Mindset - The Great Re-Think
2021-04-24 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Rome)
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_N_1zQrG9M

Mindset

Session 4 – The Great Re-Think

with Colin Tudge and special guest Ruby Reed

Saturday April 243:00pm BST | 4:00pm CEST

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

‘Mindset’ is the sum of all the ideas, preconceptions, prejudices, predilections and aversions in ‘the basement of our minds’ that we take for granted and rarely pull out for inspection—but inspection is at least salutary and indeed is necessary. The Great Re-Think discusses mindset under four headings: science, morality, metaphysics, and the arts. Very briefly:

Science is wonderful and necessary (of the right kind) but it can only ever be ‘the art of the soluble,’ as Peter Medawar put the matter. Emphatically, it is not the royal road to truth, or the only game in town. Without dumbing down science should be seen and taught primarily as an aesthetic and spiritual pursuit—not as the means to control or indeed to ‘conquer’ nature but as an exercize in appreciation. Its role as a provider of high tech—some of which can help to achieve the goals of conviviality, fulfilment, and care of the Earth—is a definite bonus but not the raison d’etre.

Morality should be an exercise not in utilitarian thinking as now, but in virtue ethics, as embraced by all the great religions. The bedrock principles are those of compassion, humility, and reverence for nature (underpinned by the concept of oneness and a sense of the sacred).

Metaphysics asks what many have called ‘the ultimate questions’ which here are taken to be: What is the universe really like (is it just ‘stuf,’ as materialist-atheists maintain, or what)? What is the basis of goodness? How do we know what’s true? And, How come? Science and standard western philosophy provide partial answers but metaphysics offers further insights—including the vital notion of transcendence and the sense of the sacred. Metaphysics is the core of all bona fide religions—and is very similar in all of them.

The Arts are the jokers in the pack. Follow the imagination and see where it leads.

In all this there are enough points for discussion to last a great many lifetimes—including ‘What, in practice, can we do?’ Colin has ideas on this—but what does everyone else think?

Ruby Reed co-founded transformative education initiative Advaya in 2015, bringing people together to explore links between ecology, society and wellbeing. In 2019 she co-founded educational platform EcoResolution, linking social movements with new audiences, and in 2021 co-founded ecosystem restoration charity Initiative Earth. Ruby is a Trustee of Resurgence Trust, Talks Curator for Medicine Festival, and excited to be part of BeTheEarth Foundation’s flow-funding network. In 2018-2019 she supported Extinction Rebellion, curating programmes at London protests and Rebel Retreats across the UK. Ruby previously worked with art collectors and has a MA in the Renaissance Body from Edinburgh and a MA in Countercultural Art in Latin America from the Courtauld. She is a Freediver and Yoga Therapist with eight years training in yoga, pranayama & Ayurveda.

Flickering Reality: Persona: Masks that Conceal, Masks that Reveal
2021-05-02 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTfvfb_3G4c

Flickering Reality: Exploring Ideas in Film and Television

Persona: Masks that Conceal, Masks that Reveal

with Kevin Lu

Sunday May 2, 20219:00 am PDT | 12:00 pm EDT | 6:00 pm CEST

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

In this session, we will use three films as our springboard to exploring Jung’s notion of the persona: Wall Street (1987), The Mask (1994) and The Farewell (2019). While each film highlights the potentially pathological relationship one can have with one’s personas, they also convey the important role played by this archetypal imperative in personality development. As with all archetypes, the persona is bipolar in nature and entering into a more integral relationship with its various qualities and characteristics is central to the project of individuation.

Kevin Lu, BA (Hons) (University of Toronto); MA (Heythrop College, University of London); PhD (University of Essex), is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the MA Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. He is a former member of the Executive Committee of the International Association for Jungian Studies and a member of Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Kevin’s publications include articles and chapters on Jung’s relationship to the discipline of history, Arnold J. Toynbee’s use of analytical psychology, critical assessments of the theory of cultural complexes, sibling relationships in the Chinese/Vietnamese Diaspora, racial hybridity, and Jungian perspectives on graphic novels and their adaptation to film.

This series is free and open to everyone!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88085841173

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

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

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

Ancient Wisdom Transforming Tomorrow
2021-05-08 17:59 - 20:30 | Online
Ancient Wisdom Transforming Tomorrow

4-part series: Saturday May 8, 15, 22, 299:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST | 6:00pm SAST

Each session is 2.5 hours

with Gavin Andersson, Rutendo Ngara and Godelieve Spaasand special guests Ela Manga and Keith Mparana

This programme features meditation, drawing, music, stories, dialogues and experiences and is limited to 20 active participants.

We find ourselves in a world in crisis. While theories abound, to some humanity is at the edge of the apocalypse. We are at a time of reckoning, a time of turning. We are both actors and spectators in the time foretold by ancient prophecy.

There has been no greater symbol of this in recent history than the global health emergency due to Covid-19. As a consequence of the virus, borders have been closed, millions of sources of livelihood have been lost, systems have been stifled, economies have suffered, and all the ills of the world have been accentuated. At the peak of the pandemic, the world was stopped in its tracks and activity—as we knew it—and was locked down. Some point out that this may just be the first such pandemic, and that it is merely a harbinger of the crises to come with climate change.

At this watershed moment humanity is asked to re-think, re-imagine, re-define, re-act, re-store, re-generate and re-new.

Can the current Western economic thinking solve everything? What lessons can we learn from Ancient Wisdom?

This series of dialogues aims to bring to light concepts from African Indigenous Knowledge Systems as catalysts for reimagining how to approach issues in our current reality in an interrelated and unbounded way.

By enlarging the space, we can move beyond the existing dominant paradigms and rethink the fictions that shape the modern world. We explore four different Indigenous principles, allowing other ways of knowing to expand our ways of doing—our activity. We create a container for unbounded organising in a time of transition. We traverse the bridge between remembering and imagining and paint the world as we would wish it to become.

Each session addresses one principle:

Ubuntu (Southern Africa)Ubuntu is the principle of interrelatedness, interconnectedness and interdependence. It asserts that: ‘A person is a person through other persons. I am because you are. You are because we are. We are because it is. It is because All that is is.’ This is the root of identity.

Sankofa (West Africa)Sankofa tells us to ‘go back and fetch it.’ It is a concept of ‘historical recovery,’ moving us to reflect on and reclaim Indigenous cultural ideas and principles in order to advance towards a co-created future.

Kemetic Tree of Life (Ancient Egypt)The Tree of Life tracks the process of creation from the Void to All That Is. It is a cosmological principle describing the ancient wisdom about the nature of the cosmos: from the unmanifest to the manifest, the infinite to finite.

Ancestors (throughout)African spirituality holds that there is no separation between the living, those who have walked before and those who are to come. Death is a complementary of life and the beginning of the communication between the visible and the invisible worlds.

How do we look back to move forward, what new insights seek to emerge and what transformative activity fractals can we manifest?

Pre-readingGavin Andersson (2021) ‘Unbounded Organising’ Pari Perspectives, Issue 7, ‘The Common Good’

Gavin Andersson, PhD, is a development practitioner and activity theorist whose life work has focused on strengthening community organisation, and leadership development within civil society.

Gavin was founder and co-ordinator of CORDE, which worked with farmer groups and community enterprises in Botswana. He later consulted in organisational development across southern Africa and in the Caribbean. Returning to South Africa at the inception of democracy he led a development advocacy organization and worked in the fields of corporate social responsibility, civil accountability, and leadership development. Gavin has helped to develop methodologies for citizen-based monitoring of government programmes.

Gavin is an executive coach, senior fellow of the Chair for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg and was a distinguished fellow of the Chair in Development Education housed at the University of South Africa UNISA. He is Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Cape Town where he hosts critical conversations on Macroeconomics, Ethics and Organizing. Gavin lives with three of his five children, is passionate about agroecology, and follows African spirituality.

Rutendo Ngara is an African Indigenous Knowledge Systems practitioner and transdisciplinary researcher whose professional interests have spanned from clinical engineering, healthcare technology management, socio-economic development, mathematics, leadership and fashion design; to the interface between science, culture, cosmology and paradigms of healing. With a passion for integrating art, science and spirituality towards healing of the Collective and restoration of the Whole, she is a spiritual coach, priestess and counsellor, who engages several modes of healing. She consults in workshop facilitation in areas such as leadership, personal development, health and wellness. Rutendo is a co-founder of Ancient Wisdom Africa, a forum that seeks to gather knowledges and voices of Ancient Wisdom and see how these can illuminate the present; as well as a member of the Assegaia Alliance—a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary group of experts dedicated to the protection of the Earth’s Sacred Natural Sites. She serves on a number of boards, advisory and convening committees, including the Credo Mutwa Foundation, the South African Wushu Federation, Earthrise Collective and Umphakatsi Peace Ecovillage. Rutendo is a practitioner of a number of physical disciplines, including Wushu/Kung Fu/Tai Ji for which she has represented South Africa as an international silver medallist. She holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering, an MSc in Medicine in Biomedical Engineering, and is pursuing a doctorate in Philosophy of Education. The quest for harmony, co- existence and complimentarity underpins her endeavours.

