My Journey to the GTU

Carol Whitfield Ph.D. ’92
Clinical psychologist and Professor of East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

My journey to the Graduate Theological Union was somewhat unusual. I was raised as a Methodist in Sonoma, California, but never felt a really strong connection to Christianity. While visiting a Sausalito bookstore as a teenager, I discovered a slim volume of the Upanishads, the teachings of the Hindu scriptures on the ultimate nature of reality. Intrigued, I bought the book and read it throughout high school.

I attended college in the 1960s, and, like many other students at the time, had the opportunity to learn more about eastern philosophies and religions. A friend invited me to hear a lecture by a teacher from India and I felt an instant connection to what he was saying. I followed him to India, leaving college right before I was to graduate, much to the consternation of my parents! (I ended up getting my B.A. several years later, after returning from India.) In India, I had the good fortune of meeting Swami Dayananda Sarasvati, a traditional teacher of Advaita Vedanta, a school of Indian philosophy. I studied Sanskrit and Vedanta under him in a traditional gurukula setting for most of the ’70s. I was one of perhaps five or six westerners at the monastery and loved being immersed in that environment.

In the late 1970s, I returned to the Bay Area and enrolled in graduate school at UC Berkeley to get a master’s degree in Sanskrit. When I began to contemplate working on a Ph.D., the Berkeley program wasn’t a good fit, as it was very focused on studying religion objectively, from the outside looking in. I knew that I wanted to study Advaita Vedanta from within, as a practitioner. I also wanted to spend some time rediscovering Christianity. This desire for interdisciplinary theological study led me to the GTU.

As a doctoral student in the phenomenology of religions, I was able to immerse myself in the study of a number of different areas, primarily Advaita Vedanta, Christian mysticism, and Jungian psychology. Jungian psychology helped me to reconnect with Christianity in a way that made sense to me. The GTU allowed me the freedom to pursue my passion which persists to this day.

In fact, I use everything I learned at the GTU every day in my work. I am currently a professor in the East-West Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I teach classes in Advaita Vedanta and spiritual counseling. Our program concerns itself with the integration of eastern and western spiritual disciplines and western psychotherapy. In the spiritual counseling class, we explore a person’s relationship with God using an East/West and Jungian perspective. While conventional therapy examines every other significant relationship in a person’s life, their images of the divine, both positive and negative, are often ignored. Jungian psychology, with its acknowledgement of the shadow, its focus on inner dialogue, and an inner relationship with God, provides a healing framework for exploring the psyche. Advaita Vedanta provides insights into the nature of God that deepen one’s religious perspective, no matter what the religious affiliation.

I also have team taught a class entitled “Advaita Vedanta and Christianity: Meeting Places” at the School of Applied Theology (a GTU affiliate) with a good friend who is a Catholic priest. In the class, we investigate the teachings of both Advaita Vedanta and Christianity to identify areas of agreement and discuss the implications of those “meeting places” for both. This type of dialogue and critical text reading is closely related to the work I did at the GTU, comparing the phenomenology of Advaita Vedanta and Christian mysticism.

As cultures increasingly collide and religious pluralism becomes more widespread, exploring these places of agreement and difference becomes more critical to creating respectful interaction between religions. The GTU helped me develop the tools to encourage dialogue and understanding with my students, my clients, and my colleagues.

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