The Pari Center

Beyond Words
2022-01-08 19:00 - 20:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
A Film Trilogy: Giving Form to the Ineffable

with director, writer and producer Hugh PidgeonRoundtable Guests: Eelco de Geus, Gary Goldberg, Donna Kennedy-Glans, Jacob Raz, Yuriko Sato and David SchrumModerated by Lee Nichol

Saturday January 8, 2022

Three Short Films9:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

Roundtable Conversation10:00am PST | 1:00pm EST | 6:00pm GMT | 7:00pm CET

Free Online Pari Dialogue

I first heard of Hugh Pidgeon’s Beyond Words trilogy from Hugh himself, when he sent me a link to view the three films. Not realizing these were short films, I put off viewing them for some time, assuming an hour or more for each film. When I realized they were not lengthy, I opened them right away, beginning with A Moment of Clarity.

At the end of Clarity, there was a simple state of silence. Eventually I began to reflect on what I had seen, and was taken aback to realize that not once, in 15 minutes of film about David Bohm, did Bohm’s image ever appear. And yet, the very essence of Bohm was everywhere, distilled and concentrated with great artistry and a true sense of love.

As it turns out, all these qualities are to be found in The Wall within Our Minds and Negotiating with Gravity, the other two films in the trilogy. But it is from within the wholeness of the three films, seen in their original intended sequence, that the true import of Hugh’s work emerges. The overlapping, interlaced meanings of the trilogy evoke a sense of mystery and beauty that transcends any of the individual films. These qualities linger, and indeed work to rearrange one’s interiority, one’s very being.

It was with great joy to learn from Hugh – who has kept these films rather close for a number of years – that he was enthusiastic about sharing them with the larger Pari community. This prospect has now come to fruition. Please join us for this very special, one-time-only event!

Lee Nichol, Moderator

On Saturday January 8, 2022, we are offering all our friends at the Pari Center the unique opportunity to view Hugh Pidgeon’s trilogy Beyond Words followed by a panel discussion.

Our invited guests at the table will come together to discuss the ideas, the beauty, and the overall sense of Wholeness that is portrayed throughout. They will examine the interconnections between David Bohm, Martin Buber, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of young Palestinians and Israelis, and the artist Andy Goldsworthy.

The films (with a combined running time of 32 minutes) can be viewed at leisure in a 60-minute window prior to the 90-minute roundtable discussion between our panelists. There will not be Q&A during this event.

It is essential that you get your ticket above in order to receive the necessary links.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Please get your ticket for this event at the top of the page and you will be sent the links to the films and to the roundtable conversation.

If you have any questions or need any help just contact Eleanor Peat: eleanor@paricenter.com

Join us at the Pari Center on Saturday January 8, 2022 for a screening of Hugh Pidgeon’s trilogy Beyond Words followed by a panel conversation. This is a unique opportunity to not only view Hugh’s films but to hear a ninety-minute roundtable conversation on the ideas presented in the films.

Thanks to creator and director Hugh Pidgeon, it is our privilege to screen the Beyond Words trilogy, Hugh’s stunning short films, free of charge, for the Pari Center community.

The Beyond Words trilogy opens with The Wall in Our Minds which introduces Arab and Jewish young musicians from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, with founder and conductor Daniel Barenboim who believes the orchestra is a metaphor for what could be achieved in the Middle East.

These young people were brought together as a one-off scratch orchestra in 1999 (yet is still giving performances) by Barenboim and the philosopher and writer, the late Edward Said. The name chosen for the orchestra The West-Eastern Divan was the title of a collection of lyrical poems by Goethe. One hundred years earlier, Martin Buber prefaced two lines from the very same collection in his book I and Thou.

Negotiating With Gravity, the second film in the trilogy, was the outcome of an invitation to the director to lead a plenary at an international conference of Gestalt therapists on Martin Buber’s contribution to the core notions of dialogue that inform Gestalt psychotherapy.

For Buber the first of what he called the ‘spheres of relation’ was our life with Nature. Going beyond words, the photographic essay that became the film followed conversations with a botanist from Kew Gardens, a professor of physics at Oxford, a professor of mathematics at Warwick University, a resident ecologist at Schumacher College, and an artist whose paintings feature in the film, the better to understand the five perspectives that featured in the passage from Buber’s book and begins ‘I consider a tree.’

The third in the series A Moment of Clarity was conceived as a sister film to bring David Bohm and Martin Buber together for the first time in the same space. In Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order the physicist includes extensive reference to the Ancient Greek notions of measure in music and the visual arts.

Hugh drew his inspiration from Andy Goldsworthy, a site-specific sculptor whose work he has long admired and is featured on the cover of the Routledge edition of Bohm’s On Dialogue edited by Lee Nichol. It is Andy Goldsworthy who speaks of a moment of clarity at the close of the film.

Hugh presents an entirely new configuration of Goldsworthy’s film Rivers and Tides brought into conjunction with David Bohm’s writing on process from Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and the extraordinary Ice Music of Norwegian musician Terje Isungset.

Hugh Pidgeon is an organisational consultant, an academic and a practicing Gestalt psychotherapist. He has been as much influenced in his work by the teaching of Martin Buber on dialogue as he has been by that of David Bohm . Drawn by the commonality of insight they shared with each other, Hugh created the trilogy Beyond Words, several years in the making, that features the two of them for the first time in the same space.

A number of years living and working in Thailand and China and often visiting Japan have also proved a significant influence on Hugh personally. He was first introduced to David Bohm’s work by fellow US consultants Roger Harrison and Peter Block while he was representing a Kansas City-based consultancy in Europe and was intrigued from the beginning by the interest David Bohm developed in the parallels in Buddhist teaching to his own work as a physicist.

Hugh’s primary interest is the contribution a dialogic orientation yet might make to the fractious collisions of opinion on how best to address our seemingly insatiable determination as the human race to sacrifice the ecological balance of the planet in pursuit of our own economic development – the outcome of the fragmentation in the way we think that David Bohm anticipated over 40 years ago.

Eelco de Geus met the work of David Bohm in his Dialogue Training in Germany with Freeman Dhoritiy. He is inspired by the integration of Bohm’s Thinking, the relational approaches in the works of Martin Buber, the process work of Arnold Mindell and different community building practices. Eelco applies this integration in a proces- oriented approach on dialogue, that inquires beyond words into the essence of human connection. He is co- founder of the Dialogue Academy Vienna, which provides learning spaces for dialogue process work and systemic constellations.

Gary Goldberg received an undergraduate degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and then a Medical Degree from McMaster University. He completed residency training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with subspecialty certification in Brain Injury Medicine. In 2020, he retired from clinical practice after over 35 years working in the field of brain injury rehabilitation at academic medical centers in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Richmond in the USA. He now is focused on drawing on this work experience to seek a means of conjoining faith and science into a coherent conceptual framework of holistic inquiry.

Gary is an energetic member of the Pari Center, actively participating in our online events and is a member of the Pari Center Advisory Board.

Donna Kennedy-Glans is a boundary-crosser. As a Canadian, she has worked on the ground to add value to enterprising projects in over thirty-five countries, in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Donna began her career as a lawyer in the energy sector, where she held several unique and pioneering roles involving corporate integrity, transparency and sustainability. She founded a non-profit to build the capacity of women in Yemen, served as an elected politician and cabinet minister in the province of Alberta, has held leading roles on boards of directors, and participates with her siblings in the stewardship of a family farm enterprise.

Donna’s book about her work with women in Yemen—Unveiling the Breath: One Woman’s Journey into Understanding Islam and Gender Equality–was published by Pari Publishing in 2009. Donna’s latest book—Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance: Moving Beyond Business as Usual—will be released in March 2022; see teachingthedinosaur.com for details. Donna blogs at https://beyondpolarity.blog and is active on several social media platforms. She is an amateur photographer and delighted grandmother to two-year-old Kennedy.

Lee Nichol is the editor of David Bohm’s On Dialogue; On Creativity; and The Essential David Bohm. From 1980-1992 he collaborated with Bohm on various aspects of dialogue, consciousness, and education.

He has been on the faculty of the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, NC; of the Oak Grove School in Ojai, CA; of the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, CA; and of Denver University in Denver, CO.

Lee has recently released – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – which can be downloaded for free at: https://paricenter.com/product/entering-bohms-holoflux-by-lee-nichol/

Jacob Raz is Professor Emeritus, East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University. He translates and writes on Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and Japanese Culture and poetry, as well as his own haiku. Raz lived many years in Japan and travelled extensively in Asia. He has long been a practitioner and teacher of Zen.

Raz has taught seminars and workshops on Martin Buber and Buddhism, and wrote the Afterword in the new translation of Martin Buber’s book I and Thou into Hebrew [2014]. He has been active in the Consciousness Laboratory, Tel Aviv University, and wrote extensively on the subject.

He is also the father of Yoni, a loving person with DS. They speak ‘Yonish’, a language they have been creating over a lifetime through constant, embodied dialogue. Consequently, Raz became a social activist, and has led a national movement toward a paradigmatic change in the life and dialogue with people with disabilities.

Yuriko Sato is a Japanese Jungian analyst and psychotherapist, and a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich. She studied medicine and worked as a psychiatrist in Osaka and Kyoto. She has private psychotherapy practices in Zürich and Bern, and is a training/supervising analyst at ISAPZURICH (International School of Analytical Psychology Zürich), where she teaches on topics such as the Eastern (Japanese) psyche, narcissism, and psychiatry.

David Schrum received his PhD in quantum theory at Queen’s University, following which he spent two post-doctoral years with David Bohm at Birkbeck College. Here, he entered Bohm’s world of creative and subtle philosophical approaches to physics and his enquiry into consciousness and what may lie beyond.

David Schrum continues in these explorations, in physics developing a new approach to relativistic quantum theory and, through the dialogue process, going into what it is to bring to light that which lies enfolded within our individual and collective consciousness.

The Colour of Sound: Emotional Response to Music Tonality
2021-11-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
with Donna Colemanpianist and performance researcher

Saturday November 209:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

On top of all this I present a fine case of coloured hearing. Perhaps “hearing” is not quite accurate, since the colour sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline. The long a of the English alphabet . . . has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes a hard g (vulcanised rubber) and r (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal n, noodle-limp l, and the ivory-backed hand mirror of o take care of the whites. . . . Passing on to the blue group, there is steely x, thundercloud z, and huckleberry k. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see q as browner than k, while s is not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl.

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited

Light and sound are waves. Light waves behave differently from sound waves, but they have wave-ness in common. Colour is a result of the refraction (bending, movement) of light. Sound is the result of air being moved. Light and sound also have in common the fact that they are perceived by an entity. It is not inconceivable that a colour perception could evoke or be evoked by a sonic perception, a phenomenon known as synaesthesia.

This two-hour webinar explores the emotional response to sound as potentially distinct and discrete experiences depending upon the key of the musical composition being played, along with the possibility that the listener may hear colour.

In the years 1722 and again in 1744, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote twenty-four preludes and fugues, each in a different key, for the two volumes known as Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Keyboard). The “tempered” scale, which had gradually evolved out of the Medieval church modes, consists of twelve pitches, each of which can be cast as “major” or “minor,” for a total of twenty-four “keys.”

Selected preludes from this collection of forty-eight will be performed, and participants will be invited to make note of any and all perceptions that arise. Discussion of these responses along with general reflections upon various colour theories and the nature of perception will follow. The music of other composers who assign colour to key, in particular, Olivier Messiaen and Alexander Skryabin (Scriabin), and composers who sought to create music with “no key” (Anton Webern, Ruth Crawford) will also be presented for listeners’ responses.