Godelieve Spaas is a professor of Sustainable Strategy and Innovation at Avans University of Applied Science in the Netherlands. She is a researcher and also creates and makes performances and podcasts about new ways of entrepreneurial organizing where ecology, society, and the economy all benefit from and interact seamlessly with each other. Her aim is to increase diversity in organizational and entrepreneurial models and realities with a view to the development of a fairer, more sustainable and robust entrepreneurial space. She combines art, science, entrepreneurial practices and indigenous knowledge.

Godelieve also creates new businesses that are collaborative, inclusive and work in harmony with nature. She is associate Director of the Pari Center and a regular guest in Pari, a place where she writes, participates in dialogues, and follows and gives courses.

Dr Ela Manga is an integrative medical doctor with an ancient vision for the future. Amongst the gifts she offers, she is a specialist in energy management, author and speaker who uses Breathwork as a tool for self-empowerment, healing and transformation. For those who have had the privilege of experiencing the transformative power of the breath under her facilitation, it was a source of inspiration and expiration. Last year she ran a podcast series called ‘Threads of Healing,’ where she expanded the notion of healing through different voices and wove it back together into a tapestry of beauty. Apart from her medical practice, she is the Founder of Breathwork Africa.

Keith Mparana is an avid student of African-based systems of knowledge that he translates into artwork through studying the thought processes that are depicted in ancient cosmologies.

Hope and Delusion
2021-05-16 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogTF4n-mRXM

Hope and Delusion: Critical Storytelling for Difficult Times

with Robert Norris

Sunday May 169:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

When we realise just how much hangs on our attitudes towards the various forms of crisis we are exposed to, we may come to see what our work really is. Hope has a curious story to tell. It reminds us of the wealth we carry within us, but also of how easily we are persuaded to give it all up. This talk attempts to string together disparate stories relating to, but not necessarily about, hope, and aims specifically to raise more questions than it answers. Accompanying the talk there will be breakout and plenary sessions in which participants will be able to articulate their thoughts and responses.

On Sunday May 16, Robert will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84842167052

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

When asked once to provide a blurb for a book on the philosophy of language, the question of how to describe Robert professionally had to be addressed. It was decided to describe him as an independent researcher, and this is more or less how Robert has viewed himself ever since. Robert teaches English as a foreign language, but his interests and experience are wide-ranging. Born to British parents in Modena, Italy, he studied Classics at school, English at Aberdeen University and General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. He has travelled and worked in various parts of Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, Southeast Asia, Australasia and the United States. In 2014, he completed a Permaculture Design Course in Vang Vieng, Laos, and holds a second degree black belt in the art of aikido. He is indebted to many teachers in the fields of aikido and meditation, especially Vipassana meditation, and in 2018 completed a Mindfulness Teacher Training Course at the Mangalam Meditation Centre in Germany. He now lives with his beloved wife in Zürich, Switzerland, where he plans to embark on training as a Jungian Analyst at the International School for Analytical Psychologists.

What Is Consciousness?
2021-06-05 17:59 - 2021-06-27 20:00 | Online
Click here to watch the recordings

with Richard Baker Roshi, Valerie Hardcastle, Basil Hiley, Bernardo Kastrup, Gary Lachman, Iain McGilchrist, Roderick Main, Paavo Pylkkänen and Beverley Zabriskie

Chaired by Shantena Sabbadini

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

June 5 – 27, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.

Consciousness is the primary and most immediate experience we all have. Before knowing our name or who we are, before being able to recognize any specific experience we are undergoing, the immediate realization that “I am” is always there.

Yet this fundamental first person experience sits uneasily within the context of our scientific third person description of the world. No doubt consciousness has somehow to do with the brain, since physical or chemical changes in the brain affect the contents of consciousness. But the contents of consciousness, e.g. the experience of the color red, are qualitatively different from and irreducible to patterns of excitation in the brain. This irreducible difference has been dubbed “the hard problem of consciousness.”

What has been dubbed ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ is much deeper than mere neurophysiology. It involves the sense we have of ourselves and our destiny, the issue of life after death and the distinction between animate and inanimate. What are the boundaries (if any) of consciousness? Is consciousness everywhere (as mystical traditions teach) or nowhere (as materialists claim)?

Each session will allow time for audience participation in the form of dialogue, discussion and Q&A.

Program of Event

Analytic Idealism with Bernardo KastrupSaturday June 5

Can Quantum Mechanics Solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness?with Basil Hiley and Paavo PylkkänenSunday June 6

Mundane and Mystical: A Panentheistic Perspective on C. G. Jung’s Late Thoughts About Consciousness, Ego, and Selfwith Roderick MainSaturday June 12

Emotion, Synchronicity and Surprisewith Beverley ZabriskieSunday June 13

Beyond the Robot: Consciousness and Existentialismwith Gary LachmanSaturday June 19

What Is the Neural Correlate of Consciousness?with Valerie Gray HardcastleSunday June 20

The Inner Science, Experiential Investigation, and Analysis of Consciousnesswith Richard Baker RoshiSaturday June 26

Closing Panel: What is Consciousnesswith Valerie Hardcastle, Gary Lachman, Roderick Main, Paavo Pylkkanen and Beverley ZabriskieSunday June 27

Analytic Idealism
2021-06-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Analytic Idealism

with Bernardo Kastrup

Saturday June 5, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Two widespread current notions of consciousness are physicalism, i.e. the perspective that assumes physical reality, matter, as fundamental, and bottom-up panpsychism, i.e. the perspective that takes everything as possessing mind or consciousness and higher levels of consciousness consisting of a combination of more elementary levels. Bernardo Kastrup will argue for an idealist (consciousness only) ontology consistent with empirical observations, which seeks to explain the facts of nature more parsimoniously than physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism. This ontology also attempts to offer more explanatory power than both physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism, in that it does not fall prey to either the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ (the challenge of deducing consciousness from matter) or the ‘subject combination problem,’ (the challenge of deducing higher levels of consciousness from lower levels). It can be summarized as follows: spatially unbound consciousness is posited to be the only ontological reality, the ultimate nature of everything. We, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness, similarly to what happens in multiple personality disorders.

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a PhD in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and a second PhD in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect‘ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. Bernardo’s most recent book is The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

Can Quantum Mechanics Solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness?
2021-06-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

Can Quantum Mechanics Solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness?

with Basil Hiley and Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday June 6, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why physical processes give rise to consciousness. Regardless of many attempts to solve the problem, there is still no commonly agreed solution. It is thus very likely that some radically new ideas are required if we are to make any progress. In this presentation we turn to quantum theory to find out whether it has anything to offer in our attempts to understand the place of mind and conscious experience in nature. In particular we will be focusing on the ontological interpretation of quantum theory proposed by Bohm and Hiley and its further development by Hiley and its philosophical interpretation by Pylkkanen.

The ontological interpretation makes the radical proposal that quantum reality includes a new type of potential energy which contains active information. This proposal, if correct, constitutes a major change in our notion of matter. We are used to having in physics only mechanical concepts, such as position, momentum and force. Our intuition that it is not possible to understand how and why physical processes can give rise to consciousness is partly the result of our assuming that physical processes (including neurophysiological processes) are always mechanical. If, however, we are willing to change our view of physical reality by allowing non-mechanical, organic and holistic concepts such as active information to play a fundamental role, this, we argue, makes it possible to understand the relationship between physical and mental processes in a new way. It might even be a step toward solving the hard problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

Mundane and Mystical: A Panentheistic Perspective on C. G. Jung’s Late Thoughts About Consciousness, Ego, and Self
2021-06-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCz8qju52Is

Mundane and Mystical: A Panentheistic Perspective on C. G. Jung’s Late Thoughts About Consciousness, Ego, and Self

with Roderick Main

Saturday June 12, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

C. G. Jung insisted that there could be no consciousness without an ego, and accordingly he expressed scepticism about the desirability and even the possibility of experiencing pure consciousness or egoless awareness—a view seemingly at odds with worldwide mystical experience as well as much Asian philosophy. In his presentation Roderick will re-examine Jung’s position on this issue in light of Jung’s own mystical experiences in 1944, some late developments in his thinking about the relationship between the ego and the self, and the case for his being viewed as an implicit panentheist. He will argue that Jung’s thought can provide a much richer and more socially relevant account of mystical experience, including of the experience of egoless awareness, than is often supposed and than some of his own comments might lead one to expect.

Roderick Main holds a BA and MA in Classics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Religious Studies from Lancaster University. He now works at the University of Essex, where he is Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the Centre for Myth Studies. His books include Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal (1997); The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of Modern Western Culture (2004); Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience (2007); Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious (2013); Holism: Possibilities and Problems (2020); and Jung, Deleuze, and the Problematic Whole (2021).

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

Emotion, Synchronicity and Surprise
2021-06-13 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WKbNa4nVf8

Emotion, Synchronicity and Surprise

with Beverley Zabriskie

Sunday June 13, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

In Psyche and Matter, the Jungian analyst Marie Louise von Franz notes:

Like Wolfgang Paul’s “statistical laws with primary probabilities,” archetypes are also “a list of expectation values or ‘primary probability’ for certain psychological (including mental) reactions.” Referring to physicist David Bohm’s grid, “the archetypes can be understood as dynamic, unobservable structures, specimens of the implicate order. If, on the other hand, an archetype manifests as an archetypal dream image, it has unfolded and become more ‘explicated’.” (p. 252)

Jung spoke of synchronicity as an archetypal pattern. What allows an archetype to unfold, and a synchronous experiences to be explicated as a synchronicity?

