Matter, Mind and Multiverse

Matter, Mind and Multiverse: Incorporating Mind into Physics

Pari, Italy – May 15-18, 2025

Speakers: Bernard Carr with Jonathan Allday

The event will start on Friday May 15 at 16:00 and end on Monday May 18 after lunch.

Price: 825.00 euros, which includes:

• programmed activities and materials;
• a 3-night stay in private accommodation;
• breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;
• water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner.

Please read the Terms and Conditions.

Physics has built a hugely impressive picture of the world. We have a broad understanding of structure from the microverse within the atom to the universe of galaxies and clusters. The evolutionary history of the cosmos is also well mapped, right back to the earliest moments of the Big Bang.

There is, however, one conspicuous absence from this grand design—us. Much of the success of physics, and science in general, has come from deliberately excluding the subjective. The physicist’s universe is a rather arid lunar landscape devoid of the colour that comes with consciousness, mind and spirit.

Most physicists believe that this is fine. It’s not their job to deal with messy and unreliable emotions, qualia and subjective experience. Some go even further and say all our personal life is an illusion.

Meanwhile, a significant number of people have experiences that are mystical, anomalous, synchronistic and personally transformative. The plural of anecdote is data: these events are happening, and they contain important clues to the nature of reality.

It is time to seriously discuss how physics might be extended to accommodate consciousness, mind and spirit.

In this series of conversations and workshops with Professor Bernard Carr and Dr. Jonathan Allday, we will explore the bounds of current physics from M-theory in the microscopic domain to the multiverse in the macroscopic domain, probe the nature of space and time, push into the esoteric worlds of cosmology and black holes, and ask whether some  final theory which amalgamates relativity and quantum mechanics can accommodate consciousness and associated anomalous phenomena.  We speculate that physics will need to take a broader view of reality if it is ever going to complete its mission.

Professor Carr has been at the forefront of this movement for most of his career. With a well-respected research profile in cosmology, black holes and the anthropic principle, he is well-placed to speak with authority on the nature of current physics. Bernard has also had a long-standing interest in Buddhism, psychical research and spiritual experience. He’s been President of the Society for Psychical Research and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center is more than joining a program, it is entering an experience unlike any other. This is no ordinary conference in a city hotel, nor a retreat hidden within a bustling resort. Instead, it is an invitation to step into an unspoilt medieval village in the Tuscan hills, where time slows and life unfolds at a rhythm that allows you to think, feel, and reconnect.

At the Pari Center, learning becomes a way of being. David Peat often described Pari as an alchemical vessel—a transformative space designed for reflection, renewal, and personal growth. It is a rare and welcoming environment for anyone seeking something deeper.

You will share traditional Tuscan meals and conversation with presenters and fellow participants, taste local wines, mingle with the village’s tiny community, and take in the beauty of the surrounding countryside. All of this unfolds within a gentle way of life, far removed from the hurry of work and the noise of city living.

The Pari Center gathers world-renowned thinkers, scholars, and innovators from diverse disciplines and traditions. Our mission is to explore the mysteries woven into everyday life: the subtle, essential questions that shape who we are and who we are becoming. Through rigorous inquiry, creative dialogue and participatory activities, we aim to illuminate the origins, nature, and possibilities of human experience.

We invite you to discover why so many visitors regard the Pari Center not only as a place of learning, but as a place of personal transformation.

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, dark matter, black holes and the anthropic principle. For his PhD he studied the first second of the Universe, working under the supervision of Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology. He was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1975 and moved to Queen Mary College in 1985. He has also held Visiting Professorships at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics.

He is the author of nearly three hundred scientific papers and the books Universe or Multiverse? and Quantum Black Holes.

Beyond his professional field, he is interested in the role of consciousness in physics and in an expanded paradigm which accommodates mind. He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between science and religion. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research in 2000-2004 and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

Jonathan Allday is a retired teacher with 30+ years’ experience teaching physics working in a range of boarding and day schools in the UK. He was a head of department, head of faculty and an academic Deputy Head. His last post had the gloriously pompous title ‘Director of Digital Strategy,’ although this did not make the IT work any better for him.

After attending the Liverpool Blue Coat School, he took his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, then in 1989 a PhD in experimental particle physics at Liverpool University. During that time, he found one of David Peat’s books in the University Bookstore. Discovering that David was also a Liverpudlian fostered Jonathan’s ambition to write about physics.

Shortly after his PhD, Jonathan started work on his first book Quarks Leptons and the Big Bang, now published by Taylor & Francis and available in its third edition. It has been in print for over 25 years.

Since then, he has also written Apollo in Perspective, Quantum Reality (now in its second edition), Space-time, and Introduction to Entropy: The Way of the World, written with an old school friend, Professor Simon Hands. In addition, Jonathan is co-authoring a successful textbook (Advanced Physics) and a volume in the Oxford Encyclopaedia for Young Scientists. Most recently, Jonathan contributed to the updated edition of the Looking-Glass Universe by F. David Peat and John Briggs.

In various other projects, Jonathan has produced articles and teaching materials on the philosophy of science and the interface between science and religion. He has contributed to Physics Review magazine and has been an editor of Physics Education.

During COVID, Jonathan started researching what the Pari Center was up to and made his first trip to Italy for the ‘Enchanted Universe’ conference in 2022. Since then, he has adopted Pari as a spiritual home.

His physical home is with his wife Carolyn in Worcestershire. They have three grown boys, one of whom actually did a degree in physics at Bristol University, (not a bad strike rate…) and is now a software engineer. The others read psychology and philosophy and fell to the dark side and became accountants.

All of them can do sport, which Jonathan can’t but his wife could (very well).

In January 2026, Jonathan became Director of the Pari Center.