The Pari Center

Beyond Bohm 2024 - Part 2
2024-08-04 17:59 - 19:30 (Europe/Rome)
The Beyond Bohm series is oriented toward sharing unique and unusual perspectives that complement and amplify the work of David Bohm.

Part 2

After an introduction to Bohm’s physics, we will explore the relations between Russellian monism, William James’s radical empiricism and Bohm’s implicate order; some traditional and recent (e.g., Johanna Seibt’s) work on process philosophy and how it connects with Bohm’s ideas; the idea of quantum properties of matter as potentialities in Bohm’s early thought; the influence of Hegel on Bohm’s ideas about fragmentation and wholeness; and whether Bohm’s notion of active information is a candidate for a unifying notion of information.

Program of Event

Sunday August 4Introduction to Bohm’s PhysicsJonathan AlldaySunday August 11The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James’s Radical Empiricism and Bohm’s Implicate OrderWilliam Seager

Saturday August 17A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics & Indeterminate Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process TheorySamuli Isotalo and Thelma Nylund, with comments by Paavo PylkkänenSunday August 18Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum TheoryPaavo Pylkkänen

Saturday August 24Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. HegelBoris Koznjak

Sunday August 25 Is There a Unifying Notion of Information? Jens Allwood, with comments by Michael Richter and Paavo Pylkkänen

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Introduction to Bohm's Physics
2024-08-04 18:00 - 19:30
Introduction to Bohm’s Physics

with Jonathan Allday

Sunday August 49:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James's Radical Empiricism and Bohm's Implicate Order
2024-08-11 18:00 - 18:30
The Relations Between Russellian Monism, James’s Radical Empiricism and Bohm’s Implicate Order

with William Seager

Sunday August 119:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

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

Willam James’s Radical Empiricism and cognate views going under the general title of Neutral Monism encompass a picture of reality with many attractive features. It presents a straightforward and intuitively attractive solution to the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness. It endorses a view of perception and cognition which puts us in direct contact with the world, indeed, in direct contact with the fundamental nature of reality, where mind does not mirror nature so much as inhabit it. It supports the idea that the world can be scientifically described in terms of structural relations without lapsing into implausible scientistic reductionisms. One aspect of James’s view that has been little explored is the its relation to some views of David Bohm’s. In particular, what is the relation between Bohm’s “Implicate Order” and what James called “Pure Experience”? There is a question whether Bohm’s view dovetails with James’s, or whether it is more akin to what has come to be called “Russellian Monism”. I’ll argue that Bohm’s view might well count as a form of Neutral Monism, but point out some key differences between Bohm and James.

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

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics & Indeterminate, Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt's General Process Theory
2024-08-17 18:00 - 19:30
Part 1: A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics

with Samuli Isotalo

Part 2: Indeterminate, Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process Theory

with Thelma Nylund

Saturday August 179:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

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

Part 1: A Comparative Overview of Process Metaphysics and Substance Metaphysics with Samuli Isotalo

Process metaphysics is an approach in philosophy according to which reality in its fundamental nature is processual. That is to say, processes rather than things are taken to be the most fundamental phenomena existing in nature. Although process metaphysics is usually attributed immediately to the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), process metaphysicians do not as such have to commit themselves into the particular views of him. Rather, process metaphysics should be looked at as a general manner of approach in metaphysics instead of a fixed set of doctrines centred around a particular thinker. Faithful to its own teachings, process metaphysics should be looked at as an ongoing process which attempts to understand the most fundamental nature of reality.

On the other hand, the more influential and more mainstream approach—substance metaphysics—takes things as the fundamental building blocks of reality. This approach usually sees these things as substances, that is to say, as some kinds of independent, discrete and static sort of entities, where the relatedness and interconnectedness of these things is quite often taken to be something secondary in nature, if not altogether irrelevant. Thus, it can be said that while process metaphysics emphasizes interactive relatedness, wholeness, activity and interdependence, substance metaphysics in contrast emphasizes discrete individuality, separateness, fixity and independence.

In my talk, I shall present these two ways of doing metaphysics in their general outlines, but I do so from the perspective of process metaphysics. I’ll do this by mostly relying on the ideas of Nicholas Rescher (1928-2024).

