The Pari Center

Beyond Bohm 2025: The Living Mountain
2025-07-12 18:00 - 2025-07-13 20:00 (Europe/Rome)
Beyond Bohm 2025 (1 of 3): The Living Mountain

Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

The session is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Around 1937 Scot author Nan Shepherd placed a finished manuscript in a drawer, where it sat for 40 years. Finally published in 1977 – four years before Shepherd’s death – The Living Mountain now has a cult following, and is considered a masterpiece that defies categorization. Though topically an account of Shepherd’s decades-long roamings in the Cairngorm massif of northern Scotland, the heart of The Living Mountain carries the reader deep within Shepherd’s experience, revealing ways of being that are at once place-specific and universal. She opens the reader to the forces and patterns of creation, and the manner in which these forces interpenetrate human consciousness and imagination.

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.

And yet… Much of the potency in Shepherd’s writing is that it is in no way limited to the Cairngorms. Once one has been infected with the spirit of engagement brought forth by Shepherd, that quality can be brought to bear anywhere – in a park, at the sea, in one’s own back yard. To that end, our second day will consist of contributions from audience-participants – a mutual sharing of experiences in which the depths of the human meet the depths of the natural world. This may take multiple forms – first-hand description of one’s own experiences in the natural world; reading to our Zoom group short passages from other writers or further readings of Shepherd; photographs of potent or numinous locations; any other means of conveying to the group the mystery, beauty, and even terror that can be encountered in the domain of nature. Our aim on this second day is to give full voice to the Pari community regarding the deep human need for conscious connection with stone and sun, wind and tree, bird and brook, sea and stars. Please join us!

Possible reading (helpful, not required):

https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/19/the-living-mountain-nan-shepherd/ (short journal article on Shepherd)

The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd (basis for this weekend’s sessions)

In the Cairngorms, Nan Shepherd (basis for this weekend’s sessions)

The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover (excellent commentary on Shepherd)

Story About Feeling, Bill Niedje (complementary perspective from Aboriginal elder)

Hester Reeve is a Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University UK. Her practice encompasseslive art, drawing, sculpture, poetry, philosophy and ‘dialogue’ (as set out by David Bohm): Art is not viewed straightforwardly as a tool of communication or form of personal expression, but more as a complex kingdom that is continually attempting to establish itself through human thought and action.

Hester’s work has been shown internationally, including at former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, BONE Performance Festival Switzerland, Tate Britain, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Halle G Vienna and, most recently, Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa. She is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing) and a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

Maria Hvidbak’s formal educational background encompasses a mix of architecture, business psychology, philosophical inter-viewing and existential-phenomenological psychotherapy. While not settling with any professional title or given field of study, Maria is engaged with questions pertaining to “communication,” as understood according to its etymological root sense of “moving together.” Increasingly inspired by what is commonly recognized as an attitude of the artist, seeking into subtleties of philosophy and sports as well as experimenting with creative expressions…all become modes of exploring what can possibly be “moved together” with.

Maria is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing) and a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

Chris Marks was one of the founding trustees of Prison Dialogue, and involved for its 25 year experiment. This dialogue process in the criminal justice system (CJS) attempted to get the CJS to talk to itself and thereby humanize the overall system. The work was applied primarily in the UK, but also had outreach in the US. He has spent many years – and continues proudly working with – a number of “woke” funding organizations: human rights; economic justice; peace and conflict resolution. Chris lives in Edinburgh, loves tai chi and real tennis. He is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

Lee Nichol is Director of Bohmian Studies at the Pari Center. As a freelance writer and editor his latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and Holoflux: Codex (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity.

Lee has been on the faculty of the Tibetan Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California, and Denver University in Denver, Colorado. He sits on the Advisory Committee of the Pari Center, the Advisory Council of the Indigenous Education Institute, and is a member of the Founding Circle of the Native American Academy. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife Eva Casey.

Beyond Bohm 2025, Part 2 - Introduction to Bohm’s physics
2025-08-02 18:00 - 20:30
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.

While his 1952 hidden variables papers were not really about hidden variables (it’s in quotes in the paper tiles), they did start a direction of travel that he periodically revisited. The quantum potential offered a new way of illustrating the profound differences between classical and quantum physics as well as a means of exploring Bohm’s vision of underlying wholeness.

The 1952 papers also profoundly influenced John Bell, who took up Bohm’s reworking of one of Einstein’s thought experiments to explore the nature of entanglement experimentally. That line led to the 2022 Nobel Prize. Without going into too much technical detail, I will explain the underlying physics of the 1952 papers, Bell’s theorem and its relationship to locality and entanglement, and will work up to the advances Basil Hiley was making right up to his death.

We might even mention the Aharonov-Bohm effect and how weird that is…

Jonathan Allday was born in Liverpool in 1960. He did his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge in 1982 and then returned to Liverpool to complete a PhD in elementary particle physics. As part of this, he was fortunate to spend some time working at the European particle physics centre, CERN, in Geneva.

Also, during that time he was co-opted onto a working party looking at the teaching of particle physics in schools and universities. The upshot was a new syllabus in particle physics and cosmology to be added to UK A-level (16-18) physics qualifications. The first questions were set in 1992.

On the back of the work on this syllabus, Jonathan wrote his first book Quarks, Leptons and the Big Bang, which was published in 1998 and is about to enter its fourth edition. Jonathan has also collaborated on a couple of textbooks and written his own books on Quantum Theory, General Relativity and the Apollo moon missions.

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

Jonathan is married to Carolyn, and they have three sons all of whom are far better at sport than he was. Carolyn was a GB swimmer, which explains how come the boys can do sport. Jonathan and Carolyn live in a hamlet not far from Worcester in the UK. When not writing or consulting, Jonathan enjoys watching cricket, James Bond movies and Formula 1 races.

Bringing Meaning Back to Life
2025-09-02 19:00 - 2025-09-09 17:00 | Pari, Italy
Thanks to the generous funding from a European foundation, we now have the opportunity to offer three full scholarships, preferably to young minds, for this event. For more information:

Scholarship Programme

Science, Arts, and the Sacred Series

Bringing Meaning Back to Life

Pari, ItalySeptember 2-9, 2025

25 years at the Pari Center

Science has largely displaced religious accounts of our existence. But it can make both life and death seem virtually meaningless. Religion does not, suggesting there is a necessary opposition between them. We will move beyond that to look at how spiritual traditions, the sciences and the arts provide complementary ways of celebrating life and accepting death as parts of living authentically.

Speakers

Bernard Carr, Ya’Acov Darling-Khan, Jeff Dunne, Suzanne Gieser, Parul Jani, Shoaib Malik, Therese Schroeder-Sheker (virtually), Nick Spencer.List of the presentations.

Chaired and curated by: John Pickering

Ticket Prices

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

Prices include:

a 7-night stay;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed lectures, activities and materials.

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

The event starts on Tuesday September 2 at 19:00 and ends after lunch on Tuesday September 9.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

If the time it took for life to evolve on earth were a day, human beings wouldn’t appear until fifty seconds before midnight. Evolutionarily speaking we’re instantaneous.

But in that instant science has achieved a deep understanding of the world and the technology it has made possible has greatly enhanced our lives. So much so that in last few centuries science has replaced religion as the framework for our existence.

But that understanding comes with costs. One is the ecological damage that is the darker side-effect of technology. Another, less apparent but just as damaging, is that with the loss of a religious framework, life, and therefore death as well, may have come to seem virtually meaningless.

C.G. Jung said: ‘Man cannot stand a meaningless life.’ Iain McGilchrist seems to agree: ‘Death is not the opposite of life but its fulfilment. The opposite of life is the machine.’ Like David Bohm and David Peat, McGilchrist rejects the idea that science requires us to conceive of the cosmos, and ourselves, as nothing but mechanisms.

But science is in any case changing, as it always has. Classical mechanistic materialism has been left behind, but quite what is to replace it is unclear. Religion is perhaps less apt to change, but Whitehead said ‘Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.’

We are moving on from the idea that there’s a necessary opposition between science and religion. This year’s meeting in Pari will be part of that move. It will look at how spiritual traditions, the sciences and the arts offer ways to celebrate life and accept death as complementary parts of living authentically.

It will bring together speakers from the sciences, arts, faiths and healing traditions to create an open dialogue and supportive experience in which all can participate. We’ll explore the leading edge of quantum physics, examine the relationship of science to Christianity, Islam and Vedanta. We’ll also hear speakers on how Shamanism, music and ritual have and continue to have a role in facing the end of our lives.

This will be an informal meeting with presentations by experts followed by roundtable discussions.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means not only meeting with scholars and experts but living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the tiny local population, eating local dishes and drinking local wines, appreciating the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and participating in a very gentle way of life far from the frenzy of work and city living. David Peat compared Pari to an alchemical vessel—a place where transformation can come about—as well as an opportunity to pause for a moment and re-assess one’s life. It’s a unique opportunity open to everyone.

We at the Pari Center seek to bring together world-renowned experts from a great range of disciplines, approaches, and sensibilities to meet together in person and deepen our insights on the workings and origin of human experience, while also exploring creative and rigorous frameworks to integrate such wonderful mysteries hidden in plain sight into a coherent evolutionary understanding. You are cordially invited to join us.

