The Pari Center

The Use of Slime Molds in Promoting Science for and by the People
2023-05-06 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
The Use of Slime Molds in Promoting Science for and by the People

with Dr. Audrey Dussutour

Saturday May 6, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

Slime molds are remarkable single cell organisms that belong to the Amoebozoa, a kingdom usually considered to be a sister group to fungi and animals. Slime molds are model organisms to study problem-solving in aneural biological systems. Although they lack the complex hardware of a true brain, they live in a complex ecological niche and face the same decision-making challenges that animals are faced with: they must feed, mate and adapt to changing conditions. Hence, in the first part of my talk, I will present various examples of problem-solving in slime molds. Surprisingly, slime moulds are also model organisms to conduct citizen science projects. They are easy to culture, safe, nontoxic and hypoallergenic living organisms. Thus, in the second part of my talk, I will demonstrate how slime molds can be used to 1) increase the public’s understanding of science and research, 2) raise awareness about societal challenges and 3) develop critical thinking.

To see the Full Incredible Minds program

Audrey Dussutour, a French born ethologist, is a CNRS Senior Researcher at the Research centre on Animal Cognition in Toulouse (Paul Sabatier University, France). She studies collective behavior and cognition, working with ant colonies and slime molds. Her topics of interest include decision-making, learning and integrative nutrition. She has made important contributions to these fields through meticulous behavioral experiments. In 2021, Audrey was awarded a Medal by the CNRS and given the French Order of Merit by the President of the French Republic, for her involvement in outreach activities. An example of her outreach efforts includes a citizen science project involving 350 000 schoolchildren with the aim to engage kids in science. Astronaut Thomas Pesquet onboard the ISS and schools were asked to run the same experiment to observe if slime molds behave differently in microgravity.

Mind and Life in the Cosmos
2023-05-07 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Mind and Life in the Cosmos

with Dr. Matthew David Segall

Sunday May 7, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

Contemporary physical cosmology describes a universe wherein the emergence of biological organisms can only be a fluke accident. Worse, the very scientific minds who claim to have discovered the laws of physics are forced to explain away their own conscious intelligence as an anomaly so vanishingly improbable in an otherwise dead, dumb cosmos that it requires the invention of an infinite number of unobservable multiverses to explain it (or rather, to explain it away). This talk will explore an alternative but no less scientifically compatible cosmology that roots mind and life in cosmogenesis from the get go. Such an alternative allows us to coherently understand how our own type of human consciousness—which seems so alien to the universe described by materialism—is in fact just as natural as radiating stars and blooming flowers.

To see the Full Incredible Minds program

Matthew David Segall, PhD, is a transdisciplinary researcher, author, and teacher applying process philosophy across the natural and social sciences, including the study of consciousness. He is a faculty member in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness graduate program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. He is the author of several books including Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (2021) and Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead (2023). Follow his work at Footnotes2Plato.com

Never Land: Culture, Agriculture and the Striving after Belonging
2023-05-12 00:00 - 2023-05-15 23:59 | Pari, Italy
Stephen Jenkinson

Dates: May 12 – 15, 2023

Curated and Chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 725.00 euros

which includes:

a 3-night stay in private accommodation;

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

the water, wine, and coffee provided with meals;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Friday May 12 at 16:00 and ends on Monday May 15 after lunch.

The Concept

People half our age will someday soon confront us with two questions: when you were my age, did you know what was happening (or what could happen)? And so, what did you do?

The most bearable answer: we had no idea. The state of the world would then seem more tolerable if failure by naive ignorance was actually the case. But was it? If it wasn’t, this would entail a kind of intolerable inheritance. We’d quickly become the ancestral monsters no one would claim as their own. It’ll be a psychic DNA whose indelible stain won’t be amenable to cosmetic fixes.

We are children of strange times. Our birthmarks are both troubled and troubling. We do not, most of us, belong. We inhabit, we own, instead. Being in the world but not of it: that was once a foundation of Western spirituality. It will end up being a stain by which we will be held in disrepute. Our way with the land entrusted to us bears the marks of our unbelonging. Given the fact that we don’t have a long time here, we should proceed with an undesperate degree of urgency in the matter of land stewardship. There is a fine decision to be made: we bear the mark of unbelonging either as an affliction or as an assignment. Those coming to this event may have, voluntarily or not, opted for the latter.

In this gathering —employing a format, approach, and content unprecedented at the Pari Center— we will raise these questions until they attain deliberateness and intention. We will work on inheritance, prejudice, spirit work, grief and wisdom. We will work with what is difficult to recognize and hard to live with.

The Teacher

Stephen Jenkinson is a poet of non-negotiable truths, a whisperer of the unspeakable.

Co-founder of the Orphan Wisdom school in Canada, he is known as “griefwalker” in the “death trade”, due to his insistence on avoiding the pervasive absurdity of the current cultural imperative to “die not dying”. He has also written books about elderhood and money and its corollary in the soul, about the phenomenology of the pandemic. Relentlessly teaching about the very same untold reality, he never says the same thing twice. His use of speech is masterfully and deliberately conjuring and sacramental. Democratizing whatever wisdom has come to him, he means to keep nothing to himself.

In order to midwife his new book on culture and agriculture, Stephen will do a residency at the Pari Center. The residency will culminate with a four-day teaching event, when he will work his book out loud with participants.

The themes of the work are three-fold: our debt to the young and their obligation to life, plant/animal domestication, and the advent of the iron age and its contemporary edge, the barbed wire fence, and the obscenity of surplus. Along the way the session will consider the strange contradictory demand to return back to that land was never known by younger generations, searching a kind of ab-solution, a kind of neolithic restoration whose causes and consequences remain unexamined. Second, the rather unavoidable psychic and poetic contradictions of animal domestication in farms. Third, the strange sense of victory contemporary Western cultures revel in as estrangement from the natural order deepens and we begin flirt with our demise.

Stephen’s allegations are a dark pool of light – a harsh blessing that calls for reckoning in times of trouble.

The Participants

People will be challenged at a level typically unwelcome in gatherings covertly designed to find self-avowal.

This is how Stephen’s workshops and lectures work: We will address our limits, frailties, and endings. A mostly troubling radicalized hospitality will be provided. Seeking commitment rather than interest, people will be vehemently minded. Instead of reaffirming an inarticulate longing that rests on associations devoid of grounding, we will seek to do something that is real, that can be lived, and that it is consequential.

Stephen will dissolve the notion of an audience. His work aspires to be seminal, not a display or summary of contents. He will summon something like a learning ceremony, not entertainment. The criteria for inclusion is suspended. Participants should consider themselves the willing casualties of a sheer willingness to entertain subversion beyond decoration.

If you are up for something that never happened before, please register.

The Format

It is perhaps appropriate that such attempt at a cultural redemption be explored in Pari. A small group of participants will gather in the small medieval village at the heart of Tuscany, starting on a Friday evening, and departing on Monday after lunch.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means 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.

Coda

Being human and being humane are different things.

In the face of culture failure, we will practice a method of inquiry that can reveal (and perhaps heal) our grief illiteracy and amnesia of ancestry beyond the pernicious triad of cope, hope, and dope.

We shall acknowledge our own ectopic ideas and cultural homelessness. Being radically contingent upon each generation and the troubles of their times, wisdom is actually “too indigenous” and never indigenous-enough.

Thus, this is not going to be an easy encounter. The so-called homo part of the sapiens etymologically stems from humus, meaning earth, ground, soil, and ultimately, dirt. Celebrating Leonard Cohen’s genius verse, “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with powdered gold. Dirt & grief are one portal for our very own “golden repair”.During this event we will be screening in the main piazza in Pari:

Griefwalker is a National Film Board of Canada feature documentary film, directed by Tim Wilson. It is a lyrical, poetic portrait of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people. The talk will be in English. Italian subtitles are made by Giulia Sbernini, who will also be in attendance.

When? Saturday, May 13, 2023 (8:30pm – 10:30pm followed by book signing)

ABOUT GRIEFWALKER ~ Filmed over a twelve year period, Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counselling sessions with dying people and their families, and in meditative and often frank exchanges with the film’s director while paddling a birch bark canoe about the origins and consequences of his ideas for how we live and die. This extraordinary film portrait reveals some of the cultural and spiritual roots that continue to shape his death and dying ideas and teachings.

Dying: the great blindspot in a culture awash in information, the great arbiter in a culture adamant about extending the power of choice across all of our endeavours. Griefwalker is a feature length National Film Board of Canada documentary of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with and on behalf of dying people, directed by Tim Wilson. It is also a profound mandate for creating sanity around the heart breaking and often toxic death fears and practices that gather at our dying time now.

Jenkinson asks,”What does it take to fall in love with being alive?”, and the answer that he offers, both unwelcome and vitally necessary, is, “Being willing to see the end of what you love.”

Video Clip 1

Video Clip 2

Video Clip 3

Video Clip 4

Available in DVD format in English with French subtitles, or watch online in English, Spanish and Hebrew versions. Note About the Watch Online Version: You can watch the online streaming version on any desktop, tablet or mobile device that supports video while connected to a high-speed internet connection.

Information

Terms and Conditions – the pdf

Additional Information about The Pari Center – the pdf

Griefwalker ~ Film Screening & Talk ~ Pari, Italy
2023-05-13 20:30 - 22:30 | Pari, Italy
Join Stephen Jenkinson for a film screening and live conversation.

Griefwalker is a National Film Board of Canada feature documentary film, directed by Tim Wilson. It is a lyrical, poetic portrait of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people. The talk will be in English. Italian subtitles are made by Giulia Sbernini, who will also be in attendance.

