Holocentric Indigenous Consciousness
2023-11-18 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Rome) | Online
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The Science of Wholeness 5/6: Holocentric Indigenous Consciousness (with Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Robert Toth and Dr. John Briggs)€10,00

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Holocentric Indigenous Consciousness

with Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Robert Toth and Dr. John Briggs

Saturday November 18, 20239:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

Traditional Indigenous people the world over regularly employ a holistic mode of consciousness that affirms they are inseparable from the natural world. Their lives are guided by this mode. The holocentric mode is a natural feature of all human consciousness but has been suppressed in the last few thousand years by the rise of cultures organized from a second ancient mode of consciousness: the anthropocentric or human-centered mode.

Anthropocentric consciousness, which derives from perceptions that the world is made of separate things dominates the way most people living today perceive reality. By contrast, holocentric consciousness focuses on the world as a source of unity, relationships, and beauty. The holocentric mode of consciousness continues to function as a “ground state consciousness” for traditional Indigenous people and, in a different context, for creative artists.

The anthropocentric and holocentric modes are roughly parallel to the awarenesses of the left and right brains functions as described by Ian McGilchrist.

Indigenous cultures are shot through with an attention to the whole. The world is approached as a living being and a collection of fellow beings acknowledged in the Lakota phrase, mitakuye oyasin, “all my relations”— animal, vegetable, water, wind, land, sun, sky: all things which are not things, but spirit.

This presentation will show, a holocentered way of being is manifest in the traditional practice of reciprocity; in ceremonies; in metaphors shaped in stories, art and dance, and in engagement with what Leroy Little Bear, borrowing from his friend David Bohm, describes as the “holoflux”: Shape shifting in the holoflux is a potent expression of Indigenous wholeness. Tiokasin says: “You will never know what is really there, but you know something is there. As soon as you think you’ve got it, it changes, shape-shifts. You never get it.”

Working from material they have developed during the past seven years on Indigenous holistic consciousness, the three presenters will sketch a picture of the original holistic mode of consciousness that has been buried and obscured by our virally growing anthropocentric knowledge and our obsessive cleverness at manipulating apparently separate things.

Here’s an Indigenous story of wholeness:

One day when we were visiting her on the Tohono O’odham Reservation in southern Arizona, our friend, elder Ofelia Rivas said, “My mother told me the story of how this farmer was working in the fields. He was really tired and grumpy. He came home, did his normal things. He went to bed early and expected to go back to the fields. He had a dream in which these warriors came and said he was being called to a meeting; so he got ready.

“At the time they had these little lanterns you could light and carry. I think it was kerosene they used. So he took his little light and went with the warriors. In the story he was being brought to a meeting in which he was told that he did something wrong. Did he know what he did and that people were suffering because he did something wrong. He claimed ‘I don’t know what I did wrong. Can you tell me please what it is?’ In that pleading he woke up.

“He got his lantern and he walked the trail he always walked, and he followed his footsteps all the way back to his fields. He finally found a big ant mound. When he was grumpy and was haphazardly walking on that trail, he had accidentally kicked a pebble into the anthill’s entrance hole. Around the whole anthill were dead ants.

“So he removed the pebble from the opening and he left the lantern. He told the ants, ‘The lantern will help you warm up and you can go back in. I’m sorry this happened.’

“That’s the lesson I tell the young people. Be very careful how you walk on this land, you don’t know what is there. You may have missed something that was important and you may have affected it in some way. Those are the kinds of lessons I learned. It’s the same way in ceremony. You regard everything as sacred.”

To see the Full The Science of Wholeness Program

Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota. Tiokasin is a survivor of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding and Church Missionary School systems designed to “kill the Indian and save the man,” and the “Reign of Terror” from 1972 to 1976 on the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River and Rosebud Lakota Reservations. He has a long history of Indigenous activism and advocacy. He is a guest lecturer at many universities and international speaker and on Peace, Indigenous and Mother Earth perspectives, cosmology, ecology and forestry and perspectives on the relational/egalitarian vs. rational/hierarchal thinking processes of western society. Tiokasin is the founder, host and executive producer of the 30 year-old “First Voices Radio”, a one-hour live program syndicated to 70 radio stations in the US and Canada.

He was awarded Staten Island’s Peacemaker Award in 2013 and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 by The International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Tiokasin serves on boards of several charitable organizations dedicated to bringing non-western education to Native and non-Native children. He is a master musician and teacher of magical, ancient and modern sounds and has performed for audiences worldwide. A Sun dancer in the Lakota Nation tradition, he describes himself as a “perfectly flawed human being.” www.firstvoicesindigenousradio.org

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

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.

Universe as Process
2023-11-19 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Buy the recording

The Science of Wholeness 6/6: Universe as Process (with Prof. Chamkaur Ghag)€10,00

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Universe as Process

with Prof. Chamkaur Ghag

Sunday November 19, 20239:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

We will explore the relationship between apparent dichotomoies through which we perceive our universe and place within it. From wave particle duality, to the left and right hemispheres of the brain, to the Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity divide that plays out in the quest to understand Dark Matter, it is becoming ever clearer that the way forward is to evolve past subjective/objective divides and come recognise the Universe as process.

To see the Full The Science of Wholeness Program

Professor Chamkaur Ghag is an astroparticle physicist leading the research at University College London (UCL) to experimentally detect dark matter in our galaxy. Prior to joining UCL in 2012 he held positions at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Edinburgh, where he completed his PhD in 2006. Chamkaur is the Spokesperson of the international LZ Collaboration, operating the world’s most sensitive dark matter experiment ever constructed. Chamkaur collaborates widely outside fundamental physics within the arts, neuroscience and Earth sciences.

The Future Human - A Conversation with Melissa Nelson
2023-11-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C0Xu9EVfbw

A Conversation between Melissa Nelson and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Thursday November 309:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

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

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

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

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

The eleventh conversation in this series will be on Thursday November 30, 2023 with Melissa Nelson. Our conversation will orbit around “Indigenous ways of knowing”.

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.

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

The Future Human - A Conversation with Michael Murphy
2023-12-20 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJrADU7-u5M

A Conversation between Michael Murphy and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday December 209:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

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

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

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

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

The twelfth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday December 20, 2023 with Michael Murphy.