In the post-Cartesian era, tough minded neuroscientists ignored the seemingly tenderminded themes of emotion and imagination. Since the 1990’s there has been dedicated pursuit of the role of emotion in cognition and imagination, leading to an intersection with Carl Jung’s seminal concepts of the affective basis of the psyche, the psyche’s role in emotional equilibrium, the notion of emotion as fuel for imagination, perceivable in archetypal images and narratives.. We have moved from what one researcher describes as a movement from “I think therefore I am,”, to “I feel , therefore I think, I think.”

This discussion will engage the intrinsic role of emotion and the agency of imagination as catalysts of unfolding, as intensities in the imprinting of mind and psyche, body and brain. The necessity of surprise as a basic survival emotion, and a crucial component of psychic process will be highlighted.

We will hear implicit and explicit resonances between Jung’s tenets and four contemporary theorists’ relevance to our understanding of inter-relatedness, on the continuum of emotion, synchronicity and surprise.:

Jaak Panskepp’s affective neuroscience’s observation that “the evolutionary layering of the brain, the raw affective substrates of mind have a more ancient evolutionary history than our sense of cognitive awareness (Panksepp, 1998).

Joseph Le Doux’s The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains

Antonio Damasio’s model of convergence and divergence.

Rodolo Llinas notions of endogenous images, and the human brain as akin to a musical instrument with sympathetic chords.

Beverley Zabriskie, LCSW, is a Jungian analyst in New York City, and a founding faculty member and past president of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association (JPA). Ms Zabriskie is a past vice president of the Philemon Foundation, dedicated to publishing the unpublished works of C.G. Jung, and a past president of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. She is on the Executive Committee of the Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Analytical Psychology, London and the San Francisco Jung Journal: Psyche and Culture. She presented the 2007 Fay Lecture ‘Transformation Through Emotion: From Myth to Neuroscience.’ Her many lectures and publications include ‘A Meeting of Rare Minds,’ the Preface to Atom and Archetype: The Pauli-Jung Correspondence (2001); ‘When Psyche Meets Soma: The Question of Incarnation’ in About a Body (2006); ‘Time and Tao in Synchronicity’ in the Jung-Pauli Conjecture and Its Impact Today (2014); ‘Energy and Emotion: C.G. Jung’s Fordham Declaration’ in Jung in the Academy and Beyond: The Fordham Lectures 100 Years Later; and ‘Psychic Energy and Synchronicity’ Journal of Analytical Psychology (2014). A recent publication is ‘Spectrums of Emotion’ in Research in Analytical Psychology, Vol. l.

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

The Ancestors—the Tree of Life and Intergenerational Patterning
2021-06-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y12raflNx6g

The Ancestors—the Tree of Life and Intergenerational Patterning

with Melanie Rein

Wednesday June 16 9:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Online Pari Dialogue

This talk will focus on the unconscious patterns which run through families and generations of families, as one generation inherits, responds and reacts to the complexes and archetypal energies of the previous generation—and even of the generation before that—parents, grandparents and in some cases, great-grandparents. Drawing on mythology and other cultural experiences, the presenter will explore the symbolic nature of the genogram, or psychological genealogy tree, and its connection to the Tree of Life as a visual image for eliciting, revealing and deepening insights into family and ancestral patterning.

On Wednesday June 16, Melanie will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84239833716

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

Melanie Rein PhD., is a Jungian analyst and supervisor with a practice in Cambridge, UK. She is a senior member of the Guild of Analytical Psychologists, London, where she originally trained, and of the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists. Many moons ago, Melanie worked as a Psychiatric Social Worker, using family therapy in her work with children and families. Later, following her PhD., and as a social scientist, she directed a number of British Government and EU projects in Central and Eastern Europe, as well working on a collaborative research project with colleagues in Zambia and Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.

Image Above:Israhel van MeckenemOrnament with the Tree of Jesse, 1480–90With kind permission of The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

Epistemic Justice
2021-06-16 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Epistemic Justice

Reflections on Past, Present and Future – from an African Perspective With Dr. Baba Buntu (PhD)

June: Cognitive

Wednesday June 16, 23 and 30 – 1 hour sessions10:00 am PDT | 1:00 pm EDT | 6:00 pm BST | 7:00 pm CEST

This seminar-series is a presentation of reflections on justice, liberation and transformation. It is a fragmented story, inspired by the presenter’s tri-continental life-journey, interpreted through a trans-disciplinary lens and motivated by finding strategies for change through epistemic disobedience.

Rooted in African worldviews, each session will explore aspects of history that has had a devastating impact on human development. Literary references will be used as navigation points in order to interrogate complex problems and stimulate philosophical introspection.

More than providing the answers, the seminar-series will seek to disrupt common thinking and encourage a transdisciplinary approach to transformation. Realizing that our views of the world have been greatly impacted by exclusion and silencing, the series is an attempt to speak the unspoken and envision the righteous.

The seminar-series will be scheduled along 12 key-concepts, structured through four dimensions: Physical, cognitive, social and metaphysical. 3 sessions will be held each month of May, June, July and August at 7:00 CEST of 1 hour.

June: Cognitive

June 16 – Violence: What is the script of violence, beyond physical aggression?June 23 – Economy: How do we manage a world where “to have” is a privilege?June 30 – Leadership: Is there a universal script for how to lead?

What people have said….

This program is -in my eyes- an absolute prerequisite for everyone aspiring to bring change in the world, for everyone who claims to believe in change, equality and justice. You cannot not listen to Baba Buntu’s work on (in)justice. Julie Arts

Using evocative questions and images, engaging around both the mind and lived experience, Dr. Buntu opens the potential for understanding at a deep and enduring level. Sharon Landes

Dr. Baba Buntu strikes the perfect balance between personal experience and in-depth academic research in this eye-opening series. This course should be mandatory for people of all colours to become aware and hopefully start to fight the inherent systemic injustices both in our daily lives and at a larger scale. Rose Vervenne

Following months…..

July: SocialJuly 14 – Family: Who is the teacher of familyhood?July 21 – Youth: Why do we hate youth so much?July 28 – Gender: Is gender a concept of violence?

August: MetaphysicalAugust 11 – Spirit: Who defines truth beyond the physical world?August 18 – Unity: What are the mechanics of reuniting a fragmented world?August 25 – Balance: Whose responsibility is it to restore what was broken?

Previous month…..

May: The PhysicalMay 12 – Skin: How did appearance become punishable?May 19 – Presence: What does it mean to exist in this world?May 26 – Representation: Who can represent who, and why?

Dr Baba Amani Olúbánjọ Buntu is a Community/Activist Scholar with more than 30 years of experience in conceptualizing and implementing programs on social development, innovative entrepreneurship, youth empowerment and indigenous knowledge – particularly suited for Afrikan applicability. He has background from Anguilla, grew up in Norway and has lived in South Afrika since the 90’s.

In Norway he founded Afrikan Youth In Norway (AYIN), started Norway’s first Afrikan-centered retail shop, Afrikan Excellence, and co-founded Afrikan History Week (AHW). He is the Founder and Co-Director of eBukhosini Solutions, a community based company in Johannesburg, focusing on Afrikan-Centered education and decolonial transformation. He holds a Doctoral and a Master Degree in Philosophy of Education from University of South Africa and has also studied social work, group therapy and political science. As a Pan-Afrikan educator, writer, mentor and practitioner, with broad experience from work in Afrika, the Caribbean and Europe.

The Image Above: MMRA KRADO belongs to the family of Adinkra conceptual symbols created by the Bono and Akan civilizations, in today’s Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.

In the literal sense, mmra means law while krado means padlock. Together they can be translated to mean the seal of the law. This symbol represents justice and authority. When there is a desire for law and order, citizens must resolve to be law abiding for a peaceful and harmonious community.

Beyond the Robot: Consciousness and Existentialism
2021-06-19 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqQUirJ5y98

with Gary Lachman

Saturday June 199:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session the recording will be available.

Lachman will base his presentation on the work of Colin Wilson and his ‘new existentialism,’ a phenomenological analysis of the habits that keep us from experiencing consciousness as we should (that would be more along the lines of Maslow’s ‘peak experience’), the ‘dampers’ we unconsciously place over our perceptions that can lead to depression, angst, and existential despair. This ‘muffling’ of experience is the result of a necessary editing process, that allows us to maneuver through life successfully. But it does its work too well, reducing the complexity of the world to a drab pasteboard surface with which we can easily deal, but which leaves us with no idea of why we should… Wilson’s phenomenological approach uncovers the unconscious ‘de-valuing’ at work in our perception of the world and the mental acts that can reduce the unconscious editing, so that more of the world—and its inherent meaning—can enter consciousness. We can say that he developed insights that can lead consciousness from Sartre’s ‘nausea’ to mystical experience.