When? Saturday, May 13, 2023 (8:30pm-10:30pm followed by book signing)

Where? Pari, Italy

ABOUT GRIEFWALKER ~ Filmed over a twelve year period, Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counselling sessions with dying people and their families, and in meditative and often frank exchanges with the film’s director while paddling a birch bark canoe about the origins and consequences of his ideas for how we live and die. This extraordinary film portrait reveals some of the cultural and spiritual roots that continue to shape his death and dying ideas and teachings.

Dying: the great blindspot in a culture awash in information, the great arbiter in a culture adamant about extending the power of choice across all of our endeavours. Griefwalker is a feature length National Film Board of Canada documentary of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with and on behalf of dying people, directed by Tim Wilson. It is also a profound mandate for creating sanity around the heart breaking and often toxic death fears and practices that gather at our dying time now.

Jenkinson asks,”What does it take to fall in love with being alive?”, and the answer that he offers, both unwelcome and vitally necessary, is, “Being willing to see the end of what you love.”

Video Clip 1

Video Clip 2

Video Clip 3

Video Clip 4

Available in DVD format in English with French subtitles, or watch online in English, Spanish and Hebrew versions. Note About the Watch Online Version: You can watch the online streaming version on any desktop, tablet or mobile device that supports video while connected to a high-speed internet connection.

MORE ABOUT STEPHEN JENKINSON ~ culture activist, worker, author, founder of The Orphan Wisdom School ~ Jenkinson teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded the school with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010, convening semi-annually in Deacon, Ontario, and in northern Europe.He has Master’s degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work).

He is the author of Reckoning (co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson (2022), A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015 and translated into Hebrew and Turkish), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Homecoming – The Haiku Sessions (Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002). He was a contributing author to Palliative Care – Core Skills and Clinical Competencies (2007).Stephen Jenkinson is also the subject of the feature length documentary film Griefwalker (National Film Board of Canada, 2008, dir. Tim Wilson and translated into five languages), a portrait of his work with dying people, and Lost Nation Road, a shorter documentary on the crafting of the Nights of Grief and Mystery tours (2019, dir. Ian Mackenzie). Read more about Stephen at orphanwisdom.com/about

The Future Human - A Conversation with Graham Hancock
2023-05-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3f5Hp9111c

A Conversation between Graham Hancock and Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín

Tuesday May 239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The fifth conversation in this series will be on Tuesday May 23, 2023 with Graham Hancock. Our conversation will orbit around “humanity’s ancient past”.

Graham Hancock is the writer and presenter of the 2022 hit Netflix documentary TV series Ancient Apocalypse and the author of the major international non-fiction bestsellers The Sign and the Seal (1992), Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), The Message of the Sphinx (1996), Heaven’s Mirror (1998), Underworld (2002), Supernatural (2005), Magicians of the Gods (2015), and America Before (2019), and also of the epic adventure novels Entangled and War God (written between 2006 and 2014, both have psychedelic sub-themes). His books have sold more than seven million copies worldwide and have been translated into thirty languages. His public lectures, radio and TV appearances, including several major TV series, as well as his strong presence on the internet, have put his ideas before audiences of tens of millions. He has become recognised as an unconventional thinker who raises resonant questions about humanity’s past and about our present predicament. In January 2023 Hancock was voted No 23 in the Watkins list of “The 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People”.

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

The Future Human - A Conversation with Dr. Merlin Sheldrake
2023-05-24 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
A Conversation between Dr. Merlin Sheldrake and Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday May 249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The fifth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday May 24, 2023 with Dr. Merlin Sheldrake. Our conversation will orbit around “the entangled lives of fauna, flora and funga”.

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation.

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

At the Edges of Consciousness
2023-06-06 00:00 - 2023-06-13 23:59 | Pari, Italy
At the Edges of Consciousness

Dates: June 6 – 13, 2023

Speakers: Allan Leslie Combs, Etzel Cardeña, Paul Grof, Sarah Janes, Jeffrey Kripal, Roderick Main, Dean Radin (via zoom), Tanya Sacramento, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes.

Curated and Chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 1975.00 euros

which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

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

the water, wine, and coffee provided with meals;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Tuesday June 6 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Tuesday June 13 after lunch.

About the Event:

Join us at the Pari Center with world-renowned scholars as we deepen our insights into the ‘exceptional’ experiences we have all encountered.

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

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

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

Through presentations and informal discussions in a convivial atmosphere you will learn about and have opportunities to discuss the insights and research findings of world-renowned experts on what are called ‘exceptional’ experiences.

The subject fits under the umbrella of consciousness research, which is currently enjoying a huge renaissance in terms of general interest and academic momentum.

The study of consciousness requires that we take seriously the many flavors of human experience, even those—ranging from psychedelics and lucid dreaming to synchronicities, near death experiences and mystical phenomena—that could be said to enter through the ‘backdoors of perception.’ Such experiences have until now been largely avoided by academia and left to lie beyond the border of what is typically explored scientifically and discussed in public.

However, now it is more openly being asked whether such experiences can actually inform—and even transform—not just neuroscience and fundamental physics but also our very understanding of the nature of reality and our collective and individual place in the world.

The scientific study of consciousness is now acknowledging that it has reached a stage where such parcels of human subjectivity have to be taken seriously. In fact, it is playing an important role in the recognition that such ‘backdoors of perception’ have the potential to profoundly impact our current state of knowledge in many fields.

We at the Pari Center seek to bring together world-renowned experts from a variety of disciplines to meet together in person and deepen our insights on the workings and bases of such experiences, while also exploring creative and rigorous frameworks to integrate such a constellation into a coherent understanding. You are cordially invited to join us.

Presentations

The Evolutionary Ascent of ConsciousnessAllan Leslie Combs

A Review of the Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological PhenomenaEtzel Cardeña

Local and Non-local Consciousness ComponentsPaul Grof

Divine Dreams: The History and Culture of the Dream as Medicine in the Western Esoteric TraditionSarah Janes

Archives of the Impossible: The Further Reaches of the Imagination and the Future HumanJeffery Kripal

The Hermeneutics of Exceptional ExperiencesRoderick Main

Dean Radin

The Subtle Art of Mediumship: Effectively Communicating with ConsciousnessTanya Sacramento

Metaphysics, Mysticism, and Psychedelic ResearchPeter Sjöstedt-Hughes

Information

Additional Information about the event – the pdf

Additional Information about the Pari Center – the pdf

Terms and Conditions – the pdf

Gentle Action: A Gathering of Common Experience
2023-06-14 00:00 - 2023-06-20 23:59 | Pari, Italy
Gentle Action: A Gathering of Common Experience

Dates: June 14 – 20, 2023

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 850 euros

which includes:

a 6-night stay in private accommodation;

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

the water, wine, and coffee provided with meals;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Wednesday June 14 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Tuesday June 20 after breakfast.

“The world is a sacred vessel and cannot be controlled. If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it…

Can you see things as they are, without trying to control them?

Can you let them go theirown way while remaining centered?”

Lao Tse, Dao De Jing #29(Mitchell & MacDonald Combined)

Join us for a week of living in the moment, for the moment, surrounded by the peaceful hills of the Tuscan landscape in Pari. With its beautiful palazzo, rustic bar, and numerous quiet places, the medieval village of Pari serves as an alchemical vessel for growth and personal transformation.

“The idea of bringing people in. They could be business people, they could be environmentalists, whatever, and bringing them in without any sort of fixed program, without them giving talks and powerpoint presentations. Just to sit in the room and see what emerges, because they are in a container, it’s in an alchemical vessel which allows something transformative to take place. So that was the idea of Pari as a container.”David Peat w/ Jena Axelrod in The Absurdity of Certainty.

Throughout the week you will have plenty of opportunities to cultivate connections with Nature, others, and — perhaps most importantly — yourself. Explore the medieval village and its surroundings, or take in the beauty of the landscape from Pari’s expansive palazzo. Dialogue with others in a supportive atmosphere and experience what it feels like to have others truly listen to your unique perspectives and experiences from a place of genuine interest and curiosity. Set aside thoughts of forcing or striving and experience how insights and interconnections naturally bubble up during dialogue.

Become more responsive and less reactive by learning to actively listen, not only to others but also to yourself. As F. David Peat, one of the founders of the Pari Center states in his autobiography, Pathways of Chance:

“Much depends upon how we react when the unexpected occurs and a new door temporarily opens. Do we compensate as best we can and attempt to remain on our own predetermined track, or do we ask ‘What is life trying to tell me? In what direction could this new possibility take me? Is it worth suspending what I am doing at the moment to explore something new?”1

Somewhat paradoxically, setting aside striving and engaging in gentle action often gives rise to the types of benefits that many people often seek, but seldom find in a sustainable form. Along with feelings of openness, trust, joy, and a childlike sense of wonder, gentle action often gives rise to a deeper sense of engagement with yourself, others, and the Universe.

1. Pathways of Chance, pp. 1-2.

Our Story (and an invitation) Several years ago, a small group of us were sitting outside the bar in Pari, Italy when the idea came up to bring a group of very open-minded people together for a gathering without any agenda, topic, intention, or specific purpose. After leaving Pari, we continued to meet monthly through an online Zoom dialogue, where our small group of three individuals gradually grew in a most organic manner. More than a year of online meetings led to our first “Gentle Action Gathering” back at Pari in September of 2022. Our original group of Jena, Manfred, and Tom, who hail from New York, Germany, and Ireland were joined by several additional members of our online community. Stefan, Rose, and Todd, traveled from Sweden, Germany/Canada, and Alaska to finally meet everyone in person. Two of our members, Lisa, from Italy, and Michael, from Connecticut, were unable to meet in person, but are quite active in our online meetings and the preparations for our gathering in June of 2023. Over the course of time, we have come to discover that we have much to share with one another due to, rather than despite, our differing backgrounds. And yet, we have also found that we also have much in common. Perhaps most importantly, we all share a genuine interest in one another’s perspectives on the world, quite reminiscent of Rumi’s quote: “Out beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

This June we have chosen to meet once again in Pari, Italy. This medieval village, nestled in the the Tuscan landscape, provides the perfect backdrop for new insights and explorations. During our “Gentle Action Gatherings”, participants are largely free to roam around as they please. Meet in the newly renovated Palazzo, take part in a yoga class, explore the area’s hot springs, or just sit down to have an espresso at the charming and peaceful square. Set aside your daily routine and begin to reconnect with your own innermost nature by setting aside the expectations of the outer world. Communicating and interacting in the moment, for the moment has enabled each of us to interact with ourselves, each other, and the world at large in a much more playful manner. Over time, we have noticed that an almost childlike curiosity tends to emerge, unforced and unbidden “beyond the ideas of right and wrong” allowing us to experience the innate beauty of the present moment and our interactions. More than anything, our gatherings have given us a deep sense of connection and friendships that endure beyond the limits of time and space. This June we get to come home again.