Samuli Isotalo is a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland. His dissertation focuses on metaphysics, the study of Being itself. More specifically, what it is to be, what is its nature, and how to understand and think of the whole, that is, Being itself as a totality. The project has recently begun by first focusing on the metaphysics of the medieval period, especially St. Thomas Aquinas (1224?-1274). The project is not, however, meant to be purely historical. Rather, the insights of the medieval metaphysicians are intended to be brought into such present-day discussions where metaphysics intersects with natural science. It is here where process metaphysics has come to be of much interest to this project.

Part 2: Indeterminate, Concrete Individuals in Johanna Seibt’s General Process Theory with Thelma Nylund

Johanna Seibt has been developing a process ontological theory called ‘general process theory’ in which the category of functionally individuated dynamic processes is the only category. Since entities are more or less general and can be multiply located in the theory of general processes, ordinary objects such as a singular cat, but also traditional class-like entities like biological species, are both thought of as concrete individuals. Seibt divides entities into different types of dynamics based on their ‘spatio-temporal signature’ which tells us how the entity is located in space and in time using the notions of like-partedness or homeomereity and self-containment or automereity. Spatio-temporal self-containment can only make sense for entities individuated functionally and can only be defined in terms of a non-standard mereology of general process theory in which parthood is a non-transitive relation.

In this talk I will argue that Seibt rejects successfully several traditional ontological presuppositions and that understanding entities as the more or less indeterminate, yet concrete individuals of general process theory, provides philosophers with novel tools for ontological inquiry.

Thelma Nylund is a Master’s level student in philosophy at Tampere University, Finland. She is finishing her Master’s thesis in which she compares the neo-Aristotelian four-category ontology of E. J. Lowe to Johanna Seibt’s process-ontological theory. After graduation she is planning to continue studying process metaphysics in doctoral studies.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum Theory
2024-08-18 18:00 - 19:30
Quantum Properties of Matter as Potentialities in Bohm’s 1951 Book Quantum Theory

with Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday August 189:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

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

One year before his 1952 ‘hidden variables’ paper David Bohm presented a physical-ontological interpretation of standard (‘Copenhagen’) interpretation of quantum theory in his 1951 646-page textbook. He proposed that properties of quantum particles such as electrons ought to be seen as ‘opposing potentialities.’ They are ‘potentialities’ in the sense they typically do not exist in a well-defined sense before measurement and ‘opposing’ in the sense that if one measures, say, position accurately, one cannot measure momentum accurately at the same time in the same experimental situation (‘complementarity’). Bohm’s discussion is philosophically intriguing—for one thing he suggests that we cannot derive the macroscopic world (which we need to actualize the potentialities of quantum particles) from quantum theory. And yet the behaviour of the macroscopic, classical level can only be understood in terms of a quantum theory of its component molecules. Bohm’s discussion anticipates the implicate order framework, where he introduces the notion of an ‘intrinsically implicate order,’ which means an order all of which cannot be made ‘explicate’ at a given moment. In this sense Bohm’s 1951 electron (conceived of as consisting of opposing potentialites) is an intrinsically implicate order, as we cannot manifest position and momentum at the single moment of time. The relation of the macroscopic world to the underlying quantum level of reality continues to be a subject of philosophical discussion, as we still cannot experimentally distinguish between, say, many worlds, pilot wave or spontaneuous collapse interpretations. I will argue that Bohm’s 1951 discussion still provides a valuable perspective to the meaning of quantum theory.

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

Paavo Pylkkänen has been a visiting researcher in Stanford University, Oxford University, London University, Charles University Prague and Gothenburg University and was a member of the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT). https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/paavo-pylkkänen/publications/

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. Hegel
2024-08-24 18:00 - 19:30
Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. Hegel

with Boris Koznjak

Saturday August 249:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

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

Among the many well-known philosophical influences on the physics and philosophy of science of David Bohm—ranging from Marxism to Krishnamurti—one important influence has remained almost completely unknown: the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the most important systematic philosophers in the history of Western philosophy and a prominent figure in philosophical idealism. This is indeed an unfortunate historical state of affairs, since Hegel was in fact Bohm’s strongest philosophical influence throughout his mature intellectual life, particularly in his abhorrence of fragmentation and his affection for wholeness, which is prominently reflected in both his physics and his philosophy of science. Moreover, speaking of Bohm as a person, his worldview can also be seen as strongly influenced by specific social propensities and psychological determinants from his early emotional and intellectual development, for which Hegel’s philosophy later served as a rational catalyst. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, these determinants were strikingly similar to those that led the young Hegel to engage with the concepts of fragmentation and wholeness throughout his philosophical life.

