The Future World - A Conversation with John Vervaeke
2025-01-15 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome)
Watch the recording

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

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

A Conversation between John Vervaeke and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday, January 159:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

Dr. John Vervaeke, an award-winning professor of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto, brings a wealth of academic expertise to his courses. With a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, Dr. Vervaeke served as the former Director of Cognitive Science and holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology. He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards and has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. With expertise in both Eastern and Western philosophy, Dr. Vervaeke guides learners through a transformative journey, integrating ancient wisdom with modern scientific insights. Dr. Vervaeke’s courses are a captivating blend of theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom, and his dynamic teaching style engages students in exploring the depths of the mind and its implications for personal growth and societal change, illuminating the path to a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.

Spaced Out - Part 1
2025-01-16 18:00 - 20:00
Spaced Out

A Two-Part Series on that Nature of Space, Higher Dimensions and the Multiverse

With Jonathan Allday and Bernard Carr

Thursday January 16 and 23, 2025

9:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

A two-session series – each session will last two hours.

All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Part 1

Thursday January 16, 2025

A Gentle Introduction to the Physics of Space with Jonathan Allday

This talk is intended to be a grounding in the physicists’ conception of space. It will discuss the relativity of space and time, how we distinguish between spatial and temporal dimensions, space-time, the curvature of space and what we mean by (various) forms of higher dimensions.

Part 2

Thursday January 23, 2025

Spaced Out: A Conversation Between Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

The conversation is designed to be a follow-up to their earlier discussion ‘It’s About Time.’ Themes will include space-time, the curvature of space around a black hole, higher dimensions in their various forms, and the multiverse. We will also touch upon the anthropic principle, cosmology and Bernard’s conception of higher dimensions and the mind.

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, dark matter, black holes and the anthropic principle. For his PhD he studied the first second of the Universe, working under the supervision of Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology. He was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1975 and moved to Queen Mary College in 1985. He has also held Visiting Professorships at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He is the author of nearly three hundred scientific papers and the books Universe or Multiverse? and Quantum Black Holes. Beyond his professional field, he is interested in the role of consciousness in physics and in an expanded paradigm which accommodates mind. He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between science and religion. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research in 2000-2004 and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

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

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

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

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

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

Is Idealism Enough?
2025-01-21 18:00 - 20:00
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr93mW3QmWo

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

Is Idealism Enough?A dialogue between Bernardo Kastrup and Rupert Sheldrake

Tuesday, January 21, 20259:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

Rupert Sheldrake recently made a series of criticisms of Bernardo Kastrup’s Analytic Idealism on Curt Jaimungal’s Theories of Everything channel. Kastrup soon responded to Rupert’s points and subsequently Rupert sent Kastrup a rejoinder. Here, in a spirit of true collegiality and intellectual pursuit, we will turn this clash into an opportunity to better understand each other’s position and inquire further into the nature of reality itself. The trialogue between Kastrup, Sheldrake, and Gomez-Marin will be followed by Q&A from the audience.

Links

1. Sheldrake’s criticisms

2. Kastrup’s responses

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2024/11/response-to-rupert-sheldrakes.html

3. Sheldrake’s rejoinder

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2024/12/rupert-sheldrakes-rejoinder.html

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than 100 technical papers and twelve books, including Science and Spiritual Practices. A former Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and philosophy at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow. He was a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and director of studies in cell biology. From 2005-2010 he was director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, for research on unexplained human and animal abilities. He is currently a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, near San Francisco, and also of Schumacher College, in Devon. For more information, please visit https://www.sheldrake.org/

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. 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). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years now, having co-founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Bernardo has most recently started AI hardware company Syncthetics B.V., currently in stealth mode. Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, Bernardo’s 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 11th book, coming in 2024, is Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.

Àlex Gómez-Marín (Barcelona, 1981) is a Spanish scientist, a theoretical physicist turned neuroscientist investigating human consciousness. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, a masters in biophysics, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Barcelona (cum laude by unanimity and Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award in 2009). He was then a postdoctoral research fellow at the Systems Biology Unit of the EMBL-CRG Center for Genomic Regulation and at the Neuroscience Programme of the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. Since 2016, he has been the director of the Organism Behavior Laboratory at the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, where he is currently an associate professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Since 2022, Alex is also the director of the Pari Center in Tuscany, Italy. Amongst other duties, Alex is an associate editor of Organisms: Journal of Biological Sciences, a member of the history committee of the Spanish Society for Neuroscience, a member of the science advisory committee of the Cobb Institute, a member of the scientific advisory board of the Dutch Brain Interface Initiative, a member of the Global Consciousness Project 2.0 research team, a team member of the Terminal Lucidity Research Group, a faculty member at the Icloby International Consciousness Lobby Foundation, a member of the research committee of the Wake Up Institute, an external advisor of UAP Digital, and a member of the postmaterialist Open Sciences group. His research encompasses the origins of the arrow of time (inert matter), neuroethological principles of action and perception across species from flies and worms to mice and humans (living matter), and robotic and artificial intelligence applied to human stupidity (so-called artificial life & mind). Alex had a near-death experience in March of 2021. He then decided to devote his research efforts to the scientific study of human minds in the real world, concentrating on what he calls “the edges” of consciousness – a wild, weird, wonderful field where great enigma meets gross stigma. In 2023 he was awarded the first Linda G O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize. In 2024 Alex was selected as one of the world’s most inspiring people by OOOM 100. He has recently been nominated as one of ten revolutionary scientists by Feed Your Head. Since 2005, Alex has published about one hundred research articles which have been cited over four thousand times in total. Alex has given countless talks and interviews too. You can find most of his material here: https://behavior-of-organisms.org/ Alex lives in sunny Alicante, Spain, with his wife, two daughters, and a cat.

Spaced Out - Part 2
2025-01-23 18:00 - 20:00
Spaced Out

A Two-Part Series on that Nature of Space, Higher Dimensions and the Multiverse

With Jonathan Allday and Bernard Carr

Thursday January 16 and 23, 2025

A two-session series – each session will last two hours.

All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Part 1

Thursday January 16, 2025

A Gentle Introduction to the Physics of Space with Jonathan Allday

This talk is intended to be a grounding in the physicists’ conception of space. It will discuss the relativity of space and time, how we distinguish between spatial and temporal dimensions, space-time, the curvature of space and what we mean by (various) forms of higher dimensions.

Part 2

Thursday January 23, 2025

Spaced Out: A Conversation Between Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

The conversation is designed to be a follow-up to their earlier discussion ‘It’s About Time.’ Themes will include space-time, the curvature of space around a black hole, higher dimensions in their various forms, and the multiverse. We will also touch upon the anthropic principle, cosmology and Bernard’s conception of higher dimensions and the mind.

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, dark matter, black holes and the anthropic principle. For his PhD he studied the first second of the Universe, working under the supervision of Stephen Hawking at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology. He was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1975 and moved to Queen Mary College in 1985. He has also held Visiting Professorships at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. He is the author of nearly three hundred scientific papers and the books Universe or Multiverse? and Quantum Black Holes. Beyond his professional field, he is interested in the role of consciousness in physics and in an expanded paradigm which accommodates mind. He also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between science and religion. He was President of the Society for Psychical Research in 2000-2004 and is currently President of the Scientific and Medical Network.

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

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

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

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

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

PSI: Back to the Future
2025-02-09 20:30 - 23:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktRJ7PKF9ws&t=371s

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

PSI: Back to the Future

Sunday February 9, 202511:30am PST | 2:30pm EST | 7:30pm GMT | 8:30pm CET (and ending about four hours later)

Curated and chaired by: Alex Gomez-Marin

With: Damon Abraham, David Acunzo, Cedric Cannard, Dani Caputi, Adam Curry, Maaneli Derakhshani, Ed Kelly, David Luke, Jeffrey Mishlove, Julia Mossbridge, Roger Nelson, Dean Radin, Stephen Schwartz, James Spottiswoode, Mario Varvoglis, Marina Weiler, George Williams

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

The scientific study of psychic (or PSI) phenomena –which includes extrasensory perception, precognition, synchronicity, direct mind-to-mind communication, or mind-matter interactions– has been going on for more than a century now. Its results are fascinating, puzzling, and often controversial. In this event some of the greatest active researchers in the field will present their own work while reflecting on where PSI has been, where we think it is now, and where we wish it to go. We hope to create an unprecedented audiovisual gathering for current and future generations to get perspective, clarity, and inspiration.

The Future World - A Conversation with Michael Levin
2025-02-21 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWT3dMZrqw0

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

A Conversation between Michael Levin and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Friday, February 219:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

Michael Levin is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University, and associate faculty at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. He serves as the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts (https://allencenter.ufts.edu/) and the co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms at Tufts/UVM (https://icdorgs.org). He received dual B.S. degrees in computer science and biology, followed by a Ph.D. from Harvard with Clifford Tabin. He did post-doctoral training at Harvard School of Medicine in cell biology, and started his independent lab in 2000, developing the first molecular tools to read and write bioelectric prepatterns in non-neural tissue. The Levin lab studies the natural bioelectric gradients in tissue as the cognitive glue that holds together not only the neural Self but the somatic mind of the body.

His group at Tufts (https://drmichaellevin.org/) works to understand information processing and problem-solving across scales, in a range of naturally evolved, synthetically engineered, and hybrid living systems. They are interested in understanding how highly diverse minds are embodied in the physical world, and how cognition and intelligence scales and projects into new problems spaces. One of the model systems they use is morphogenesis during embryonic development and regeneration; by modeling this navigation of anatomical space as the behavior of a collective intelligence, they have developed novel applications in organ regeneration, birth defects repair, cancer reprogramming, and the engineering of novel living proto-organisms. Using tools from behavioral, life, and computer sciences, Dr. Levin seeks to develop an empirically useful conceptual framework for identifying and ethically relating to a very wide range of possible minds. This work impacts regenerative medicine, AI, and bioengineering, as well as deep questions about the origin and future of natural and artificial intelligence. Dr. Levin’s science outreach is at https://www.youtube.com/@drmichaellevin/videos, and his personal thoughts on these questions are at https://thoughtforms.life/.

