The Pari Center

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

August 29 – September 4, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

“Absurdity of Certainty”Jena Axelrod

Goethean Science an Approach for the FutureIsis Brook

Wholeness and the Implicate Order RevisitedBasil Hiley

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

Artomovement and the FutureHester Reeve

Science, Abstraction and WholenessShantena Augusto Sabbadini

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

Saltwater Living: Worldviews Towards Sustainable EconomyGodelieve Spaas

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

For additional information, you can check the PDF.

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

with Shantena Sabbadini, Godelieve Spaas and Donna Kennedy-Glans

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

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

F. David Peat

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

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

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

Suggested Reading

Gentle Action for a Harmonious World by F. David Peat

Preserving Dignity in Uncertain Times by Donna Kennedy-Glans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

with Julie Arts

Saturday June 27 at 16:00 (CEST)

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

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

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

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

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

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

This event is open to everyone!

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

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

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

INFINITE POTENTIALTHE LIFE AND IDEAS OF DAVID BOHM

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

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

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

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

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

Panel Discussion And Live Q&A

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

Moderator

David LorimerProgram Director of Scientific and Medical NetworkEditor, Paradigm Explorer

Panelists

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

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

Email address (required)

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Infinite Potential: Exploring the Life and Work of David Bohm - Summer Series
2020-07-12 17:59 - 2020-08-23 18:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Pari Center Online Summer Series

Join us for one or all of our two-hour sessionsSaturday and Sunday from July 12–August 239:00am (PDT)/12:00pm (EDT)/6:00pm (CEST)

This summer we are offering a unique opportunity to take part in an exploration of Bohm’s life and ideas. Join us online for a series of presentations by former colleagues of David Bohm and scholars of his work. Each session will allow time for audience participation in the form of dialogue, discussion and Q&A.

The presenters, many of whom were interviewed in the Infinite Potential documentary, will examine the many facets of Bohm’s life and work—physics, philosophy, wholeness, implicate and explicate orders, holomovement, consciousness, dialogue, language and the rheomode, interaction with the Blackfoot, his relationship and dialogues with J. Krisnamurti.

Program of Event

Sunday July 12Infinite Potential: A Filmmaker’s Journey into the World of David Bohmwith Paul Howard

Saturday July 18David Bohm in the 1940s: Science, Scientific Style, and Political Engagementwith Olival Freire Jr.

Sunday July 19Quantum Trajectories and the Nature of Wholeness in David Bohm’s Quantum Theorywith Chris Dewdney

Saturday July 25How does the Classical World Emerge from the Implicate Order?with Basil Hiley

Sunday July 26Laozi and the Implicate Order: Wholeness in Daoism and Quantum Physicswith Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

Saturday August 1The Blackfoot Worldview, Language and David Bohmwith Leroy Little Bear

Sunday August 2Recovering Coherency in Politics and Society Through Dialoguewith Glenn Aparicio Parry

Saturday August 8Insight and Illusion in Bohmian Psychologywith David Moody

Sunday August 9Understanding Quantum Reality and Consciousnesswith Paavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 15Tracing the Story of David Bohm and Dialogue with Beth Macy

Sunday August 16Beyond Dialoguewith Lee Nichol

Saturday August 22Beyond the Known Dimension: A Journey into David Bohm’s Implicate Orderwith David Schrum

Sunday August 23Nonlocality, Interconnectedness, and the Quantum Observerwith Jan Walleczek

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

with Paul Howard

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Howard, Film and Television Producer and Director, Ireland

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

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

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

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

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

David Bohm in the 1940s: Science, Scientific Style and Political Engagement
2020-07-18 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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David Bohm in the 1940s: Science, Scientific Style and Political Engagement

with Olival Freire Jr.