Boris Kožnjak is a historian and philosopher of science, working as a scientific advisor at the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated in physics from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics at the University of Zagreb and received a PhD in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at the same university. His scientific work particularly involves research in the history and philosophy of modern physics, with great attention paid also to the sociology and psychology of science. His work on Bohm includes research on Bohm’s Hegelianism as well as the scientific, historical, and social conditions of the ‘turn’ in the reception of Bohm’s ‘alternative physics’ during the late 1950s.

Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 - Is There a Unifying Notion of Information?
2024-08-25 18:00 - 19:30
Is There a Unifying Notion of Information?

with Jens Allwood. Comments by Michael Richter and Paavo Pylkkänen

Sunday August 259:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST 2-hour session.

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

In this session we will explore the following questions: Is there one all-encompassing concept of information or are there several different concepts of information? Do different disciplines have different notions of information? Is there a unifying notion of information? Can a unifying concept of information help us solve important disciplinary and interdisciplinary problems?

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

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

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

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Alison Liebling
2024-08-26 20:30 - 22:00
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIUoqL_sGw0

A Conversation between Alison Liebling and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Monday August 2611:30am PDT | 2:30pm EDT | 7:30pm BST | 8:30pm CEST

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

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

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.

Longing for Wholeness
2024-08-27 19:00 - 2024-09-03 14:00 | 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

Longing for Wholeness:What do the Sciences, Arts and Religions Share?

August 27 – September 3, 2024

Speakers: Jonathan Allday, Jonathan Code, Chamkaur Ghag, Tim Ingold, Alison MacLeod, Andrea McLean, Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, Joan Walton

Curated and Chaired by: John Pickering

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 August 27 at 19:00 with a welcome dinner and ends on Tuesday September 3 after lunch.

Download information, terms and conditions.

About the Event

Science has helped us to live with less suffering, but has it helped us to understand life or accept death? It cannot do what spiritual traditions do. Ideally, it should remain open to other ways of knowing and this meeting will look at what common ground might exist between them. Speakers from the sciences, arts and the healing traditions will aim to create an open, participatory dialogue on how we might understand the world as a unified whole.

Over the past four centuries or so we have come to know far more than we understand. But although modern science has become the principal framework for human understanding, it cannot do what spiritual traditions formerly did. Science has helped us to live with less suffering, but has it helped us to understand life or to accept death?

If science exclusively favours rational methodology over artistic expression or spiritual insight it can become restrictive, leading to Blake’s “Single Vision”. But at its best science remains open to other traditions and other ways of knowing. Many scientists are firmly religious while deeply religious people usually find little difficulty in engaging with scientific findings.

This meeting will look at what common ground exists between different ways of knowing. Perhaps that lies in the feeling that we need to understand the world as a unified whole and that inquiry can be open, guided by imagination and by beauty. Here, the arts play a unique role, leading the way to a deeper understanding of the place of human life, and death, within the cosmos.

It will bring together speakers from the sciences, arts, faiths and the healing traditions to create an open dialogue and supportive experience in which all can participate. We hope to touch on the relationship of science and religions, especially as they touch on the reality of death, the roles and status of women both now and in former times, ritual, music especially the voice and much more.

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.

