Advisory Council

Ben Bowler is the Executive Director of UNITY EARTH, a global network building a worldwide movement for unity and peace. In 2006 he and his wife Jildou moved to Thailand to volunteer along the Thai-Burma border. In 2008 they founded Blood Foundation together, a NGO focusing on education projects. In 2008 Ben founded Monk for a Month in Chiang Mai offering men and women the opportunity to experience Thai temple life and temporary ordination.

In 2010, Ben launched Muslim for a Month in Turkey offering guests a first-hand experience of Turkish Islam and Sufism, underneath the spiritually inclusive banner of Rumi. A year later, he launched World Weavers, offering spiritual immersion programs in Tibetan India, Nepal, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

In October 2015, at the Parliament of World’ Religions, Ben launched 1GOD.com, an online platform aimed at countering religious fundamentalism, relativism and western materialism. Since then he has worked to build UNITY EARTH into a global platform that can support and empower the many grassroots movements working towards unity and peace in the world.

New York Times best-selling author and 2015 Templeton Award nominee Gregg Braden is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science with ancient and indigenous knowledge to create real-world solutions for today.  Following successful careers in the energy and defense industries, he became the first technical operations manager for Cisco Systems in 1991. For three decades, Gregg has explored high-mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to merge their wisdom with the best science of our time.  Based in New Mexico, Gregg has shared his discoveries with the United Nations, Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. military, mainstream universities, and audiences throughout the world.  Gregg is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at:  GreggBraden.com

Dr Jude Currivan is a cosmologist, planetary healer, futurist, author and previously one of the most senior business women in the UK. Jude integrates leading edge science, research into consciousness and universal wisdom teachings into a wholistic wholeworld-view. This underpins her work aimed at enabling transformational and emergent resolutions to our collective planetary issues, raising awareness and empowering fundamental change and sustainable solutions to global problems. She is the author of six non-fiction books currently available in 15 languages and 25 countries including CosMos – a co-creator’s guide to the whole-world co-authored with Dr Ervin Laszlo. Her first fictionalised e-book Legacy is available at amazon. Her latest is The Cosmic Hologram- In-formation at the Center of Creation, the first book of the Transformation trilogy and which won a silver Nautilus Book Award for 2017. She is currently writing book two Gaia: Her-Story. Jude is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at: JudeCurrivan.com and WholeWorld-View

Charles Eisenstein is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, most recently Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible. His background includes a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, a decade in Taiwan as a translator, and stints as a college instructor, a yoga teacher, and a construction worker. He currently writes and speaks full-time. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and four children.  Charles is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at: charleseisenstein.net and sacred-economics.com/

Duane Elgin is an internationally recognized author and speaker.  His books include: The Living Universe, Voluntary Simplicity, Promise Ahead, and Awakening Earth.  He has contributed to numerous studies of the long-range future—working as a senior social scientist in Washington, D.C. on a Presidential Commission on the American Future, and then with the futures group at SRI International. Duane received the Peace Prize of Japan, the Goi Award, in Tokyo in 2006 in recognition of his contribution to a global “vision, consciousness, and lifestyle” that fosters a “more sustainable and spiritual culture.” He is the Executive Director of Great Transition Stories.  Duane is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at:  DuaneElgin.com and Great Transition Stories

The Rev. Canon Charles P. Gibbs is an Episcopal priest, a visionary and a poet who has dedicated his life to serving the sacred in the world, especially through interreligious and intercultural engagement.  His new volume of poetry – Light Reading: Selected Poems from a Pilgrim Journey – is available at Amazon.com.

He recently became Senior Partner and Poet-in-Residence for the Catalyst for Peace foundation (www.catalystforpeace.org), providing leadership and support for CFP’s organizational evolution. Building on its eight-year transformational partnership with Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone, CFP is exploring a new phase of regional and global engagement focused on community-based peacebuilding, healthy whole systems partnerships and leadership development.

From 1996 until his retirement in 2013, he served as the founding executive director of the United Religions Initiative (www.uri.org). As executive director, he worked with thousands of colleagues around the world to guide URI’s growth from a vision to becoming the world’s largest grassroots interfaith network. Charles is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at: revcharlesgibbs.net

Andrew Harvey is Founder Director of the  Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Sacred Activism is a transforming force of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual knowledge, courage, love, and passion, with wise radical action in the world. The large-scale practice of Sacred Activism can become an essential force for preserving and healing the planet and its inhabitants.