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

When David Bohm arrived in California in the early 1940s for graduate studies he had already consolidated two intellectual trends which would characterize his whole life. He knew what kind of physics he enjoyed working on; while he was attracted to theoretical physics and had exhibited skills in mathematics, he had no patience for the solving problem style of physics he had found at Caltech. Instead he looked for speculative and conceptual science. Bohm, however, was not only concerned with science, for him science was part of a larger picture involving society as a whole. During the Great Depression he had shifted from a strong commitment to individualism along the lines of the American Dream to a more socially inclined, even sympathetic, social view. As for physics subjects, he began to work on a subject, plasma, which was inherited from the war effort and he moved to the subject to which he would dedicate his entire life: the quest to understand the quantum world. Olival will present and reflect on Bohm’s early stage of his mature life looking for elements of continuity we may find in his whole life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quantum Trajectories and the Nature of Wholeness in David Bohm’s Quantum Theory
2020-07-19 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Quantum Trajectories and the Nature of Wholeness in David Bohm’s Quantum Theory

with Chris Dewdney

July 19 at 18:00 (CEST) for a 2-hour live session

Chris Dewdney will review a selection of the animations that he originated during the period from 1979, when the Two-Slit calculations were first published, up to the more recent field-matter interaction examples. The animations will be shown (many in the updated form seen in the documentary Infinite Potential) during his talk and he will explain in a non-technical way, how they were produced and exactly what they show. For each animation, the implications for our understanding of quantum mechanics and the nature of reality will be drawn out. In particular, it will be argued that the fundamental nonlocality of quantum mechanics demands that we must transcend our common-sense perception that events are determined solely by processes taking place within ordinary space and time. The true arena in which Schödinger’s quantum mechanics plays out is ‘configuration space’ and these will illustrate, using the animations, how Bohm’s trajectories within this space give rise to nonlocal connections in our everyday space and to the wholeness that is seen in complex quantum systems (everything is a complex quantum system). Finally, there will be discussion on the nature of quantum fields in David Bohm’s quantum field theory and the interaction between quantum fields and quantum matter, hence revealing the nature of the photon.

Each of the animations will be shown and discussed in turn, allowing plenty of time for questions and answers after each. The animations considered will be:

Einstein’s single slit experiment

The two-slit experiment

Quantum measurement—the Stern Gerlach experiment and the measurement of quantum spin

Nonlocality in David Bohm’s version of the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen experiment

The nature of the field in David Bohm’s quantum field theory

The nature of the photon in the interaction between quantum fields and matter.

Chris Dewdney, PhD. Reader in Theoretical Physics at the University of Portsmouth.

Chris Dewdney obtained a joint degree in Physics and Philosophy from the University of Warwick in 1973. He then continued his interest in philosophy of physics, at the postgraduate level, studying History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge; there his dissertation was written on Niels Bohr’s Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Chris then obtained funding from the British Science Research Council to work towards a PhD in David Bohm’s group in the Physics Department at Birkbeck College in London. There, Chris started to read Bohm’s papers on the notion of order in physics, attended Bohm’s undergraduate lectures on quantum theory and the frequent postgraduate seminars. Initially, Chris was the only full-time PhD student at that time working in Bohm’s group. At Birkbeck, students had to find their own PhD topic, the main thrust of the research was around formulating a mathematical description of Bohm’s notion of the holomovement and the processes of ‘becoming.’ Bohm’s 1952 hidden-variable theory was not discussed at the time and it was pure serendipity (browsing in the bookshop) that lead Chris to formulate his own PhD study demonstrating in detail how Bohm’s 1952 theory accounted for all of the ‘paradoxical’ features of quantum theory, starting with the double-slit experiment. Whilst at Birkbeck, Chris also produced the first computer-generated motion picture animations of quantum tunnelling.

On completion of his PhD in 1983, Chris was awarded a Royal Society Fellowship which he held in Jean-Pierre Vigier’s group at the Insitut Henri Poincare in Paris. During the fellowship Chris extended the detailed de Broglie-Bohm theory calculations to include neutron interferometry and the processes of spin measurement and spin superposition.

