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COSMOGENETIC EXPERIENCE:
An Autocosmological Pathway into the Current
“Great Leap in Being”
Eleven Week Course with
BRIAN THOMAS SWIMME, PhD,
Carolyn Cooke, Ezekiel Fugate, Jennifer Morgan, and a team of respondents
Tuesdays: Jan. 13 – March 24, 2026; 7:00 – 8:30 pm ET
Optional Add On Autocosmology Lab
Thursdays: Jan. 15 – March 19; 7:00 – 8:30 pm ET
22 PD Hrs Approved by AMS (American Montessori Society).
Scroll down for discounts, options, & to register, or click here!
COSMOGENETIC EXPERIENCE
is the direct awareness that it is the Universe, as us, experiencing reality.
— Brian Thomas Swimme
This course will provide lectures, reflections, and discussions in which participants learn to experience their lives through a cosmogenetic lens. This notion will become clear as we progress through the course.
- Tuesdays: Lectures with Brian Thomas Swimme
- Thursdays: Autocosmology support group with Ezekiel Fugate. (Optional add on. See description below.)
A New Structure of Experience is arising
Our course is based on the premise that a new structure of experience is giving rise to a new form of humanity. All leaps in being began with a new form of experience. In our present leap, the new form is identified as “cosmogenetic experience“ and as “time-developmental experience.” Experience is understood as the primary mode in which reality becomes present to human consciousness. Experience is prior to any concepts or ideas concerning reality. Experience comes first and establishes a new civilization with new ideas and institutions. Consciousness is understood as the capacity of perceiving one’s own inner states.
A Great Leap in Being
Evolution of New Modes of Experiencing Reality
The idea of an axial age was invented by Karl Jaspers who first introduced it in his 1949 work The Origin and Goal of History. Jaspers’ work celebrates the emergence of transformative philosophical and ethical ideas in the ancient civilizations of China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. Taking this line of thought further, the philosopher Eric Voegelin classified each of these transitions as a “great leap in being” – historical ruptures that reorder both human consciousness and its symbolic systems. In our own time, the philosopher Wolfgang Leidhold, whose ideas suffuse our course, theorizes that these ruptures of history were brought about by the evolution of new modes of experiencing reality. If we today are in the midst of one of these leaps in being, it will manifest in how we experience one another and the universe as a whole.
As one continues in an investigation of contemporary cosmology, there comes a moment when one feels, in a direct way, the movement of energy from the beginning of time.
— Brian Thomas Swimme
Course Outline & Session Descriptions
Tuesdays: Jan. 13 – March 24, 2026; 7:00 – 8:30 pm ET
Each week has a 4-part structure. Hominization is the threshold event in cosmic evolution when evolution crosses into reflective consciousness.
For a detailed outline, description of each session, and homework assignments, click here.
Session 1 (Jan. 13) – The Hominization of the Power of Centration
Session 2 (Jan. 20) – The Hominization of the Power of Allurement
Session 3 (Jan. 27) – The Hominization of the Power of Emergence
Session 4 (Feb. 3) – The Hominization of the Power of Homeostasis
Session 5 (Feb. 10) – The Hominization of the Power of Cataclysm
Session 6 (Feb. 17) – The Hominization of the Power of Synergy
Session 7 (Feb. 24) – The Hominization of the Power of Transmutation
Session 8 (Mar. 3) – The Hominization of the Power of Cerebralization
Session 9 (Mar. 10) – The Hominization of the Power of Interrelatedness
Session 10 (Mar. 17) – The Hominization of the Power of Radiance
Session 11 (Mar. 24) – The Hominization of the Power of Seamlessness
Please Purchase the book COSMOGENESIS
before the course starts!
All reading assignments are from the book COSMOGENESIS: AN UNVEILING OF THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE by Brian Thomas Swimme.
Audio Version Just released at a 50% discount. Click here!
Please purchase your copy from your favorite vendor and read the first assignment before session one.
Recordings Will Be Available in the Course Space
Sessions are live. Recordings of all sessions will be accessible inside the course space for up to one year.
Meet Others and Participate in Online Discussions
Discussion topics added each week to help deepen the course material and develop community. A map showing the locations of all participants helps you locate and get in touch with others through the messaging system.
Autocosmology Lab with Ezekiel Fugate
A focused cohort to nurture autocosmological practice, creativity, and community
Ten Week Optional Add On
Thursdays: Jan. 15 – March 19; 7:00 – 8:30 pm ET
Do you feel called to deepen your understanding and practice by creating your own autocosmology? Or maybe you’re mid-project and need structure, community, accountability to bring it to completion. If so, the Autocosmology Lab add-on is for you!
