Events

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction to Bohm’s physics with Jonathan Allday Saturday August 29:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST 2-hour session. The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING. David Bohm’s work in physics spanned a range of areas and interests, but he always came back to the foundations of quantum theory. […]

This talk explores the nature of potentiality and its relation to actuality through the views of David Bohm and Charles Burton Martin.

At the start of the presentation three general premises will be offered: 1. All is process, 2. We are part of nature and 3. Three world experiments are currently underway. During this talk we may explore how these premises relate to the making and usage of materials in the development of humanity.

Panpsychism has emerged as a compelling perspective in contemporary philosophy of mind, asserting that consciousness is not confined to humans and animals but is a fundamental feature of the physical world. The primary motivations for panpsychism include the continuity argument, which seeks to address the apparent gap between mindless matter and conscious experience, the argument from intrinsic natures, which posits that consciousness is an intrinsic property of all entities, and the conceivability argument, which explores the possibility that consciousness could be a universal property in a way that is both metaphysically coherent and scientifically plausible.

The Dynamic Universe: a New Holistic World View with Tuomo Suntola Saturday August 169:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST 2-hour session. The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING. The Dynamic Universe (DU) offers an approach to understanding and predicting the natural world by describing three-dimensional space as […]

Consciousness, Reduction and Quantum Psycho-Physical Laws with Paavo Pylkkänen Sunday August 179:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST 2-hour session. The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING. David Chalmers (1996) proposed that because it does not seem likely that consciousness (understood as phenomenal properties) can be reduced to […]