In 1986, Chris took up a permanent teaching and research position at The University of Portsmouth in the UK, becoming a Reader in Theoretical Physics in 1992. At Portsmouth he extended his work in de Broglie-Bohm theory to give a detailed, de Broglie-Bohm account of the nonlocal processes evident, for example, in the Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen experiment. At Portsmouth, working with George Horton, and his own students, Chris also developed detailed de Broglie-Bohm accounts of quantum chaos, the motion of quantum fields and the quantized exchange of energy between matter and radiation.

Chris’s work in carrying out the detailed calculations of quantum mechanical processes helped transform the situation regarding interest in, and acceptance of, de Broglie-Bohm theory. Although at first, he was almost alone in pursuing de Broglie-Bohm theory calculations, today there is a small industry doing so for many different physical circumstances. Chris’s work helped put de Broglie-Bohm theory centre stage in the foundations of quantum theory context. When he started out, Bohm’s approach was hardly considered, and none had carried out detailed calculations within the interpretation of quantum theory community; today it is considered a viable theory, and this is in some part due to Chris’s work.

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

How does the Classical World Emerge from the Implicate Order?
2020-07-25 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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How does the Classical World Emerge from the Implicate Order?

with Basil Hiley

July 25 at 18:00 (CEST) for a 2-hour live session

Experimental evidence clearly shows classical physics is wrong. Sure, it works at the classical level, but there is some deeper order necessary to understand the new physics. Nevertheless this deeper process must approximate to the macroscopic world we experience. David Bohm suggested that the algebraic quantum formalism should be understood in terms of the implicate order. For him this was the order that we directly perceive and from our experiences we abstract an array classical orders, the explicate orders from which we construct the an order which allows us to find a way to survive. The deeper implicate order contains an array of what appears to be contradictory possible explicate orders. Why? We find classical rigidity is replaced by a new notion of dynamical rigid forms which gives rise to what is known as quantum non-locality. I will try to explain how these novel ideas arise from our physics and how they provide another way of looking at the world that David Bohm was developing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laozi and the Implicate Order: Wholeness in Daoism and Quantum Physics
2020-07-26 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Laozi and the Implicate Order: Wholeness in Daoism and Quantum Physics

with Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

July 26 at 18:00 (CEST) for a 2-hour live session

Bohm’s notion of implicate order resonates with the Eastern notion of Dao. Dao is the invisible current that brings the ‘ten thousand things’ to manifestation, but it is also described as the attractor that calls them back to return to their root, to no-thingness, to the unmanifest. And ultimately these two states, the manifest, the explicate, that which can be named, and the unmanifest, the implicate, that which has no name, are one and the same. Holding them together in our awareness is, Laozi tells us, the ultimate secret, the door of all mysteries.

Dr Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, quantum physicist and philosopher

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

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

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

The Blackfoot Worldview, Language and David Bohm
2020-08-01 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/3C89Rjm6p6Y?si=Nb9JU5Mzx-uzdSrq

The Blackfoot Worldview, Language and David Bohm

with Leroy Little Bear

Saturday August 19:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST for a 2-hour live session

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lola Major, local teacher and University of Lethbridge alumna, says Leroy’s unparalleled drive to see others succeed, and his ability to connect people of all cultures, make him an outstanding candidate for Alumnus of the Year.

Leroy’s reputation as a scholar, author, consultant and University of Lethbridge builder is without equal in his quest for excellence, understanding and equality for Aboriginal peoples. Modest, caring and valued, Leroy Little Bear is a truly remarkable person, well-deserving of this award.

The University of Lethbridge Alumni Association is proud to recognize the leadership and achievements of Leroy Little Bear by awarding him the Fall 2003 Alumnus of the Year award.

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

Recovering Coherency in Politics and Society through Dialogue
2020-08-02 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Recovering Coherency in Politics and Society through Dialogue

with Glenn Parry

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

The main reason we are divided in politics is not only polarization between parties, or fragmentation within the parties, but because of how we think. We tend to think in partial fragments, not in contextual wholes. David Bohm was keenly aware of this. Bohm was also aware that this lack of coherency was not necessarily the case in Indigenous cultures that have a history of shared meaning and participatory consciousness. In the USA, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy had a profound effect on the very idea to unite the states and also on the foundational values of liberty, equality, and natural rights enshrined in the US Constitution—and then on the unwritten rules of engagement that govern political protocols. The latter influence arguably was what prevented the country from lapsing into fascism, at least until now. Sadly, authoritarian governments are now on the rise across the globe. In honor of David Bohm’s far-reaching vision, how do we begin to restore coherency in government and society? How do we make America and the world sacred again?

Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, of Basque, Aragon Spanish, and Jewish descent, is the author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) and Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Press, 2015). Parry is an educator, ecopsychologist, and political philosopher whose passion is to reform thinking and education into a coherent, cohesive whole. The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently the president of the think tank: Circle for Original Thinking. Parry organized and participated in the groundbreaking Language of Spirit Conferences from 1999 – 2011 that brought together Native and Western scientists in dialogue, moderated by Leroy Little Bear. He has appeared in several documentary films, including Journey to Turtle Island, a biographic piece exploring David Peat’s life and participation in the dialogue circles by Spanish filmmaker Miryam Servet. Parry is a member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Theosophical Society as part of a life-long interest in bridging the arts and sciences.

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

Insight and Illusion in Bohmian Psychology
2020-08-08 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Insight and Illusion in Bohmian Psychology

with David Moody

August 8 at 18:00 (CEST) for a 2-hour live session

David Bohm is known primarily for his work in physics and cosmology, but his contributions to the field of psychology were equally profound and significant. His understanding of the nature and dynamic structure of consciousness, and their relevance to the ordinary affairs of daily life, had several sources. His views were shaped in part by his experience with members of the scientific community and his disillusionment with their independence of mind and objectivity. He also drew upon the work of Hegel and Piaget, among others. The greatest influence upon his outlook on psychology, however, was the philosophy of J. Krishnamurti, and the quarter-century of dialogue and collaboration between the two men.

In Bohm’s approach to psychology, the role of thought occupies a central position in consciousness, including our common misconceptions about thought and the illusions that thought generates. The remedy for these illusions is insight, which represents a form of seeing or intelligence that transcends the limitations of thought. These views closely parallel those of Krishnamurti, but Bohm expressed them with his own gift for language and colourful metaphors. In this presentation, we will examine the basic elements of Bohmian psychology with special reference to the work of Krishnamurti and the nature and quality of the relationship between the two men.

David Edmund Moody, PhD author and educator

David Edmund Moody, PhD, is the author of An Uncommon Collaboration: David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti. He worked closely with Bohm and Krishnamurti in his capacity as director of the Oak Grove School, founded by Krishnamurti in Ojai, California, in 1975. Moody’s relationship with the two men is described in his previous book, The Unconditioned Mind: J. Krishnamurti and the Oak Grove School.

Moody is currently completing a biography of Krishnamurti that presents his philosophy in a new light. Krishnamurti in America: New Perspectives on the Man and His Message is scheduled for publication in October 2019.

Moody facilitated a series of seminars conducted by Bohm at Oak Grove School, in which Bohm described his views on consciousness and the human condition. He conducted several recorded dialogues with Bohm, three of which are included as appendixes in An Uncommon Collaboration.

He took his PhD in education at UCLA in 1991. His doctoral research investigated the logical structure of high school biology textbooks and their effects on student understanding of the theory of evolution. Moody is the author of numerous articles in popular and professional journals on topics related to biology and science education, including Gaia theory and the development of a curriculum based on the cultivation of insight.

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

Understanding Quantum Reality and Consciousness
2020-08-09 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Understanding Quantum Reality and Consciousness

with Paavo Pylkkänen

August 99:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST for a 2-hour live session

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

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

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

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

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

Tracing the Story of David Bohm and Dialogue
2020-08-15 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Tracing the Story of David Bohm and Dialogue

with Beth Macy

August 159:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST for a 2-hour live session

How is it that one of the world’s most gifted and innovative theoretical physicists would stray from his primary calling of uncovering the secrets of the universe? What so captivated his interest that, with that same intense creativity brought to his science, he would divert his exploration to uncovering the basis of human thought and the roots of social discord? Using David Bohm’s own words and those of his associates, we will plumb these queries by tracing the stories of his experience that called him to this deep practice of dialogue.