Beyond the Looking-Glass
2025-03-01 17:59 - 2025-03-16 20:00
Beyond the Looking-Glass: Wholeness in Modern Science

With Jonathan Allday, Vasileios Basios, John Briggs, Jeff Dunne, Stuart Kauffman, Katherine Peil Kauffman, Paavo Pylkkänen.

March 1 – 16, 20259am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

6 two-hour sessions every Saturday and Sunday

An exploration of themes from the book Looking-Glass Universe by F. David Peat and John Briggs.

Looking-Glass Universe takes a fascinating look at the wholeness revolution in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and neurophysiology, and the scientists whose converging theories are changing our understanding of how the universe works. The series will explore how far the themes of the book Looking-Glass Universe have developed since it was first published.

The ‘looking-glass’ theories propose that we are at this very moment living in an Alice-in-Wonderland universe where each part is in fact the whole, where scientists conducting an experiment are themselves the experiment, and even inanimate objects contain consciousness. These theories give scientific meaning to the ancient mystical idea that the universe is One.

Looking-Glass Universe by John Briggs and F. David Peat will be released in a new edition this year with physicist Jonathan Allday filling in readers on how science has evolved in the 40 years since the book first appeared. He reviews the progress towards a looking-glass view of the universe and updating aspects of the text in line with current scientific thinking.

We are pleased to announce that two of the authors, John Briggs and Jonathan Allday, will be presenting during this series.

Sessions

Looking Glass UniverseWith Jonathan Allday and John BriggsSaturday March 1

David BohmWith Jonathan Allday and Paavo PylkkänenSunday March 2

Objectivity: The Mythical Border Between Science and ScientistsWith Jeff DunneSaturday March 8

Eppur Si Muove! The Sudden–and persistent–Vortex of Ilya Prigogine and their descendantsWith Vasileios BasiosSunday March 9

Heisenberg’s Potentia: Toward a Theory of ConsciousnessWith Stuart KauffmanSaturday March 15

The Tao of Emotional Sentience With Katherine Peil KauffmanSunday December 16

Beyond the Looking-Glass - Looking-Glass Universe
2025-03-01 18:00 - 20:00
Looking Glass Universe

with Jonathan Allday and John Briggs

Saturday, March 1, 20259am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond the Looking-Glass, Session 1 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

John Briggs and David Peat wrote Looking Glass Universe in the wake of publishing events such as The Tao of Physics. At the time, physics was cool and popular, especially among New Age adherents looking to science to provide a context for their beliefs. The authors wanted to take different approach—to show how a range of sciences, not just physics, were converging on a new way of viewing the world: as a whole. In this context, they wanted to pose and answer the question: is a science of wholeness possible?

Now that the book is about to be re-released, it is interesting to review how things stood at the time, with one of the original authors, so that progress, or lack of, since then can but seen in context.

This will act as an introduction to the whole series.

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.

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

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

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

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

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

Beyond the Looking-Glass - David Bohm
2025-03-02 18:00 - 20:00
David Bohm

with Jonathan Allday and Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday, March 2, 20259am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond the Looking-Glass, Session 2 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

One of the key scientists featured in the book Looking Glass Universe was David Bohm. One of the original authors, David Peat, was a friend and collaborator of Bohm. The philosopher, Paavo Pylkkänen, also knew Bohm and has worked on developments of his ideas.

In this conversation, we will discuss Bohm’s life, his personality, important aspects of his work and view of wholeness and how the work continues to be developed. Inevitably, we will also talk about our mutual friend and Bohm collaborator, Basil Hiley, who died recently.

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

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

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

Professionally, Jonathan worked as a physics teacher for 30 years in a variety of independent day and boarding schools in the UK. He was a head of physics, a head of science and latterly an academic deputy head. He retired in 2020 and now runs a consulting company providing training and educational advice for schools.

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

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

Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and was a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT).

Beyond the Looking-Glass - Objectivity: The Mythical Border Between Science and Scientists
2025-03-08 18:00 - 20:00
Objectivity: The Mythical Border Between Science and Scientists

with Jeffrey Dunne

Saturday, March 8, 20259am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond the Looking-Glass, Session 3 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

The premise of modern science is that it focuses on studying objective aspects of reality. It is on this basis that the scientific community claims that science is a sieve for fundamental ‘truth,’ i.e. establishing fact and weeding out subjective opinion. What has been forgotten along the way over the past few centuries is that the concept of the ‘objective’ is itself subjective. To wit, the measure of objectivity is consensus, i.e. things upon which the majority of people agree are considered ‘objectively true,’ with the remaining perspectives treated as ‘subjective,’ or even ‘subjectively biased.’ As a consequence, the defining of ‘objective truth’ and ‘objective reality’ is actually a process of sharpening the delineation between what is considered acceptable observations and experiences versus those which are rare and consequently shunned, even to the point of calling them false and claiming the people who have them must be either lying or insane. Yet uncommon experiences, whether one calls them anomalous or denies them entirely, continue to occur, and the body of documented evidence of their legitimacy is now overwhelming. If we are to move science forward—in fact, if we are to recover from the growing disfunction of a global society being told that people are nothing more than biological computers—we must open the aperture of what phenomena are deemed worthy of scientific study and recognize that the distinction between the objective and the subjective is nothing more than an arbitrary line in the sands of statistics.

Dr. Jeffrey Dunne is President of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL, www.icrl.org), an organization dedicated to understanding the nature of consciousness for the betterment of humanity. Beyond his work with ICRL and several decades of research at the Johns Hopkins University in fields ranging from acoustics to data science and AI, Dr. Dunne is an award-winning playwright and author. His recently published novel, Nexus, weaves the concept of syntropy with the implications of the nature of consciousness into a story that speaks to the challenges humanity is facing, sharing a vision for finding a healthier, more balanced future.

Beyond the Looking-Glass - Eppur Si Muove! The Sudden -and persistent- Vortex of Ilya Prigogine and their descendants
2025-03-09 18:00 - 20:00
Eppur Si Muove! The Sudden–and persistent–Vortex of Ilya Prigogine and their descendants

with Vasileios Basios

Sunday, March 9, 20259am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond the Looking-Glass, Session 4 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Since Ilya Prigogine’s ‘sudden Vortex’ was reflected in the ‘Looking Glass Universe,’ complexity theory has advanced by leaps and bounds. From a marginal theory in the corners of physics, it has become the cornerstone of many advanced new sciences.

From physics, physical chemistry, biological systems and ecology to social networks and leadership in organisations, the very ideas he developed and put into practice—emergence, entropy, self-organisation, spontaneous symmetry breaking, bifurcations and chaos—are today’s bread and butter and central. The focus has shifted towards understanding how order and chaos lead to new structures and behaviours at higher levels of complexity, adaptivity and extended domains. We now know that Life is unpredictable, but not an accident. It cannot emerge from total randomness, nor can intelligence and consciousness.

We need to establish a new discipline: self-reflexive interdisciplinary studies of consciousness. Such studies will empower science by extending it beyond naive reductionism and to become more useful in exploring reality, both within and without. It will also empower society to shed more light on the root causes of some of its major problems, including suggestions on how best to deal with them.

Dr Vasileios Basios is a senior researcher in the Physics of Complex Systems at the University of Brussels, with over 25 years of experience in research and coaching. His interdisciplinary work focuses on self-organisation, emergence in complex matter, complementarity and the foundations of complex systems.

Mentored by Nobel laureates Ilya Prigogine and Grégoire Nicolis, Dr Basios received his Ph.D. from the University of Brussels after studying cybernetics with John S. Nicolis. His research interests include foundations of complexity science, emergence in complex matter, nonlinear dynamics and chaos in biological information processing, computability and the logic of extended Bayesian inference. Dr Basios has participated in several research initiatives, including the European Space Agency’s Complex Matter programme and EU projects such as Pythagoras I&II and Thales I&II.

He is deeply interested in the history of scientific ideas and their role in transforming science beyond the mechanistic worldview. His work aims to bring insights from complex systems science to consciousness studies, working towards an inclusive and self-reflexive interdisciplinary science of consciousness. In 2023, his research team received the inaugural Linda G. O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize for their study on detecting deviations from random activity as indicators of nonlocal consciousness correlates beyond the brain.

Dr Basios serves in various capacities, including as a speaker for the Scientific & Medical Network after a period as its co-Chair and board member, as a member of the Galileo Commission Steering Team, and as a Trustee of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL). By contributing to complexity and consciousness research in a variety of formats, from podcasts to books to peer-reviewed papers, he aspires to advance knowledge in this evolving field.

The Future World - A Conversation with Carissa Véliz
2025-03-12 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6DOEIowrG4

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

A Conversation between Carissa Véliz and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday, March 1210:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed Privacy Is Power (an Economist book of the year, 2020) and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. She is a member of UNESCO’s Women 4 Ethical AI. She advises companies and policymakers around the world on privacy and the ethics of AI.

Beyond the Looking-Glass - Heisenberg’s Potentia: Toward a Theory of Consciousness
2025-03-15 18:00 - 20:00
Heisenberg’s Potentia: Toward a Theory of Consciousness

with Stuart Kauffman

Saturday, March 15, 202510am PDT / 1pm EDT / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond the Looking-Glass, Session 5 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Werner Heisenberg in 1958 proposed that quantum states are ‘potentia standing ghost-like between a dream and reality.’ The proposal of ontologically real potentia not obeying Aristotle’s Laws of the Excluded Middle and Non-Contradiction provides an interpretation of superpositions and answers the six mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. This suggest that potentia are real and that quantum measurement converts Possibles to Actuals.

Radin’s work with colleagues is evidence at 6.49 sigma that mind can play a role in collapse of the wave function—the conversion of Possibles to Actuals. Qualia are never in superposition. These facts suggest that conscious qualia arise upon mind’s conversion of Possibles to Actuals.

Stuart Kauffman is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Universitry of Calgary. He is currently emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and affiliate faculty at the Institute of Systems Biology. He has a number of awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Wiener Medal. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from delf-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as discussed in his book Origins of Order (1993).

