Musical Borrowing: Theft or Tribute?
2022-01-26 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ssv-oIe8D4

a webinar produced, presented, and performed by

Dr Donna Coleman

Streaming from Studio OutBach® Santa Fe, situated in the heart of the deep Indigenous history of Native New Mexico, from ancient Paleoindians to Keres- and Tanoan-speaking peoples who were raided by the Comanches.

Wednesday January 269:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET | 4:00am AEST

From the series:

The Quintessence of Music with Dr Donna Coleman

A monthly musical and philosophical journey into the Mind, Heart, and Soul of Sound Organized in Time

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”

Ecclesiastes 1: 10–11

The practice of appropriating a musical phrase, a motivic idea, a concept, or even an entire melodic line as material for a “new” musical composition is as old as music itself. Composers from Johann Sebastian Bach (and before) to the present day have mined hymns, folk music, the clickety-claque of train trucks on the rails, and the work of other composers (who may have borrowed from others themselves!) in the process of creating their own sonatas, cantatas, symphonies, and suites.

This two-hour, interactive webinar asks participants to consider the notion of originality vs plagiarism. If a composer “borrows” material from a pre-existing musical source, at what point can that composer claim that her material is “hers”?

Donna will discuss and perform examples of musical compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ferruccio Busoni, and Charles Ives that make extensive and obvious use of borrowed material. Participants will have the opportunity to present their response to the question: theft or tribute?

On Wednesday January 26, Donna will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81479605511

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

Recommended Reading:

Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music by Ferruccio Busoni (1907)https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31799/31799-h/31799-h.htmTranslated by Theodore Baker; published 1911 by Schirmer

Essays Before a Sonata by Charles Edward Ives (1918)https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3673/3673-h/3673-h.htmPublished by The Knickerbocker Press, 1920 at Ives’s expense

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

Photo credit: Peter Paul Geoffrion

Dualities
2022-02-05 17:59 - 2022-03-06 20:00 | Online
Dualities: The Marriage of Opposites

with Jena Axelrod, Mauro Bergonzi, Anjali D’souza, Andrew Fellows, Gary Goldberg, Basil Hiley, Ruth Kastner, Shantena Sabbadini, Mark Saban and David Schrum

and 4 Sunday sessions with Mark Vernon onDualities on Spiritual Paths: Oppositions and Contraries in Plato, Dante, William Blake and Iain McGilchrist

February 5 – 6, 12 – 13, 19 – 20, 26 – 27, March 5 – 6 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

10 Two-hour sessions, Saturdays and Sundays

All sessions are live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Program of Event

Saturday February 5A Conversation about Duality and Non-duality in East and Westwith Anjali D’souza, Andrew Fellows and Shantena Sabbadini

Sunday February 6The Way of Love: Plato and Participation in the Good, Beautiful and Truewith Mark Vernon

Saturday February 12Duo Duels on Non-duality, the Quantum Potential, and the Nature of Consciousnesswith Jena Axelrod and Basil Hiley

Sunday February 13The Way Up and the Way Down: Dante and the One Path from Hell to Paradisewith Mark Vernon

Saturday February 19Connecting the Actuality of Things in Space-Time to the Reality of Possibility in QuantumLand: Convergences in Quantum Physics, Brain Science, Philosophy and Mystical Thoughtwith Gary Goldberg and Ruth E. Kastner

Sunday February 20Contraries and Human Existence: William Blake and Cleansing the Doors of Perceptionswith Mark Vernon

Saturday February 26Beyond Dualistic Mind: Journeying Together on David Bohm’s ‘No Road’with David Schrum

Sunday February 27The Master and the Emissary: Dualities in the Philosophy of Iain McGilchristwith Mark Vernon

Saturday March 5Jung’s Two Personalities: Psychological Implicationswith Mark Saban

Sunday March 6Dualities and Non-Dualitywith Mauro Bergonzi and Shantena Sabbadini

Join us online at the Pari Center to explore the fascinating and seemingly endless topic of dualities where together with experts and scholars we will examine the meaning of dualities in physics, philosophy, spirituality, literature, psychology and reality.

The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.Niels BohrAs quoted by his son Hans Bohr in ‘My Father,’ published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work.

Beauty is the harmony of opposing things.Sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)

Life is full of dualities. Things coexist, oppose, contrast and parallel every day. Duality teaches us that every aspect of life is created from a balanced interaction of opposite and competing forces. Yet these forces are not just opposites; they are complementary.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary the word dual means ‘with two parts’ and duality ‘the state of combining two things.’ In philosophy ‘mind-body dualism’ was first formulated by the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes who stated that there exists a clear distinction between physical and mental phenomena..

In many of the theologies and religions of the world we also find the pervasive idea that the forces of good and evil are equally balanced in the universe. Another common idea is that of the dual nature of human beings, existing in both body and spirit. Christian dualism refers to the belief that God and creation are distinct and also a belief in the dual personality of Christ (human and divine). Traditional Chinese philosophy similarly believes that there is both an active male and passive female principle in the universe, which is embodied in the symmetric yin-yang.

In 1933, C.G. Jung wrote that duality is a fact of human nature and that we cannot achieve wholeness without integrating the dark or shadow side of the self. According to Jung it is the lack of awareness of our duality and inner contrasts that may lead to uncontrolled outbursts of the shadow, as in the time of the Nazis.

Several political theories also show evidence of a kind of dualistic thinking. In Marxism, for example, we find a dialectical view of the relationship between the theory and empirical practice (praxis) of society and political systems, the thesis and anti-thesis, a continual tension between capitalism and socialism, as well as between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

A key notion of quantum mechanics is the complementarity of incompatible observables, which are both needed to fully describe a quantum system, but cannot be measured simultaneously. An example is the complementarity of position and momentum of a particle and more generally of ‘particle’ and ‘wave’ behaviour of quantum systems.

Duality is explored in such fictional writings as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Romeo and Juliet, The Picture of Dorian Grayand even in the contrasting characters of Harry Potter and Voldemort. Films such as Black Swan and Fight Club explore the dualism of human nature. Batman and Joker are the polar opposites of order and chaos, light and darkness. And it is the two-sided nature of the Force that propels the storyline in Star Wars.

In the visual arts, The Kiss, by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) depicts a nearly indistinguishable man and woman as two figures become one as they emerge from a single block of material. Dutch artist M.C. Escher was fascinated by duality and symmetry.

In Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching we read:

When in the world all appreciate beauty as beauty,then ugliness is already there;when all appreciate good as good,then bad is already there.

Therefore being and non-being generate each other,difficult and easy complete each other,long and short define each other,high and low lean towards each other,voice and music harmonise with each other,before and after follow each other.

A Conversation about Duality and Non-duality in East and West
2022-02-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
A Conversation about Duality and Non-duality in East and West

with Anjali D’souza, Andrew Fellows and Shantena Sabbadini

Saturday February 5, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Our primary subjective experience is one of duality, of experiencing the separateness of self and the rest of the world around us. This informs how we live and perceive the world, the knowledge and institutional systems we have created throughout history and as we continue to do so in the present.

On the other hand, some Eastern systems and mystics of all religions have insisted on the fundamental non-duality of the world. In India for instance, the belief in the discrete disconnected egoic self is seen as epitomizing ignorance and the root cause of suffering. The experience of nonduality liberates and transforms one’s existence. The Tao in Chinese philosophy is the symbol and experience of integration and wholeness, nonduality beyond duality, undergirding the universe. In our contemporary times the insights and explorations into nonduality have been coming through Quantum physics; consequently, initiating much needed dialogues between science and spirituality.

Nonduality as a construct and experience is not merely a wondrous spiritual belief, or an exploration into fascinating but abstract ideas. It has tangible consequences individually, collectively and politically for the integrity of ourselves and our world/planet as a whole. It impacts how we choose to live, relate and behave as we begin to understand that we are all one indivisible whole.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Anjali D’Souza has a Master’s degree in Sociology and has just completed her training in Jungian Analysis at ISAP-Zurich. She has 20 years of experience working in India as a psychotherapist and consultant with individuals, groups, communities and organisations. She also trained as an Indian classical dancer and subsequently studied dance expression and Authentic Movement. Her multi systemic approach is shaped by her own experiences, C.G. Jung, the expressive arts, Indian philosophy, and gender and post-colonial studies.

Andrew Fellows, is a Jungian Analyst (AGAP/IAAP) with private practices in Bern and Zürich, a deep ecologist, and a writer. He holds a Doctorate in Applied Physics (Dunelm), and enjoyed two decades of international professional engagement with renewable energy, sustainable development and environmental policy before moving from the U.K. to Switzerland in 2001 to study Analytical Psychology. His special interests include the anima mundi, the mid-life transition, the new sciences, and the use of depth psychology to understand and address global collective and environmental problems, especially climate change and other aspects of the Anthropocene. His personal passions include nature, mountains and music, and he lives over three thousand feet above sea level in rural Switzerland without a car.

His lecture draws on many years of independent research and writing, from which he has presented his evolving ideas since 2007 at international conferences in England, Estonia, Japan, Switzerland and the U.S. in addition to teaching at ISAP Zurich. His first book, published by Routledge in March 2019, is Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology: Navigating Climate Change in the Anthropocene.

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

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

The Way of Love: Plato and Participation in the Good, Beautiful and True
2022-02-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
The Way of Love: Plato and Participation in the Good, Beautiful and True

with Mark Vernon

Sunday February 6, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Though Plato is often accused of dualism, the word itself didn’t exist in his time, which points to a subtler and crucial reassessment of what the Ancient Greek philosopher was driving at. He recognised that the body and death are sites of experience within which we can know of their seeming opposites, namely life itself. This realisation is gained by fostering the capacity to love. We will also consider how early Platonic thought developed with Neoplatonic and theistic perceptions.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. Mark’s latest book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Angelico Press, 2021. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Duo Duels on Non-duality, the Quantum Potential, and the Nature of Consciousness
2022-02-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Duo Duels on Non-duality, the Quantum Potential, and the Nature of Consciousness

with Basil Hiley and Jena Axelrod

Saturday February 12, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Join quantum physicist Basil Hiley and Pari Center’s Jena Axelrod in a dynamic discussion on the structure of our universe, the quantum potential, the nature of consciousness, and the paradigm shift they both see as being necessary in the West.

Nondual philosophy teaches that, ‘the multiplicity of the universe is reducible to one essential reality.’ The conclusion is that reality is a dynamic process accessible and known to people through music, art, transpersonal psychology, Buddhism, physics, and many more, if not all, fields. The Western worldview favours the mechanistic, static, ridgid, and as such has lost the sense of dynamism, and interconnectedness prevalent in most indigenous cultures, Eastern philosophies, and in the science of the quantum potential.

