Autho​​r: Divinity School

With the end of school funding for drug education, McKinney perfected the first computer typesetting system for Russian. Then, as relations with the U.S.S.R. cooled, he acquired a cache of Louis Agassiz’s antique hand-blown laboratory jars from Harvard and opened a retail shop on Boston’s Newbury St. 

Here he began to write his first draft, but realizing he needed better grounding in world religions, he entered Harvard Divinity School in 1977, listing his religion as “spiritual psychobiology”. 

He enjoyed studies under prominent scholars George McRae, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr, and formed a lasting friendship with Harvey Cox, prolific author and theologian. 

Leaving before graduating to return to business consulting, he met a scholarly Tibetan lama teaching at Tufts and in need of a Green Card. To aid in this purpose, McKinney formed a Buddhist Institute and managed a variety of activities. As Thupten Kalsang enjoyed a long relationship with the Dalai Lama, this resulted in a period of intensive study and practice as well as meetings with His Holiness and other prominent religious figures. 

Finding numerous parallels between the Buddhist belief that our reality is largely self created, his next draft was able to draw on rich insights acquired at Harvard Divinity School and the Institute. Kalsang got his Green Card, and the Dalai Lama was given an early first version of Neurotheology in 1981. He found it interesting, and it added to his own growing study of the modern mind sciences.