Please contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com

Presentations

Click to see a list of the presentations for this event
The Soul of the Cosmos and the Hierarchy of Life and Deathwith Bernard Carr

Benevolent Death: A Teacher for the Livingwith Ya’Acov Darling-Khan

Syntropy: A Scientific Expression of Purpose in Life and Beyond Deathwith Jeffrey Dunne

Healing the Split: How Can Science and Spirituality Join Forces?with Suzanne Gieser

Beyond: Beyond the Limits of the Mindwith Parul Jani

Daring to Believe and Question: Theological Anthropology in an Age of Sciencewith Shoaib Ahmed Malik

Science, Religion and Human Identitywith Nick Spencer

Dying and Becoming as Meaning and Metamorphosiswith Therese Schroeder-Sheker

Information

Additional information on this program (PDF)

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Mind, Matter and Meaning: A Jubileum
2025-10-02 16:00 - 2025-10-06 17:00
Mind, Matter and Meaning: A Jubileum

October 2-6, 2025Pari, Italy

Event Schedule

Thursday, October 2

16:00-16:30 Welcome/Introductions

16:30-19:00 Symposium 1

16:30 Oliver Sharpe: “Portfolism – Reasoning well given the logical limits of rationality”

17:30 Berkan Eskikaya: “Before it’s gone: Fragility as a Precondition for Consciousness, Meaning, and Value”

18:30 General discussion: Reason and Living well

Friday, October 3

09:30-13:00 Symposium 2

09:30 Paavo Pylkkänen: “Bohm’s pilot wave theory and its philosophical implications”

10:30 General discussion: Science and philosophy

11:00 coffee

11:30 Uziel Awret: “Consciousness and the AdS/CFT Duality”

12:30 General discussion: Physics and consciousness

15:00-18:00 Symposium 3

15:00 Vinod Goel: “Biological Constraints on the Rational Mind”

16:00 coffee

16:30 Ron Chrisley: “Creativity as Non-Conceptual Conceptual Change”

17:30 General discussion: Beyond the Rational/Conceptual Mind

Saturday, October 4

09:30-13:00 Symposium 4

09:30 John Polito: “How to perceive BS with AI (It’s not what you’re thinking, it’s what your hearing)”

10:30 Avery Wang: TBA

11:30 coffee

12:00 Barney Pell: TBA

Sunday, October 5

09:30-13:00 Symposium 5

09:30 Yair Pinto: “Conscious comprehension enables non-algorithmic capabilities.”

10:30 Mark Kennedy: TBA

11:30 coffee

12:00 Ron Chrisley: “Adventures in Self-Reference 1: Epistemic Blindspots”

15:00-18:00 Symposium 6

15:00 Ewan Paton: “Must Judges Be Human?”

16:00 coffee

16:30 Brian Keeley: “The weird epistemology of conspiracy theories.”

17:30 General discussion: Reckoning & Judgement

Monday, October 6

09:30-13:00 Symposium 7

09:30 Ron Chrisley: “Adventures in Self-Reference 2: The Situatedness of Computation and Inference”

10:30 TBA (possibly Vinod Goel?)

11:30 coffee

12:00 General discussion: Moving Forward

12:30 Closing

Participants

Uziel Awret

Presentation:

“Consciousness and the AdS/CFT Duality”

In my talk I will try and convince you that were the neural correlates of consciousness shown to be massively entangled then consciousness might be an exotic phase of matter that is constituted similarly to space. Physicists like Juan Maldacena believe that in the not so far future we will be able to use quantum computers to generate AdS spaces with a couple of thousands of properly entangled qubits. These spaces, which are a solution of Einstein’s gravitational equation, are more classical in nature and possess many philosophically relevant properties.

I will begin the talk with methodological issues relevant to any theory of consciousness that appeals to novel physical mechanisms and proceed to motivate my argument. Next I will say a few words on massively entangled systems that harbor interspersed local measuring devices and the new Frontier of quantum complexity. While the physical scenario that I will be entertaining may have little to do with reality (after all it assumes large scale entanglement in the warm brain and embraces a radical interpretation of the holographic duality) it is worth considering because of the many philosophical advantages that it provides, if time permits, I will list more than twenty such philosophical advantages.

Ron Chrisley

Presentations:

I will give some or all of the following talks:

“Creativity as Non-Conceptual Conceptual Change”

Much of our mental life is non-conceptual (roughly, composed of meanings not capturable in words). This poses a challenge for our sciences and technologies of the mind, but also promises several opportunities. The challenge is how to talk and theorize about these otherwise ineffable non-conceptual contents. The opportunities derive from the role that non-conceptuality plays in our mental lives: grounding perception, action on the one hand, and providing the medium for radical learning and creativity on the other. How can the proper recognition and understanding of the role of the non-conceptual inform the design of better AI systems?

(This talk of mine from almost 20 years ago introduces some of the key ideas: https://e-asterisk.blogspot.com/2007/08/interactive-empiricism-philosopher-in_06.html )

“Adventures in Self-Reference 1: Epistemic Blindspots”

“It’s raining, but George doesn’t know it” is an example of an epistemic blindspot for George: it can be true, it can be known (e.g. by Ron), but it is logically impossible for George to know it. Each knower has an unbounded number epistemic blindspots. I show:

(Following Sorensen) how conditional epistemic blindspots can be used to resolve paradoxes (e.g., the paradox of the surprise examination);

How epistemic blindspots can be used to defeat a famous argument against physicalism, Jackson’s Knowledge Argument;

That physical knowledge can be logically private and ineffable knowledge;

That the mere possibility of epistemic blindspots implies that for any knowledge-based system (natural or artificial) to track the truth it must not only check for logical consistency (as is well known), but must also check for what I call epistemic consistency.

(This talk of mine from almost 20 years ago introduces some of the key ideas: https://e-asterisk.blogspot.com/2006/07/epistemic-blindspot-sets-resolution-of.html)

“Adventures in Self-Reference 2: The Situatedness of Computation and Inference”

Computation and inference are both situated in the sense that they occur in a particular context; specifically, there is a particular system carrying out the computation, and a particular subject engaging in the inference at a particular time. The upshot of this is that general accounts of what is and what is not computable, or what inferences are or are not valid, must, contrary to orthodoxy, pay attention to these contextual details. I demonstrate this by showing:

One cannot capture inferential validity purely syntactically: the argument “P; P->Q; Therefore Q” is not, despite conventional wisdom, always valid; to capture validity requires reference to situational aspects, not just syntactic form.

The non-computability of the (non-)Halting Problem by a system is itself dependent on the identity (classification) of that system. One result of this is that the diagonal argument against AI fails.

(This talk of mine from last year introduces some of the key ideas concerning the second point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSBpUOG7UH8)

Berkan Eskikaya

Presentation:

“Before it’s gone: Fragility as a Precondition for Consciousness, Meaning, and Value”

This talk is a speculative exploration of how fragility and vulnerability are not only essential features of living systems, but also serve as a lens through which we can shape our understanding of consciousness, meaning, and value. Edge cases such as mind–body conditions and ephemeral art are used to probe and stress these ideas — for instance, do they point to ways fragility can be turned into appreciation or resilience? The aim is to invite dialogue on how fragility, as a unifying principle, may connect across domains relevant to consciousness, AI, and creativity.

Vinod Goel

Presentation:

“Biological Constraints on the Rational Mind (Discussed in Context of “Us and Them” Phenomenon)”

We are widely considered to be the rational animal. This entails that our volitional behavior is a function of our beliefs, desires, and a principle of coherence which guides our pursuit of the latter in the context of the former. Where human behavior seems less than rational one can appeal to irrationality in the form of various “heuristic” responses.

At least two important assumptions underly the model of rationality: (1) Beliefs (and cognitive desires founded on false suppositions) are considered to be malleable/corrigible allowing for unlimited learning and enormous flexibility in behavior at any tme. (2) The model is self-contained and insulated from lower-level biological systems (for e.g beliefs and desires presumably cannot mingle with low blood sugar level). I want to suggest that both of these assumptions are flawed. They ignore basic biological constraints. In the case of the first assumption, while neural development does allow for local belief revision at any time, revision of large-scale worldviews are rare/impossible after certain neural maturation windows have closed. In the case of the second, if we are to accept the theory of evolution and the past 100 years of neurobiology research we must acknowledge that our system of rationality is built on top of and modulated by evolutionarily older systems such as the autonomic system, reinforcement learning systems, and instincts. There is no Libertarian CEO in charge. The control structure is based on hedonic principles. This leads to a notion of arational (rather than irrational) behavior. Accepting these constraints leads to a model of mind tethered to and constrained by various biological systems and processes and gives us a larger repertoire of tools for explaining teenage daughters, MAGA, Brixet, Ukraine and Gaza. I will discuss these ideas in the context of the “us and them” phenomenon.

Suggested reading:

Both assumptions are discussed in the this manuscript entitled “Us And Them: Insights From Evolution, Neurodevelopment, And The Tethered Mind” which is currently in review. (My apologies for the length of the ms but the reviewers keep asking for more details…. but over half of it is bibliography.)

I have also made a one hour YouTube video for my students about the tethered mind that discusses the problem with the second assumption and my proposed solution. Here is the link:https://youtu.be/zb2Z7P7CCKg

Brian Keeley

Presentation:

“The weird epistemology of conspiracy theories.”

In the late ‘90s, when it looked like nobody wanted to hire a philosopher who studied the neuroscience of electric fish, I wrote a random paper on the philosophy of conspiracy theories (CTs), because almost no one else had. That got published in the Journal of Philosophy, which got me a job. Then 9/11 happened and lots of people became interested in CTs to the point that there’s now a thriving cottage industry in the academic study of this social and epistemic phenomenon. Since this is not a crowd of conspiracy theory theorists, I’ll introduce the topic and explain what topics are currently driving me and others who study the current landscape. Please come prepared to discuss and defend the conspiracy theory you most want to believe.

