The Pari Center

David Bohm Centennial Celebration
2017-09-14 08:00 - 2017-09-20 17:00 UTC
David Bohm Centennial Celebration

September 14 – 20, 2017

Join us at the Pari Center to celebrate the life and work of the multifaceted David Bohm. Considered one of the most important theoretical physicists and original thinkers of the 20th century, Bohm contributed influential ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology, philosophy of mind, language, dialogue and education.

This will be an informal meeting with presentations by experts on Bohm’s life, work and philosophy followed by roundtable discussions.

Key topics will include Quantum Theory and Relativity, the Aharonov-Bohm Effect, Implicate and Explicate Orders, Limits of Language, Dialogue, Philosophy of Mind, Creativity, Rheomode, Protomind, the Bohm/Krishnamurti relationship.

Exploring Synchronicity: Jung, Pauli and the I Ching
2018-07-12 08:00 - 2018-07-16 17:00 UTC | Pari, Italy
Exploring Synchronicity: Jung, Pauli and the I Ching

June 12 – 16, 2018

with Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and Cruz Manas Sabbadini

The term “synchronicity” was coined by Jung and refers to those meaningful coincidences in which outer circumstances reflect in surprising ways the inner process of the person involved, sometimes with life transforming implications.

In this seminar we will investigate synchronicity both as an interpretative principle and as a psychological experience through the actual consultation of the oracle. We will use the Eranos I Ching, an innovative translation by the sinologist Rudolf Ritsema and Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, the fruit of fifty years of research by Ritsema and a decade of Round Table Sessions at the Eranos East-West study centre, which was founded under Jung’s supervision in 1933.

Exploring the Mystery of Time
2018-09-06 08:00 - 2018-09-12 17:00 UTC | Pari, Italy
Exploring the Mystery of Time

September 6 – 12, 2018

with Julian Barbour, Mauro Bergonzi, Warwick Fox, Christopher Hauke, Alison MacLeod, James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Shantena Sabbadini, David Schrum and Gordon Shippey

What is time? It is at the same time what is closest to us and the deepest mystery. So close we cannot step outside it and watch it from a distance. And actually, when we attempt to do so, the notion of time itself seems to fade away, to dissolve into timelessness, where past, present and future merge into an eternal instant.

In this Pari Dialogue we will plumb the mystery of time from different perspectives: art, science, psychology, literature, mystical experience. Our aim will not be so much to try to answer the impossible question, as to awaken to the awesome fact of the transient, terrible, marvelous, phenomenon that is life itself.

Pilgrimages to Emptiness: Rethinking Reality through Quantum Physics
2018-10-04 00:00 - 2018-10-08 23:59 UTC
Pilgrimages to Emptiness: Rethinking Reality through Quantum Physics

4 – 8 October, 2018

with Shantena Sabbadini

This seminar is an invitation to wonder and be grateful for the adventure of life and for the mystery of which we are part. We and the world are expressions of the same creativity of existence, waves in the ocean of consciousness. Embracing our oceanic nature is the way to find peace on an individual and a collective level.

Weekend Among Friends: Small changes making big differences
2019-04-25 00:00 - 2019-04-28 23:59 UTC | Pari, Italy
A Tribute to the Other and Elsewhere
We are bound by the way we live and trying to change that world is difficult. It might be interesting to just try to understand how other groups organize and denote their world.It is not about knowledge.A conversation between F. David Peat and Godelieve Spaas, 2016

How often do we feel ourselves in a situation of not being understood or not being seen by the other? Equally so, we can ask ourselves how often are we able to really understand and acknowledge the other? As a dancer, scientist and entrepreneur I experience the synergy between different aspects in myself. At the same time, even after years of practice, I often fail in transferring experiences and knowledge from one of these domains to the other in my day to day work.
Making a career as a woman required being adaptive to a mainly masculine company culture. I learned how to be the other.Working in South Afrika confronted me with views and wisdom so different from mine that I had to learn to listen with my heart and soul just because my mind couldn’t understand.
We all have developed our own ways of meeting, understanding and becoming with the other and elsewhere.

If we have a wider range of ideas, knowledge and expressions to tap into, we would probably be better equipped for developing a way of living that contributes to the wellbeing of everyone in harmony with our Earth. To evolve towards a world that does justice to all people, communities, cultures and ecosystems, we need to reach out to, relate and become with the other and other places. Can we find ways to cooperate with the earth, with wisdom rooted in other worldviews then ours and with ideas born and nurtured in other communities, disciplines, cultures and places?
This year’s Weekend Among Friends will explore meeting the other and elsewhere. How can we enlarge our space to make our thinking, doing and imagining more transformative?

To be in love is to be worldly, to be in connection with significant otherness and signifying others, on many scales, in layers of locals and globals, in ramifying webs.Donna Haraway

As friends meeting in Pari we will explore our different ways of understanding the other and elsewhere. How do we move beyond our prejudices? What are our ways to stay with the trouble of bridging differences and weaving new entrepreneurial or communal fabrics out of diversity? By sharing our experiences, stories and curiosity we will use the diversity among friends to explore untrodden pathways to a more sustainable and just future.
Our special guest this year is Annet Henneman who travels through conflict areas in the Middle East and lives with the people in these areas over extended periods of time. Based on these highly personal meetings she creates performances as a way to bring the lives of those who live in oppression, war, and occupation closer to the ‘Western countries’.
We would like to invite you to the beautiful little village of Pari, Italy, April 25-28, 2019, to join us for the weekend and to meet with old and new friends. The landscape and community, the Pari Center and Pari Networks all represent a container in which one feels invited to have good conversations and to enjoy the company of our Pari friends, the excellent Italian food and wine, and of course the Tuscan sun and culture.
With love, Godelieve Spaas

eleanor@parinetworks.org godelieve@creatingchange.nl
Weekend Among Friends is an initiative of

IDEAS BEHIND WEEKEND AMONG FRIENDS
Pari, its community and the Pari Center have a special place in my heart. The landscape and the community represent a sphere in which I feel invited to explore art, literature, science, indigenous knowledge, culture, music and poetry as means to denote, understand, reflect and renew ourselves and the world we are part of. At the same time the village serves as a place to come to rest, to listen to the silence, to nature and to celebrate a holiday.
Weekend Among Friends was born out of my longing to share this experience with friends. The weekend has become an annual event at the cross over of the good life and good conversations in a beautiful and wise environment. Dialogues pay a tribute to an idea or people that might generate reflection and renewal on personal and community level.
The overarching idea: small changes making big differences towards a social, economic and ecological just future. Thinking doing and imagining are equally important. Participants are the co-creators of the weekend. Their wisdom, experiences and expressions form the base of our exploration, rethinking and creation.
I introduce the theme of the year and from there the group as whole takes it further. No specified program, just joint dedication to explore what can become. A special guest brings in another perspective to invite other lines of thoughts to the table.The weekend unfolds along dialogues, joint meals, hikes, music, dance meditation, making/experiencing art and other means of exchange as they appear, depending on who the participants are and what they share.

