with Richard Baker Roshi, Valerie Hardcastle, Basil Hiley, Bernardo Kastrup, Gary Lachman, Iain McGilchrist, Roderick Main, Paavo Pylkkänen and Beverley Zabriskie
Chaired by Shantena Sabbadini
8 two-hour online sessions, one every Saturday and Sunday
June 5 – 27, 2021
9:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST Â | Â 18:00 CEST
All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.
Consciousness is the primary and most immediate experience we all have. Before knowing our name or who we are, before being able to recognize any specific experience we are undergoing, the immediate realization that “I am” is always there.
Yet this fundamental first person experience sits uneasily within the context of our scientific third person description of the world. No doubt consciousness has somehow to do with the brain, since physical or chemical changes in the brain affect the contents of consciousness. But the contents of consciousness, e.g. the experience of the color red, are qualitatively different from and irreducible to patterns of excitation in the brain. This irreducible difference has been dubbed “the hard problem of consciousness.”
What has been dubbed ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ is much deeper than mere neurophysiology. It involves the sense we have of ourselves and our destiny, the issue of life after death and the distinction between animate and inanimate. What are the boundaries (if any) of consciousness? Is consciousness everywhere (as mystical traditions teach) or nowhere (as materialists claim)?
Each session will allow time for audience participation in the form of dialogue, discussion and Q&A.
Saturday June 5
Analytic Idealism
with Bernardo Kastrup
Sunday June 6
Can Quantum Mechanics Solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness?
with Basil Hiley and Paavo Pylkkänen
Saturday June 12
Mundane and Mystical: A Panentheistic Perspective on C. G. Jung’s Late Thoughts About Consciousness, Ego, and Self
with Roderick Main
Sunday June 13
Emotion, Synchronicity and Surprise
with Beverley Zabriskie
Saturday June 19
Beyond the Robot: Consciousness and Existentialism
with Gary Lachman
Sunday June 20
What Is the Neural Correlate of Consciousness?
with Valerie Gray Hardcastle
Saturday June 26
The Inner Science, Experiential Investigation, and Analysis of Consciousness
with Richard Baker Roshi
Sunday June 27
Closing Panel: What is Consciousness
with Valerie Hardcastle, Gary Lachman, Roderick Main, Paavo Pylkkanen and Beverley Zabriskie
Packages:
All sessions – Full Price €160, Member’s Discount €144: All 8 live sessions or recording if you miss a session.
4/8 sessions – Full Price €90, Member’s Discount €81: Choose any 4 live sessions or recording if you miss the event. After you have purchased this option, you will receive a form by email to choose the events you wish to attend.
One session – Full Price €25, Member’s Discount €22.50: By purchasing one session, you will have access to any one session and recording. Tickets for individual sessions are available on the event page for that session.
Solidarity All Sessions – €80: All 8 live sessions or recording if you miss a session. Please feel free to use this solidarity rate if you are under financial stress. The membership discount does not apply to this package.
Solidarity  4/8 Sessions – €45: Choose any 4 live sessions, or recording if you miss a session. After you have purchased this option, you will receive a form by email to choose the events you wish to attend. Please feel free to use this solidarity rate if you are under financial stress. The membership discount does not apply to this package.
General InformationÂ
All sessions will last for approximately 2 hours, and will be held over zoom.us. The session structure may vary from speaker to speaker, but in general participants will have the opportunity to ask questions of the presenter and in some cases there will be breakaway discussion groups.
Each session will be hosted by a member of the Pari Center Team, to ensure that the call is running smoothly and assist anyone experiencing technical problems.
During the presentations, we ask participants to turn off their microphone to ensure better quality audio. For this reason, the host may mute a participant’s audio. This is not to silence a participant’s voice, but to ensure an overall good audio quality. If a participant would like to ask a question or make a contribution to the discussion, they can use the ‘raise your hand’ tool in the chat, and then are welcome to turn on their microphone.
We invite all participants to turn on their video camera, as we believe that seeing everyone creates an inclusive educational environment. However, if any participant is uncomfortable, they are free to turn off the camera.
All sessions will be recorded. The recordings will not include the possible breakout-room discussions, but only the speaker’s presentation, follow-up discussions and Q&A. If a participant does not feel comfortable being recorded, we invite that participant to turn off their video and audio throughout the session. These recordings are available to anyone who has purchased a ticket for an attended session, or for a session they have paid for but were unable to attend.