Suggested reading:

The opening chapter of political scientist, Joe Uscinski’s Conspiracy Theories: A Primer, 2nd edition, 2023, available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17CchevMUC4bBi_OR6zowfeJH5Efk3GwY/view?usp=share_link

Mark Kennedy

TBA

Ewan Paton

Presentation:

“Must Judges Be Human?”

Suggested reading:

“Algorithms and adjudication” – William Lucy (2024) Jurisprudence, 15:3, p251-281

Full article: Algorithms and adjudication

Barney Pell

TBA

Yair Pinto

Presentation:

“Conscious comprehension enables non-algorithmic capabilities.”

In this talk I present an argument against the computational theory of mind. In short, the argument states that human comprehension plus volition enables capabilities that exceed the capabilities of finite algorithmic systems. I will shortly outline how the current argument is similar to the Lucas-Penrose argument. Moreover, an empirical research line is deduced from this argument. The first tasks within this research line have recently been finalized. Performance on these tasks of humans, and of various large language models (Grok, Claude 4, o3, etc.), will be discussed.

Suggested reading: TBA

John Polito

Presentation:

“How to perceive BS with AI. (It’s not what you’re thinking, it’s what your hearing)”

Suggested reading:

Here are a couple quick blurbs that might get everyone closer to the topic than my presentation title (which will be explained!).

https://leader.pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/leader.FTR1.12042007.6

https://medium.com/@joydesdevises/auditory-perception-understanding-and-applying-its-principles-09c3b2be58b8

Paavo Pylkkänen

Presentation:

“Bohm’s pilot wave theory and its philosophical implications”

Bohm’s pilot wave theory has been one long-term focus of my interaction with Ron, and he has provided valuable criticisms of it over the years. Assuming that many of the other participants are not familiar with the theory, I will first present it. I will then move on to discuss its philosophical implications, hoping to engage in a debate with Ron and others. For philosophers the Bohm theory offers the possibility of a new kind of ‘physicalism’ where information is assumed to be fundamental, leading to the notion that ‘meaning is a key factor of being’. If this is correct, it will be valuable to give more attention to the role that meaning plays both in nature and in our lives individually and socially. I will explain what meaning meant for Bohm and look forward to a lively discussion.

Suggested reading:

Bohm, D. (1990) A new theory of the relationship of mind and matter, Philosophical Psychology, 3:2-3, 271-286, DOI: 10.1080/09515089008573004. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T7_BBDPLIQBOT-VPMU7Qlt7uhRV8KH5Z/view?usp=share_link

Oliver Sharpe

Presentation:

“Portfolism – Reasoning well given the logical limits of rationality”

In the 20th century our rational, calculative tools showed us their own limits, from Russel’s paradoxes of set theory; through Gödel’s incompleteness theorems; to the unresolved tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity. With Wittgenstein, Derrida and others the limits of language also became clear. For some these conclusions painted a hopeless state of affairs from which the very notion of reasoned progress became an impossibility. Others simply ignored or forgot these limits.

In my talk I’ll explain the route through this tension that I’ve been exploring for the last decade, a framework of ideas I call “portfolism”. It provides a way to understand what we count as good reasoning, while also holding on to the benefits of our rational tools without ignoring the implications of their own limits.

Avery Wang

TBA

An Armchair Guide to Quantum Mechanics
2025-10-28 18:00 - 2025-11-18 20:00
An Armchair Guide to Quantum Mechanics

Presented by Jonathan Allday

A semi-serious approach to one of the most important fundamental theories in physics

10 sessions from October 28 – November 18

7 one-hour lectures and 3 sessions of group conversation and Q&A

9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

All sessions are live and all participants will receive the RECORDING.

What is quantum mechanics?

More than 100 years ago, the founding fathers were faced with a series of experimental results that confounded their understanding regarding the nature of reality. Einstein never forgave Nature for doing this to him. Heisenberg had to run away to an island to figure it out. Pauli ended up going to Jung for analysis.

Gradually, they came to a new understanding—Quantum Mechanics—but in the process, they had to throw away virtually all of the old physical picture of particles colliding and interacting like tiny billiard balls. Instead, we now have shifting probability waves existing in an implicate layer of reality and manifesting in explicate results. Our very language and concepts struggle to cope with expressing in words what is clear mathematically. Bohr had to invent a new form of double-think, complementarity, to try and ride the paradox: Nature expressing herself in both wave and particle forms, within the same experiment.

Why is it important?

Quantum mechanics, and the theories built from its foundations, is our fundamental theory of matter and forces. It underpins everything we understand about the nature of our universe. In the earliest moments of creation, fractions of a second into the Big Bang, quantum theory governed the structure and evolution of our young cosmos. Delicate measurements of the universal ‘heat map’ spread across the sky, reveal aspects of this quantum driven period.

Along with the awe-inspiring beauty and depth of the physics involved, quantum theory also has profound implications for our technology: from computer chips, MRI scans, communications and quantum computers.

Fundamentally, quantum mechanics is the most radical recasting of the nature of reality that we have ever experienced. The world is far stranger, and more supple, than we are led to believe.

Why should people have a basic understanding of QM?

It seems clear that the rigidly materialistic paradigm is crumbling, and we don’t yet know what is going to replace it.

We’re at a delicate time. On the one hand some of our political masters seek to undermine the expertise and results of the scientific community, replacing Truth with Story. On the other, enthusiastic and well-meaning groups working to assemble new paradigm thinking are promoting quantum ideas as a universal panacea for mind, body, spirit and anomalous experience.

Wider groups are trying to ride the turbulent waves and look for some understanding they can hold to. In order to steer between rigid scientism on one side and some of the flakier philosophies on the other, it helps to know a little of what quantum theory is really saying about the world

Who are our audience?

High school students

Retirees looking for new areas of interest or wanting to brush up on the latest thinking and developments

People who enjoy reading popular science books and periodicals

People who experienced poor teaching in their science classes at school and would like to start over in their physics education

People who just enjoy learning

How do these presentations differ from other online QM series?

It’s a no-math introduction—sigh of relief!

In addition to the weekly talk with Q&A there will be a weekly ‘conversation bar’ where participants can discuss the ideas of the week with each other and the course presenter, if available.

There will be no keeping away from philosophical issues—the nature of reality is in question here!

JONATHAN ALLDAY took his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, then gained a PhD in particle physics in 1989 at Liverpool University. For a period, he worked at the particle physics research centre, CERN, but not as a cleaner.

For 30 years Jonathan taught physics to high-school students in a range of schools across the UK. In addition, he ran summer schools for the Open University, helped devise new physics curricula and a new course in the history and philosophy of science for 16–18-year-olds. For a period, he was co-editor of Physics Education magazine and has contributed more articles to Physics Review than anyone else in its 35-volume history.

He is an author of science textbooks, has contributed to an encyclopaedia for young scientists, and has written on aspects of the history and philosophy of science.

Sessions

Session 1: Not even wrong…

Tuesday 28th October

The fall of classical physics and the rise of the quantum world.

Amplitudes/wave functions, and the probable outcomes of experiments.

Conversation and Q&A

Thursday 30th October

Session 2: Come on everybody, let’s do the twist…

Saturday 1st November

The mysterious quantum property known as ‘spin’. Particles have it, photons have it, but do we really understand what it is?

Session 3: Spooky action at a distance

Tuesday 4th November

When the left hand implicately knows what the right hand is doing. Einstein’s problem with quantum theory. The work of John Bell and the radical undermining of reductionism.

Conversation and Q&A

Thursday 6th November

Session 4: The Measurement Problem

Saturday 8th November

Is quantum theory a 32 regular or a 36 long? Or more seriously…

Why does anything happen in the quantum world? The astonishing fact is that quantum theory relies on a mysterious process that is not fully understood and is not present in the standard mathematics.

Session 5: Interpretations

Tuesday 11th November

More than 100 years later, we still can’t agree what it means. Some people feel that quantum theory can only be understood in the context of many partially overlapping worlds. Others think that there is an unbridgeable and unknowable divide between the classical and quantum worlds. Most just ‘shut up and calculate.’ We, however, are made of sterner stuff so we ask the question: ‘What does quantum theory tell us about the nature of reality?’

Conversation and Q&A

Thursday 13th November

Session 6: Bohm and Hiley

Saturday 15th November

In which our heroes seek to replace the traditional approach to quantum theory with something more satisfying, from an ontological perspective.

Session 7: Quantum Snake Oil

Tuesday 18th November

Would you buy a used quantum computer from this man? What are quantum computers? Why are they attracting so much funding and have they been over-promised?

Beyond Jung - Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology
2025-11-22 18:00 - 20:30
Beyond Jung –Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology

with Andrew Fellows PhD

Saturday November 22, 20259am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2025, Session 1 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Synergies between Jungian psychology, systems dynamics, Gaia theory, dual-aspect monism and deep ecology can prepare and guide us to counter the existential threat of the Anthropocene. Moreover, Jung’s Stages of Life “cradle-to-grave” developmental theory can be scaled up to show that our entire civilisation is in mid-life crisis, and responding to it with a toxic mix of inertia, nostalgia and hubris. Instead, the essential transition from development to individuation at this point in our personal psychology translates into an urgently needed metanoia away from our collective ecocidal behaviour. The consilience that I establish lays the foundations of a radically different worldview—a fundamental shift from anthropocentric inflation to biocentric holism—with which to address global heating, the sixth mass extinction, and other unprecedented challenges of our time.