Both Basil and Jena perceive nonduality as a core truth of our reality. Basil approaches the nature of reality, and the quantum potential, from the perspective of math and physics; Jena approaches the nature of reality, and of our unified consciousness from within, via the experiential internal explorations of a psychonaut.

How then might these two seem to converge in their shared worldview—a nondual explanation of the nature of our dynamic reality—when approaching their queries from such disparate angles? Like Bohr’s complementarity, Basil and Jena may evidence that seemingly oppositional explanations of a phenomenon might be the fullest way to describe that phenomenon.

Basil Hiley will introduce us to his latest discoveries on the structure of the universe and how they relate to the quantum potential, a central concept of the de Broglie-Bohm formulation from David Bohm’s 1952 paper, A Suggested Interpretation of the Quantum Theory in Terms of ‘Hidden’ Variables, which was later expanded upon by Bohm and Hiley. Jena will interject as Basil’s mathematical points become too abstract for a lay audience, and will redirect the discussion back toward the real world practical application and meaning of these concepts!

To see the Full Dualities Program

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 collaboration 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.

Pari Center Associate Director Jena Axelrod is the founder of Numena Productions LLC, where she directs and produces surreal, enlightening film, television, and web content. Premiering in 2022, the documentary Absurdity of Certaintyfeatures Pari Center co-founder physicist-philosopher Dr F. David Peat.

Jena works as a comedian, best known as Jena Not Jameson on Jackie Martling’s radio show on the Howard Stern channel at SiriusXM. Jena also works as a workshop facilitator for ThriveLoud, and as a Sales Director at Ideal Prediction providing trade analytics services to banks, hedge funds, and cryptocurrency firms.

The Way Up and the Way Down: Dante and the One Path from Hell to Paradise
2022-02-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
The Way Up and the Way Down: Dante and the One Path from Hell to Paradise

with Mark Vernon

Sunday February 13, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Dante’s Divine Comedy famously opens with the poet wakening in a dark wood. His life has seemingly taken a wrong turn. But why must he embark first on a journey through hell, before ascending Mount Purgatory, only then entering paradise? What has the way into darkness to do with the way into light? He learns to say ‘yes’ to all of reality, and that the light includes the darkness, even as tragedy is integrated into the comedy of divine life.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. Mark’s latest book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Angelico Press, 2021. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Connecting the Actuality of Things in Space-Time to the Reality of Possibility in QuantumLand
2022-02-19 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Connecting the Actuality of Things in Space-Time to the Reality of Possibility in QuantumLand

Convergences in Quantum Physics, Brain Science, Philosophy and Mystical Thought

with Ruth E. Kastner and Gary Goldberg

Saturday February 19, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

In their joint presentation, Ruth and Gary will examine convergent trends across multiple disciplines indicating a fundamental paradigm shift is necessary and underway. The dominant Nominalistic perspective focuses only on phenomena that are detectable through empirical observation of discrete ‘things’ and ‘events’ situated in space-time, and sees reality as exclusively constituted as such, maintaining that potentiality is not real. There is a fundamental ‘threat’ inherent in such a worldview. What is ignored—to our peril—is the underlying matrix of relational reality, an ‘Implicate Order’ that sculpts out the possibilities that are offered for actualization out of a primordial flowing continuum, a hidden potent realm of streaming quantum process that we will call ‘QuantumLand’ for reasons that will be explained.

As Hans Reichenbach insightfully remarked, ‘the flow of time is a real becoming in which potentiality is transformed into actuality.’ Through time-dependent process, the possibilities generated in the hidden relational quantum realm presage the physical actuality of our manifest phenomenal world. Billions of years of biological evolution have conferred an ‘Actuality Instrument Panel’—ie. our physical senses, that allow us to function—to ‘fly on instruments’, so to speak, through this veiled reality—as embodied, but fundamentally relational creatures.

A further assumption of the Western modern worldview is the notion that all action occurs via ‘billiard-ball’ mechanism, with isolated entities (ie. lone ‘monads’ without communicative capacity) traveling unilaterally through space-time, thus precluding the possibility of any real, two-way communication—ie. ‘trans-action’—between constituents. According to this ‘modern’ perspective, there is no mediating factor in between entities and the only logic applicable is classical and binary. The Laws of Non-contradiction and Excluded Middle are in full force, dictating intolerance for uncertainty. Charles Sanders Peirce, over 100 years ago warned of the dire deficiencies of this rigid perspective which he called ‘Necessitarianism‘, with its championing of ‘hard determinism’, and the denial of so-called ‘generals,’ ‘potentiality’ and ‘free will.’ Necessitarianism is a ‘Yang-only’ understanding limited to the proliferative processes of generation, initiation, and creation. Precluded are Yin-type selective processes: reception, response, growth and dissolution. Yang involves an exclusive focus on ‘things’, ‘relata’ that then come into ordering relationship. Yin involves the ordering relations themselves.

Modern Western science continues to be dominated by ‘Yang-only’ prioritizing of relata over relations, placing ‘things’ over the ‘connections’—the importance of which is minimized in the Yang mindset as being ‘mind-dependent’ and thus NOT real. One important consequence is that an approach to field propagation that could shed new light on the physical meaning of quantum theory has been, for many years, overlooked. What exactly is quantum theory trying to tell us about where we ‘moderns’ have gone wrong in our understanding of how the cosmos operates? A viable alternative understanding places Yang and Yin processes into a configuration ofbalanced mutual complementarity rather than conflictual opposing polarities, best understood by recognizing negotiated ‘transaction’, of communicative interaction and informational exchange via relation, as real and of fundamental significance. Drawing on emerging concepts in brain science (the functional specialization of the two cerebral hemispheres in accordance with the divided brain theory of Iain McGilchrist), in philosophy (the turn toward ‘panpsychism’—implying that everything is conscious) and in mystical thought (the referenced yinyang concept of Chinese origin, Kabbalistic principles, beliefs of indigenous cultures, etc), we develop the hypothesis implying that:

Everything is conscious and has ‘free will’ to some extent (consistent with the Born Rule and ‘nomic grounding’),

Consciousness is linked to agency

Agency is linked to transaction understood as bidirectionally negotiated communicative interaction in which there is an actualenergetic exchange consistent with the principle of mass-energy-information equivalence ( see https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794 ) between an ‘emitter’ and an ‘absorber’, with the Possibilist/Relativistic version of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics implying that the available phenomenal level of our actual experience rests upon a vast oceanic continuum of possibility out of which the creative, the unanticipated, and the whole of physical actuality arises through a process occurring in QuantumLand involving an exchange of ‘active information’ via a hidden interaction involving an ‘offer wave’ from an ‘emitter’ entity traveling forward in time connecting with a ‘confirmation wave’ from an ‘absorber’ entity traveling backward in time to the originating ‘emitter.’

This, we believe, is the ultimate message that quantum theory is attempting to drive home.

To see the Full Dualities Program

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

Gary Goldberg obtained a B.A.Sc. (bachelor of applied science) in electrical engineering science at the University of Toronto and his M.D. at McMaster University. He completed specialty training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and subsequently sub-specialized in Brain Injury Medicine. He has worked and taught at academic medical centers in Philadelphia, Toronto, Pittsburgh and Richmond, Virginia during the course of a nearly 40-year career in brain injury rehabilitation. He retired from active clinical participation in September, 2020 to turn to other personal activities. He has sustained an abiding interest in how neuroscience, physical science, as well as interpersonal experience and systems of belief examined through a semiotic relational lens have informed his work as well as his understanding of the human condition. He currently serves as a Scientific Advisor to the Pari Center for New Learning.

Contraries and Human Existence: William Blake and Cleansing the Doors of Perceptions
2022-02-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Contraries and Human Existence: William Blake and Cleansing the Doors of Perceptions

with Mark Vernon

Sunday February 20, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Sight is found in the struggles of life, William Blake realised, as his own life was lived between heaven and hell, innocence and experience, vision and labour. Opposites are the energy of the imagination and bring the power to see through surfaces. Blake offers maps that chart the transformation from the narrow sight of Ulro to the full embrace of Eternity. We will also consider the role of dualities in Romantic philosophers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. Mark’s latest book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Angelico Press, 2021. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

The Future Scientist - A Conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
2022-02-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpr0QP4Qcvk

A Conversation between Rupert Sheldrake and Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday February 239:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

The session is live and all registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go.

In this second session of the conversation series on “The Future Scientist”, Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín will be in conversation with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.

The dialogue will be in a lively and spontaneous format of approximately 45 minutes up to an hour and we will then open up for questions from the audience.

After a brief discussion of the issues raised by dogmatism within mainstream materialism and accusations of heresy by orthodox institutional science, in this second conversation we will address weak points in contemporary science in areas that might be more promising for breakthroughs, accelerating a change of paradigm already under way, and leading to a more comprehensive and inclusive worldview.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than ninety technical papers and nine books, including The Science Delusion (called Science Set Free in the US). As a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, he was Director of Studies in Cell Biology, and was also a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He worked in Hyderabad, India, as Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), and also lived for two years in the ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths in Tamil Nadu. From 2005-2010, he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for the study of unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California and of Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon. He lives in London and is married to Jill Purce, with whom he has two sons. His web site is www.sheldrake.org.

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a theoretical physicist turned cognitive neuroscientist. He earned his PhD in Physics in 2008 from the University of Barcelona, where we studied the microscopic origins of the arrow of time. He also holds a Masters in Biophysics from the same university. He was a Juan de la Cierva Fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation where he investigated the neurobiology of action and perception in fruit flies, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal, where he deployed a computational ethology approach to establish neuro-ethological principles in worms, flies and mice. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, Spain, where he has been a Ramón y Cajal Fellow, and where he currently is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. His latest research concentrates on consciousness and cognition in humans in real-world situations, combining high-resolution experiments with theoretical biology and continental philosophy. He is the author of a number of research articles, and he is shortly to publish his first book in Spanish on the ‘tales not told’ in current neuroscience. Born in Barcelona, he now lives in the Mediterranean coast of Alicante and has two daughters and a cat. You can follow him on social media at @behaviOrganisms and read his work here: https://behavior-of-organisms.org/read-us

The Future Scientist Series

Science as we know it is a relatively recent human invention.

After the ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century, science and philosophy remained entangled as ‘natural philosophy’ until they started to separate in the nineteenth century (the very word ‘scientist’ was coined in 1834). Subsequently, science morphed from an activity carried out by wealthy people as a hobby (the ‘amateur,’ in the etymological sense of the word) into a paid job within an institutionalized system (the ‘professional’). Paradoxically or not, great ideas come more easily from people who are not paid to have them—it’s like forcing someone to be free, or compelling creativity by an act of will.