Gary Lachman is the author of many books about consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including The Return of Holy Russia, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, and Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson. He writes for several journals in the US, UK, and Europe, lectures around the world and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a former life he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before moving to London in 1996 and becoming a full time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a metaphysical book shop, taught English literature, and was Science Writer for UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be reached at www.garylachman.co.uk,www.facebook.com/GVLachman/ and twitter.com/GaryLachman

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

General Information

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

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

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

What Is the Neural Correlate of Consciousness?
2021-06-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

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

with Valerie Gray Hardcastle

Sunday June 209:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

At first glance, it seems that explaining what the “neural correlate of consciousness” (NCC) is should be straightforward: it is whatever that happens in our brains when we have a conscious experience that is lacking when we are not having a conscious experience. But this simple answer is misleading. It turns out that there might not be an NCC – even if we believe that consciousness is part of the material world and can be explained scientifically.

This presentation will discuss some of the complexities in understanding what exactly a conscious experience is, as different groups (philosophers and physicians, for example) describe it very differently. We will then look at the multitude of suggestions for the NCC and try to draw some conclusions about what the NCC could be based on these ideas. We will also explore the reasons some scholars believe that trying to identify the NCC is a fool’s errand and whether these reasons make sense from a scientific point of view. Finally, we will examine the “embodied cognition” movement can shed some light on these issues.

Seeking the NCC presents a very simple vision for how to investigate and understand consciousness: isolate the thing inside the brain that is correlated with experience and you will have identified what consciousness is. I shall suggest that whatever story ends up being told about consciousness is going to be much more complicated. We shall engage in a group discussion of whether seeking the neural correlates for consciousness is a productive approach for understanding our phenomenal experiences and what the outcomes of this search might bring.

Valerie Gray Hardcastle recently joined Northern Kentucky University as the St. Elizabeth Healthcare Executive Director of the Institute for Health Innovation and the Vice President for Health Innovation. An internationally recognized scholar, Hardcastle is also the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Consciousness Studies and the author of five books and over 200 essays. She studies the nature and structure of interdisciplinary theories in cognitive science and has focused primarily on developing a philosophical framework for understanding conscious phenomena responsive to neuroscientific and psychological data. Most recently, she is investigating how the nature of addiction can shed light on what it means to be human. Hardcastle received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in cognitive science and philosophy from the University of California, San Diego; a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Houston; and a bachelor’s degree with a double major in philosophy and political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

The Inner Science, Experiential Investigation, and Analysis of Consciousness
2021-06-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA1Gv_2NN70

The Inner Science, Experiential Investigation, and Analysis of Consciousness

with Richard Baker Roshi

Saturday June 269:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session the recording will be available.

To practice Zen means to observe the fact and process of knowing. Consciousness is the most visible face of our mutualized knowing, a knowing through others and within the proximal spectrum of phenomenality. To closely and dispassionately observe the activity and functioning of consciousness, it is necessary, additionally, to actualize a transformational ‘awareness-observing-consciousness.’ This is a shift in kind: a shift from a self- referencing, comparative consciousness to a non-self- referencing, non-comparative awareness. This ‘non-self-referencing, non-comparative awareness,’ allows us to attentionally notice and study, to deconstruct and reconstruct, the perceptual and organizational processes of consciousness. This process of deconstructing and reconstructing consciousness is called the Teaching of the Five Skandhas. The five attentional categories for the analysis of consciousness are: ‘Form,’ ‘Non-Graspable-Feelings,’ ‘Perception,’ ‘Associative Consciousness,’ and ‘Consciousness.’

Zentatsu Richard Baker is the Founder and Head Teacher of the Dharma Sangha Centers in the United States and Europe. In the United States he lives at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center in Colorado; and in Germany, at the Zen Buddhist Center Schwarzwald in the Black Forest. He has been teaching Zen-Buddhism for 45 years.

Baker Roshi is the Dharma Successor of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (author of the book Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind). In 1966, with and for Suzuki Roshi, he co-founded the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California.

Baker Roshi subsequently founded the Green Gulch Zen Practice Community and Farm in Marin County, California in 1972. During the ’70s, he pioneered a number of businesses related to Zen practice. In 1983, he founded the Dharma Sangha.

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

Closing Panel: What is Consciousness?
2021-06-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOg8shXLAqM

Closing Panel: What is Consciousness?

with Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Gary Lachman, Roderick Main, Paavo Pylkkanen and Beverley Zabriskie

Sunday June 279:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

We are sorry to announce that Iain McGilchrist is indisposed and will be unable to give what was to be the final presentation in our ‘What Is Consciousness?’ series. Iain is rescheduling his talk for September, and we will be notifying everyone once we have confirmed the date. In its place we have gathered together a number of our presenters for a final panel.

We have now reached the end of our ‘What is Consciousness?’ event. We have explored the many aspects of the topic through the eyes of scholars some of whom had opposing viewpoints but all of whom were both compelling and enlightening. We are pleased that so many of them have agreed to take part in a final panel to explore and deepen some of the themes that have emerged in the presentations.

We will begin with the panelists responding to prepared questions on such topics as the relationship of matter and consciousness, how quantum mechanics might shed light on the ‘block universe’ conceptualization, and how patterns of activation of the human brain during cognitive performancemight shed light on consciousness.

This will be followed by a Q&A session open to everyone. Make sure you have your questions and comments ready.

To see the full What is Consciousness Series and list of speakers click here

The Screen and the Soul
2021-07-03 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6TRmZBZIpo

The Screen and the Soul: Virtual Reality, Real Reality and How It Is

with Christopher Hauke

Saturday July 39:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Free Online Pari Dialogue

The Covid pandemic has required us to keep a broader social distance from one another; for psychotherapists this should be less of a problem. With reliable broadband making therapy sessions (and presentations like this one) possible online, why do so many people still find the virtual session falls so far short of the ‘real’ meeting in person? Maybe our assumption that there is a ‘real’ version and there is an inferior ‘virtual’ version is wrong to begin with. Christopher Hauke will lay out three approaches to this question.

The first derives from quantum theorist David Deutsch and his book The Fabric of Reality (Deutsch, 1997). The second approach digs further into philosophical implications around the idea that material reality is not an objective fact and consciousness is all there is. This is known as metaphysical idealism as analysed by Bernardo Kastrup’s (Kastrup 2020, 2021) work especially his understanding of Jung’s metaphysics.

Lastly, film narratives, as well as factual ‘reality’ films, have long been delivering ‘reality’ to us on screens in their own virtual way. So Chris will finish by discussing the bio-evolutionary ideas around visual perception, affordance (Gibson, 1979) and the central role of meaning in both film and the therapy session. In doing so, he will bring us back to the definition of ‘virtual’ which flagged it as something in essence or effect. In this way he brings a new perspective to the idea of ‘real reality’ and ‘virtual reality’ in our new way of working.

On Saturday July 3, Chris will open our monthly Community Call with a presentation and followed by discussion and Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE!

Join our Zoom meeting via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83111513487

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

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

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

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

Beyond Bohm: Science, Order and Creativity
2021-07-10 17:59 - 2021-08-29 20:00 | Online
Part 1: Physics and Metaphysics

Part 2: Contemplation and Creativity

Part 1: Physics and Metaphysics

with Emily Adlam, Basil Hiley, Paavo Pylkkänen and Giuseppe Vitiello

Chaired by Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

July 10 – 11, 17 – 18 and Closing Panel 25, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

Two hour sessions on Saturdays and Sundays

All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.

David Bohm has given a fundamental contribution to the still ongoing debate on the interpretation of quantum physics, a contribution largely ignored by the mainstream physics community for decades, but now being rediscovered and taken into consideration both in philosophical debate and in mathematical and experimental developments.

This first sequence of Beyond Bohm: Science, Order and Creativity will explore some outer edges of these investigations.

It will describe how contextuality (one of the most puzzling features of the quantum world) is represented in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum physics and compare it to various alternatives.

It will follow up Bohm’s investigation of consciousness in terms of a dialogue between the self and its Double (the representation it constructs of its surroundings).

It will outline the Dirac-Bohm picture, a very significant recent mathematical result that provides a different physical intuition with which to understand quantum phenomena.

It will illustrate some of Bohm’s key philosophical contributions to a scientific metaphysics and sketch how they could be further developed in future research.

Take this unique opportunity to participate in an exploration of what Bohm’s ideas mean for the future, by former colleagues of David Bohm and scholars of his work.

Program of Event

Saturday July 10Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyondwith Emily Adlam

Sunday July 11The Brain and its Mindful Doublewith Giuseppe Vitiello

Saturday July 17The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm’s 1952 Approach in a Wider Contextwith Basil Hiley

Sunday July 18Understanding the Nature of Reality and Consciousness: Bohm’s Philosophical Projectwith Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday July 25Closing Panel – Physics and Metaphysicswith Emily Adlam, Basil Hiley, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and David Schrum

Part 2: Contemplation and Creativity

with more than 25 guest presentersChaired by Lee Nichol

August 14 – 15, 21 – 22, 28 – 29, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

Two hour sessions every Saturdays and Sundays

All sessions are live; recordings will be available for any sessions you are unable to attend.