Re-enchanting the World: Narratives of Wholeness
2019-06-13 00:00 - 2019-06-19 23:59 UTC | Pari, Italy
Narratives of Wholeness

Pari Dialogues 2019

with Richard Berengarten, Andrew Fellows, Elena Liotta, Roderick Main, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and Yuriko Sato

Carl Jung once said that the gods we have expelled from our psyche come back to us in the guise of diseases (and, we might add, ecological disasters). Only the contact with the numinous can make us whole and enable us to navigate the tremendous challenges of the Anthropocene.

By focusing exclusively on the measurable aspects of the world modern science has gained immense technological power, but it has lost the living quality of experience and the intimate participation in the web of life.

The June 2019 Pari Dialogue will invite archetypes of wholeness to our discussions as we work toward a return of the world soul.

Poetry, Inspiration and SynchronicityRichard Berengarten

Deep Ecology: The Enchanted CompassAndrew Fellows

On the Edge of Destruction or the Border of “Renaissance”? Soul and Earth facing a global challengeElena Liotta

Jung’s Critical HolismRoderick Main

Vocatus atque non vocatusShantena Augusto Sabbadini

The Sense of Wonder: Being Connected with the Enchanted WorldYuriko Sato

For additional information, you can check the PDF.

Science, Art and the Sacred: The Quest for Wholeness
2019-08-29 00:00 - 2019-09-04 23:59 UTC | Pari, Italy
The Quest for Wholeness

August 29 – September 4, 2019

with Jena Axelrod, Isis Brook, Basil Hiley, Ciprian Man, Hester Reeves, Shantena Sabatini, David Schrum, Godelieve Spaas and Christopher Todhunter

What does it mean to comprehend and to participate in life holistically?

Pari Dialogues 2019 explores this challenge. Through seminars, discussions and practical sessions, we will journey together into subtle realms of art, physics, cultural studies, philosophy, economics and technology—pathways to investigate wholeness and to ponder our place in it.

Join us at The Pari Center and engage in a spirit that honours the approaches and work of David Bohm and F. David Peat, as we explore bringing together art, science and the sacred in the quest for wholeness.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Basil Hiley, long-term colleague of David Bohm, will be joining us.

“Absurdity of Certainty”Jena Axelrod

Goethean Science an Approach for the FutureIsis Brook

Wholeness and the Implicate Order RevisitedBasil Hiley

Technology and Shifting Worldviews: How to Overcome Humanity’s Current and Future ChallengesCiprian Man

Artomovement and the FutureHester Reeve

Science, Abstraction and WholenessShantena Augusto Sabbadini

Wholeness, the Implicate Order, and the Future of Humanity: An Exploration into Subtle MindDavid Schrum

Saltwater Living: Worldviews Towards Sustainable EconomyGodelieve Spaas

Wholeness and the Theory of Centres: The Art of BuildingChristopher Todhunter

For additional information, you can check the PDF.

Online Pari Community Conversations: Gentle Action
2020-04-18 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Online Pari Community Conservation about Gentle Action

with Shantena Sabbadini, Godelieve Spaas and Donna Kennedy-Glans

Saturday April 18, 202016:00 Central European Standard Time (GMT +2)

What our planet requires are not violent revolutions, or vast government programs imposed from above but a new action that is sensitive and highly intelligent. This action must grow out of our sense of harmony and relationship to nature and each other. It has its source in very gentle but coordinated activity that sweeps inwards and outwards so that the whole system is able to produce it own healing. Each of us is empowered to face the problems that challenge the planet and, by developing a greater sensitivity and a more meaningful relationship to the whole of life, this ability to heal ourselves and our planet will echo around the world just like those tiny ripples in a lake that grow into a giant wave. If there is to be hope for the future then it must begin with the creativity and sensitivity of each one of us.

F. David Peat

We invite you to share your personal stories and reflections in an online dialogue with the Pari Center Community.

Join our zoom meeting via the following link: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/917407312

If you would like to participate or have any questions please contact Eleanor Peat eleanor@paricenter.com

Suggested Reading

Gentle Action for a Harmonious World by F. David Peat

Preserving Dignity in Uncertain Times by Donna Kennedy-Glans

This year, for the first time in our 20-year history, none of us may be able to meet in person. Yet the need for community, for human interaction, to check in with and support others in a similar situation is very strongly felt. Three weeks ago, we held our first Zoom dialogue on the topic of ‘Certainty and Uncertainty.’ It was an opportunity for the Pari Center community to come together to discuss an important subject in these troubling times. We were a group of 56 participants, re-connecting many old friends and welcoming a number of new faces. The feedback we received indicated that the gathering was a great success, one that people would like to see repeated.

As a result we have decided to launch a monthly Online Pari Community Conversation which will feature a few opening words on a pre-announced topic followed by small group discussions. We will then come together to share some of the issues that emerged in the breakaway groups and end with a summing-up. These will be free and open to anyone.

Pari Dialogue: What is Reality Really Like? with Shantena Sabbadini
2020-05-09 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Zoom Online Dialogue: May 9, 2020 at 16:00 – 17:30 Central European Summer Time (GMT+2)

We ordinarily assume that we know what is real. I assume the computer I am typing these words on is a real solid object here in front of me, set on a real wooden table, which has been with me for many years. They both seem real enough.

And yet, are they? Physics gives me quite a different picture: these apparently solid objects are actually the interplay of infinitely extended fields, and my experience of them is actually the flickering of neuron connections in my brain. But we don’t see things that way. Fortunately, because it would be a very confusing world if we did.

What then determines what we perceive as real? Is there an ultimate reality? In this webinar we shall play with such radical questions.

This online talk will be followed by questions and answers and discussion.

This event has a fee of €15,00 a participant.

Pari Dialogue: The Great Re-Think with Colin Tudge
2020-06-06 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
The Agrarian Renaissance

Zoom Online Dialogue: June 6, 2020 at 16:00 – 17:30 (CEST)

Although the world is in a terrible state on every front—Covid-19 is just the surface of our problem—there is still time to turn things around. Indeed we and our fellow creatures could and should be looking forward to a long and glorious future—the next million years for starters. To achieve this though we need to re-think everything that we do and take for granted—and to re-think everything in the light of everything else to provide a coherent, ‘holistic’ worldview, and to re-structure accordingly. It all amounts to nothing less than a Renaissance, more profound and far-reaching than the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries. But the present ruling powers—governments, corporates, financiers, and their chosen intellectual advisers—are geared to the status quo and are not going to do what’s needed. So we, people at large, Ordinary Joes and Jos, must take the lead.