Michael Murphy is a graduate of Stanford University, co-founder of Esalen Institute in 1962, and founder of Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. He is a key figure in the Human Potential Movement and author of The Future of the Body (1992), a massive historical and cross-cultural collection of documentation of various occurrences of extraordinary human functioning such as healing, hypnosis, martial arts, yogic techniques, clairvoyance, telepathy, and feats of superhuman strength and extraordinary potential. He is an author of numerous books. His novels include The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, Golf in the Kingdom, Jacob Atabet, and An End to Ordinary History. His latest nonfiction work is An End to Ordinary History: Comments on a Philosophical Novel. Other nonfiction work includes: God and the Evolving Universe, co-authored with James Redfield and Sylvia Timbers; In the Zone, an anthology of extraordinary sports experiences, co-authored with Rhea White; The Life We Are Given, a book about transformative practice, co-authored with George Leonard; and The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation, co-authored with Steve Donovan.

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

The Big Questions in Science with Rupert Sheldrake
2024-01-11 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5BQ0rMvDz8

A dialogue between Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín and Dr Rupert Sheldrake

Thursday January 119:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

In his 12-part online course, recently launched in an online on-demand format, Rupert Sheldrake argues that the sciences are being constricted by ten assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. In this course he turns the dogmas into questions and examines them scientifically in the light of advances in the sciences themselves. For example, the dogma that nature is mechanical becomes the question “Is nature mechanical?”; the dogma that matter is unconscious becomes “Is matter unconscious?”; the dogma that minds are confined to brains becomes “Are minds confined to brains?” This mind-transforming course is based on Rupert’s award-winning bestselling book The Science Delusion (called Science Set Free in the US) and makes these ideas accessible to scientists and non-scientists alike. Alex and Rupert will discuss some of the ways in which the sciences could be liberated and revitalized. Their discussion will be followed by Q&A. This event is free of charge but participants need to register in advance.

Link to the event: https://advaya.life/courses/the-rupert-sheldrake-course

Please use the 20% single course discount code 20-PARI.

Dr 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.

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

The Rupert Sheldrake Course

Explore the big questions in science in this 13-week self-paced course.

Are you ready to deepen your understanding of cutting edge science? This course will radically change your view of what is real and what is possible. Embark on an enlightening exploration with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, challenging the core beliefs of contemporary science.

What’s Included:

13 Modules and 14 Sessions: Uncover the depth of Dr. Sheldrake’s thought-provoking content spread across comprehensive modules and engaging sessions. You’ll explore groundbreaking research into topics like Free will, The consciousness of nature, The mind, The mystery of psychic phenomena, How dogs know when their owners come home, How memory works, The potential of alternative medicine, and more.

Cutting Edge Science: Learn from the distinguished Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist, and author of more than 100 technical papers and twelve books, published in 28 languages. Dr. Sheldrake is a leading authority in pushing the boundaries of scientific inquiry.

Curated Readings and Resources: Access carefully selected readings and resources that deepen your understanding and provide additional context to the course content.

Live Q&A: to be scheduled in February to add a new element to the course

Flexible Formats: Both video and audio formats are available.

In this course, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery.

Link to the event: https://advaya.life/courses/the-rupert-sheldrake-course

Please use the 20% single course discount code 20-PARI.

Book-A-Month Club - The Blackwinged Night
2024-01-26 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFpmyLHRYnM&t=1s

The Blackwinged Night: Creativity in Nature and Mindby F. David Peat

Host: Alison MacLeod

Friday January 26, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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.

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Holoflux: The Meanings of Stone - Day 1
2024-01-27 18:00 - 21:00 | Online
No places available

Facilitated by Lee Nichol

January 27 & 28, 2024

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

The maximum number of 25 participants was reached, registration is closed.

The price of this workshop is 30 euros for the two-days, 6 hours. If you are interested in participating, please use the form above to pre-register.

This two-day, six-hour workshop is hands-on, and fully participatory. Each participant will need to acquire a new “found stone” (not store-bought) and work with that stone in ways specific to the workshop. In addition, each participant will give a brief report to the whole group, on Zoom, of what occurs when working with their found stone.

If you have an interest in this workshop, please read on, and make note of the requirements outlined below. Please don’t register if you feel you can’t follow these group guidelines.

Finding a stone prior to the workshop is the starting point. Stones are everywhere! Open fields, stream beds, hillsides, abandoned lots, the beach, mountains – even parking lots (car parks) – are good places to find stones. Some of the most amazing stones can be found in those concrete islands that partition outdoor parking lots. Urban or rural, you will have no problem finding a stone.

There are four key aspects in the finding. First, this must be a new stone, not one you already have. Second, it must be an opaque stone – no gemstones. Third, it should be palm-sized – easy to hold in the hand, not too big, not too small. Finally, the stone should appeal to you, should have some quality – tactile, visual, or otherwise – that draws you to it.

It is very useful to make notes of anything that seems of interest or value as you search for the stone. You could begin your search now, or you could begin a week or so before the workshop. You might gather multiple stones, and make a final decision shortly before we begin on Jan. 27.

Once you have a new stone, you may be inclined to engage with it right away, naturally and spontaneously. Try to resist this! Set it aside, considering it from afar. Of course, if you cannot resist, by all means enjoy the stone in any way you wish! But the less you work with the stone in advance, the more we will discover together.

Why is this?

The reason is simple. A few days before we begin the workshop, we will all receive some basic instructions on “how” to work with the stone. This short working (10 – 20 minutes) will be done privately, on an individual basis, a day or two before January 27. There is nothing complicated or mysterious in this. It will involve simple things like holding the stone in silence and paying attention to what kinds of sensings occur, and what kinds of images pass through consciousness. The key is that we are all starting from the exact same basis. Different stones, same approach. No one is out wandering into their own “way” of working with stones – we are all doing the same thing, very direct, very uncomplicated.

Needless to say, what occurs once we follow the simple instructions is another matter altogether. Each person will have their own individual and unique experiences. This is why the workshop title refers to “meanings” (plural). It is this great variety that will arise from within the group that allows us to begin to see “what really happens” when we work with a stone, as opposed to what we think should happen, or what we want to happen. When we work as a group with “what really happens,” and share that together, very rich possibilities emerge. Our first day, January 27, will largely consist of this sharing, relying on notes and memory. Making brief notes after each stage of your stone experiment is essential, as reporting back to the group is at the core of the work together.

The second day, January 28, we will use the results of our collective workings as a basis for asking, “What relationship does our body-consciousness have with stone?” Is there meaning, significance in that relationship, apart from utility and enjoyment? This query will lead to further considerations of rheosoma – the flowing body – and how engaging with stone might open new variants of very primordial human experiences.

If this collective, hands-on stone experiment speaks to you, in all its specificity, please join us for Holoflux: The Meanings of Stone.

To pre-register, use the form above or contact Eleanor Peat – eleanor@paricenter.com

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

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

Holoflux: The Meanings of Stone - Day 2
2024-01-28 18:00 - 21:00 | Online
No places available

[rtec-registration-form]

Facilitated by Lee Nichol

January 27 & 28, 2024

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

The maximum number of 25 participants was reached, registration is closed.

