PodcastEpisode 17
The Pragmatic Visionary: Fifty Years of Asking the Questions Nobody Wanted to Fund
Integrative medicine, the polycrisis, and cosmic consciousness.
Some people have a gift for seeing what matters before the world is ready to hear it. Michael Lerner — founder of Commonweal, pioneer of integrative cancer care, and one of the early architects of the polycrisis framework — has spent fifty years making bets that frightened his colleagues and proved to be right. In this conversation with Rufus Pollock, he traces a remarkable life: from a New York childhood steeped in political philosophy and psychology, through the counterculture of the early seventies, to the founding of Commonweal in a dilapidated radio transmitter facility in California with no money and a vision he couldn’t fully articulate yet. What emerges is less a biography than a kind of living map of the last half-century’s most important questions.
In this episode, Rufus and Michael discuss the through-line that has connected all of Lerner’s work: the conviction that personal healing and planetary healing are not separate projects. That thread runs from his early work with children with neurodevelopmental challenges whose behaviour changed when their diet did, through Commonweal’s landmark contributions to integrative cancer care and whole-person medicine, to his role in naming and shaping the global polycrisis movement. Michael presents a combination of spiritual depth and strategic precision — he describes himself as deeply pragmatic, and means it.
“A new world is opening of the exploration of super-consciousness — and it makes sense that it’s taking place when the earth itself, and the people, and all other species, are experiencing intense trauma.”
The conversation closes on the question of how consciousness itself — not just spiritual practice, but the fundamental nature of what we are — is relevant to how the polycrisis unfolds. Consciousness, he notes, carries no moral code. It can be weaponised like any other advance. But it may, he suggests, be truer than what we currently accept as real. And in a time when the world as we know it may be ending, that matters.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction
- 01:50Michael’s spiritual biography and early influences
- 04:26Family roots in philosophy and psychology, and their guiding influence
- 12:09The integration of Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Sufi and yogic traditions into Michael’s worldview
- 17:06The societal and personal shifts in the late 1960s fostering alternative paths
- 33:20The origins of Commonweal and its initial vision for healing self and earth
- 41:35The complex challenges faced during the 1980s, including organizational crises
- 48:00Major bets on environmental health, social justice, and policy reform
- 52:10Reflection on the accelerated crises since the 1990s and the shifting global outlook
- 1:08:00The emergence and importance of consciousness studies in addressing the polycrisis
- 1:22:03Exploring super consciousness, psychedelics, and their relation to societal crises
- 1:33:30The limitations and potentials of consciousness in resolving the polycrisis
Speakers
Michael Lerner is the founder of Commonweal, a center for healing ourselves and healing the earth based in Bolinas, California. A Harvard and Yale-trained psychologist and political philosopher, he pioneered integrative cancer care and whole-person medicine, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, and has been one of the early architects of the global polycrisis framework. He is now exploring the relationship between consciousness and civilisational crisis.
Rufus Pollock is a co-founder of Life Itself, an entrepreneur, activist, an author, as well as a long-term zen practitioner.
Notes and links
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