On Saturday November 20, Donna will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82279864300

If you would like to participate, have any questions or need any help just contact Eleanor Peat: eleanor@paricenter.com

Recommended Reading:

Visualising Visions: The Significance of Messiaen’s Colours by Håkon Austbøhttps://www.musicandpractice.org/volume-2/visualizing-visions-the-significance-of-messiaens-colours/

Scriabin’s Color Symbolism in Music by Ursula Rehn Wolfmanhttps://interlude.hk/scriabins-color-symbolism-music/

Dr Donna Coleman is a multi-award-winning concert pianist, recording artist, author, performance researcher and philosopher, and master teacher whose career spans a half-century, of which more than half has been based in Australia. She is also an accomplished weaver and photographer and an amateur but passionate astronomer and archaeologist with a keen interest in the culture of the Indigenous peoples of Australia and the United States. As Head of Keyboard and of Postgraduate Studies at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, she convened weekly thought-provoking seminars that explored relationships between music and other disciplines. Donna is writing a book entitled Dancing with the Piano, a collection of essays distilled from these sessions and from her many years of phenomenological engagement with her ultimate dance partner, the piano.

photo credit: Peter Paul Geoffrion

The Consciousness of Neuroscience
2021-11-06 18:00 - 20:00
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxG7_rMpnuk

The Consciousness of Neuroscience

with Alex Gomez-Marin

Saturday November 610:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

Free Online Pari Dialogue

The scientific study of consciousness used to be taboo just a few decades ago, but it is now in its heyday. Consciousness research captures the imagination of laypeople, attracts research funding, and sells books. Amongst neuroscientists, the dominant position is this: whatever consciousness is, it must somehow emerge somewhere in the brain. Where else could it be? The challenge then is to find out how subjective experience springs from neural activity. But does it? By what kind of modern alchemy is the water of the matter supposed to be transformed into the wine of experience? We are never told. Instead, materialism excels at selling old metaphysical commitments as new scientific data. In addition, materialism is promissory by necessity: the grand resolution is at hand but always lies ahead – the best is yet to come. Moreover, and despite the impressive tools available, such a conception of the physical world dates back to the nineteenth century – ironically, physicalism is embraced by virtually everyone except physicists themselves. In sum, the blind spot of the neuroscience of consciousness is paradoxical: a mind studies other brains and declares itself illusory, epiphenomenal, or emergent at best. Here, rather than trying to answer how “matter makes mind”, Alex Gomez-Marin questions whether it does, and what this entails for science writ large. He argues that the science of consciousness is at a sweet crossroads: either we continue doing science as usual with ever fancier tools and bigger data or we seize the opportunity to craft a new idea of science.

On Saturday November 6, Alex will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89671398135

If you would like to participate, have any questions or need any help just contact Eleanor Peat: eleanor@paricenter.com

Alex Gomez-Marin is a theoretical physicist turned cognitive neuroscientist. He was awarded his PhD in physics in 2008 by the University of Barcelona. He also holds a Masters in Biophysics from the same university. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the EMBL-CRG Centre forGenomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown, where he studied worms, flies and mice. Since 2016 he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias (CSIC-UMH) in Alicante, Spain. The mission of his group is to establish neuro-ethological principles across species. His latest research concentrates on machines and humans in real-world situations, combining computational techniques with theoretical biology and continental philosophy. You can follow him at @behaviOrganisms and read his work here: https://behavior-of-organisms.org/read-us

Closing Panel: Multiple Universes
2021-10-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9MqWMqeslk

Closing Panel: Multiple Universes

with Bernard Carr, Geraldine Patrick Encina, Ruth Kastner, Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz, Paul Tappenden and Jean-Francois Vezina

Sunday October 24, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

A panel discussion with some of the speakers of the Multiple Universes series will close the event, reflecting on the various perspectives that have emerged in the presentations and comparing different world views.

The session will begin by posing the panelists a few key questions to start the discussion. It will continue as a Q&A session open to everybody. You are invited to have your questions and comments ready, and in formulating them please be mindful of other people’s need to ask their own questions! The best questions are often the most concise ones.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

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.

Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition forthcoming in Fall 2021), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019). She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory.

Paul Tappenden’s first degree was in philosophy and psychology but he has long taken an interest in physics and was particularly fascinated by the philosophical problems associated with quantum mechanics. His PhD from King’s College, London, was an attempt to relate an important current debate in philosophy of mind with ideas in the so-called Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Since then he has taught philosophy of science to physics students in Grenoble, France, and has pursued the ideas in his doctorate in a series of papers, the most recent being in the journal Synthese, 2019.

Jean-François Vezina is a clinical psychologist in Quebec and author of 6 books including Necessary Chances: Synchronicity in the Encounters That Transform Us by Pari Publishing. He was president of the Jungian society of Quebec for seven years and the animator and producer of the radio show Projections: Psychology and Cinema about symbols in the movies. He is also an international lecturer and a musician. www.jfvezina.net/

Is the Multiverse in the Mind or is the Mind in the Multiverse?
2021-10-23 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKtozqHKuUA

Is the Multiverse in the Mind or is the Mind in the Multiverse?

with Bernard Carr

Saturday October 23, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Physics has been triumphant in understanding the vast array of structures in the universe and the forces which link the microscopic and macroscopic domains. This link culminates in the big bang, where the very small (M-theory) meets the very large (the multiverse). The history of physics might also be regarded as the expansion of our consciousness to ever larger and smaller scales. However, at each stage the micro and macro frontiers have been regarded as bordering on philosophy because of the lack of empirical data. So does the merging of the two physics/philosophy borders at the big bang indicate the end of physics or the need for a radically new paradigm. I take the latter view and argue that a feature of the next paradigm must be an expansion of physics to accommodate mind and consciousness. This proposal impinges on two problems on the borders of physics and philosophy: the relationship between physical space and perceptual space and the nature of the passage of time. It is argued that the resolution of both these problems may involve a 5-dimensional model, with the 5th dimension being associated with mental time. This proposal may relate to recent developments in brane cosmology, which is one version if the multiverse proposal. A description of consciousness must also entail a proper understanding of the specious present, the minimum timescale of conscious experience, and this may be associated with other dimensions which arise in M-theory. Higher dimensions may therefore play a vital role in linking physics, the multiverse and mind.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

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.

Imagined Problems: Real Opportunities
2021-10-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0CxUbY3iY

Imagined Problems: Real Opportunities

with Susanna Wu-Pong Calvert and Gary Goldberg

Wednesday October 209:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

The science of perception tells us that our problems are subjective and socially constructed. So what is a “real” problem, and what solutions become available to us? In this engaging session, Drs. Susanna Wu-Pong Calvert, MAPP, PhD and Gary Goldberg, MD discuss the nature of perception and “reality” in our VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous). They will also discuss how to move from feelings of overwhelm and despair to inspiration and agency by accessing our deep, inner wisdom. Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey will be presented as a timeless, increasingly relevant, and useful frame for our individual and collective pursuit of meaning and authentic, impactful action, especially in light of our modern challenges. Personal stories and anecdotes will be used to illustrate how we can create our own sagas akin to Dorothy (Wizard of Oz) and Luke Skywalker (Star Wars). Participants will be invited to envision, and then pursue their own achievable, unique, and deeply authentic solutions to achieve the beautiful new world that we all desire.

On Wednesday October 20, Susanna and Gary will open our monthly Community Call followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86035064521

If you would like to participate, have any questions or need any help just contact Eleanor Peat: eleanor@paricenter.com

Dr. Susanna Wu-Pong Calvert is a 26-year veteran of higher education, first starting at Virginia Commonwealth University where she was a faculty member in the School of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutics, and Director of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Program for 11 years. She joined the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Georgia in 2016 as the inaugural Director of Programming, where she supported faculty success and wellbeing, and leadership and organizational development for the 2300 faculty across the UGA campuses. In 2018, she founded the Foundation for Family and Community Healing, who focuses on creating vibrant connections between individuals and their families, communities, and with Earth to promote wellbeing for all.

Susanna has a Bachelors Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Texas, Austin, a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, a PhD in pharmacy and pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco and a postdoctoral fellowship in dermatology, also at UCSF. During her career she has published almost 100 journal articles, books, and book chapters, and has written hundreds of blogs for the Silver Lining blog (www.findingpositiveperspective.wordpress.com) and through FFCH. She has several coaching credentials including Clifton StrengthsFinders, Growth Edge Coaching, Arbinger Institute, and the Leadership Circle, and is trained as a life coach. Her passion is in helping individuals and organizations find and pursue their calling and the highest versions of themselves.

For more information on Susanna and her work www.HealingEdu.org and www.SusannaCalvert.com

Dr. Gary Goldberg received an undergraduate degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and then a Medical Degree from McMaster University. He completed residency training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with subspecialty certification in Brain Injury Medicine. In 2020, he retired from clinical practice after over 35 years working in the field of brain injury rehabilitation at academic medical centers in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Richmond in the USA. He now is focused on drawing on this work experience to seek a means of conjoining faith and science into a coherent conceptual framework of holistic inquiry.

Gary is an energetic member of the Pari Center, actively participating in our online events and is a member of the Pari Center Advisory Board.

Science, Philosophy, Evidence, Explanation and Fine-Tuning
2021-10-17 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt6nO3MTjvA

Science, Philosophy, Evidence, Explanation and Fine-Tuning

with Tim Maudlin

Sunday October 17, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Various sorts of “multiverse” scenario force us to reflect both on the aims of physics and on the sorts of considerations that can make a theory credible. This topic has been somewhat suppressed in the physics community by the prevalence of operationist and instrumentalist rhetoric (“Shut Up And Calculate”). I will survey the situation with respect to how multiverse theories could address fine-tuning problems, and the challenges that remain in making the principles used for assessing credibility clear and explicit.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. His research interests lie primarily in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and logic. His books include Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity (Blackwell), Truth and Paradox (Oxford), The Metaphysics Within Physics (Oxford), Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (Princeton University Press) and New Foundations for Physical Geometry: The Theory of Linear Structures (Oxford). Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory comes out on March 12, 2019. He is a member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an ACLS fellow.

Discovering Multiple Possibilities in Quantum Theory
2021-10-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdDB8ueFnWU

Discovering Multiple Possibilities in Quantum Theory

with Ruth E. Kastner

Saturday October 16, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

In her presentation Ruth will discuss the need for a paradigm change in the way we think about the world. When she says ‘we,’ she means primarily the Western scientific tradition and its attendant metaphysical and epistemological background assumptions, which have led to intractable problems in making sense of quantum theory. Among the assumptions leading us into this cul-de-sac are the empiricist notion that anything real must be tangible, and the Democritan notions that (1) a container called ‘spacetime’ is the delimiter for all real objects and that (2) real entities are separable, localizable ‘things’ that move from place to place in a local manner (as opposed to processes). A further Western background assumption is the notion that all dynamical action occurs in a unilateral fashion: e.g., that a physical quantity (e.g. energy) is emitted by one entity that does all the work and ends up at another spacetime point as a purely passive, secondary effect. The latter can be understood as a ‘Yang-only’ view of interactions, where Yang-type processes are generation, initiation, and creation. In contrast, Yin-type processes include reception, response, and dissolution. The Western paradigm neglects this latter aspect, and one consequence is that it has for many years overlooked an approach to field propagation that could shed new light on the physical meaning of quantum theory.