So what’s entailed? And how do we go about it?

Colin Tudge is co-founder of the Oxford Real Farming Conference, the Real Farming Trust, and the College for Real Farming and Food Culture.

He has just finished a book, The Great Re-think, to summarize the ideas needed to bring about an Agrarian Renaissance as a key step in the development of the grand Renaissance that is now needed to restore the world. The Great Re-think will be published by Pari Publishing asap.

This online talk will be followed by questions and answers and discussion.

Online Pari Community Conversations: Presencing with Julie Arts
2020-06-27 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Online Pari Community Conversations: Presencing

with Julie Arts

Saturday June 27 at 16:00 (CEST)

Presencing (blending Presence and Sensing) is the capacity to operate from the source of one’s highest future possibility, in the Now – an intentional realisation of the present through active dialogue with the emerging future.

Julie Arts, from the Presencing Institute, will share elements of Theory U, a framework for profound innovation developed to allow individuals, organizations and communities to address their most pressing challenges.

Theory U, as an awareness-based method for transformation, is inspired by the wisdom and experience of many scientists, artists and spiritual lineages, including David Bohm, Francisco Varela, Henri Bortoft, and others.

The Practice is both highly systemic and deeply personal – most essential is the individual and collective capacity for deep listening, generative dialogue and sensemaking, as we learn to allow the future to emerge through us. As Martin Buber put it, “the future stands in need of you in order to be born”. Or as David Bohm said: “The whole is present in the parts; separation without separateness.”

The Presencing Institute was founded in 2006 by MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer Dr C. Otto Scharmer and colleagues, to create an action research platform at the intersection of science, consciousness, and profound social and systems change.

This online presentation will be followed by discussion and Q&A.

This event is open to everyone!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83050092250

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

Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas of David Bohm - Exclusive Screening of Director's Cut
2020-07-11 18:00 - 21:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
It is our great pleasure to invite you to join us for the screening of theWorld Premiere of the Director’s cut of

INFINITE POTENTIALTHE LIFE AND IDEAS OF DAVID BOHM

Saturday July 11 at 9:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST

David Peat’s long-term dream was to produce a documentary about his colleague and friend David Bohm. Now, with the support of the Fetzer Foundation, the Mind and Life Institute, director Paul Howard and Imagine Films, and the Pari Center Community, the dream has finally been realised. Pari was the birthplace of the film, and many of the interviewees were filmed here in the village, so it is an honour for us to present the long-awaited Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas of David Bohm.

David Bohm was one of the 20th Century’s most brilliant physicists. INFINITE POTENTIAL takes us on a mystical and scientific journey into the nature of life and reality with David Bohm, the man Einstein called his ‘spiritual son’ and the Dalai Lama his ‘science guru.’ A physicist and explorer of Consciousness, Bohm turned to Eastern wisdom to develop groundbreaking insights into the profound interconnectedness of the Universe and our place within it.

The Director’s Cut will feature exclusive interviews with luminaries such as H.H. the Dalai Lama, Basil Hiley, Sir Anthony Gormley, Sir Roger Penrose, Yakir Aharnov and Leroy Little Bear among others. This version will feature in-depth explorations of David Bohm’s ideas and philosophy, with original animations curated by physicist Chris Dewdney.

Following the screening, an Online Summer Series organized in celebration of the film will span the following 7 weekends, featuring almost all of the interviewees in 2-hour long live interactive sessions. Find out more

Panel Discussion And Live Q&A

Following the film, we invite you to join us for a panel discussion and live Q&A with the director and key interviewees from the film.

Moderator

David LorimerProgram Director of Scientific and Medical NetworkEditor, Paradigm Explorer

Panelists

Paul Howard, Director and ProducerBasil Hiley, Quantum Physicist and Professor Emeritus, University of London, UKLeroy Little Bear, Blackfoot Native, Professor Emeritus University of Lethbridge, CanadaLee Nichol, Editor and Educator

Sign up for your FREE seat at the Director’s Cut screening on YouTube and we’ll keep you up to date with all the relevant info

Email address (required)

Δ

Infinite Potential: A Filmmaker's Journey into the World of David Bohm
2020-07-12 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Infinite Potential: A Filmmaker’s Journey into the World of David Bohm

with Paul Howard

July 12 at 18:00 (CEST) for a 2-hour live session

Having just completed a film on David Bohm’s life, his incredible work in physics, philosophy and the nature of consciousness, the question that Paul asked himself was, how come I never before heard about this extraordinary man and his work?

He was the man Einstein called his ‘spiritual son’ and the Dalai Lama his ‘science guru,’ so why is it that the world hardly knows his name?

Paul Howard’s film is an attempt to answer that question, to shine a light into the world of Bohm and how making the film changed his life.

It’s a film he believes has the potential to change the world.

Paul Howard, Film and Television Producer and Director, Ireland

A Producer, Director, Executive Producer of International repute with an enviable track record in documentary, television series and more recently in feature film production.He has just completed work on the documentary titled Infinite Potential—The Life and Ideas of David Bohm for release in 2020.

Paul has worked across most disciplines in the film/television industry over the past 30 years in Ireland and overseas as a director, producer, writer, covering genres such as biography, natural history, wildlife. He has directed many critically acclaimed documentaries. He has worked for RTE (Ireland’s Public Service Broadcaster), Imagine Limited (Independent Film Company), Nine Network (Sydney, Australia), Nomad Films International (Melbourne, Australia).

Some recent successes include 21st Century Railway, a modern history of railways; Waiting for Houlihan, an arts documentary nominated for an IFTA award; Marsh to the Skies, the secret Irish/American alliance that gave American access to Shannon Airport during the ‘Cold War’; The Irish in Hollywood, a documentary ‘special’ on the cultural impact that the Irish have had on the famous Film Town; Bloomsday, a documentary celebrating James Joyce’s Ulysses, broadcast internationally.

In Australia, Paul completed Triumph of the Nomads, a history of Australia prior to the arrival of European white settlement; and The Pintubi, a series about the last remaining tribe of Aborigines who roamed the outback of Australia up until 1935. Also, Breakthroughs, a series on the latest developments in science and medicine.