In the last decades, a series of technological and societal changes have further accelerated mutations of what it means to be a scientist; from the selection forces cast by neoliberalism on ‘scientific careers,’ to the kind of ‘science in the age of selfies’ that social media promotes. Scientists too are prey to the perverse dynamics of nowadays ‘attention economy.’ To understand what scientists do and why they do it, one must also understand the political and social contexts in which they live.

In addition, the rise of ‘big science’—initially in physics (particle physics and astronomy), and subsequently in life and mind sciences (genomics, and connectomics)—is reconfiguring the landscape typically inhabited by the romantic figure of the lone scientist receiving visions in dream-like states of consciousness and, eventually, advancing science in a stroke of genius. In turn, the idea of the scientist bred in the current academe is that of a diligent caffeinated deluxe technician as a part within the larger mechanism of research group army; a person trained exquisitely (and almost exclusively) on a research aspect, a specialist unable to keep track of what goes on beyond the narrow confines of his/her discipline. Young scientists are indeed trained to be good at following rules and procedures (explicit laboratory protocols, but also implicit codes of conduct and metaphysical commitments) but discouraged to learn to see when and how to transcend them.

In turn, the more recent promises of ‘big data’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ posit a near-future landscape where some of the core skills and tasks traditionally attributed to humans may be soon carried out by machines (or so the ‘scientific soteriologists’ claim). Algorithms are not just ingenious means to an end that require human intervention to imbue them with meaning, but are swiftly becoming ends in themselves, pretending they offer an automated unbiased interpretation of the data.

A re-appraisal of the habits of the modern scientist entails an ethical dimension as well: why do we treat animals as objects (as means, rather than ends in themselves), why do we study life in laboratories primarily by killing it, and why do we study life in laboratories in the first place? These questions also reflect on ecological considerations regarding our place in nature (humans in relationship with other animals, and other kingdoms of life) and our destruction of the planet. Francis Bacon’s prophetic vision of the Promethean scientist, so vividly captured in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has become both a cautionary tale and an inspiration.

In addition, and despite the real ‘paradigm changes’ in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century, other branches of science such as biology and neuroscience remain under the spell of philosophical promissory materialism. Research facts are sold in tandem with covert metaphysical commitments. The objective-subjective divide still puzzles both scientists and the layperson. The mind-body problem remains to be solved (or dissolved).

In sum, the whole enterprise seems to be committed to suppressing broad thinkers, promoting academics that look more like corporate managers, PR mavericks and professional fund-raisers and less like scholars, who are asked to inhibit their interest in philosophy, and to cast suspicion on their fertile imagination. Dogma and habit are inhibiting free inquiry.

It is as if science as a whole is becoming less scientific.

In the face of this milieu of factors, in this series of online events we seek to reflect on what ‘the future scientist’ may look like. This is an ambitious exercise indeed, which goes beyond mere theoretical speculation. It is not unlikely that sooner than we think current science will be unrecognizable to most of us. The consequences for humanity writ large, not just for scientists themselves, are pressing.

The question at stake is whether by ‘future scientist’ we mean what scientists in the future are all likely to look like, or what a future better scientist might look like. In our conversations we will engage more in prescribing than in predicting, that is, we might begin by describing where science is going (prediction) to then describe where we hope science might go (prescription). Attempting the art of ‘dia-logos,’ we hope to express a creative voice that will enlighten the way of a new science in the twenty-first century.

The series will be direct conversations, that is, no formal presentation of the invited speaker but a kind of ‘thinking aloud’ in the mode of a dialogue between each guest and Àlex Gómez-Marín as the conversation host. The idea is to engage critically with various aspects of ‘the future scientist’ in a lively and spontaneous format for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, followed by comments and questions from the audience. Each conversation will take place virtually, on a Wednesday each month.

The invited speakers to The Future Scientist series are chosen not just as great interlocutors to discuss these issues, but also as exemplars and hints of what ‘the future scientist’ may actually look like here and now.

Beyond Dualistic Mind: Journeying Together on David Bohm’s ‘No Road’
2022-02-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
with David Schrum

Saturday February 26, 2022

9:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

The Heart Sutra, taken from ancient Buddhism, concludes with this evocation of awakening, “gone, gone, gone to the farthest shore….”

‘This shore’ and ‘the other shore’, nowadays, have become common metaphors in spiritual discourse, ‘this side’ (here) representing the field of fragmented mind with its conflict of opposing dualities; ‘the other side’ (there) reflecting wholeness; the gap between these two signifying the great divide between this and that. But, as sages and mystics also have indicated, when one reaches the other side, he/she may find that it is this side—that always it has been this side, but now is differently perceived. This journey to perception is the journey beyond duality.

But what is this voyage—practically, beyond metaphor, beyond verbal description and explanation? What might it be to touch onto the ‘other shore’ as an actuality? David Bohm worked to open these questions at depth. Over the years, through talks, writings, and conversations, he shared an invitation to enquiry into and observation of ourselves in a movement that is away from nothing but, rather, is into what is. What he sought to open is a journey intimately within, which might well be characterized as “here, here, here upon the innermost shore.” Such exploration takes us beyond concepts, words, and their dualities. It leads us to preverbal territories which are in their nature without maps. It brings us to be way-finders on ‘no road’.

Here is the field that we propose to open to together—tentatively, subtly—considering both what Bohm and others have offered, and that which we may come upon ourselves.

To see the Full Dualities Program

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

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

The Master and the Emissary. Dualities in the Philosophy of Iain McGilchrist
2022-02-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
The Master and the Emissary. Dualities in the Philosophy of Iain McGilchrist

with Mark Vernon

Sunday February 27, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

The recent work of the psychiatrist and philosopher, Iain McGilchrist, allows us to bring the role of dualities in spiritual perception right up to date. He has shown how brain lateralisation facilitates two types of perception. They are asymmetric, both required in right relation for the fullest awareness of the world, which is so often lacking in our times. In this session we will weave in insights from Carl Jung and process theology too.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. Mark’s latest book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Angelico Press, 2021. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Music and Numbers
2022-02-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-0cy1RkTa8

a webinar produced, presented, and performed by

Dr Donna Coleman

and Special Guest Dr Kevin March

Streaming from Studio OutBach® Santa Fe, situated in the heart of the deep Indigenous history of Native New Mexico, from ancient Paleoindians to Keres- and Tanoan-speaking peoples who were raided by the Comanches.

Monday February 28

9:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CETTuesday March 1 at 4:00am AEST (Australia)

Free Online Pari Dialogue

“The theory of Relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My parents had me study the violin from the time I was six. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”Albert Einstein

quintessence n. 1. The pure, highly concentrated essence of something. 2. The purest or most typical instance: “thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!” (Poe). 3. Ancient & Medieval Philosophy. The fifth and highest essence (after the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water), thought to be the substance of the heavenly bodies and latent in all things. [Middle English, from Old French quinte essence, from Medieval Latin quinta essentia (translation of Greek pempte ousia, fifth essence) : Latin quinta, feminine of quintus, fifth (see penkwe in Appendix*) + essentia, ESSENCE.]One of the first philosophers believed to have described the relationship between music and numbers was Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 490 BCE), who in fact wrote nothing himself. The first written accounts of his apparent postulates date from the third century CE. For a comprehensive discourse on the “problem of Pythagoras,” see the article by Carl Huffman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Suggested Reading, below).

Nevertheless, Pythagoras is credited with having distinguished, by plucking strings of various lengths, the relationships between the wavelengths of sound that define musical intervals and thence identified the harmonic or overtone series. The harmonic series, which is a phenomenon of pure physics, begins with a fundamental (the original wavelength of the plucked string), which subdivides proportionately, first in half (to produce the first octave), in half again (the next higher octaves), and on and on, to ultimately produce all of the pitches of the diatonic scale. These principles are believed to govern the development of polyphony (many layers of voices) from monophony (a single line of music, as Gregorian Chant). The number five plays a prominent role in this evolution.

This two-hour, fully interactive webinar will introduce the harmonic series and the musical intervals produced by it; the way a scale and its associated harmonic scheme and thence, the musical structures that depend upon this harmony, are derived from it; consider the significance and symbolism of the number five (quinta; cinque) and the so-called “fifth element” in the realm of music; discuss the notion of cadence and its role in Western European Art Music structures; explore the role of the Fibonacci Series [Fibonacci = contraction of Filius Bonacci, aka Leonardo Bonacci or Leonardo Bigolio Pisano, Italian mathematician born and died in Pisa c. 1170–1250 CE] in musical structure; and analyse and present in performance the music of several composers, beginning, as always, with Johann Sebastian Bach, discussing the interval relationships in Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Vol. I Prelude in C major BWV 846. We will explore tonality as it relates to consonance and dissonance, and introduce music that seeks to avoid tonality through non-repetition of tones, by American composers Ruth Porter Crawford and Carl Sprague Ruggles by a process called Dissonation (by non-repetition of tones).A special feature of this webinar will be the participation, from Australia at 5:00 a.m., of my esteemed colleague and friend, Dr Kevin March, with whom I have been collaborating on a project for the past two years to create a series of musical compositions inspired by the Fantod Pack by the American author, illustrator, and costume designer Edward Gorey (1925 Chicago – 2000 Cape Cod MA). I gave the World Premiere of two of these works for the Sadie Hawkins Day concert in Melbourne on 29th February 2020. For this webinar, Kevin and I will discuss the role of the Fibonacci series in the choice of harmonies, phrase lengths, and other aspects of the structure of the piece entitled The Stones, for which this performance is the WORLD PREMIERE.

Participants are encouraged to engage with questions, comments, and insights throughout the session, which can be lodged in the Chat or via a “raised hand” in this ZOOM presentation. The second half of the webinar, during which Dr March and Dr Coleman will engage in conversation about The Stones will be fully open for Q&A throughout.

Repertory to be explored on this leg of the Quintessence of Music journey:

Johann Sebastian Bach: Das Wolhtempierte Klavier, I, Prelude in C major, BWV 846

Ruth Porter Crawford: Prelude No. 6 (1924)

Carl Sprague Ruggles: Evocation No. 2 (1943)

Kevin March: Fantod Pack (2020–2022 for Donna Coleman), The Stones

On Monday February 28, Donna will open our monthly monthly musical and philosophical journey with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83468133210

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

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SESSION IS THE FIRST OF TWO (possibly THREE) on this topic!

