Book-A-Month Club – The Passion of the Western Mind

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View
by Richard Tarnas

Hosts: David Lorimer with Guest and Author Richard Tarnas

Tuesday April 9, 2024
9:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST 

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

The Passion of the Western Mind – understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view – is, along with its sequel Cosmos and Psyche – one of the most seminal and original books in the history of ideas. I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy in 1973 at the age of 21, and Rick covers the same territory with enormous elegance, clarity and style. However, his vision is very different from the positivism of Russell and in his epilogue he unfolds his understanding of the co-creative and  participatory nature of reality that values the feminine and where ’the autonomous individual self has been forged and is now reunited with the ground of its being. Understanding how and where we have arrived enables us to understand our transformative potentials and possibilities. Join our dialogue on April 9th!

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Distinguished Rockefeller Faculty, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and is director of its programme in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. A graduate of Harvard University and Saybrook Institute, he was formerly director of programmes and education at Esalen Institute.

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a writer, lecturer, poet, editor and spiritual activist who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network (www.scientificandmedical.net) and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society (www.swedenborgsociety.org.uk). He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorersince 1986 and completed his 100^th issue in 2019. 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 every year since the late 1980s.

Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Survival? Death as Transition (1984, 2017) Resonant Mind (originally Whole in One)(1990/2017), The Spirit of Science (1998), Thinking Beyond the Brain(2001), The Protein Crunch(with Jason Drew) and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). He has edited three books about the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov): Prophet for our Times (1991, 2015), The Circle of Sacred Dance,and Gems of Love,which is a translation of his prayers and formulas into English. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince (2003) –has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. His new book of essays, A Quest for Wisdom was published in 2021.

David is also Chair of the Galileo Commission (www.galileocommission.org) which seeks the expand the evidence base of science of consciousness beyond a materialistic worldview.

In 2020 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award as a Visionary Leader by the Visioneers International Network and the 2021 Aboca Human Ecology Prize. He is a Creative Member of the Club of Budapest. His website is www.davidlorimer.co.uk