The price of this workshop is 30 euros for the two-days, 6 hours. If you are interested in participating, please use the form above to pre-register.

This two-day, six-hour workshop is hands-on, and fully participatory. Each participant will need to acquire a new “found stone” (not store-bought) and work with that stone in ways specific to the workshop. In addition, each participant will give a brief report to the whole group, on Zoom, of what occurs when working with their found stone.

If you have an interest in this workshop, please read on, and make note of the requirements outlined below. Please don’t register if you feel you can’t follow these group guidelines.

Finding a stone prior to the workshop is the starting point. Stones are everywhere! Open fields, stream beds, hillsides, abandoned lots, the beach, mountains – even parking lots (car parks) – are good places to find stones. Some of the most amazing stones can be found in those concrete islands that partition outdoor parking lots. Urban or rural, you will have no problem finding a stone.

There are four key aspects in the finding. First, this must be a new stone, not one you already have. Second, it must be an opaque stone – no gemstones. Third, it should be palm-sized – easy to hold in the hand, not too big, not too small. Finally, the stone should appeal to you, should have some quality – tactile, visual, or otherwise – that draws you to it.

It is very useful to make notes of anything that seems of interest or value as you search for the stone. You could begin your search now, or you could begin a week or so before the workshop. You might gather multiple stones, and make a final decision shortly before we begin on Jan. 27.

Once you have a new stone, you may be inclined to engage with it right away, naturally and spontaneously. Try to resist this! Set it aside, considering it from afar. Of course, if you cannot resist, by all means enjoy the stone in any way you wish! But the less you work with the stone in advance, the more we will discover together.

Why is this?

The reason is simple. A few days before we begin the workshop, we will all receive some basic instructions on “how” to work with the stone. This short working (10 – 20 minutes) will be done privately, on an individual basis, a day or two before January 27. There is nothing complicated or mysterious in this. It will involve simple things like holding the stone in silence and paying attention to what kinds of sensings occur, and what kinds of images pass through consciousness. The key is that we are all starting from the exact same basis. Different stones, same approach. No one is out wandering into their own “way” of working with stones – we are all doing the same thing, very direct, very uncomplicated.

Needless to say, what occurs once we follow the simple instructions is another matter altogether. Each person will have their own individual and unique experiences. This is why the workshop title refers to “meanings” (plural). It is this great variety that will arise from within the group that allows us to begin to see “what really happens” when we work with a stone, as opposed to what we think should happen, or what we want to happen. When we work as a group with “what really happens,” and share that together, very rich possibilities emerge. Our first day, January 27, will largely consist of this sharing, relying on notes and memory. Making brief notes after each stage of your stone experiment is essential, as reporting back to the group is at the core of the work together.

The second day, January 28, we will use the results of our collective workings as a basis for asking, “What relationship does our body-consciousness have with stone?” Is there meaning, significance in that relationship, apart from utility and enjoyment? This query will lead to further considerations of rheosoma – the flowing body – and how engaging with stone might open new variants of very primordial human experiences.

If this collective, hands-on stone experiment speaks to you, in all its specificity, please join us for Holoflux: The Meanings of Stone.

To pre-register, use the form above or contact Eleanor Peat – eleanor@paricenter.com

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

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

The Future Mind - A Conversation with Robert Lawrence Kuhn
2024-01-31 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO8wM06PiPA

A Conversation between Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday January 319:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

The conversation will explore “a landscape of consciousness”, toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications.

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

Throughout 2022 Àlex initiated The Future Scientist conversation series, a monthly virtual encounter to understand where science is going and to reimagine where we hope it might go.

Maintaining the spirit and the format intact, in 2023 the series expanded its scope and morphed into The Future Human as a natural continuation of the quest to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Now, in 2024, Àlex will continue to curate and host such conversations to address The Future Mind, seeking to gain clarity and insight into important contemporary matters that require both urgent action as well as deep reflection.

Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual; he is the creator, writer, host and executive producer of Closer To Truth, the long-running PBS/public television series and leading global resource on Cosmos (cosmology/physics, philosophy of science), Consciousness (brain/mind, philosophy of mind), Life (philosophy of biology), and Meaning (theism/atheism/agnosticism, global philosophy of religion, critical thinking). See the Closer To Truth web resource (www.closertotruth.com), Closer To Truth YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV), and List of Closer To Truth episodes(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Closer_to_Truth_episodes).

Dr. Kuhn has written or edited over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; The Library of Investment Banking; How China’s Leaders Think (featuring President Xi Jinping); The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (China’s best-selling book in 2005 and in December 2022); “The Origin and Significance of Zero: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (with Peter Gobets); and Xi Jinping’s New-Era China: The Inside Story (2024).

An international corporate strategist and investment banker, Dr. Kuhn is a recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal, China’s highest award for 10 foreigners who contributed to China’s reform and opening up over four decades; only five are living; Dr. Kuhn is one of two Americans. He is a frequent commentator in the international media (BBC, CNN, etc.) and Chinese media.

Dr. Kuhn is chairman of The Kuhn Foundation. He has a BA in Human Biology (Johns Hopkins), PhD in Anatomy/Brain Research (UCLA), and SM (MBA) in Management (MIT).

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

Global Futures, Conscious Leadership
2024-02-07 17:30 - 19:00 | Online
Global Futures, Conscious Leadership

with Jessica Bockler and Bruce Alderman

February 7, 20248:30am PST | 11:30am EST | 4:30pm GMT | 5:30pm CET

This event is LIVE and FREE.

As Alfred North Whitehead put it, the world “craves for novelty and yet is haunted by terror at the loss of the past”. We feel we urgently need change but we seem unable to make it happen, at least at the speed, precision, and depth required for it to make a real, positive, and effective difference in the world. In this free live event Àlex Gómez-Marín will be in conversation with Jessica Bockler (Alef Trust) and Bruce Alderman (California Institute of Integral Studies) in the context of their respective new programmes which seek to promote, with the same spirit but in different ways, conscious leadership and conscious change-making in ourselves and the world.

Nurturing the Fields of Change Programme | Alef Trust

Conscious community has always been at the heart of the Alef Trust, a non-profit global learning provider in higher education, research and community development. Our work is about cultivating balanced ways of being, as well as activating the potential of whole-person inquiry for the evolution of human habits, cultures, and systems. In 2023 we launched Nurturing the Fields of Change, a programme for holistic change leaders working on transformation projects. The programme explores the links between inner work, deep ecology, conscious leadership, and social change; and it offers opportunities for collective presencing and sense-making to address the big challenges of our time. We know that transformation thrives through collaboration and supportive community, as well as through deep participation in our inner, multi-dimensional growth. With the support and encouragement of our peers, we feel accompanied and validated in our work; and we grow in our inner capacities and in our ability to engage more expansively and creatively with the questions we face in our work. A new cycle of the programme begins on Monday, 5th February 2024 and we invite you to join us:

https://fieldsofchange2024.sutra.co/space/9mx82r/register

The Blue Sky Leaders Certificate Program | California Institute of Integra Studies.