He has published over 350 articles and 6 books: The Origins of Order (1993), At Home in the Universe (1995), Investigations (2000), Reinventing the Sacred (2008), Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016), and A World Beyond Physics (2019).

In 2017, exploring the concept that reality consists of both ontologically real ‘possibles’ (res potentia) and ontologically real ‘actuals’ (res extensa), Kauffman co-authored, with Ruth Kastner and Michael Epperson, ‘Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously.’

Beyond the Looking-Glass - The Tao of Emotional Sentience
2025-03-16 18:00 - 20:00
The Tao of Emotional Sentience

with Katherine Peil Kauffman

Sunday, March 16, 202510am PDT / 1pm EDT / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond the Looking-Glass, Session 6 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Building upon Bohmian (and Kauffmanian) physics, the Eastern metaphor of The Tao is employed to introduce the new emotion science. In this context, emotional sentience—from its simple binary evaluations to its complex informational content—is not only central to the ‘self-regulatory’ behavioral hardware and learning software of living systems but may be integral to the in-forming and trans-forming process of reality creation itself. To distinguish emotion as a separate and more ancient system than ‘cognition’ proper, is to honor the ‘agent in the machine,’ to discover the untold wonders embodied in the physical organism, and to reclaim the divine attributes of human being and becoming.

Katherine T. Peil Kauffman is the founding Director of non-profit EFS International, whose mission is fostering global emotional wisdom. From a background in Pantheistic spirituality and clinical and social psychology, her lengthy interdisciplinary inquiry into the biophysical substrates of emotion led to the identification of its previously mysterious biological function: as an ancient ‘self-regulatory sense’—an evaluative perceptual mechanism through which living systems directly participate in self-organizing and evolutionary processes, and one that invites deeper inquiries into the physics of consciousness. This new science also casts light upon innate ‘biovalues,’ which scientific methodology has long avoided, as well as vital processes that in-form common spiritual experiences, and the healthy development of empathic moral conscience. It provides a biophysically informed vision of ‘naturalistic spiritualty,’ one that echoes the common wisdom across the great religious traditions, while challenging such time honored assumptions as ‘sin’ and the ‘good and evil’ dichotomy.A former affiliate of Northeastern University and the Harvard Divinity School, Ms. Kauffman has spoken internationally on the function, evolution, physio-chemical, and informational nature of emotion, as well as its central role in optimal health, human development, moral reasoning, universal spiritual experiences, and its informative value toward creating nonviolence in a global village.

Edge of Belief: Faith, Imagination, and Science
2025-03-23 20:30 - 22:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCqy4UxmY88

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

Edge of Belief: Faith, Imagination, and Science

Sunday March 23, 2025

Starting at 12:30pm PDT | 3:30pm EDT | 7:30pm GMT | 8:30pm CET

Curated and chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

With Robert Duncan and Brett Robinson

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

Science can explain many things about reality but the addition of theology, literature, and art deepens our understanding and makes for a much richer appreciation of life on this weird and wonderful planet. How can Religion respond to evolving scientific discoveries? How should the Church think about UFOs? What are the boundaries for Catholic belief? The McGrath Institute for Church Life is proud to present “Edge of Belief: UFOs, Technology & The Catholic Imagination”, a documentary short that explores the outer limits of belief.

“The Edge of Belief” is a documentary film about the interplay of faith, imagination and science. The film looks at the modern UFO phenomenon through the lens of the Catholic theological, scientific and literary tradition. This impactful documentary gives viewers a holistic framework for thinking about the mysteries of the universe and dealing with the claims that we are not alone in it. “The Edge of Belief” features interviews with CS Lewis scholar and Oxford professor Michael Ward, religious studies researcher and author of American Cosmic, Diana Pasulka, icon artist and host of “The Symbolic World,” Jonathan Pageau, Notre Dame theologian Christopher Baglow, and Chair of Astronomy at Cornell, Jonathan Lunine, among others.

Link to the film (31 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA0ah6Xmqus

Schedule:

08:30pm CET – Introduction

08:45pm CET – Live film watch

09:15pm CET – Conversation between Robert, Brett, and Alex

10:00pm CET – Q&A from the audience

10:30pm CET – End

Robert Duncan, a native of North Carolina, is a filmmaker and communications professional who has spent over a decade producing documentaries and news videos on the Vatican and Catholic life in Rome. He has worked extensively as a journalist covering Vatican affairs and as a communications consultant for various non-profit religious organizations, particularly in the areas of fundraising and strategic media. Robert graduated from NYU’s film program and has consulted for the U.S. State Department, creating media for the U.S. embassies in Rome. He has lectured on communication strategy for Vatican employees and assisted with media projects for Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. Robert lives near Rome with his family, enjoying hiking and sailing.

Brett Robinson, Executive Producer Brett Robinson serves as the Associate Director for Outreach and Associate Professor of the Practice at the McGrath Institute for Church Life. In his role, he oversees outreach efforts for the institute while conducting research at the intersection of religion, technology and culture. Brett studied marketing and English at the University of Notre Dame and received his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Georgia. He has taught media studies courses at Duquesne University, the University of Georgia, Saint Vincent College and Notre Dame. Brett is the author of Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs and his essays and commentary on technology and culture have been featured in Wired Magazine, CNN, the LA Times and Catholic News Service.

Àlex Gómez-Marín, theoretical physicist turned neuroscientist studying the edges of consciousness in the real world. He is an associate professor at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, Spain, and director of the Pari Center in Tuscany, Italy.

The Future World - A conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove
2025-04-11 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/gtFdA6vh_QI?si=zUaCZ96DVKx71ZQ0

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

A Conversation between Jeffrey Mishlove and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Friday April 119:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

Host and producer of the New Thinking Allowed channel on YouTube, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is also author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. He is the recipient of a doctorate in “Parapsychology” from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Grand Prize winner of the Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding postmortem survival of human consciousness. He currently serves as Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

SURVIVAL: Re-Appraising the Evidence for Life After Death
2025-04-13 20:30 - 23:30
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/UrzcZfp-mV8?si=xAijmeVaHLNJDoWb

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

SURVIVAL: Re-Appraising the Evidence for Life After Death

Sunday April 13, 2025

11:30am PDT, 2:30pm EDT, 7:30pm BST, 8:30pm CEST (and ending about four hours later)

With: Alejandro Agudo, Eben Alexander, John Ballard, Stafford Betty, Bernard Carr, Jeff Dunne, Bruce Greyson, Stanley Krippner, Jeffrey Long, David Lorimer, Janice Miner Holden, Jeffrey Mishlove, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Leo Ruickbie, Gary Schwartz, Steve Taylor, Stephan Schwartz, Pim Van Lommel, Helane Wahbeh, Marjorie Woollacott

In memoriam: Peter Fenwick (1935-2024), Charles Tart (1937-2025), and Allan Leslie Combs (1942-2025)

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

A Rigorous Open-Minded Exploration

Understanding whether consciousness continues after death is one of the most profound scientific and philosophical questions of our time. A rigorous, evidence-based, but also open-minded, exploratory, approach to this mystery has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of human identity, the nature of consciousness, and the boundaries of life itself. What, if anything, survives bodily death? In what form, and for how long? These are questions that demand a trans-disciplinary investigation, not just for their scientific implications but for their profound impact on culture, ethics, and human experience. SURVIVAL: Re-Appraising the Evidence for Life After Death brings together world-renowned experts to explore the latest research, theories, and firsthand accounts that challenge conventional assumptions. This online event is an essential opportunity to engage with cutting-edge insights into what might lie beyond the final frontier.

A Bold New Conference Format

We are pioneering a dynamic, high-impact online conference format via Zoom that maximizes efficiency and engagement. These live-recorded events feature a series of fast-paced, 15-minute “science nuggets”—concise, content-rich presentations from leading researchers, with or without slides, without lengthy introductions or Q&A. This streamlined approach keeps the momentum strong, allowing us to cover in a few hours what a traditional in-person conference might take a week to accomplish. The result? A free, to-the-point, and comprehensive snapshot of the latest advancements in our field, offering a pluralistic advanced testament to where we stand—and where we’re headed.

Martin Buber’s I and Thou
2025-04-14 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/WDObxvA5xvg?si=pw8AIiDYK3ecVgdf

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

Martin Buber’s I and Thou

Host: Nicholas Colloff

Monday, April 14, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

Martin Buber wrote, ‘There is something that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may e called the fulfilment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands.’ HIs first attempt to lay out a pathway to this fulfilment was in his seminal book, I and Thou, written in six weeks under an intense sense of inspiration, and which he would spend the next forty years developing into the practice of living dialogue, revealing that ‘all real living is meeting.’ But what does it mean to be truly present in the world, engaged in relationships of wholeness and meaning? How does this relate to the equal imperative to know about the world and to use it to achieve our specific purposes? And what might either have to do with God or ultimate reality?

For those familiar with the work of Ian McGilchrist, we could frame this as how might my Master and my Emissary achieve a more harmonious relationship in the light of a deeper unity waiting to address me, now, just where I am, standing in a world that waits to greet me? I have now been reading Buber for forty years—and whether it is mastering my impatience in the queue at the Sainsbury checkout, answering a colleague’s question openly and honestly, making a decision with hoped for love and justice or thinking about the nature of God, I found that Buber is part of the weft on which my thinking and acting has been woven. I hope to share something of his life, the book’s meanings and why they might matter deeply.

NICHOLAS COLLOFF, when not posting art on Facebook or walking through the woods, is the Director of the Argidius Foundation, a Swiss family foundation that helps develop social and environmental enterprises, principally in Africa and Latin America. He studied theology, philosophy and the psychology of religion at university, after which he helped found the Prison Phoenix Trust that teaches meditation and yoga to people in prison, and from this discovered a gift for starting things (and leaving them in better hands so they flourished). This has included a microfinance bank in the Balkans, a charity focused on community mental health in poor communities in the Global South and a social investment fund. In between launches, he is also to be found in contemplative communities recovering!

Unbreaking the World
2025-05-09 16:00 - 2025-05-12 17:00
Unbreaking the WorldAwakening from the Meaning Crisis and the Return of the Sacred

Pari, Italy, May 9-12, 2025

Speaker: John Vervaeke

Curated and chaired by Àlex Gómez-Marín

The event will start on Friday May 9 at 16:00 and end on Monday May 12 after lunch.

