"I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know.""Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity.""We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released."
Houston was born prematurely on May 10, 1937, in New York City. Her mother, Mary Todaro Houston, of Sicilian extraction, had studied acting. Her father, Jack Houston (of Scottish descent), was a comedy writer. His forebears and relatives included Sam Houston, Robert E. Lee, William and Mary Randolph of Virginia, and Thomas Jefferson. His career with show business — which included developing material for stage, television, and movies — kept the family on the move throughout the Unites States. Houston attended some 20 schools by the time she was 12.
As a child, Houston went with a small school group to meet the famous Helen Keller, who left a lasting impression on her. When she was 14, Houston literally ran into an old man on Park Avenue in New York City on her way to school. After this mishap they became friends and she enjoyed listening to him on various occasions. At the time she learned to pronounce his name as "Mr. Tayer". At a much later time, she learned that she had been talking with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ( pronounced "tay-yar".)
Houston earned a B.A. degree from Barnard College, a Ph.D. in psychology from the Union Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in religion from the Graduate Theological Foundation. She was deeply influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell, most notably by The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). The anthropologist Margaret Mead was also a significant mentor and friend of Houston's.
During her graduate-school years, in New York City in the very early 1960s, Houston had been introduced to the LSD experience by her friend Michael Corner, a medical student. She immediately perceived a relationship between this experience and the archetypal, mythological stories of the world's varied cultures. Somewhat later Houston formed a relationship with Robert Masters, a writer whom she married and worked in collaboration with. The two of them spent some years guiding LSD experiences and collecting data from these (and other) psychedelic sessions. They published widely read books on the subject. Together, Drs. Masters and Houston founded the Foundation for Mind Research. There followed many years of research into non-drug mind-expansion methods, about which they also wrote.
Houston was also the founder and chief teacher of the Mystery School, a program of cross-cultural study of spirituality and ritual processes. She conducted the Mystery School on east and west coasts for more than two decades. In 1984, she started a national non-profit organization, The Possible Society, to explore new ways for people to help solve societal problems. More recently, she founded the International Institute for Social Artistry. She is currently working with the United Nations Development Programme in her new field of social artistry, training U.N. staff and leaders in certain developing countries {which ones?}.
Her book, Life Force: The Psycho-Historical Recovery of the Self (1980), acknowledges she draws on Gerald Heard's 1963 book The Five Ages of Man. She offers that people need to recover dimensions of the life force lost touch with as a result of historical development... that Western culture thinks it knows far more than the ancient ancestors, but this is not so... that having information is confused with knowing. She recommends recovering certain dimensions of the life force. Instead of speaking of a mystique, one would speak of a spirituality. Spirituality has long been understood to include both personal spirituality and ritual processes involving a group of people. The cultivation of spirituality can help persons develop their human potential. Broadly speaking, Dr. Houston's work involves the cross-cultural study of spirituality and ritual processes.
In their 1972 book Mind Games, Robert Masters and Jean Houston refer to a kind of practice as "mind games." The book is devoted to explicitly non-religious imaginative exercises. On the level of personal development, Teilhard de Chardin has written about this life force from the perspective of the Christian tradition in The Divine Milieu (1960).
Many of Houston's books have been reprinted; only the original dates of publication are given here.
Books by Jean Houston
Life Force: The Psycho-Historical Recovery of the Self (1980); The Possible Human: A Course in Extending Your Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities (1982; 2nd ed. 1997); The Search for the Beloved: Journeys in Mythology and Sacred Psychology (1987); Godseed: The Journey of Christ (1988); Erwachen (in German); The Hero and the Goddess: The "Odyssey" as Mystery and Initiation (1992); Public Like a Frog: Entering the Lives of Three Great Americans (1993); The Passion of Isis and Osiris: A Union of Two Souls (1998); A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story (1996); A Passion for the Possible: A Guide to Realizing Your True Potential (1997); Jump Time: Shaping Your Future in a World of Radical Change (Sentient Publications, 2000, ISBN 1-59181-018-3); Mystical Dogs: Animals as Guides to Our Inner Life (2002).
Books with Robert Masters
The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience (1966); Psychedelic Art (1968); Mind Games (1972); Listening to the Body: The Psychophysical Way to Health and Awareness (1978).
Book with Diana Vandenberg
A Feminine Myth of Creation (in Dutch, 1988).
Book with Margaret Rubin
Manual for the Peacemaker: An Iroquois Legend to Heal Self (1995).
Forwords
Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes original printing (1926)