To see the full Summer Series and list of speakers click here

Entering Bohm's Holoflux
2020-10-04 19:00 - 2020-10-25 21:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Entering Bohm’s Holoflux

Four Sundays in October – 4, 11, 18, 25 – 202010:00 am PST, 7:00 pm CEST

Each Sunday session will be followed by a one-hour Wednesday discussion group11:00 am PST, 8:00 pm CEST.

An experiential, experimental approach to David Bohm’s holoflux: the flowing movement of all that is, the ground of our being, the mysterious domain in which mind, matter, and meaning are an organic whole.

Bohm proposed that human beings hold the potential to manifest the holoflux as living reality. What access points might we already have to this potential? What aspects of our personal and cultural lives thwart this access? Through presentation and extensive participant interaction, these questions will guide our inquiry.

Sunday October 4: The Enfolding/Unfolding HumanOur contemporary identity—the self-image—follows a pattern of ‘enfolding’ and ‘unfolding’ that we find articulated throughout Bohm’s cosmos. But this self-image filters out the deep, living currents of the holoflux, in favour of enfolding recycled thought patterns, values, and images. Bohm often referred to the bright lights of Las Vegas, which blot out the light of the stars: ‘When you turn off the electric lights, then the universe comes through.’ Can we move through this analogy, and into the living cosmos it points to? This holds the key to what Bohm referred to as true individuality—the undivided human.

Sunday October 11: Thought as a System & the Pain BodyWe will examine the manner in which awareness, thinking, and feeling deteriorate into ‘thoughting’ and ‘felting.’ This process permeates our individual lives, as well as collective global culture, and is at the root of reflexive defensiveness and isolation. The result is what has been called the ‘pain body,’ a uniquely apt term for our modern condition. We will inquire into the various manifestations of the pain body, and how this blockage to the deep currents of the holoflux might be undone. We will explore how interoception—our interpretation of the sensations within our bodies—can help us understand the grip and extent of the thoughting/felting vortex.

Sunday October 18: Liberating the Explicate Order & and the Prospect of DialogueIf we can release somewhat the impulses of thoughting, felting, and the pain body, we can begin to sense untapped aspects of consciousness that are innately in motion, rather than fixed and rigid. As inner rigidities dissolve, this is reflected in the ‘outer’ world. It is this affinity for movement that allows us to sense and engage in a new way with the explicate order—the world of cars, rivers, people, stars. Such ‘liberating’ of the explicate order is central to deep engagement in dialogue—when multiple participants allow the flux and flow of assumptions and presuppositions, we find the seeds of a new level of participatory consciousness.

Sunday October 25: Flux & TransformationFor 40,000 years or more, indigenous people have been attuned to what David Bohm referred to as the holoflux, and its attendant implicate orders. Our guest Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot) will discuss how these perceptions relate to the fixities and rigidities of the modern world. Can our categories of ‘reality’ become fluid? More deeply, can fluid, evolving categories—our framings of reality—help us align with the movements of the holoflux? Is such activity itself the expression of the holoflux, manifesting in human beings? Are we willing to entertain the prospect of perpetual transformations?

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.

David Bohm Dialogue: Is There a Different Way to Talk Together
2020-10-31 18:00 - 2020-12-05 18:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
David Bohm Dialogue: Is There a Different Way to Talk Together

Saturday, October 31 – December 5, 2020Six Saturday Sessions of 2 hours and 30 mins18:00 CEST / 13:00 EST on October 31, thereafter 12:00 EST

with Sally Jeffery, Manfred Kritzler, Beth Macy, Caroline Pawluk and David Schrum

Register early as this program has a limit of 16 participants.

Dialogue works at several levels. At the deepest level it is about the development and transformative power of the collective mind. At another it provides a ‘display’ of thought, slowing down its movement and allowing its observation. It allows the expression of many alternative views on a particular topic, some of which are presented in non-negotiable ways. Thanks to the group process these differences do not lead to confrontation but are held together in a creative tension. Rather than trying to resolve opposing positions through compromise, it is possible to move to an ‘order between and beyond.
David Bohm

The Dialogue Program

This dialogue program is an invitation both to those new to dialogue and those who have participated previously. It is a journey together, without leaders or followers. Registrants and convenors enquire as co-participants, as we explore the movement of conscious mind and touch into what may lie beyond.

Each week a presenter will offer a brief introduction to a dialogue theme. Group dialogues of about two hours will follow. All convenors will participate in each session. Through this series, our weekly introductory focus will progress—beginning from (1) a general overview, then moving to (2) self, (3) the other, (4) the group as a whole, (5) silence and (6) the dialogic field. In practice, however, our intention is that every session may bring in all these aspects and that we explore without boundaries, in freedom.

Topics and presenters are listed below, each followed by a quotation/quotations by David Bohm that touch on the week’s focus:

Week 1 – Dialogue – A Journey Together – with David Schrum

What is it to discover the roots of our common human consciousness? Through David Bohm’s approach to dialogue, we will open an enquiry into this question as we begin our journey together.

The object of dialogue is not to analyze things, or to win an argument, or to exchange opinions. Rather, it is to suspend your opinions and to look at the opinions—to listen to everyone’s opinions, to suspend them, and to see what all that means.

I suggest that there is a potential for self-awareness of thought—that the concrete, real process of the movement of thought could be self-aware, without bringing in a “self” who is aware of it.

Week 2 – The Art of Listening – with David Schrum

Deep listening is a transformative process for the listener. As we listen to both the voices of others and the voice within, we enter into an exploration together. Through intimate listening consciousness flowers, to reveal its inner structure.

If you see other people’s thought, it becomes your own thought, and you treat it as your own thought. And when an emotional charge comes up, you share all the emotional charges, too, if they affect you; you hold them together with all the thoughts.

Week 3 – Suspension and Moving Together – with Manfred Kritzler

Through suspension of assessment and judgement, whatever thoughts are arising in me have the same value as the thoughts of others. This gives us the opportunity to move together beyond the limitation of thought.

If each of us in the room is suspending, then we are all doing the same thing. We are looking at everything together.

Accordingly, a different kind of consciousness is possible among us, a participatory consciousness….Everything can move between us. Each person is participating, is partaking of the whole meaning of the group and also taking part in it. We can call that true dialogue.

The point of suspension is to help make proprioception possible, to create a mirror so that you can see the results of your thought. You have it inside yourself because your body acts as a mirror and you can see tensions arising in the body. Also, other people are a mirror, the group is a mirror.

Week 4 – Facilitation – with Sally Jeffery

This process of dialogue, as David Bohm proposes it, is not easy. Perhaps there are ways to support its emergence. It begins with seeing the need for this kind of dialogue.