Beth Macy, PhD, organizational consultant, Bohmian dialogue practitioner

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

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

Beyond Dialogue
2020-08-16 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/POs-PghoovY?si=zsNRyE2yW3RCFQf3

Beyond Dialogue

with Lee Nichol

August 169:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour live session

Over the years that David Bohm presented his vision of dialogue, he pointed to three aspects of the human being—the individual, the collective, and the cosmic. While the individual and collective aspects have been much studied and practiced, the cosmic aspect has received little attention. In this presentation we will open up what this cosmic aspect might mean, and, of equal importance, what is involved in conducting such an investigation. The first hour will consist of laying out the terrain involved. The second hour will be discussion and question and answer. There will be no attempt to conduct a dialogue.

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

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

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

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

Beyond the Known Dimension
2020-08-22 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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with David Schrum

August 22 at 9:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST for a 2-hour live session

David Bohm spoke of an implicate order, a subtle, hidden order that lies within mind and matter. While we will consider both the physical and mental dimensions of this order, our focus will be greatly on our inner human dimension.

In our time together, we will challenge ourselves to open an exploration into these inner depths and to uncover the implicate within ourselves. We will go into the question of what sort of inner observation will bring us into a deep participation of our own in this subtle realm and, thus, to first-hand appreciation and understanding of this hidden order. This is a journey of exploration together that begins with our surface consciousness and that offers an opening to that which lies beyond the known dimension.

David C. Schrum, PhD. Quantum theorist

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

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

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

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

All sessions will last for approximately 2 hours, and will be held over zoom.us. The session structure may vary from speaker to speaker, but in general participants will have the opportunity to ask questions of the presenter and in some cases there will be breakaway discussion groups.

Each session will be hosted by a member of the Pari Center Team, to ensure that the call is running smoothly and assist anyone experiencing technical problems.

All sessions will be recorded for archival purposes. The recordings will not include the possible breakout-room discussions, but only the speaker’s presentation, follow-up discussions and Q&A. If a participant does not feel comfortable being recorded, we invite that participant to turn off their video and audio throughout the session. These recordings are available to anyone who has purchased a ticket for an attended session, or for a session they have paid for but were unable to attend. If a participant would like to access to the recording, please email us at: eleanor@paricenter.com

Nonlocality, Interconnectedness, and the Quantum Observer
2020-08-23 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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Nonlocality, Interconnectedness, and the Quantum Observer

with Jan Walleczek

August 239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 6:00pm CEST for a 2-hour live session

Dr. Jan Walleczek Director of Phenoscience Laboratories

Jan Walleczek, Director of Phenoscience Laboratories, Berlin, Germany, and Director of the Fetzer Franklin Fund of the John E. Fetzer Memorial Trust, USA. Previously, he was Director of the Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory at Stanford University Medical School, USA. Jan Walleczek was a doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, and post-doctoral fellow at the Research Medicine and Radiation Biophysics Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley. His scientific publications cover the fields of biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics. His recent work concerns the foundations of quantum mechanics and applications to living systems of concepts such as quantum coherence, emergent dynamics, and the flow of information, a long-standing interest that he summarized as an edited volume for Cambridge University Press titled ‘Self-organized Biological Dynamics and Nonlinear Control.’ In 2019, he co-edited the book titled Emergent Quantum Mechanics—David Bohm Centennial Perspectives for MDPI Press. In addition to metascience and advanced methodology, his professional interests include the philosophy and foundations of science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dialogue Program

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 2 – The Art of Listening – with David Schrum

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

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

Week 3 – Suspension and Moving Together – with Manfred Kritzler

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

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

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

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

Week 4 – Facilitation – with Sally Jeffery

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

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

Week 5 – Silence and Listening – with Caroline Pawluk

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

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

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

Week 6 – Sensing the Field – with Beth Macy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Online Pari Community Conversations: What is ‘I’?

with Yuriko Sato

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

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

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

This event is open to everyone!