It would be wonderful if you could join us, Jena, Lisa, Manfred, Michael, Rose, Stefan, Todd, & Tom

Information

Additional Information about the event – the pdf

Community Activities – the pdf

Terms and Conditions – the pdf

Additional Information about The Pari Center – the pdf

East and West Philosophy in Dialogue
2023-06-20 00:00 - 2023-06-25 23:59 | Pari, Italy
East and West Philosophy in Dialogue – From Worldview to Sustainable Order

Commencing at the Pari Center 20-25 June 2023 and concluding at the Vatican 27-28 June 2023.

A gathering of world leading philosophers to explore how traditionally Eastern emphases on holism may inform the global commons.

Engendering a new chapter in East and West communication especially in relation to pressing global challenges.

The Pari Center is pleased to host the June 2023 symposium East and West Philosophy in Dialogue—From Worldview to Sustainable Order. At the eight-day symposium, leading philosophers from the East and the West will gather to explore how traditionally Eastern emphases on holism may inform the global commons. The symposium will convene in Pari at the Pari Center and conclude in Rome at the Vatican with two days of dialogue on the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Some of the pertinent questions to be addressed include:

How does Eastern holism relate to the modern Western philosophical schools of Continental Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, and Process Philosophy?

Whether and to what extent a holistic vision also can be found in the West?

Whether the diverse philosophical paths may complement each other and to what extent a Perennial Philosophy exists?

How does worldview relate to global sustainability?

How does worldview relate to local and global order?

Through substantive discussions, the Symposium hopes to engender a new chapter in East and West communication, especially insofar as it relates to pressing global challenges.

The Future Human - A Conversation with Jennifer Banks
2023-06-28 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJrhQT8ATjY

A Conversation between Jennifer Banks and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday June 289:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The sixth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday June 28, 2023 with Jennifer Banks. Our conversation will orbit around “natality, birth, and new beginnings”.

Jennifer Banks is the author of Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, published in May 2023 by W.W. Norton and selected as a May Must-Read title by the Next Big Idea Club. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Lithub, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Current, Comment, Big Think, The Boston Review, The Best American Poetry, and more. A graduate of Cornell University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is Senior Executive Editor at Yale University Press where she has acquired books on literature, religion, and philosophy since 2007. She has also worked at International Creative Management, the Continuum International Publishing Group, and Harvard University Press.

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

The Future Human - A Conversation with Edi Bilimoria
2023-07-12 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

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

A Conversation between Edi Bilimoria and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday July 129:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The seventh conversation in this series will be on Wednesday July 12, 2023 with Edi Bilimoria. Our conversation will orbit around “consciousness and perennial philosophy”.

Edi Bilimoria (DPhil, FIMechE, FEI, FRSA).

Born in India and educated at the universities of London, Sussex and Oxford, Edi Bilimoria presents an unusual blend of experience in the fields of science, the arts and philosophy.

Professionally, Edi was a consultant engineer to the petrochemical, oil and gas, transport, and construction industries. He was Project Manager and Head of Design for major innovative projects such as the Channel Tunnel, London Underground systems, and offshore installations. He also worked in safety and environmental engineering and management for several Royal Navy projects, including the Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier and the fleet of River-class offshore patrol vessels. Edi’s Rolls-Royce funded doctoral research paper on gas turbine thermofluids was awarded the Thomas Lowe Gray Prize by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He has also received industry ‘recognition of achievement’ and ‘impact achievements’ awards for safety and environmental management of petrochemical complexes and defence projects.

A student of the perennial philosophy for over half a century, Edi has given courses and lectured extensively in the UK, and internationally in California, the Netherlands, India, and Australia. He has organized and chaired conferences in order to encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas in the fields of science, religion and practical philosophy. He worked as Education Manager for the Theosophical Society in Australia developing courses and study papers, researching, lecturing and organizing international conferences; as well as supervising the Research Library, National Media Library, National Members Lending Library and the development of the website.

Edi has published many informative articles and papers in the disciplines of science, engineering, and esoteric philosophy. In 2007, his book The Snake and the Rope was awarded the Book Prize by the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN). In 2023, this present work, consisting of four volumes, was awarded the SMN’s Grand Prize. Applauded by many, it is considered to be the most penetrating and all-embracing work on consciousness written in decades.

For many years Edi was a Board Director of the SMN. He now serves as a Trustee of the SMN and in an advisory capacity to both the Board and the SMN’s Galileo Commission, a project set up to find ways to expand science and open up public discourse on the subject.

Edi is also a Trustee and Council Member of the Francis Bacon Society.

An enthusiastic glider pilot for many years, Edi is a choral singer and a dedicated pianist of concert standard.

The outcome of Edi’s involvement in music and the perennial philosophy is a discernment of the higher laws governing all life and existence, at all levels, and the necessity of striving to live with integrity according to this realization.

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Beyond Bohm 2023
2023-07-16 17:59 - 2023-08-27 20:00 | Online
Beyond Bohm 2023: Part 1 – Changing Meaning / Changing Being

Beyond Bohm 2023: Part 2: Science and Philosophy

David Bohm has been described as one of the most significant and original thinkers of the twentieth century whose interests and influence extend well beyond the field of physics to include philosophy, psychology, language, religion, art, creativity, thought, and education. Underlying his innovative approach to these many different issues was the fundamental idea that beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicate order of undivided wholeness.

During July and August the Pari Center is offering a unique opportunity to hear and dialogue with those involved in the many aspects of David Bohm’s work and to discuss the implications of his ideas for the future. All sessions include audience participation in the form of Q&A and discussion.

Beyond Bohm 2023: Part 1 – Changing Meaning / Changing Being

Curated and Chaired by Lee Nichol

July 16 – 30, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

6-two-hour sessions

All sessions are live, and include Q & A, and all participants will receive the RECORDING.

Now in its third year, Beyond Bohm aims to use multiple aspects of David Bohm’s work as jumping-off points for ongoing inquiry and experiential probings. We are especially happy with this year’s offerings, and are honored to have more than 30 guest participants for Part 1 (July 16 – 30).

Our first weekend will open up significant new territory while exploring perennial questions regarding meaning, consciousness, dialogue, and the nature of experience. While organicism, panpsychism, and temporal flux are marbled throughout the work of David Bohm, further perspectives – particularly those of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead – are brought to bear in our opening session. The following day, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake brings his own unique perspective to some of these process-oriented questions, asking, “Is the Sun Conscious?”

Our second weekend puts forth multiple perspectives regarding Bohm’s proposals about holoflux and holomovement. These concepts – and what they imply – are foundational for any experiential sense of Bohm’s overall metaphysics. The various perspectives shared across two sessions draw from years of experimentation with the relevance of this aspect of Bohm’s work, within the actual movement of daily life.

Our third weekend is a bounty of dialogue. The group of ten women partaking in the Saturday session collectively bring hundreds of years of experience with various dialogical modes. The following day, Blackfoot elder Leroy Little Bear and multiple guests will once again share with us Leroy’s unique approach to dialogue, rooted in indigenous world views and sensibilities.

Program of Event

Sunday July 16Bohm/Bergson/Whitehead: Life as Movementwith Àlex Gómez-Marin, Lee Nichol, Hester Reeve

Monday July 17Is the Sun Conscious?with Rupert Sheldrake

Saturday July 22Holoflux: The Qualitative Infinity of Naturewith Lee Nichol, Cheryl Brant, Aja Bulla Zamastil

Sunday July 23Holoflux: Codexwith Richard Burg, Eva Casey, Sky Hoorne, Maria Hvidbak, Beth Macy, Hester Reeve, Aja Bulla Zamastil

Saturday July 29The Heart of DialogueDialogue with Jessica Ball, Trine-Line Biong, Eva Casey, Anna Factor, Sally Jeffery, Beth Macy, Marie-Eve Marchand, Melissa Nelson, Marjorie Parker, Susanna Ruebsaat

Sunday July 30The Hidden Science: What Western Science Metrics Don’t Know – And Can’t KnowIndigenous Dialogue with Leroy Little Bear and Jeannette Armstrong, Greg Cajete, Marie-Eve Marchant, Kent Monkman, Melissa Nelson, Lee Nichol

Beyond Bohm 2023: Part 2 -Science and Philosophy

with Jonathan Allday, Jens Allwood, Paavo Pylkkänen, Michael Richter, William Seager, David Schrum, Marij van Strien

Curated and Chaired by Paavo Pylkkänen

August 5 – 6, 12 – 13, 26 – 27, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

6-two-hour sessions

All sessions are live, and include Q & A, and all participants will receive the RECORDING.

Beyond Bohm 2023 Part two focuses on scientific and philosophical themes. After an introduction to Bohm’s physics, the topics include pluralism in science and the relation between Bohm and Paul Feyerabend; the role of mind and consciousness in Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics and in Hugh Everett’s “many worlds” theory; Bohm’s view of the self and the observer; Bohm’s notion of an order between and beyond; and Bohm’s process-oriented view of language.