Blue Sky Leaders at CIIS is a professional certificate program that blends intensive contemplative training with cutting-edge neuroscience, new cosmology, regenerative economics, creative arts, and conscious leadership principles for a profoundly transformative educational experience. Modeled on the “encore” or “third act” programs offered by universities such as Stanford, Notre Dame, or Oxford, the BSL program is designed to provide established or retired professionals, leaders, and cultural creatives with new opportunities for growth and development, an expanded community of practice, and the skills to respond wisely to the fragmentation and loss of meaning that drive many of our current social and environmental ills. Grounded in timeless wisdom and emerging science, and led and facilitated by a team of over 30 thought-leaders and creative change agents from across many disciplines, BSL reimagines leadership development by emphasizing the dynamic intersections of personal transformation, global consciousness, and creative action. Applications for the 2024 cohort are now being accepted:

https://www.ciis.edu/blueskyleaders/bsl-certificate

Jessica Bockler is an applied artist and transpersonal psychologist who has spent the past two decades exploring how integrative practices, spiritual wisdom and creativity can catalyse individual and collective transformation. Jessica is a co-founding director of the Alef Trust, a global provider of transpersonal and integrative education. Jessica’s vision and research interests centre on holistic and creative approaches to social transformation, bridging embodied imagination and sourcing of deep intelligence with transpersonal activism and social change initiatives. Jessica is the research lead of Alef Trust’s Conscious Community Initiative which galvanises and supports projects for human flourishing, social justice, peace and sustainability. She is a certified Warm Data Lab host (Bateson Institute) and she is on the academic advisory board of the Inner Development Goals initiative. She is also a member of the Presencing Institute’s research community and the UN’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance.

Bruce Alderman is the associate director of the Blue Sky Leaders program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, part-time faculty for the Consciousness, Psychology, and Transformation department at National University, and an integral and transpersonal psychologist. He is also a long-time student of David Bohm’s work, and recently led a course with Lee Nichol on the concept and practice of the rheosoma. Prior to working at CIIS and NU, Bruce worked and studied abroad in Asia for several years, teaching courses on creative writing and inquiry at the Rajghat Besant School, a Krishnamurti school in Varanasi, India, and studying and practicing at monasteries and ashrams in Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Nepal. He has published essays in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice and Consciousness Journal, as well as in several anthologies on Integral philosophy and spirituality. Recently he launched a YouTube channel and podcast called The Integral Stage, dedicated to exploring integral, metamodern, and other holistic and integrative approaches to addressing the complex social, ecological, and spiritual challenges of our time.

Theories of Consciousness
2024-02-10 17:00 - 2024-02-25 19:30
A Pari Center Online Series

Theories of Consciousness: Making Sense of a Field in Revolt and Revolution

withAnna CiaunicaFrancesco ElliaMatteo GrassoJohannes KleinerLiad MudrikMaxwell Ramstead

Hosted by Francesco ElliaCurated by Francesco Ellia and Alex Gómez-Marín

6-two-hour sessions every Saturday and Sunday

February 10 – 25, 2024 9:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

The future of consciousness science is going through very interesting turbulent times. Three decades ago, the C-word was taboo in mainstream academia. Today, it is teeming with all sorts of approaches, techniques, and theories. Then, there wasn’t hardly any signal. Today, there is perhaps too much noise. Join us at the heart of consciousness science, as we delve into an in-depth exploration of the field’s trajectory from its nascent stages to its current state and future prospects. This online series is a unique opportunity to learn from and interact with some of the very minds currently leading the field forward.

Sessions

The Philosophy of Consciousness Science
February 10, 2024 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Consciousness and the Brain: Comparing and Testing Neuroscientific Theories of Consciousness
February 11, 2024 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

What (if anything) does the Free Energy Principle Teach us about Consciousness? The Inner Screen Model
February 17, 2024 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

The Bodily Roots of Conscious Experiences in Early Life
February 18, 2024 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Theories of Consciousness in a Structural Turn
February 24, 2024 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Integrated Information Theory: Methodology, Foundations, Explanations
February 25, 2024 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

The Philosophy of Consciousness Science
2024-02-10 18:00 - 20:00
Buy the recording

Theories of Consciousness 1/6: The Philosophy of Consciousness Science (with Francesco Ellia)€10,00

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The Philosophy of Consciousness Science

With Francesco Ellia

Saturday February 10, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

In his seminal 1884 observation, Thomas Huxley likened the enigma of consciousness and its relation to nervous tissue to the inexplicable emergence of a djinn from Aladdin’s magic lamp. This metaphor strikingly encapsulates the persistent complexity of what is now known as the mind-body problem. Despite the exponential growth in our scientific understanding, particularly of the brain, we find ourselves scarcely closer to unraveling this mystery than in Huxley’s time. This talk aims to navigate the foundational issues in consciousness science. It critically examines the prevailing functionalist and physicalist perspectives in contemporary science, arguing their insufficiency in addressing the mind-body problem. The discussion underscores that the crux of this problem is not merely a scientific query but is deeply rooted in the fundamental principles of modern science itself. Through this exploration, the talk endeavors to bridge the gap between philosophical inquiry and scientific research, suggesting a new direction in our quest to understand one of the most profound aspects of human existence.

Francesco Ellia is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bologna and an Honorary Fellow at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy, Science and Cognition from the University of Bologna in 2021 with a dissertation on Integrated Information Theory and the Mind-Body Problem.

Consciousness and the Brain: Comparing and Testing Neuroscientific Theories of Consciousness
2024-02-11 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Theories of Consciousness 2/6: Consciousness and the Brain – Comparing and Testing Neuroscientific Theories of Consciousness (with Liad Mudrik)€10,00

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Consciousness and the Brain: Comparing and Testing Neuroscientific Theories of Consciousness

With Liad Mudrik

Sunday February 11, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

For centuries, consciousness was considered to be outside the reach of scientific investigation. Yet in recent decades, more and more studies have tried to probe the neural correlates of conscious experience, and several neuronally-inspired theories for consciousness have emerged. In this talk, I will focus on four leading theories of consciousness: Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), integrated Information Theory (IIT), Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT) and Higher Order Theory (HOT). I will first shortly present the guiding principles of these theories, and compare them. Then, I will provide a bird’s-eye view of the field, using the results of a large-scale quantitative and analytic review we conducted, examining all studies that either empirically tested these theories or interpreted their findings with respect to at least one of them. I will then describe the first results of the Cogitate consortium – an adversarial collaboration aimed at testing GNW and IIT.