Suggested Reading

Cavanagh, Lynn. A Brief History of the Establishment of International Standard Pitch A=440 Hertz. Online. https://www.wam.hr/sadrzaj/us/Cavanagh_440Hz.pdf

Gann, Kyle. An Introduction to Historical Tunings. Online. https://www.kylegann.com/histune.html

Hemholtz, Hermann L.F., M.D. On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music. London: Spottiswood and Co., 1885. PDF online. https://ia600208.us.archive.org/25/items/onsensationston00unkngoog/onsensationston00unkngoog.pdf

Huffman, Carl. “Pythagoras.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, editor. Online. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/pythagoras/.

Klein, Jürgen and Guido Giglioni, “Francis Bacon,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 edition), Edward N. Zalta, editor. Specific to this discussion, see 3.3 Matter Theory and Cosmology. Online.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/#MatTheCos

or

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/francis-bacon

Porterfield, Richard. Melodic Function and Modal Processes in Gregorian Chant. PhD Dissertation. New York: City University of New York, 2014. Online. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1091&context=gc_etds

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

Kevin March is an award-winning composer whose works have been performed in North America, Australia, and Europe by Victorian Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Pacific Opera Victoria, Edmonton Opera, One Ounce Opera, PLEXUS, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria, Ironwood Ensemble, Halcyon, The Arcko Ensemble, the ASTRA Chamber Music Society, the New York City Opera, and by renowned performers Donna Coleman, Nicole Car, Étienne Dupuis, Gino Quilico, Stefan Cassomenos, Sarah Curro, and others.

His fifth opera, Echo & Narcissus, commissioned by Victorian Opera, premiered in March 2021 to positive reviews. The Sydney Morning Herald called it ” … delicate and enigmatic and often ravishingly beautiful.” His previous opera, Les Feluettes (The Lilies), commissioned by Opéra du Montréal, premiered in May 2016 to sold-out audiences, standing ovations, and rave reviews, and was nominated for a coveted Opus Award. Les Feluettes received two further productions, Pacific Opera Victoria and Edmonton Opera, which received two Sterling Award nominations.

Other awards include First Prize in the 3MBS National Composer Awards for his orchestral work The Flowering and the Dorian La Gallienne Prize for his setting of the Rimbaud poem Ophélie. His song cycle, Songs of Remembrance and Resistance, was nominated for Outstanding Original Composition in the 2018 Austin Critics Table Awards. His music has been broadcast on ABC Classic FM and 3MBS radio. It has featured in the Metropolis New Music Festival and the 7th Sydney Biennale, and in the ABC Radio National documentary Modern Muses: The Greeks and New Music.

His most recent work, Electric Cathedral, created in collaboration with Virtual Reality artist and poet reVerse Butcher and poet Kylie Supski, received a grant from The Australia Council for the Arts. He has also received creative grants from Vic Arts, the University of Michigan, and ArtServe Michigan.

Scores for many of Kevin’s compositions are available through Wirripang Publishing and the Australian Music Centre.

Kevin holds a Master’s degree and a Doctorate from the University of Michigan where his principal composition instructors were William Bolcom, William Albright, Michael Daugherty and Curtis Curtis-Smith. In Australia, he has been mentored by notable Australian composers Richard Mills, Gerard Brophy, Maria Grenfell, and Paul Stanhope.

Jung’s Two Personalities: Psychological Implications
2022-03-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Jung’s Two Personalities: Psychological Implications

with Mark Saban

Saturday March 5, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

In his book, Two Souls Alas: Jung’s Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology (2019), Mark Saban looksinto the way Jung uses his memoir to describe the experience of having two personalities. Saban argues there that Jung’s experience of the dynamic between these two personalities informs basic principles behind the development of Jung’s psychological model and indeed Jung’s entire mature psychology. He suggests that what Jung took from this experience was the principle that psychological health required the avoidance of one-sidedness and that this was achieved through the experience of tension between what Jung described as two conflicting personalities. It was this dynamic that powered Jung’s notion of individuation. In short, any one-sided position needs to be brought into tension with a conflicting ‘opposite’ position, in order that a third position can be achieved which transcends both of the earlier positions. This latter operation Jung called the Transcendent Function.In this talk, Saban will open up this notion, showing how it operates within both psychotherapeutic work and wider cultural and political spheres.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Mark Saban PhD worked for 20 years as an actor and performer before training with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, with whom he is a senior analyst. He is also a lecturer in Jungian and post-Jungian studies in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex.

Publications: Mark co-edited (with Emilija Kiehl and Andrew Samuels) Analysis and Activism – Social and Political Contributions of Jungian Psychology (Routledge 2016) and wrote Two Souls Alas: Jung’s Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology (Chiron 2019) which won the International Association of Jungian Studies’ Best Book of 2019.

s the 2019 Zürich Lecture Series at the International School of Analytical Psychology. Based on his Ph.D. thesis, the book was published by Chiron in 2019.

Dualities and Non-Duality
2022-03-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Dualities and Non-Duality

with Mauro Bergonzi and Shantena Sabbadini

Sunday March 6, 20229:00 PST | 12:00 EST | 17:00 GMT | 18:00 CET

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

What is the ultimate nature of reality? In our contemporary scientific culture reality appears to consist of a multiplicity of interacting parts. That multiplicity exhibits some fundamental dualities: being and becoming, particle and field, mind and matter.

On the other hand the main stance of non-duality (advaita in sanskrit) points to the simple fact that in reality there are endless differences, but no separation at all: reality is regarded as an indivisible whole, while the perception of isolated entities is just a mental construct without any cogent ontological foundation (including the idea of a separate ‘ego’ dwelling ‘within’ a single body/mind).

Not even the boundary between subject and object is real: according to non-duality, the opposing terms ‘consciousness’ and ‘world’ are just two different conceptual descriptions (in terms of the ‘first’ or of the ‘third’ person) of one and the same indivisible reality, just as ‘ascent’ and ‘descent’ are two different words for the same slope, depending which way one is going. So the alleged separation between ‘subject’ and ‘object’ is only an illusory mental construct.

This non-dual perspective has unfolded through a wide range of different forms not only in Eastern thought (mahāyāna buddhism, advaita-vedānta, tantrism, daoism, etc), but also in Western philosophical tradition, albeit frequently in more implicit forms (e.g Parmenides, Plotinus, Cusanus, Berkeley, Spinoza, Shelling or even Hegel), which may engender new prospects of dialogue with some challenging issues of contemporary scientific thought.

To see the Full Dualities Program

Mauro Bergonzi taught “Religions and Philosophies of India” and “General Psychology” from 1985 to 2017 at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. He is also a member of I.A.A.P. (International Association for Analytical Psychology) and of C.I.P.A. (Centro Italiano di Psicologia Analitica). He is author of academic essays and articles on Oriental Philosophies, Comparative Religion, Comparative Philosophy, Psychology of Mysticism and Transpersonal Psychology. Since 1970, for about 25 years he has been practicing meditation (mainly within Buddhist, Taoist and Vedānta traditions), always preserving a non-confessional and non-dogmatic approach, until only a radical non-duality prevailed. From then on, he has been regularly invited to lead spiritual groups in Italy. A survey of his non-dual communication is available in his book Il sorriso segreto dell’essere (Mondadori) and in his website: https://sites.google.com/site/ilsorrisodellessere/.

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

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

An Introduction to Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind
2022-03-23 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

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

An Introduction to Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind

with Jon Goodbun

Wednesday March 2310:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

Free Online Pari Dialogue

Jon Goodbun’s research focuses on ‘ecological thinking’—both in terms of how we think about ecological systems, and how ecological systems themselves think—drawing in particular on his extensive study of the work of the ecological anthropologist Gregory Bateson. In this talk Goodbun will introduce some of the history and thinking of this important theorist, drawing in particular upon some of the ideas contained within his first collection of essays: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, as well as his later synthesis: Mind and Nature—A Necessary Unity, and his final incomplete text, published after his death by daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, called Angels Fear—Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred, and will situate these ideas in relation to more recent research, and the wider research interests of the Pari Center.

On Wednesday March 23, Dr. Goodbun will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Dr Jon Goodbun is mostly based in Athens, Greece where he runs Rheomode, a small experimental studio working and writing at the intersection of art, architecture, and ecological pedagogy, although he also contributes to the MA Environmental Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London and the architecture and landscape programmes at University College London. His 2011 PhD, ‘Critical Urban Ecologies: The Architecture of the Extended Mind,’ drew together thinking on ecological and complex systems theory, together with cognitive science and consciousness studies, in relation to aesthetic theory, spatial perception and ecological empathy, and he is currently working on a book called The Ecological Calculus, which builds on this work. He spent some time at the Pari Center in 2010, interviewing David Peat about his own work, and the work of his collaborator David Bohm (from whose work Goodbun borrowed the name ‘rheomode’ for his blog and studio!).

The Future Scientist – A Conversation with Michel Bitbol
2022-03-30 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N48vkz4qrgw

A Conversation between Dr. Michel Bitbol and Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday March 309:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

The session is live and all registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go.

The dialogue will be in a lively and spontaneous format of approximately 45 minutes up to an hour and we will then open up for questions from the audience.

Until the advent of quantum mechanics, physical sciences had thrived on the separation between object and subject that seems to provide “a view from nowhere”. At the same time, current life and mind sciences still struggle with experiments and theories in which the primacy of felt experience does not seem to matter. In this third conversation of the series we will draw from the phenomenological tradition to explore the feasibility of a new kind of science in which human consciousness is placed at the center.

Michel Bitbol is emeritus researcher at CNRS/École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. He received a M.D., a Ph.D. in physics and a “Habilitation” in philosophy. After a start in scientific research, he turned to philosophy of science, editing texts by Erwin Schrödinger and formulating a philosophy of quantum mechanics based on phenomenological and neo-kantian conceptions. He then studied the relations between physics and the philosophy of mind, as well as a first-person conception of consciousness arising from an experience of the phenomenological Epoché. More recently, he engaged a debate with the philosophical movement called “speculative realism”, from the same standpoint.

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception in flies, worms, mice, humans and robots. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining high-resolution experiments, computational and theoretical biology, and continental philosophy, his latest research concentrates on real-life cognition and consciousness.

The Future Scientist Series

Science as we know it is a relatively recent human invention.

After the ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century, science and philosophy remained entangled as ‘natural philosophy’ until they started to separate in the nineteenth century (the very word ‘scientist’ was coined in 1834). Subsequently, science morphed from an activity carried out by wealthy people as a hobby (the ‘amateur,’ in the etymological sense of the word) into a paid job within an institutionalized system (the ‘professional’). Paradoxically or not, great ideas come more easily from people who are not paid to have them—it’s like forcing someone to be free, or compelling creativity by an act of will.