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

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

Presentations

Click to see a list of the presentations for this event
Signs and Portents: How Physics Points Beyond Itself into a Richer Reality with Jonathan Allday

The Turin Shroudwith Jonathan Allday

Cultivating Imaginative Cognition: The Time is at Hand! with Jonathan Code

Physics in Flux with Chamkaur Ghag

Evolution in the Minor Key, or, the Soul of Wisdom with Tim Ingold

Ways of Knowing; the Human Imagination as Conduit with Alison MacLeod

Visionary Mapping: Creating Blakean Worlds with Andrea McLean

Visionary cartographywith Andrea McLean

Quantum Measurement as Act of Creation with Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

A Quest for Wholeness: Weaving a Rich Tapestry Interleaving Science, the Arts and the Sacred with Joan Walton

The Dao Without Namewith Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

Information

Terms and conditions for this course (PDF)

Additional Information about the Pari Center (PDF)

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Amy Lemon
2024-09-18 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpT1duQyYc0&t=2s

A Conversation between Amy Lemon and Àlex Gómez-Marín

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

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

Amy Lemon has been a professional actress for 40 years in New York and Los Angeles. Her pursuit of knowledge into the nature of being a conscious human has been a lifelong study. Her inquiry into Jungian thought, perennial philosophy, consciousness studies broadly, religious studies in college and continuing presently as a seminary student, have been her passions. Her 45 year spiritual practices and personal phenomenal experiences, have all opened and awakened a ravenous curiosity that has helped to heal her early childhood experience of being sexually, emotional and physically abused by a family member. She spent years working and on the board of directors of a non-profit, The Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse in upstate New York where she raised her two now adult daughters. Child abuse has a profound effect on the lives of those who have experienced it; from the way the brain and nervous system develops and responds to life’s circumstances and interpersonal relationships, to life long difficulties with substance abuse, depression, anxiety and other mental and physical health maladies. This is well documented in neuroscience, medicine and psychology. Its continuous perpetration in the world is a heinous human rights violation and affects us all in ways visible and invisible. And it stays in the shadows. It’s time to call it out into the light as we try to raise our consciousness as a species, starting with our most vulnerable, who will inherit the earth we leave them with.

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.

Structuring Process in the Undivided Universe
2024-09-20 18:00 - 2024-09-24 14:00 | Pari, Italy
Structuring Process in the Undivided Universe: a series of talks and conversations with Basil Hiley

September, 20 – 24, 2024

with Basil Hiley, Hamish Todd, Paavo Pylkkänen, Jonathan Allday and Michael Wright

Location: Pari, Italy

Quantum Phoronomy; that is Quantum Non-mechanics.

David Bohm writes in his 1951 book “Quantum Theory” (p. 167):- “The entire universe must, on a very accurate level, be regarded as a single indivisible unit in which the separate parts appear as idealisations permissible only on a classical level of accuracy of description.” The challenge then is to find an accurate mathematical way to describe this situation. As Eddington points out in his 1936 book, “Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons”, “The quantum formalism tells us how an incompletely separated object can be represented as a probability distribution over completely separated states.” I will explain how this removes the ‘measurement problem’ and replaces materialism with the more primitive organic notion of process where activity or ‘energy’, rather than ‘matter’, is taken as basic.

This approach provides a way to understand Bohm’s implicate/explicate order in which emphasis is given to the emergence of different geometries (or phoronomies, a notion already used by Einstein in ‘Über den Äther, Schw. Nat. Gesel. Verh. 105 (1924) 85-93). I want to motivate intuitively why it is necessary to change the whole system of order and measure assumed in Euclidean geometry. In this way I want to emphasise the role of algebra in the mathematical description in this approach, linking up with some more recent developments in symplectic, conformal and nil geometries.

Book-a-Month Club - The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays
2024-10-01 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4H_aRA4DSc

The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essaysby Owen Barfield

Host: Mark Vernon

Tuesday October 1, 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.

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

The Future Mind – A Conversation with Kimberly Johnson
2024-10-09 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOxreX7aiuQ&t=240s

A Conversation between Kimberly Johnson and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday, October 99:00am PDT | 12:00pm EDT | 5:00pm BST | 6:00pm CEST

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

Kimberly Johnson is an author, postpartum care activist, trauma educator, structural bodyworker and mother. She graduated Valedictorian from Northwestern University with a BS in Social Policy (‘97). She studied yoga directly with the three main lineage holders of the Krishnamacharya tradition- Desikachar, BKS Iyengar, and Pattabhi Jois and taught yoga full time for 15 years, while also maintaining a Structural Integration practice. When radically rearranged by childbirth, Kimberly’s life changed shape to attend to the cultural chasm of postpartum care, and as a result she trained in Somatic Experiencing and Sexological Bodywork to be able to help women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries and sexual boundary violations. She is the author of the recent Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power and Use it for Good published by the feminist imprint HarperWave as well as the early mothering classic, The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions and Restoring Your Vitality (Shambhala, 2017) – translated into 8 languages. She is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast with over 930,000 unique downloads.