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

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

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

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

Flickering Reality: Exploring Ideas in Film and Television

Exploring Alex Garland’s “Devs”

with James Peat Barbieri

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

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

Quantum Physics, Free Will and Faith in Devs

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

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

This series is free and open to everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

with Olival Freire Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horror and the Role of Terror: The Antithesis of Being Glad to Be Alive
2021-01-30 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iHRFsnpVlE

Flickering Reality: Exploring Ideas in Film and Television

Horror and the Role of Terror: The Antithesis of Being Glad to Be Alive

with Christopher Hauke

Saturday January 30, 20219:00 am PST | 12:00 pm EST | 6:00 pm CET

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

Would Christianity have taken off as successfully if Christ had been imprisoned and died out of sight? The horrific image of a nearly naked man, nailed to a cross and bleeding from his hands, feet, forehead and stomach has had greater impact. What is the relationship between horror, its images and the sublime?

From the ancient through the mediaeval to Victorian and contemporary forms of the genre, horror, and terror, have been used to impress upon us the frailty of humanity and, often, the value of a spiritual alternative. In one era, the paintings of Bosch or the original German folk tales could terrify their audience, while in the present day the horror film and its digital game equivalent offer a corresponding function.

Jung was aware of how myth and archetypal imagery took on modern forms when included in contemporary visual media—and yet the psychological impact remained. Jung maintained that evil was a real entity in the world. In their stories, horror writers and filmmakers rely on such an assumption. Christopher Hauke will be discussing a Jungian perspective on horror, the sublime and the role of terror with wide-ranging examples from literature and especially film. You may want to keep the light on…

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

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

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

www.christopherhauke.com

This series is free and open to everyone!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81879261698

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

Suggested reading:

Jung discusses evil in many passages. Start with Collected Works Vol. 9 Pt ii. Aion (orig. 1958). Chap. ll: ‘The Shadow’ paras. 13-19; and Chap. V: ‘Christ, A Symbol of the Self’ paras. 68-126

Here’s a good modern horror writer with archetypal qualities:

Ligotti, Thomas (2009) My Work Is Not Yet Done. Three Tales of Corporate Horror. London, Virgin Books.

How do we view horror films? Try this piece of research:

Johnston, Diedre D. (1995) ‘Adolescents’ Motivations for Viewing Graphic Horror. ‘Human Communication Research Vol. 21. Issue 4. Pp. 522-552. June 1995

A good article on film horror and its literary forebears:

Davis, Rhidian (2013) ‘Shadowlands and Roger Corman “The Poe Complex.”’ Sight and Sound. Vol 23. Issue 11. Pp 24-30. November 2013.

Books for further reading:

Hanich, Julian (2010/2011) Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers. New York and Abingdon: Routledge

Tan, Ed S., (2011) Emotion and the stricture of narrative film. Film as an emotion machine. New York and Abingdon: Routledge

Suggested viewing:

Try these quite recent horror films and think about their different styles:

Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2016. USA)

Ghost Stories (Dyson and Nyman, 2017. UK)

Triangle (Christopher Smith, 2009. UK)

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

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

Synchronicity, Mind and Matter
2021-02-13 17:59 - 2021-03-07 20:00 (Europe/Rome)
Synchronicity, Mind and Matter

With Allan Combs, Roderick Main, Mathew Mather, Cruz Mañas Sabbadini, Remo Roth, Shantena Sabbadini, Yuriko Sato, Jean-François Vezina and special guest poet, Richard Berengarten

8 two-hour online sessions, one every Saturday and Sunday

February 13 – March 7, 20219:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 18:00 CET

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

The term ‘synchronicity’ was introduced by C.G. Jung to denote those experiences in which a coincidence of inner and outer events appears to be particularly significant, transcending causal explanation and carrying a message that often has a remarkable, sometimes numinous, impact on the person experiencing it.

