A Free online Course
Awakening with Wiki: Composing the Transpersonal Self
This course offers students intensive practice in multimedia composition as they investigate their transpersonal self. Weekly audio talks by mobius will focus on practices for becoming aware of and exploring the different scales and layers of the "I". Textual composition on a wiki will be taught, and taught again, as a scripting tool for composing in every combination of media in response to this phenomenologically infinite space for student response: the sacred. Students will study, practice collective exegesis and remix texts from the contemplative tradition of the ineffable, the encounter with that which exceeds words. Rather than an element in religious discourse or dogma, the sacred (and its frequent resistance to languaging) will be taught as a rhetorical practice in response to what Friedrich Nietzsche called the "untimely", that which bursts, exceeds or just plain ignores "ordinary" chronological or historical temporality. Zen koans, mantra ("Be Here Now!") and other practices of daily rhetorical practice will be suggested as effective ways to investigate your transpersonal aspects. While no multimedia/multimodal experience is necessary, students should come to this wiki'd class ready to experiment with digital images (The Gimp), sound (audacity, cheap synthesizers, strings) video (kino, imovie) and text as they compose thrice weekly in response to the archive of discourse and images that fathom their everyday sacred epic.
This course will be taught primarily by weekly podcast, classroom sessions and wiki interaction beginning January 2010. The course is free and open to everyone who maintains a committment to inquiry, open mind and mutual respect. For live and/or video teleconferences with mobius and course credit, please enroll via Penn State.
Professor Richard Doyle
aka
mobius@psu.edu
Office Hours: Monday 10-11:30 am; Friday 10-11:30 am
Burrowes #8
8148639582
No Office Hours on Martin Luther King Day, January 18
Essentially Indescribable - Workshop in Lawrence, Kansas
Texts:
Sacred Texts.com - We will browse alot of texts here for free
A Rulebook for Argument ( Anthony Weston) - Buy this one and keep it close!
The Perennial Philosophy (Aldous Huxley) - Buy this one, & I predict you will keep it!
The Cloud of Unknowing by mobius's favorite author, Anonymous! - Free online (Also FREE for Kindle, epub, and PDF readers)
The Discourses of Rumi Great Persian Poet Reveals Nature of Vermicelli and All Things, demands that We Dance - free online
The Bhagavad Gita Translation by Easwaran- free online
Composing the Sacred Folder - I will add Journal articles and other files here
Special Guest Text: The Red Book by Carl Jung Will Periodically Drop in
Podcasts
"Let the Seeking Become Strong" - Week 1
In The Cloud - Week 2
Perennially Pink: From the Cloud of Unknowing to the Dark Side of the Moon - Week 3
Declaration of a Quest: Who Knows?!
Projects:
Thrice weekly wiki composition posted to Class Wiki Page - Click to create your class blog
1 short remix composition and exegesis/performance ( around five "pages"). Due February 18.
15 page "paper" or its equivalent final project: Due last day of class
Digital Attendance:
Continuous and aware participation in the class is key to the sometimes variable and volatile journey to discover your transpersonal aspects. This includes live "wetware" meetups with other class members when possible, meditation lab of several hours per week, and the aforementioned thrice weekly wikidelic practice. Listen to each week's podcast and respond with text and image as the epic ( and sometimes difficult!) quest to investigate your transpersonal self unfolds.
Deadlines:Each Thursday night by Midnight Eastern Standard Time, there will be a new podcast uploaded. Students should post their responses on the following Monday and respond to a class member's post by Wednesday. Your third wikipost of each week will be your weekly "Summary of My Path".
Click here to view your 30 Boxes calendar