On the whole you could say that if you are defending your opinions, you are not serious. Likewise, if you are trying to avoid something unpleasant inside of yourself, that is also not being serious. But in dialogue you have to be serious. It is not dialogue if you are not—not in the way I’m using the word.

Week 5 – Silence and Listening – with Caroline Pawluk

The beauty of silent listening is that we just watch and listen, doing nothing about what we observe.

But in a participatory view, the suggestion is that we have the unlimited as the ground of everything—that our true being is unlimited.

So we can see there is no “road” to truth. What we are trying to say is that in dialogue we share all the roads and we finally see that none of them matters. We see the meaning of all the roads, and therefore we come to the “no road.”

Week 6 – Sensing the Field – with Beth Macy

Listening intently to the silence that is beyond our personal thought, what seeks to emerge from that field of common consciousness? What inklings of new meaning are arising?

I am proposing, however, that the field of thought is limited. I am also suggesting that there is the “unlimited,” which contains the limited. This “unlimited” is not just in the direction of going to greater and greater distances out to the end of the universe; but much more importantly, it is also going into more and more subtlety.

SALLY JEFFERY was introduced to the teachings of J. Krishnamurti while an undergraduate in Sociology. Through involvement with his school in England, she met and was impressed by David Bohm (a founding trustee of the school) and became committed to his work with dialogue. Over more than three decades, she has participated in dialogue in many settings including prisons and her local (Lancaster) dialogue group.

MANFRED KRITZLER was born in Nürnberg, Germany. He was a partner in a German tax consultant firm in Stuttgart and a member of an international group of chartered accountants. He specialized in international taxes and transferring firms to the next generation. Having left the partnership some years ago, he is now a self-employed coach based mainly on David Bohm‘s holographic worldview. Manfred is presently in the process of creating a workshop with the title, ‘Trust in the Unknown.’

BETH MACY has followed a career interwoven with a common thread—change. She has 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.

CAROLINE PAWLUK has been involved in a local dialogue group in Sudbury, Canada over the past twenty years and in various international forums in the United States and Europe during the past eight years. She is presently engaged with four online dialogue groups.

DAVID SCHRUM has been involved in dialogue for over thirty years. His experience includes dialogues extending across approaches that arise from David Bohm’s work, Krishnamurti’s teachings, Ojibway spiritual traditions, and other forms.

Online Pari Community Conversations: What is ‘I’? with Yuriko Sato
2020-11-08 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8wy91SDXQA

Online Pari Community Conversations: What is ‘I’?

with Yuriko Sato

Sunday November 8, 202012:00 EST / 18:00 CET

The Jungian analyst, James Hillman, wrote, ‘There is only one core issue for all psychology. Where is the “me”? Where does the “me” begin? Where does the “me” stop? Where does the “other” begin?’ In other words, ‘What is I?’ When we dream at night, is ‘I’ dreaming or being dreamed? Is it also ‘I’ who appears in someone else’s dream? In the Japanese language, there are different words to express ‘I’ according to relationship and occasion. So, what is ‘I’?

On Sunday November 8, Yuriko will open our monthly Community Call with a short presentation on the fascinating topic of ‘What is I’? This will be followed by breakaway discussion groups with the community coming back together for comments and Q&A.

This event is open to everyone!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85232321129

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

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.

Flickering Reality: Exploring Alex Garland’s “Devs” with James Peat Barbieri
2020-12-13 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbzND6KzXYM

Flickering Reality: Exploring Ideas in Film and Television

Exploring Alex Garland’s “Devs”

with James Peat Barbieri

Sunday December 13, 20209:00am PST | 12:00 pm EST | 6:00pm CET

A monthly get-together to examine the thought-provoking, the philosophical, and the ones that take risks.

Quantum Physics, Free Will and Faith in Devs

James Peat Barbieri will explore the ideas that arise from Alex Garland’s Devs (2020). This 8-part series follows the story of the secret department of a high-tech company, which is developing a quantum computer that will be able to determine the past and the future by analysing data from the present. This session will take a look at the ideas in physics used in the show, such as Bohm and Everett’s interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, the philosophical implications of living in a deterministic world, and the meaning of faith in science and in the creators of visionary technologies.The session will be followed by Q&A and discussion.

To watch this series: Devs is available on the BBC in the UK, on Hulu in the US, FX in Canada and Binge in Australia. If you live elsewhere and you have problems finding a streaming platform that includes Devs, send me a message and I’ll see if I can help!

This series is free and open to everyone!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8533220379

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

What do Films and Television say about our world? What ideas can be examined through the moving image? From Science Fiction, to Comedy, Drama and Documentaries, the Seventh Art has been a mirror of our society, from the stories they portray to the method in which they’ve been produced, a mirror that is sometimes difficult to understand.

This monthly series will reveal the message behind different Films and TV Series, exploring the themes through the lens of physics, psychology, philosophy and sociology. Each session will have a guest speaker who will analyse these themes, which will then be discussed with our community, and lead us to a better understanding of film and reveal the deeper truths of our world.

What Breakthroughs in Science Can We Reasonably Predict?
2021-01-16 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome)
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/Aet1N1eskNI?si=hP3Q6RSTFM-JsfAI

with Olival Freire Jr.

Saturday January 16, 20219:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 18:00 CET

It is much easier to talk about advances in the field of science in the past than to guess about its future. The case of Lord Kelvin’s 1900 statement concerning the two little clouds that still obscured the sky of physics, and that would eventually be resolved into revolutionary theories—special relativity and quantum mechanics—is a well-known example of this. While risky, guesses about the future of science are appealing. Indeed, dramatic change is a recurrent theme in science studies as illustrated by Thomas Kuhn’s ideas on shifting paradigms in scientific revolutions as well as by several other authors who elaborated different views on the subject. Informed guesses about the future of science breakthroughs will be the subject of our conversation.

This online talk will be followed by questions and answers and discussion.

This event has a fee of €10,00 a participant, €9.00 for Friends of The Pari Center.

Professor Olival Freire Jr., professor of physics and history of science

Olival Freire Jr. is Professor of Physics and History of Physics at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil. In Brazil, he was trained in Physics (UFBA), he earned a PhD in History (USP) in 1995 and is fellow at the CNPq in History of Science.

He founded the Graduate Program in Science Teaching, History and Philosophy of Science at UFBA, in Brazil. He served as President of the Sociedade Brasileira de História da Ciência, the Commission on the History of Physics at DHST and as a member of the council of History of Science Society.

He was researcher at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science, MIT, Harvard, Université de Paris VII, University of Maryland, and Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics.