Prof. Liad Mudrik is a researcher at the school of psychological sciences and Sagol school of neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on conscious experience, its neural mechanisms and functions. Mudrik completed two Ph.D. dissertations at Tel Aviv University, in cognitive psychology and in philosophy. She then continued to a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, in Christof Koch’s lab. In 2019, she was selected as a member of the young Israeli academy of sciences. She is also one of the leaders of the Cogitate consortium, an international adversarial collaboration aimed at arbitrating between theories of consciousness, and a Tenenbaum fellow of the CIFAR Brain, Mind and Consciousness program.

Book-A-Month Club - Quantum Questions
2024-02-15 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIYNit9NMKE

Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists

Edited by Ken Wilber

Host: Jonathan Allday

Thursday February 15, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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.

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

What (if anything) does the Free Energy Principle Teach us about Consciousness? The Inner Screen Model
2024-02-17 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Theories of Consciousness 3/6: What (if anything) does the Free Energy Principle Teach us about Consciousness? The Inner Screen Mode (with Maxwell Ramstead)€10,00

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What (if anything) does the Free Energy Principle Teach us about Consciousness? The Inner Screen Model

With Maxwell Ramstead

Saturday February 17, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

This presentation is about whether we can learn anything about consciousness from the free energy principle (FEP). This presentation will first gently introduce the FEP to a general, nontechnical audience. The FEP says that anything with a Markov blanket will look as if it infers the statistics of other things “beyond” the blanket, to which it is coupled, but from which it can be separated. We will then discuss the “inner screen model” of consciousness that follows directly from applying the FEP to model known human neurophysiology. The ensuing neo-Cartesian model of consciousness provides a deflationary account of the “homunculus.”

Maxwell J. D. Ramstead is the Senior Director of Research at the VERSES AI Research Lab. Ramstead is also an Honorary Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, at University College London, in the United Kingdom, where he works with Professor Karl Friston within the Theoretical Neurobiology unit. Ramstead’s research focuses on the free-energy principle, Bayesian mechanics, multiscale formulations of active inference, and computational phenomenology.

The Bodily Roots of Conscious Experiences in Early Life
2024-02-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Theories of Consciousness 4/6: The Bodily Roots of Conscious Experiences in Early Life (with Anna Ciaunica)€10,00

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The Bodily Roots of Conscious Experiences in Early Life

With Anna Ciaunica

Sunday February 18, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

Discussions about the nature of consciousness are typically couched in a way that endorses a tacit adult-centric and vision-based perspective. Here I will examine the nature of subjective experiences through a bottom-up developmental lens, drawing attention to experiencing subjects as embodied and situated organisms essentially concerned with self-preservation within a precarious environment. How do embodied experiences ‘arise’ from square one? I will concentrate on a key yet overlooked aspect of human consciousness studies, namely, that the earliest and closest environment of an embodied experiencing subject is the body of another human experiencing subject. I will present evidence for fairly sophisticated forms of early sensorimotor integration of bodily signals and self-generated actions already being established in utero. These primite relational co-embodied roots of our early experiences may have a crucial impact on how we experience our-selves, our bodies and the world across our lifespan.

Anna Ciaunica’s research in philosophy of mind and cognitive science focuses on the relationship between (a)typical forms of self-consciousness, embodiment and social interactions in human and artificial agents. Her PhD thesis ‘Physicalism and Qualia’ tackled the mind-body problem. During her first postdoctoral assignments in Switzerland and Portugal she examined the link between disrupted sense of self, (dis)embodiment and social connectedness in conditions such as Autism, Möbius Syndrome and Depersonalization Disorder. Anna is currently the Principal Investigator of two interdisciplinary projects. (1) The first looks at the relationship between altered sense of self and social alienation in Depersonalisation. (2) The second examines self-consciousness and social interactions in human and artificial agents. In her work, she combines conceptual resources from philosophy of mind and the phenomenological tradition with experimental methods from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Anna is the main coordinator of the Network for Embodied Consciousness and the Arts (NECTArs) – a collaborative platform bringing together artists, researchers, stakeholders, policy makers and people with lived experiences, aiming at fostering creative approaches to timely issues such as self-awareness and (dis)embodiment in our hyper-digitalized world.

A Field for the Future
2024-02-21 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwwOQh6Iz3Y

A Field for the Future:Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the “Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science”

February 21, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

withKaralee KotheLisa MillerLorne SchusselGary E. SchwartzLaurel WatermanMarjorie Woollacott

Hosted by Àlex Gómez-Marín

A free, online, live event at the Pari Center.

In collaboration with:The Scientific and Medical Network (SMN);The Academy for the Advancement of PostMaterialist Sciences (AAPS).

Karalee Kothe has been a student of consciousness since she was a kid. The beauty of nature, the joy of music and dancing, the exploration of knowledge, and the enduring love of her family have been her guiding lights on her path. She obtained a master’s degree from the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, and she is currently a clinical health psychology PhD student at the University of Colorado, Denver. Her research interests presently include understanding terminal lucidity, the sudden return of energy and clarity before death, and examining the intersection of meaning, spirituality, and health.

Lisa Miller, Ph.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the Founder and Director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program and research institute in spirituality and psychology, and has held over a decade of joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School. Her innovative research has been published in more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including Cerebral Cortex, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Miller is Editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality, Founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the APA journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice, an elected Fellow of The American Psychological Association (APA) and the two-time President of the APA Society for Psychology and Spirituality. A graduate of Yale University and University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate under the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, she has served as Principal Investigator on multiple grant funded research studies. Dr. Miller speaks and consults around The Awakened Brain and The Spiritual Child for the US Military, businesses (including tech, finance, HR and sales), personal development, faith based organizations, schools and universities, and for mental health and wellness initiatives.

Lorne Schussel, Ph.D is Adjunct Assistant Professor and Core Faculty at the Spirituality Mind Body Institute of Columbia University, Teacher College. He is the Research Director of the Contemplative Science and Post Materialism Lab as well as the PI of the Contemplative Neuroscience and Connectivity Project. His research focuses on the utilization of contemplative practices, human connectivity, contemplative neuroscience, EEG hyperscanning, and integrating clinical biomarkers into treatment. Dr. Schussel developed a psychological healing practice known as “The Best Self Visualization Method” which has been cited in the New York Times, ABC-online, and the Huffington Post. His thoughts on creativity and neuroscience have been quoted recently in Health.com He has also been an invited speaker at the United Nations Mission to Nigeria and United Nation Church Center and his method has been added to a curriculum for mental health and resilience at Zucker Hillside Hospital (NorthWell Health) and the Long Beach School District. He has presented to corporate leaders in Indonesia as part of a mental health initiative for the COVID-19 crisis and lectured to Psychiatry Medical Residents at Mount Sinai Hospital, Glendale Adventist Hospital and to the University of Southern California. Dr. Schussel has worked as visiting faculty at the California State Judicial College teaching about mental health and employee burnout to appointed state judges and offered meditation, loving-kindness and resilience programs to Police Officers in NY, CA, and MA.

Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D., is professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery at the University of Arizona, and Director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (www.lach.arizona.edu). He received his PhD from Harvard University, and was a tenured professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University. He served as the founding President of the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences. Schwartz has published more than 500 scientific articles and chapters, including six in the journal Science. His research has been funded by NSF, NIH, NIMH, NCCAM, DARPA, private foundations and donors. Schwartz has co-edited more than a dozen academic volumes and authored more than a dozen books for the general public including The Afterlife Experiments, The G.O.D. Experiments, and The Energy Healing Experiments.

Laurel Waterman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Curriculum and Pedagogy, Wellbeing Emphasis, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. She teaches narrative non-fiction writing at the University of Toronto and is an Adjunct Faculty in the Alef Trust’s MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology. She is a board member of The Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), an educational organization focused on the intersection of science and spirituality, and belongs to the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS Global). Laurel’s research focuses on consciousness studies and education, with the goal of popularizing participatory and postmaterialist paradigms of consciousness in the field of education.

Marjorie Woollacott, Ph.D., was professor and chair of the Dept. of Human Physiology and is a member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon. She is President of the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences, On the Science Committee of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Co-Director of the Galileo Commission and Research Director for the International Association of Near-Death Studies. Woollacott has received over 7.2 million dollars in research funding for her research in rehabilitation medicine, meditation, spiritual awakening and end-of-life experiences, has published over 200 scientific articles and written or edited nine books, including Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind (receiving 8 book awards) and Spiritual Awakenings: Scientists and Academics Describe Their Experiences.

Theories of Consciousness in a Structural Turn
2024-02-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Theories of Consciousness 5/6: Theories of Consciousness in a Structural Turn (with Johannes Kleiner)€10,00

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Theories of Consciousness in a Structural Turn

With Johannes Kleiner

Saturday February 24, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

Recent activities in virtually all fields engaged in consciousness studies indicate early signs of a structural turn, where verbal descriptions or simple formalizations of conscious experiences are replaced by structural tools, most notably mathematical spaces and mathematical structures. This might, on my view, lead to a novel phase in consciousness science that fundamentally changes how we engage in, theorize about, and empirically investigate conscious experiences. My goal in this talk is to introduce the audience to these developments and to paint a picture of how we might expect consciousness science to change if the turn indeed happens, both in terms of scientific achievements and real-world consequences. As part of this picture, we will explore the fundamental question of what it means to represent consciousness mathematically, and discuss the structural claims of two major theories of consciousness.

Johannes Kleiner is a physicist and mathematician who works on mathematical topics in consciousness science. In 2017, he completed a PhD in mathematics at the University of Regensburg, awarded summa cum laude, subsequent to which he was a postdoc at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Leibniz University of Hanover. In 2020, he decided to pursue a second PhD at the LMU Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy and the LMU Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, devoted to what is now called Mathematical Consciousness Science. Since 2023, he is also a postdoc at the Institute for Psychology of the University of Bamberg, and a visiting scholar at the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. Johannes has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Computer Science of Oxford University, the Harvard Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, and the Centre de Physique Théorique of Aix-Marseille Université, and from September 2022 to September 2023, was an academic visitor at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University. He currently serves on the board of the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science. https://jkleiner.de/

Integrated Information Theory: Methodology, Foundations, Explanations
2024-02-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
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Theories of Consciousness 6/6: Integrated Information Theory – Methodology, Foundations, Explanations (with Matteo Grasso)€10,00

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Integrated Information Theory: Methodology, Foundations, Explanations

With Matteo Grasso

Sunday February 25, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

2-hour session

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

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) aims to account for consciousness in physical terms by identifying the essential properties of experience (axioms), and inferring the necessary and sufficient properties that its physical substrate must satisfy (postulates). In this talk I will present an outline of IIT 4.0’s account of some qualitative contents of experience. First, I will introduce IIT’s methodology to study consciousness scientifically, highlighting its differences with respect to other approaches in philosophy and consciousness science. Then, I will provide an overview of the core concepts of the theory, with particular focus on the role of phenomenology, on the view of experience as a phenomenal structure, and on their implications for the understanding of consciousness in physical terms. Lastly, I will present IIT’s account of some key qualitative contents of experience (such as the extendedness of visual space and the flow of time).

Matteo Grasso works as a Scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After completing a PhD in philosophy, he joined the Tononi lab to contribute to the development of Integrated Information Theory (IIT). Currently, his research is focused on applying IIT’s formalism to account for phenomenal time and conceptual invariance.

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Christof Koch
2024-02-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pBf5g_YQe8

A Conversation between Christof Koch and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday February 2810:00am PST | 1:00pm EST | 6:00pm GMT | 7:00pm CET

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

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Ph: Erik Dinnel – Allen Institute

Christof Koch, PhD, is best known for his work exploring the physical basis of consciousness in humans, animals, and machines. A physicist and neurobiologist, he was for more than a quarter of a century a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. He remains at the Allen Institute as a Meritorious Investigator. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica, seeking to understand consciousness, its place in nature, and how this knowledge can benefit all of humanity. He is the author of five books and more than 350 peer-reviewed publications on, neuroscience, visual perception, and consciousness. A vegetarian, cyclist and dog lover, he lives on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, see www.christofkoch.com

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

Book-A-Month Club - Steppenwolf
2024-03-19 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_aBKTZ_2ZQ

Steppenwolfby Herman Hesse

Hosts: David Schrum and Caroline Pawluk

Tuesday March 19, 202410:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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.

Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf is a surreal, dreamlike narrative deeply influenced by his encounters with Carl Jung. In this writing, Harry Haller, the steppenwolf, mirrors the author in a stark psycho-confessional account of an exploration of the unconscious. Harry’s tumult and suffering portrays what may be seen as a path through purgation to synthesis on a journey that keeps redefining itself, transformation upon transformation. Steppenwolf mirrors the dark side of the human psyche and invites the reader to participate in shadow, in a movement into its chaos, through it, and to integration.

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Caroline Pawluk has explored extensively the life and writings of the author of Steppenwolf, as documented in her thesis, “Fragments of a Great Confession:” The Process of Synthesis in Hermann Hesse’s Writing.