Andrew was born in south India in 1952, where he lived until he was nine years old. It is this early period that he credits with shaping his sense of the inner unity of all religions and providing him with a permanent and inspiring vision of a world infused with the sacred. He left India to attend private school in England and entered Oxford University in 1970 with a scholarship to study history. At the age of 21, he became the youngest person ever to be awarded a fellowship to All Soul’s College, England’s highest academic honor.

By 1977, Harvey had become disillusioned with life at Oxford and returned to his native India, where a series of mystical experiences initiated his spiritual journey. Over the next thirty years he plunged into different mystical traditions to learn their secrets and practices.  In 1992, he met Father Bede Griffiths in his ashram in south India near where Andrew had been born. It was this meeting that helped him synthesize the whole of his mystical explorations and reconcile eastern with western mysticism.

Andrew has since lived in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco, and has continued to study a variety of religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. He has written and edited over 30 books. Other honors he has received include the Benjamin Franklin Award and the Mind Body Spirit Award (both for Mary’s Vineyard: Daily Readings, Meditations, and Revelations). Among Harvey’s other well-known titles are: Dialogues with a Modern Mystic, Hidden Journey, The Essential Mystics, Son of Man, The Return of the Motherand The Direct Path.  Andrew is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at:  www.AndrewHarvey.net

Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her books Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers, 1983); Dharma and Development (Kumarian Press, 198); Thinking Like a Mountain (with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess; New Society Publishers, 1988; New Society/ New Catalyst, 2007); Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (SUNY Press, 1991); Rilke's Book of Hours (1996, 2005) and In Praise of Mortality (2004) (with Anita Barrows, Riverhead); Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown, New Society Publishers, 1998); Joanna's memoir entitled Widening Circles (New Society, 2000); World as Lover, World as Self (Parallax Press, 2007), A Year With Rilke, (with Anita Barrows, Harper One, 2009); and Pass It On: Five Stories That Can Change the World (with Norbert Gahbler, Parallax Press, 2010).

Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings. Her group methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

Joanna travels widely giving lectures, workshops, and trainings in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She lives in Berkeley, California, near her children and grandchildren. Joanna is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at:  http://www.joannamacy.net and http://workthatreconnects.org/

Barbara Marx Hubbard has been called “the voice for conscious evolution.” She is a visionary and evolutionary thinker who believes that global change happens when we work collectively and selflessly for the greater good. She realizes that the lessons of evolution teach us that problems are evolutionary drivers, and crises precede transformation, giving a new way of seeing and responding to our global situation.

As a prolific author and educator, Barbara has written seven books on social and planetary evolution.  She has produced, hosted, and contributed to countless documentaries seen by millions of people around the world.  In conjunction with the Shift Network, Barbara co-produced the worldwide “Birth 2012″ multi-media event that was seen as a historic turning point in exposing the social, spiritual, scientific, and technological potential in humanity.

In 1984 her name was placed in nomination for the Vice Presidency of the United States on the Democratic ticket, calling for a “Peace Room” to scan for, map, connect and communicate what is working in America and the world. She also co-chaired a number of Soviet-American Citizen Summits, introducing a new concept called “SYNCON” to foster synergistic convergence with opposing groups. In addition she co-founded the World Future Society, and the Association for Global New Thought.

Barbara Marx Hubbard is not an idealist, nor does she believe that social and planetary change is simple.  But she does believe that humanity has the tools, fortitude, and resolve to take the leap towards conscious evolution.

Her books include: The Hunger of Eve: One Woman’s Odyssey toward the Future; The Evolutionary Journey: Your Guide to a Positive Future; Revelation: Our Crisis is a Birth –An Evolutionary Interpretation of the New Testament; Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of our Social Potential; Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence; 52 Codes for Conscious Self Evolution and Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanity’s Great Shift to the Age of Conscious Evolution.  Barbara is bringing spirit and consciousness to life at:  www.evolve.org