Price: 725.00 euros, which includes:

a 3-night stay in private accommodation;

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

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed activities and materials;

Dr John Vervaeke’s Advent of the Sacred develops the sense of convergence and transformation as a response to the Meaning Crisis that the world is experiencing.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

Unbreaking the World invites us to pause and think about the cluster of crises we are globally facing. John argues that these problems aren’t just about the media, politics, or even the economy… the roots of this malaise are problems that are deeply historical, cultural, and cognitive. It’s what he calls the Meaning Crisis. Yet the word ‘crisis,’ etymologically means ‘decision.’

During this weekend we will trace the history of what led to the contemporary malaise which leaves us cut off from our past, disconnected from ourselves in the present, and incapable of reimagining a viable future. We will examine the anxiety, alienation and absurdity of our age, and seek a deep transformation of our modes of knowing and being.

This transformation is not only urgent but indeed possible. John will be our guide tapping into a rich well of resources—from Socrates to Jung, from cognitive psychology to neuroscience, from mystical experiences to artificial intelligence. He will offer a coherent and clear approach that integrates scientific and philosophical threads with spiritual practice to ensure the development of the transformative wisdom necessary to cultivate a meaningful life.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the tiny local population, eating local dishes and drinking local wines, appreciating the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and participating in a very gentle way of life far from the frenzy of work and city living. David Peat compared Pari to an alchemical vessel—a place where transformation can come about—as well as an opportunity to pause for a moment and re-assess one’s life. It’s a unique opportunity open to everyone.

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

Schedule

In addition to his lectures, John will offer meditation, contemplation, tai chi and dialogical practices.

Part I: Introduction

Session 1 (Friday afternoon): The Current Meta-Crisis and Trust in a Post-Truth World

Part II: Awakening From the Meaning Crisis

Session 2 (Saturday morning): Part I: Origins

Session 3 (Saturday afternoon): Part II: Structure and Function of Meaning

Part III: The Advent of the Sacred

Session 4 (Sunday morning): Unbreaking the Spell of Modernity

Session 5 (Sunday afternoon): Mentoring the Machines: Wisdom in the Age of AI

Part IV: The Philosophical Silk Road

Session 6 (Monday morning): A Pilgrimage to Lost Ways of Knowing

John Vervaeke, an award-winning professor of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto, brings a wealth of academic expertise to his courses.

With a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, Dr Vervaeke served as the former Director of Cognitive Science and holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology.

He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards and has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom.

With expertise in both Eastern and Western philosophy, Dr Vervaeke guides learners through a transformative journey, integrating ancient wisdom with modern scientific insights.

Dr Vervaeke’s courses are a captivating blend of theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom, and his dynamic teaching style engages students in exploring the depths of the mind and its implications for personal growth and societal change, illuminating the path to a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.

Information

Additional information on this program (PDF)

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Book-a-month Club - Choosing my Goethe
2025-05-19 18:00 - 20:30
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/oVDq82fttYQ?si=9I_EpGOZPsGufMe7

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

Choosing my Goethe:R. Safranski’s Goethe: Life as a Work of Art (2017) and A. N. Wilson’s Goethe: A Faustian Life (2024)

Host: Alison Liebling

Monday, May 19, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

An informal monthly get-together to discuss books of significance for the Pari Center community.

When I came across the term ‘delicate empiricism,’ several years ago, I felt I had found a concept that helped describe my approach to social science research in prisons—something I was writing a chapter about. I fell in love with this intriguing genius: prolific author, attentive scientist, and ‘lover of what is alive.’ Encounters in Pari fueled the flames. As a result of my new love, I emerged from Topping and Company’s independent bookshop in Bath in October 2024 more fully alive than when I had entered, with these two great biographies under my arm. I wasn’t aware that I was looking (except, perhaps, for Faust, Part 1), or that they existed, but something drew me to the right shelf. The bookshop itself, I discovered later, sees itself as a ‘world-opening,’ face-to-face, carefully curated book sanctuary. I spent a delightful time with my bookshop companion in Beckford Bottle Shop wine bar that evening feeling exuberant, expectant, and somehow sure of my ground. Once home, I found my opportunity and read them avidly.

In this informal get together for book lovers, I reflect on the meaning of my encounters with Goethe and his two recent biographers. Drawing on my own work, as well as these two books, I explore two main Goethe-inspired ideas: the role of the human observer, and the concept of the life force.

Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Cambridge and the Director of the Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre. She has carried out research on life in prison for over 30 years. Her projects have included suicide and self-harm in prisons, close supervision centres for difficult prisoners, incentives and earned privileges, staff-prisoner relationships, the location and building of trust in high security prisons, the work of prison officers, and conceptualizing and measuring the moral quality of prison life, including comparisons between public and private sector prisons. She has evaluated shared reading programmes in Psychologically-Informed Planned Environments for prisoners with personality disorders, and is currently exploring the differences between survivable and unsurvivable prisons. Her books include Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life (2004), The Effects of Imprisonment (2005, with Shadd Maruna), Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration (2013, with Justice Tankebe); and The Prison Officer (2001, 2nd edition 2010). She has just completed a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, carrying out the project, ‘Moral rules, social science and forms of order in prison’. She is finishing a book arising from that project, tentatively called Aristotle’s Prison: A Search for Humanity and Justice. She argues that what keeps people alive in prison is feeling part of a moral universe. She was made a member of the British Academy in 2018. She is involved in an advisory capacity in projects on penal reform and evaluating prison quality in countries including Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and Switzerland.

The Future World - A conversation with Rebecca Tarnas
2025-05-21 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://youtu.be/AtvFLF0PP9I?si=ojluXWTExbPJNUtD

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

A Conversation between Rebecca Tarnas and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday, May 219:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

Rebecca Tarnas, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her doctoral dissertation was titled The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien, and her research interests include depth psychology, archetypal studies, literature, philosophy, and the ecological imagination. Becca is an editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology and author of the book Journey to the Imaginal Realm: A Reader’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. She is currently researching and writing a biography of Stanislav Grof, a co-founder of transpersonal psychology.

Radical Visions
2025-05-23 19:00 - 2025-05-30 17:00 | Pari, Italy
Radical Visions

Celebrating the Lives and Work of the Two Davids, David Bohm and David Peat.In memory of Basil J. Hiley (1935-2025)

Pari, ItalyMay 23-30, 2025

A special event celebrating 25 years at the Pari Center

For the Pari Center’s 25th anniversary we are holding a week-long celebration dedicated to examining the legacy of the two Davids—David Bohm and David Peat. We have gathered a group of presenters from physics, philosophy, the Indigenous world, dialogue, synchronicity, Gentle Action, and the sacred, who will discuss the life’s work of the two men and how their influence has extended well beyond the confines of physics.

The presenters—former colleagues, friends, and scholars—will illuminate the wide-ranging work and interests of the two physicists during their talks, workshops and roundtable discussions, and will share their personal stories and anecdotes.

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Basil Hiley, who was to be a presenter at this event. Radical Visions will now be dedicated to his memory.

Speakers

Jonathan Allday, Harald Atmanspacher, John Briggs, Andrew Fellows, Isabel Hawkins, Paul Howard, Melissa Nelson, Paavo Pylkkänen, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, Godelieve Spaas

Virtually: Àlex Gómez-Marín, Sakej Henderson, Leroy Little Bear, Lee Nichol, David Schrum

Chaired by: Melissa Nelson

See a list of presentations for this event

Ticket Prices

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

Prices include:

a 7-night stay;

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

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed lectures, activities and materials.

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

The event starts on Friday May 23 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Friday May 30 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

For the Pari Center’s 25th anniversary we are holding a week-long celebration dedicated to examining the legacy of the two Davids—David Bohm and David Peat. We have gathered a group of presenters from physics, philosophy, the Indigenous world, dialogue, synchronicity, Gentle Action, and the sacred, who will discuss the life’s work of the two men and how their influence has extended well beyond the confines of physics.

The presenters—former colleagues, friends, and scholars—will illuminate the wide-ranging work and interests of the two physicists during their talks, workshops and roundtable discussions, and will share their personal stories and anecdotes.

Who This Event Is For:This event is open to everyone but especially those who have an interest in:

Wholeness and the Implicate OrderThought and ConsciousnessIndigenous KnowledgeSynchronicity—the Jung/Pauli connection Gentle Action and ethical valuesCreativity and metaphorBohm’s rheosomaThe Lives of the Two Davids

Included are two special evenings with the outdoor screening of Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas of David Bohm and Quantum Convergence with filmmaker Paul Howard.

David Bohm was the maverick physicist who proposed an alternative approach to the conventional version of quantum theory, as well as suggesting that a new Implicate Order lay behind what could be thought of as our surface perception of reality. But Bohm’s ideas extended well beyond theoretical physics and included reflections on the nature of creativity and the order of society and the individual. The presenters we have gathered will also look at the personal life of David Bohm, his relationship with J. Robert Oppenheimer, his encounter with the House Un-American Activities and his subsequent exile to Brazil; his friendship with Krishnamurti which led to a series of discussions between the two men and is considered one of the most important encounters of his life; the dialogue process he proposed which he felt could bring about a transformation in the individual and society; and his crucial meeting with the indigenous people of North America at the end of his life.

F. David Peat was a researcher in theoretical physics when he opted to take a life-changing sabbatical year with David Bohm at Birkbeck College, University of London. From that time on he was profoundly influenced by the work of David Bohm, their relationship deepened, and the Peat and Bohm families became friends. This led to Bohm and Peat’s Science, Order and Creativity and Peat eventually writing the biography of Bohm Infinite Potential. Peat also wrote more than 20 books and numerous essays on a wide range of topics. In 2000 he founded the Pari Center as a congenial location where people can meet to think, learn and explore while advancing the integration of knowledge, the arts, science, ethical values, community and spirituality within the ambience of a medieval village.