Andrew Fellows is a Training Analyst and former Program Director at ISAP Zurich, independent researcher and author, and deep ecologist. He holds a Doctorate in Applied Physics (Dunelm), and has been a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (UK). He enjoyed two decades of international engagement with renewable—especially wind—energy, sustainable development and environmental policy before moving to train as a Jungian Analyst in Zürich in 2001. His passion draws on his expertise from these two very different careers, extending Jungian Psychology to address global social and environmental problems. His first book, Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology: Navigating Climate Change in the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2019) was joint winner of the Scientific & Medical Network 2019 Book Prize. He has lectured around this topic to audiences in Europe (including the Pari Center), Asia and the United States. Andrew lives over three thousand feet above sea level in rural Switzerland.

Experiencing Consciousness: Inner Knowing Through Art
2026-01-04 19:00 - 20:00
International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) and The Pari Center present:

Experiencing Consciousness: Inner Knowing Through Art

with Jeff Dunne

Sunday January 4, 202610:00AM PST | 1:00PM EST | 6:00PM GMT | 7:00PM CET

This event is restricted to 40 participants. There will be no recording.

The inaugural session of the Experiencing Consciousness event series is a roughly one-hour workshop led by ICRL’s president, Jeff Dunne. We will start with a brief, guided meditation and then transition into a series of artistic exercises that use simple drawings and short writings in response to individualized prompts that are randomly (or perhaps not-so-randomly!) generated. The activities are designed to bypass the intellect and allow each person to tap into their inner wisdom to answer perhaps what they thought they wanted to know, but undoubtedly what they needed to hear. At the end, participants will have the opportunity – if they wish – to share their insights with another participant one-on-one, and/or with the whole group.

No background in art is required for this workshop, only an interest in trying something different in a safe, welcoming online group setting.

Experiencing Consciousness

Register now to reserve your place!

As you will see in the registration form, there are three options for registering. The normal ticket price is $15 for the session. There is also a free option for students and others who cannot afford this registration fee, and this is possible thanks to the incredible generosity of Neal Grossman, who has provided a scholarship fund to ensure that money never stands in the way of people expanding their horizons. Lastly, if you are like Neal and are motivated to contribute a little more to help others, there is also a Supporting Angel ticket for $30 that will make another free ticket available for future participants!

Note: We use a service called Zeffy to handle registrations because it eliminates credit card fees. However, the system defaults to including a 17.5% donation to Zeffy at the same time. That fee is not required and can be easily eliminated or adjusted by simply selecting ‘Other’ in that section.

You will also have the option to include an additional donation on top of the ticket price. Despite what it says on the form (which, alas, cannot be changed), any additional donations are divided equally between the Pari Center and ICRL.

Experiencing Consciousness: Remote Viewing
2026-02-15 19:00 - 21:30
International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) and The Pari Center present:

Experiencing Consciousness: Remote Viewing

with David Harker

Sunday February 15, 202610:00AM PST | 1:00PM EST | 6:00PM GMT | 7:00PM CET

This event is restricted to 40 participants. There will be no recording.

In this session you will do remote viewing. You might have read about it, but as is the point of the Exploring Consciousness series, there’s no substitute for first-hand experience. If you’re curious to explore this natural ability that everyone has, this is a great opportunity to learn by doing in an informal group workshop.

The session is for beginners, including people who don’t think they are psychic! All you need is some plain paper, a pen and an open mind. Come along and give it a go — you might well be surprised to discover just what your mind is capable of.

David Harker is a remote viewer, trainer, mentor, mystic and magickian. He hosts The Psychic Guys podcast, is a founder of the Second House RV Group (who regularly predict the future), and moderates the largest online community of remote viewers. He’s particularly interested in the overlap between remote viewing and esoteric spiritual traditions and how remote viewing can serve as an adjunct to spiritual practice. He has a background in archaeology, software engineering and life sciences. David lives in North Yorkshire, UK. Learn more about David at Intuitive Ops.

No background or prior experience with remote viewing is required to participate, only an interest in trying your mind at a new way of perceiving the universe.

Experiencing Consciousness

Register now to reserve your place!

As you will see in the registration form, there are three options for registering. The normal ticket price is $15 for the session. There is also a free option for students and others who cannot afford this registration fee, and this is possible thanks to the incredible generosity of Neal Grossman, who has provided a scholarship fund to ensure that money never stands in the way of people expanding their horizons. Lastly, if you are like Neal and are motivated to contribute a little more to help others, there is also a Supporting Angel ticket for $30 that will make another free ticket available for future participants!

Note: We use a service called Zeffy to handle registrations because it eliminates credit card fees. However, the system defaults to including a 17.5% donation to Zeffy at the same time. That fee is not required and can be easily eliminated or adjusted by simply selecting ‘Other’ in that section.

You will also have the option to include an additional donation on top of the ticket price. Despite what it says on the form (which, alas, cannot be changed), any additional donations are divided equally between the Pari Center and ICRL.

Fringe Physics - Mind and Multiverse (Session 1 and 2 of 6)
2026-03-07 18:00 - 2026-03-08 21:00
Mind and Multiverse

Fringe Physics, Session 1 and 2 of 6

With Jonathan Allday and Bernard Carr.

Saturday and Sunday March 7-8, 202610am PDT / 1pm EDT / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

These events are LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Up to around the 1970s, cosmology was not a subject that a well-brought up young physicist would get involved with. It was dangerously close to philosophy, and worse, theology. Now, cosmology is not only a respected branch of science, it’s one of the fastest growing. However, it’s also an area where some of the ideas involved (speculative to be sure) are the weirdest. The community accepts conversations about higher dimensions, parallel worlds, and a multiverse.

This topic is split into two parts:

Saturday March 7, 2026Mind and Multiverse – A conversation between Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

We will discuss the evidence for the Big Bang and various topics to do with the Multiverse.

Sunday March 8, 2026Mind and Multiverse – A conversation between Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

In this conversation we’ll venture into higher dimensions and where Bernard sees mind fitting in to an expanded physics.

Jonathan Allday is a retired teacher with 30+ years’ experience teaching physics working in a range of boarding and day schools in the UK. He was a head of department, head of faculty and an academic Deputy Head. His last post had the gloriously pompous title ‘Director of Digital Strategy,’ although this did not make the IT work any better for him.

After attending the Liverpool Blue Coat School, he took his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, then in 1989 a PhD in experimental particle physics at Liverpool University. During that time, he found one of David Peat’s books in the University Bookstore. Discovering that David was also a Liverpudlian fostered Jonathan’s ambition to write about physics.

Shortly after his PhD, Jonathan started work on his first book Quarks Leptons and the Big Bang, now published by Taylor & Francis and available in its third edition. It has been in print for over 25 years.

Since then, he has also written Apollo in Perspective, Quantum Reality (now in its second edition), Space-time, and Introduction to Entropy: The Way of the World, written with an old school friend, Professor Simon Hands. In addition, Jonathan is co-authoring a successful textbook (Advanced Physics) and a volume in the Oxford Encyclopaedia for Young Scientists. Most recently, Jonathan contributed to the updated edition of the Looking-Glass Universe by F. David Peat and John Briggs.

In various other projects, Jonathan has produced articles and teaching materials on the philosophy of science and the interface between science and religion. He has contributed to Physics Review magazine and has been an editor of Physics Education.

During COVID, Jonathan started researching what the Pari Center was up to and made his first trip to Italy for the ‘Enchanted Universe’ conference in 2022. Since then, he has adopted Pari as a spiritual home. His physical home is with his wife Carolyn in Worcestershire. They have three grown boys, one of whom actually did a degree in physics at Bristol University, (not a bad strike rate…) and is now a software engineer. The others read psychology and philosophy and fell to the dark side and became accountants. All of them can do sport, which Jonathan can’t but his wife could (very well).

In January 2026, Jonathan became Director of the Pari Center.

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.

An Armchair Guide to Jung and God
2026-04-10 08:00 - 2026-04-29 17:00
The Armchair Guide to Jung and God

Presented by Mark Vernon

What did Carl Jung really think about God, religion, and the inner life?

In this thought-provoking 9-session course, Mark Vernon brings Jung’s most powerful ideas to life—exploring the unconscious, symbols, synchronicity, and spiritual experience in a way that’s accessible, challenging, and deeply relevant to modern seekers.

Course Format

The course includes 9 sessions:

6 one-hour recorded lectures

3 live group conversation and Q&A sessions

Beginning April 10, two recorded lectures will be released each week for you to view at your own pace. These talks provide the foundation for deeper reflection and discussion.

The weekly live group conversations are an opportunity to:

Reflect on the week’s two lectures

Ask questions

Explore your own responses and insights

Learn from the perspectives of others

Live Group Conversation Dates:

Wednesdays: April 15, 22, 2910am PDT/1pm EDT/6pm BST/7pm CEST

Carl Jung was born in 1875, just over 150 years ago. His impact upon psychology is immense, with notions such as extroversion and introversion, archetypes and synchronicities. But what lies at the heart of his psychology and how compatible is it with theistic convictions?

The course will examine the fundamentals of Jung’s depth psychology, paying particular attention to its significance for religious belief. Jung felt that psychoanalysis had emerged to fill a vacuum in the western world, with churches losing the ability to address the pressing issues of inner life.

Why is this important?