Ruth will also connect our current quantum conundrum to the insights of physician/psychologist Iain McGilchrist, who has argued that Western culture has emphasized left-brain thinking (based on separation, analysis, and control) and neglected right-brain thinking (based on holism, synthesis, and intuition), which is equally valid and necessary. This holistic aspect includes the mode of possibility, while the analytical, left-brain component sees only actuality. Hans Reichenbach (expressing a minority view among philosophers of science) insightfully remarked that ‘the flow of time is a real becoming in which potentiality is transformed into actuality.’ The paradigm change required by quantum theory includes the recognition that potentiality, or possibility (the intangible level described by quantum states and processes) is just as real as actuality (tangible spacetime phenomena). Thus, quantum theory opens the door to an understanding that the phenomenal level of our experience rests upon a vast ocean of possibility from which creativity and the manifest level of life and experience emerges.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition forthcoming in Fall 2021), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019). She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory.

May the Force Be Among Us
2021-10-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcEV5fcQCm0

May the Force Be Among Us: Exploring our MultiVerse with the help of Star Wars and other movies

with Jean-Francois Vezina

Sunday October 10, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Jung defines the Individuation process as an expression of our own originality through collective and universal attraction points called archetypes. But can we imagine that an entire Planet or Universe has his own individuation? If so, how can we synchronise our personal Universe, with the collective one?

Using the archetypal field of Star Wars Episodes 1-9, Ready Player One, Arrival and a surprise movie, we will explore how to ‘travel’ through parallel universes or parallel time and extract valuable information about our Individuation in 2021.

We will use these movies to explore the concept of ‘Symphonicity,’ a new way to see synchronicity on a collective level. and learn how to extract Archetypal Ideas from the projection of our collective archetypical field on the screen that help inspire us in creativity in our lives.

We will then create a game to learn together the necessity of meeting the Unexpected and the necessary chances in our lives by using Arrival and a mystery movie.

This psycho-philo-poetic game is inspired by 20 years of research in my six books which I continue in the article: ‘The Space of Time: Synchronicity as an Act of Creation in Nature and Psyche’ that will be published in the next Pari Perspectives.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

Jean-François Vezina is a clinical psychologist in Quebec and author of 6 books including Necessary Chances: Synchronicity in the Encounters That Transform Us by Pari Publishing. He was president of the Jungian society of Quebec for seven years and the animator and producer of the radio show Projections: Psychology and Cinema about symbols in the movies. He is also an international lecturer and a musician. www.jfvezina.net/

Multiple Universes in Mesoamerican Cultures
2021-10-09 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-PDg5twUHw

Multiple Universes in Mesoamerican Cultures

with Geraldine Ann Patrick Encina and Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz

Saturday October 9, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Drs Mindahi Bastida and Geraldine Patrick will share about the cosmovision of Mesoamerican cultures, where multiple simultaneous worlds are understood to exist. They will draw from different representations of such worlds and will also share personal experiences where they have had a glimpse into such alternate dimensions.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

Geraldine Ann Patrick Encina (Mapuche Descent) has been a founding member of the Biocultural Heritage Network of Mexico since 2008, is founder and executive director of Earth Timekeepers since 2016, member of several pre-Columbian societies since 2015 and member of the Inter-American Society of Cultural Astronomy since 2013.

She has been a professor at the Intercultural University of the State of Mexico for courses on Ethnoecology and Biocultural Ethics (2007-2010), and at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Lerma (2012-2015) for Interdisciplinary Studies, Complex Systems and Mesoamerican Calendars.

Her research focuses on the ancestral and current ways of conceiving time and natural cycles in Mesoamerica, especially among the Maya, Otomian and Mexica cultures, and since 2016 she has started study groups in four communities in Mexico and Guatemala with teachers, university students and organized farmers and women interested in revitalizing their culture and traditional ways of living with the land. Among her publications are “Biocultural Sacred Sites in Mexico” in the book Indigeneity and the Sacred, article Long Count in Function of the Haab and its Venus-Moon Relation. Application in Chichén Itzá and article Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent. Its Relation to Evening Venus, Rains, and the closing of 13 Bak’tun.

Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz (Otomi-Toltec) is the Director of the Original Nations Program at The Fountain and a member of the Mother Earth Delegation. He is an executive member of the Alliance Guardians of Mother Earth and a spokesperson of the recently created Grand Council of the Eagle and the Condor. He is also the General Coordinator of the Otomi Regional Council of the High Lerma River Basin, Mexico, that promotes the rights of nature and Mother Earth as well as the rights to self- determination of original nations.

Mindahi has served as a delegate to various commissions and summits on indigenous rights and sustainability, including the 1992 Earth Summit and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, 2002). He was director of the Original Caretakers Program at the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City between 2015 and 2020 and has been invited to partake in several advisory councils.

He has written on the relation between the state and Indigenous Peoples, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, biocultural sacred sites, and other topics.

Dendritic Quantum Mechanics
2021-10-03 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2LsAL9o_kw

Dendritic Quantum Mechanics

with Paul Tappenden

Sunday October 3, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

The advent of quantum mechanics in the 1920s brought with it the idea that fundamental physical processes may be stochastic which is to say random but constrained by probabilistic law. Rather than the future being determined in advance, as envisaged by Newtonian mechanics, one actual future is stochastically selected from a range of alternativepossibilities. A way to restore determinism to physics is to replace the idea of a stochastic process with that of a dendritic process where all (possible) outcomes actually occur, each in a different (branch) of a burgeoning quantum multiverse. The idea has been much discussed but remains very controversial. Paul explains some of the conceptual difficulties involved and how the idea may be linked to a non-standard materialist conception of the mind-body relation.

If you are constantly ‘splitting’ into every future previously thought merely possible, in what sense is it you who lives through those futures? An analysis of trans-temporal identity is required. How can the concept of probability apply to multiple coexistent futures rather than the selection of a single actual future from a range of alternative possiblities? A thought experiment involving hypothetical parallel universes helps. If ‘splitting’ is intelligible, what would the implications be for our choices in life if it came to be generally accepted by physicists and philosophers of physics?

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

Paul Tappenden’s first degree was in philosophy and psychology but he has long taken an interest in physics and was particularly fascinated by the philosophical problems associated with quantum mechanics. His PhD from King’s College, London, was an attempt to relate an important current debate in philosophy of mind with ideas in the so-called Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Since then he has taught philosophy of science to physics students in Grenoble, France, and has pursued the ideas in his doctorate in a series of papers, the most recent being in the journal Synthese, 2019.

The Multiverse and the Limits of Science
2021-10-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeOyQW8QyoQ

The Multiverse and the Limits of Science

with Bernard Carr

Saturday October 2, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Developments in both cosmology and particle physics suggest that our universe may just be one member of an ensemble of universes, termed the multiverse. However, there are many different versions of the multiverse proposal, so it is important to distinguish between these in assessing the plausibility of the notion. In some versions the values of the physical constants may vary across the ensemble, so this could provide a scientific basis for the suggestion that some of the constants are fine-tuned for the existence of observers. The evidence for this comes from numerous unexplained ‘coincidences’ between the constants, a notion which used to regarded as purely philosophical or even theological. But what is the universe fine-tuned for? Is it for complexity or some physical feature (such as the existence of black holes) or is for life or consciousness. And is the multiverse a proper scientific proposal or just philosophical speculation? This depends on the definition of ‘science’ but it is argued that the nature of science has continually changed as our knowledge of the universe has expanded.

To see the Full Multiple Universes Program

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.

Multiple Universes
2021-10-02 17:59 - 2021-10-24 20:00 | Online
Multiple UniversesParallel Worlds in Quantum Physics, Cosmology and Imagination

with Bernard Carr, Geraldine Patrick Encina (Mapuche Descent), Ruth Kastner, Tim Maudlin, Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz (Otomi-Toltec), Paul Tappenden and Jean François Vézina

Chaired by Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

October 2 – 3, 9 – 10, 16 – 17, 23 – 24, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

Two hour sessions every Saturdays and Sundays

All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.

Is the universe we live in unique? What lies beyond the boundaries of the universe we see? Was the process that we believe gave birth to our universe – the Big Bang –a singular event or are universes bubbling up all the time? Do we exist in different worlds and live parallel lives?

Such notions would have seemed outrageous a few decades ago: surprisingly, as evidence begins to converge from different directions, they are close to becoming scientific orthodoxy.

The Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann described a key motive in the evolution of scientific thought as “jettisoning excess baggage”. Ideas that were previously accepted as absolute truth (e.g. the idea that the Earth sits at the center of the cosmos) were later seen to be relative and simply a consequence of our particular perspective. Are we today on the edge of another such radical enlargement of our perspective by abandoning the notion of a single universe?

In this online course we will explore the idea of multiple universes (and multiple realities, multiple selves) in science, film, science fiction, indigenous wisdom, etc.

Program of Event

Saturday October 2The Multiverse and the Limits of Sciencewith Bernard Carr

Sunday October 3Dendritic Quantum Mechanicswith Paul Tappenden

Sunday October 10May The Force Be Between Us Exploring our MultiVerse with the help of Star Wars and Otherswith Jean-Francois Vezina

Saturday October 16Discovering Multiple Possibilities in Quantum Theorywith Ruth Kastner

Sunday October 17Science, Philosophy, Evidence, Explanation and Fine-Tuningwith Tim Maudlin

Saturday October 23Is the Multiverse in the Mind or is the Mind in the Multiverse?with Bernard Carr

Sunday October 24Multiple Universes: Closing Sessionwith Bernard Carr, Geraldine Patrick Encina, Ruth Kastner, Tim Maudlin, Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz, Paul Tappenden, Jean-Francois Vezina

On the Interpretation of Signs: The Search for Meaning in Music Notation
2021-09-30 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
On the Interpretation of Signs: The Search for Meaning in Music Notation

with Donna Coleman

Thursday September 309:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays1803 Boston MA – 1882 Concord MA

What in the hell have the notes got to do with the music?!Charles Edward Ives1874 Danbury CT – 1954 West Redding CT

If we gaze at the image above, many thoughts, ideas, interpretations come to mind. My tendency is to see astronomical phenomena. Total solar eclipse. Sunspot. Inverse full moon. End of a sentence; a separator. Centre of a universe; a generator.

The line suggests altogether different meanings. A horizon. An edge. ‘The bottom line.’ Another version of a separator. A blue highway across Kansas.

The origins of written language—the use of symbols to represent sounds—date back to c 4,000 BC and the ancient Sumerians. Their script, called Proto-Sumerian, consisted of marks pressed into soft clay using either the blunt or the sharp end of a stylus. Since that time, attempts to translate the aural experience of music into visual cues for its re-creation by a performer have evolved into a sophisticated but ultimately inadequate system of ‘notation.’ As a performer and researcher, world renowned concert pianist Dr Donna Coleman has spent six decades engaged in the daily challenge of turning a collection of black dots on a line into a narrative, yet wordless, aural journey.

In this two-hour webinar, divided into two forty-minute presentation sessions followed by twenty minutes for questions and debate, Coleman will lead a discussion about the perception and interpretation of signs and symbols at it relates to music notation. The discourse will encircle Coleman’s Music: It IS Rocket Science and the many disciplines that inform the study and contemplation and performance of music. We will explore the history of music notation and contemplate the notion of music as language. Coleman will demonstrate at the piano the diverse performance outcomes that arise from the often confusing, different published editions of a single work. Webinar attendees will be encouraged to actively engage in discussion, and they will be provided with links to materials that can be perused in advance of the scheduled session.

