Events

We tend to think of the Sacred as something unchanging. There is some point to this: the Sacred is, after all, what connects us to eternity or even to something beyond space and time.  But could it be changing? To address this question, since the modern West pays so little attention to the Sacred, it makes sense to go back to other cultures who have developed deeper knowledge about it.

Most major spiritual traditions, in the West as well as in India, make some kind of distinction between the Divine who is eternal and perfect, and the world which is constrained by time and imperfect, but what if our conception of this split is due to the limited nature of our human consciousness and our too limited mental understanding of reality?

To mark the one year since the publication of The Matter with Things, this free online event will reflect on its first year of being in the world. Dr. McGilchrist will be interviewed by the publisher of the book, Perspectiva’s Jonathan Rowson, followed by a discussion with experts for the sciences and humanities. The final part of the event will give you a chance to put a question to Dr. McGilchrist.

The Rainmaker Story tells of a Taoist elder who brought rain to a region of great drought in ancient China; it was one of C.G. Jung’s favourite stories about the capacity to bring about a state of natural balance. It is also one of many examples of an ancient worldview where the earth is seen as sacred and humans are part of that sacred matrix. Can we reinhabit this way of seeing in our modern world? In this talk I will bring stories, experiences and examples of ways in which our relationship with the earth, and with our own animal nature, can be restored, opening doors to imagination, synchronicity and the numinous. Along the way there may be many difficult and painful encounters with the shadow of our dominant culture; when this is honoured our ecological crisis can then become an extraordinary portal of modern times.

What does it mean to live on Earth as Gaia—that is to say, as a living, vital entity in which many kinds of beings create meaning and tell stories? If we invoke such a world of sentient presence, calling to other-than-human beings as persons, might we be graced with a response? And what does this mean for recovering the sacred?

Over the past four years I have initiated and participated in a series of co-operative inquiries, drawing on Freya Mathews’ articulation of ‘living cosmos panpsychism.’ In this talk I will give some accounts of our experiences from these inquiries, narratives of occasions when the world has indeed ‘answered back’ to our invocation. From this I will say something about living cosmos panpsychism that has underpinned our work.

Science is traditionally associated with the material world but in this conversation Bernard (President of the Scientific and Medical Network) and Alex (Director of the Pari Center) will discuss whether, and to what extent, it can be expanded to accommodate the worlds of mind and spirit. This is the remit of what is sometimes termed ‘postmaterialist’ science, although ‘transmaterialist science’ is another possible designation, this requiring a change in the nature of both science and scientists themselves. From this perspective, the sacred can be found in all three worlds and not just the domain of spirit. While materialist science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a divine element in the universe, an expanded version may reinforce the link between science and spirituality, thus healing a bifurcation that harms both our planet and our humanity.

Jesus said that men do not put new wine in old bottles, lest the bottles break and the wine is lost. There is new wine pouring into our culture from different sources: new bottles are being created to hold it. This talk will explore aspects of the new wine and the new bottles. It will also explore when, where and how we lost a vital aspect of the sacred, together with visionary imagination and experience. In focussing so much on the rational mind, we have lost touch with the heart and the soul. For increasing numbers, religion has become meaningless. God has been pronounced dead—an outgrown superstition. But while the image of the sacred may die, the Sacred cannot die. After an interval marked by cultural and social disintegration, chaos and despair, a new image may appear, unheralded, from the depths of the human psyche. We are living at such a time, in the final stages of an old era and the birth of a new one.

In this installment of The Future Scientist we will draw attention to the roots, falsehoods, and perils of “post-truth” in the context of the so-called fourth industrial revolution — to distract and confuse, to discipline and punish, such are the means of totalitarianism, now overpowered by digital media. If not dark, the mirror of science has become rather blurred. Who to trust, and why? The post-pandemic challenges of global control and dehumanization apply not only to science, but also to education, health, and the economy. Despite the accelerated proliferation of scientism (and precisely because of this), science still has a vital role to play.

Scientific materialism and modern consumerism have led to a widespread loss of a sense of the sacred where Nature is regarded as dead and a resource to exploit for monetary gain. Correspondingly, the human being is understood in mechanistic terms, and the vision of transhumanism and technocracy is a future ‘upgrade of the human operating system’ where we are, in the memorably chilling phrase of Yuval Noah Harari, simply hackable animals. The very nature of what it means to be human is now at stake, and a recovery of a sense of the sacred with respect to both humans and Nature is now an evolutionary imperative. This entails resisting the transhumanist agenda of universal surveillance and control, and forging a beneficial relationship both with Nature and emerging technologies with human flourishing at the centre; also recognising the centrality of our transcendent nature that gives us access to deeper structures of reality. In the words of King Charles III, the watchword is Harmony.

Our dominant worldview tells us we’re split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world. This worldview has passed its expiration date: it’s based on a series of flawed assumptions that have been superseded by modern scientific findings. In this talk, based on themes from his recent book, The Web of Meaning, author Jeremy Lent will discuss how another worldview is possible—recognizing our deep interrelatedness with all of life.

In this final instalment of The Future Scientist series we will be in conversation with the former director of The Pari Center, Dr. Shantena Augusto Sabbadini. We will discuss the I Ching, also known as The Book of Changes, which Dr. Sabbadini translated to English together with Rudolf Ritsema, the former director of the Eranos Foundation. The I Ching is a divination system, a formidable three-thousand years old manual, whose language defies Western rationality. It is not a philosophical text, nor a prediction machine. Rather than guessing the future, the I Ching allows us to read into the present moment, weaving together context and chance as an organic whole at the moment of observation.