1. Henry FitzGerald Heard, commonly called Gerald Heard, was an English-born American historian, science writer and broadcaster, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher.
28 Facts About Gerald Heard
1. 2.
Gerald Heard's work was a forerunner of, and influence on, the consciousness development movement that has spread in the Western world since the 1960s.
3.
The son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, Gerald Heard was born in London, but spent much of his youth in Ireland.
4.
Gerald Heard studied history and theology at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with honours in history.
5.
In 1927 Gerald Heard began lecturing for the South Place Ethical Society.
6.
Gerald Heard first embarked as a book author in 1924, but The Ascent of Humanity, published in 1929 and receiving the British Academy's Hertz Prize, occasioned his ascent to prominence.
7.
From 1932 to 1942, Gerald Heard was a council member of the Society for Psychical Research.
8.
In 1931 Gerald Heard had initiated an informal research group to look into developing group-mindedness or group communications, which became known as The Engineers Study Group because several of its members were engineers who afterwards were involved in the early development of computers.
9.
Meanwhile, Gerald Heard played a minor part in the development of the Peace Pledge Union.
10.
Gerald Heard became well known as an advocate for pacifism and argued for the transformation of behaviour through meditation and "disciplined nonviolence".
11.
Gerald Heard was accompanied by Aldous Huxley; Huxley's wife, Maria; and their son Matthew Huxley.
12.
Gerald Heard had developed an identity as an informed individual who recognised no intrinsic conflict among history, science, literature, and theology.
13.
Gerald Heard was the first among a group of literati friends to discover Swami Prabhavananda and Vedanta.
14.
Gerald Heard maintained a regular discipline of meditation, along the lines of yoga, for many years.
15.
Gerald Heard took interest in parapsychology and was a member of the Society for Psychical Research.
16.
Gerald Heard used some of his inherited resources toward this most ambitious of projects.
17.
The idealistic experiment required land, and Gerald Heard bought 300 acres in Trabuco Canyon, in the Santa Ana Mountains.
18.
Gerald Heard deeded the land and facilities to the Vedanta Society of Southern California, which still maintains the facility as a Ramakrishna monastery and retreat.
19.
In 1954 Gerald Heard tried mescaline and, in 1955 tried LSD.
20.
Gerald Heard felt that, used properly, these had strong potential to "enlarge Man's mind" by allowing a person to see beyond his ego.
21.
Gerald Heard was responsible for introducing the then unknown Huston Smith to Aldous Huxley.
22.
Gerald Heard's book The World's Religions is a classic in the field, has sold over two million copies and is considered a particularly useful introduction to comparative religion.
23.
Gerald Heard termed this phase "Leptoid Man" because humans increasingly face the opportunity to "take a leap" into a considerably expanded consciousness, in which the various aspects of the psyche will be integrated, without any aspects being repressed or seeming foreign.
24.
Gerald Heard's views were cautionary about developments in society that were not balanced, about inappropriate aims of our use of technological power.
25.
Toward the end of his life, Gerald Heard was given a bit of financial assistance by Henry Luce and Clare Booth Luce.
26.
Gerald Heard died on 14 August 1971 at his home in Santa Monica, California, of the effects of several earlier strokes he had, beginning in 1966.
27.
In popular culture: James Lapine's Broadway musical Flying Over Sunset includes a character named "Gerald Heard," modeled on the real-life Gerald Heard.
28.
The Gerald Heard character was played by Robert Sella in the first Broadway run.