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 Mind - A conversation with Annika and Tristan
2024-11-13 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5GZXAapxXk

A Conversation between Annika, Tristan and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Wednesday, November 139:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

Annika and Tristan are two distinct persons that share a single body. Together over the last sixteen years they have learned to live in harmony with each other while overcoming the unique struggles and challenges their situation naturally brings. Today they are ready to share what they have learned from their experience of being “two souls in one brain” and what the existence of others like them may mean for science and the hard problem of consciousness. Recently interviewed by Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove and featured on “New Thinking Allowed”, Annika and Tristan’s case is unique and transcends the psychiatric and psychological literature. Their embodied experiences offer radical insights for neuro-diversity and have deep metaphysical implications for our everyday life.

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 Little Prince
2024-11-21 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

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

The Little Princeby Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Host: Beth Macy

Thursday, November 21, 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.

After the Bible and then the Kuran, de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince ranks as the third most read book in the whole world! What has made this short little children’s book have such popularity with both children and adults even eighty years after publication? Join Beth Macy to refresh the story of The Little Prince, to view some of de Saint-Exupéry’s original artwork that graces the book’s pages, to hear stories about Saint-Exupery’s own life, and to delve into that question of what has been the underlying essence of this story that has kept it vibrant for generations of readers and likely for you as well.

The common thread weaving through Beth’s career has been change, having been a manager, leader, consultant or participant in organizations experiencing difficult issues: organizations from small to large, private to public, non-profit to profit, health care to manufacturing, local to global. David Bohm’s dialogue and Carl Jung’s psychology been core to her research, writing and consulting and teaching for nearly three decades. Living in the USA (Texas) she is completing a book on the ideas and individuals who influenced Bohm’s process of dialogue. And beyond that, Beth is a big fan of de Saint-Exupéry’s writing, especially Le Petit Prince.

Pictures are taken from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Translated from the French by Richard Howard, published by A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc. 2000.

Beyond Jung 2024: Living Synchronicity
2024-11-30 17:59 - 2024-12-15 19:30
with Richard Berengarten, Jean Bolen, Joe Cambray, Suzanne Gieser, Roderick Main, Rick Tarnas.Curated and Chaired by Roderick Main.

November 30 – December 15, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

6 two-hour sessions every Saturday and Sunday

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

Six seasoned explorers of synchronicity share their insight into the topic, including how synchronicity, as an experience or as a principle, plays a vital part in their professional work.

This is the inaugural set of talks in a new ‘Beyond Jung’ series hosted by the Pari Center, honouring the seminal work and inspiration of the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung. Our title, ‘Living Synchronicity’, refers to both the vital contemporary importance of synchronicity and the possibility of our living more synchronistically. Beginning with this topic seems especially apt in view of the seminal contribution to the study of synchronicity by the founder of the Pari Center, the late David Peat.

Synchronistic experiences—meaningful coincidences—are often described as profoundly significant both personally and sometimes also at a more than personal level. Meanwhile, synchronicity as a principle—acausal connection through meaning—is often claimed to have radical implications for how we understand reality. Jung himself associated synchronicity with a unitary worldview, and he developed the concept as a form of holistic epistemology to address what he saw as the perilous one-sidedness of modern experimental science when decoupled from the realms of meaning and value.

In this series of talks, six seasoned explorers of the topic—from scientific, scholarly, psychotherapeutic, divinatory, and creative backgrounds—share some of their insights into the nature and importance of synchronicity and how it has played into their lives and professional work.

