritual teaching that utilizes a unique kind of inquiry into realization.

Dr. Angel Acosta works to bridge the fields of leadership, social justice & mindfulness. He completed his Ed.D. in the Curriculum and Teaching Department at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research explored healing-centered education as a promising framework for educational leadership development and community care. 

Angel is the director of the Wounded Healer Project. This portrait series captures the profiles of nine educators, community leaders and practitioners, all of whom have dedicated their lives to — in some shape or form — creating spaces for others to thrive, flourish and heal.

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Mauro Zappaterra obtained his MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School. He completed his PhD doing work with neuronal stem cells and the effects of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in brain development and in the adult. He is published in numerous scientific articles on the CSF and his work was chosen as the cover image for the prestigious Neuron Journal.  He was also featured in the New England Journal of Medicine in teaching medical students about living with life threatening diseases and in Psychology Today on an article titled “Joy: The art of loving life.”

You can view the video version of this talk on SAND’s website:

An upcoming course with Mauro presented by SAND: The Wisdom of Pain: an online course live with Mauro Zappaterra.

In this course we will:

Mauro Zappaterra’s website: HoldingSpace.com

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Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen is a Historian of Religion, Ph.d from Uppsala University in Sweden. His research into Afro-diasporic strategies for maintaining animist reality in the modern world has lead him towards reading North European cultural history from the perspective of rejected animist knowledge and practice. The objective is to recover Euro-traditioanl forms of landconnectedness ecological knowledge and kinship with the greater community of beings. Rune has lived in a number of countries in Europe, Africa North- and South America and presently runs the platform “Nordic Animism”.

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Recorded live at a Science and Nonduality Community Conversation hosted by Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo on July 12, 2023.

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledge at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

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Judith Blackstone, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist and innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. She developed the Realization Process®, an embodied approach to personal and relational healing and nondual realization. She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body, Belonging Here, The Intimate Life, The Enlightenment Process, and The Empathic Ground. For more, see realizationprocess.org.

The Fullness of the Ground is a guide to embodied nondual realization and its profound effect on our senses, our ability to love, our experience of our own authentic existence, and our connection with other living beings. It distills Dr. Judith Blackstone’s decades of teaching into the essentials of the nondual spiritual path.

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Mentioned in the episode – #48 Ancestral Healing: Daniel Foor

Today on the podcast, we welcome two special guests, Science and Nonduality co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo.

Zaya and Maurizio are both filmmakers and activists. They merged their lifelong passions for science and mysticism when they met in 2007, and their first project together was filming the documentary Rays of the Absolute on the life and teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

This project sparked their next level of creation and collaboration: SAND, a global community inspired by timeless wisdom traditions, informed by modern science, and grounded in direct experience.

In 2021 they released the acclaimed documentary The Wisdom of Trauma featuring Dr. Gabor Maté. And for the past year they have been traveling the globe working on their next documentary about indigenous cultures, resilience, and an expansion of what is meant by Nonduality and Science, all today on the Sounds of SAND Podcast.

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We wanted to create this episode highlighting some shimmering jewels from the first 50 episodes of the podcast. We know that getting into a podcast can be daunting when there are dozens of episodes to choose from. So we wanted to distill some of the varied guests from our previous episodes with some clips from the show.

Consider becoming a member of SAND to support the production costs of this podcast.

Thank you for listening and sharing the show.

Guest Clips

Mauro Bergonzi taught ‘Indian Religion and Philosophy’ from 1985 to 2017 at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. About twenty years ago  - after 25 years of meditative practices -  a spontaneous fading out of his spiritual seeking just happened unexpectedly and only a radical non-dualism prevailed. From then on, he has been invited to hold regular meetings of ‘sharing of being’ (satsang). A survey of Mauro's non-dual communication is available in his book Il sorriso segreto dell’essere (Mondadori) and in his website.

E-mail: [email protected]

Some video talks from Mauro’s Appearances at SAND Italy:

The Bottomless Pit Behind the Word "Consciousness"

The Utter Simplicity of What Is

Rays of the Absolute a film by SAND

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Dr. Daniel Foor is a ritualist and educator focused on helping others to reclaim their innate capacity to relate with their ancestors and with the greater web of other-than-human kin.

He is the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing and an internationally respected teacher of ancestor reverence and ritual. Since 2004 Daniel has guided over one hundred multi-day ancestor-focused healing rituals in eight countries, reached thousands of participants through personal sessions and online courses, and mentored over 150 practitioners to facilitate the work of ancestral healing.

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