He has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as books and book chapters. He wrote The Quantum Dissidents—Rebuilding the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics 1950-1990, Springer, 2015, and David Bohm—A Life Dedicated to Understanding the Quantum World, Springer, 2019.

Synchronicity Quest with Remo Roth
2021-02-13 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/E2iBB1h5Aeo?si=TZjSnVdClrlYX8w_

Synchronicity Quest with Remo Roth

with Remo Roth

Experiencing synchronicities is the observation of spontaneous incarnation phenomena in our consciousness.

Beginning with Jung’s Scarab Synchronicity, Roth outlines the conscious preconditions for the experience of synchronicities. In other words: What change in our consciousness is necessary for the observation of a multiplication of synchronicities?

With the help of some of his most important synchronicities, Roth will demonstrate how they work, their mode of operation, and the way in which they led him to the method he calls Synchronicity Quest.

Remo F. Roth, was born in 1943 and lives in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a researcher in the field of psychophysical reality (W. Pauli) or unus mundus (C.G. Jung), the magical unified world of Hermetic alchemy, Daoism and Tantrism that is behind, or even beyond, the split into the outer world of physics and the inner world of Jung’s depth psychology. Roth was a former student and collaborator of Marie-Louise von Franz. Today he is working as an interpreter of synchronicity and archetypal dreams, and as a healing practitioner.

With Pari Publishing he published three books on this subject; see http://www.paripublishing.com/authors/remo-f-roth/

The Practice of the I Ching
2021-03-27 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Lad9o5wME

The Practice of the I Ching

with Shantena Sabbadini and Cruz Mañas Sabbadini

Saturday March 2710:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

Online Pari Dialogue

The practice of the I Ching oracle is a form of introspection bridging different dimensions, unconscious and conscious, imaginal and rational, heart and mind. The wild images from a shamanic tradition three thousand years old are framed in the rigorous system of yin and yang. And the intuitive practice of ‘rolling the words in one’s heart’ is grounded in the exact discipline of handling the forty-nine yarrow stalks or the three coins and reading one’s answer in the book.

In this webinar we will explore the practice of consultation in detail, answering, as far as possible, all the questions concerning this mysterious activity, from the appropriate formulation of the question to the specific function of the various sections of a hexagram in the answer.

The webinar is addressed both to newcomers and to ‘old I Ching hands.’ Our main reference will be the Eranos I Ching, translated by Rudolf Ritsema and Shantena Sabbadini, but you are welcome to keep at hand your favourite I Ching and to compare passages. Often the ancient Chinese of the I Chingallows for multiple meanings.

On Saturday March 27, Shantena and Cruz 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/82002877500

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

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.

Cruz Mañas Sabbadini, is a clinical psychologist. She researched mental illness and gave treatment in jails. She works as a psychotherapist with a Jungian orientation and gives I Ching seminars with Shantena Sabbadini. She founded El Cortijo de Gaia, a deep psychology center in Lanjaron (Granada). She is author of the book Simplicidad Consciente and of a number of poetry books, among which Todo lo Sabe la Tierra, Mar de Fondo, Noveno Planeta, La Zarza Incandescente.

The Goal - The Great Re-Think
2021-04-17 11:01 - 13:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

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

The Goal

Session 1 of The Great Re-Think

with Colin Tudge and special guest Andrew Fellows

Saturday April 1710:00am BST | 11:00am CEST

All sessions are live, recordings will be available for any sessions you can not attend.

First we need to decide what we want to achieve—which Colin suggests should be to create:

Convivial societies—with personal fulfilment! —within a flourishing biosphere

Governments rarely spell out properly what they are actually trying to achieve. They rely on slogans—as in ‘Make America Great Again’ or ‘Take Back Control.’

We need to achieve the necessary turn-around not merely by Reform, or by out-and-out Revolution—but by Renaissance—re-birth: creating the world we want to see in situ, and leaving what we don’t need to wither on the vine.

But powers-that-be—an oligarchy of governments, corporates, financiers, and their selected intellectual advisers—are not going to do what’s needed. In large part they are leading us in the opposite direction. So we—people at large—need to make the Renaissance happen for ourselves.

Always we need to be guided by the twin principles of morality (what is it right to do?) and of ecology (what is necessary and what is possible?). Both are rooted in the much neglected discipline of metaphysics. Good science is vital but commensurately we need to restore the sense of the sacred. ‘Re-enchantment’ is required.

** All is ripe for discussion. Most basically: does everyone agree with the stated goal? And is it really possible to take care of humanity and our fellow creatures? (Yes, is the answer, but only with truly radical change—brought about by people at large.)

Andrew Fellows is a Jungian Analyst, Program Director and Training Analyst at ISAP Zurich, independent researcher and author, and deep ecologist. He holds a Doctorate in Applied Physics, and enjoyed two decades of international engagement with renewable energy, sustainable development and environmental policy before moving to Switzerland.

He is currently extending Jungian Psychology with Gaia theory, dual-aspect monism and deep ecology to address global environmental problems.

His first book, Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology: Navigating Climate Change in the Anthropocene was joint winner of the Scientific & Medical Network 2019 Book Prize. Andrew lives over three thousand feet above sea level in rural Switzerland without a car.

Ancient Wisdom Transforming Tomorrow
2021-05-08 17:59 - 20:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Ancient Wisdom Transforming Tomorrow

4-part series: Saturday May 8, 15, 22, 299:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST | 6:00pm SAST

Each session is 2.5 hours

with Gavin Andersson, Rutendo Ngara and Godelieve Spaasand special guests Ela Manga and Keith Mparana

This programme features meditation, drawing, music, stories, dialogues and experiences and is limited to 20 active participants.

We find ourselves in a world in crisis. While theories abound, to some humanity is at the edge of the apocalypse. We are at a time of reckoning, a time of turning. We are both actors and spectators in the time foretold by ancient prophecy.

There has been no greater symbol of this in recent history than the global health emergency due to Covid-19. As a consequence of the virus, borders have been closed, millions of sources of livelihood have been lost, systems have been stifled, economies have suffered, and all the ills of the world have been accentuated. At the peak of the pandemic, the world was stopped in its tracks and activity—as we knew it—and was locked down. Some point out that this may just be the first such pandemic, and that it is merely a harbinger of the crises to come with climate change.

At this watershed moment humanity is asked to re-think, re-imagine, re-define, re-act, re-store, re-generate and re-new.

Can the current Western economic thinking solve everything? What lessons can we learn from Ancient Wisdom?

This series of dialogues aims to bring to light concepts from African Indigenous Knowledge Systems as catalysts for reimagining how to approach issues in our current reality in an interrelated and unbounded way.