Program of Event

Saturday August 5Introduction to Bohm’s Physicswith Jonathan Allday

Sunday August 6Bohm’s Views on Pluralism in Science and the Relation between Bohm and Paul Feyerabendwith Marij van Strien

Saturday August 12Maverick Minds: Bohm and Everett on Mind & Consciousnesswith William Seager

Sunday August 13Bohm’s View of the Self and the Observerwith Paavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 26David Bohm and an Order Between and Beyond:Toward a New Mind and a New Human Beingwith David Schrum

Bohm / Bergson / Whitehead: Life as Movement
2023-07-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Bohm / Bergson / Whitehead: Life as Movement

with Àlex Gómez-Marin, Hester Reeve, Lee Nichol

Sunday July 16, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

Process, movement, time, flux, consciousness, memory, recurrence, relationality – these elements and more occur in mutually reflective ways in the work of David Bohm, Henri Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead. What resonances emerge when we hold these three bodies of work together? What variances do we discover? In this opening session of Beyond Bohm 2023, our panel will explore these and other questions. Of particular significance is the fact that all three men intended their insights to be applied and tested in daily life, rather than remaining purely theoretical. We then pose a further question: How do we make the shift from the abstract idea to the concrete lived quality?

Please join us as we initiate new lines of inquiry in the Pari community, drawing from three profoundly original yet complementary philosophical perspectives.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm program

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

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

Hester’s work has been shown internationally, including at former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, BONE Performance Festival Switzerland, Tate Britain, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Halle G Vienna and, most recently, Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa.

https://hester-reeve.squarespace.com/https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-profiles/hester-reeve

Lee Nichol is a freelance writer and editor. His latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and, as editor, Holoflux: Codex – Form / Movement / Vision inspired by David Bohm (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity. Lee has been on the faculty of the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, North Carolina; the Oak Grove School in Ojai, California; the Tibetan Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California; and Denver University in Denver, Colorado. He sits on the Advisory Committee of the Pari Center, the Advisory Council of the Indigenous Education Institute, and is a member of the Founding Circle of the Native American Academy. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife Eva Casey.

Is the Sun Conscious?
2023-07-17 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Is the Sun Conscious?

with Rupert Sheldrake

Monday July 17, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

We are very happy to have Rupert Sheldrake with us this year, discussing his landmark paper, “Is the Sun Conscious?” In Dr. Sheldrake’s reckoning:

The recent panpsychist turn in philosophy opens the possibility that self-organizing systems at all levels of complexity, including stars and galaxies, might have experience, awareness, or consciousness. The organismic or holistic philosophy of nature points in the same direction. Meanwhile, field theories of consciousness propose that some electromagnetic fields actually are conscious, and that these fields are by their very nature integrative. When applied to the sun, such field theories suggest a possible physical basis for the solar mind, both within the body of the sun itself and also throughout the solar system. If the sun is conscious, it may be concerned with the regulation of its own body and the entire solar system through its electromagnetic activity, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections. It may also communicate with other star systems within the galaxy.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm program

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author of more than a hundred technical papers and nine books, including The Science Delusion. 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 Benedictine 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.

Holoflux: The Qualitative Infinity of Nature
2023-07-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Holoflux: The Qualitative Infinity of Nature

with Lee Nichol, Cheryl Brant, Aja Bulla Zamastil

Saturday July 22, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

While Bohm’s work in physics and dialogue is well-established, new threads are emerging that attempt to take us deeper into the living substance and import of his metaphysics. What do we find when we peer beyond his foundational terms holoflux / holomovement? Is it possible to move out from the texts of Bohm’s books, and into the living world? Is there something that can be directly engaged through ongoing experimentation? In this session we will propose that there is a living actuality pointed to by Bohm, akin to what he described as “the qualitative infinity of nature.” We will explore two aspects of a multi-year holoflux inquiry — rheosoma (the flowing body) and holosoma (the body of the whole). From the outset, however, it is important to keep such terms experimental, enigmatic. What then emerges is not a model, system, or practice, but a process of open-ended embodiment in which the path is created while walking.

This session will serve as an introduction to a two-day program of the same name, offered by the Pari Center on September 23 and 24, 2023, open to people who have not participated in any previous Holoflux programs through Pari.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm program

Lee Nichol is a freelance writer and editor. His latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and, as editor, Holoflux: Codex – Form / Movement / Vision inspired by David Bohm (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity.

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

Cheryl Brant

Cheryl’s work finds her at the intersection of art and science. Her formal education began with a Bachelor of Science in Art, and then continued with an MFA in sculpture. Her professional life has been in engineering for the past 36 years. First, in geotechnical engineering with Herbst & Associates, and for the past 22 years in Structural, Civil, and Coastal engineering with Moffatt & Nichol. The last six years have focused on visualizations for ship simulations. Her artwork has been exhibited in small galleries through the years. Cheryl is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments.

Aja Bulla Zamastil is an architectural and landscape architectural designer, public artist, and educator. As a Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism graduate program at the University of Southern California, she leads design studios that address adapting our constructed world to shifting natural and socio-cultural forces. As the Creative Director at Watershed Progressive, she is responsible for managing and designing landscape projects and educational programs throughout California. These projects explore how we can transform monolithic systems into resilient ecological cycles that re-enchant everyday experience and promote alternative cultural practices.

Aja is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex – Form/Movement/Vision inspired by David Bohm(Pari Publishing 2022). She is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments.

Holoflux: Codex
2023-07-23 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Holoflux: Codex

with Richard Burg, Eva Casey, Sky Hoorne, Maria Hvidbak, Beth Macy, Hester Reeve, Aja Bulla Zamastil

Sunday July 23, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

In late summer of 2020, through the Pari Center, a small group of people began an applied experiment into the nature of David Bohm’s holoflux (see session description for July 22, 2023). Midway through this inquiry, a number of the group formally presented some of their experiences regarding holoflux, rheosoma, and holosoma. These accounts led to the publication of a book, Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing, 2022), that carried the inquiry one step further. In this session, the contributors to the book will share some of that work and discuss their creative process. The conversation, however, will not be limited to an artifact (the book), but will also address the ongoing process of engaging with the holoflux experiment. What is the nature of this inquiry? What impact does it have in daily life? What has inspired people to sustain this inquiry? Where does it stand after three years?

The editor’s introduction to Holoflux: Codex is available as here: https://paricenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/pp.5-9-15.pdf

To see the Full Beyond Bohm program

Richard Burg – In 2003 I retired from consulting, my fourth career (IT, potter, Continuing Medical Education research). Simple Idea worked with corporate leaders to integrate human values and productivity in a constantly changing environment – engaging with teams and individuals to build relationships within the organization that nurture the humanity in everyone, even as they work together to achieve audacious goals.

In 1990 a friend sent me a transcript of a talk given by David Bohm at MIT. In my organization development practice – focused on changing corporate cultures – group work was a built-in aspect of the process. Bohm’s dialogue experiment was thus enticing, and I discovered a Bohmian dialogue group in the San Francisco Bay Area, which I attended weekly for the next eight years. Stemming from that group, Lee Nichol and I designed a nine-hour, multi-day introduction to Bohm’s experiment at the first National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation in Washington DC. I have since engaged in dialogue in many different contexts – most recently, like many, in online dialogues, before and during the covid pandemic.

Early on in my dialogue work, I received permission to transcribe the little pamphlet, Dialogue: A Proposal (D. Bohm, D. Factor, and P. Garrett) and post it online via colleagues at MIT. It is still available, in multiple “versions,” some with several addenda/commentaries.

Eva Casey is a freelance artist who works in ceramics, metal, paint media, and graphic design. A detail of her painting “Heliac” is featured as the cover of Holoflux: Codex. Eva formerly taught at Cañada Community College and the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, both in Berkeley, California. She is a mother of two, and a grandmother of two. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband, Lee Nichol.

Sky Hoorne holds a MS in Computer Science from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and attended LUCA School of Arts Ghent. She is a graphic artist, creator of comic strips, and a dedicated scholar of the work of David Bohm. Currently she is focused on ceramic sculptures, drawings, paintings, and on making complex issues digestible to a broader, non-academic public. Rooted in her life philosophy of ‘active context’/’contexting’, Sky attempts to make ‘inscendental’ works of art, in which the viewer is invited to step into the subject by appealing to their primal imagination and subtle participation. This approach involves free play with clichés, perspectives, and polarities. Despite her background in IT, her main interests include psychology, eastern philosophy, science of mind, no-nonsense metaphysics and kiko/qi gong. https://www.antihype.be/

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

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

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

Hester’s work has been shown internationally, including at former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, BONE Performance Festival Switzerland, Tate Britain, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Halle G Vienna and, most recently, Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa.

https://hester-reeve.squarespace.com/https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-profiles/hester-reeve

Aja Bulla Zamastil is an architectural and landscape architectural designer, public artist, and educator. As a Lecturer in the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism graduate program at the University of Southern California, she leads design studios that address adapting our constructed world to shifting natural and socio-cultural forces. As the Creative Director at Watershed Progressive, she is responsible for managing and designing landscape projects and educational programs throughout California. These projects explore how we can transform monolithic systems into resilient ecological cycles that re-enchant everyday experience and promote alternative cultural practices.

Aja is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex – Form/Movement/Vision inspired by David Bohm(Pari Publishing 2022). She is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments.