David Bohm’s work has been highly influential in the world of physics, but his philosophical ideas crossed multiple disciplines with a holistic approach. This sequence of presentations will follow some of these ideas, and explore new threads of inquiry inspired by Bohm:

How can artistic expression and philosophical inquiry complement one another? What is the role of imagination in exploring the polarity between participatory consciousness and literal thought? What can we learn from Indigenous cultures about enfoldment and unfoldment in the natural order? Can Bohm’s insight into participatory understanding, along with Buddhist principles, point the way through our collective human sorrow to what may lie beyond? What does the lineage of those who influenced Bohm’s dialogue tell us about the transmission and evolution of participative consciousness in today’s world?

Each of these questions will be addressed in this six-part sequence of presentations. We hope you can join us as we attempt to stand on Bohm’s shoulders and peer into the future.

All sessions will be in ’roundtable’ format, with each having a core group of guest presenters in conversation and dialogue. In most case, the presentations will be followed 30 minutes of discussion and Q & A with all those attending the session. In total, we have more than 25 guest presenters bringing their insights to ‘Beyond Bohm, Part 2.’

Program of Event

Saturday August 14Creativity and the Artistwith Jessica Ball, Alison Churchill, Emma Cocker and Hester Reeve

Sunday August 15Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexuswith James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark Vernon. Facilitated by Lee Nichol

Saturday August 21Transformation and Renewal Through Indigenous Dialoguewith David Begay (Navajo), Angelita Borbon (Yaqui), Greg Cajete (Tewa), Amethyst First Rider (Blackfoot), Rose Imai (Tuscarora), Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot), Nancy Maryboy (Navajo), Melissa Nelson (Anishinaabe/Metis), Lee Nichol

Sunday August 22Changing Consciousnesswith Sandra Fiegehen, David Schrum and Stephen Smith

Saturday August 28Dialogue’s Lineage and the Transmission of Participative Consciousnesswith Beth Macy, Mark Ryan and Lee Nichol

Sunday August 29Beyond Bohm 2: Closing Sessionwith Leroy Little Bear, Beth Macy, Melissa Nelson, Lee Nichol, Hester Reeve and David Schrum

Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyond
2021-07-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Contextuality In De Broglie-Bohm And Beyond with Emily Adlam€10,00

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Contextuality in de Broglie-Bohm and Beyond

with Emily Adlam

Saturday July 10, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Contextuality is one particularly puzzling non-classical feature of the quantum world—but what conclusions should we draw from it? In this talk, Dr Adlam will explain what contextuality is and why the presence of contextuality in our theories needs explaining. She will describe how contextuality is manifested in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics and compare and contrast the de Broglie-Bohm account of contextuality to various alternatives. Finally, she will discuss some interesting new mathematical approaches to contextuality and consider what these results add to our understanding.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Emily Adlam is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of physics specialising in quantum information and foundations. She studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and then received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in relativistic quantum information. She recently published a book, Quantum Foundations, as part of the Cambridge University Press Elements of Philosophy series.

The Brain and its Mindful Double
2021-07-11 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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The Brain And Its Mindful Double with Giuseppe Vitiello€10,00

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The Brain and its Mindful Double

with Giuseppe Vitiello

Sunday July 11, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

By repeated trial-and-error the brain constructs within itself, through its mental activity, an understanding of its surround, that we describe as its Double. The relation that the self and its Double construct constitutes the meaning of the flows of information exchanged during their interactions. The act of consciousness resides in such a dialogue of the self with its Double. The continuous attempt to reach the equilibrium in this dialogue shows that the real goal pursued by the brain activity is the aesthetical experience, the perfect ‘to-be-in-the-world.’ Active reciprocal responses between the self and the world imply responsibility and thus they become moral, ethical responses through which the self and its Double become part of the larger social dialogue. Aesthetical pleasure unavoidably implies disclosure, to manifest ‘signs,’ communication. An interpersonal, collective level of consciousness then arises, a larger stage where the actors are mutually dependent, each one simply non-existing without the others.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Giuseppe Vitiello is Honorary Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Salerno, Italy.

Associate (1983-2018) to INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare). Ph.D. in Physics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA, 1974. Research activity in elementary particles, condensed matter physics, biological systems and brain studies. Author of about 250 papers and of the books My Double Unveiled – The dissipative quantum model of brain, John Benjamins Publ. Co., Amsterdam 2001. H.Umezawa and G.Vitiello, Quantum Mechanics, Bibliopolis, Napoli 1986, (Japanese translation by K.Yasue and M.Jibu, Nippon Hyoron Sha. Co.Ltd., Tokyo, Japan 2005). M.Blasone, P.Jizba, G.Vitiello, Quantum Field Theory and its macroscopic manifestations, Imperial College Press, London 2011. G.G.Globus, K.H.Pribram, G.Vitiello (Editors) Brain and Being. At the boundary between science, philosophy, language and arts, John Benjamins Publ. Co., Amsterdam 2004. He collaborates since 2009 with Luc Montagnier (2008 Medicine Nobel Prize), on research on the electromagnetic properties of DNA and since 2003 has collaborated with Walter J. Freeman (deceased 2016) in neuroscience.

The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm's 1952 Approach in a Wider Context
2021-07-17 18:01 - 20:00 | Online
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The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm’s 1952 Approach In A Wider Context. Basil Hiley€10,00

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The Dirac-Bohm Picture: Bohm’s 1952 Approach in a Wider Context

with Basil Hiley

Saturday July 17, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

It has recently been shown that the Bohm approach outlined in his 1952 work is not a new type of ‘mechanics’ but is unitarily equivalent, i.e. mathematically equivalent, to the Schrödinger approach, dealing directly with canonical coordinates (x, p) rather than through the intermediary ‘wave functions’. This fits in with the Stone-von Neumann theorem which explains why we already have the Schrödinger ‘picture’, the Heisenberg ‘picture’, the interaction ‘picture’ etc. We have called it the Dirac-Bohm ‘picture’ based on a non-commutative algebra: it is from this picture that Bohm’s ’52 approach emerges. The word ‘picture’ is here used in a technical sense, but can be taken as providing a different physical intuition with which to understand quantum phenomena.

Although many of the details are very technical, Hiley will try to explain how the ideas provide a new way of looking at quantum phenomena, which not only confirms Bohm’s philosophical insights, but adds a new meaning to terms like the ‘Bohm momentum’, the ‘osmotic momentum’ which, in turn, enables us to understand how the quantum potential fits in with the general notion of a gauge field. The reason why the quantum potential gives rise to such a ‘strange’ force is that we are looking at it in terms of an interaction force. However it gives rise to a different type of force which Einstein calls a ‘phoronometric’ force. It is the type of potential that generates the Coriolis force which is responsible for the depressions arising in the Atlantic ocean giving us here in the UK such ‘wretched weather’ or the vortices that arise in the Bosporus. What is not generally realised is that the perihelion precession of Mercury arises from just such a force in general relativity. It is this mathematical structure that enables us to generate a new ‘dynamical geometry’ or better still a phoronometry providing new insights into the relation between the individual and the collective.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

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

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

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

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

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

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

Understanding the Nature of Reality and Consciousness: Bohm’s Philosophical Project
2021-07-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Understanding The Nature Of Reality And Consciousness: Bohm’s Philosophica Project. Paavo Pylkkänen€10,00

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with Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday July 18, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

David Bohm was concerned with providing a description of reality – at the quantum level, and more generally, a unified description of matter, life, and consciousness, all adding up to a general concept of reality or a metaphysical theory. Such synthetic ontological projects were not popular in much of 20thcentury philosophy and thus Bohm’s philosophical work has been often ignored by professional philosophers. However, it is important to realize that although he was clearly more concerned with describing a mind-independent reality than many other 20th-century physicists or philosophers, this concern did not mean that he ignored the role of the mind (language, perception, etc.) in his attempts to describe reality. In other words, he did not ignore epistemological issues or questions that concern the nature of our knowledge and the problems of justifying it, or the way language shapes our perception of reality. On the contrary, his broad philosophical work includes extensive studies of various epistemic issues: physics and perception (Bohm 1965a), the notions of truth and understanding (Bohm 1964), a view of science as “perception-communication” (Bohm 1977), experimentation with the structure of language (the rheomode, Bohm 1977), study of knowledge understood as process (Bohm 1974), and discussions of topics such as communication, creativity, art, and so on. To fully appreciate Bohm’s views about the nature of reality, they should be understood in the context of his epistemic considerations.

What would it mean to go beyond Bohm in philosophy? Before doing that we ought to first be able to understand the philosophical significance of what he did. Perhaps his main contribution was to offer us a version of scientific metaphysics, through his interpretations of quantum theory and the more general implicate order scheme he developed. The need for a scientific metaphysics has in recent years been energetically proposed by Ladyman and Ross in their “ontic structural realism”, which is in some ways similar to Bohm’s implicate order scheme – perhaps some new possibilities arise when thinking together these schemes? But Bohm’s proposal to experiment with the structure of language and to ask what happens to epistemology if both reality and knowledge are processes offer likewise radically new perspectives for philosophy. In this talk Pylkkänen will go through some of Bohm’s key philosophical contributions and sketch how they could be further developed in future research.

https://philpapers.org/s/Paavo%20Pylkkänen

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

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

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

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

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

Closing Panel: Physics and Metaphysics
2021-07-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Closing Panel: Physics and Metaphysics

with Emily Adlam, Basil Hiley, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and David Schrum

Sunday July 25, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

The concluding panel of Part One of the Beyond Bohm event will examine work in progress in various areas related to Bohm’s thought.