By enlarging the space, we can move beyond the existing dominant paradigms and rethink the fictions that shape the modern world. We explore four different Indigenous principles, allowing other ways of knowing to expand our ways of doing—our activity. We create a container for unbounded organising in a time of transition. We traverse the bridge between remembering and imagining and paint the world as we would wish it to become.

Each session addresses one principle:

Ubuntu (Southern Africa)Ubuntu is the principle of interrelatedness, interconnectedness and interdependence. It asserts that: ‘A person is a person through other persons. I am because you are. You are because we are. We are because it is. It is because All that is is.’ This is the root of identity.

Sankofa (West Africa)Sankofa tells us to ‘go back and fetch it.’ It is a concept of ‘historical recovery,’ moving us to reflect on and reclaim Indigenous cultural ideas and principles in order to advance towards a co-created future.

Kemetic Tree of Life (Ancient Egypt)The Tree of Life tracks the process of creation from the Void to All That Is. It is a cosmological principle describing the ancient wisdom about the nature of the cosmos: from the unmanifest to the manifest, the infinite to finite.

Ancestors (throughout)African spirituality holds that there is no separation between the living, those who have walked before and those who are to come. Death is a complementary of life and the beginning of the communication between the visible and the invisible worlds.

How do we look back to move forward, what new insights seek to emerge and what transformative activity fractals can we manifest?

Pre-readingGavin Andersson (2021) ‘Unbounded Organising’ Pari Perspectives, Issue 7, ‘The Common Good’

Gavin Andersson, PhD, is a development practitioner and activity theorist whose life work has focused on strengthening community organisation, and leadership development within civil society.

Gavin was founder and co-ordinator of CORDE, which worked with farmer groups and community enterprises in Botswana. He later consulted in organisational development across southern Africa and in the Caribbean. Returning to South Africa at the inception of democracy he led a development advocacy organization and worked in the fields of corporate social responsibility, civil accountability, and leadership development. Gavin has helped to develop methodologies for citizen-based monitoring of government programmes.

Gavin is an executive coach, senior fellow of the Chair for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg and was a distinguished fellow of the Chair in Development Education housed at the University of South Africa UNISA. He is Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Cape Town where he hosts critical conversations on Macroeconomics, Ethics and Organizing. Gavin lives with three of his five children, is passionate about agroecology, and follows African spirituality.

Rutendo Ngara is an African Indigenous Knowledge Systems practitioner and transdisciplinary researcher whose professional interests have spanned from clinical engineering, healthcare technology management, socio-economic development, mathematics, leadership and fashion design; to the interface between science, culture, cosmology and paradigms of healing. With a passion for integrating art, science and spirituality towards healing of the Collective and restoration of the Whole, she is a spiritual coach, priestess and counsellor, who engages several modes of healing. She consults in workshop facilitation in areas such as leadership, personal development, health and wellness. Rutendo is a co-founder of Ancient Wisdom Africa, a forum that seeks to gather knowledges and voices of Ancient Wisdom and see how these can illuminate the present; as well as a member of the Assegaia Alliance—a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary group of experts dedicated to the protection of the Earth’s Sacred Natural Sites. She serves on a number of boards, advisory and convening committees, including the Credo Mutwa Foundation, the South African Wushu Federation, Earthrise Collective and Umphakatsi Peace Ecovillage. Rutendo is a practitioner of a number of physical disciplines, including Wushu/Kung Fu/Tai Ji for which she has represented South Africa as an international silver medallist. She holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering, an MSc in Medicine in Biomedical Engineering, and is pursuing a doctorate in Philosophy of Education. The quest for harmony, co- existence and complimentarity underpins her endeavours.

Godelieve Spaas is a professor of Sustainable Strategy and Innovation at Avans University of Applied Science in the Netherlands. She is a researcher and also creates and makes performances and podcasts about new ways of entrepreneurial organizing where ecology, society, and the economy all benefit from and interact seamlessly with each other. Her aim is to increase diversity in organizational and entrepreneurial models and realities with a view to the development of a fairer, more sustainable and robust entrepreneurial space. She combines art, science, entrepreneurial practices and indigenous knowledge.

Godelieve also creates new businesses that are collaborative, inclusive and work in harmony with nature. She is associate Director of the Pari Center and a regular guest in Pari, a place where she writes, participates in dialogues, and follows and gives courses.

Dr Ela Manga is an integrative medical doctor with an ancient vision for the future. Amongst the gifts she offers, she is a specialist in energy management, author and speaker who uses Breathwork as a tool for self-empowerment, healing and transformation. For those who have had the privilege of experiencing the transformative power of the breath under her facilitation, it was a source of inspiration and expiration. Last year she ran a podcast series called ‘Threads of Healing,’ where she expanded the notion of healing through different voices and wove it back together into a tapestry of beauty. Apart from her medical practice, she is the Founder of Breathwork Africa.

Keith Mparana is an avid student of African-based systems of knowledge that he translates into artwork through studying the thought processes that are depicted in ancient cosmologies.

Hope and Delusion
2021-05-16 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome) | Online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogTF4n-mRXM

Hope and Delusion: Critical Storytelling for Difficult Times

with Robert Norris

Sunday May 169:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

When we realise just how much hangs on our attitudes towards the various forms of crisis we are exposed to, we may come to see what our work really is. Hope has a curious story to tell. It reminds us of the wealth we carry within us, but also of how easily we are persuaded to give it all up. This talk attempts to string together disparate stories relating to, but not necessarily about, hope, and aims specifically to raise more questions than it answers. Accompanying the talk there will be breakout and plenary sessions in which participants will be able to articulate their thoughts and responses.

On Sunday May 16, Robert 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/84842167052

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

When asked once to provide a blurb for a book on the philosophy of language, the question of how to describe Robert professionally had to be addressed. It was decided to describe him as an independent researcher, and this is more or less how Robert has viewed himself ever since. Robert teaches English as a foreign language, but his interests and experience are wide-ranging. Born to British parents in Modena, Italy, he studied Classics at school, English at Aberdeen University and General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. He has travelled and worked in various parts of Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, Southeast Asia, Australasia and the United States. In 2014, he completed a Permaculture Design Course in Vang Vieng, Laos, and holds a second degree black belt in the art of aikido. He is indebted to many teachers in the fields of aikido and meditation, especially Vipassana meditation, and in 2018 completed a Mindfulness Teacher Training Course at the Mangalam Meditation Centre in Germany. He now lives with his beloved wife in Zürich, Switzerland, where he plans to embark on training as a Jungian Analyst at the International School for Analytical Psychologists.

Analytic Idealism
2021-06-05 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Analytic Idealism

with Bernardo Kastrup

Saturday June 5, 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.