Sessions

‘Everything Breathes Together’: Synchronicity and Its Implications, Cosmological, Psychological, SpiritualWith Professor Rick TarnasSaturday 30 November

Splitting the Mirror: A Shard of Synchronicity from a Historical and Personal PerspectiveWith Dr Suzanne GieserSunday 1 December

The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the SelfWith Dr Jean Shinoda BolenSaturday December 7

Synchronicity and Jung’s Holistic EpistemologyWith Professor Roderick MainSunday December 8

An Arc of SynchronicitiesWith Dr Joe CambraySaturday December 14

Four Shillings and Sixpence: Synchronicity and Poetry With Richard BerengartenSunday December 15

Beyond Jung 2024 - ‘Everything Breathes Together’: Synchronicity and Its Implications, Cosmological, Psychological, Spiritual
2024-11-30 18:00 - 19:30
‘Everything Breathes Together’: Synchronicity and Its Implications, Cosmological, Psychological, Spiritual

with Professor Rick Tarnas

Saturday, November 30, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 1 of 6

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

The phenomenon of synchronicity represents a distinctive challenge to the dominant scientific world picture of our time: If synchronicity is real, the universe must be very different indeed from what is assumed by the mainstream modern scientific understanding with its fundamental conviction that the cosmos is a randomly evolving mechanistic phenomenon blindly indifferent to human concerns, with no intrinsic meaning or purpose outside of human subjectivity. Yet this paradigm conflict is not merely of possible theoretical interest to a few open-minded scientists and philosophers. The profound shift of horizon entailed by the ongoing fact of synchronicities occurring in countless individual lives carries existential implications at the most intimate as well as most cosmic levels of human concern. In today’s lecture, I hope to address some of these more practical implications as well as those that touch on the great metaphysical and epistemological issues at play.

Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He has taught courses in the history of ideas, depth psychology, archetypal cosmology, cultural history, and the evolution of consciousness. He has also frequently lectured on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a narrative history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern that is widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network. He is also the co-editor of Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof. Richard Tarnas is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and was a long-time member of the Board of Governors for the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.

Beyond Jung 2024 - Splitting the Mirror: A Shard of Synchronicity from a Historical and Personal Perspective
2024-12-01 18:00 - 19:30
Splitting the Mirror: A Shard of Synchronicity from a Historical and Personal Perspective

with Dr Suzanne Gieser

Sunday, December 1, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 2 of 6

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

The concept of synchronicity was developed by C. G. Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli during the period 1946-1952 and finally published in the book The interpretation of Nature and Psyche, containing Jung’s essay on synchronicity and Pauli’s essay on the influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler. For Pauli the book was in itself a synchronicity, a spiritual testament, almost like a holy book, whose content should never be ‘split’. Pauli’s personal experience of synchronicity was linked to the theme of accidents and the breaking of objects, the so called ‘Pauli-effect’, well known amongst his colleagues. With time it came to be more about the theme of mirroring, which also became important in the scientific field that he was working in. In my personal journey of 37 years of working with Pauli’s correspondence, there has been a peculiar parallel process of synchronicities also mainly expressing itself in objects splitting and systems breaking, as well as an emergence of a ‘mirroring’ theme. In my case the theme of splitting showed itself in a very numinous dream in 1982, long before I encountered the Pauli material. This lecture will probe into synchronicity from these angles.

Suzanne Gieser has a PhD in the History of Sciences (specialty history of psychiatry and psychotherapy) and is also a licensed psychotherapist and supervisor. She works both with a private practice and as employed at a specialist clinic for the sexually traumatized in Stockholm, Sweden. She has studied the psychology of C. G. Jung since 1981, especially the relationship between Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Her book, The Innermost Kernel: Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics. Wolfgang Pauli’s Dialogue with C. G. Jung was published in English in 2005. She was a senior lecturer and associate professor for ten years at The Institute of Analytical Psychology (IAP), a private institute of Jungian scholarly studies in Stockholm, and has authored several articles and prefaces related to C. G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli in Swedish and English, including the article on Jung in the Swedish National Encyclopedia. She is a member of the board at the Swedish C. G. Jung Foundation and is co-founder of the Swedish Association of Imago Therapy. She is the editor of Jung’s 1937 and 1938 seminars in Bailey Island and New York, published in 2019.