He endured a substantial crisis in the earlier part of his life, known now in his so-called Red Book, in which he describes encounters with various entities and the zeitgeist. He strove to bring the insights he gained to the wider world, in various phases of work, including personality types and alchemical concepts. He also engaged with other thinkers such as Nietzsche and Darwin and, of course, Freud.

In other words, Jung wanted to make a difference and, by any measure, he has. But his ideas about religion, and Christianity in particular, are contested. Towards the end of his life, he described not believing in God but knowing of God’s existence. He also disagreed with the classical conception of God held in traditions including the Christian. So what can be made of his work now?

Who Is This Series For?

This course will appeal to:

Students and practitioners of psychotherapy and depth psychology

Religious professionals interested in psychological flourishing and how Jung might inform their work.

Those considering psychotherapy or spiritual direction as a second career

People who enjoy reading about spirituality and have a spiritual practice

Anyone who enjoys reflecting on religious questions and the inner life

How will this presentation differ?

Assuming no prior knowledge, this course will return to basics, which is, in fact, the best way to make an assessment of Jung’s insights. There will be plenty of opportunity for QnA and discussion.

Lecture Titles

Lecture 1A Call From The UnconsciousAn outline of Jung’s life and how he came to see his vocation.

Lecture 2After The Split With FreudJung’s own analytical psychology in outline.

Lecture 3The Spiritual Problem of TodayHow Jung understood psychotherapy to be a response to a modern crisis.

Lecture 4The Failure of ReligionJung had a sharp critique of the failures of Christianity.

Lecture 5The Fabric of RealityPhenomena like synchronicities suggested a complete metaphysic to Jung.

Lecture 6Jung and GodAn exploration of Jung’s theology: its genius and constraints.

Dr Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist, teacher, podcaster and writer of journalistic articles as well as books. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and degrees in theology and physics. His books include Carl Jung: How To Believe, A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness; Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey and most recently Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination.

He teaches with a variety of informal adult education projects, both online and in-person, covering the mystical traditions of theistic traditions and the interface between science and religion. He was recently Philosophy in Residence at Broughton Sanctuary and is a contributor to the BBC, particularly on programmes such as the Moral Maze and Thought for the Day. He has a regular column in the Idler magazine and is also a director of the Realisation Festival, a gathering that brings together ideas and music to resource the soul for our times. He used to be a priest in the Church of England and lives in south London. For more see www.markvernon.com

Experiencing Consciousness: Storytelling and Consciousness
2026-04-12 19:00 - 20:30
International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) and The Pari Center present:

Experiencing Consciousness: Storytelling and Consciousness

with Robin Rice

Sunday April 12, 202610:00AM PDT | 1:00PM EDT | 6:00PM BST | 7:00PM CEST

This event is restricted to 40 participants. There will be no recording.

How we tell our stories – to ourselves and others – shapes our lives and defines the boundaries of our world. To fully explore consciousness, we must examine the stories that hold us. Join Robin Rice, Master Storyteller and Alchemist, as she guides you through deconstructing three of your personal life stories to see what they hide and reveal. You’ll then practice a “cleaner” and more integrated storytelling process. You will also learn how consciousness itself can be invited to become a character in your narrative. Expect a lifting of old burdens and a revitalization of your stories going forward.

No background in storytelling or writing in general is required for this workshop, only an interest in trying something different in a safe, welcoming online group setting.

Robin Rice is an AGI Strategist, serving as a trusted partner to C-suite leaders navigating the ethical frontiers of emerging technologies. Bridging the gap between code and consciousness, she helps her clients align their efforts with the betterment of humanity. She is the author of 11 books and a Story Strategist behind multiple high-profile bestsellers. Her interest in conscious narrative is largely due to her 28 years of personal inquiry into the “hard problem” of consciousness—a journey sparked by a profound personal awakening at age 35. Her latest project, the audiobook Stories About Stories with Robin Rice, explores these intersections and is available for free on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. Learn more at RobinRice.com.

Experiencing Consciousness: Storytelling and Consciousness on ICRL website

Spaces are limited – Register now to reserve your spot!

As you will see in the registration form, there are three options for registering. The normal ticket price is $15 for the session. There is also a free option for students and others who cannot afford this registration fee, and this is possible thanks to the incredible generosity of Neal Grossman, who has provided a scholarship fund to ensure that money never stands in the way of people expanding their horizons. Lastly, if you are like Neal and are motivated to contribute a little more to help others, there is also a Supporting Angel ticket for $30 that will make another free ticket available for future participants.

Note: Please do not sign up for the free slots if you are not a student or financially disadvantaged, as you are taking away an opportunity from someone who really needs it.

Note: We use a service called Zeffy to handle registrations because it eliminates credit card fees. However, the system defaults to including a 17.5% donation to Zeffy at the same time. That fee is not required and can be easily eliminated or adjusted by simply selecting ‘Other’ in that section.

You will also have the option to include an additional donation on top of the ticket price. Despite what it says on the form (which, alas, cannot be changed), any additional donations are divided equally between the Pari Center and ICRL.

Experiencing Consciousness: Metaphor and Consciousness
2026-05-03 19:00 - 20:30
International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) and The Pari Center present:

Experiencing Consciousness: Metaphor and Consciousness

with Jessica Ball

Sunday, May 3, 202610:00AM PDT | 1:00PM EDT | 6:00PM BST | 7:00PM CEST

There will be no recording.

Many people overlook the deeply metaphorical nature of our language, thought, and action. Metaphor can help us access deeper levels of consciousness, connecting to more universal and creative aspects of what it means to be human and revealing the interrelationships with each other and the world around us. This creative workshop will guide participants through a series of Clean Language* questions to facilitate an imaginative process that will allow each person to create (by drawing, annotating and speaking in response to the questions) a personal metaphor, grounded in their own physical, cultural and creative experience. The starting point will be to imagine a vessel, as an invitation to connect to individual and shared meaning and experience of what it means to be in participatory and reciprocal relationship with other humans and the more-than-human world.

*Clean Language is a method of questioning that removes all assumptions and biases from the questioner. Through a set of 12 simple questions, it draws on the power of metaphor to allow people to develop meaning and clarity that can support them to bring about personal or group change. Jessica Ball is an experienced facilitator with over a decade of expertise in Bohm Dialogue. The principles of a dialogue practice provide a grounding in all aspects of her facilitation work. As founder of Creating Meaning, she works with purpose-led organisations, supporting them to navigate complexity and change and strengthen the human skills that make transformation possible. Alongside her facilitation work she is researching a PhD in ecolinguistics and regenerative language. Enriched by her background in art and design, Jessica weaves theory and practice to create meaningful and creative dialogues and workshops that aim to transform how people communicate and relate to themselves, each other and the world around them.

As you will see in the registration form, there are two options for registering. However, thanks to the generosity of Neal Grossman, we are able to offer reduced (or even free) registrations to ensure that money never stands in the way of people expanding their horizons. If you are like Neal and are motivated to contribute a little more to help others, please selected the Supporting Angel ticket to make another free ticket available for future participants.

If you would like to receive a free or discounted registration, please just get in touch! eleanor@paricenter.com

Note: We use a service called Zeffy to handle registrations because it eliminates credit card fees. However, the system defaults to including a 17.5% donation to Zeffy at the same time. That fee is not required and can be easily eliminated or adjusted by simply selecting ‘Other’ in that section.

You will also have the option to include an additional donation on top of the ticket price. Despite what it says on the form (which, alas, cannot be changed), any additional donations are divided equally between the Pari Center and ICRL.

Warp Drives, Black Holes, and Wormholes
2026-05-13 18:00 - 20:30
Event registration

Click on the Going button below to register for this event; enter your full name and email address and then press Submit RSVP.

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

Matter, Mind and Multiverse
2026-05-15 16:00 - 2026-05-18 15:00 | Pari, Italy
Matter, Mind and Multiverse: Incorporating Mind into Physics

Pari, Italy – May 15-18, 2026

Speakers: Bernard Carr with Jonathan Allday

The event will start on Friday May 15 at 16:00 and end on Monday May 18 after lunch.

Price: 825.00 euros, which includes:

programmed activities and materials;

a 3-night stay in private accommodation;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner.

Please read the Terms and Conditions.

Physics has built a hugely impressive picture of the world. We have a broad understanding of structure from the microverse within the atom to the universe of galaxies and clusters. The evolutionary history of the cosmos is also well mapped, right back to the earliest moments of the Big Bang.

There is, however, one conspicuous absence from this grand design—us. Much of the success of physics, and science in general, has come from deliberately excluding the subjective. The physicist’s universe is a rather arid lunar landscape devoid of the colour that comes with consciousness, mind and spirit.

Most physicists believe that this is fine. It’s not their job to deal with messy and unreliable emotions, qualia and subjective experience. Some go even further and say all our personal life is an illusion.

Meanwhile, a significant number of people have experiences that are mystical, anomalous, synchronistic and personally transformative. The plural of anecdote is data: these events are happening, and they contain important clues to the nature of reality.

It is time to seriously discuss how physics might be extended to accommodate consciousness, mind and spirit.

In this series of conversations and workshops with Professor Bernard Carr and Dr. Jonathan Allday, we will explore the bounds of current physics from M-theory in the microscopic domain to the multiverse in the macroscopic domain, probe the nature of space and time, push into the esoteric worlds of cosmology and black holes, and ask whether some final theory which amalgamates relativity and quantum mechanics can accommodate consciousness and associated anomalous phenomena. We speculate that physics will need to take a broader view of reality if it is ever going to complete its mission.