The Heart of Dialogue
2023-07-29 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
The Heart of Dialogue

with Jessica Ball, Trine-Line Biong, Eva Casey, Anna Factor, Sally Jeffery, Beth Macy, Marie-Eve Marchand, Melissa Nelson, Marjorie Parker, Susanna Ruebsaat

Saturday July 29, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

What is the heart? In physiology, as far back as human records go, heart has been thought of as the core of the physical body, the sine qua non of life. Metaphorically, the heart has been considered as that which brings about the coursing of spirit, meaning and emotion throughout one’s person, one’s relationships and one’s community. It is the flow of life at both individual and collective spheres. David Bohm’s description of dialogue also refers to an essential flow: that of “meaning moving through.” Does dialogue, as well, have a heart, an essential core, through which a developing meaning flows? What might emerge as our all-women dialogue gestates this question?

To see the Full Beyond Bohm program

Jessica Ball is a creative facilitator dedicated to working towards positive social and environmental change through transformative learning, dialogue and the value of creativity. Jessica has worked with a diverse range of organisations across sectors from corporate and international development to education and charities. She is currently studying a PhD in ecolinguistics at the University of Gloucestershire, under the supervision of Professor Arran Stibbe, author and founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association. Jessica is researching ‘the body, nature and dialogue’, an exploration of ecological identity.

Trine-Line Biong, a trained actor, director and coach, joined as chief editor in the Flux Foundation in 1997. Initially, her main role was the publication of Flux Magazine, and subsequently the books that would come out under the Flux imprint. In 2009 Trine-Line and Christian Valentiner, an experienced facilitator and organisational development consultant, decided to turn some of the subject matter on dialogue into experiential programs. Over the course of the following years hundreds of people have been trained as dialogue practitioners and facilitators under the Flux brand.

Today, she is the general manager of flux www.flux.no , which is a publishing house and also works with courses and programs around dialogue. Important areas for all work in Flux are awareness-raising and communication. Some of the ongoing projects are prison dialogue and from autumn 2023, Flux will also become a collaboration partner with the Nobel Peace Center and will deliver dialogue courses on a regular basis.

Eva Casey is a freelance artist who works in ceramics, metal, paint media, and graphic design. A detail of her painting “Heliac” is featured as the cover of Holoflux: Codex. Eva formerly taught at Cañada Community College and the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, both in Berkeley, California. She is a mother of two, and a grandmother of two. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband, Lee Nichol.

Anna and her husband, Don Factor, were longtime friends and supporters of David Bohm and the process of dialogue he envisioned. Don had first met Bohm in the 1970s in London, and the two continued their friendship from that time on. It was their early acquaintance that led to inviting Bohm to be interviewed by Don at the Human Unity Conference – a large gathering of people from many different spiritual traditions – held at Warwick University, in March of 1983. Following the enthusiastic response to this interview, Bohm was invited to present more of his thinking at a weekend conference held in Mickleton, England. It was during the ensuing weekend that what is considered to have been the very first Bohmian dialogue occurred. The transcript of the weekend has been preserved by Don Factor in the book, Unfolding Meaning.

Following that weekend, Anna and Don began offering their home for dialogues among those who had been so inspired by the initial dialogue idea, and along with Peter and Jenny Garrett and David and Saral Bohm, they organized public dialogues at many locations across western Europe, Scandinavia, and Israel during the late 1980s. Stemming from these early dialogues is the well-known publication by Bohm, Don Factor and Peter Garrett, “Dialogue, A Proposal” which still is considered a cornerstone description of Bohm’s intention for dialogue.

Sally Jeffery was introduced to the teachings of J. Krishnamurti while a young undergraduate in Sociology. Through involvement with his international school in England, she met and was deeply impressed by David Bohm (a founding trustee of the school) and, later, his proposals for dialogue.

Over three decades, she has taken part in dialogue in many settings, including prisons and her local (Lancaster) dialogue group. Involvement in two online dialogue groups began in 2018/19, but since the pandemic and through the Lancaster group website, others have been in contact, expressing interest and wanting to start new ​online groups to explore David Bohm’s thinking in practice.

During this same period, Sally was employed as a body work therapist, including over 20 years working with people who’d had a cancer diagnosis, along with their families. A leaning to such work might suggest she would take less readily to online dialogue, missing the physical presence of the other participants. After initial hesitation, this has proved not to be the case.

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

Marie-Eve Marchand has a Ph.D. in adult education, a field she studied while in charge of the professional development of Executives in the Public Service of Canada. She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Bohm’s dialogue based on an action-research with a group of senior managers. She joined forces with a colleague at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, who had also written his dissertation on Bohm dialogue. For 14 years, they created and taught courses aimed at helping managers lead more consciously by introducing them to meditation, stages of human development, theories of complexity and Bohm dialogue. Marie-Eve considers the skills of dialogue as essential in our world battling unprecedented challenges of high complexity. Her view is that Bohm dialogue –in the form he himself proposed — is more appropriate for people who have done a good measure of psycho-spiritual work. However, she considers that dialogue skills ought to be taught and exemplified in many different ways in order to reach people with different levels of self-knowledge and openess. She is the author of Vivre en dialogue à l’ère du texto, published by Les Presses de l’Université Laval, in 2019. The same year, the Academy of Professional Dialogue published an English translation of the book The Spirit of Dialogue in a Digital Age.

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Marjorie Parker: Fifty years ago, en route to New York after doing volunteer work in Palestine, I made a quick pitstop in Norway to visit a friend. I never left. Funnily enough as fate will have it, I met a Norwegian, not here in Norway, but at a creativity conference in Buffalo, N.Y. He later became my husband and business partner.

I have been officially retired for several years, but I often have conversations around the kitchen table with consultants searching for new ways to support dialogue and creativity in their client organizations. A few years ago, Anna Pool and I co-authored Creating Futures that Matter Today – Facilitating Change through Shared Vision. We described methodologies and experiences with integrating dialogue and processes for creating shared vision, and the exciting breakthroughs achieved when using these in combination.

Otherwise here in Norway, my life as a soon-to-be 85 year old is enriched by having a son with family nearby, a mountain cabin, a loving dog, access to cultural activities, a long-standing dialogue group, good friends and legs that still allow for hiking.

Susanna Ruebsaat, PhD, BCATR, RCC, RCC-ACS (Provisional) is a registered art therapist and clinical counselor, supervisor and doctoral mentor at City University, Vancouver, BC. She has been in practice for 25 years. She has a background in Jungian theory and practice and is also interested in further exploring Existential Psychoanalysis in its endeavour to engage rather than fear the unknown, understanding the unknown as the necessary condition for creativity.

Susanna has one book published: Mourning the Dream/Amor Fati. An Illustrated Mythopoetic Inquiry, and is working on her second: I Myself am a Dream. Growing Down into Our Mythological Roots.

She writes, ”Our demons hold, as do our dreams, deep pools of our archetypal life to be reflected upon. Archetypal would include ancestral. If we can be with our own hauntings those of other people might seem less ferocious.

The Hidden Science: What Western Science Metrics Don’t Know – And Can’t Know
2023-07-30 18:00 - 21:00 | Online
The Hidden Science: What Western Science Metrics Don’t Know – And Can’t Know

Indigenous Dialogue with Leroy Little Bear and Jeannette Armstrong, Greg Cajete, Marie-Eve Marchand, Kent Monkman, Melissa Nelson, Lee Nichol

Sunday July 30, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

3-hour session

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

Don’t miss this third annual Indigenous Dialogue, facilitated by Leroy Little Bear. This year we will have an extended dialogue session – two full hours of dialogue, a short break, then another hour of Q&A with Leroy and his guests. Our topic this year promises to be no less provocative than those of previous years, as we find ourselves in the interface of western and indigenous world views.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm program

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

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

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

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

Along with his wife, Amethyst First Rider, Little Bear brought about the historic Buffalo Treaty between First Nations on both sides of the USA-Canada border in 2014. Little Bear was inducted into the Alberta Order Excellence and the Order of Canada in 2016 and 2019 respectively. After a lifetime of educational service, Little Bear remains a dedicated and dynamic teacher and mentor to students and faculty at the University of Lethbridge. He continues to pursue new research interests including North American Indian science and Western physics, and the exploration of Blackfoot knowledge through songs, stories and landscape.

Dr. Little Bear is the co-author of several books on self-government and Aboriginal rights, including Pathways to Self Determination, Quest For Justice, and Governments in Conflict.

Jeannette Armstrong, Syilx Okanagan, is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Okanagan Philosophy at UBC Okanagan Campus. She is a fluent speaker and teacher of the Nsyilxcn Okanagan language, and a traditional knowledge keeper of the Okanagan Nation. She is a founder of En’owkin, the Okanagan Nsyilxcn language and knowledge institution of higher learning of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Ethics and Syilx Indigenous Literatures.

Jeannette is the recipient of the Eco Trust USA Buffett Award in Indigenous Leadership, and in 2016 received the BC George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. She is an author whose published works include poetry, prose and children’s literary titles, and academic writing on a wide variety of Indigenous issues. She currently serves on Canada’s Traditional Knowledge Subcommittee of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Jeannette was recently named to the class of 2021 as a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada.

Jeannette Armstrong was made Officer of the Order of Canada, as announced by Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, on June 30, 2023

Some of her publications include:

Slash. Theytus, 1987; revised edition, 1998.

Whispering in Shadows. Theytus Books, 1999.

Breathtracks. Theytus, 1991.

Enwhisteetkwa; Walk in Water (for children). Theytus, 1982.

Neekna and Chemai (for children), illustrated by Barbara Marchand. Theytus, 1984.

with Douglas Cardinal. The Native Creative Process: A Collaborative Discourse. Theytus, 1992.

Gregory Cajete is a Native American educator whose work is dedicated to honoring the foundations of Indigenous knowledge in education. Dr. Cajete is a Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico.

Dr. Cajete is a practicing ceramic, pastel and metal artist. He is extensively involved with art and its application to education. He is also a scholar of herbalism and holistic health. Dr. Cajete also designs culturally-responsive curricula geared to the special needs and learning styles of Native American students.

He worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 21 years. While at the Institute, he served as Dean of the Center for Research and Cultural Exchange, Chair of Native American Studies and Professor of Ethno- Science. He is the former Director of Native American Studies (18 years) and is Professor Emeritus in the Division of Language, Literacy and Socio Cultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. In addition, he has lectured at colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, England, France and Germany.

Dr. Cajete has authored 10 books: “Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education,” (Kivaki Press, 1994); “Ignite the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Education Curriculum Model”, (Kivaki Press, 1999); “Spirit of the Game: Indigenous Wellsprings (2004),” “A People’s Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living,” and “Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence” (Clear Light Publishers, 1999 and 2000). “Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom,” Don Jacobs (Four Arrows), Gregory Cajete and Jongmin Lee) Sense Publishers, 2010. “Indigenous Community: Teachings of the Seventh Fire,” (Living Justice Press, 2015). His most recent books are edited volumes entitled: “Native Minds Rising” and “Sacred Journeys” (John Charlton Publications, 2020). Dr. Cajete also has chapters in 36 other books along with numerous articles and over 350 national and international presentations.

Marie-Eve Marchand is a system entrepreneur who dedicates her life to bring culture, conservation sciences, communications, and policy together for better relationships between Peoples and Nature. Over the last decade, she has successfully coordinated the Bison Belong Initiative to bring back Bison in Banff National Park and is actively supporting The Buffalo: A Treaty of Cooperation, Renewal and Restoration as the Executive Director of the Indigenous-led International Buffalo Relations Institute. She is also a member of IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and of the Species Commission, Bison Specialist Group and was the Business and Strategies Manager for the IUCN WCPA Post-2020 Task Force to support an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework.

Marie-Eve is the Chair of the IUCN Green List Expert Assessment Group in Quebec, the first in Canada to improve effective management and governance for different relations to conservation in protected and conserved areas. She previously received the national Golden Leaf Award for her work on protecting the last undammed river in Southern Quebec, Dumoine River, and played a key role in the Quebec government’s commitment to protect at least half of Northern Quebec. She is from Lac-St-Jean, Quebec and she lives with her husband Harvey Locke in Banff National Park.

Kent Monkman (b. 1965) is an interdisciplinary Cree visual artist. A member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba), he lives and works in Dish With One Spoon Territory (Toronto, Canada).

Known for his thought-provoking interventions into Western European and American art history, Monkman explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across painting, film/video, performance, and installation. Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.

Monkman’s painting and installation works have been exhibited at institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; Musée d’artcontemporain de Montréal; The National Gallery of Canada; Crystal Bridges Museumof American Art; Hayward Gallery; Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art; Musée d’art Contemporain de Rochechouart; Maison Rouge; Philbrook Museum of Art; and Palais de Tokyo. He has created site-specific performances at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Royal Ontario Museum; Compton Verney, Warwickshire; and The Denver Art Museum. Monkman has had two nationally touring solo exhibitions, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience (2017-2020), and The Triumph of Mischief (2007-2010).

Monkman’s short film and video works, collaboratively made with Gisèle Gordon, have screened at festivals such as the Berlinale (2007, 2008) and the Toronto International Film Festival (2007, 2015). Monkman is the recipient of the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2017), an honorary doctorate degree from OCAD University (2017), the Indspire Award (2014), and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award (2014).

Kent Monkman was made Officer of the Order of Canada, as announced by Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, on June 30, 2023

Melissa K. Nelson is an ecologist and Indigenous scholar-activist. She earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis. Formerly a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, she now teaches at Arizona State University in the School of Sustainability, Global Futures Laboratory. From 1993 to 2021, she served as the founding executive director and CEO of the Cultural Conservancy. She now serves as their president emerita. Melissa is the Bundle Holder for the Native American Academy. She is a contributor and co-editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. She is also a contributor and the editor of Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008). She is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Lee Nichol is a freelance writer and editor. His latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and, as editor, Holoflux: Codex – Form / Movement / Vision inspired by David Bohm (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity.

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

Introduction to Bohm’s Physics
2023-08-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Introduction to Bohm’s Physics

with Jonathan Allday

Saturday August 5, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

David Bohm made very important contributions to a range of different areas in physics. Amongst these, his work on quantum theory is possibly the most relevant to Pari discussions. In this talk I will attempt to outline Bohm’s ontological interpretation of quantum theory, which has since been developed by Basil Hiley amongst others. I will also discuss Bohm’s development of the Einstein-Podalsky-Rosen (EPR paradox) paper which led to John Bell’s work and our current understanding of entanglement.

To see the Full Beyond Program

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

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

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

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2000 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

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

Bohm's Views on Pluralism in Science and the Relation Between Bohm and Paul Feyerabend
2023-08-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Bohm’s Views on Pluralism in Science and the Relation Between Bohm and Paul Feyerabend

with Marij van Strien

Chaired by Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday August 6, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

Quantum mechanics is often regarded as an important case for pluralism in science, as the theory allows for a plurality of interpretations. This talk shows that scientific pluralism is also historically connected to quantum mechanics: in particular, the philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend developed his arguments for pluralism in the context of debates on quantum mechanics and in conversation with David Bohm.

In 1952, Bohm published an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics, demonstrating the possibility of non-standard interpretations. Bohm himself regarded this interpretation merely as a starting point for a more thorough rethinking of the foundations of quantum physics, and argued that what was needed was the development of new concepts, which could form the basis for a genuinely new theory yielding new predictions. In this context, Bohm developed general arguments for pluralism in science: he argued that to avoid being trapped within a conceptual scheme, scientists should always actively try to develop alternatives to current theories. In 1957, Feyerabend and Bohm became colleagues in Bristol, where they regularly discussed physics and philosophy. Bohm had a large influence on the development of Feyerabend’s pluralistic philosophy of science: Feyerabend in fact attributed one of his main arguments for pluralism to Bohm. Feyerabend saw pluralism as particularly urgent in quantum physics: in his perception, Bohm’s alternative account of quantum physics was dogmatically rejected by the community of quantum physicists.

However, as Feyerabend’s understanding of the complexities of quantum physics and its historical development grew, his criticism of the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics gradually became weaker, and his views on pluralism changed: whereas pluralism remained an important virtue for Feyerabend, he no longer thought that it should be imposed on science as a methodological requirement. Meanwhile, Bohm’s attempts to develop a new conceptual framework for quantum physics remained largely unsuccessful, and from the late 1970s, he returned to his original interpretation from 1952. This interpretation has become increasingly popular, but it is not the genuinely new theory which Bohm envisioned: it largely uses classical concepts and has not yielded new predictions. Despite the plurality of interpretations of quantum mechanics which one can find nowadays, it is hard to find one which presents a new theoretical framework of the kind Bohm and Feyerabend envisioned. It thus seems that the pluralism for which Feyerabend and Bohm argued turned out to be hard to realize in practice.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Program

Marij van Strien is a postdoctoral researcher at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. After studying physics and history and philosophy of science at Utrecht University, she obtained a PhD at Ghent University. Her research focusses on the relation between physics and philosophy, and in particular the philosophical implications that have been drawn and can be drawn from theories in physics.

Maverick Minds: Bohm and Everett on Mind and Consciousness
2023-08-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Maverick Minds: Bohm and Everett on Mind and Consciousness

with William Seager

Saturday August 12, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

David Bohm and Hugh Everett were both mavericks in physics, bucking the Copenhagen trend (which was exceptionally powerful during their formative years and long after). They each developed a surprising and novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, which shared some features but were also radically dissimilar, almost as dissimilar as their personalities and outlook on life. Their views have been much discussed, but less has been said of the place of mind and consciousness within their interpretations. Bohm wrote more explicitly about this, but Everett said very little about the nature of mind. Here, I want to explore their views, to outline Bohm’s approach to the mind and to see how mind can be integrated with the so-called Many-Worlds interpretation we owe to Everett.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Program

William Seager is Professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He has been working on the the philosophy of mind and especially the problem of consciousness for about 45 years, but still hasn’t gotten very far. Two recent books of his are Theories of Consciousness (2nd ed. 2016) and The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism (2020).

Bohm’s View of the Self and the Observer
2023-08-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Bohm’s View of the Self and the Observer

with Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday August 13, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

This talk considers Bohm’s view of the self and the observer in the light of the recently published Bohm’s letters to Jeffrey Bub. (C. Talbot ed. (2020) David Bohm’s Critique of Modern Physics. Letters to Jeffrey Bub, 1966-1969. Cham: Springer). Bohm’s view is influenced on the one hand by the situation in quantum physics, where the role of the observer is an important topic. But there are also influences from his discussions with Krishnamurti. According to Bohm the plain fact in the mental domain is that observation is going on, but there is no separate observer inside the mind, who would be “doing the looking”. Is this view plausible and consistent, and how does it relate to other contemporary views of the self?

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Program

Paavo Pylkkänen, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor’s Program in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (currently on leave) at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Programme. His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. In his book Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Springer) he proposed that new notions emerging from quantum physics (especially Bohm and Hiley’s interpretation) provide new ways of approaching key problems in philosophy of mind, such as mental causation and time consciousness. In 2018-2020 working as the Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts he had the main responsibility for developing the new profiling area Mind and Matter for the University of Helsinki https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/mind-and-matter. Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and was a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT). https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/paavo-pylkkänen/publications/

The Future Human - A Conversation with Mauro Biglino
2023-08-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

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

A Conversation between Mauro Biglino and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday August 239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The eighth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday August 23, 2023 with Mauro Biglino. Our conversation will orbit around “the literal translation of the Bible and the oldest secret in history”.