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

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

Presentations

Click to see a list of the presentations for this event
David Bohm’s Physicswith Jonathan Allday

The Role of the Unknowable and The Universe as a Work of Artwith John Briggs

Joined up thinking… and why it matterswith Andrew Fellows

Bohm’s Gift of Somawith Lee Nichol

25 years with the Davidswith Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

Times with David Peat and David Bohm; and Bohm’s Journey into Subtle Mindwith David Schrum

Small Things Making Big Differenceswith Godelieve Spaas

Many Faces of Synchronicitywith Harald Atmanspacher

David Bohm

David Bohm and his wife, Sarah

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

As a physicist Bohm’s radical theories challenged the orthodox Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory and in its place made the alternative proposal of Hidden Variables, as well as his later developments of the Quantum Potential. He was also an explorer of mind and consciousness, language, perception, creativity and dialogue. He had close relationships with the Indian teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti and, later in life, the Dalai Lama, who called him his ‘science guru.’ In the 1960s, he exchanged four thousand pages of correspondence with the American abstract artist Charles Biederman that discussed the nature of the creative process and questions of order, perception and consciousness. In the final year of his life, he was invited to join a circle of Native American elders and Western scientists. This meeting was of great significance for Bohm. As he listened to the First Nations’ participants describing their strongly verb-based Algonkian family of languages, he recognized that here was a society that practiced what he had envisioned for his ‘rheomode’—a hypothetical verb-based language. He was also struck by their process-based worldview of constant flux and change whose metaphysics strongly mirrored his own.

Finding Cartesian duality limited, he believed that the same principles which underlie the behaviour of matter also operate in the realms of consciousness, society and culture. In 1980 he published his seminal work Wholeness and the Implicate Order in which he suggested that all the phenomena that appear in the world—whether fundamental particles or thoughts in the mind—emerge out of a deeper order of reality, their character varying according to the context. At its deepest level, he maintained, reality is an ‘unbroken whole,’ and he made this the basis of his work in every sphere. In later life he felt that transformation in society could be brought about by dialogue and today Bohmian dialogues are held throughout the world.

F. David Peat

F. DAVID PEAT was a theoretical physicist, writer, and teacher who founded the Pari Center in 2000. He wrote more than 20 books on such diverse topics as quantum physics, synchronicity, superstrings, artificial intelligence, film and reality, creativity, chaos theory, indigenous knowledge, and his original concepts of Gentle Action and Creative Suspension, a new form of intelligent, compassionate and mild action that flows from the entire field of meaning in which a particular individual, society or organization is a part. His books have been translated into 24 languages and his numerous essays and articles are freely available in the online library on the Pari Center website.

He was a researcher at the National Research Council of Canada when he spent a sabbatical year, 1971-72 with David Bohm at Birkbeck College, University of London. Thereafter his research focused on the foundations of quantum theory and a non-unitary approach to the quantum measurement problem. Bohm and Peat became friends and colleagues and eventually co-authored the book Science, Order and Creativity and were working on a second book, The Order Between and Beyond, at the time of Bohm’s death.

Peat continued to promote the work of David Bohm in seminars and courses at the Pari Center and in his writings. In 1997 he published the biography Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm and subsequently worked hard to obtain funding for a film based on the biography. In 2020 with the generous sponsorship of the Fetzer Foundation the film, Infinite Potential: The Life and Work of David Bohm, was brought to fruition by Paul Howard and Imagine Films of Dublin. Peat did not live to see its release, but he is acknowledged as the co-writer of the script and the film is dedicated to him.

While living in Canada, Peat organized discussion circles between Western scientists and Native American Elders to which David Bohm was invited. While living in London he spent much of his time talking to artists and psychologists and organized a conference between artists and scientists which was instrumental in his founding of the Pari Center. The Center, housed in a medieval village in Tuscany, fosters an interdisciplinary approach linking science, arts, ethics, community and the sacred.

Peat was adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, Fellow of the International Futures Forum, Distinguished Fellow at the University of South Africa, and a corresponding Member of the European Academy of Arts, Science and the Humanities. David Peat died in Pari in 2017 and is buried in the village cemetery.

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

Information

Additional information on this program (PDF)

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Consciousness 2.0
2025-06-03 19:00 - 2025-06-10 17:00 | Pari, Italy
Science of Consciousness Series

Consciousness 2.0

Seeing the theoretical forest for the empirical trees

Pari, ItalyJune 3-10, 2025

We are living a profound moment of transformation that is happening within the field of consciousness studies, drawing an intriguing parallel to the revolutions that occurred in physics a century ago.

Speakers

Jessica Bockler, Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Robert Lawrence-Kuhn (virtually), Lucia Melloni, Kehlan Morgan, Liad Mudrik, Koncha Pinos

Chaired and curated by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

See a list of presentations for this event.

Ticket Prices

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

Prices include:

a 7-night stay;

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

water, wine, and coffee are provided with lunch and dinner;

programmed lectures, activities and materials.

There is a limited amount of accommodation in Pari and you will be placed on a first-come, first-served basis. We will also be using accommodation just outside of the village—within 3 kilometres. If you are housed outside Pari, a shuttle to and from the village will be provided.

The event starts on Tuesday June 3 at 19:00 and ends after lunch on Tuesday June 10.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the Event

Modern Physics, a Century Ago

In the early 20th century, modern physics underwent a revolutionary transformation with the advent of quantum mechanics and relativity. The established, classical Newtonian worldview, which had dominated for centuries, began to unravel in the face of new experimental evidence. This was a time of great upheaval—scientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others pushed the boundaries of human understanding, introducing concepts that defied common sense (challenging the very ideas of space, time, causality, locality and objective reality) and our everyday experience of reality.

Such revolutions were not just a series of empirical discoveries; they entailed a meta-theoretical shift that opened the door to new kinds of experience and understanding. In the process, physicists had to embrace a new way of thinking—one that was less about absolute certainties and more about probabilities, perspectives, and the complex nature of reality itself. These developments are often referred to as the ‘foundations of modern physics,’ and they marked the dawn of an entirely new era in science.

Consciousness Studies: the Next Revolution?

Today, consciousness studies seems to be undergoing a similar upheaval, though the field is in some ways even more complex because it deals directly with subjective experience. We are grappling not just with theories of the physical world, but with the nature of awareness itself, the qualities that make us experience the world, perceive it, and reflect on it.

In many ways, consciousness studies has been constrained by our inability to bridge the gap between subjective experience (the ‘what it is like’ aspect of consciousness) and objective scientific analysis. Theories of consciousness range from materialist metaphors, models, and metaphysics, which claim that consciousness arises solely from brain activity, to more radical proposals like panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe itself. Within this spectrum, there are competing schools of thought, such as cognitive science, quantum consciousness theories, integrated information theory (IIT), and various forms of phenomenology and philosophy of mind.

Like physics in the early 20th century, we find ourselves in a moment where the old paradigms are increasingly inadequate to explain the full scope of consciousness. Traditional, reductionist models of mind and brain are being challenged by new, more complex theories that attempt to account for the mystery of subjective experience—something that is elusive to scientific observation and analysis. And just as physicists had to grapple with the unsettling nature of quantum mechanics and relativity, those of us in consciousness studies must contend with the disorienting, mysterious quality of conscious experience itself.

The Challenge: Empirical Trees and Theoretical Forests

Despite the progress being made, a crucial issue remains: many of us within the field of consciousness studies remain attached to particular theories, often to the point of dogma, which can limit our capacity to integrate the vast range of data available to us. Some scientists and philosophers stubbornly cling to reductive models, insisting that consciousness will eventually be fully explained by neuroscience. Others, meanwhile, explore more speculative or metaphysical theories, sometimes neglecting the empirical rigor that has characterized the most successful scientific endeavors. As much as pluralism is welcome (even necessary), the divide between these camps can lead to confusion, fragmentation, and a lack of consensus, leaving us stuck in a kind of theoretical paralysis.

This is where the ‘reckoning’ comes in—the realization that we must move beyond entrenched positions and truly confront the complexity of consciousness. It is not enough to insist on a particular theory or model; we need to develop a truly interdisciplinary approach that draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, physics, and even the arts. It is time to seek integration and synthesis, embracing diversity while avoiding division.

A Science of Experience for the 21st Century

What would such integration look like? First, it means acknowledging that consciousness is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that cannot be fully captured by any single theory or discipline. Like the revolution in physics a century ago, we need a new language—a more inclusive, flexible framework that can accommodate the diversity of human experience and the complexities of the systems that give rise to it.

In practical terms, this could involve greater collaboration between neuroscientists and philosophers of mind, or the incorporation of phenomenological insights into experimental design. New methodologies—such as neurophenomenology—are already emerging, which attempt to correlate subjective experience with objective neural data, creating a bridge between ‘what it’s like’ and the brain processes that underlie it. But this will require the humility to accept that the very nature of experience may defy the kind of reductionist models that have so often dominated science. We must also be open to the possibility that the field of consciousness studies, like physics, may require new tools, new conceptual frameworks, or even a new understanding of reality itself to truly understand the nature of experience.

This means cultivating an openness to mystery—something we may have lost sight of in the quest for certainty. Unlike the hard, measurable phenomena of physics, consciousness resists being neatly packaged or fully explained by any one theory. However, that does not mean we should shy away from the challenge; rather, it invites us to deepen our inquiry and embrace the richness of experience.

The Road Ahead

The ‘reckoning’ that is needed in consciousness studies is one of intellectual humility, bold exploration, and interdisciplinary collaboration. It is about transcending the boundaries that currently divide us—amongst the different ‘isms,’ between objective and subjective, between science and spirit—and creating a field that acknowledges the complexity of human consciousness while embracing rigorous, empirical methods.

If we can do that, we may be poised to uncover insights about the nature of experience that are as transformative for the 21st century as the breakthroughs in physics were for the 20th century. The key will be to approach consciousness not merely as a set of theories or data points but as a profound mystery that we can experience, reflect upon, and, in time, understand in new ways.

Consciousness for Real

Finally, to move beyond ‘mere’ theoretical models and into the realm of ‘consciousness for real,’ we must make the study of consciousness not just an intellectual pursuit but a lived experience that anyone can access, explore, and understand. This means creating bridges between abstract theories and the concrete, everyday experiences that shape our lives. The technologies and methodologies emerging in neuroscience, psychology, and even virtual reality offer exciting new ways to immerse ourselves in the study of consciousness. But these must be grounded in real, subjective experiences—whether through meditative practices, altered states of awareness, or simply cultivating our attention and perception while walking in the forest—that allow individuals to directly engage with the mysteries of their own minds.