On Thursday September 30, Donna will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88489296199

If you would like to participate, have any questions or need any help just contact Eleanor Peat: eleanor@paricenter.com

Dr Donna Coleman is a world renowned concert pianist, recording artist, author, philosopher, and master teacher whose career spans a half-century, of which half has been based in Australia. She is also an accomplished weaver and photographer and an amateur but passionate astronomer and archeologist with a keen interest in the deep history of the US Southwest. As Head of Postgraduate Studies at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, she convened weekly thought-provoking seminars that explored relationships between music and other disciplines. Donna is writing a book entitled Dancing with the Piano, a collection of essays distilled from these sessions and from her many years of phenomenological engagement with her ultimate dance partner, the piano.

Exploring the Earth-Mind
2021-09-11 18:00 - 2021-09-19 20:00 | Online
Exploring the Earth-Mind

4-part series: Saturday and Sunday September 11- 12, 18 – 199:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Each session is 2 hours

with John Briggs PhD, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Writing and Aesthetics at WCSUand coauthor of three books with F. David Peat

Featuring Guests:Robert Toth: Former Executive Director of the Merton Institute for Contemplative LivingOfelia Rivas: Elder of the Tohono O’odham NationShantena Augusto Sabbatini, Director of The Pari CenterJames Peat Barbieri, Associate Program Director of The Pari Center

Indigenous peoples alive today are rooted in a consciousness of Earth that once provided the guiding mode of consciousness for humans but which at this point in time most of the rest of humanity has lost. The mainstream mode of consciousness is the “anthropocentric” or human-centered mode—a consciousness of objects, causality, competition and hierarchy that focuses on the individual self and on the conflict for survival of the individual. By contrast, the holomorphic or Earth-Mind consciousness is a holistic awareness; it’s an awareness of living in dynamic balance with other beings as “relatives,” including mountains, trees, rivers, wind. It’s an awareness of the deeply metaphoric nature of our relationship to reality and of our obligation to engage in “reciprocity” with all beings, animate or inanimate.

Everyone comes to life naturally endowed with both modes of consciousness, but the holistic Earth-Mind has been suppressed by the all-consuming anthropocentric structures of thought and self-interest that have moved to control nature since the Neolithic Revolution. In the words of one Native elder: “Instead of taking care, we are taking over.”

The objective of the four sessions of this course is to alert participants to the existence of the Earth-Mind mode of awareness in their own consciousness and to explore the implication of this mode of awareness for their individual lives and the collective life of the planet.

The sessions will be interactive. Through simple activities, participants will engage their Earth-Mind and report back to the group for discussion what they find. Guests will include Ofelia Rivas elder of the Tohono O’odam Nation in Southern Arizona and Mexico. Physicists Shantena Sabbadini and James Peat Barbieri will join the final session in a dialogue exploring how modern physics and ideas of the whole might find resonance with the holistic mode of consciousness that grounds traditional People.

Program

Session 1: A Holistic Kind of Consciousness—Saturday September 11Climate change and catastrophic species extinction have resulted from a way of thinking that could be called anthropocentric or “human-centered.” This is thinking about the world and ourselves in terms of separate objects and interchangeable parts. The so-called “human enhancement project” exemplifies this kind of thinking that most people would conclude is, for better and ill, the only kind of human thinking there is short of enlightenment. However, Indigenous people around the world are guided by another mode of consciousness, a holomorphic or Earth-Mind consciousness. This first session will sketch the characteristics of Earth-Mind consciousness. Short selections of reading will be assigned along with an activity. Both will be discussed on Sept. 18 in session 3.

Session 2: A Conversation with O’odam Elder Ofelia Rivas—Sunday September 12Among the items Ofelia will discuss: her experience of reality as flux, relations with other entities, ceremony, reciprocity, balance, the original instructions. What is the role of the feminine in maintaining balance in the flux of the world? What is it like for her to live under the pressures of a toxic anthropocentric society? This session will end with a recommendation that participants engage in two simple activities over the next week and come prepared to communicate their experiences on the 18th, session 3.

Session 3: Living with Our Relatives—Saturday September 18This session is devoted to participants’ thoughts about the reading selections and their experiences as they engaged the recommended “homework” activities. Final assignment will be given to view two short videos on YouTube in preparation for the last session.

Session 4: What Is the Whole?—Sunday September 19Physics has pursued the idea of a universe made of separate objects connected by forces and causality. But figuring out how the smallest objects come together to make the world eventually led to the discovery of a missing ingredient in scientific theories: the whole. What is the whole according to chaos theory, quantum mechanics and David Bohm’s implicte order? The final session will unfold as a dialogue with physicists Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and James Peat Barberi exploring physical conceptions of holism and their possible connections to Earth-Mind consciousness.

John Briggs, PhD, taught for 25 years at Western Connecticut State University. He has taught aesthetics, journalism, and creative writing and served as co-chair of the English Department; he was one of the founders of the Department of Writing, Linguistics and Creative Process and one of the principal developers of the MFA in Professional and Creative Writing. He is now Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Writing and Aesthetics at WCSU. Among his many publications are three books he co-authored with David Peat, Looking Glass Universe (1984), Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness (1989), and Seven Life Lessons of Chaos (1999). He lives in the New England town of Granville, Massachusetts.

Ophelia Rivas My people are the O’odham from the desert, O’odham means people. The O’odham oral history teaches us where and when we originated and how to live on the land and follow our way of life called the Him’dag. My homelands are illegally occupied by the United States of America and the Republic States of Mexico—an International Boundary bisected my homelands. Today we live on reservations “wards of the state”, where the poverty levels are above national levels. My father’s community is in Cu:Wi I-gersk, Sonora, Mexico and my mother’s community is Ali Jegk, Arizona, USA. I hold my alliance with my Indigenous brothers and sisters and my traditional O’odham Elders and ceremony leaders. The traditional O´odham hold their alliance to Mother Earth. No written documents required. I carry the words from my traditional elders and ceremony leaders. They call for solidarity to defend the sacred places of our people for our survival. They call to defend the source of our original birthplaces as people, Mother Earth, Father Sky and the sacred Water and Air.

Robert G. Toth served as Executive Director the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living from 1998 to 2010. He co-edited Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton, a popular series designed for small group dialogue. He is an active member of The Contemplative Alliance, an initiative of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, which organizes dialogues and programs around the world to advance contemplative approaches to issues affecting the welfare of all being. He also serves on the Board of the Lake Erie Institute which offers holistic ecological leadership programs to individuals engaged in creating flourishing, regenerative, and socially just communities.

Shantena Sabbadini graduated from the University of Milan in 1968 and was awarded his PhD in physics from the University of California in 1976. In Milan he researched the foundations of quantum physics, laying the base for what is currently known as the decoherence interpretation of quantum physics. At the University of California, he contributed to the theoretical work behind the first identification of a black hole, the X-ray source Cygnus X-1. In the 1990s he was scientific consultant for the Eranos Foundation, an East-West research center founded under the auspices of C.G. Jung in the 1930s. In that context he produced various translations and commentaries of Chinese classics in Italian and English, including the Yijing and the trilogy of Daoist classics, the Laozi, the Zhuangzi and the Liezi. From 2002 onwards he collaborated with F. David Peat running the Pari Center for New Learning and in 2017 he succeeded his friend and colleague as director of the center.

Shantena leads workshops and courses on the philosophical implications of quantum physics, on Daoism, and on using the Yijing as a tool for introspection. His most recent book in English, Pilgrimages to Emptiness: Rethinking Reality through Quantum Physics, was published by Pari Publishing in 2017.

James Peat Barbieri is the Associate Programme Director at the Pari Center, and host of the Pari Center online events. He studied at a professional dance school, Ateneo della Danza, Siena, but moved on to academic studies. James is now a King’s College, University of London graduate in Physics and Philosophy. His other interests include Film, Art, and Philosophy. He is interested in analysing cinema and works of art by applying philosophical approaches such as aesthetics and the Continental philosophies.

James has been taking part in conferences and courses at the Pari Center since he was 11. He was David Peat’s Teaching Assistant from the age of 15 and has since then given several presentations at the Pari Center, including two mini-courses on Beauty and Mathematics, dealing with the relationship of Nature and the Golden Section, on Hegel’s philosophy and its symmetry with the works of David Bohm, and the historical relationship between Art and Science.

The Brain and our Encounter with the World
2021-09-04 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6ZNDD77in8

The Brain and our Encounter with the World

with Iain McGilchrist

Saturday September 49:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

At the very least, our brains help to shape our consciousness. Can an examination of the way in which they do so help us to reconcile different visons of ourselves and of our world? There is nothing reductionist about asking such a question: rather, McGilchrist shall suggest, it helps us to transcend the limitations of reductionism itself. Importantly it may, for the first time, give philosophy a basis for judging certain views on the world as worthier of acceptance than others.

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009), and is shortly to publish a book on epistemology and ontology called The Matter with Things. He lives on the Isle of Skye, and has two daughters and a son.

Beyond Bohm 2: Closing Session
2021-08-29 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Beyond Bohm 2: Closing Session

with Leroy Little Bear, Beth Macy, Melissa Nelson, Lee Nichol, Hester Reeve and David Schrum

Sunday August 29, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

It may be “auspicious coincidence” – or otherwise – but the first five of the sessions in Beyond Bohm 2 are in one way or another related to participatory consciousness. This overlap occurred without any intention on the part of the individuals who put together each of the sessions. It is likely then, that this topic will figure into our final summary session, though any of the topics addressed in the preceding weeks may come to the fore – especially in the extended discussion and Q &A with those attending this final segment of Beyond Bohm. And in the spirit of dialogue, something completely new may emerge, unforeseen by any plan or agenda.

Please join us as we gather and look toward the future of Bohm-inspired inquiries and explorations, with an eye toward genuine transformations in consciousness.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Leroy Little Bear, PhD. Blackfoot Native—Professor Emeritus University of Lethbridge, Canada.

Leroy Little Bear was born and raised on the Blood Indian Reserve (Kainai First Nation), approximately 70 km west of Lethbridge, Alberta. One of the first Native students to complete a program of study at the University of Lethbridge, Little Bear graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1971. He continued his education at the College of Law, University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, completing a Juris Doctor Degree in 1975.

Following his graduation, Little Bear returned to his alma mater as a founding member of Canada’s first Native American Studies Department. He remained at the University of Lethbridge as a researcher, faculty member and department chair until his official retirement in 1997.

In recent years Little Bear has continued his influential work as an advocate for First Nations education. From January 1998 to June 1999 he served as Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. Upon his return to Canada, he was instrumental in the creation of a Bachelor of Management in First Nations Governance at the University of Lethbridge—the only program of its kind in the country.

In the spring of 2003, Little Bear was awarded the prestigious National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Education, the highest honour bestowed by Canada’s First Nations community. Little Bear is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Lethbridge and the University of Northern British Columbia. Along with his wife, Amethyst First Rider, Little Bear brought about the historic Buffalo Treaty between First Nations on both sides of the USA-Canada border in 2014. Little Bear was inducted into the Alberta Order Excellence and the Order of Canada in 2016 and 2019 respectively.

Beth Macy, PhD, organizational consultant, Bohmian dialogue practitioner

The common thread weaving through Beth’s career has been change, having been a manager, leader, consultant or participant in organizations experiencing difficult issues: organizations from small to large, private to public, non-profit to profit, health care to oil and gas, local to global. David Bohm’s dialogue has been core to her research, writing, consulting and teaching for nearly three decades. Living in the USA (Texas) she is completing a book on the ideas and individuals who influenced Bohm’s methodology of dialogue.

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

Lee Nichol is the editor of David Bohm’s On Dialogue; On Creativity; and The Essential David Bohm. From 1980-1992 he collaborated with Bohm on various aspects of dialogue, consciousness, and education.