Caroline has been involved in dialogue over the past 30 years and has presented online for the Pari Center on David Bohm dialogue. She is a longtime meditator.

David Schrum is a quantum theorist whose larger focus has become inner exploration and group enquiry through dialogue. He had a long connection with physicist David Bohm and his work on consciousness.

Schrum has been involved in local and international dialogues of various kinds for 40 years. In more recent times, he has written and presented on consciousness and inner exploration.

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Pim van Lommel
2024-03-20 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5EJwBzQm7Y

A Conversation between Pim van Lommel and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday March 2010:00am PDT | 1:00pm EDT | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Pim van Lommel, M.D., born in 1943, graduated in 1971 at the University of Utrecht, and finished his specialization in cardiology in 1976. He worked from 1977-2003 as a cardiologist in Hospital Rijnstate, a 800-bed Teaching Hospital in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and is now doing full-time research on the mind-brain relation. He published several articles on cardiology, but since he started his research on near-death experiences (NDE) in survivors of cardiac arrest in 1986 he is the author of over 20 articles (most of them in Dutch), one book and many chapters about NDE. He was co-founder of the Dutch IANDS in 1988. In 2005 he was granted with the Dr. Bruce Greyson Research Award of the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS). In 2006, the President of India rewarded him the Life Time Achievement Award at the World Congress on Clinical and Preventive Cardiology in New Dehli. His Dutch book ‘Endless Consciousness’, was nominated for the ‘Book of the Year 2008’ in the Netherlands. In 2010 he received the 2010 Book Award from the Scientific and Medical Network, and in 2017 he received the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Award by the Dutch Society of Volunteers in Palliative and Terminal Care (VPTZ). In 2020 the Spiritual Awakenings International (SAI) honored him for his ground-breaking work about Near-Death Experiences as Circle of Honor honoree. The Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) started in 2021 an international essay contest for the best scientific evidence about a possible ‘afterlife’. With his article, entitled: ‘The Continuity of Consciousness’ he won the second Prize. See https://bigelowinstitute.org/News4.php. In 2022 he became a Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN).

In November 2007 his book ‘Endless Consciousness’ (Eindeloos Bewustzijn) was published in The Netherlands, which is a bestseller with more than 155.000 copies sold (30th edition). His book was nominated for the ‘Book of the Year 2008’in the Netherlands. His book was published in Germany in 2009,and it has been published in the English language by Harper Collins in 2010, entitled: Consciousness beyond Life. The science of the near-death Experience, and in the same year the book received the 2010 Book Award by de Scientific and Medical Network.In 2011 the Polish edition was published, the Spanish translation was published in 2012, and in 2012 his book was also published in France. In 2015 the book was also published in Latvia, in 2017 the book was published in Italy, and in 2019 the book was published in Hungary. In 2020 the book was published in China, and in 2021 it was published in Russia. In 2024 the book will be published in Bulgaria. By now more than 400.000 copies have been sold worldwide.

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

Book-A-Month Club - The Passion of the Western Mind
2024-04-09 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFpmyLHRYnM&t=1s

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World Viewby Richard Tarnas

Hosts: David Lorimer with Guest and Author Richard Tarnas

Tuesday April 9, 20249:00am 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.

The Passion of the Western Mind – understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view – is, along with its sequel Cosmos and Psyche – one of the most seminal and original books in the history of ideas. I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy in 1973 at the age of 21, and Rick covers the same territory with enormous elegance, clarity and style. However, his vision is very different from the positivism of Russell and in his epilogue he unfolds his understanding of the co-creative and participatory nature of reality that values the feminine and where ’the autonomous individual self has been forged and is now reunited with the ground of its being. Understanding how and where we have arrived enables us to understand our transformative potentials and possibilities. Join our dialogue on April 9th!

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Distinguished Rockefeller Faculty, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and is director of its programme in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. A graduate of Harvard University and Saybrook Institute, he was formerly director of programmes and education at Esalen Institute.

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

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

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

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

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Carlos Eire
2024-04-17 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGJCJ9DJfNI

A Conversation between Carlos Eire and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday April 179:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

A monthly virtual encounter to reckon whence and whither humanity.

Carlos Eire is a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe at Yale University who focuses on the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. At Yale he has served as chair of the Religious Studies Department and the Renaissance Studies Program. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for two years. He is the author of War Against the Idols (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory(1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (2019), and They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023). He is also co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997). In 2003 he won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for his first memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores his early years in exile. His book Reformations won the R.R.Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state – a distinction he regards as the highest of all honors.

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

It’s About Time
2024-04-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NRnig-KI2U

It’s About Time: A Conversation on the Subject of Time

Wednesday April 24, 20249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

with Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

A free, online, live event at the Pari Center.

Time is one of the central mysteries of existence. It is also a profound puzzle in physics.

We understand how the passage of time ‘expands’ or ‘contracts’ depending on how fast you are travelling compared to an observer. There is also conclusive evidence that time distorts in the presence of mass, leading to the effects we used to ascribe to a force of gravity. Some even believe that they understand how time morphs into existence, along with the universe, out of some quantum pre-stuff. This, however, is all ‘physical time’; the relationship between the physics and the experience of ‘psychological time’ is far from clear.

Is there a “block universe”, where all of time is laid out to God’s eye-view, with humans only perceiving a small slice as they advance along their world-lines? Or is the future not yet written, but exists in some quantum level of possibility and probability?

In this conversation we will touch upon the physical aspects of time, attempting to make the physics clear to non-scientists. Undoubtedly, this will lead us to psychological, and perhaps spiritual time. Who knows where the thoughts will take us, but it seems very likely that the specious present and the multiverse will also come up…

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.

Book-A-Month Club - The Anomaly
2024-05-03 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf1Ylk6SXQA

The Anomalyby Hervé Le Tellier

Hosts: Beverley Zabriskie

Friday May 3, 20249:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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.

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, winner of the 2020 Goncourt Prize and now an international phenomenon, is a novel blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight.Who would we be if we had made different choices? Told that secret, left that relationship, written that book? We all wonder—the passengers of Air France 006 will find out. About to start their descent to JFK, they hit a shockingly violent patch of turbulence, emerging on the other side to a reality both perfectly familiar and utterly strange. As it charts the fallout of this logic-defying event, The Anomalytakes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House and a top-secret hangar.

Each month we will meet with a guest presenter/moderator to discuss a book of their choice that probes important aspects of our focus—Physics and Philosophy, the work of David Bohm, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Jungian Concepts, Gentle Action, Creativity, the Arts, Ethics, Community, the Sacred.