The field of consciousness must find ways to make its insights accessible to the public, so that consciousness is not something relegated to academic debate or laboratory experiments, but a tangible and transformative aspect of our collective human experience. This ‘consciousness for real’ approach has the potential to democratize the study of mind, allowing all of us to participate in the unfolding revolution, fostering a deeper understanding of what it means to be conscious, and ultimately helping us harness the profound potential of awareness in our everyday lives.

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

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

Presentations

Click to see a list of the presentations for this event
The Science of Beauty: How Art Generates, Expands and Alters Consciousness. Neuroaestheticwith Koncha Pinos

Information

Additional information on this program (PDF)

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Gentle Action 2025
2025-06-12 19:00 - 2025-06-19 17:00 | Pari, Italy
Gentle Action 2025

A Gathering of Shared Experience

Pari, ItalyJune 12-19, 2025

25 years at the Pari Center

Ticket Prices

950.00 euros, which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

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

water, wine, and coffee served with lunch and dinner;

programmed activities and materials.

The event starts on Thursday June 12 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Thursday June 19 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions for this course.

About the event

A weeklong interaction through dialogue at the Pari Center based on F. David Peat’s concept of Gentle Action.

Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field and I will meet you there. Rumi

On Gentle Action

Undoubtedly, we are faced by problems of great complexity. The environment, society and even life on earth, is under threat and, as a result, the human race is struggling with feelings of anger, frustration and helplessness. Something, we urge, must be done; some action must be taken. Tomorrow, we sense, will be too late. Yet it is these very feelings and reactions that have become part of the problem. The urge to change and control, to analyze, priorize, plan and act are all aspects of the same pattern that, in the first place, drove us to the edge of this crisis. What is needed is a radical change in human consciousness, in organizations and governments, if we are to survive into the second half of the 21st century. This I have called Gentle Action. F. David Peat

On Dialogue

In our modern culture men and women are able to interact with one another in many ways: they can sing, dance or play together with little difficulty but their ability to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them seems invariably to lead to dispute, division and often to violence. This condition points to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought. Because the nature of Dialogue is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold. No firm rules can be laid down for conducting a Dialogue because its essence is learning—not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, nor as a means of examining or criticizing a particular theory or programme, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation between peers. David Bohm

Embracing the present and choosing to act more gently, allows insights and interconnections to emerge and bubble up in a natural manner. Such moments are often accompanied by experiences of openness, trust, joy, and a childlike sense of wonder. In the beautiful and peaceful setting of a medieval village, participants in our Gentle Action gathering will have ample opportunities to connect with nature, their fellow dialoguers, and—perhaps most importantly—themselves. Experience the power of dialogue, creative suspension, and active listening in an open and supportive atmosphere.

During out Gentle Action Gathering, participants are encouraged to explore the village and its surroundings. We will meet in the newly renovated palazzo for our dialogues which will include sessions with the whole group as well as participating in smaller groups. A variety of activities will be offered which might include taking part in a yoga class, exploring the wisdom of Tarot or I Ching, creating a mandala, walking in the countryside, visiting the local hot springs—or just relaxing with an espresso in Pari’s piazza.

Join us for a week of living in Pari—the alchemical vessel where transformations take place. Practice living in the moment for the moment, while acting and speaking in more gentle ways.

Our Story

Several years ago, a small group of us were sitting outside the bar in Pari, Italy when the idea came up to bring a group of very open-minded people together for a gathering without any agenda, topic, intention, or specific purpose.

After leaving Pari, we continued to meet monthly through an online Zoom dialogue, where our small group of three individuals gradually grew in a most organic manner. More than a year of online meetings led to our first Gentle Action Gathering back at Pari in September of 2022.

Our original group of Jena, Manfred, and Tom, who hail from New York, Germany, and Ireland has gradually grown into a thriving community. Members of our online community have traveled from throughout the world to meet one another in person. Similarly, new participants who meet during our in-person Gentle Action Gatherings, frequently wish to stay in touch through our online dialogues.

Over the course of time we have come to discover that we have much to share with one another. Somewhat paradoxically, many of us believe that this is due to—rather than despite—our differing backgrounds. Throughout our interactions, we have also found that we have much in common. Perhaps most importantly, we all share a genuine interest in one another’s perspectives on the world, reminiscent of Rumi’s quote:

Out beyond the ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.

This June we have chosen to meet once again in Pari, Italy. The medieval village of Pari, nestled in the Tuscan landscape, provides the perfect backdrop for new insights and explorations. During our Gentle Action Gatherings, participants are largely free to roam around as they please. They can meet in the newly renovated palazzo, take part in a yoga class, explore the area’s hot springs, or just sit down to have an espresso at the charming and peaceful square. Many find that leaving their daily routine behind and setting aside the expectations of the outer world allows them to reconnect with their innermost nature.

Taking the time to communicate and interact in the moment, for the moment, provides a unique opportunity to engage with the world in a much more playful manner—deepening the participants’ relationships with themselves, others, and the world around them.

Many participants notice that an almost childlike curiosity tends to emerge, unforced and unbidden, ‘beyond the ideas of right and wrong’ allowing them to experience the innate beauty of the present moment.

More than anything, our gatherings have given us a deep sense of connection and friendships that endure beyond the limits of time and space.

This June we get to come home again. It would be wonderful if you could join us.

Jena, Lisa, Manfred, Michael, Todd, and Tom

PARTICIPANTS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES

ManfredBased on the ideas of David Bohm’s Dialogue, we had dialogues that included all the participants and in groups of four to five people. People sat in a circle with a talking stone in the middle. A person talks only when she or he has taken the talking stone. All others listen deeply without interruption. This gives the speaker the freedom to talk as long as they want, but at the same time to take the responsibility to stop when it is appropriate for the group. I’ve participated in this kind of dialogue for more than twenty years, but in this Gathering there was from the beginning an attitude which I had never experienced before. The level of sensitivity was so high that most of the time a talking stone was not necessary.

TimThe depth of integrated experience, wisdom and special talents of our lovely group became increasingly clear. There were moments of true Alchemy which were enduring, fruitful and uplifting. Love, generosity of spirit, deep listening, laughter, and pain became manifest. Five words coalesced for me: PRESENCE, OPEN-NESS, COMMUNION, INTENTION, ACCEPTANCE. Eternal thanks to you all.

TomOur get together of many people and nationalities in Pari was a joy. There are many positives to our Western ways, but deep human alienation is a price we often pay. I think in Pari we paid homage to Martin Buber’s great insight: I and Thou. In harmony with you…beyond our egos…we get glimpses of deeper truths.

ArturIt is always very difficult to describe a rich experience that impacts many different dimensions of Being. First of all because any kind of description will always be unfair, incomplete, and inaccurate… With that in mind, the experience was extremely rich in connections with incredible people who were available to open up, exchange and think together without the obligation to agree or have to appear intelligent, smart or sophisticated to the Other. Being present and simply letting your Presence happen in the way the Soul chose was what touched me the most.

Ciara Some thoughts, but no words can really convey what it meant to me. There was something about the implicit nature to the information about the Gathering, an invitation, a Gentle one at that. It created a hope in me that this might be a gathering that would allow the time and space needed for truth (in all its complex beauty) to emerge. It was that and more. I am both changed and restored by the deep relationships that formed over the week. Relationships with each other, with place, with reality and with a way of being I thought had got lost in the noise of modern life. Eternally grateful, Ciara

Daniela When I go to events, I often feel overstimulated and, in the end, flooded with information—often welcome or sought out deliberately—but when I go home, I carry with me too much data to handle. Such a relief to find a place, where something new can emerge merely by people sharing time together and being in dialogue. In the Gentle Gathering I have found a co-creative place of exploration where genuinely new ideas can come into the world just because they want to and there are people who are present with them.

JenaI don’t think I’ve ever seen a group coalesce so quickly into respectful dialogue; I’ve never seen a dialogue group begin with so few rules and definitions on what dialogue is. That may not exactly be a paradox but feels a bit like a Zen koan to me at the moment.

AngelicaI felt connected and present. I could be who I am, not trying to fit in, and yet felt that I was very welcome and appreciated. That gave me an inner space to go deeper into myself and understand more about me, without being taught or lectured to. The experience of love among participants was spectacular and that gave me confidence about a worldview I carry with me, which is: we are all loving humans who can express that love, be that love, be conscious and connect with consciousness, given the circumstances for that.

AlistairMy first response is that of gratitude. Firstly, to the six of you who have carried the flame and brought it to this point so others could share your dream. Thank you for drawing us in. It felt like sacred ground. And gratitude to all of you who were there. I gained so much from so many. In the dialogues, over meals, late at night after one more bottle of wine. Long conversations, snatches of insight, pithy one liners and stories, overheard conversations, moments of gracious input into my life, observing your ways of being, I absorbed so much. Thank you!

Information

Additional information on this program (PDF)

Terms and conditions (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

The Future World – A conversation with Sergi Torres
2025-06-25 18:00 - 19:30
Event registration

Click on the Going button below to register for this event; enter your full name and email address and then press Submit RSVP.

Donate to the Pari Center

We could not exist without the generosity of our supporters, sponsors and friends. Donate even a small amount, to help support us financially and enable us to continue our work.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be taken to the payment screen.

A Conversation between Sergi Torres and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday June 259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

Born in Barcelona in 1975, Sergi Torres is a contemporary mystic. His focus is self-knowledge, starting from the Mystery from which our conscious human experience arises. His approach takes the form of a constant invitation to self-inquiry: “Know yourself.” He is the author of several books (A Bridge to Reality, Jump into the Void, Will You Join Me?, The IntroHeroes, The Biology of the Present (with David del Rosario), Aurum, and Humanitas (with Xavier Ginesta), all centered around this call to self-inquiry.