Professor Carr has been at the forefront of this movement for most of his career. With a well-respected research profile in cosmology, black holes and the anthropic principle, he is well-placed to speak with authority on the nature of current physics. Bernard has also had a long-standing interest in Buddhism, psychical research and spiritual experience. He’s been President of the Society for Psychical Research and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center is more than joining a program, it is entering an experience unlike any other. This is no ordinary conference in a city hotel, nor a retreat hidden within a bustling resort. Instead, it is an invitation to step into an unspoilt medieval village in the Tuscan hills, where time slows and life unfolds at a rhythm that allows you to think, feel, and reconnect.

At the Pari Center, learning becomes a way of being. David Peat often described Pari as an alchemical vessel—a transformative space designed for reflection, renewal, and personal growth. It is a rare and welcoming environment for anyone seeking something deeper.

You will share traditional Tuscan meals and conversation with presenters and fellow participants, taste local wines, mingle with the village’s tiny community, and take in the beauty of the surrounding countryside. All of this unfolds within a gentle way of life, far removed from the hurry of work and the noise of city living.

The Pari Center gathers world-renowned thinkers, scholars, and innovators from diverse disciplines and traditions. Our mission is to explore the mysteries woven into everyday life: the subtle, essential questions that shape who we are and who we are becoming. Through rigorous inquiry, creative dialogue and participatory activities, we aim to illuminate the origins, nature, and possibilities of human experience.

We invite you to discover why so many visitors regard the Pari Center not only as a place of learning, but as a place of personal transformation.

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.

Jonathan Allday is a retired teacher with 30+ years’ experience teaching physics working in a range of boarding and day schools in the UK. He was a head of department, head of faculty and an academic Deputy Head. His last post had the gloriously pompous title ‘Director of Digital Strategy,’ although this did not make the IT work any better for him.

After attending the Liverpool Blue Coat School, he took his first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, then in 1989 a PhD in experimental particle physics at Liverpool University. During that time, he found one of David Peat’s books in the University Bookstore. Discovering that David was also a Liverpudlian fostered Jonathan’s ambition to write about physics.

Shortly after his PhD, Jonathan started work on his first book Quarks Leptons and the Big Bang, now published by Taylor & Francis and available in its third edition. It has been in print for over 25 years.

Since then, he has also written Apollo in Perspective, Quantum Reality (now in its second edition), Space-time, and Introduction to Entropy: The Way of the World, written with an old school friend, Professor Simon Hands. In addition, Jonathan is co-authoring a successful textbook (Advanced Physics) and a volume in the Oxford Encyclopaedia for Young Scientists. Most recently, Jonathan contributed to the updated edition of the Looking-Glass Universe by F. David Peat and John Briggs.

In various other projects, Jonathan has produced articles and teaching materials on the philosophy of science and the interface between science and religion. He has contributed to Physics Review magazine and has been an editor of Physics Education.

During COVID, Jonathan started researching what the Pari Center was up to and made his first trip to Italy for the ‘Enchanted Universe’ conference in 2022. Since then, he has adopted Pari as a spiritual home.

His physical home is with his wife Carolyn in Worcestershire. They have three grown boys, one of whom actually did a degree in physics at Bristol University, (not a bad strike rate…) and is now a software engineer. The others read psychology and philosophy and fell to the dark side and became accountants.

All of them can do sport, which Jonathan can’t but his wife could (very well).

In January 2026, Jonathan became Director of the Pari Center.

Paths to Knowing Consciousness and Reality: From the Indigenous to the Academic
2026-05-20 17:00 - 2026-05-27 14:00 | Pari, Italy
Thanks to the generous funding from a European foundation, we now have the opportunity to offer three full scholarships, preferably to young minds, for this event. For more information:

Scholarship Programme

SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS SERIES

Paths to Knowing Consciousness and Reality: From the Indigenous to the Academic

May 20–27, 2026

Speakers: Jonathan Allday, Vicente Arraez, Vasileios Basios, Apela Colorado, Alvaro Doethiro Tukano, Ruro Caituiro Monge, Aimee Morgana (virtually), Robin Rice, Francisco Rivarola.Curated and Chaired by: Jeff Dunne

Location: Pari, Italy

Ticket Prices:

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

which includes:

a 7-night stay;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed lectures, activities and materials

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

Event: The event starts with on Wedensday May 20 at 17:00 and ends after lunch on Wednesday May 27.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

The exploration of consciousness, as a direct goal or as reflected in our desire to understand the natural universe, is central to every culture throughout history. In this event we consider how this quest has been pursued through both modern western intellectualism and the older indigenous paths of experiential knowing, and ultimately ask whether such approaches can be complementary.

Humanity’s recent evolution has seen an increase in anxiety of epidemic proportions, and a prevailing assessment is that it is strongly correlated with our growing sense of disconnection—disconnection with others, of course, but also disconnection from the world, and even from ourselves at the individual level. It is quite possible that the relatively recent resurgence of interest in understanding the nature of ourselves and our connection to the universe is in response to these pressures; whether at a conscious or subconscious level, we sense that this growing sense of isolation is at the core of our dis-ease manifesting at spiritual and emotional levels, and ultimately manifesting as literal disease in the physical.

We say resurgence because understanding the nature of self in relation to the world has been an enduring priority throughout most of human history, only diminished—particularly in western societies—over the last few hundred years. Modern science is now seeking these answers by exploring our prevailing models of reality (such as quantum mechanics) through the language of mathematics, but we must recognize that this intellectual path is only one approach, and quite nascent. For many thousands of years, indigenous cultures have been approaching these same questions, but along an experiential path, i.e. understanding our connection to the world (and each other) by focusing on the experience of those connections.

What is consciousness? What is reality? How are they connected? In this conference, we will not provide an answer to such questions; instead, we will provide many answers. But that is not our goal. These answers, offered from the diverse perspectives of a diverse set of presenters, are the candles with which we will examine the methods that produce such answers.

During the seven days of May 20-27th—as nature transitions from awakening into full function… as the Gemini Threshold encourages increase cognition and the urge to converse and explain… as Indigenous cultures offer first harvest blessings and elders speak the season into the people—we will come together to explore the potential for integrating intellectual articulation with experiential knowing. A group of eight speakers will share insights on topics such as:

The history of western science’s approach to understanding the universe, and where the scientific world stands today;

How the process of connecting with nature has been developed over thousands of years of living with nature, and where it stands today;

The evolution of ancient energetic traditions such as Qigong and Shamanism into modern practices;

Alternate experiences of reality—or even alternate realities—that can be experienced through dreaming and other ways of experiencing; and ultimately…

How we can leverage all of this into a set of coherent practices and worldviews.

But more than an opportunity to listen, this conference is an opportunity to engage. Participants will be more than individuals; they will be part of the conference community. Supported with tools, conversations, and a safe, welcoming environment, they will be challenged to make their own connections, find their own answers, and then (if they so choose) to contribute their insights as part of something bigger.

Please be part of the science, the magic, the experience.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center is more than joining a program, it is entering an experience unlike any other. This is no ordinary conference in a city hotel, nor a retreat hidden within a bustling resort. Instead, it is an invitation to step into an unspoilt medieval village in the Tuscan hills, where time slows and life unfolds at a rhythm that allows you to think, feel, and reconnect.

At the Pari Center, learning becomes a way of being. David Peat often described Pari as an alchemical vessel—a transformative space designed for reflection, renewal, and personal growth. It is a rare and welcoming environment for anyone seeking something deeper.

You will share traditional Tuscan meals and conversation with presenters and fellow participants, taste local wines, mingle with the village’s tiny community, and take in the beauty of the surrounding countryside. All of this unfolds within a gentle way of life, far removed from the hurry of work and the noise of city living.

The Pari Center gathers world-renowned thinkers, scholars, and innovators from diverse disciplines and traditions. Our mission is to explore the mysteries woven into everyday life: the subtle, essential questions that shape who we are and who we are becoming. Through rigorous inquiry, creative dialogue and participatory activities, we aim to illuminate the origins, nature, and possibilities of human experience.

We invite you to discover why so many visitors regard the Pari Center not only as a place of learning, but as a place of personal transformation.

Please contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com

Information

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Creation and Life Itself
2026-09-01 19:00 - 2026-09-08 14:00 | Pari, Italy
Science, Art and the Sacred Series

Creation and Life Itself

September 1 – 8, 2026

Speakers: Sarah Churchwell, Lauren Cole, Nicholas Colloff, Isabel Hawkins, Angie Hobbs, Karina Miotto, Shelly Valdez. Curated and Chaired by: John Pickering

Location: Pari, Italy

Ticket Prices:

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

which includes:

a 7-night stay;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed lectures, activities and materials

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

Event: The event starts with dinner on Tuesday September 1 at 19:00 and ends after lunch on Tuesday Setpember 8.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

At its best, being ‘human’ means being creative. Here, ‘creative’ means more than just poetic language or beautiful images. It speaks to something primordial in nature, since life itself is creation. Our meeting will look at the complementary ways in which science, the humanities and spiritual traditions recognise this and how that might inform the lives we lead, singly or collectively.

All human cultures have Creation stories. They reflect our wonder at life itself and the enchanting diversity of Creation that it brings forth. To tell and re-tell the stories is part of being human.

Science is sometimes accused of disenchanting Creation; in fact, it has enhanced it, since the wonder remains. Scientists like David Attenborough express as much love for living things as poets or mystics have done down the ages and as people living in animistic cultures do now.