When confronted with such experiences we are drawn to look at physical and psychic events as subtly interconnected, perhaps even as manifestation of a common underlying reality. Such an intuition resonates with the findings of quantum physics, in which the description of physical processes inevitably involves the notion of an observer, and was the overarching theme of the correspondence Jung entertained with the Nobel prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli over a quarter of a century.

In this course we will focus on synchronicity as a gate to a deeper understanding of the relationship between mind and matter and as a guide to read the archetypal energy configurations we encounter in our daily life. This experiential approach to synchronicity will use the I Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle, as a tool for ‘inviting synchronicity’.

We are very fortunate to have poet Richard Berengarten as part of our Synchronicity series. Richard will be reading from two of his collections: Notness which includes a section of ten sonnets entitled ‘On Synchronicity,’ and his ambitious Changing,a homage to the I Ching.Richard will briefly introduce himself and his work and each session will begin with his reading from these two works.

Saturday February 13: Synchronicity Questwith Remo Roth

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

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

Sunday February 14: Necessary Chances: Synchronicity in the Encounters that Transform Uswith Jean-François Vezina

People often enter our lives in mysterious ways. We have all met ‘by accident’ a person who crossed our path and radically altered our trajectory and opened a new door that helped us to enter a new universe. What predisposes us to such meetings? Who are these Trickster’s messengers—not necessarily people, as they can also take the forms of books or movies—that lead us to cross a new threshold?

In the light of the new sciences and cinema, this presentation introduces more than 20 yeas of research trying to understand the fascinating question of synchronistic encounters.

Saturday February 20: Numinous Matter: Synchronicity and the Reanimation of the Physical Worldwith Roderick Main

In this session we shall explore the implications of synchronicity for our experience of and relationship to the physical world. The presumption of disenchanted science is that matter is in itself inherently inert and devoid of meaning. Contrary to this, with the concept of synchronicity as well as his use of alchemical symbolism, Jung proposed that meaning and numinosity, as expressions of the psychoid archetype, could be inherent properties of not only the psyche but also matter. Such a view arguably fosters a more participative and respectful, rather than instrumental and exploitative, relationship to the physical world. We shall examine some of the experiences and underpinning philosophical assumptions that have been invoked in support of this view.

Sunday February 21: Synchronicity: A Common Reality in Japanwith Yuriko Sato

Since time immemorial, before C.G. Jung named the phenomenon, synchronicity has been perceived by people of various cultures. In the modern Western world view, mind and matter are clearly separated. Synchronistic phenomena, which cross the boundary between and connect these two distinct categories of reality, are therefore intriguing. However, in places where older world views have been retained in some way, such as in Japan, people seem to be less curious than Westerners about why and how synchronistic events happen; they seem to think of them more as natural occurrences—“just so” and “it happens.” I will approach synchronicity from these perspectives, using the Japanese psyche as an example, to explore its nature.

Saturday and Sunday February 27 – 28: I Ching and Synchronicity Workshopwith Shantena Sabbadini and Cruz Mañas Sabbadini

The intention of this workshop is to give you an experiential taste of reading events in a synchronistic perspective. Opening up to the experience of synchronicity is the essence of all divinatory practices. The divinatory practice we will explore in this workshop is the consultation of the I Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes.

We suggest to approach divination not as a way to predict the future, but as a way to allow unconscious knowledge to emerge in order to illuminate a problematic situation or a specific question.

Due to the constraint of meeting online rather than in person, we ask you to do your I Ching consultation in advance of the workshop, so that the workshop time can be fully devoted to the interpretation of the answers.

Saturday March 6: Tarot and Synchronicity: Reading the World as Symbol with Mathew Mather

After a brief elaboration on the history of the Tarot and its use as a divinatory tool, Mathew will relate a number of synchronistic experiences. Based on this he will describe how the Tarot can be used as a divinatory method allowing for an understanding and appreciation of the mytho-poetic language of the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World. In this space, the possibility emerges of being initiated into a stitching together of the microcosm of our individual life myth within the macrocosm of the Anima Mundi.