Two widespread current notions of consciousness are physicalism, i.e. the perspective that assumes physical reality, matter, as fundamental, and bottom-up panpsychism, i.e. the perspective that takes everything as possessing mind or consciousness and higher levels of consciousness consisting of a combination of more elementary levels. Bernardo Kastrup will argue for an idealist (consciousness only) ontology consistent with empirical observations, which seeks to explain the facts of nature more parsimoniously than physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism. This ontology also attempts to offer more explanatory power than both physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism, in that it does not fall prey to either the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ (the challenge of deducing consciousness from matter) or the ‘subject combination problem,’ (the challenge of deducing higher levels of consciousness from lower levels). It can be summarized as follows: spatially unbound consciousness is posited to be the only ontological reality, the ultimate nature of everything. We, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness, similarly to what happens in multiple personality disorders.

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a PhD in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and a second PhD in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect‘ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. Bernardo’s most recent book is The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.

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

The Ancestors—the Tree of Life and Intergenerational Patterning
2021-06-16 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y12raflNx6g

The Ancestors—the Tree of Life and Intergenerational Patterning

with Melanie Rein

Wednesday June 16 9:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Online Pari Dialogue

This talk will focus on the unconscious patterns which run through families and generations of families, as one generation inherits, responds and reacts to the complexes and archetypal energies of the previous generation—and even of the generation before that—parents, grandparents and in some cases, great-grandparents. Drawing on mythology and other cultural experiences, the presenter will explore the symbolic nature of the genogram, or psychological genealogy tree, and its connection to the Tree of Life as a visual image for eliciting, revealing and deepening insights into family and ancestral patterning.

On Wednesday June 16, Melanie 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/84239833716

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

Melanie Rein PhD., is a Jungian analyst and supervisor with a practice in Cambridge, UK. She is a senior member of the Guild of Analytical Psychologists, London, where she originally trained, and of the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists. Many moons ago, Melanie worked as a Psychiatric Social Worker, using family therapy in her work with children and families. Later, following her PhD., and as a social scientist, she directed a number of British Government and EU projects in Central and Eastern Europe, as well working on a collaborative research project with colleagues in Zambia and Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.

Image Above:Israhel van MeckenemOrnament with the Tree of Jesse, 1480–90With kind permission of The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

Epistemic Justice
2021-06-16 19:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Epistemic Justice

Reflections on Past, Present and Future – from an African Perspective With Dr. Baba Buntu (PhD)

June: Cognitive

Wednesday June 16, 23 and 30 – 1 hour sessions10:00 am PDT | 1:00 pm EDT | 6:00 pm BST | 7:00 pm CEST

This seminar-series is a presentation of reflections on justice, liberation and transformation. It is a fragmented story, inspired by the presenter’s tri-continental life-journey, interpreted through a trans-disciplinary lens and motivated by finding strategies for change through epistemic disobedience.

Rooted in African worldviews, each session will explore aspects of history that has had a devastating impact on human development. Literary references will be used as navigation points in order to interrogate complex problems and stimulate philosophical introspection.

More than providing the answers, the seminar-series will seek to disrupt common thinking and encourage a transdisciplinary approach to transformation. Realizing that our views of the world have been greatly impacted by exclusion and silencing, the series is an attempt to speak the unspoken and envision the righteous.

The seminar-series will be scheduled along 12 key-concepts, structured through four dimensions: Physical, cognitive, social and metaphysical. 3 sessions will be held each month of May, June, July and August at 7:00 CEST of 1 hour.

June: Cognitive

June 16 – Violence: What is the script of violence, beyond physical aggression?June 23 – Economy: How do we manage a world where “to have” is a privilege?June 30 – Leadership: Is there a universal script for how to lead?

What people have said….

This program is -in my eyes- an absolute prerequisite for everyone aspiring to bring change in the world, for everyone who claims to believe in change, equality and justice. You cannot not listen to Baba Buntu’s work on (in)justice. Julie Arts

Using evocative questions and images, engaging around both the mind and lived experience, Dr. Buntu opens the potential for understanding at a deep and enduring level. Sharon Landes

Dr. Baba Buntu strikes the perfect balance between personal experience and in-depth academic research in this eye-opening series. This course should be mandatory for people of all colours to become aware and hopefully start to fight the inherent systemic injustices both in our daily lives and at a larger scale. Rose Vervenne

Following months…..

July: SocialJuly 14 – Family: Who is the teacher of familyhood?July 21 – Youth: Why do we hate youth so much?July 28 – Gender: Is gender a concept of violence?

August: MetaphysicalAugust 11 – Spirit: Who defines truth beyond the physical world?August 18 – Unity: What are the mechanics of reuniting a fragmented world?August 25 – Balance: Whose responsibility is it to restore what was broken?

Previous month…..

May: The PhysicalMay 12 – Skin: How did appearance become punishable?May 19 – Presence: What does it mean to exist in this world?May 26 – Representation: Who can represent who, and why?

Dr Baba Amani Olúbánjọ Buntu is a Community/Activist Scholar with more than 30 years of experience in conceptualizing and implementing programs on social development, innovative entrepreneurship, youth empowerment and indigenous knowledge – particularly suited for Afrikan applicability. He has background from Anguilla, grew up in Norway and has lived in South Afrika since the 90’s.

In Norway he founded Afrikan Youth In Norway (AYIN), started Norway’s first Afrikan-centered retail shop, Afrikan Excellence, and co-founded Afrikan History Week (AHW). He is the Founder and Co-Director of eBukhosini Solutions, a community based company in Johannesburg, focusing on Afrikan-Centered education and decolonial transformation. He holds a Doctoral and a Master Degree in Philosophy of Education from University of South Africa and has also studied social work, group therapy and political science. As a Pan-Afrikan educator, writer, mentor and practitioner, with broad experience from work in Afrika, the Caribbean and Europe.

The Image Above: MMRA KRADO belongs to the family of Adinkra conceptual symbols created by the Bono and Akan civilizations, in today’s Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.

In the literal sense, mmra means law while krado means padlock. Together they can be translated to mean the seal of the law. This symbol represents justice and authority. When there is a desire for law and order, citizens must resolve to be law abiding for a peaceful and harmonious community.

The Screen and the Soul
2021-07-03 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome)
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.

Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyond
2021-07-10 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Buy the recording

Contextuality In De Broglie-Bohm And Beyond with Emily Adlam€10,00

Shop now

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.

The Brain and our Encounter with the World
2021-09-04 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | 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.

Exploring the Earth-Mind
2021-09-11 18:00 - 2021-09-19 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | 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.