He has been on the faculty of the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, NC; of the Oak Grove School in Ojai, CA; of the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, CA; and of Denver University in Denver, CO.

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

Hester Reeve’s practice encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing, David Bohm’s ‘Dialogue’ and social sculpture.

She is interested in the relationship between critical thinking and human agency in everyday life, particularly when it is risked through the figure of ‘the artist’ (where what constitutes an artist is broadly conceived and not exclusive to art school training).

Recent public works have been staged at Tanzquartier, Vienna, Tate Britain (working under the umbrella of The Emily Davison Lodge with Olivia Plender) and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hester Reeve is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

David Schrum received his PhD in quantum theory at Queen’s University, following which he spent two post-doctoral years with David Bohm at Birkbeck College. Here, he entered Bohm’s world of creative and subtle philosophical approaches to physics and his enquiry into consciousness and what may lie beyond.

David Schrum continues in these explorations, in physics developing a new approach to relativistic quantum theory and, through the dialogue process, going into what it is to bring to light that which lies enfolded within our individual and collective consciousness.

Dialogue’s Lineage and the Transmission of Participative Consciousness
2021-08-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Dialogue’s Lineage and The Transmission Of Participative Consciousness with Beth Macy, Mark Ryan and Lee Nichol€10,00

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Dialogue’s Lineage and the Transmission of Participative Consciousness

with Beth Macy, Mark Ryan and Lee Nichol

Saturday August 28, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Dip with Beth Macy into her research archives of the lineage of Bohm’s dialogue. Pursue with her core aspects of each lineage member’s own early lifetime wounding as well as later cultural and professional alienation, and the impact of these dynamics on lineage members’ resulting contributions to Bohm’s ideas of “participation” in dialogue. And then, explore the meaning as it flows through the whole of the lineage and those to whom dialogue’s participative spiral of meaning unfolds, transforms and re-enfolds.

From the perspectives of the history of thought, Jungian psychology, mythology, and Barfield’s participatory consciousness, panel members will explore the following questions:

What is the potential impact that early trauma and later professional alienation might have had on lineage members’ connection to a higher form of consciousness?

What about Bohm’s assertion that with sufficient capacities of suspension and proprioception an individual could experience direct perception and participation with the intelligence of the universe? Is that really possible?

Bohm also suggests that if a group of individuals have developed this capacity of direct perception, then together their consciousness can form one “consensual mind” which vastly expands the power of participation with universal intelligence.

Did the recurring evolution of participative consciousness which occurred through the lineage happen solely by chance? Or, was there a higher intention that guided each of their efforts? Were their ideas part of one, intentional flow? If so, is that higher intention perhaps still transmitting of an even further evolution of participative consciousness today?

Seminar participants are encouraged to read Beth’s article “The Backstory of David Bohm’s Dialogue” describing the dialogue’s lineage prior to the session: https://paricenter.com/library/pari-perspectives-issue-6-in-memoriam-david-bohm/the-backstory-of-david-bohms-dialogue/

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Beth Macy, PhD, organizational consultant, Bohmian dialogue practitioner

The common thread weaving through Beth’s career has been change, having been a manager, leader, consultant or participant in organizations experiencing difficult issues: organizations from small to large, private to public, non-profit to profit, health care to oil and gas, local to global. David Bohm’s dialogue has been core to her research, writing, consulting and teaching for nearly three decades. Living in the USA (Texas) she is completing a book on the ideas and individuals who influenced Bohm’s methodology of dialogue.

Mark B. Ryan is an historian of American thought and culture, Mark Ryan was Dean of Jonathan Edwards College and a teacher of American Studies and history at Yale University for more than twenty years. Subsequently, he was Titular IV Professor at the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, where he also served as Dean of the Colleges, Regente (Head) of José Gaos College, and Coordinator of the master’s degree program in United States Studies. He holds Ph.D. and M. Phil. degrees from Yale, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from the University of St. Thomas. Mark is author of A Different Dimension: Reflections on the History of Transpersonal Thought (Westphalia Press, 2018), A Collegiate Way of Living (Yale University, 2001), articles in various journals on higher education, and articles in TheJournal of Transpersonal Psychology and related publications on the history of psychology. He is certified by Grof Transpersonal Training as a practitioner of Holotropic Breathwork, served for fourteen years on the Board of Trustees of Naropa University, is past chair of the Board of Directors of Wisdom University, and current Chair of the Jonathan Edwards Trust at Yale.

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

Lee Nichol is the editor of David Bohm’s On Dialogue; On Creativity; and The Essential David Bohm. From 1980-1992 he collaborated with Bohm on various aspects of dialogue, consciousness, and education.

He has been on the faculty of the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, NC; of the Oak Grove School in Ojai, CA; of the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, CA; and of Denver University in Denver, CO.

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

Changing Consciousness
2021-08-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Changing Consciousness

with Sandra Fiegehen, David Schrum and Stephen Smith

Sunday August 22, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Human consciousness is a shared space. As individuals, we are born into an inherited socio-cultural matrix from which almost all of what we think and do derives. As Bohm points out, thought is a material process which pervades and dominates us.

We need to realise that we are participants. We must make a basic shift: from literal thought to participatory thought, a process in which we partake of consciousness. This can then become a kind of “food” which, in our times, we so desperately need.

Dialogue provides the opportunity for listening and sharing, out of which a sense of communion may arise, operating to nourish our spirit and open us to luminous intelligence. Thought may then find its proper, natural place; it is a guest in our house, not a usurper.

– Stephen Smith

Although we most often experience ourselves as separate islands of consciousness operating independently of that which surrounds us, our sense of separateness is constructed and illusory.

This separate self sense is a mere representation of the dynamic and unfolding process of conscious experience, a kind of alienated existence characterized by various degrees of narcissistic wounding acquired throughout the course of our development. We each play out these wounded, ‘separate’ selves in ways that create more suffering, both for ourselves and for others.

How can we find our way to realizing and embodying our common consciousness authentically and creatively? I will briefly explore some key Buddhist principles and how to bring them into practice in daily life.

– Sandra Fiegehen

To understand our lives and to live intelligently, creatively, and compassionately, David Bohm indicates, we must meet those dimensions of mind which for us are hidden. Beyond the surface of our consciousness, as personal memories, attitudes, and dispositions, we come upon that which is subtle: both as a flow of great momentum that is vast and ancient, and as a spacious field which is always new. These depths are common to us all, but we tend to be unaware. How are we to awaken?

Bohm offers us what he terms ‘participatory understanding’. This understanding is not ‘conceptual understanding’, which seeks to have understood and to lodge an understanding in memory. Rather, it is a living movement. It is embodiment; it is presence.

Our journey together is an invitation to explore this deeper inner world.

– David Schrum

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Dr. Sandra Fiegehen is a retired Psychologist presently obsessed with growing raspberries. She has practiced and taught Chan (Zen) meditation for the last 15 years. Throughout her life, she has pursued a variety of psycho-spiritual approaches to the question of who and what she is – and is pleased to report that her investigations have resulted in near-absolute uncertainty.

David Schrum received his PhD in quantum theory at Queen’s University, following which he spent two post-doctoral years with David Bohm at Birkbeck College. Here, he entered Bohm’s world of creative and subtle philosophical approaches to physics and his enquiry into consciousness and what may lie beyond.

David Schrum continues in these explorations, in physics developing a new approach to relativistic quantum theory and, through the dialogue process, going into what it is to bring to light that which lies enfolded within our individual and collective consciousness.

Stephen Smith has been Acting Principal, Academic Director, and for twenty years a teacher at Brockwood Park School in England, where he met Krishnamurti and knew David Bohm personally. His interest in dialogue took a decisive turn when he moved to California in 1994 and began to facilitate dialogue groups. He sees dialogue as a means of mirroring the psyche so that we can move from being thought-bound individuals, embrace the collective, and awaken intelligence.

Transformation and Renewal Through Indigenous Dialogue
2021-08-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Transformation and Renewal Through Indigenous Dialogue

with David Begay (Navajo), Angelita Valencia Borbon (Yaqui), Greg Cajete (Tewa), Amethyst First Rider (Blackfoot), Rose von Thater Braan-Imai (Tuscarora), Nancy Maryboy (Navajo), Melissa Nelson (Anishanaabe/Metis), Lee Nichol.Facilitated by Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot)

Saturday August 21, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Reaching back through recorded history, into the multivalent worlds of oral tradition, Indigenous people have long indicated knowledge of how the world comes into being, and how humans can live in accord with this perpetual ”coming into being.” This knowledge is expressed through origin stories, ceremonial activity, ritual enactment and renewal, paradoxical language play, and trickster humor – it permeates all aspects of daily life in traditional cultures.

When Leroy Little Bear first read David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order, he recognized many reflections of his traditional Blackfoot worldview, albeit expressed in different language. David Peat, a friend of both Little Bear and Bohm, arranged for the two of them to meet. There was a natural affinity, and all three concurred that dialogue between Indigenous and Western worldviews was in order.

This program marks a new phase in that ongoing dialogue process, which is not strictly “Bohmian,” nor strictly traditional. It is a new form, ever-evolving, now finding its place in the world of Zoom.

Among the potential topics: Can shared cultural meaning bridge the polarity between analytic thought and holistic perception? How does our understanding of whole and part affect our action in daily life? Is it possible to step beyond theory to inhabit the implicate orders of the natural world and the living land? What part do language, art, creativity, and silence play in such investigations? What role do tacit cultural infrastructures play in forming the “worlds” we inhabit?

As Little Bear says, “We may have these starting points, but where we will end up, nobody knows. The best part of dialogue is the opportunity to shed our tacit infrastructures. Prepare yourselves accordingly!”

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Leroy Little Bear, PhD. Blackfoot Native—Professor Emeritus University of Lethbridge, Canada.

Leroy Little Bear was born and raised on the Blood Indian Reserve (Kainai First Nation), approximately 70 km west of Lethbridge, Alberta. One of the first Native students to complete a program of study at the University of Lethbridge, Little Bear graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1971. He continued his education at the College of Law, University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, completing a Juris Doctor Degree in 1975.

Following his graduation, Little Bear returned to his alma mater as a founding member of Canada’s first Native American Studies Department. He remained at the University of Lethbridge as a researcher, faculty member and department chair until his official retirement in 1997.

In recent years Little Bear has continued his influential work as an advocate for First Nations education. From January 1998 to June 1999 he served as Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. Upon his return to Canada, he was instrumental in the creation of a Bachelor of Management in First Nations Governance at the University of Lethbridge—the only program of its kind in the country.

In the spring of 2003, Little Bear was awarded the prestigious National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Education, the highest honour bestowed by Canada’s First Nations community. Little Bear is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Lethbridge and the University of Northern British Columbia. Along with his wife, Amethyst First Rider, Little Bear brought about the historic Buffalo Treaty between First Nations on both sides of the USA-Canada border in 2014. Little Bear was inducted into the Alberta Order Excellence and the Order of Canada in 2016 and 2019 respectively.

After a lifetime of educational service, Little Bear remains a dedicated and dynamic teacher and mentor to students and faculty at the University of Lethbridge. He continues to pursue new research interests including North American Indian science and Western physics, and the exploration of Blackfoot knowledge through songs, stories and landscape.

While his educational achievements are remarkable, Little Bear’s contribution to the First Nations community extends well beyond the classroom. He has served as a consultant to local and national organizations including the Blood Tribe, Indian Association of Alberta and the Assembly of First Nations of Canada. His notable reputation has also earned him a place on numerous government commissions and boards including the Task Force on the Criminal Justice and Its Impact on the Indian and Metis Peoples of Alberta (1990-91). Little Bear’s legal advice is widely sought on such significant issues as land claims, treaties, and hunting and fishing rights.

