In Beyond Bohm 2025, we will extend feelers to the world of nature, and into certain aspects of human creativity. We will be looking to see if we can have a concrete, rather than conceptual sense of wholeness. In the first instance – the natural world – we will explore in some detail the phenomenological engagement with nature taken by Scot author Nan Shepherd. In the second instance – the domain of human creativity – we will take up the manner in which architect- philosopher Christopher Alexander approached wholeness, as a concrete living process.

We will not be attempting to come to finished conclusions or final answers. Rather, we will be aiming for a “flavor,” a “taste” of both wholeness and of fragmentation. To this end, our format will be notably different from in the past. In our first and third weekends, the entire second day will be given over to audience participation, in order to get the fullest possible feeling for the pulse of the Pari community. The second weekend will offer specific activities that can be done between the first day and the second day.

In this two-day session, we will explore Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, as well as her slim volume of poetry, In the Cairngorms. The first day will consist of brief selected readings, with close examination and commentary on Shepherd’s intimate and evocative “way” of being with the mountain. We will also hear first-person accounts from people who, inspired by The Living Mountain, ventured forth and found their own “way” into the Cairngorms.

This weekend will provide the option for those attending to experiment directly with certain basic approaches to the “quality without a name.” This will include activities that can be done between the first day and second day, which can then be shared with the group on the second day. As in our first weekend, we are aiming to broaden the manner in which the Pari community can engage with the Beyond Bohm programs.

While our first two weekends will focus on two views of wholeness – in the natural world and in the human-made world – our final weekend will take up Bohm’s “hard problem”: that is, changing the reflexive, thought-centered nature of our everyday consciousness. Bohm pointed to the necessity of apprehending and altering our age-old engagement with what he called “thought as a system” – the tacit, culture-wide commitment to a pervasively fragmented worldview, inclusive of ourselves and our own individual consciousness.

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath, spiritual activist and poet, who is Founder of Character Education Scotland, Global Ambassador of the Scientific and Medical Network (www.scientificandmedical.net) and former President of Wrekin Trust and the

Swedenborg Society. He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorer since 1986. He was the instigator of the Beyond the Brain conference series in 1995
(www.beyondthebrain.org) and has co-ordinated the Mystics and Scientists conferences (www.mysticsandscientists.org) every year since the late 1980s.

David Krakauer is the President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. His research explores the fundamental character of problem-solving matter. This is in contrast to the ordinary and abiotic matter of the universe. This research spans the origin of life and the evolution of intelligence and stupidity on earth, to include processes of “exbodiment” through which intelligence is enhanced and outsourced, using languages and artifacts. The details of this research include studying the evolution of cellular, linguistic, social, and cultural mechanisms supporting communication, memory, and a panoply of information-processing systems. He is also interested in the history of complexity and the way in which language games, rule systems, and paradigms help us to understand systems of knowledge.

Science has largely displaced religious accounts of our existence. But it can make both life and death seem virtually meaningless. Religion does not, suggesting there is a necessary opposition between them. We will move beyond that to look at how spiritual traditions, the sciences and the arts provide complementary ways of celebrating life and accepting death as parts of living authentically.