Our Thursday sessions will focus on three core objectives: cultivating community in a cosmological context; advancing your autocosmological project; and activating your lived experience of the developing universe. This is a time to gather in the wonder of our shared story, to enter directly into the creativity that shaped galaxies and now stirs within your own imaginations, and to discover how the universe is dreaming itself through you.
Each session will begin with a practice of attunement. From there, you’ll be invited into focused time with your project, with occasional prompts or practices to help awaken new possibilities. We’ll also spend time in small groups to share what is emerging and to encourage one another as our creative visions take shape. The aim of this group is to offer a mix of solitude and community, inspiration and accountability, focus and freedom.
COSMOGENESIS
Origin of the Term
Understanding COSMOGENESIS is Crucial for Evolving Our Planet
We are created to evolve the cosmos.
— Maria Montessori
With AUTOCOSMOLOGY, we see ourselves IN AND AS the universe evolving.
AUTO-COSMOLOGY is one pathway into this expanded consciousness, a process of reflection and writing that awakens the experience of ordinary life as a fourteen billion year creative event.
AUTO-COSMOLOGY is a new genre in literature that can best be described as a hybrid genre arising from the intersection of autobiography and cosmology. Although this course will focus on literature in particular, the insights are resonant with other arts — such as dance, film, ritual, and music — which can all become spiritual paths into new forms of consciousness.
Brian’s recently published book, Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe, a book in the emerging auto-cosmology genre, will be a centerpiece of this course. Please purchase your copy and do the readings for session one before the course begins.
Above photo by Clifford Berrien, certified Deeptime Leader, Cohort 2022.
Rewiring Ourselves for Cosmogenesis (2:43)
Impact on Education and Religion (1:30)
Becoming Indigenous to the Universe and Ourselves (1:29)
Source of Pain Today (1:43)
How the Future Shapes the Present and our Cosmic Task (2:07)
Key Learnings:
- An overview of what scholars mean with the phrase, “Axial Age,” as well as how “Cosmogenetic Experience” is leading to a new Axial Age.
- A fundamental understanding of the forces and powers that govern cosmic evolution.
- To fully understand humanity as well as the chaotic time in which we live, one needs to see that Homo sapiens is not just another species but is in fact a new phylum.
- An understanding of the two fundamental flaws in modern consciousness.
- The skill of identifying ways in which ordinary life is suffused with the achievements of cosmic evolution.
- A sampling of the profound cosmological vision of Thomas Berry, connecting an understanding of Cosmogenesis with Thomas Berry’s vision of an Ecozoic Era.
- An understanding of Maria Montessori’s teaching about Cosmic Gift and Task and how it relates to Cosmogenesis and Autocosmology.
- A profound sense of connection between personal allurement and the trajectory of the universe as a whole.
- An understanding of the way in which “relationship” is a more fundamental building block in our universe than atoms and molecules.
- How, with the invention of symbols, humanity transformed the “not-here” into a causal relationship with the “here and now.”
- The powerful analogy that compares a mammal’s capacity to recognize a mind in another mammal to our own capacity to recognize a cosmic mind.
- How the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics leads to the drama of Energy Acquistion throughout the life world.
Who Is This Course For?
- Everyone who’s interested in the work of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, Jennifer Morgan.
- Everyone who’s already familiar with this work and wants a deeper understanding of how to apply it to personal-to-planetary change.
- Everyone who has projects and practices they’d like to work on inside a New Cosmology framework.
- Students who want to learn about their role in the universe and apply deeptime principles in their academic work.
- Teachers who want to frame their curriculum inside the New Cosmology.
- Montessori Teachers who want to connect Cosmic Education and the New Cosmology.
- Spiritual/religious who want to situate and ground their understandings/practices inside an evolving universe.
- Artists/Poets/Writers/Dancers inspired to express the larger story we all share.
- Scientists who want to connect with and experience other ways of knowing.
- Healers and healing practitioners who know the healing power of a living functional cosmology.
- Politicians/Activists looking for a larger frame and understanding to address the crises of today.
- Mental Health Practioners who understand that our cosmologies give us meaning and purpose. Dysfunctional cosmologies can be at the root of mental illness and addiction.
- Anyone who wants to ground their lives in the New Cosmology and an emerging consciousness.
Our Team
Brian Thomas Swimme
Brian Thomas Swimme is professor emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. A specialist in gravitational dynamics, his work for many years has been to bring the context of story to our understanding of the 13.8 billion year trajectory of the universe. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. He is the author of several well known and influential books and is co-author with Thomas Berry on The Universe Story and with Mary Evelyn Tucker on the award-winning book and film Journey of the Universe. His book Cosmogenesis is an early example of the autocosmological genre. His most recent work is Story of the Noosphere, co-authored with Monica DeRaspe Bowles.