Dr Little Bear is the co-author of several books on self-government and Aboriginal rights, including Pathways to Self Determination, Quest For Justice, and Governments in Conflict. His credits also include a variety of influential articles such as, ‘A concept of Native Title,’ which was cited in a Canadian Supreme Court decision.

David Begay, Ph.D. is currently Associate Research Professor with the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in the College of Pharmacy, Community Environmental Health Program, working with several federally-funded health research projects. David is former adjunct faculty at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He is also a former professor and academic dean for Dine’ (Navajo Nation) College. He is currently VP for the Indigenous Education Institute, Friday Habor, WA. He has worked with National Science Foundation and other federal projects, including NASA, for 20 plus years, as well as JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Goddard Space Flight Center on Heliophysics educational outreach. David is considered a tribal elder and provides cultural consultant services to many organizations and corporations both in the United States and internationally. He is raised with the deep cultural knowledge, tradition, and language of the Dine’ (Navajo) people. He is a member of the Dine’ Hatallii (Spiritual and Herbal Healers) Association. David is a disabled combat Vietnam veteran. He is also currently a member of the Navajo Nation Human Research Review Board (IRB) appointed by the Navajo Nation Council.

Angelita Valencia Borbón (Yaqui) I am living my life paying attention, observing and listening, looking for patterns and feeling resonance. I have a whole world of mentors teaching me what I know and remember. Some say I am like a rez dog with a bone: persistent, relentless and focused. My Grandfather told me I am responsible for helping the Sonoran Desert and Los Yaquis survive. My Father told me to remember and practice how we think so our People do not forget, and so others may awaken their Conciencia/Knowing that we are all connected through our relationship with our Mother Earth, and the Laws of Nature.

Gregory Cajete is a Native American educator whose work is dedicated to honoring the foundations of Indigenous knowledge in education. Dr. Cajete is a Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico.

Dr. Cajete is a practicing ceramic, pastel and metal artist. He is extensively involved with art and its application to education. He is also a scholar of herbalism and holistic health. Dr. Cajete also designs culturally-responsive curricula geared to the special needs and learning styles of Native American students.

He worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 21 years. While at the Institute, he served as Dean of the Center for Research and Cultural Exchange, Chair of Native American Studies and Professor of Ethno- Science. He is the former Director of Native American Studies (18 years) and is Professor Emeritus in the Division of Language, Literacy and Socio Cultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. In addition, he has lectured at colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, England, France and Germany.

Dr. Cajete has authored 10 books: “Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education,” (Kivaki Press, 1994); “Ignite the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Education Curriculum Model”, (Kivaki Press, 1999); “Spirit of the Game: Indigenous Wellsprings (2004),” “A People’s Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living,” and “Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence” (Clear Light Publishers, 1999 and 2000). “Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom,” Don Jacobs (Four Arrows), Gregory Cajete and Jongmin Lee) Sense Publishers, 2010. “Indigenous Community: Teachings of the Seventh Fire,” (Living Justice Press, 2015). His most recent books are edited volumes entitled: “Native Minds Rising” and “Sacred Journeys” (John Charlton Publications, 2020). Dr. Cajete also has chapters in 36 other books along with numerous articles and over 350 national and international presentations.

Rose von Thater Braan-Imai (Tuscarora) is a self-taught artist. Her surrealist figurations explore the exquisiteness of our connections to the Earth expressing the sensuality and intimacy of the natural world as experienced through the human body. She works primarily in oils enjoying the depth and range of feeling she finds in their texture and in the way they carry light. She is the Founding Director of The Native American Academy, leading creative projects (Sculpture Garden of Native Science and Learning) and transcultural dialogues between Indigenous and Western worldviews to forward the potential for new knowledge using the lens of the Native paradigm, indigenous learning processes and Native science.

From 1989 to 2000 she served as the Director of Education at University of California (UC) Berkeley’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, presenting at national and international forums, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Banff Centre, Goddard Space Flight Center and The National Science Foundation. Prior to 1989, Rose worked in theater (the American Conservatory Theater), television (KQED-TV), and as Liason and Assistant to writer/critic/producer Ralph J. Gleason, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine before heading her own production company.

Amethyst First Rider is a member of the Kainai Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, Alberta, Canada and married to Leroy Little Bear. She is a leader in the performing arts community for more that 20 years, producing and directing plays depicting Aboriginal stories and culture. Her experience in the arts has included dance productions, consulting for the University of California, Berkeley’s planetarium, as well as narration and production in the National Film Board’s documentary: Kainayssini Imanistaiswa, The People Go On. She co-conceived Iniskim an immersive puppet lantern performance celebrating the reintegration of Bison into the natural ecosystem of Banff National Park. She is central to the development and success of The Buffalo: A Treaty of Cooperation, Renewal and Restoration signed by over 30 First Nations and Tribes in Canada and the USA. It is the biggest modern Treaty amongst First Nations. Its purpose is to “one again welcome the Buffalo to live among us” and it recognizes “Buffalo as a wild free-ranging animal and as an important of the ecological ecosystem.” She is also a founding-advisor to the Kainai Ecosystem Protection Association.

Dr. Nancy C. Maryboy is the President and Executive Director of the Indigenous Education Institute, (IEI) located in the San Juan Islands, in Washington, and on the Navajo Nation. IEI is an all Indigenous institution with a mission to preserve, protect and apply traditional Indigenous knowledge in contemporary settings. She is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, in the School of Environmental Sciences and Forestry. She has been a Principal Investigator for National Science Foundation funded projects including the Cosmic Serpent, Native Universe and Co-PI for additional NSF projects. Dr. Maryboy is a PI for NASA’s Space Science Education Consortium, and has worked with both Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She works with the University of New Mexico Superfund program. She has written several books and numerous articles on collaboration between Indigenous communities and science centers, with a focus on Navajo astronomy. She works with Indigenous schools around the world. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums. Dr. Maryboy is Navajo and Cherokee. She comes from a family of traditional and medical healers, on the Navajo Nation and in the Pacific Northwest.

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

Lee Nichol is the editor of David Bohm’s On Dialogue; On Creativity; and The Essential David Bohm. From 1980-1992 he collaborated with Bohm on various aspects of dialogue, consciousness, and education.

He has been on the faculty of the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, NC; of the Oak Grove School in Ojai, CA; of the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, CA; and of Denver University in Denver, CO.

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus
2021-08-15 18:00 - 20:00
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Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus with Lee Nichol, James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark Vernon€10,00

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Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus

with James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark VernonFacilitated by Lee Nichol

Sunday August 15, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

For those who have surveyed David Bohm’s version of dialogue and the larger theoretical context from which it emerged, a trove of concepts and definitions will be familiar: participatory thought, literal thought, thought of type “A” and type “B”, representations, collective representations.

What is less familiar is the extent to which Bohm imported these concepts from his long relationship with the philologist Owen Barfield, whose lifework centered around what he called “the evolution of consciousness.” In this view, human consciousness has shifted from a dispersed, widely focused consciousness (original participation) to the pinpoint, individualized consciousness that we experience today. Barfield proposed that this atomistic, individualized consciousness has the potential to now open into a transformed participatory mode, deriving from the “interiority,” or selfhood, that is a correlate of individuated consciousness.

Our roundtable will survey the relationship between the two men, and the mutually informing nature of their respective bodies of work. We aim to develop a kind of “binocular vision,” in which the overlapping insights of Bohm and Barfield yield greater depth and understanding than either one standing alone. This will lead us to a key point of reference the two men shared – the nature of imagination as outlined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We will attempt to indicate what this kind of imagination has to offer contemporary humanity – and the prospect of moving from a theory of imagination to its practical engagement and flowering.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

Lee Nichol is the editor of David Bohm’s On Dialogue; On Creativity; and The Essential David Bohm. From 1980-1992 he collaborated with Bohm on various aspects of dialogue, consciousness, and education.

He has been on the faculty of the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, NC; of the Oak Grove School in Ojai, CA; of the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, CA; and of Denver University in Denver, CO.

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

James Peat Barbieri studied at a professional dance school, Ateneo della Danza, Siena, and then moved on to academic studies. He graduated from King’s College, University of London in Physics and Philosophy in 2019.

He is on the Board of Directors of the Pari Center, a member of the Editorial Board of the Pari Perspectives journal, and a member of the Programming Committee. He is also the host of many of the Pari Center’s webcasts. In addition to physics, his interests include film, art, and philosophy. He is interested in analysing cinema and works of art by applying philosophical approaches such as aesthetics and the Continental philosophies.

James has been taking part in conferences and courses at the Pari Center since he was 11. He was David Peat’s Teaching Assistant from the age of 15 and has since then given several presentations at the Pari Center, including two mini-courses on ‘Beauty and Mathematics,’ dealing with the relationship of Nature and the Golden Section; on Hegel’s philosophy and its symmetry with the works of David Bohm; and the historical relationship between Art and Science.

Hester Reeve’s practice encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing, David Bohm’s ‘Dialogue’ and social sculpture.

She is interested in the relationship between critical thinking and human agency in everyday life, particularly when it is risked through the figure of ‘the artist’ (where what constitutes an artist is broadly conceived and not exclusive to art school training).

Recent public works have been staged at Tanzquartier, Vienna, Tate Britain (working under the umbrella of The Emily Davison Lodge with Olivia Plender) and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hester Reeve is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including his latest, which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield: A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Creativity and the Artist
2021-08-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Creativity And The Artist with Jessica Ball, Alison Churchill, Emma Cocker and Hester Reeve€10,00

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Creativity and the Artist

with Jessica Ball, Alison Churchill, Emma Cocker and Hester Reeve

Saturday August 14, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

David Bohm’s writing on creativity was not directed exclusively at art works, instead it sought to outline a more foundational capacity in any one of us – or in any human discipline – for new orders of perception and understanding. First and foremost, he explained, we need to awaken the necessary ‘creative mind state’ which is supressed by the unrecognized “boss reality” of Western thought, language and the associated entrapment of the self-image. Bohm’s is a dynamic model of creativity open to entanglements of mind, body, language, conceptual abstraction, non-human matter and infinity, the nature of which is to be continually unfolding, to be generative. His expanded notion of what constitutes an ‘artform’ is radical and speaks to contemporary, speculative approaches towards ever opening up an animate world of which we are a participant.

Four artists, all of whom recognise first-hand the creative potential of Bohm Dialogue to individual and social transformation, will explore their concerns, ideas and experiences together.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Jessica Ball is a creative facilitator dedicated to working towards positive social and environmental change through transformative learning, dialogue and the value of creativity. With a background in fine art, textile design (Chelsea College of Art and Design, BA) and sustainable fashion (London College of Fashion, MA), she grounds her work in design thinking and creative methods to support people to engage, connect, reflect and express. Her approach to workshop design and facilitation encourages participants to explore various themes such as culture, identity and values, gender equality and the relevance of sustainability to their lives. Her work aims to provide a creative and engaging space for participants to better understand themselves; improve their relationships with other people; and become more aware and engaged in the world around them. Jessica has worked with a diverse range of organisations across sectors from corporate and international development to education and charities.

Alison Churchill is a visual artist in Sheffield with a practice exploring the creative force contained in water and the patterns of disruption, coherence and emergence which play out on its surface. She is developing an online collaborative art practice with artists in the UK, which comes out of an over ten-year experiment with four female artists based in the US and Israel exploring the creative process beyond the individual.

Churchill has been involved in a number of projects exploring intersubjective consciousness, including Scott Peck’s Community Building, Bohm Dialogue and Emergent Dialogue.