Animistic Creation stories are of a transformative relation between beings of all kinds that continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence. So, in that view, simply living and being human is to be creative, where ‘creative’ means more than just making poetic language or beautiful images.

Luckily, we live in a time when science, the humanities and the arts are becoming more open, in complementary ways, to recognising this. Our meeting will look at how that might inform the lives we lead, singly or collectively.

We will investigate what ‘being human’ and ‘being creative’ might have meant in the past, what it means in our time. We will look at creativity in science, in the arts and humanities and in spiritual traditions, paying particular attention to women’s voices, those heard and those not. We will, for example, hear from speakers on Hildegarde of Bingen and Julian of Norwich, as well mystical traditions from South American cultures.

Being human, all too human, is difficult. Being more than human, particularly so. Creativity in some sense extends, even transcends the human condition, and we will explore what philosophy and the humanities have to say about that.

Now is a particularly appropriate time to do it, as both creativity and what it is to be human are brought into question by the rise of the machine.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center is more than joining a program, it is entering an experience unlike any other. This is no ordinary conference in a city hotel, nor a retreat hidden within a bustling resort. Instead, it is an invitation to step into an unspoilt medieval village in the Tuscan hills, where time slows and life unfolds at a rhythm that allows you to think, feel, and reconnect.

At the Pari Center, learning becomes a way of being. David Peat often described Pari as an alchemical vessel—a transformative space designed for reflection, renewal, and personal growth. It is a rare and welcoming environment for anyone seeking something deeper.

You will share traditional Tuscan meals and conversation with presenters and fellow participants, taste local wines, mingle with the village’s tiny community, and take in the beauty of the surrounding countryside. All of this unfolds within a gentle way of life, far removed from the hurry of work and the noise of city living.

The Pari Center gathers world-renowned thinkers, scholars, and innovators from diverse disciplines and traditions. Our mission is to explore the mysteries woven into everyday life: the subtle, essential questions that shape who we are and who we are becoming. Through rigorous inquiry, creative dialogue and participatory activities, we aim to illuminate the origins, nature, and possibilities of human experience.

We invite you to discover why so many visitors regard the Pari Center not only as a place of learning, but as a place of personal transformation.

Please contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com

Speakers and sessions

Click on a title to expand

Finding Meaning with Medieval Women Mysticswith Lauren Cole

It may seem on the surface that our modern secular society has little in common with the stringent religious culture of medieval Europe. As the story goes, we have moved from a “Dark Age” of superstition to an enlightened age of reason. But look a little closer, and we find that in trying to make sense of the world, we inevitably fall back on the same tools.

In this session, we examine these sense-making tools in the writings of medieval women mystics and their counterparts today. The writings of mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, and Mechthild of Magdeburg provide us with frameworks for environmentalism, feminist thought, and natural medicine today. Parallels we will explore include Hildegard von Bingen’s lapidary and today’s crystal healing, beguines’ practices of care and today’s care homes, and mystical astrology and today’s horoscopes. Ultimately, this session will consider what we have already learned from medieval women mystics, and what we can continue to learn.

Lauren Cole is a PhD History Candidate and Presidential Fellow at Northwestern University. Her research centres on medieval mystics, medicine, and manuscripts in Europe, with a particular focus on Hildegard von Bingen. Lauren is also a public historian, creating videos on medieval history for over 95’000 followers on her Instagram and TikTok accounts (@MedievalLauren). Lauren splits her time between London, Mainz, and Chicago. You can find more on her website: https://medievallauren.wordpress.com

Seeing with the Eye of the Heartwith Nicholas Colloff

Both the painter, Cecil Collins, and the poet, Edwin Muir, enjoyed paradisial childhoods, which, though rudely interrupted, provided a sustaining sense of innocence and wonder through which they subsequently beheld the world and wove artistic practices that sought to widen and deepen consciousness into a ‘second, renewing innocence’ that was a paradise regained, which Collins referred to as the “great happiness”.

They both employed artistic, spiritual practices that deepened attention, reverenced, and used dreams and other imaginal states, and cultivated good memory to develop works of great originality and of gently transforming power that they felt could take people on a pilgrimage to their originating light, where “that strange quarry you scarcely thought you sought” would reveal itself and you would find “Yourself, the gatherer gathered, the finder found.”

Both worked, broadly, within the ‘Western tradition’, but with an openness to the Spirit that bloweth where it will, and both were sustained, nurtured, and challenged in their long, loving marriages to Elizabeth Collins and Willa Muir, both themselves artists. Both in their practices and their work, they have much to inspire us about the potential for a creative, spiritual life.

Nicholas Colloff, when not posting art on Facebook or walking through the woods, is the Director of the Argidius Foundation, a Swiss family foundation that helps develop social and environmental enterprises, principally in Africa and Latin America. He studied theology, philosophy, and the psychology of religion at university, after which he helped found the Prison Phoenix Trust that teaches meditation and yoga to people in prison, and from this discovered a gift for starting things (and leaving them in better hands so that they flourished).

This has included a microfinance bank in the Balkans, a charity focused on community mental health in poor communities in the Global South, and a social investment fund. Through the auspices of Temenos and the friendship of the poet and Blake scholar, Kathleen Raine, he was privileged to meet and know Cecil Collins in the latter years of his life, and through Kathleen to know one of Edwin and Willa Muir’s closest friends.

Plato and the Pregnant Philosopherwith Angie Hobbs

Plato stimulates creative thought in a variety of ways, all aimed at stimulating our non-rational as well as our rational faculties. In order to explore fundamental ethical questions about how to live and what sort of person to be, he creates dialogues involving a vibrant cast of characters (never himself), and the conversations invite us to see the connections between belief, character and life. We are enabled to form a sense of the shape, structure and narrative of a life — both models to emulate and models to avoid. The dialogues often deploy vivid imagery — such as the Allegory of the Cave in the Republic — and in much of this imagery Plato plays with gender expectations, such as the pregnant philosopher (male as well as female) in the Symposium and philosophical statecraft as the art of weaving in the Statesman. In several dialogues imaginary utopias also encourage us to envisage different ways of thinking, living and being. It is intriguing how often this agent-centred, dialogic approach, which embeds individuals in their social contexts, has appealed to women philosophers, particularly during the last 70 years, and this is a topic we shall explore.

Angie Hobbs is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Sheffield. She gained a degree in Classics (First Class) and a PhD in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and her chief interests are in ancient philosophy and literature, and ethics and political theory from classical thought to the present, and she has published widely in these areas, including Plato and the Hero; Why Plato Matters Now was published by Bloomsbury in 2025. She contributes regularly to TV, radio, podcasts and other media around the world, including 27 appearances on In Our Time on Radio 4. She works in a number of policy sectors, including the U.K. Civil Service, National Health Service and Health Research Authority. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Athens Democracy Forum, the Symi Symposium, the Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and Westminster Abbey, and been the guest on Desert Island Discs and Private Passions. She was a judge of the Man Booker International Prize 2019 and was on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council 2018-9 for Values, Ethics and Innovation.

Through the Fire: How Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects Saved My Activist Heartwith Karina Miotto

In her talk in Paris, Karina Miotto will share her powerful journey as an environmental activist in the Brazilian Amazon — a path shaped by purpose, but also by burnout and PTSD after years of frontline work. She will speak about the transformative role Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects played in her healing, restoring not only her strength but also her faith in humanity. Karina will also share personal conversations she had with Joanna, highlighting how this body of work continues to deeply influence her life, her worldview, and her approach to changemaking.

Her presentation will be both motivational and inspiring. As part of her session, Karina will guide the audience through a simple experiential practice from the Work That Reconnects, inviting participants to reconnect with themselves, with each other, and with the living Earth. She believes Joanna Macy’s work offers essential tools for this moment in human history, and her talk aims to open a space of clarity, courage, and collective renewal for all who attend. Karina will also explore the vital role of Systems Thinking in the Work That Reconnects — showing how a systemic view of life deepens our understanding of interdependence, resilience, and the complexity of the times we are living through.

Karina Miotto is a journalist, eco-philosopher, changemaker mentor, and speaker coach. She lived for many years in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil and worked with major NGOs. As editor of the website O Eco, she covered the nine countries of the Amazon Basin. She studied the Deep Ecology movement directly with pioneers such as Satish Kumar, John Seed, and Stephan Harding. She studied The Work That Reconnects directly with Joanna Macy.

She holds a Master’s degree in Holistic Science from Schumacher College, England. In her dissertation, titled “Reconnecting the Amazon: Awakening Deep Feelings for the Rainforest,” she developed ten different pathways to help people emotionally connect with the forest. Her findings can be applied to any landscape or environment on the planet. Her name has been cited in books and scientific articles around the world.

Karina has given talks in countries such as England, the United States, Germany, New Zealand, Chile, Australia, Portugal, Spain, and Brazil, impacting hundreds of people worldwide. Deep Ecology is currently the foundation of all her work. She lead a project on climate adaptation and community resilience in the Australian Alps using as methodology WTR and Deep Ecology for La Trobe University, Melbourne.

In 2024, she published her first book: Changemakers – the courage to transform the world: it’s beautiful, challenging, and possible to do without burning out, released by Bambual Editora (Brazil). In 2025, the same book was published in Portugal under the title A coragem de mudar o mundo – changemakers, by the same publisher.

During the same year, she collaborated with The Wellbeing Project, supporting line up curation and speaker preparation for the Hearth Summit, a global event for 1,200 changemakers from 89 countries.