Beyond Bohm 2025
2025-07-12 17:59 - 2025-07-27 22:30
Beyond Bohm 2025: Wholeness and Fragmentation

With Aja Bulla Zamastil , Richard Burg, Maria Hvidbak, Chris Marks, Melissa K. Nelson, Lee Nichol, Hester Reeve.Curated and Chaired by Lee Nichol.

July 12-27, 20259am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm BST / 6pm CEST

6 two-hour sessions every Saturday and Sunday.

The sessions are LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

If one were to select one concept to describe the arc of David Bohm’s lifework, it would surely be wholeness. Having said that, the road splits off into many forks. Questions regarding wholeness apply in so many domains – in physics, in the social world, in the artistic domain, in the world of nature, in one’s daily life. The list could go on at great length.

In Beyond Bohm 2025, we will extend feelers to the world of nature, and into certain aspects of human creativity. We will be looking to see if we can have a concrete, rather than conceptual sense of wholeness. In the first instance – the natural world – we will explore in some detail the phenomenological engagement with nature taken by Scot author Nan Shepherd. In the second instance – the domain of human creativity – we will take up the manner in which architect- philosopher Christopher Alexander approached wholeness, as a concrete living process.

The flip side of the “wholeness coin” is, of course, fragmentation. Indeed, much of Bohm’s life was taken up with the interplay of wholeness and fragmentation. His work in physics, in philosophy, in dialogue, in aesthetics, in the nature of thought – in all these areas the wholeness/fragmentation nexus was central. In service to that, our final weekend will examine the still-evolving interplay of digital media and human consciousness, and the manner in which these media are currently amplifying certain factors that Bohm felt to be at the root of human fragmentation.

Needless to say, engaging this wholeness/fragmentation nexus is the work of lifetime, for any of us. From a “Bohmian” perspective, there is literally no end to the inquiry, for wholeness, being a living thing, is never finished. It is ever-evolving, recursive, generative. Always on the move, always in flux.

In Beyond Bohm 2025, then, we will not be attempting to come to finished conclusions or final answers. Rather, we will be aiming for a “flavor,” a “taste” of both wholeness and of fragmentation. To this end, our format will be notably different from in the past. In our first and third weekends, the entire second day will be given over to audience participation, in order to get the fullest possible feeling for the pulse of the Pari community. The second weekend will offer specific activities that can be done between the first day and the second day. We hope you will join us as we expand the Beyond Bohm format and aim to open new participatory terrain.

Program of Event

THE LIVING MOUNTAINWith Hester Reeve, Maria Hvidbak, Chris Marks and Lee NicholJuly 12 and 13, 2025

THE QUALITY WITHOUT A NAMEWith Aja Bulla Zamastil and Lee NicholJuly 19 and 20, 2025

BOHM’S HARD PROBLEM & DEVICE CULTUREWith Hester Reeve, Richard Burg, Melissa K. Nelson, Aja Bulla Zamastil and Lee NicholJuly 26 and 27, 2025

Sessions

1 of 3: The Living Mountain

Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

Around 1937 Scot author Nan Shepherd placed a finished manuscript in a drawer, where it sat for 40 years. Finally published in 1977 – four years before Shepherd’s death – The Living Mountain now has a cult following, and is considered a masterpiece that defies categorization. Though topically an account of Shepherd’s decades-long roamings in the Cairngorm massif of northern Scotland, the heart of The Living Mountain carries the reader deep within Shepherd’s experience, revealing ways of being that are at once place-specific and universal. She opens the reader to the forces and patterns of creation, and the manner in which these forces interpenetrate human consciousness and imagination.

In this two-day session, we will explore Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, as well as her slim volume of poetry, In the Cairngorms. The first day will consist of brief selected readings, with close examination and commentary on Shepherd’s intimate and evocative “way” of being with the mountain. We will also hear first-person accounts from people who, inspired by The Living Mountain, ventured forth and found their own “way” into the Cairngorms.

And yet… Much of the potency in Shepherd’s writing is that it is in no way limited to the Cairngorms. Once one has been infected with the spirit of engagement brought forth by Shepherd, that quality can be brought to bear anywhere – in a park, at the sea, in one’s own back yard. To that end, our second day will consist of contributions from audience-participants – a mutual sharing of experiences in which the depths of the human meet the depths of the natural world. This may take multiple forms – first-hand description of one’s own experiences in the natural world; reading to our Zoom group short passages from other writers or further readings of Shepherd; photographs of potent or numinous locations; any other means of conveying to the group the mystery, beauty, and even terror that can be encountered in the domain of nature. Our aim on this second day is to give full voice to the Pari community regarding the deep human need for conscious connection with stone and sun, wind and tree, bird and brook, sea and stars. Please join us!

2 of 3: The Quality without a Name

Saturday and Sunday, July 19 and 20, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

With the publication in 1977 of A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander initiated a revolution in how to think about built and inhabited spaces. His emphasis on “the quality without a name” – a mysterious but graspable quality that touches the human soul – was radical and provocative. This weekend we will explore various approaches to that quality – the relation of space and form; the Chinese “heaven-earth-human” principle; Japanese flower arranging (ikebana); the aesthetics of landscape architecture; and traditional architectural forms. We will also give detailed attention to Alexander’s magnum opus on wholeness, The Nature of Order, and his remarkable work delineating the spiritual geometry and color of early Turkish carpets, A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art.

Some Pari patrons may know that Alexander was an early friend of the Pari Center. He visited there around 2000 or 2001, sharing insights with David Peat and Maureen Doolan regarding the architecture and renovations of the village itself. There was also a multi-day meeting between Alexander and David Bohm in 1986, in which the two discussed their various perspectives on wholeness.

This weekend will provide the option for those attending to experiment directly with certain basic approaches to the “quality without a name.” This will include activities that can be done between the first day and second day, which can then be shared with the group on the second day. As in our first weekend, we are aiming to broaden the manner in which the Pari community can engage with the Beyond Bohm programs.

3 of 3: Bohm’s Hard Problem and Device Culture

Saturday and Sunday, July 26 and 27, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

While our first two weekends will focus on two views of wholeness – in the natural world and in the human-made world – our final weekend will take up Bohm’s “hard problem”: that is, changing the reflexive, thought-centered nature of our everyday consciousness. Bohm pointed to the necessity of apprehending and altering our age-old engagement with what he called “thought as a system” – the tacit, culture-wide commitment to a pervasively fragmented worldview, inclusive of ourselves and our own individual consciousness.

This potential transformation is difficult under the best of circumstances – thus, a “hard problem” – and has been a perennial challenge for humanity. When Bohm began putting forward his proposals in the late 1970s and early 80s, the accelerating nature of communication media was formative in his assessment of how the subtle fragmentation of thought as a system operates. Now, in 2025, our enmeshment in this system is far more pervasive and tenacious, due in large part to our immersion in interactive digital devices.

In his original proposals, Bohm put great emphasis on the manner in which thought and feeling reflexively and repetitively sustain one another, leaving precious little opportunity for careful examination and understanding of the implications of this mechanical patterning. It is startlingly ironic then, that today we live in a digital environment that is specifically designed to amplify and exaggerate the very reflexes Bohm had hoped we could free ourselves from. In the first day of this weekend, our panel will give sustained attention to the manner in which thought as a system has become much harder to apprehend and counteract than it was when Bohm formulated his original concerns.

Our second day will open more broadly, dedicating the entire session to participant engagement with our panel. We will continue our examination of how social media – whose purveyors are Facebook-Meta, Instagram, X, TikTok, and Snapchat – intentionally create addictive behavior, ranging from existential anxiety in the formative psyches of adolescents, to the dopamine-fueled rage that has infected societies across the globe.

Questions and themes will include, but not be limited to: Are our life choices arising from intelligence and free will, or are they being more and more determined by corporate algorithms? Is technology inherently neutral – as many claim – the only question then being whether we use it for good or ill? Why does biological research have legal and ethical guardrails, whereas socio-technological research and application do not? Is the deepening fascination with the self-image and its attendant narcissism now an intractable feature of contemporary culture? What are the implications of young children spending an average of 7 hours per day in front of screens, while spending an average of less than 10 minutes per day in outdoor activities? Perhaps most importantly, what can we actually do in the face of these challenges? Do we want to do anything at all, or are we satisfied with the status quo?

Please join us to participate in this timely and important conversation.

Beyond Bohm 2025: The Living Mountain
2025-07-12 18:00 - 2025-07-13 20:00
Beyond Bohm 2025 (1 of 3): The Living Mountain

Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

The session is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

Around 1937 Scot author Nan Shepherd placed a finished manuscript in a drawer, where it sat for 40 years. Finally published in 1977 – four years before Shepherd’s death – The Living Mountain now has a cult following, and is considered a masterpiece that defies categorization. Though topically an account of Shepherd’s decades-long roamings in the Cairngorm massif of northern Scotland, the heart of The Living Mountain carries the reader deep within Shepherd’s experience, revealing ways of being that are at once place-specific and universal. She opens the reader to the forces and patterns of creation, and the manner in which these forces interpenetrate human consciousness and imagination.

In this two-day session, we will explore Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, as well as her slim volume of poetry, In the Cairngorms. The first day will consist of brief selected readings, with close examination and commentary on Shepherd’s intimate and evocative “way” of being with the mountain. We will also hear first-person accounts from people who, inspired by The Living Mountain, ventured forth and found their own “way” into the Cairngorms.

And yet… Much of the potency in Shepherd’s writing is that it is in no way limited to the Cairngorms. Once one has been infected with the spirit of engagement brought forth by Shepherd, that quality can be brought to bear anywhere – in a park, at the sea, in one’s own back yard. To that end, our second day will consist of contributions from audience-participants – a mutual sharing of experiences in which the depths of the human meet the depths of the natural world. This may take multiple forms – first-hand description of one’s own experiences in the natural world; reading to our Zoom group short passages from other writers or further readings of Shepherd; photographs of potent or numinous locations; any other means of conveying to the group the mystery, beauty, and even terror that can be encountered in the domain of nature. Our aim on this second day is to give full voice to the Pari community regarding the deep human need for conscious connection with stone and sun, wind and tree, bird and brook, sea and stars. Please join us!