In the last decades, a series of technological and societal changes have further accelerated mutations of what it means to be a scientist; from the selection forces cast by neoliberalism on ‘scientific careers,’ to the kind of ‘science in the age of selfies’ that social media promotes. Scientists too are prey to the perverse dynamics of nowadays ‘attention economy.’ To understand what scientists do and why they do it, one must also understand the political and social contexts in which they live.

In addition, the rise of ‘big science’—initially in physics (particle physics and astronomy), and subsequently in life and mind sciences (genomics, and connectomics)—is reconfiguring the landscape typically inhabited by the romantic figure of the lone scientist receiving visions in dream-like states of consciousness and, eventually, advancing science in a stroke of genius. In turn, the idea of the scientist bred in the current academe is that of a diligent caffeinated deluxe technician as a part within the larger mechanism of research group army; a person trained exquisitely (and almost exclusively) on a research aspect, a specialist unable to keep track of what goes on beyond the narrow confines of his/her discipline. Young scientists are indeed trained to be good at following rules and procedures (explicit laboratory protocols, but also implicit codes of conduct and metaphysical commitments) but discouraged to learn to see when and how to transcend them.

In turn, the more recent promises of ‘big data’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ posit a near-future landscape where some of the core skills and tasks traditionally attributed to humans may be soon carried out by machines (or so the ‘scientific soteriologists’ claim). Algorithms are not just ingenious means to an end that require human intervention to imbue them with meaning, but are swiftly becoming ends in themselves, pretending they offer an automated unbiased interpretation of the data.

A re-appraisal of the habits of the modern scientist entails an ethical dimension as well: why do we treat animals as objects (as means, rather than ends in themselves), why do we study life in laboratories primarily by killing it, and why do we study life in laboratories in the first place? These questions also reflect on ecological considerations regarding our place in nature (humans in relationship with other animals, and other kingdoms of life) and our destruction of the planet. Francis Bacon’s prophetic vision of the Promethean scientist, so vividly captured in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has become both a cautionary tale and an inspiration.

In addition, and despite the real ‘paradigm changes’ in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century, other branches of science such as biology and neuroscience remain under the spell of philosophical promissory materialism. Research facts are sold in tandem with covert metaphysical commitments. The objective-subjective divide still puzzles both scientists and the layperson. The mind-body problem remains to be solved (or dissolved).

In sum, the whole enterprise seems to be committed to suppressing broad thinkers, promoting academics that look more like corporate managers, PR mavericks and professional fund-raisers and less like scholars, who are asked to inhibit their interest in philosophy, and to cast suspicion on their fertile imagination. Dogma and habit are inhibiting free inquiry.

It is as if science as a whole is becoming less scientific.

In the face of this milieu of factors, in this series of online events we seek to reflect on what ‘the future scientist’ may look like. This is an ambitious exercise indeed, which goes beyond mere theoretical speculation. It is not unlikely that sooner than we think current science will be unrecognizable to most of us. The consequences for humanity writ large, not just for scientists themselves, are pressing.

The question at stake is whether by ‘future scientist’ we mean what scientists in the future are all likely to look like, or what a future better scientist might look like. In our conversations we will engage more in prescribing than in predicting, that is, we might begin by describing where science is going (prediction) to then describe where we hope science might go (prescription). Attempting the art of ‘dia-logos,’ we hope to express a creative voice that will enlighten the way of a new science in the twenty-first century.

The series will be direct conversations, that is, no formal presentation of the invited speaker but a kind of ‘thinking aloud’ in the mode of a dialogue between each guest and Àlex Gómez-Marín as the conversation host. The idea is to engage critically with various aspects of ‘the future scientist’ in a lively and spontaneous format for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, followed by comments and questions from the audience. Each conversation will take place virtually, on a Wednesday each month.

The invited speakers to The Future Scientist series are chosen not just as great interlocutors to discuss these issues, but also as exemplars and hints of what ‘the future scientist’ may actually look like here and now.

Music and Numbers, Part II
2022-04-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG0La1b-QuQ

a webinar produced, presented, and performed by

Dr Donna Coleman

Streaming from Studio OutBach® Santa Fe, situated in the heart of the deep Indigenous history of Native New Mexico, from ancient Paleoindians to Keres- and Tanoan-speaking peoples who were raided by the Comanches.

Wednesday April 6

9:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CESTThursday April 7 at 2:00am AEST (Australia)

“What is above is as what is below.”The Book of Thoth

This session will continue the journey we began in Music and Numbers, Part I. Having embarked upon the landscape comprised of dissonant intervals and avoidance of tonality, we will explore the music of composers working with the so-called Twelve-Tone System: Riccardo Malipiero, Anton Webern, and Luigi Dallapiccola, for whom numbers provided the pathway to their idiosyncratic musical languages. We will begin by considering the way interval relationships in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sinfonia in F minor create what we know as consonance and compare it to Riccardo Malipiero’s (1914 Milan – 2003 Milan) Invenzione #7, a dissonant work that is modelled upon it. Dr Coleman will demonstrate the way Webern created 144 possible versions of his twelve-tone row using the Magic Square.

Repertory to be explored on this leg of the Quintessence of Music journey:

Johann Sebastian Bach: Sinfonia in F minor, BWV 795 (1723)Riccardo Malipiero: Invenzioni, No. 7 (1949)Anton Webern: Variationen für Klavier, opus 27 (1936)Luigi Dallapiccola: Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera (1952)

The discussion will also dwell upon traditional number attributes, delving back to the Sephiroth of the ancient Qabalah, the significance of the ten numbers assigned to the branches of the Tree of Life, its seven planes, twenty-two intersections, and the hermetic adaptation of these into the Tarot. As always, we will look for the meaning behind all of these inter-related manifestations of the Ethereal Universe.

On Wednesday April 6, Donna will open our monthly monthly musical and philosophical journey with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83082713624

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

Suggested Reading

Crowley, Alistair. The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians, Being the Equinox Volume III No. V. Newburyport MA: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974. https://echoesofegypt.peabody.yale.edu/egyptosophy/fragments-book-thoth

———. Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck. http://www.thule-italia.net/esoterismo/Aleister%20Crowley/Crowley%20Thoth%20Tarot%20Deck.pdf

Morris, Robert. Mathematics and the Twelve-Tone System. https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/229011/mod_resource/content/1/Mathematics%20and%20the%20Twelve-Tone%20System%20(Morris%202007).pdf

Papus. The Tarot of the Bohemians. https://www.labirintoermetico.com/02tarocchi/papus_the_tarot_of_the_bohemians.pdf

Tufts University Faculty (unnamed). Twelve-Tone Technique: A Primer. https://sites.tufts.edu/markdevoto/files/2015/10/12TonePrimer.pdf

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

Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance: Moving Beyond Business as Usual
2022-04-13 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNDpL1S2fLY

Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance: Moving Beyond Business as Usual

Donna Kennedy-Glans in conversation with Julie Arts

Wednesday April 13 9:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Free Online Pari Dialogue

Donna’s latest book Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance provides the roadmap builders and rebuilders—of society and of enterprise—with the tools to rethink, redesign and revitalize their organizations and to remain relevant and sustainable in a new and very different future. Business as usual is extinct. Disruption and social pressure are the new norm and change is inevitable for enterprises of all kinds—businesses, governments, non-profits, community initiatives and social institutions. We’ve reached a turning point and it’s time to evolve, or we go the way of the dinosaurs. We all need to act now to survive and find new ways to thrive in a changed world. But in an age of polarized debates on complex issues (such as fairness and climate change), how can leaders find a new way forward? How can enterprises re-invent themselves to make capitalism work better for more people? These are some of the compelling and timely issues that Donna and Julie will tackle in their conversation.

On Wednesday April 13, Donna and Julie will be in conversation followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85176061107

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

Donna Kennedy-Glans is a boundary-crosser, adding value throughout her career to enterprising projects in over thirty-five countries, in the public, private and non-profit sectors: as an energy insider rooted in Alberta’s oil patch; founding a non-profit to build the capacity of women in Yemen; serving as an elected politician and cabinet minister; holding leading roles on boards of directors; and helping to steward the family farm enterprise. She is a political commentator, community builder, writer and speaker, weighing in on energy, leadership, governance, community and integrity issues.

Julie Arts is currently on a sabbatical from being a senior faculty member and consultant with the Presencing Institute (PI), an organisation founded in 2006 by Otto Scharmer and colleagues, to support action research and leadership development for systems change and societal transformation.Julie is an economist by training and has worked as a senior consultant, designing and hosting multi-stakeholder transition processes and ecosystem leadership programs such as the UN SDG Leadership Lab and many in-house leadership programs for companies and NGOs.

Julie is also a board member of Meg Wheatley’s Berkana Institute. She lives in Mechelen, Belgium and in Pari, Italy.

The Future Scientist – A Conversation with Dr Vandana Shiva
2022-04-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j41Fcg2HmdY

A Conversation between Dr. Vandana Shiva and Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday April 279:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

The session is live and all registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go.

The dialogue will be in a lively and spontaneous format of approximately 45 minutes up to an hour and we will then open up for questions from the audience.

Science is more than an academic activity circumscribed to laboratories and seminar rooms; it is a human creative effort that has political implications and bears societal responsibilities. In this installment of The Future Scientist series, we will explore what scientists actually do, aren’t doing, and could do in the wider picture of the troubled relationship between human beings and the Earth. Drawing from science and philosophy, but also from real-world activism, we will explicitly address the pervasive and pernicious effects of the neoliberal tide and discuss how to enact reciprocal transformations at the individual and planetary levels, so as to honor the land, the feminine and, above all, mother nature. The Future Scientist shall not be the modern Prometheus.

Dr Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, activist, and author. A food sovereignty advocate, environmentalist, and ecofeminist, Shiva holds a PhD in physics and has written more than 20 books, including Making Peace with the Earth, Staying Alive, Monocultures of the Mind, Democratizing Biology, Soil Not Oil, and Stolen Harvest. Based in Delhi, she is referred to as “Gandhi of grain” for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement. Shiva is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization, and a figure of the anti-globalization movement. She has worked as a consultant for the Indian government and abroad, and in NGOs such as the International Forum on Globalization, Women’s Environment & Development Organization and Third World Network. She is a co-founder of the gender unit of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, and of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization. Shiva has received numerous international honors, such as the John Lennon-Yoko Ono Grant for Peace (2008), Sydney’s Peace Prize (2010), Calgary’s Peace Prize (2011), and the Right Livelihood Award (1993), which is regarded as the “alternative Nobel Prize”.