Churchill is a junior Rinzai Zen teacher and lead regular Zen Brushwork sessions in Sheffield, which involve meditation, energy-raising exercises and calligraphy using a large brush.

Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University, whose research focuses on artistic processes and practices, and the performing of ‘thinking-in-action’ therein. Her practice unfolds restlessly along the threshold between writing/art, including experimental, performative and collaborative approaches. Cocker’s writing has been published in Failure; Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought; Stillness in a Mobile World; Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art; Reading/Feeling; On Not Knowing: How Artists Think; The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, and the solo collection, The Yes of the No. Emma was co-researcher on the artistic research project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (2014–2017); a contributing artistic researcher in Ecologies of Practice, Research Pavilion, Venice, (2019); and is co-founder of the Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group on Language-based Artistic Research.

Hester Reeve’s practice encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing, David Bohm’s ‘Dialogue’ and social sculpture.

She is interested in the relationship between critical thinking and human agency in everyday life, particularly when it is risked through the figure of ‘the artist’ (where what constitutes an artist is broadly conceived and not exclusive to art school training).

Recent public works have been staged at Tanzquartier, Vienna, Tate Britain (working under the umbrella of The Emily Davison Lodge with Olivia Plender) and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hester Reeve is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

Closing Panel: Physics and Metaphysics
2021-07-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Closing Panel: Physics and Metaphysics

with Emily Adlam, Basil Hiley, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and David Schrum

Sunday July 25, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

The concluding panel of Part One of the Beyond Bohm event will examine work in progress in various areas related to Bohm’s thought.

The session will start with the panelists describing which developments of Bohm’s thought they consider most important for their work, for their life and for philosophy in general.

The discussion will then be open to the audience. Conversation in small groups will be used to elicit relevant question and comments.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Emily Adlam is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of physics specialising in quantum information and foundations. She studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and then received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in relativistic quantum information. She recently published a book, Quantum Foundations, as part of the Cambridge University Press Elements of Philosophy series.

Professor Basil Hiley, collaborator and colleague of David Bohm for over 30 years

Basil J. Hiley is a British quantum physicist and professor emeritus of the University of London. He received the Majorana Prize ‘Best Person in Physics’ in 2012. A long-time co-worker of David Bohm, Hiley is known for his work with Bohm on the implicate order and for his work on algebraic descriptions of quantum physics in terms of underlying symplectic and orthogonal Clifford algebras. Hiley co-authored the book The Undivided Universe with David Bohm, which is considered the main reference for Bohm’s interpretation of quantum theory.

The work of Bohm and Hiley has been characterized as primarily addressing the question ‘whether we can have an adequate conception of the reality of a quantum system, be this causal or be it stochastic or be it of any other nature’ and meeting the scientific challenge of providing a mathematical description of quantum systems that matches the idea of an implicate order.

In 1961 Hiley was appointed assistant lecturer at Birkbeck College, where Bohm had taken the chair of Theoretical Physics shortly before. Hiley wanted to investigate how physics could be based on a notion of process, and he found that David Bohm held similar ideas. He reports that during the seminars he held together with Roger Penrose he was particularly fascinated by John Wheeler’s ‘sum over three geometries’ ideas that he was using to quantize gravity.

Hiley worked with David Bohm for many years on fundamental problems of theoretical physics. Initially Bohm’s model of 1952 did not feature in their discussions; this changed when Hiley asked himself whether the ‘Einstein-Schrödinger equation,’ as Wheeler called it, might be found by studying the full implications of that model. They worked together closely for three decades. Together they wrote many publications, including the book The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory, published 1993, which is now considered the major reference for Bohm’s interpretation of quantum theory.

In 1995, Basil Hiley was appointed to the chair in physics at Birkbeck College at the University of London. He was awarded the 2012 Majorana Prize in the category The Best Person in Physics for the algebraic approach to quantum mechanics and furthermore in recognition of ‘his paramount importance as natural philosopher, his critical and open minded attitude towards the role of science in contemporary culture.’

Shantena Augusto Sabbadini graduated from the University of Milan in 1968 and was awarded his PhD in physics from the University of California in 1976. In Milan he researched the foundations of quantum physics, laying the base for what is currently known as the decoherence interpretation of quantum physics. At the University of California, he contributed to the theoretical work behind the first identification of a black hole, the X-ray source Cygnus X-1. In the 1990s he was scientific consultant for the Eranos Foundation, an East-West research center founded under the auspices of C.G. Jung in the 1930s. In that context he produced various translations and commentaries of Chinese classics in Italian and English, including the Yijing and the trilogy of Daoist classics, the Laozi, the Zhuangzi and the Liezi. From 2002 onwards he collaborated with F. David Peat running the Pari Center for New Learning and in 2017 he succeeded his friend and colleague as director of the center.

Shantena leads workshops and courses on the philosophical implications of quantum physics, on Daoism, and on using the Yijing as a tool for introspection. His most recent book in English, Pilgrimages to Emptiness: Rethinking Reality through Quantum Physics, was published by Pari Publishing in 2017.

David C. Schrum, PhD. Quantum theorist

David Schrum received his PhD in quantum theory from Queen’s University, Canada (1971), after which he spent two years in post-doctoral studies with David Bohm at Birkbeck College, London. At Birkbeck, Schrum entered the world of Bohm’s creative and subtle philosophical approaches to physics, and of his enquiry into the structure of consciousness and what may lie beyond. He was also introduced to his professor’s interest in the philosopher J. Krishnamurti. David Schrum continues engagement in these areas.

From 1974 until retirement he taught at Cambrian College, Sudbury, Canada. Present areas of focus are relativistic quantum theory derived from a new application of the quantum principle, and exploration and development of David Bohm dialogue as a process of shared enquiry into mind.

He is a board member of the Pari Center, Italy.

Understanding the Nature of Reality and Consciousness: Bohm’s Philosophical Project
2021-07-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Understanding The Nature Of Reality And Consciousness: Bohm’s Philosophica Project. Paavo Pylkkänen€10,00

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with Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday July 18, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

David Bohm was concerned with providing a description of reality – at the quantum level, and more generally, a unified description of matter, life, and consciousness, all adding up to a general concept of reality or a metaphysical theory. Such synthetic ontological projects were not popular in much of 20thcentury philosophy and thus Bohm’s philosophical work has been often ignored by professional philosophers. However, it is important to realize that although he was clearly more concerned with describing a mind-independent reality than many other 20th-century physicists or philosophers, this concern did not mean that he ignored the role of the mind (language, perception, etc.) in his attempts to describe reality. In other words, he did not ignore epistemological issues or questions that concern the nature of our knowledge and the problems of justifying it, or the way language shapes our perception of reality. On the contrary, his broad philosophical work includes extensive studies of various epistemic issues: physics and perception (Bohm 1965a), the notions of truth and understanding (Bohm 1964), a view of science as “perception-communication” (Bohm 1977), experimentation with the structure of language (the rheomode, Bohm 1977), study of knowledge understood as process (Bohm 1974), and discussions of topics such as communication, creativity, art, and so on. To fully appreciate Bohm’s views about the nature of reality, they should be understood in the context of his epistemic considerations.

What would it mean to go beyond Bohm in philosophy? Before doing that we ought to first be able to understand the philosophical significance of what he did. Perhaps his main contribution was to offer us a version of scientific metaphysics, through his interpretations of quantum theory and the more general implicate order scheme he developed. The need for a scientific metaphysics has in recent years been energetically proposed by Ladyman and Ross in their “ontic structural realism”, which is in some ways similar to Bohm’s implicate order scheme – perhaps some new possibilities arise when thinking together these schemes? But Bohm’s proposal to experiment with the structure of language and to ask what happens to epistemology if both reality and knowledge are processes offer likewise radically new perspectives for philosophy. In this talk Pylkkänen will go through some of Bohm’s key philosophical contributions and sketch how they could be further developed in future research.

https://philpapers.org/s/Paavo%20Pylkkänen

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Paavo Pylkkänen, PhD, Philosopher of Mind, Helsinki University, Finland

Paavo is Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor’s Program in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (currently on leave) at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Program.

His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. The central problem in philosophy of mind is how to understand the place of mind—and especially conscious experience—in the physical world. Pylkkänen has explored whether this problem can be approached in a new way in the framework of the new holistic and dynamic worldview that is emerging from quantum theory and relativity. He has in particular been inspired by the physicists David Bohm and Basil Hiley’s interpretation of quantum theory and has collaborated with both of them.

In his 2007 book Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Springer) he proposed that Bohmian notions such as active information and implicate order provide new ways of approaching key problems in philosophy of mind, such as mental causation and time consciousness. The overall aim of his research is to develop a scientific metaphysics. Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and is a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT).

The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm's 1952 Approach in a Wider Context
2021-07-17 18:01 - 20:00 | Online
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The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm’s 1952 Approach In A Wider Context. Basil Hiley€10,00

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The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm’s 1952 Approach in a Wider Context

with Basil Hiley

Saturday July 17, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

It has recently been shown that the Bohm approach outlined in his 1952 work is not a new type of ‘mechanics’ but is unitarily equivalent, i.e. mathematically equivalent, to the Schrödinger approach, dealing directly with canonical coordinates (x, p) rather than through the intermediary ‘wave functions’. This fits in with the Stone-von Neumann theorem which explains why we already have the Schrödinger ‘picture’, the Heisenberg ‘picture’, the interaction ‘picture’ etc. We have called it the Dirac-Bohm ‘picture’ based on a non-commutative algebra: it is from this picture that Bohm’s ’52 approach emerges. The word ‘picture’ is here used in a technical sense, but can be taken as providing a different physical intuition with which to understand quantum phenomena.

Although many of the details are very technical, Hiley will try to explain how the ideas provide a new way of looking at quantum phenomena, which not only confirms Bohm’s philosophical insights, but adds a new meaning to terms like the ‘Bohm momentum’, the ‘osmotic momentum’ which, in turn, enables us to understand how the quantum potential fits in with the general notion of a gauge field. The reason why the quantum potential gives rise to such a ‘strange’ force is that we are looking at it in terms of an interaction force. However it gives rise to a different type of force which Einstein calls a ‘phoronometric’ force. It is the type of potential that generates the Coriolis force which is responsible for the depressions arising in the Atlantic ocean giving us here in the UK such ‘wretched weather’ or the vortices that arise in the Bosporus. What is not generally realised is that the perihelion precession of Mercury arises from just such a force in general relativity. It is this mathematical structure that enables us to generate a new ‘dynamical geometry’ or better still a phoronometry providing new insights into the relation between the individual and the collective.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Professor Basil Hiley, collaborator and colleague of David Bohm for over 30 years

Basil J. Hiley is a British quantum physicist and professor emeritus of the University of London. He received the Majorana Prize ‘Best Person in Physics’ in 2012. A long-time co-worker of David Bohm, Hiley is known for his work with Bohm on the implicate order and for his work on algebraic descriptions of quantum physics in terms of underlying symplectic and orthogonal Clifford algebras. Hiley co-authored the book The Undivided Universe with David Bohm, which is considered the main reference for Bohm’s interpretation of quantum theory.

The work of Bohm and Hiley has been characterized as primarily addressing the question ‘whether we can have an adequate conception of the reality of a quantum system, be this causal or be it stochastic or be it of any other nature’ and meeting the scientific challenge of providing a mathematical description of quantum systems that matches the idea of an implicate order.