Mauro Biglino is an Italian biblical scholar, translator, popularizer and best-selling author for Mondadori, one of the major publishing houses in Italy. During his career, Biglino has directed and supervised the translation and publication of 17 books of the Old Testament for Edizioni San Paolo, Italy’s main Catholic publisher. Mauro’s books take the reader by the hand and – free of any preconceptions or theological filters – accompany them through a fascinating narration of biblical verses, which are analysed in their original form in ancient Hebrew.”

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

David Bohm and An Order Between and Beyond
2023-08-26 18:00 - 20:00
David Bohm and An Order Between and Beyond: Toward a New Human Being and a New Culture

with David Schrum

and guests Steven Rosen and Paavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 26, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

David Bohm was a physicist and an explorer of mind who probed deeply the question of what might bring about a transformation of consciousness in the individual and in society as a whole. Such a renaissance he perceived could arise as humanity awakened to what he termed orders between and beyond, new orders of cognition within which thought would operate in a movement subtle and creative. One approach that he brought to opening this understanding to others was to bring attention to how new orders of perception may be formed by bringing together and transcending orders already present.

We will look into several such transformations of order to develop a feeling for this, following which we will focus on the ubiquitous orders of understanding which Bohm terms ‘literal’ thought and ‘participatory’ thought. The processes involved in these two sorts of comprehension, we nowadays recognize as corresponding respectively to left hemisphere- and right hemisphere-dominated activities of the brain. Considering these orders brings out David Bohm’s approach to exploration of consciousness, and it opens into his perception of truth as a process. This latter view brings questions as to its possible relevance to metaphysics and to cognitive science.

We will explore what it is to enter into these issues not only conceptually but also in movements subtle beyond words, as it is in the liminal region beyond the poles of concepts on one hand and felt movement on the other, that we may participate in a vital order between.

After the presentation, a roundtable discussion with Paavo Pylkkanen, Steven M. Rosen, and David Schrum will consider these issues. This will be followed and continued by participation of the group as a whole.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm 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.

Steven M. Rosen is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. After receiving his Ph.D. in psychology from the City University in 1971, he began exploring the foundations, frontiers, and poetics of science, his work becoming transdisciplinary and philosophical in nature. Rosen’s essays have appeared in journals and collections spanning the fields of philosophy, psychology, theoretical physics, education, semiotics, and ecology. His published books include Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle (1994), Dimensions of Apeiron (2004), Topologies of the Flesh (2006), and The Self-Evolving Cosmos (2008). Rosen’s website is embodyingcyberspace.com.

Paavo Pylkkänen, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor’s Program in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (currently on leave) at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Programme. His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. In his book Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Springer) he proposed that new notions emerging from quantum physics (especially Bohm and Hiley’s interpretation) provide new ways of approaching key problems in philosophy of mind, such as mental causation and time consciousness. In 2018-2020 working as the Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts he had the main responsibility for developing the new profiling area Mind and Matter for the University of Helsinki https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/mind-and-matter. Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and was a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT). https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/paavo-pylkkänen/publications/

Bohm and Language
2023-08-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Bohm and Language

with Jens Allwood, Michael Richter and Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday August 27, 20239:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2-hour session

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

There was “a linguistic turn” in Bohm’s thinking, particularly as a result of interaction with Donald Schumacher. Among other things this led Bohm to propose a new language mode, the rheomode which gives the verb a central role in language structure. In this session Bohm’s proposals will be considered and critically examined.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Program

Jens Allwood is professor of Linguistics at the University Gothenburg. He is also professor of communication studies at Strömstad Academy. He is born in Moline, Illinois, USA in 1947. He is active as a researcher and professor emeritus in projects at the University of Gothenburg and in the Company Communication Development J.A. & E.A. HB. He is the director of Marston Hill Intercultural Center for Quality of Life, chairman of the board of the Immigrant Institute and editor in chief of the Journal of Intercultural Communication (on-line, open access). He has worked as researcher and teacher in linguistics, specialized in semantics, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, multimodal communication and intercultural communication. He has coordinated and participated in a large number of national and international research project in semantics, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, studies of spoken language, multimodal communication, intercultural communication and development of research and research education. He has been the chairman of the department of linguistics, section manager of the Interdisciplinary center SCCIIL (semantics, cognition, communication, information, interaction).

Michael Richter is a Researcher at the Institute of Computer Science at Leipzig University (Department of Natural Language Processing), and at the Institute of Applied Computer Science (InfAI) in Leipzig. His fields of research include Models of Communication in natural language; information theory;corpus linguistics, lexical semantics; text mining; application of information theory in digital humanities; andsyntax models of natural language.

Paavo Pylkkänen, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor’s Program in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (currently on leave) at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Programme. His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. In his book Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order (Springer) he proposed that new notions emerging from quantum physics (especially Bohm and Hiley’s interpretation) provide new ways of approaching key problems in philosophy of mind, such as mental causation and time consciousness. In 2018-2020 working as the Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts he had the main responsibility for developing the new profiling area Mind and Matter for the University of Helsinki https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/mind-and-matter. Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and was a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT). https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/paavo-pylkkänen/publications/

Seizing the Underlying Unity of Science, the Arts and the Sacred
2023-08-29 00:00 - 2023-09-05 23:59
Dates: August 29 – September 5, 2023

Speakers: Mary Attwood, John Cleese (via Zoom), John Krakauer, Mervat Nasser, Melissa Nelson, John Pickering, Jordi Pigem, Mark Vernon

Curated and Chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 1995.00 euros

which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

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

the water, wine, and coffee provided with meals;

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Tuesday August 29 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Tuesday September 5 after lunch.

About the Event:

There was a time when understanding was unified and spoke to our inner wholeness. This initial vision was lost, leading to a bifurcation of nature that has impeded human flourishing. In the medieval hilltop of a Tuscan town, we will seek to explore and experience the underlying wholeness that was initially present in the spirit of the arts, the scientific mind, and the sense of the sacred.

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 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

The 20th century composer of devotional music, John Tavener, has written of the “one simple memory,” a deeply buried sense of a time when understanding was unified and spoke to our inner wholeness. In that period the artisan, miner, metal worker and artist alike were considered as the midwives to nature, aiding her in her striving to perfection. The physicist Wolfgang Pauli believed that this sprit was still alive in the 17th century when the quantitative science of Kepler and Galileo coexisted with a more deeply symbolic approach to nature and matter—each complementing the other. This later vanished in the hands of the followers of Descartes and Newton and, for Wolfgang Pauli, the ‘spirit in matter’ was banished for over two hundred years. Particularly in the twentieth century, physics (and subsequently other major disciplines, mirroring themselves in it) had lost its initial vision and become obsessed with a “will to power” as it sought control over nature. A “bifurcation of nature” —the harsh separation of reality as conceived by science and as experienced by humans (including scientists) —, in the words of mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, is one of the greatest fallacies of modernity and a major impediment to human flourishing. However, a “resurrection” of spirit within matter may be at hand today. Such wholeness can be explored in the medieval hilltop town of Pari, Tuscany, for in the Middle Ages nature, beauty and the sacred were seen as one. The presenters and participants who come to Pari will bring together many skills to the discussions on the relationship of religious ritual to sacred theatre; of brain activity to the orders of music and mathematics; the ultimate nature of reality as seen from these various disciplines; limitations to knowing, and questions of the origin of the universe. Topics move towards questions that stretch the limits and boundaries that are currently placed around science, the sacred and the arts. We will discuss, and hopefully experience, the underlying unity that was initially present in the spirit of the arts, the scientific mind and the spiritual quest. We shall seek to “re-member” such one simple memory — indeed, we have taken as our maxim a quotation from Carlo Levi “The future has an ancient heart.”

Presentations

The Art of Seeing: Rediscovering the Four Senses HermeneuticMary Attwood

The Humanities as an Emergent Level of ExplanationJohn Krakauer

The Return of Hermopolis as Healing MemoryMervat Nassar

The Journey is the Goal and Beauty is our Guide John Pickering

Towards a Postmaterialistic Worldview: Contributions from Contemporary Science and Eastern and Western PhilosophyJordi Pigem

Dante, Blake and the Revelation of UnityMark Vernon

Information

Additional Information about the event – the pdf

Additional Information about the Pari Center – the pdf

Terms and Conditions – the pdf

Benign Anarchy!
2023-09-09 18:00 - 2023-09-16 13:00 | Pari, Italy
Benign Anarchy!

A gathering of members of AA and NA(mainly Irish!) but open to anyone interested in Dialogue..as developed by David Bohm and also Martin Bubers “I-Thou

Dates: September 9 – September 16, 2023

Organizers: Tom C., Rose R., Jim C.

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 890 euros for single occupancy, 730 for shared occupancy (two-bedroom apartment, shared bathroom)

which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

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

programmed activities and materials;

refreshments provided at mid-morning and mid-afternoon coffee breaks.

Event: The event starts on Saturday September 9 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Saturday September 16 after lunch.

Registration and Information: Please contact Tom tcallagyp@gmail.com or Eleanor eleanor@paricenter.com or Chiara chiara@paricenter.com

About the Event:

A Pari gathering/retreat for members of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) plus family and friends will be held in Pari, Tuscany from September 9-16, 2023 (Saturday to Saturday).

The format will be a combination of closed AA and NA meetings and meditation, and some open meetings which everyone can attend.

It is hoped to have discussion groups/workshops on the history of AA and NA; the influence of Carl Jung on Bill W; a talk on Bill W. and Jimmy K. by Irene C.; the deep wisdom of the 12 Steps and the profundity of the 12 traditions.

It is hoped the golden thread running through our week will be‘The Language of the Heart.’

All of the above in magical Pari—the creation of David Peat and Maureen Doolan. Here we will have wonderful Italian food—and—talk, talk, talk in the outdoor café, with music and dancing in the square, soaking in the sulphur springs, and joy and laughter!

