History

Insight’s History and Heritage

Insight Seminars was founded in 1978 by John-Roger, an international educator, author, and speaker. He, along with Russell Bishop, a personal growth facilitator and workshop designer, created the first Insight I Seminar. One hundred and fifty-one people who had been studying spiritually with John-Roger through the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA) gathered in Santa Monica, California in January 1978 to pioneer what was then an experiment in personal growth education.

Insight I: The Awakening Heart Seminar, now the first in The Insight Seminar Series, was created out of this community’s shared desire to gain practical tools for becoming more effective and successful in their lives. Since its beginning, over a million people have attended Insight Seminars throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Greece, Canada, Russia, Spain, Israel, South America, Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean Basin, Puerto Rico, Africa, and Australia.

Insight’s roots come from MSIA – these are spiritual roots based in the core values of loving, integrity, and service – and roots that form the basis of our three ground rules found in all of the work we do:

  • Take care of yourself so you can help take care of others
  • Don’t hurt yourself and don’t hurt others
  • Use everything for you learning, growth and upliftment

Insight’s very first seminar was offered to students who had been studying with John-Roger in MSIA and wanted to learn how to live their lives more effectively in the world.

Today Insight is an independent international educational organization, welcoming and embracing people of all faiths, beliefs, creeds, sizes, shapes, colors, races and genders.

In January 2011, Insight Seminars merged into Insight University and became the university’s Continuing Education Division.  Insight University is headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico and offers an Ed.D. in Transformational Leadership through its Degree Granting Division. The Continuing Education Division consists of four institutes:

  1. John-Roger Institute for Personal Transformation, which offers the Insight I, II, III, IV Pathways to Personal Transformation Series; the Best of Super II, our annual fundraising seminar facilitated by John-Roger, John Morton and Michael Hayes; and other specialty workshops for graduates and their friends.
  2. Institute for Youth Leadership, which hosts the Children and Teen Seminars and the new collaboration with the EduCare Foundation, Youth Transformational Leadership (YTL).
  3. Institute for Transformational Leadership, through which are offered growth seminars for businesses, not-for-profits and NGO’s.
  4. Institute for Leadership Through Service, which is currently in design and will offer our Service Through the Heart programs for serving self, family, community and the world.