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception in flies, worms, mice, humans and robots. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining high-resolution experiments, computational and theoretical biology, and continental philosophy, his latest research concentrates on real-life cognition and consciousness.

The Future Scientist Series

Science as we know it is a relatively recent human invention.

After the ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century, science and philosophy remained entangled as ‘natural philosophy’ until they started to separate in the nineteenth century (the very word ‘scientist’ was coined in 1834). Subsequently, science morphed from an activity carried out by wealthy people as a hobby (the ‘amateur,’ in the etymological sense of the word) into a paid job within an institutionalized system (the ‘professional’). Paradoxically or not, great ideas come more easily from people who are not paid to have them—it’s like forcing someone to be free, or compelling creativity by an act of will.

In the last decades, a series of technological and societal changes have further accelerated mutations of what it means to be a scientist; from the selection forces cast by neoliberalism on ‘scientific careers,’ to the kind of ‘science in the age of selfies’ that social media promotes. Scientists too are prey to the perverse dynamics of nowadays ‘attention economy.’ To understand what scientists do and why they do it, one must also understand the political and social contexts in which they live.

In addition, the rise of ‘big science’—initially in physics (particle physics and astronomy), and subsequently in life and mind sciences (genomics, and connectomics)—is reconfiguring the landscape typically inhabited by the romantic figure of the lone scientist receiving visions in dream-like states of consciousness and, eventually, advancing science in a stroke of genius. In turn, the idea of the scientist bred in the current academe is that of a diligent caffeinated deluxe technician as a part within the larger mechanism of research group army; a person trained exquisitely (and almost exclusively) on a research aspect, a specialist unable to keep track of what goes on beyond the narrow confines of his/her discipline. Young scientists are indeed trained to be good at following rules and procedures (explicit laboratory protocols, but also implicit codes of conduct and metaphysical commitments) but discouraged to learn to see when and how to transcend them.

In turn, the more recent promises of ‘big data’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ posit a near-future landscape where some of the core skills and tasks traditionally attributed to humans may be soon carried out by machines (or so the ‘scientific soteriologists’ claim). Algorithms are not just ingenious means to an end that require human intervention to imbue them with meaning, but are swiftly becoming ends in themselves, pretending they offer an automated unbiased interpretation of the data.

A re-appraisal of the habits of the modern scientist entails an ethical dimension as well: why do we treat animals as objects (as means, rather than ends in themselves), why do we study life in laboratories primarily by killing it, and why do we study life in laboratories in the first place? These questions also reflect on ecological considerations regarding our place in nature (humans in relationship with other animals, and other kingdoms of life) and our destruction of the planet. Francis Bacon’s prophetic vision of the Promethean scientist, so vividly captured in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has become both a cautionary tale and an inspiration.

In addition, and despite the real ‘paradigm changes’ in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century, other branches of science such as biology and neuroscience remain under the spell of philosophical promissory materialism. Research facts are sold in tandem with covert metaphysical commitments. The objective-subjective divide still puzzles both scientists and the layperson. The mind-body problem remains to be solved (or dissolved).

In sum, the whole enterprise seems to be committed to suppressing broad thinkers, promoting academics that look more like corporate managers, PR mavericks and professional fund-raisers and less like scholars, who are asked to inhibit their interest in philosophy, and to cast suspicion on their fertile imagination. Dogma and habit are inhibiting free inquiry.

It is as if science as a whole is becoming less scientific.

In the face of this milieu of factors, in this series of online events we seek to reflect on what ‘the future scientist’ may look like. This is an ambitious exercise indeed, which goes beyond mere theoretical speculation. It is not unlikely that sooner than we think current science will be unrecognizable to most of us. The consequences for humanity writ large, not just for scientists themselves, are pressing.

The question at stake is whether by ‘future scientist’ we mean what scientists in the future are all likely to look like, or what a future better scientist might look like. In our conversations we will engage more in prescribing than in predicting, that is, we might begin by describing where science is going (prediction) to then describe where we hope science might go (prescription). Attempting the art of ‘dia-logos,’ we hope to express a creative voice that will enlighten the way of a new science in the twenty-first century.

The series will be direct conversations, that is, no formal presentation of the invited speaker but a kind of ‘thinking aloud’ in the mode of a dialogue between each guest and Àlex Gómez-Marín as the conversation host. The idea is to engage critically with various aspects of ‘the future scientist’ in a lively and spontaneous format for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, followed by comments and questions from the audience. Each conversation will take place virtually, on a Wednesday each month.

The invited speakers to The Future Scientist series are chosen not just as great interlocutors to discuss these issues, but also as exemplars and hints of what ‘the future scientist’ may actually look like here and now.

Love in the Time of Crisis
2022-05-07 17:59 - 2022-05-29 20:00 | Online
Love in the Time of CrisisFrom Separation to Interbeing

with John Briggs, Will Buckingham, Jane Clark, Vincent Colapietro, Satish Kumar, Ramona Rolle-Berg, Renée Rolle-Whatley, Rabbi Neal Rose and Mark Vernonand Special guest poet Richard Berengarten

Pari Center Online Series

May 7 – 8, 14 – 15, 21 – 22, 28 – 29, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

8 Two-hour sessions, Saturdays and Sundays

Blessed be the covenant of love between what is hidden and what is revealed.Leonard Cohen

We live in a challenging time of transition which promises both hope and peril. How are we to navigate a course that will take us from a story of separation, competition, and distrust to a new narrative of inter-being, cooperation, and love? How do we begin to give up and move beyond an incoherent and too often destructive structure of consciousness and a world which seems rarely to see the mediating presence of what has been called ‘evolutionary love’?

This program approaches these questions and others from a wide variety of perspectives:

On our journey we explore the concept of ‘evolutionary love’ in the context of the metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce with Vincent Colapietro. We travel into and through the rich imagery of love in literature and culture with John Briggs. We enter energy and mind-body medicine with Renee Rolle-Whatley and Ramona Rolle-Berg, each of whom holds a PhD in Mind Body Medicine, as we explore parental love. With Mark Vernon we will address the need for a deeper awareness of love that becomes particularly acute in times of crisis, though times of crisis also offer moments to understand love move fully.

Satish Kumar brings us to ecology, approached from a love which finds its expression in a reverence for nature—which he strongly feels should be at the heart of every political and social debate. Jane Clark and Mark Vernon take us with them in a journey which explores the meaning of divine love.

In this program, we will approach love from multiple perspectives of how to go about restoring the power of love—the power of a positive mediating force, to enliven, re-enchant, and re-invigorate our world. We seek pathways that restore reason as a guide to the expansion of knowledge and understanding, and we see love as a guide, bringing goodness and order to their application. From within the midst of present chaos, we look to love in its varied dimensions to bring quiescence within, and creativity and intelligence in its outer expression.

We are again fortunate to have poet, Richard Berengarten, as part of our series on the theme of love. Richard will be read short poems from several of his collections, including The Blue Butterfly, Notness, Changing , and a new sequence of villanelles in honour of Tao Yuanming, entitled The Wine Cup. Richard will briefly introduce himself and his work and each session will begin with his reading from one of these books.

Program of Event

Saturday May 7Temporality and Tragedy: Irrevocable Loss and Redemptive Lovewith Vincent Colapietro

Sunday May 8Tales of Love and Narcissism in Classical Jewish Sourceswith Rabbi Neal Rose

Saturday May 14Portrayals of Love in Literature and Culturewith John Briggs

Sunday May 15Power of Lovewith Satish Kumar

Saturday May 21Parenting as a Journey towards Awakening: Exploring Self-growth through the Hidden Guidance of the Heartwith Ramona Rolle-Berg and Renée Rolle-Whatley

Sunday May 22Love In A Time of Crisiswith Mark Vernon

Saturday May 28Love Across Traditionswith Jane Clark and Mark Vernon

Sunday May 29Strangers on the Threshold: Love, Wisdom, and the Task of Philosophywith Will Buckingham

Temporality and Tragedy: Irrevocable Loss and Redemptive Love
2022-05-07 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Buy the recording

Temporality and Tragedy: Irrevocable Loss and Redemptive Love with Vincent Colapietro€10,00

Shop now

Temporality and Tragedy: Irrevocable Loss and Redemptive Love

with Vincent Colapietro

Saturday May 7, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

A. N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality can be read as a sustained meditation on Locke’s characterization of time as ‘perpetual perishing.’ But he refuses to see time solely as an occasion of perishing. Colapietro will seize this occasion itself to reflect on time and tragedy. Is time by its very nature tragic, entailing the irrevocable loss of whatever emerges and, for a time, endures in its flux? Or is time a site wherein forms of ‘ immortality’ are attainable? But of even more basic concern are several different senses of time, above all, the time envisioned by the most influential physicists (including Einstein) and the conception of time implicit in the activity of physicists themselves. Are physicists in time in the same sense that they so often conceive time (specifically, time as a reversible process or even an illusory phenomenon)? That is, is the dominant understanding of time among theoretical physicists compatible with what physicists do as agents? Colapietro will argue that agential time is an irreducible phenomenon and any attempt to explain it away (or to render it illusory) is mistaken.

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Vincent Colapietro is Liberal Arts Research Professor Emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University. He is presently at the Center for the Humanities (University of Rhode Island). One of his main areas of research is pragmatism, with emphasis on Peirce. Though devoted to developing a semiotic perspective rooted in Peirce’s seminal work, Colapietro draws upon a number of other authors and perspectives (including Bakhtin, Jakobson, and Bourdieu as well as such movements as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction). He is the author of Peirce’s Approach to the Self (1989), A Glossary of Semiotics (1993), Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom (2003), and Acción, sociabilidad y drama: Un retrato pragmatista del animal humano (2020) as well as numerous essays. He has written on a wide range of topics, from music (especially jazz) and cinema to psychoanalysis and deconstruction, from art and literature to ontology and phenomenology. He has served as President of the Charles S. Peirce Society, the Metaphysical Society of America, and the Semiotic Society of America.