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means not only attending meetings but living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the local population, eating local dishes, 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.

Additional information about the Pari Center – pdf

The Future Human - A Conversation with Tanya Luhrmann
2023-09-13 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recoding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnEcZxvB1WU

A Conversation between Tanya Luhrmann and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday September 139:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The ninth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday September 13, 2023 with Tanya Luhrmann. Our conversation will orbit around “belief, experience, and how things come to feel real to people”.

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Psychology. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She has done ethnography on the streets of Chicago with homeless and psychotic women, and worked with people who hear voices in Chennai, Accra and the South Bay. She has also done fieldwork with evangelical Christians who seek to hear God speak back, with Zoroastrians who set out to create a more mystical faith, and with people who practice magic. She uses a combination of ethnographic and experimental methods to understand the way people feel their thoughts and imagine their minds in different social settings, and what follows. At the heart of the work is the question of how things come to feel real to people.

She was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, received a John Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2007 and elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. When God Talks Back was named a NYT Notable Book of the Year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. It was awarded the $100,000 Grawemeyer Prize for Religion by the University of Louisville. She is also the author of Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft, The Good Parsi, Of Two Minds, When God Talks Back, Our Most Troubling Madness, and How God Becomes Real, and is currently at work on a book entitled Voices.

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

The Future Human - A Conversation with Luca Possati
2023-10-18 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orWU_MLoK54

A Conversation between Luca Possati and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday October 189:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

This event is LIVE and FREE. All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Following an hour-long lively and spontaneous dialogue between Alex and his guest, the session will be open to questions from the audience.

What will the future look like? How will the Future Human live? How will families, child rearing, education, health services, work, art, religion, love, science, language, storytelling change? And politics, economics, government, and the law? Will we be able to inhabit our planet in harmony, have sufficient energy, and afford to eat healthy food? Will we even survive? Can we thrive? These are just some of the topics that will be discussed online at the Pari Center in 2023.

Each month the Director of the Pari Center, physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín, will be thinking and feeling aloud in the mode of dialogue with a prominent guest for about an hour, followed by questions and comments from the audience. Pursuing a major theme without rehearsal or script, they will attempt to engage with ‘that’ which sometimes takes place between (and beyond) two people talking.

Throughout 2022, Àlex hosted the very successful conversation series The Future Scientist, a monthly virtual encounter that aimed to understand where science is going and to reimage where we hope it might go. Maintaining the spirit and the format, the series will now expand its scope and morph into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The tenth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday October 18, 2023 with Luca Possati. Our conversation will orbit around “AI and psychoanalysis”.

Luca M. Possati is a postdoctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands). Educated as a philosopher, he has been researcher and lecturer at the University of Porto (Portugal) and Institut Catholique (France), and associate researcher of the Fonds Ricoeur and EHESS (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales). His research focuses on philosophy of technology and AI, technology assessment, AI ethics, and ethics of quantum technologies. He also works in the field of software studies. He has published numerous papers and books on phenomenology, and history of contemporary philosophy. He is the author of The Algorithmic Unconscious. How Psychoanalysis Helps in Understanding AI (Routledge, 2021).

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.

Galileo at 400
2023-10-31 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recordings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v66cS8XoQ2A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4btmqCOYhpk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOeqgq4ymIY

Galileo at 400

Looking Through 21st Century Telescopes

with Avi Loeb, Dean Radin, David Lorimer, Athena Potari, Marjorie Woollacott

Curated by Àlex Gómez-Marín

Free Program in 3 Parts

Tuesday October 3110:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

Part 1 – The Assayer – To Watch the recordingA reading together of Galileo’s seminal book with Àlex Gómez-Marín and James Peat BarbieriFriday October 20 at 12:00-13:30 EDT, 17:00-18:30 BST, 18:00-19:30 CEST

Part 2 – Exploring Outer and Inner Spaces- To Watch the RecordingA conversation between Avi Loeb and Dean Radin with Àlex Gómez-MarínWednesday October 25 at 13:00-14:30 EDT, 18:00-19:30 BST, 19:00-20:30 CEST

Part 3 – Expanding the Scope of Science with the Galileo CommissionA dialogue between David Lorimer, Marjorie Woollacott, Athena Potari, and Àlex Gómez-MarínTuesday October 31 at 12:00-13:30 EDT, 17:00-18:30 GMT, 18:00-19:30 CET

In this online series we will revisit Galileo’s book, The Assayer, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its publication this very month of October.

Written as a letter in a controversy about the nature of comets, such a foundational text in the history of modern science deserves to be more widely known and read. It contains one of the first and clearest articulations of the scientific method, the famous claim about the mathematical intelligibility of nature, and Galileo’s emphasis on epistemic humility in the face of dogma and authority. Remarkably, in the book we also find Galileo’s programmatic exclusion of consciousness from the purview of science, whose consequences we are still wrestling with today.

Celebrating “Galileo at 400” shall inspire us to dare to look through current “telescopes” in order to continue exploring our inner and outer spaces while expanding the scope of science as we know it.

Galileo’s indelible legacy can be grasped directly from his own words. We encourage attendees to get first-hand experience with The Assayer before the event, via the free material linked below.

REFERENCES

(1) ABRIDGED ENGLISH TRANSLATION: G. Galilei, in The Controversy on the Comets of 1618, S. Drake, C. D. O’Malley, Transl. (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1960). You can read it for free here: https://web.stanford.edu/~jsabol/certainty/readings/Galileo-Assayer.pdf

(2) ORIGINAL TEXT IN ITALIAN: G. Galilei, Il Saggiatore [Works of Galileo Galilei, Part 3, Volume 15, Astronomy: The Assayer] (Giacomo Mascardi, 1623). You can read it for free here: https://www.loc.gov/item/2021666740/

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L’Express and more). He received a PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb has written 8 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial, and nearly a thousand papers (with h-index of 119 and i10-index of 543) on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the Universe. Loeb is the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (2007-present) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and also serves as the Head of the Galileo Project(2021-present). He had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy (2011-2020) and the Founding Director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative (2016-2021). He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. Loeb is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the White House, a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies (2018-2021) and a current member of the Advisory Board for “Einstein: Visualize the Impossible” of the Hebrew University. He also chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative (2016-present) and serves as the Science Theory Director for all Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space and in 2020 Loeb was selected among the 14 most inspiring Israelis of the last decade. Click here for Loeb’s commentaries on innovation and diversity.

Personal website: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/

Dean Radin is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Associated Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), and chairman of the genetic engineering company, Cognigenics. He earned an MS (electrical engineering) and a PhD (psychology) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and in 2022 was awarded an Honorary DSc (doctor of science) from the Swami Vivekananda University (an accredited university in Bangalore, India). He served for five terms as President of the Parapsychological Association (PA), a professional society affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)), and in 2023 received the PA’s Outstanding Career Award.

Before joining the IONS research staff in 2001, Radin worked at AT&T Bell Labs, Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, and SRI International. He has given over 750 talks and interviews worldwide, and he is author or coauthor of some 300 scientific and popular articles, four dozen book chapters, and nine books, four of which have been translated into 15 foreign languages: The Conscious Universe (1997, HarperCollins), Entangled Minds (2006, Simon & Schuster), Supernormal (2013, RandomHouse), and Real Magic (2018, PenguinRandomHouse).

David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a writer, lecturer, poet, editor and spiritual activist who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network (www.scientificandmedical.net) and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society (www.swedenborgsociety.org.uk). He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorer since 1986 and completed his 100th issue in 2019. He was the instigator of the Beyond the Brain conference series in 1995 (www.beyondthebrain.org) and has co-ordinated the Mystics and Scientists conferences every year since the late 1980s.

Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Survival? Death as Transition (1984, 2017) Resonant Mind (originally Whole in One) (1990/2017), The Spirit of Science (1998), Thinking Beyond the Brain (2001), The Protein Crunch (with Jason Drew) and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). He has edited three books about the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov): Prophet for our Times (1991, 2015), The Circle of Sacred Dance, and Gems of Love, which is a translation of his prayers and formulas into English. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince (2003) – has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. His new book of essays, A Quest for Wisdom was published in 2021.

David is also Chair of the Galileo Commission (www.galileocommission.org) which seeks the expand the evidence base of science of consciousness beyond a materialistic world view.

In 2020 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award as a Visionary Leader by the Visioneers International Network and the 2021 Aboca Human Ecology Prize. He is a Creative Member of the Club of Budapest. His website is www.davidlorimer.co.uk

Dr. Athena Potari is Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford, specializing in Political Philosophy, and her MA in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is recipient of the Academy of Athens Award of Philosophy (2020), author of A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities published by the Galileo Commission, and Member of the Galileo Commission Committee. In 2019, she founded Athenoa, a School of Hellenic Philosophy based in Athens, Greece where Hellenism is approached as a living wisdom tradition whose very essence consists in the inextricable combination of science, reason and spirituality. Her work aims to revive the deeper spiritual and experiential dimensions of Hellenic Philosophy, combining discursive rigor and embodied spiritual and meditative practices with the aim of awakening to our true Self.

Marjorie Woollacott, Ph.D., was Professor, and chair of the Dept. of Human Physiology, and member of the Inst. of Neuroscience, at the U. of Oregon for 35 yrs. She is Co-director of the Galileo Commission, President of the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences (AAPS) and Research Director for the Intl. Assoc. of Near-Death Studies (IANDS). She has received over 7.2 million dollars in research funding and published more than 200 scientific articles on her research in medicine, meditation and spiritual awakening. Her book, Infinite Awareness (2015) pairs Woollacott’s research as a neuroscientist with her self-revelations about the mind’s spiritual power.

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 across species, from flies and worms to mice and humans. Since 2016 he has been 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 computational biology and continental philosophy, his current research concentrates on consciousness in the real world.