The second part of the session will include an interactive Tarot workshop in which participants will be invited to respond in word and image to a ‘random’ selection of a card, individually chosen, from the major arcana. This will be followed by sharing in groups, and then a final discussion. Note that a pack of Tarot cards will not be required. Please have a sheet of sketch paper and a few pens (art materials) available during the session.

Sunday March 7: The Trickster Inside and Outwith Allan Combs

The trickster is a shadow figure, a dynamic archetype, hidden in every human psyche. It arises uninvited as impulses that urge us to “play the devil” with our own rational side and behavior. But it can also manifest as a sense of playfulness, when one becomes a clown in an otherwise “serious” situation. The trickster is projected in myths and stories of virtually every traditional culture, from the Native American crow and coyote, to the closely related Mexican/Aztec dancing Huehuecóyotl (or Ueuecoyotl), and on to the African spider trickster, Anansi, and Renard the trickster fox, popular throughout Europe during the late Middle Ages; and includes great trickster gods such as the Chinese monkey king, the Norse Loki, and the Greek Hermes, said to be the “friendliest of the gods to men.”

I show this with the help of some of my most important synchronicities, which, so to speak, talked about how they work, their mode of operation, and in this way led me to the method I call today Synchronicity Quest.

The trickster protects us as individuals, and society as a whole, form taking ourselves too seriously, and from growing rigid and inflexible in our traditional ways. Often by the event of synchronicities that trip us up at first, and make us stop and examine ourselves. If we are open to these seeming stumbling blocks, we often discover them to be treasures in hiding; gifts from the trickster to enrich our lives.

This lesson will encourage each of us to explore our personal experiences of synchronicity, share them with others, and question how they reflect the work of the archetypal trickster, often to our consternation at first, but ultimately facilitating our own growth and transformation.

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

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

Synchronicity Quest with Remo Roth

with Remo Roth

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

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

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

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

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

Necessary Chances: Synchronicity in the Encounters that Transform Us
2021-02-14 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Buy the recording

Necessary Chances: Synchronicity in the Encounters that Transform Us

with Jean-François Vezina

People often enter our lives in mysterious ways. We have all met ‘by accident’ a person who crossed our path and radically altered our trajectory and opened a new door that helped us to enter a new universe. What predisposes us to such meetings? Who are these Trickster’s messengers—not necessarily people, as they can also take the forms of books or movies—that lead us to cross a new threshold?

In the light of the new sciences and cinema, this presentation introduces more than 20 yeas of research trying to understand the fascinating question of synchronistic encounters.

Jean-François Vézina is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Québec and a musician. He was the president of the Jungian Society of Quebec for 7 years and has recently created the Cercle Jung de Tequenonday and The Hilbert Hotel, a psycho-philo-poetic experience exploring the multiverse. He has published several books translated in various languages such as Necessary Chances by Pari Publishing, The Love Adventure and Dancing with Chaos on the Trickster archetype. Web Site: www.hilbert-hotel.com

Numinous Matter: Synchronicity and the Reanimation of the Physical World
2021-02-20 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmB9tP-Km70

Numinous Matter: Synchronicity and the Reanimation of the Physical World

with Roderick Main

In this session we shall explore the implications of synchronicity for our experience of and relationship to the physical world. The presumption of disenchanted science is that matter is in itself inherently inert and devoid of meaning. Contrary to this, with the concept of synchronicity as well as his use of alchemical symbolism, Jung proposed that meaning and numinosity, as expressions of the psychoid archetype, could be inherent properties of not only the psyche but also matter. Such a view arguably fosters a more participative and respectful, rather than instrumental and exploitative, relationship to the physical world. We shall examine some of the experiences and underpinning philosophical assumptions that have been invoked in support of this view.

Roderick Main, works at the University of Essex, UK, where he is Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the Centre for Myth Studies. He is the author of The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of Modern Western Culture and Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience, the editor of Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, and co-editor of Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious. He was Principal Investigator in the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘“One world”: logical and ethical implications of holism’ (2016-18).