Tales of Love and Narcissism in Classical Jewish Sources
2022-05-08 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Buy the recording

Tales of Love and Narcissism in Classical Jewish Sources with Rabbi Neal Rose€10,00

Shop now

Tales of Love and Narcissism in Classical Jewish Sources

with Rabbi Neal Rose

Sunday May 8, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

The foundational literature of many societies contains reflections on the nature of love. These sources come in the form of stories, aphorisms, and even theoretical discussions. Ancient Greek literature has a variety of philosophical reflections on the nature of love and narcissism. Classical Hebraic literature, biblical and rabbinic, evidences a lack of theoretical discussions in favor of more concrete expressions. This literature contains moral rules and regulations, wisdom teachings, and a great variety of stories. My presentation will center primarily on the narratives of love in both biblical and rabbinic sources. The many dimensions of love and narcissism are enacted by an array of characters such as Moses, Sarah, Queen Jezebel, the Messiah, and above all God. The theoretical aspects of the presentation are informed by the work of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Erich Fromm. (Have a Bible at hand so we can look at the material together).

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Rabbi Neal Rose taught at the University of Manitoba from 1967 to 2000. He was a member of the Departments of Judaic Studies and Religion. He also was an instructor in family therapy at the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Spiritual Care. He and his wife currently live in St. Louis, MO where he serves as rabbinic scholar in residence at Congregation Bnai Amoona and community Chaplain.

The Future Scientist - A Conversation with John Horgan
2022-05-11 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

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

A Conversation between John Horgan and Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday May 119:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

The session is live and all registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go.

The dialogue will be in a lively and spontaneous format of approximately 45 minutes up to an hour and we will then open up for questions from the audience.

The idea that the end of science “as we know it” is near may sound absurd to many. And yet, in the era of “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence” the limits of human insight seem to saturate, as scientific revolutions and revelations stall. In this instalment of The Future Scientist series, we will reflect upon the limits of knowledge, the idea of scientific progress, and current exciting directions in both in fundamental physics and consciousness studies. We will also discuss the role of science journalism in shaping the public perception of science in the age of selfies, outlining future challenges and present opportunities at the intersection of science and society.

John Horgan is an award-winning science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include The End of Science, a 1996 bestseller translated into 13 languages, and Mind-Body Problems, published online in 2018. A frequent contributor to Scientific American, he has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic and many other publications.

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception in flies, worms, mice, humans and robots. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining high-resolution experiments, computational and theoretical biology, and continental philosophy, his latest research concentrates on real-life cognition and consciousness.

The Future Scientist Series

Science as we know it is a relatively recent human invention.

After the ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century, science and philosophy remained entangled as ‘natural philosophy’ until they started to separate in the nineteenth century (the very word ‘scientist’ was coined in 1834). Subsequently, science morphed from an activity carried out by wealthy people as a hobby (the ‘amateur,’ in the etymological sense of the word) into a paid job within an institutionalized system (the ‘professional’). Paradoxically or not, great ideas come more easily from people who are not paid to have them—it’s like forcing someone to be free, or compelling creativity by an act of will.

In the last decades, a series of technological and societal changes have further accelerated mutations of what it means to be a scientist; from the selection forces cast by neoliberalism on ‘scientific careers,’ to the kind of ‘science in the age of selfies’ that social media promotes. Scientists too are prey to the perverse dynamics of nowadays ‘attention economy.’ To understand what scientists do and why they do it, one must also understand the political and social contexts in which they live.

In addition, the rise of ‘big science’—initially in physics (particle physics and astronomy), and subsequently in life and mind sciences (genomics, and connectomics)—is reconfiguring the landscape typically inhabited by the romantic figure of the lone scientist receiving visions in dream-like states of consciousness and, eventually, advancing science in a stroke of genius. In turn, the idea of the scientist bred in the current academe is that of a diligent caffeinated deluxe technician as a part within the larger mechanism of research group army; a person trained exquisitely (and almost exclusively) on a research aspect, a specialist unable to keep track of what goes on beyond the narrow confines of his/her discipline. Young scientists are indeed trained to be good at following rules and procedures (explicit laboratory protocols, but also implicit codes of conduct and metaphysical commitments) but discouraged to learn to see when and how to transcend them.

In turn, the more recent promises of ‘big data’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ posit a near-future landscape where some of the core skills and tasks traditionally attributed to humans may be soon carried out by machines (or so the ‘scientific soteriologists’ claim). Algorithms are not just ingenious means to an end that require human intervention to imbue them with meaning, but are swiftly becoming ends in themselves, pretending they offer an automated unbiased interpretation of the data.

A re-appraisal of the habits of the modern scientist entails an ethical dimension as well: why do we treat animals as objects (as means, rather than ends in themselves), why do we study life in laboratories primarily by killing it, and why do we study life in laboratories in the first place? These questions also reflect on ecological considerations regarding our place in nature (humans in relationship with other animals, and other kingdoms of life) and our destruction of the planet. Francis Bacon’s prophetic vision of the Promethean scientist, so vividly captured in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has become both a cautionary tale and an inspiration.

In addition, and despite the real ‘paradigm changes’ in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century, other branches of science such as biology and neuroscience remain under the spell of philosophical promissory materialism. Research facts are sold in tandem with covert metaphysical commitments. The objective-subjective divide still puzzles both scientists and the layperson. The mind-body problem remains to be solved (or dissolved).

In sum, the whole enterprise seems to be committed to suppressing broad thinkers, promoting academics that look more like corporate managers, PR mavericks and professional fund-raisers and less like scholars, who are asked to inhibit their interest in philosophy, and to cast suspicion on their fertile imagination. Dogma and habit are inhibiting free inquiry.

It is as if science as a whole is becoming less scientific.

In the face of this milieu of factors, in this series of online events we seek to reflect on what ‘the future scientist’ may look like. This is an ambitious exercise indeed, which goes beyond mere theoretical speculation. It is not unlikely that sooner than we think current science will be unrecognizable to most of us. The consequences for humanity writ large, not just for scientists themselves, are pressing.

The question at stake is whether by ‘future scientist’ we mean what scientists in the future are all likely to look like, or what a future better scientist might look like. In our conversations we will engage more in prescribing than in predicting, that is, we might begin by describing where science is going (prediction) to then describe where we hope science might go (prescription). Attempting the art of ‘dia-logos,’ we hope to express a creative voice that will enlighten the way of a new science in the twenty-first century.

The series will be direct conversations, that is, no formal presentation of the invited speaker but a kind of ‘thinking aloud’ in the mode of a dialogue between each guest and Àlex Gómez-Marín as the conversation host. The idea is to engage critically with various aspects of ‘the future scientist’ in a lively and spontaneous format for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, followed by comments and questions from the audience. Each conversation will take place virtually, on a Wednesday each month.

The invited speakers to The Future Scientist series are chosen not just as great interlocutors to discuss these issues, but also as exemplars and hints of what ‘the future scientist’ may actually look like here and now.

Portrayals of Love in Literature and Culture
2022-05-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Buy the recording

Portrayals of Love in Literature and Culture with John Briggs€10,00

Shop now

Portrayals of Love in Literature and Culture

with John Briggs

Saturday May 14, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

‘Love makes the world go round,’ according to a song from the Broadway musical Carnival. Certainly the theme of love stands out as a central force motivating poetry, fiction, film, and popular culture.

This session will explore selected familiar works of literature and popular culture in order to consider what clues these they contain to the implicit meanings of love that haunt us. What secret does the song suggest when it tells us:

Love makes the world go ‘roundLove makes the world go ‘roundSomebody soon will love youIf no one loves you now

In the 1960s people were advised to make love not war. Still, why is it that war makes for the best romantic love stories? Do our literary and popular portrayals of love provide insights into the tangled thickets of love where narcissism, domination, betrayal, disillusion and conflict accompany expressions of infinite tenderness and care?

Types of love portrayed in this sessionRomantic and Erotic LoveLove of Friends, FamilyLove and the Innocence of ChildhoodLove of God and Country, Cosmos, Knowledge and Other AbstractionsLove of Life, Love of Earth

The feelings of love expressed in literature from the Native American context will provide a contrast to the feelings and ideas of love for those of us raised in anthropocentric (human-centered) cultures.

Fred Rogers, host of the public television children’s show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood articulated the vital importance of love to children, as you can see in these two YouTube clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtsLoA1nBDQ&list=TLPQMTQwMzIwMjJFAj-eQEew9A&index=3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIG5rroOv5I

Scientists have shown that without love a child becomes psychologically damaged and may even die. But love and death are woven together, so literature tells us.

Participants are urged to review several short YouTube clips from film versions of one of the most intense romantic love stories every written: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

An overview montage of the story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqwS3614J7Q

Dramatic moments

Cathy reflects on love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNmWXt-8J1U

Cathy remembering her childhood castle with Heathcliff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gbCsNzr-L8

Heathcliff reacting to Cathy’s death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nB84L4aIZo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofLC0be13Ks

Heathcliff reaching for the ghost of Cathy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABx-JZPSM10

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

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

Power of Love
2022-05-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Power of Love with Satish Kumar€10,00

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Power of Love

with Satish Kumar

Sunday May 15, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

As gravity holds the physical world together, love holds the metaphysical world together. Love permeates through all our activities and gives us a sense of joy, fulfilment and contentment. Satish Kumar will speak about personal love, love of people, love of nature; love at all levels.

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Peace-pilgrim, life-long activist and former monk, Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. Aged 9, Satish renounced the world and joined the wandering Jain monks. Inspired by Gandhi, he decided at 18 that he could achieve more back in the world and soon undertook a peace-pilgrimage, walking without money from India to America in the name of nuclear disarmament. Now in his 80s, Satish has devoted his life to campaigning for ecological regeneration, social justice and spiritual fulfilment.

Satish founded Schumacher College as well as The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity that seeks a just future for all. To join Satish in protecting people and planet, become a member of Resurgence (with 20% off), entitling you to this charity’s change-making magazine, Resurgence & Ecologist.

Satish appears regularly on podcasts, radio and television shows. He has been interviewed by Richard Dawkins, Russell Brand and Annie Lennox, appearing as a guest on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Thought for the Day and Midweek. Satish presented an episode of BBC2’s Natural World documentary series, which was watched by 3.6 million people. An acclaimed international speaker and author, Satish’s autobiography sold over 50,000 copies, inspiring change around the world.

Parenting as a Journey Towards Awakening
2022-05-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Parenting as a Journey Towards Awakening with Ramona Rolle-Berg and Renée Rolle-Whatley€10,00

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Parenting as a Journey Towards Awakening

Exploring Self-growth through the Hidden Guidance of the Heart

with Ramona Rolle-Berg and Renée Rolle-Whatley

Saturday May 21, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

A well-known wisdom teaching from de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince mirrors what Vedic rishis, Sufi and Christian mystics alike have imparted for millennia: ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.’