Being Human: Enlarging Lifewith Sarah Churchwell

Our culture treats innovation as self-justifying—as if speed, scale, and automation were enough to define progress. The humanities center imagination instead, asking not only what we can do, but what we are becoming as we do it. Through literature, philosophy, history, art, they enlarge the inner life, teaching us how to live with complexity without collapsing into cynicism or fantasy.

When John Adams wrote during the American Revolution that he studied war and politics so later generations could study philosophy and poetry, he was sharing an Enlightenment logic: the humanities as the point of self-government, not a luxury. The same settlement produced mass literacy, the modern university, the professional middle class, and the novel—a form that trained readers in moral judgment and imaginative recognition. These developments sustained one another.

That settlement is now under assault. The “dark enlightenment” and its tech patrons explicitly call for replacing democracy with neo-feudal hierarchy, governed like a corporation and insulated from public accountability. AI sits at the center of this program: prediction in place of judgment, privatized platforms in place of public institutions, and the enclosure of knowledge as a condition of power.

Imaginative literature makes the stakes legible. Poets from Coleridge onward distinguish world-making imagination from mechanical recombination, a useful lens for generative AI. Novelists like Charlotte Brontë and F. Scott Fitzgerald make imagination the predicate of liberty and autonomy, and trace what happens to hope in cultures structured by injustice. Philosophers like Hannah Arendt supply the political hinge: imagination is a precondition for politics, because politics depends on the ability to envision alternatives.

In a world of accelerating technologies and shallow attention, how do the humanities enlarge human life—and what would it take to rebuild the conditions that let them flourish?

Sarah Churchwell is Chair of Public Humanities and Professor of American literature at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she directs the UK’s national festival of humanities research, the Being Human Festival.

She is the author of several acclaimed books, most recently The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells (2022). She comments widely on politics, culture, and art in print, television, radio, and film. She has been a winner of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award, longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism and named one of Prospect magazine’s Top 50 World Thinkers.

She is co-host with historian David Olusoga of the Goalhanger podcast Journey Through Time.

Information

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Inscendence: A Participatory Enquiry into Awareness, Presence and Place
2026-09-10 19:00 - 2026-09-17 14:00 | Pari, Italy
Inscendence: A Participatory Enquiry into Awareness, Presence and Place

September 10 – 17, 2026

Speakers: Jonathan Code and Alistair Duncan

Location: Pari, Italy

Ticket Prices:

Private AccommodationPrice: 1800.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1650.00 euros

which includes:

a 7-night stay;

breakfast, lunch and dinner at the local restaurant featuring locally sourced produce and traditional dishes;

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed lectures, activities and materials

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

Event: The event starts with dinner on Thursday September 10 at 19:00 and ends after lunch on Thursday September 17.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

Why Inscendence?

In a time riven by fragmentation, dislocation and conflicting narratives, this programme invites a collaborative enquiry into ways of knowing and thinking that will delve deeply into the field where land, body and consciousness meet.

Inscendence proposes an opportunity for re-orientation by attending to participative awareness, heightened sensory perception and the wisdom of the body-mind.

In resonance with Pari, its landscape, history, and community, we will engage with many of the Center’s core themes seeking to open up a creative ground from which new forms of insight, relationship and action can emerge.

Inscendence—the impulse not to rise above the world but to climb into it, to seek its core.Thomas Berry, via Robert Macfarlane

Programme Themes and Practices

Over the course of a week in Pari, we will engage with:

Embodied and Perceptual Investigation:

Explorations into how breath-work, movement and posture can expand and transform perceptual awareness

Working with our experience of the traditional elements of nature: earth, water, fire, air and ether in a contemporary way

Heightening the sensitivity of our physical senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, as entry points into deeper experience

Understanding the body-mind as a phenomenological instrument

Fieldwork in the More-than-Human World:

Immersive sessions engaging with the plants, stones, weather and landforms of the Tuscany landscape

Exploration of a range of ways of knowing including Goethean observation and nature-connection practices

Attending to artefacts, stories and built structures as relational presences

Creative and Collaboratives Explorations:

Creative writing, journaling, and drawing as practices of attending to lived experience

Sitting in Council / dialogue will allow us to share insights and integrate personal experience into collective understanding.

Conversational ‘tutorial-style’ sessions will be used to explore the intersection between experience and theory

Daily Rhythms—each day will include four main elements:

Outdoor sessions exploring a range of practices and experiences

The seeding of ‘micro-practices’ that will provide the opportunity for moments in the day to become an opportunity for conscious awareness

Sitting in Council, ‘tutorial’ circles and creative sessions to collectively reflect on our unfolding experience and its implications

Personal reflection time supported by the quiet rhythms of the village

Theoretical Context:

With an emphasis on experiential forms of enquiry, Inscendence is nevertheless inspired by the insights and practices of a wide range of thinkers from both East and West. These perspectives provide lenses through which our lived experience can be shared and articulated.

Some of these sources of inspiration include:

The Implicate / Explicate / Holoflux (David Bohm)

The implications of brain hemisphere modes of attention (Iain McGilchrist)

The nature of participatory consciousness (Owen Barfield,)

The idea of Authentic Wholeness (Henri Bortoft, J.W. Goethe)

The unity of Mind and Matter from (Gregory Bateson)

The explorations of language, sensory perception and the new animism (David Abram, Robin Kimmerer)

Philosophical Taoism

Non-dual Shaiva Tantra

What May Emerge:

A refined capacity for attentional flexibility and resonance

A deeper sense of participation in the implicate wholeness of the cosmos

Insight into how perception constructs (and reconstructs) the world

A felt understanding of new grounds for coherent action and relationship

A more integrated experience of self within the context of a conscious whole.

Our aim is not to provide answers to the complex challenges of our time but to cultivate a new ground of exploration—a place from which thought, relationship and creativity may unfold with greater coherence and sensitivity.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center is more than joining a program, it is entering an experience unlike any other. This is no ordinary conference in a city hotel, nor a retreat hidden within a bustling resort. Instead, it is an invitation to step into an unspoilt medieval village in the Tuscan hills, where time slows and life unfolds at a rhythm that allows you to think, feel, and reconnect.

At the Pari Center, learning becomes a way of being. David Peat often described Pari as an alchemical vessel—a transformative space designed for reflection, renewal, and personal growth. It is a rare and welcoming environment for anyone seeking something deeper.

You will share traditional Tuscan meals and conversation with presenters and fellow participants, taste local wines, mingle with the village’s tiny community, and take in the beauty of the surrounding countryside. All of this unfolds within a gentle way of life, far removed from the hurry of work and the noise of city living.

The Pari Center gathers world-renowned thinkers, scholars, and innovators from diverse disciplines and traditions. Our mission is to explore the mysteries woven into everyday life: the subtle, essential questions that shape who we are and who we are becoming. Through rigorous inquiry, creative dialogue and participatory activities, we aim to illuminate the origins, nature, and possibilities of human experience.

We invite you to discover why so many visitors regard the Pari Center not only as a place of learning, but as a place of personal transformation.

Please contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com

Jonathan Code

During a childhood and youth spent in Southern Ontario, regular immersion in and on the freshwater lakes of Frontenac Park fostered in me a deep ecological and place-based awareness of the natural world. I am to this day never more at home than in a canoe on a lake at dawn, paddling out as the sun rises and the loons call forth the day.

My ecological interests grew and deepened through encounters with the work of Goethe, Schumacher, Vine Deloria Jr., and Steiner—whose contributions to education, medicine, human development, and agriculture (Biodynamic farming) continue to inform my teaching, research, and writing to this day.

I am particularly interested in the contribution that Goethe can make to ecological thinking (which I addressed in a study of Goethe’s method of exact imagination as applied to the Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa)) and in how the Biodynamic preparations are not only stimulants for good composting processes but are also catalysts for a deepening of agricultural consciousness (which I address in Muck and Mind: Encountering Biodynamic Agriculture, 2014).

I am currently engaged in a study of traditional fire-craft and its affordances for educational philosophy and praxis. This study grows out of a deep concern for education in the twenty first century (see Crafting: Transforming Materials and the Maker, 2019)—a concern that what is too often left out in many of our educational endeavors is a sense for who a human being is…and what we can (potentially) become.

Alistair Duncan

After a first career as a systems programmer, architect and programme manager in technology for a couple of global corporations, fifteen years ago I jumped ship. Since then I have worked as an eco-psychologist, workshop facilitator/educator and therapist across a number of contexts particularly in universities, disadvantaged communities and with conservation organisations.

My passion is weaving together concrete practices from contemporary psychology, embodiment modalities and therapies as well as the spiritualities of east and west. Then, using them to make experiential and practical, the insights that arise from a range of fields across philosophy, science and spirituality.

To define my context with a few names. I would cite David Bohm, Owen Barfield, Martin Heidegger, Gregory Bateson, Henri Bortoff, Michael Washburn, David Abram and Kenneth White as my current key co-ordinates. And I am drawing practices from a wide palette, but the core is found in indigenous tracking methods, Non-dual Shaiva Tantrism, Taoism, and Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).

I have a first degree in Biology and a Masters in Philosophy, and have trained in several coaching and therapeutic modalities.

Everything I do nowadays is based in nature. It’s my current conviction that exploring a deeper sensorial resonance and reciprocity between the human body-mind and the more-than-human cosmos is the starting point for a lived experience of wholeness and a connection into the deep consciousness of the cosmos. And that, from there, we may be able to discern a better way to live in these times.

Information

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)