The session will start with the panelists describing which developments of Bohm’s thought they consider most important for their work, for their life and for philosophy in general.

The discussion will then be open to the audience. Conversation in small groups will be used to elicit relevant question and comments.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Emily Adlam is a theoretical physicist and philosopher of physics specialising in quantum information and foundations. She studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and then received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in relativistic quantum information. She recently published a book, Quantum Foundations, as part of the Cambridge University Press Elements of Philosophy series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David C. Schrum, PhD. Quantum theorist

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

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

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

Creativity and the Artist
2021-08-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Creativity And The Artist with Jessica Ball, Alison Churchill, Emma Cocker and Hester Reeve€10,00

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Creativity and the Artist

with Jessica Ball, Alison Churchill, Emma Cocker and Hester Reeve

Saturday August 14, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

David Bohm’s writing on creativity was not directed exclusively at art works, instead it sought to outline a more foundational capacity in any one of us – or in any human discipline – for new orders of perception and understanding. First and foremost, he explained, we need to awaken the necessary ‘creative mind state’ which is supressed by the unrecognized “boss reality” of Western thought, language and the associated entrapment of the self-image. Bohm’s is a dynamic model of creativity open to entanglements of mind, body, language, conceptual abstraction, non-human matter and infinity, the nature of which is to be continually unfolding, to be generative. His expanded notion of what constitutes an ‘artform’ is radical and speaks to contemporary, speculative approaches towards ever opening up an animate world of which we are a participant.

Four artists, all of whom recognise first-hand the creative potential of Bohm Dialogue to individual and social transformation, will explore their concerns, ideas and experiences together.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Jessica Ball is a creative facilitator dedicated to working towards positive social and environmental change through transformative learning, dialogue and the value of creativity. With a background in fine art, textile design (Chelsea College of Art and Design, BA) and sustainable fashion (London College of Fashion, MA), she grounds her work in design thinking and creative methods to support people to engage, connect, reflect and express. Her approach to workshop design and facilitation encourages participants to explore various themes such as culture, identity and values, gender equality and the relevance of sustainability to their lives. Her work aims to provide a creative and engaging space for participants to better understand themselves; improve their relationships with other people; and become more aware and engaged in the world around them. Jessica has worked with a diverse range of organisations across sectors from corporate and international development to education and charities.

Alison Churchill is a visual artist in Sheffield with a practice exploring the creative force contained in water and the patterns of disruption, coherence and emergence which play out on its surface. She is developing an online collaborative art practice with artists in the UK, which comes out of an over ten-year experiment with four female artists based in the US and Israel exploring the creative process beyond the individual.

Churchill has been involved in a number of projects exploring intersubjective consciousness, including Scott Peck’s Community Building, Bohm Dialogue and Emergent Dialogue.

Churchill is a junior Rinzai Zen teacher and lead regular Zen Brushwork sessions in Sheffield, which involve meditation, energy-raising exercises and calligraphy using a large brush.

Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University, whose research focuses on artistic processes and practices, and the performing of ‘thinking-in-action’ therein. Her practice unfolds restlessly along the threshold between writing/art, including experimental, performative and collaborative approaches. Cocker’s writing has been published in Failure; Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought; Stillness in a Mobile World; Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art; Reading/Feeling; On Not Knowing: How Artists Think; The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, and the solo collection, The Yes of the No. Emma was co-researcher on the artistic research project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (2014–2017); a contributing artistic researcher in Ecologies of Practice, Research Pavilion, Venice, (2019); and is co-founder of the Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group on Language-based Artistic Research.

Hester Reeve’s practice encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing, David Bohm’s ‘Dialogue’ and social sculpture.

She is interested in the relationship between critical thinking and human agency in everyday life, particularly when it is risked through the figure of ‘the artist’ (where what constitutes an artist is broadly conceived and not exclusive to art school training).

Recent public works have been staged at Tanzquartier, Vienna, Tate Britain (working under the umbrella of The Emily Davison Lodge with Olivia Plender) and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hester Reeve is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus
2021-08-15 18:00 - 20:00
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Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus with Lee Nichol, James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark Vernon€10,00

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Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus

with James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark VernonFacilitated by Lee Nichol

Sunday August 15, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

For those who have surveyed David Bohm’s version of dialogue and the larger theoretical context from which it emerged, a trove of concepts and definitions will be familiar: participatory thought, literal thought, thought of type “A” and type “B”, representations, collective representations.

What is less familiar is the extent to which Bohm imported these concepts from his long relationship with the philologist Owen Barfield, whose lifework centered around what he called “the evolution of consciousness.” In this view, human consciousness has shifted from a dispersed, widely focused consciousness (original participation) to the pinpoint, individualized consciousness that we experience today. Barfield proposed that this atomistic, individualized consciousness has the potential to now open into a transformed participatory mode, deriving from the “interiority,” or selfhood, that is a correlate of individuated consciousness.

Our roundtable will survey the relationship between the two men, and the mutually informing nature of their respective bodies of work. We aim to develop a kind of “binocular vision,” in which the overlapping insights of Bohm and Barfield yield greater depth and understanding than either one standing alone. This will lead us to a key point of reference the two men shared – the nature of imagination as outlined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We will attempt to indicate what this kind of imagination has to offer contemporary humanity – and the prospect of moving from a theory of imagination to its practical engagement and flowering.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

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

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

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

James Peat Barbieri studied at a professional dance school, Ateneo della Danza, Siena, and then moved on to academic studies. He graduated from King’s College, University of London in Physics and Philosophy in 2019.

He is on the Board of Directors of the Pari Center, a member of the Editorial Board of the Pari Perspectives journal, and a member of the Programming Committee. He is also the host of many of the Pari Center’s webcasts. In addition to physics, his interests include film, art, and philosophy. He is interested in analysing cinema and works of art by applying philosophical approaches such as aesthetics and the Continental philosophies.

James has been taking part in conferences and courses at the Pari Center since he was 11. He was David Peat’s Teaching Assistant from the age of 15 and has since then given several presentations at the Pari Center, including two mini-courses on ‘Beauty and Mathematics,’ dealing with the relationship of Nature and the Golden Section; on Hegel’s philosophy and its symmetry with the works of David Bohm; and the historical relationship between Art and Science.

Hester Reeve’s practice encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing, David Bohm’s ‘Dialogue’ and social sculpture.

She is interested in the relationship between critical thinking and human agency in everyday life, particularly when it is risked through the figure of ‘the artist’ (where what constitutes an artist is broadly conceived and not exclusive to art school training).

Recent public works have been staged at Tanzquartier, Vienna, Tate Britain (working under the umbrella of The Emily Davison Lodge with Olivia Plender) and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hester Reeve is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

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

Transformation and Renewal Through Indigenous Dialogue
2021-08-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Transformation and Renewal Through Indigenous Dialogue

with David Begay (Navajo), Angelita Valencia Borbon (Yaqui), Greg Cajete (Tewa), Amethyst First Rider (Blackfoot), Rose von Thater Braan-Imai (Tuscarora), Nancy Maryboy (Navajo), Melissa Nelson (Anishanaabe/Metis), Lee Nichol.Facilitated by Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot)

Saturday August 21, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Reaching back through recorded history, into the multivalent worlds of oral tradition, Indigenous people have long indicated knowledge of how the world comes into being, and how humans can live in accord with this perpetual ”coming into being.” This knowledge is expressed through origin stories, ceremonial activity, ritual enactment and renewal, paradoxical language play, and trickster humor – it permeates all aspects of daily life in traditional cultures.

When Leroy Little Bear first read David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order, he recognized many reflections of his traditional Blackfoot worldview, albeit expressed in different language. David Peat, a friend of both Little Bear and Bohm, arranged for the two of them to meet. There was a natural affinity, and all three concurred that dialogue between Indigenous and Western worldviews was in order.

This program marks a new phase in that ongoing dialogue process, which is not strictly “Bohmian,” nor strictly traditional. It is a new form, ever-evolving, now finding its place in the world of Zoom.

Among the potential topics: Can shared cultural meaning bridge the polarity between analytic thought and holistic perception? How does our understanding of whole and part affect our action in daily life? Is it possible to step beyond theory to inhabit the implicate orders of the natural world and the living land? What part do language, art, creativity, and silence play in such investigations? What role do tacit cultural infrastructures play in forming the “worlds” we inhabit?

As Little Bear says, “We may have these starting points, but where we will end up, nobody knows. The best part of dialogue is the opportunity to shed our tacit infrastructures. Prepare yourselves accordingly!”