In 1961 Hiley was appointed assistant lecturer at Birkbeck College, where Bohm had taken the chair of Theoretical Physics shortly before. Hiley wanted to investigate how physics could be based on a notion of process, and he found that David Bohm held similar ideas. He reports that during the seminars he held together with Roger Penrose he was particularly fascinated by John Wheeler’s ‘sum over three geometries’ ideas that he was using to quantize gravity.

Hiley worked with David Bohm for many years on fundamental problems of theoretical physics. Initially Bohm’s model of 1952 did not feature in their discussions; this changed when Hiley asked himself whether the ‘Einstein-Schrödinger equation,’ as Wheeler called it, might be found by studying the full implications of that model. They worked together closely for three decades. Together they wrote many publications, including the book The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory, published 1993, which is now considered the major reference for Bohm’s interpretation of quantum theory.

In 1995, Basil Hiley was appointed to the chair in physics at Birkbeck College at the University of London. He was awarded the 2012 Majorana Prize in the category The Best Person in Physics for the algebraic approach to quantum mechanics and furthermore in recognition of ‘his paramount importance as natural philosopher, his critical and open minded attitude towards the role of science in contemporary culture.’

The Brain and its Mindful Double
2021-07-11 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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The Brain And Its Mindful Double with Giuseppe Vitiello€10,00

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The Brain and its Mindful Double

with Giuseppe Vitiello

Sunday July 11, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

By repeated trial-and-error the brain constructs within itself, through its mental activity, an understanding of its surround, that we describe as its Double. The relation that the self and its Double construct constitutes the meaning of the flows of information exchanged during their interactions. The act of consciousness resides in such a dialogue of the self with its Double. The continuous attempt to reach the equilibrium in this dialogue shows that the real goal pursued by the brain activity is the aesthetical experience, the perfect ‘to-be-in-the-world.’ Active reciprocal responses between the self and the world imply responsibility and thus they become moral, ethical responses through which the self and its Double become part of the larger social dialogue. Aesthetical pleasure unavoidably implies disclosure, to manifest ‘signs,’ communication. An interpersonal, collective level of consciousness then arises, a larger stage where the actors are mutually dependent, each one simply non-existing without the others.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Giuseppe Vitiello is Honorary Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Salerno, Italy.

Associate (1983-2018) to INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare). Ph.D. in Physics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA, 1974. Research activity in elementary particles, condensed matter physics, biological systems and brain studies. Author of about 250 papers and of the books My Double Unveiled – The dissipative quantum model of brain, John Benjamins Publ. Co., Amsterdam 2001. H.Umezawa and G.Vitiello, Quantum Mechanics, Bibliopolis, Napoli 1986, (Japanese translation by K.Yasue and M.Jibu, Nippon Hyoron Sha. Co.Ltd., Tokyo, Japan 2005). M.Blasone, P.Jizba, G.Vitiello, Quantum Field Theory and its macroscopic manifestations, Imperial College Press, London 2011. G.G.Globus, K.H.Pribram, G.Vitiello (Editors) Brain and Being. At the boundary between science, philosophy, language and arts, John Benjamins Publ. Co., Amsterdam 2004. He collaborates since 2009 with Luc Montagnier (2008 Medicine Nobel Prize), on research on the electromagnetic properties of DNA and since 2003 has collaborated with Walter J. Freeman (deceased 2016) in neuroscience.

Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyond
2021-07-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Contextuality In De Broglie-Bohm And Beyond with Emily Adlam€10,00

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Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyond

with Emily Adlam

Saturday July 10, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Contextuality is one particularly puzzling non-classical feature of the quantum world—but what conclusions should we draw from it? In this talk, Dr Adlam will explain what contextuality is and why the presence of contextuality in our theories needs explaining. She will describe how contextuality is manifested in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics and compare and contrast the de Broglie-Bohm account of contextuality to various alternatives. Finally, she will discuss some interesting new mathematical approaches to contextuality and consider what these results add to our understanding.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Emily Adlam is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of physics specialising in quantum information and foundations. She studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and then received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in relativistic quantum information. She recently published a book, Quantum Foundations, as part of the Cambridge University Press Elements of Philosophy series.

Beyond Bohm: Science, Order and Creativity
2021-07-10 17:59 - 2021-08-29 20:00 | Online
Part 1: Physics and Metaphysics

Part 2: Contemplation and Creativity

Part 1: Physics and Metaphysics

with Emily Adlam, Basil Hiley, Paavo Pylkkänen and Giuseppe Vitiello

Chaired by Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

July 10 – 11, 17 – 18 and Closing Panel 25, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

Two hour sessions on Saturdays and Sundays

All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.

David Bohm has given a fundamental contribution to the still ongoing debate on the interpretation of quantum physics, a contribution largely ignored by the mainstream physics community for decades, but now being rediscovered and taken into consideration both in philosophical debate and in mathematical and experimental developments.

This first sequence of Beyond Bohm: Science, Order and Creativity will explore some outer edges of these investigations.

It will describe how contextuality (one of the most puzzling features of the quantum world) is represented in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum physics and compare it to various alternatives.

It will follow up Bohm’s investigation of consciousness in terms of a dialogue between the self and its Double (the representation it constructs of its surroundings).

It will outline the Dirac-Bohm picture, a very significant recent mathematical result that provides a different physical intuition with which to understand quantum phenomena.

It will illustrate some of Bohm’s key philosophical contributions to a scientific metaphysics and sketch how they could be further developed in future research.

Take this unique opportunity to participate in an exploration of what Bohm’s ideas mean for the future, by former colleagues of David Bohm and scholars of his work.

Program of Event

Saturday July 10Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyondwith Emily Adlam

Sunday July 11The Brain and its Mindful Doublewith Giuseppe Vitiello

Saturday July 17The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm’s 1952 Approach in a Wider Contextwith Basil Hiley

Sunday July 18Understanding the Nature of Reality and Consciousness: Bohm’s Philosophical Projectwith Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday July 25Closing Panel – Physics and Metaphysicswith Emily Adlam, Basil Hiley, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and David Schrum

Part 2: Contemplation and Creativity

with more than 25 guest presentersChaired by Lee Nichol

August 14 – 15, 21 – 22, 28 – 29, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

Two hour sessions every Saturdays and Sundays

All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.

David Bohm’s work has been highly influential in the world of physics, but his philosophical ideas crossed multiple disciplines with a holistic approach. This sequence of presentations will follow some of these ideas, and explore new threads of inquiry inspired by Bohm:

How can artistic expression and philosophical inquiry complement one another? What is the role of imagination in exploring the polarity between participatory consciousness and literal thought? What can we learn from Indigenous cultures about enfoldment and unfoldment in the natural order? Can Bohm’s insight into participatory understanding, along with Buddhist principles, point the way through our collective human sorrow to what may lie beyond? What does the lineage of those who influenced Bohm’s dialogue tell us about the transmission and evolution of participative consciousness in today’s world?

Each of these questions will be addressed in this six-part sequence of presentations. We hope you can join us as we attempt to stand on Bohm’s shoulders and peer into the future.

All sessions will be in ’roundtable’ format, with each having a core group of guest presenters in conversation and dialogue. In most case, the presentations will be followed 30 minutes of discussion and Q & A with all those attending the session. In total, we have more than 25 guest presenters bringing their insights to ‘Beyond Bohm, Part 2.’

Program of Event

Saturday August 14Creativity and the Artistwith Jessica Ball, Alison Churchill, Emma Cocker and Hester Reeve

Sunday August 15Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexuswith James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark Vernon. Facilitated by Lee Nichol

Saturday August 21Transformation and Renewal Through Indigenous Dialoguewith David Begay (Navajo), Angelita Borbon (Yaqui), Greg Cajete (Tewa), Amethyst First Rider (Blackfoot), Rose Imai (Tuscarora), Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot), Nancy Maryboy (Navajo), Melissa Nelson (Anishinaabe/Metis), Lee Nichol

Sunday August 22Changing Consciousnesswith Sandra Fiegehen, David Schrum and Stephen Smith

Saturday August 28Dialogue’s Lineage and the Transmission of Participative Consciousnesswith Beth Macy, Mark Ryan and Lee Nichol

Sunday August 29Beyond Bohm 2: Closing Sessionwith Leroy Little Bear, Beth Macy, Melissa Nelson, Lee Nichol, Hester Reeve and David Schrum

The Screen and the Soul
2021-07-03 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6TRmZBZIpo

The Screen and the Soul: Virtual Reality, Real Reality and How It Is

with Christopher Hauke

Saturday July 39:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Free Online Pari Dialogue

The Covid pandemic has required us to keep a broader social distance from one another; for psychotherapists this should be less of a problem. With reliable broadband making therapy sessions (and presentations like this one) possible online, why do so many people still find the virtual session falls so far short of the ‘real’ meeting in person? Maybe our assumption that there is a ‘real’ version and there is an inferior ‘virtual’ version is wrong to begin with. Christopher Hauke will lay out three approaches to this question.

The first derives from quantum theorist David Deutsch and his book The Fabric of Reality (Deutsch, 1997). The second approach digs further into philosophical implications around the idea that material reality is not an objective fact and consciousness is all there is. This is known as metaphysical idealism as analysed by Bernardo Kastrup’s (Kastrup 2020, 2021) work especially his understanding of Jung’s metaphysics.

Lastly, film narratives, as well as factual ‘reality’ films, have long been delivering ‘reality’ to us on screens in their own virtual way. So Chris will finish by discussing the bio-evolutionary ideas around visual perception, affordance (Gibson, 1979) and the central role of meaning in both film and the therapy session. In doing so, he will bring us back to the definition of ‘virtual’ which flagged it as something in essence or effect. In this way he brings a new perspective to the idea of ‘real reality’ and ‘virtual reality’ in our new way of working.

On Saturday July 3, Chris will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83111513487

If you would like to participate, have any questions or need any help just contact Eleanor Peat: eleanor@paricenter.com

Christopher Hauke is a Jungian analyst in private practice and Senior Lecturer emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London interested in the applications of depth psychology to a wide range of social and cultural phenomena including film. His books include Jung and the Postmodern: The Interpretation of Realities, (2000); Human Being Human. Culture and the Soul (2005) Visible Mind. Movies, Modernity and the Unconscious.(2013). He has co-edited two collections of Jungian film writing: Jung and Film. Post-Jungian Takes on the Moving Image(2001) and Jung and Film II – The Return (2011).

His short films, documentaries One Colour Red and Green Ray and the psychological drama Again premiered in London venues and at congresses in Barcelona, Zurich and Montreal.

In addition to new film projects he is now researching the limits of rationality, and the place of the irrational in our lives.

Closing Panel: What is Consciousness?
2021-06-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOg8shXLAqM

Closing Panel: What is Consciousness?

with Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Gary Lachman, Roderick Main, Paavo Pylkkanen and Beverley Zabriskie

Sunday June 279:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

We are sorry to announce that Iain McGilchrist is indisposed and will be unable to give what was to be the final presentation in our ‘What Is Consciousness?’ series. Iain is rescheduling his talk for September, and we will be notifying everyone once we have confirmed the date. In its place we have gathered together a number of our presenters for a final panel.

We have now reached the end of our ‘What is Consciousness?’ event. We have explored the many aspects of the topic through the eyes of scholars some of whom had opposing viewpoints but all of whom were both compelling and enlightening. We are pleased that so many of them have agreed to take part in a final panel to explore and deepen some of the themes that have emerged in the presentations.

We will begin with the panelists responding to prepared questions on such topics as the relationship of matter and consciousness, how quantum mechanics might shed light on the ‘block universe’ conceptualization, and how patterns of activation of the human brain during cognitive performancemight shed light on consciousness.

This will be followed by a Q&A session open to everyone. Make sure you have your questions and comments ready.

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here