Carolyn Cooke
Carolyn Cooke is a professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts MFA Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she co-directs the Center for Transformative Media. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, her fiction has appeared in AGNI, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and multiple volumes of Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards. Her debut collection, The Bostons, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and her subsequent works, including Daughters of the Revolution and Amor and Psycho, have earned wide critical acclaim.
Jennifer Morgan
Jennifer Morgan, president and founder of the Deeptime Network, is an award-winning author, storyteller, and educator inspired by the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Maria Montessori, Thomas Berry, and Brian Swimme. Her Universe Story Trilogy — Born With a Bang, From Lava to Life, and Mammals Who Morph — are used in classrooms around the world, and have received the Teachers Choice Award, Nautilus Semi Finalist, highest ratings from AAAS and endorsements from Jane Goodall, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and others. She is on the board of the American Teilhard Association.
Ezekiel Fugate
Ezekiel Fugate, is the co-founding director of Deep Belonging, a co-founder of Springhouse Community School, and a co-editor of Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology. He is currently completing his dissertation under Brian Thomas Swimme in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His research and teaching focus on the intersection of evolutionary cosmology and human experience. He lives with his wife and two daughters in central Virginia.
Deeptime Companions for Course Participants
Kyle Herman is a high school teacher, curriculum coach at Community Montessori Public Charter School, and an Instructional Guide for the Center for Guided Montessori Studies’ adolescent training program. He holds degrees in English and Montessori Education along with MACTE and NAMTA/AMI adolescent credentials. Kyle has presented nationally on Montessori education, published in Montessori Life and Origins, and contributed educational resources for the Deep Time Network and the Center for Guided Montessori Studies.
Orla Hazra, PhD, lives in Sarasota, Florida after ten years in Mumbai, India, where she developed a curriculum renewing the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm for St. Xavier’s College and Tarumitra, an ecoliteracy center. With training in recreation leadership, addiction counseling, and spiritual direction, she earned a PhD in Religious Education from Fordham University, focusing on Thomas Berry’s fourfold wisdom model for educational reform. A founding board member of the Deeptime Network, she is thrilled to see this integrative approach coming alive in practice.
Sarbmeet Kanwal, PhD, is an award-winning educator known for pioneering innovative ways of teaching quantum physics and astronomy. He earned his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech and is widely recognized for making complex science accessible to general audiences. A board member of the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought, he helped launch the award-winning MOSAIC youth leadership program. He has also contributed to Deeptime Network courses over the past two years and was instrumental in developing the recent Deeptime Network video, The Cosmic Signal. https://youtu.be/WC7TwK7NEts?si=5lUs0zcsZPnAEm7a
Stephan Martin is an astronomer, educator, and author who has taught astronomy, physics, and consciousness studies for more than twenty-five years. After studying with Brian Swimme at the California Institute of Integral Studies, he authored Cosmic Conversations, featuring dialogues with scientists and spiritual teachers on the nature of the universe. He has since led New Cosmology workshops across the US and Europe and explores multidisciplinary approaches to understanding the cosmos. He is director of DTN’s Deeptime Leadership & Wellbeing Program.
Sign Me Up!
Choose One of Two Options
- 1. Tuesday Sessions with Brian Swimme (no add on) – $495, OR
- 2. Tuesday Sessions with Brian Swimme & Thursday Autocosmology Lab with Ezekiel Fugate – $790*
- * NOTE: Brian Swimme will only be present for the Tuesday lectures.
Discounts and installment Options:
- Premium members receive a 5% discount. Become a premium member before purchasing this course and save.
- Particpants in Cosmogenesis 2024 will receive discount coupon by email.
- Check out the installment plan by clicking on payment plan and then “View” to see individual payments. Save your spot today with a deposit. Your second payment will be charged when the course starts.
- Do you need scholarship support? We have some scholarship funds available particularly for young up and coming leaders. Please complete a questionnaire by clicking here.
Log in first before making your purchase!
If you haven’t yet signed up on the site, please sign up for free first and click on activation links in two different emails. If you purchase a premium membership, the premium membership discount will appear after you log in to purchase this course.
REGISTER HERE
FOR TUESDAY SESSIONS ONLY!
Tuesdays: Jan. 13 – March 24
7 – 8:30 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
FOR TUESDAY & THURSDAY SESSIONS!
Tuesdays: Jan. 13 – March 24
7 – 8:30 pm ET
Thursdays: Jan. 15 – March 19
7 – 8:30 pm ET
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