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Begay, Ph.D. is currently Associate Research Professor with the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in the College of Pharmacy, Community Environmental Health Program, working with several federally-funded health research projects. David is former adjunct faculty at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He is also a former professor and academic dean for Dine’ (Navajo Nation) College. He is currently VP for the Indigenous Education Institute, Friday Habor, WA. He has worked with National Science Foundation and other federal projects, including NASA, for 20 plus years, as well as JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Goddard Space Flight Center on Heliophysics educational outreach. David is considered a tribal elder and provides cultural consultant services to many organizations and corporations both in the United States and internationally. He is raised with the deep cultural knowledge, tradition, and language of the Dine’ (Navajo) people. He is a member of the Dine’ Hatallii (Spiritual and Herbal Healers) Association. David is a disabled combat Vietnam veteran. He is also currently a member of the Navajo Nation Human Research Review Board (IRB) appointed by the Navajo Nation Council.

Angelita Valencia Borbón (Yaqui) I am living my life paying attention, observing and listening, looking for patterns and feeling resonance. I have a whole world of mentors teaching me what I know and remember. Some say I am like a rez dog with a bone: persistent, relentless and focused. My Grandfather told me I am responsible for helping the Sonoran Desert and Los Yaquis survive. My Father told me to remember and practice how we think so our People do not forget, and so others may awaken their Conciencia/Knowing that we are all connected through our relationship with our Mother Earth, and the Laws of Nature.

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.

Rose von Thater Braan-Imai (Tuscarora) is a self-taught artist. Her surrealist figurations explore the exquisiteness of our connections to the Earth expressing the sensuality and intimacy of the natural world as experienced through the human body. She works primarily in oils enjoying the depth and range of feeling she finds in their texture and in the way they carry light. She is the Founding Director of The Native American Academy, leading creative projects (Sculpture Garden of Native Science and Learning) and transcultural dialogues between Indigenous and Western worldviews to forward the potential for new knowledge using the lens of the Native paradigm, indigenous learning processes and Native science.

From 1989 to 2000 she served as the Director of Education at University of California (UC) Berkeley’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, presenting at national and international forums, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Banff Centre, Goddard Space Flight Center and The National Science Foundation. Prior to 1989, Rose worked in theater (the American Conservatory Theater), television (KQED-TV), and as Liason and Assistant to writer/critic/producer Ralph J. Gleason, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine before heading her own production company.

Amethyst First Rider is a member of the Kainai Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, Alberta, Canada and married to Leroy Little Bear. She is a leader in the performing arts community for more that 20 years, producing and directing plays depicting Aboriginal stories and culture. Her experience in the arts has included dance productions, consulting for the University of California, Berkeley’s planetarium, as well as narration and production in the National Film Board’s documentary: Kainayssini Imanistaiswa, The People Go On. She co-conceived Iniskim an immersive puppet lantern performance celebrating the reintegration of Bison into the natural ecosystem of Banff National Park. She is central to the development and success of The Buffalo: A Treaty of Cooperation, Renewal and Restoration signed by over 30 First Nations and Tribes in Canada and the USA. It is the biggest modern Treaty amongst First Nations. Its purpose is to “one again welcome the Buffalo to live among us” and it recognizes “Buffalo as a wild free-ranging animal and as an important of the ecological ecosystem.” She is also a founding-advisor to the Kainai Ecosystem Protection Association.

Dr. Nancy C. Maryboy is the President and Executive Director of the Indigenous Education Institute, (IEI) located in the San Juan Islands, in Washington, and on the Navajo Nation. IEI is an all Indigenous institution with a mission to preserve, protect and apply traditional Indigenous knowledge in contemporary settings. She is an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington, in the School of Environmental Sciences and Forestry. She has been a Principal Investigator for National Science Foundation funded projects including the Cosmic Serpent, Native Universe and Co-PI for additional NSF projects. Dr. Maryboy is a PI for NASA’s Space Science Education Consortium, and has worked with both Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She works with the University of New Mexico Superfund program. She has written several books and numerous articles on collaboration between Indigenous communities and science centers, with a focus on Navajo astronomy. She works with Indigenous schools around the world. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums. Dr. Maryboy is Navajo and Cherokee. She comes from a family of traditional and medical healers, on the Navajo Nation and in the Pacific Northwest.

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, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

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

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

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

Changing Consciousness
2021-08-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Changing Consciousness with Sandra Fiegehen, David Schrum and Stephen Smith€10,00

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Changing Consciousness

with Sandra Fiegehen, David Schrum and Stephen Smith

Sunday August 22, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Human consciousness is a shared space. As individuals, we are born into an inherited socio-cultural matrix from which almost all of what we think and do derives. As Bohm points out, thought is a material process which pervades and dominates us.

We need to realise that we are participants. We must make a basic shift: from literal thought to participatory thought, a process in which we partake of consciousness. This can then become a kind of “food” which, in our times, we so desperately need.

Dialogue provides the opportunity for listening and sharing, out of which a sense of communion may arise, operating to nourish our spirit and open us to luminous intelligence. Thought may then find its proper, natural place; it is a guest in our house, not a usurper.

– Stephen Smith

Although we most often experience ourselves as separate islands of consciousness operating independently of that which surrounds us, our sense of separateness is constructed and illusory.

This separate self sense is a mere representation of the dynamic and unfolding process of conscious experience, a kind of alienated existence characterized by various degrees of narcissistic wounding acquired throughout the course of our development. We each play out these wounded, ‘separate’ selves in ways that create more suffering, both for ourselves and for others.

How can we find our way to realizing and embodying our common consciousness authentically and creatively? I will briefly explore some key Buddhist principles and how to bring them into practice in daily life.

– Sandra Fiegehen

To understand our lives and to live intelligently, creatively, and compassionately, David Bohm indicates, we must meet those dimensions of mind which for us are hidden. Beyond the surface of our consciousness, as personal memories, attitudes, and dispositions, we come upon that which is subtle: both as a flow of great momentum that is vast and ancient, and as a spacious field which is always new. These depths are common to us all, but we tend to be unaware. How are we to awaken?

Bohm offers us what he terms ‘participatory understanding’. This understanding is not ‘conceptual understanding’, which seeks to have understood and to lodge an understanding in memory. Rather, it is a living movement. It is embodiment; it is presence.

Our journey together is an invitation to explore this deeper inner world.

– David Schrum

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Dr. Sandra Fiegehen is a retired Psychologist presently obsessed with growing raspberries. She has practiced and taught Chan (Zen) meditation for the last 15 years. Throughout her life, she has pursued a variety of psycho-spiritual approaches to the question of who and what she is – and is pleased to report that her investigations have resulted in near-absolute uncertainty.

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.

Stephen Smith has been Acting Principal, Academic Director, and for twenty years a teacher at Brockwood Park School in England, where he met Krishnamurti and knew David Bohm personally. His interest in dialogue took a decisive turn when he moved to California in 1994 and began to facilitate dialogue groups. He sees dialogue as a means of mirroring the psyche so that we can move from being thought-bound individuals, embrace the collective, and awaken intelligence.

Dialogue’s Lineage and the Transmission of Participative Consciousness
2021-08-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Dialogue’s Lineage and The Transmission Of Participative Consciousness with Beth Macy, Mark Ryan and Lee Nichol€10,00

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Dialogue’s Lineage and the Transmission of Participative Consciousness

with Beth Macy, Mark Ryan and Lee Nichol

Saturday August 28, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

Dip with Beth Macy into her research archives of the lineage of Bohm’s dialogue. Pursue with her core aspects of each lineage member’s own early lifetime wounding as well as later cultural and professional alienation, and the impact of these dynamics on lineage members’ resulting contributions to Bohm’s ideas of “participation” in dialogue. And then, explore the meaning as it flows through the whole of the lineage and those to whom dialogue’s participative spiral of meaning unfolds, transforms and re-enfolds.

From the perspectives of the history of thought, Jungian psychology, mythology, and Barfield’s participatory consciousness, panel members will explore the following questions:

What is the potential impact that early trauma and later professional alienation might have had on lineage members’ connection to a higher form of consciousness?

What about Bohm’s assertion that with sufficient capacities of suspension and proprioception an individual could experience direct perception and participation with the intelligence of the universe? Is that really possible?

Bohm also suggests that if a group of individuals have developed this capacity of direct perception, then together their consciousness can form one “consensual mind” which vastly expands the power of participation with universal intelligence.

Did the recurring evolution of participative consciousness which occurred through the lineage happen solely by chance? Or, was there a higher intention that guided each of their efforts? Were their ideas part of one, intentional flow? If so, is that higher intention perhaps still transmitting of an even further evolution of participative consciousness today?

Seminar participants are encouraged to read Beth’s article “The Backstory of David Bohm’s Dialogue” describing the dialogue’s lineage prior to the session: https://paricenter.com/library/pari-perspectives-issue-6-in-memoriam-david-bohm/the-backstory-of-david-bohms-dialogue/

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

Beth Macy, PhD, organizational consultant, Bohmian dialogue practitioner

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

Mark B. Ryan is an historian of American thought and culture, Mark Ryan was Dean of Jonathan Edwards College and a teacher of American Studies and history at Yale University for more than twenty years. Subsequently, he was Titular IV Professor at the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, where he also served as Dean of the Colleges, Regente (Head) of José Gaos College, and Coordinator of the master’s degree program in United States Studies. He holds Ph.D. and M. Phil. degrees from Yale, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from the University of St. Thomas. Mark is author of A Different Dimension: Reflections on the History of Transpersonal Thought (Westphalia Press, 2018), A Collegiate Way of Living (Yale University, 2001), articles in various journals on higher education, and articles in TheJournal of Transpersonal Psychology and related publications on the history of psychology. He is certified by Grof Transpersonal Training as a practitioner of Holotropic Breathwork, served for fourteen years on the Board of Trustees of Naropa University, is past chair of the Board of Directors of Wisdom University, and current Chair of the Jonathan Edwards Trust at Yale.