How then do we perceive this unseen field of potential-filled guidance? And how, once aware of it, can we engage with it in a conscious and coherent way? That’s what researcher-clinicians and integrative medicine practitioners Ramona Rolle-Berg, Ph.D. and her sister, Renée Rolle-Whatley, Ph.D. will discuss using the results of their published and ongoing research about parental love.

Rolle-Berg and Rolle-Whatley suggest that experiencing parenting over time may eventually reveal the existence of a fundamental invisible awareness— a ubiquitous orthogenetic vibration acting upon humanity—guiding individuals towards heart-centered evolution.

The daily choices we make direct our lives. Choosing to actively parent is one such choice. As parents, we become more devoted, more loyal, and more humble. We transformation. Through the vehicle of active parenting, Rolle-Berg and Rolle-Whatley propose that egocentric perceptions give way. Over time, integration of new parenting behaviors evolves perceptions and ultimately, our heart’s capacity to love unconditionally.

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Ramona Rolle-Berg, Ph.D. describes herself as an intuitive, an integrative medicine practitioner-clinician, and scholar. Her clinical approach is based on healing through trust and compassion. With the aid of energetic and evidenced-based healing modalities, she promotes client-realized self-awareness growth and a reclaiming of self. As a scholar, she is focused on using CAQDAS (computer-assisted qualitative data analysis systems) to conceptually reveal deeper process-based relationships, grounded in data, exemplified by parental behaviors. Her original published research presented devotion as a process of change used by parents of Autistic children to both strengthen self-induced physical/psychological limitations and to reclaim life. She has a BS & MS in Engineering and PHD in Mind-Body medicine. With her sister, her current research explores how loyalty, devotion & humility interact to provide parents with life experiences that promote integration to higher levels of consciousness via non-judgmental compassion.

Renée Rolle-Whatley, Ph.D. takes a two-prong approach to health and wellness: as a practitioner-clinician, she provides intuitive guidance and evidence-based energetic-and integrative-modality supports for clients seeking mind-body-spirit healing and health care around chronic and/or long-term physical and emotional health challenges. As a scholar she is focused on revealing the theoretical concepts and behavioral processes between physical and non-physical vibratory experiences of love through study of the lived experiences of parents that actively parent. Her original published research presented relational loyalty as an underlying process adopted by parents towards individuated growth in self-acceptance and self-awareness. She has a BS & MS in Engineering and PHD in Mind-Body medicine. With her sister, her current work explores the intersection of self-awareness and self-acceptance as revealed thru the impact of non-judgmental compassion.

Love In A Time of Crisis
2022-05-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Love in a Time of Crisis with Mark Vernon€10,00

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Love In A Time of Crisis

with Mark Vernon

Sunday May 22, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Love is often used in nebulous or ill-defined ways, which means that its nuanced perceptions and mature forms can be hard to grasp. The need for a deeper awareness of love becomes particularly acute in times of crisis, though times of crisis also offer moments to understand love move fully. In this talk, Mark Vernon will explore the links between love and personal development, different types of power, its relationship with freedom and mind, as well as erotic yearning, suffering and loss, and so also to the knowledge of the ways in which reality itself is shaped by love.

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. Mark’s latest book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Angelico Press, 2021. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Love Across Traditions
2022-05-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Love Across Traditions with Jane Clark and Mark Vernon€10,00

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Love Across Traditions

with Jane Clark and Mark Vernon

Saturday May 28, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

It is often noted that the ancient Greeks had an advantage in possessing several words for love. Eros, philia, agape and others allowed them to be nuanced about love and navigate its differences. So is there benefit in considering how love has been understood in different wisdom traditions, too? This conversation will explore how love has been understood in various faith contexts and across time, looking at Christian, Sufi, Platonic and other insights. The aim will be to tease out similarities and differences so as to deepen and refresh the felt presence of love in our lives.

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Jane Clark is a teacher and independent researcher who lives in Oxford. She has been studying the Islamic mystical tradition for more than forty years and has given many lectures and courses both in the UK and internationally for organisations such as The Beshara Trust, Oxford University Department for Continuous Education and Temenos Academy. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society, and also the editor of Beshara Magazine, in which capacity she is able to pursue her particular interest in the relevance of the spiritual traditions to contemporary life. Jane originally studied science, and first came across David Bohm’s ideas during her PhD studies when she was working on magnetism. She went on to do a series of dialogues with him in London in the 1980s/90s, and interviewed him for Beshara Magazine https://besharamagazine.org/metaphysics-spirituality/david-bohm-wholeness-timelessness-and-unfolding-meaning/. She also did a piece on Infinite Potential with Paul Howard https://besharamagazine.org/metaphysics-spirituality/david-bohm-infinite-potential-paul-howard/

Mark Vernon is a writer and psychotherapist. He contributes to and presents programmes on the radio, as well as writing for the national and religious press, and online publications. He also podcasts, in particular The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues with Rupert Sheldrake, gives talks and leads workshops. He has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy, and other degrees in physics and in theology, having studied at Durham, Oxford and Warwick universities. He is the author of several books, including A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness which in part explores the work of Owen Barfield. He used to be an Anglican priest and lives in London, UK. He is working on the notion of spiritual intelligence with the research group, Perspectiva. Mark’s latest book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Angelico Press, 2021. For more information see www.markvernon.com.

Strangers on the Threshold: Love, Wisdom, and the Task of Philosophy
2022-05-29 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Strangers in the Threshold: Love, Wisdom, and the Task of Philosophy with Will Buckingham€10,00

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Strangers on the Threshold: Love, Wisdom, and the Task of Philosophy

with Will Buckingham

Sunday May 29, 20229:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

What is philosophy? Why do we philosophise? And why, in a time of crisis, does philosophy matter?A familiar answer might be that philosophy is the love of wisdom, that we philosophise out of a hunger for wisdom, and that this deep need for wisdom is all the greater when we navigate through times of crisis. But for the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, this gets things back to front. Philosophy, Levinas writes, is not the love of wisdom. It is, instead, the wisdom of love in the service of love. Why do we philosophise? Why do we awaken to philosophical questions? Levinas’s answer is clear: we philosophise, or awaken to love’s wisdom, because we are called to do so by another – by the proximity of a stranger on the threshold, by someone who is not us.In a time of crisis, the temptation is often to withdraw, to fall back on our own resources, or to batten down the hatches. But in this talk, writer and philosopher Will Buckingham will explore how Levinas sets out a more challenging, and more fruitful, path. Weaving together philosophy and storytelling, he will argue that in a time of crisis, the greatest philosophical demand may be this: to open up the door.

To see the Full Love in a Time of Crisis Program

Will Buckingham is a writer from the UK with a PhD in philosophy and an MA in anthropology. He has previously been associate professor of writing and creativity at De Montfort University, Leicester, and visiting associate professor in the School of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University. He now works as a freelance writer, and is on the visiting faculty at Parami University, Myanmar. His most recent book is Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World (Granta 2021). https://www.willbuckingham.com

Re-Visioning Consciousness
2022-06-05 18:00 - 2022-06-12 14:00
Dates: June 5 – 12, 2022

Speakers: Harald Atmanspacher, Gary Lachman, Iain McGilchrist, John Pickering, William Seager, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, Angelita Valencia Borbon and Beverley Zabriskie. Guests Federico Faggin and Roberto Miller

Venue: Pari, Italy

Price: 1700.00 euros (This fee includes 7-night stay in private accommodation, all meals and sessions and workshops.)

About the Event:

When we move beyond the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ by recognizing the primacy of consciousness, a vast panorama of questions opens up. How do we understand matter, time and space, individual consciousness, birth and death, free will? Are all things alive and conscious in some sense?

Join us at the Pari Center and let us explore together the tip of the iceberg of these challenges, perhaps the closest that philosophical enquiry comes to our existential questions and emotional involvement.

We are delighted and honoured to announce that Federico Faggin, inventor of the microprocessor and delver into the science of consciousness, will be with us in Pari for this event. We will also be hosting Roberto Miller the filmmaker of the documentary The Four Lives of Federico Faggin. Following a screening of the film, there will be a panel discussion with Federico and other presenters and then an open discussion and Q&A with all participants of ‘Re-visioning Consciousness.’

This will be an informal meeting with presentations by experts followed by roundtable discussions. The cost of the event is 1700.00 euros. The event fee includes a 7-night stay in private accommodation and all meals. It also includes activities, materials, sessions and workshops. The event starts on Sunday June 5 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Sunday June 12 after lunch.

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.

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

Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.Schrödinger

When we move beyond the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ by abandoning the tacit premises of materialism and physicalism, a vast panorama of questions opens up.

Is consciousness indeed, as Schrödinger suggests above, the primal experience, the elementary primary fact all our philosophy and all our science are built upon?

Does consciousness arise in the world, according to the physicalist view (e.g., when a sufficiently complex nervous system evolves), or does the world arise in consciousness? And, if the latter is the case, how does that happen? If the world is a dream arising in consciousness, why does it arise? And why is the dream structured as it is, why is it a cosmos, not a chaos?

Matter and spacetime appear to have their own order, their own laws that govern our experience. Are those laws intrinsic to consciousness? Are they in turn a creation of consciousness?

Another possible approach is that of pantheism. In this perspective the world exists and consciousness exists, they are both primary. But the world is infused with consciousness, everything is conscious to some degree, from the most elementary (say, an elementary particle) to the cosmic scale of the universe itself.

If that is so, why are we not aware of it? The reason might be that we recognize consciousness only when it is close enough to our own level. I am aware of the consciousness of my dogs and cats, but the consciousness of an atom and that of a solar system both elude me, they are too different.

Or you might say matter and consciousness are just two sides of one coin. Dual aspect monism suggests that mind and matter are the dual manifestation of one substance, which is perceived from the inside (in the first person) as consciousness, from the outside (in the third person) as things.

In Re-Visioning Consciousness, we will explore together the tip of the iceberg of these profound questions, perhaps the closest philosophical enquiry comes to our existential and emotional involvement.

Presentations:

Does “Consciousness” Exist? with Harald Atmanspacher

Awakening Conciencia and The Path With Heart with Angelita Valencia Borbon

Dreaming Ahead of Time with Gary Lachman

Value and Purpose with Dr. Iain McGilchrist

Why Re-vision Consciousness? with John Pickering

The Problem of Consciousness in Philosophy, Or What’s All the Fuss About?  with William Seager

Inside Out and Outside In with Beverley Zabriskie

The Four Lives of Federico Faggin – Screening of the Film followed by Roundtable with the filmmaker Roberto Miller, Federico Faggin and Presenters from this event

Information:

For additional information about the event, you can check the PDF.

For additional information about The Pari Center, you can check the PDF.

For Terms and Conditions, you can check the PDF.