Beverley Zabriskie is a Jungian Analyst in New York City, a founding faculty member and former President of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association (JPA), where she teaches Jungian theory and practice, theories of emotion, psychological interpretation of Egyptian Mythology, and alchemical imagery. She is past Vice-President of the Philemon Foundation which produced The Red Book, and other unpublished volumes by C.G. Jung. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Analytic Psychology, and on The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation Executive Committee. Her publications include: ‘The Spectrums of Emotion,’ in Volume 1, Research in Analytical Psychology: Applications from Scientific, Historical and Cross-Cultural Research (2018); ‘Time and Tao in Synchronicity’ in The Pauli-Jung Conjecture and Its Impact Today (2014); ‘Synchronicities: Riddles of Time and Emotion’ (2012); ‘Synchronicity and the I Ching: Jung, Pauli, and the Chinese Woman’ (2005); Imagination as Laboratory,(2004); ‘A Meeting of Rare Minds.’ Preface to Atom and Archetype, The Pauli-Jung Correspondence, (2001).

Benign Anarchy!
2024-05-25 18:00 - 2024-06-01 19:00 | Pari, Italy
Benign Anarchy!

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

Dates: May 25 – June 1, 2024

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

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 890 euros for single occupancy730 euros for shared occupancy (two-bedroom apartment, shared bathroom)645 euros each for a couple sharing a room

which includes:

a 7-night stay in private accommodation;

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

programmed activities and materials;

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

Event: The event starts on Saturday May 25 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Saturday June 1 after lunch.

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

About the Event:

The second gathering of members of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) will be held in Pari, May 25 – June 1. The week’s structure is freeform and anarchistic! There will be closed and open meetings, visits to the hot springs, long hours at the bar/restaurant talking, and wonderful food. There will also be visits to Florence and Siena for those who wish to go further afield.

It is not necessary to be a member of either fellowship in order to attend. And we hope that this year, the group will include a few friends and partners. This is also an invitation to anyone interested in Dialogue—note that the 12 Steps and the 12 Traditions for nearly 100 years ‘contain all the wisdom of all the ages.’

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

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

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

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

Additional information about the Pari Center – pdf

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Ida Cuéllar
2024-05-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
Watch the recording

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

A Conversation between Ida Cuéllar and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Thursday May 309:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

Ida Cuéllar is a filmmaker and musician living between Barcelona and Mexico City. He has worked all over the world as a director and screenwriter. His work in advertising has won numerous awards at Cannes, San Sebastián FIAP and the Ojo de Iberoamérica, among others. Ida has directed multiple short films, such as La muerte de Otilia Ruiz (2011) and the experimental fashion film Phasmata (2014), selected for numerous international festivals. Among other relevant commissions, he directed the pilot episode of the series Magnum Opus (2016), with James Cosmos, Arly Jover, Timothy Gibbs, Jamie Anderson and Sam Douglas. In his works, Ida explores the nature of imagination and consciousness. Hence one of his latest and greatly acclaimed works, on which he has been researching for a decade, is The Secret of Dr. Grinberg (2020).

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

Consciousness for Real
2024-06-04 19:00 - 2024-06-11 12:00 | Pari, Italy
Thanks to the generous funding from a European foundation, we now have the opportunity to offer three full scholarships, preferably to young minds, for this event. For more information:

Scholarship Programme

Consciousness for Real:Towards a New Science of Human Experience

June 4 – 11, 2024

Speakers: Owen A. Barfield, Edi Bilimoria, David Glowacki, Marcello Massimini (on zoom), Jonathan Rowson, Vandana Shiva, Angela Volpini, Marjorie Woollacott

Curated and Chaired by: Àlex Gómez-Marín

Location: Pari, Italy

Ticket Prices:

Private AccommodationPrice: 2175.00 euros

Shared Accommodation – Private Room with shared bathroomPrice: 1875.00 euros

which includes:

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 activities and materials;

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

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.

Event: The event starts on Tuesday June 4 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Tuesday June 11 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions.

About the Event

Join us at the Pari Center with world-renowned leaders in consciousness studies as we deepen our insights into the many facets that such an intimate mystery entails.

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

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

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

Through in-depth presentations and informal discussions in a convivial atmosphere you will learn about, and have opportunities to discuss, the insights and research findings of world-renowned experts on current consciousness research and its future.

Such a multifaceted field is currently enjoying a huge renaissance in terms of general interest and academic momentum. Consciousness is more than a ‘hard problem’—and also less. It’s the intimate mystery of our very existence. Its study thus requires an integrative and conscious approach beyond short-sighted abstractions.

From phenomenology and neuroscience to biology and sociology, we will weave together a spectrum of approaches to consciousness that have, up till now, been largely disconnected, if not avoided, by academia and left to lie beyond the border of what is typically explored scientifically or discussed in public.

We can now more openly and rigorously ask whether such approaches can actually inform us about ‘consciousness for real,’ truly advancing its scientific study as well as transforming science as we know it and, more importantly, our very understanding of the nature of reality and our collective and individual place in it.

Mindfully drawing from orthodox, heterodox, and heretic views on consciousness, our humble ambition is to tackle it ‘for real,’ overcoming our ingrained limiting habits of thought and grasping the roots of human experience and its evolutionary future.

We at the Pari Center seek to bring together world-renowned experts from a great range of disciplines, approaches, and sensibilities to meet together in person and deepen our insights on the workings and origin of human experience, while also exploring creative and rigorous frameworks to integrate such wonderful mysteries hidden in plain sight into a coherent evolutionary understanding. You are cordially invited to join us.

Information

Additional Information about the program (PDF)

Terms and conditions for this course (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

Gentle Action: A Gathering of Shared Experience
2024-06-13 19:00 - 2024-06-20 14:00 | Pari, Italy
Gentle Action: A Gathering of Shared Experience

Dates: June 13 – 20, 2024

Location: Pari, Italy

Price: 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;

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

Event: The event starts on Thursday June 13 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Thursday June 20 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions.

About the Event

Join us for a week of living moment by moment, in Pari, Italy surrounded by the peaceful hills of the Tuscan landscape. With its beautiful palazzo, rustic bar, and numerous quiet places, the medieval village of Pari acts as an alchemical vessel for transformations to take place.

Throughout the week you will have ample opportunities to connect with Nature, others, and—perhaps most importantly—yourself. Experience the power of dialogue and active listening in an atmosphere that cultivates intimacy in everyday interactions.

Embracing the present and choosing to act more gently, allows insights and interconnections to emerge and bubble up in a natural and playful manner. Such moments are often accompanied by experiences of openness, trust, joy, and a childlike sense of wonder.

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, quite 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 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

Information

Additional Information about this Event (PDF)

Terms and conditions for this course (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)
