Jonathan Bricklin

Jonathan Bricklin was drawn to Taiji after a mystical experience on a Vipassana meditation retreat upended his ordinary understanding of reality and set him on a lifelong inquiry into consciousness. That journey began with William James’s The Principles of Psychology, and, as Jonathan describes it, three decades of reading James’s work since then have felt like falling down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole.

He is the author of The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’s Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (SUNY Press), a Chicago Seminary Co-op Notable Book Award winner for 2016, and the editor of the acclaimed anthology Sciousness (Eirini Press). His reimagined readings of James have appeared in many international journals and magazines. Oliver Sacks called his work “full of interest and originality… the ghost of William James is surely happy to see it,” while Eugene Taylor wrote that “Bricklin advances James on consciousness farther than anyone.”

A former Program Director of the New York Open Center, Jonathan has also studied Tai Chi for 30 years.