Lee Nichol, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

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

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

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

Beyond Bohm 2: Closing Session
2021-08-29 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Beyond Bohm 2: Closing Session

with Leroy Little Bear, Beth Macy, Melissa Nelson, Lee Nichol, Hester Reeve and David Schrum

Sunday August 29, 20219:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

It may be “auspicious coincidence” – or otherwise – but the first five of the sessions in Beyond Bohm 2 are in one way or another related to participatory consciousness. This overlap occurred without any intention on the part of the individuals who put together each of the sessions. It is likely then, that this topic will figure into our final summary session, though any of the topics addressed in the preceding weeks may come to the fore – especially in the extended discussion and Q &A with those attending this final segment of Beyond Bohm. And in the spirit of dialogue, something completely new may emerge, unforeseen by any plan or agenda.

Please join us as we gather and look toward the future of Bohm-inspired inquiries and explorations, with an eye toward genuine transformations in consciousness.

To see the Full Beyond Bohm Series

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

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

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

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

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

Beth Macy, PhD, organizational consultant, Bohmian dialogue practitioner

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

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, Bohm collaborator, editor, educator

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

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

Lee is currently at work on a new book – Entering Bohm’s Holoflux – to be released in July 2021 by Pari Publishing.

Hester Reeve’s practice encompasses live art, philosophy, drawing, David Bohm’s ‘Dialogue’ and social sculpture.

She is interested in the relationship between critical thinking and human agency in everyday life, particularly when it is risked through the figure of ‘the artist’ (where what constitutes an artist is broadly conceived and not exclusive to art school training).

Recent public works have been staged at Tanzquartier, Vienna, Tate Britain (working under the umbrella of The Emily Davison Lodge with Olivia Plender) and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Hester Reeve is Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University.

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

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

The Brain and our Encounter with the World
2021-09-04 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6ZNDD77in8

The Brain and our Encounter with the World

with Iain McGilchrist

Saturday September 49:00 PDT | 12:00 EDT | 17:00 BST | 18:00 CEST

2-hour session

If you are unable to attend the live session, the recording will be available.

At the very least, our brains help to shape our consciousness. Can an examination of the way in which they do so help us to reconcile different visons of ourselves and of our world? There is nothing reductionist about asking such a question: rather, McGilchrist shall suggest, it helps us to transcend the limitations of reductionism itself. Importantly it may, for the first time, give philosophy a basis for judging certain views on the world as worthier of acceptance than others.

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009), and is shortly to publish a book on epistemology and ontology called The Matter with Things. He lives on the Isle of Skye, and has two daughters and a son.

Exploring the Earth-Mind
2021-09-11 18:00 - 2021-09-19 20:00 | Online
Exploring the Earth-Mind

4-part series: Saturday and Sunday September 11- 12, 18 – 199:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

Each session is 2 hours

with John Briggs PhD, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Writing and Aesthetics at WCSUand coauthor of three books with F. David Peat

Featuring Guests:Robert Toth: Former Executive Director of the Merton Institute for Contemplative LivingOfelia Rivas: Elder of the Tohono O’odham NationShantena Augusto Sabbatini, Director of The Pari CenterJames Peat Barbieri, Associate Program Director of The Pari Center

Indigenous peoples alive today are rooted in a consciousness of Earth that once provided the guiding mode of consciousness for humans but which at this point in time most of the rest of humanity has lost. The mainstream mode of consciousness is the “anthropocentric” or human-centered mode—a consciousness of objects, causality, competition and hierarchy that focuses on the individual self and on the conflict for survival of the individual. By contrast, the holomorphic or Earth-Mind consciousness is a holistic awareness; it’s an awareness of living in dynamic balance with other beings as “relatives,” including mountains, trees, rivers, wind. It’s an awareness of the deeply metaphoric nature of our relationship to reality and of our obligation to engage in “reciprocity” with all beings, animate or inanimate.

Everyone comes to life naturally endowed with both modes of consciousness, but the holistic Earth-Mind has been suppressed by the all-consuming anthropocentric structures of thought and self-interest that have moved to control nature since the Neolithic Revolution. In the words of one Native elder: “Instead of taking care, we are taking over.”

The objective of the four sessions of this course is to alert participants to the existence of the Earth-Mind mode of awareness in their own consciousness and to explore the implication of this mode of awareness for their individual lives and the collective life of the planet.

The sessions will be interactive. Through simple activities, participants will engage their Earth-Mind and report back to the group for discussion what they find. Guests will include Ofelia Rivas elder of the Tohono O’odam Nation in Southern Arizona and Mexico. Physicists Shantena Sabbadini and James Peat Barbieri will join the final session in a dialogue exploring how modern physics and ideas of the whole might find resonance with the holistic mode of consciousness that grounds traditional People.

Program

Session 1: A Holistic Kind of Consciousness—Saturday September 11Climate change and catastrophic species extinction have resulted from a way of thinking that could be called anthropocentric or “human-centered.” This is thinking about the world and ourselves in terms of separate objects and interchangeable parts. The so-called “human enhancement project” exemplifies this kind of thinking that most people would conclude is, for better and ill, the only kind of human thinking there is short of enlightenment. However, Indigenous people around the world are guided by another mode of consciousness, a holomorphic or Earth-Mind consciousness. This first session will sketch the characteristics of Earth-Mind consciousness. Short selections of reading will be assigned along with an activity. Both will be discussed on Sept. 18 in session 3.

Session 2: A Conversation with O’odam Elder Ofelia Rivas—Sunday September 12Among the items Ofelia will discuss: her experience of reality as flux, relations with other entities, ceremony, reciprocity, balance, the original instructions. What is the role of the feminine in maintaining balance in the flux of the world? What is it like for her to live under the pressures of a toxic anthropocentric society? This session will end with a recommendation that participants engage in two simple activities over the next week and come prepared to communicate their experiences on the 18th, session 3.

Session 3: Living with Our Relatives—Saturday September 18This session is devoted to participants’ thoughts about the reading selections and their experiences as they engaged the recommended “homework” activities. Final assignment will be given to view two short videos on YouTube in preparation for the last session.

Session 4: What Is the Whole?—Sunday September 19Physics has pursued the idea of a universe made of separate objects connected by forces and causality. But figuring out how the smallest objects come together to make the world eventually led to the discovery of a missing ingredient in scientific theories: the whole. What is the whole according to chaos theory, quantum mechanics and David Bohm’s implicte order? The final session will unfold as a dialogue with physicists Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and James Peat Barberi exploring physical conceptions of holism and their possible connections to Earth-Mind consciousness.

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

Ophelia Rivas My people are the O’odham from the desert, O’odham means people. The O’odham oral history teaches us where and when we originated and how to live on the land and follow our way of life called the Him’dag. My homelands are illegally occupied by the United States of America and the Republic States of Mexico—an International Boundary bisected my homelands. Today we live on reservations “wards of the state”, where the poverty levels are above national levels. My father’s community is in Cu:Wi I-gersk, Sonora, Mexico and my mother’s community is Ali Jegk, Arizona, USA. I hold my alliance with my Indigenous brothers and sisters and my traditional O’odham Elders and ceremony leaders. The traditional O´odham hold their alliance to Mother Earth. No written documents required. I carry the words from my traditional elders and ceremony leaders. They call for solidarity to defend the sacred places of our people for our survival. They call to defend the source of our original birthplaces as people, Mother Earth, Father Sky and the sacred Water and Air.

Robert G. Toth served as Executive Director the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living from 1998 to 2010. He co-edited Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton, a popular series designed for small group dialogue. He is an active member of The Contemplative Alliance, an initiative of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, which organizes dialogues and programs around the world to advance contemplative approaches to issues affecting the welfare of all being. He also serves on the Board of the Lake Erie Institute which offers holistic ecological leadership programs to individuals engaged in creating flourishing, regenerative, and socially just communities.

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

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

James Peat Barbieri is the Associate Programme Director at the Pari Center, and host of the Pari Center online events. He studied at a professional dance school, Ateneo della Danza, Siena, but moved on to academic studies. James is now a King’s College, University of London graduate in Physics and Philosophy. His other interests include Film, Art, and Philosophy. He is interested in analysing cinema and works of art by applying philosophical approaches such as aesthetics and the Continental philosophies.

James has been taking part in conferences and courses at the Pari Center since he was 11. He was David Peat’s Teaching Assistant from the age of 15 and has since then given several presentations at the Pari Center, including two mini-courses on Beauty and Mathematics, dealing with the relationship of Nature and the Golden Section, on Hegel’s philosophy and its symmetry with the works of David Bohm, and the historical relationship between Art and Science.
