Join us for a week of living moment by moment, in Pari, Italy surrounded by the peaceful hills of the Tuscan landscape. With its beautiful palazzo, rustic bar, and numerous quiet places, the medieval village of Pari acts as an alchemical vessel for transformations to take place. Throughout the week you will have ample opportunities to connect with Nature, others, and—perhaps most importantly—yourself. Experience the power of dialogue and active listening in an atmosphere that cultivates intimacy in everyday interactions. Embracing the present and choosing to act more gently, allows insights and interconnections to emerge and bubble up in a natural and playful manner. Such moments are often accompanied by experiences of openness, trust, joy, and a childlike sense of wonder.

Patrick Harpur grew up in Surrey, attended Cranleigh School and travelled for a year in Africa before going to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, to read English. Subsequently he did much of the reading and research which he would eventually use in his books, and wrote poetry, stories and plays by way of practice, while supporting himself with part-time jobs, such as teaching, market research, gardening, computer personnel etc.

How to Think Impossibly invites us to think about these fantastic (yet commonplace) experiences as an essential part of being human, expressive of a deeply shared reality that is neither mental nor material but gives rise to both.

Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Kripal interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to develop an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.

Syntropy describes aspects of reality that follow an increase in complexity through the action of attractors in the future, explaining the relationship of systems with their purposes. Rather than progressing towards disintegrated disorder, syntropy “draws together” through commonality and intertwined purposes. In a way, syntropy can be regarded as the life force that emanates from the unifying action of love.

Thought as a System is David Bohm’s ur-text pertaining to his views regarding the nature of collective thought. It elucidates core themes of awareness, collective assumptions, social conditioning, dialogue, fragmentation, the self-image, insight, meaning, the observer and the observed, proprioception of thought, thinking vs. thought, and many more.

In this session, Dr. Elizabeth Henderson will share with us aspects of her 20 years of engagement with Early Years (Early Childhood) education, oriented toward a process of nurturing that is fundamentally different from contemporary quantitative educational systems.

Federico Faggin is a physicist born and educated in Italy who co-invented and developed the MOS Silicon Gate Technology at Fairchild Semiconductor and designed the world’s first microprocessor at Intel. Faggin also co-founded and led Zilog and Synaptics, two successful high-tech companies, before founding the non-profit Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation, dedicated to the science of consciousness. He received the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama.

Rocks as verbs? Stones with subtle wisdom? Experiencing Earth with the fourth dimension of Deep Time? Marcia Bjornerud is doing in geology what Tim Ingold has done in anthropology and David Bohm has done in physics: make new levels of embodied meaning available to non-specialists while challenging our reflexive perceptions of the world.

In this session, Pam Harris will share with us some of her contemplations of scientific and philosophical questions—including those of David Bohm—and how those contemplations translate to canvas. If contemporary abstract painting has eluded you, this is an opportunity to get a first-hand sensibility of how one artist creates such works.

In order to celebrate the centennial of Feyerabend’s birth (and three decades since he passed away), Vandana and Alex will be in dialogue for about one hour, reflecting on his legacy and its impact today. They will discuss current pernicious monotheisms of the mind and, based on general principles and concrete examples, entertain and illustrate alternatives in physics, neurobiology, agriculture, and economy. We would then open it up for questions and comments from the audience.