Possible reading (helpful, not required):

https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/19/the-living-mountain-nan-shepherd/ (short journal article on Shepherd)

The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd (basis for this weekend’s sessions)

In the Cairngorms, Nan Shepherd (basis for this weekend’s sessions)

The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover (excellent commentary on Shepherd)

Story About Feeling, Bill Niedje (complementary perspective from Aboriginal elder)

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

Hester’s work has been shown internationally, including at former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, BONE Performance Festival Switzerland, Tate Britain, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Halle G Vienna and, most recently, Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa. She is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing) and a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

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

Maria is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing) and a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

Chris Marks was one of the founding trustees of Prison Dialogue, and involved for its 25 year experiment. This dialogue process in the criminal justice system (CJS) attempted to get the CJS to talk to itself and thereby humanize the overall system. The work was applied primarily in the UK, but also had outreach in the US. He has spent many years – and continues proudly working with – a number of “woke” funding organizations: human rights; economic justice; peace and conflict resolution. Chris lives in Edinburgh, loves tai chi and real tennis. He is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

Lee Nichol is Director of Bohmian Studies at the Pari Center. As a freelance writer and editor his latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and Holoflux: Codex (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity.

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

Beyond Bohm 2025: The Quality without a Name
2025-07-19 18:00 - 2025-07-20 20:00
Beyond Bohm 2025 (2 of 3): The Quality without a Name

Saturday and Sunday, July 19 and 20, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

The session is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

With the publication in 1977 of A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander initiated a revolution in how to think about built and inhabited spaces. His emphasis on “the quality without a name” – a mysterious but graspable quality that touches the human soul – was radical and provocative. This weekend we will explore various approaches to that quality – the relation of space and form; the Chinese “heaven-earth-human” principle; Japanese flower arranging (ikebana); the aesthetics of landscape architecture; and traditional architectural forms. We will also give detailed attention to Alexander’s magnum opus on wholeness, The Nature of Order, and his remarkable work delineating the spiritual geometry and color of early Turkish carpets, A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art.

Some Pari patrons may know that Alexander was an early friend of the Pari Center. He visited there around 2000 or 2001, sharing insights with David Peat and Maureen Doolan regarding the architecture and renovations of the village itself. There was also a multi-day meeting between Alexander and David Bohm in 1986, in which the two discussed their various perspectives on wholeness.

This weekend will provide the option for those attending to experiment directly with certain basic approaches to the “quality without a name.” This will include activities that can be done between the first day and second day, which can then be shared with the group on the second day. As in our first weekend, we are aiming to broaden the manner in which the Pari community can engage with the Beyond Bohm programs.

Possible reading (helpful, not required):

The Luminous Ground (vol. 4 of The Nature of Order), Christopher Alexander (this is the culmination of Alexander’s lifework, unafraid to address the metaphysical, religious, and mystical import of his oeuvre)

https://archive.org/details/natureoforderess0000alex

A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art, Christopher Alexander (groundbreaking assessment of the underlying nature of early Turkish carpets, lavishly illustrated)

https://archive.org/details/AForeshadowingOf21stCenturyArt/page/n55/mode/2up

A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander (detailed applications of Alexander’s early work)

The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander (provides the underlying theory behind Alexander’s work, emphasizing “the quality without a name”)

(Each of these books is best appreciated in physical paper, but as some of them are quite expensive, links to high-quality digital versions are provided).

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

Aja is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing 2022), and is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments. As part of her undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, Aja studied under senior students of Christopher Alexander, particularly regarding The Nature of Order.

Lee Nichol is Director of Bohmian Studies at the Pari Center. As a freelance writer and editor his latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and Holoflux: Codex (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity.

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

Beyond Bohm 2025: Bohm's Hard Problem and Device Culture
2025-07-26 18:00 - 2025-07-27 20:00
Beyond Bohm 2025 (3 of 3): Bohm’s Hard Problem and Device Culture

Saturday and Sunday, July 26 and 27, 20259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

2 two-hour sessions.

The session is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

While our first two weekends will focus on two views of wholeness – in the natural world and in the human-made world – our final weekend will take up Bohm’s “hard problem”: that is, changing the reflexive, thought-centered nature of our everyday consciousness. Bohm pointed to the necessity of apprehending and altering our age-old engagement with what he called “thought as a system” – the tacit, culture-wide commitment to a pervasively fragmented worldview, inclusive of ourselves and our own individual consciousness.

This potential transformation is difficult under the best of circumstances – thus, a “hard problem” – and has been a perennial challenge for humanity. When Bohm began putting forward his proposals in the late 1970s and early 80s, the accelerating nature of communication media was formative in his assessment of how the subtle fragmentation of thought as a system operates. Now, in 2025, our enmeshment in this system is far more pervasive and tenacious, due in large part to our immersion in interactive digital devices.

In his original proposals, Bohm put great emphasis on the manner in which thought and feeling reflexively and repetitively sustain one another, leaving precious little opportunity for careful examination and understanding of the implications of this mechanical patterning. It is startlingly ironic then, that today we live in a digital environment that is specifically designed to amplify and exaggerate the very reflexes Bohm had hoped we could free ourselves from. In the first day of this weekend, our panel will give sustained attention to the manner in which thought as a system has become much harder to apprehend and counteract than it was when Bohm formulated his original concerns.

Our second day will open more broadly, dedicating the entire session to participant engagement with our panel. We will continue our examination of how social media – whose purveyors are Facebook-Meta, Instagram, X, TikTok, and Snapchat – intentionally create addictive behavior, ranging from existential anxiety in the formative psyches of adolescents, to the dopamine-fueled rage that has infected societies across the globe.

Questions and themes will include, but not be limited to: Are our life choices arising from intelligence and free will, or are they being more and more determined by corporate algorithms? Is technology inherently neutral – as many claim – the only question then being whether we use it for good or ill? Why does biological research have legal and ethical guardrails, whereas socio-technological research and application do not? Is the deepening fascination with the self-image and its attendant narcissism now an intractable feature of contemporary culture? What are the implications of young children spending an average of 7 hours per day in front of screens, while spending an average of less than 10 minutes per day in outdoor activities? Perhaps most importantly, what can we actually do in the face of these challenges? Do we want to do anything at all, or are we satisfied with the status quo?

Please join us to participate in this timely and important conversation.

Possible reading (helpful, not required):

The Endgame of Edgelord Eschatology

https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html(provides multiple links to the 2023 US Surgeon General’s report on social media)

Alone Together, Sherry Turkle (one of the most comprehensive books currently available on what is really happening in our psychological relationship to digital platforms and artifacts…Turkle is a peerless researcher who has been surveying this terrain for decades)

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, Jaron Lanier (from the Silicon Valley insider who coined the term “virtual reality,” and developed the first viable VR headset in the 1980s… here he offers a searing indictment of social media and its pernicious underlying intentions)

Superbloom, Nicholas Carr (clear-eyed assessment of the history, digital architecture, and implications of immersive social media… superb research references)

Thought as a System, David Bohm (primary reference for understanding Bohm’s view of thought, feeling, and society)

The Social Dilemma (Netflix film)

“Knowledge as Endarkenment” (PDF transcript), David Bohm (incisive early formulation of Thought as a System)

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

Hester’s work has been shown internationally, including at former Randolph Street Gallery Chicago, LIVE Biennale Vancouver, BONE Performance Festival Switzerland, Tate Britain, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Halle G Vienna and, most recently, Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa. She is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing) and a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

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

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

Richard is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing) and a founding member of the Pari Holoflux group.

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.

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

Aja is a contributor to Holoflux: Codex (Pari Publishing), and is a founding member of the Pari Holoflux experiments. As part of her undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, Aja studied under senior students of Christopher Alexander, particularly regarding The Nature of Order.

Lee Nichol is Director of Bohmian Studies at the Pari Center. As a freelance writer and editor his latest works are Entering Bohm’s Holoflux and Holoflux: Codex (both from Pari Publishing). He was a long-time friend and collaborator of David Bohm, and is editor of Bohm’s On Dialogue, The Essential David Bohm, and On Creativity.

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

Beyond Bohm 2025, Part 2
2025-08-02 17:59 - 2025-08-24 20:30
August 2 – 24, 20258 two-hour sessions

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

All sessions are live, and include Q & A, and all participants will receive the RECORDING.Each session: Full Price €15, Member’s Discount €13.50Series tickets available.

Beyond Bohm 2025, Part 2

Following an illuminating introduction to Bohm’s revolutionary physics, we embark on an exploration of potentiality and its intricate relationship with actuality, drawing upon the insights of both Bohm and Charles Burton Martin; we will delve deeply into the terrain of panpsychism, examining consciousness not as a mere biological phenomenon confined to humans and animals, but as a fundamental architectural principle woven into the very fabric of physical reality; we investigate whether Bohmian quantum theory might inspire new forms of psycho-physical laws; we will examine the conception of ‘strict monism’ and its relation to Bohm’s ideas of undivided wholeness; we will illuminate Bohm’s distinctive philosophy of science as manifested in his causal interpretation of quantum theory; we will consider the implications of quantum materials on humanity’s evolutionary trajectory, examining how these emerging technologies may fundamentally reshape our civilizational future; and we provide an introduction to a new worldview: the Dynamic Universe—a proposal that provides a new way of understanding relativistic phenomena.

Every session will have openings for question / answer and discussion with presenters.

Program of Event

Saturday August 2Introduction to Bohm’s PhysicsJonathan AlldaySunday August 3Potentialities in Nature and the Nature of Potentialities: David Bohm’s 1951Quantum Theory and C. B. Martin’s Dispositionalist MetaphysicsAlex Carruth

Saturday August 9The Impact of (Quantum) Materials on the Development of Humanity and of Shaping our FutureSaskia FischerSunday August 10On PanpsychismSanttu Heikkinen

Saturday August 16The Dynamic Universe: A New Holistic World ViewTuomo Suntola

Sunday August 17 Consciousness, Reduction and Quantum Psycho-Physical Laws Paavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 23Bohm’s Philosophy of Science in his Causal Interpretation of Quantum MechanicsMarja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila

Sunday August 24 Not Even One William Seager

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.