Beyond Jung 2024 - The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self
2024-12-07 18:00 - 19:30
The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self

with Dr Jean Shinoda Bolen

Saturday, December 7, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 3 of 6

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

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, is the author of the seminal book, The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self, now published internationally in eleven languages. The Tao of Psychology provides the key for each individual to interpret the synchronistic events in his or her life and gives fresh insight into the relationships, dreams, and flashes of perception that transform our existence. In this session, Dr Bolen will share her personal inspiration, insights, and experiences of synchronicity throughout her life as an international author, activist, psychiatrist, and Jungian analyst.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, internationally known speaker, and author of thirteen influential books in over one hundred foreign editions: The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, Ring of Power, Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, Goddesses in Older Women, Crones Don’t Whine, The Millionth Circle, Like A Tree, Urgent Message From Mother, Moving Toward the Millionth Circle, and Artemis: The Indomitable Spirit in Everywoman. She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a past Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, and a former board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, and the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is a 2020-21 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree from Marquis Who’s Who. Look for the Spring 2025 release of her autobiography, Ever Widening Circles and Mystical Moments. Website: Jeanbolen.com

Beyond Jung 2024 - Synchronicity and Jung’s Holistic Epistemology
2024-12-08 18:00 - 19:30
Synchronicity and Jung’s Holistic Epistemology

with Professor Roderick Main

Sunday, December 8, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 4 of 6

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

Jung developed his concept of synchronicity to address the scientific, spiritual, and social crises he saw as stemming from the one-sided rationalism of modern Western culture and its concomitant ‘disenchantment’. With his concept of synchronicity, Jung provided a holistic approach to knowledge that aimed to undo disenchantment by reinstating mystery, meaning, and connection to the sacred at the heart of our scientific and scholarly as well as therapeutic and creative practices. In this presentation, I shall first clarify the holistic character of Jung’s proposed epistemological contribution with his concept of synchronicity. I shall then illustrate how this holistic approach to knowledge informed Jung’s scientific and scholarly work, including on synchronicity itself. Finally, I shall indicate some of the ways in which my own work as a researcher and educator has been influenced by holistic epistemological principles based on the concept of synchronicity.

Roderick Main holds a BA and MA in Classics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Religious Studies from Lancaster University. He now works at the University of Essex, where he is Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the Centre for Myth Studies. His books include Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal (1997; edited); The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of Modern Western Culture (2004); Revelations of Chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience (2007); Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious (2013; co-edited); Holism: Possibilities and Problems (2020; co-edited); Jung, Deleuze, and the Problematic Whole (2021; co-edited); and most recently, Breaking the Spell of Disenchantment: Mystery, Meaning, and Metaphysics in the Work of C. G. Jung (2022).

Remembering Jacobo Grinberg at 30
2024-12-08 20:30 - 23:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHzede1Ho5M

Donate to the Pari Center

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

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Remembering Jacobo Grinberg at 30Back to the Future of a Science of the Sacred

Sunday December 8, 2024

Starting at 11:30am PST / 2:30pm EST / 7:30pm GMT / 8:30pm CET

Curated and Chaired by Àlex Gómez-Marín

The Mexican neurophysiologist and psychologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum disappeared in strange circumstances exactly thirty years ago. His theoretical, empirical, and experiential work on space, the brain, and consciousness would still be considered beyond cutting-edge today. In this free online event, we will commemorate his legacy with a selected group of family, friends, and colleagues. Were Jacobo with us today, he would certainly enjoy such company of top scientists, creative artists, deep mystics, and original media curators.

Featuring:

Amit Goswami (head of Center for Quantum Activism) on communication without signaling

Estusha Grinberg (Jacobo’s daughter) on music and Jacobo’s theory

Iain McGilchrist (author of The Matter with Things) on brain hemispheres and coherence

Ida Cuéllar (director of The Secret of Dr. Grinberg) on film, science, and science fiction

Inés Urdaneta (researcher at the International Space Federation) on post-modern physics

Javier F. Alvarez-Leefmans (professor of neuropharmacology at Wright State University) on the beginnings of Jacobo’s career

Janine Rodiles (PhD in cognitive Sciences, clinical psychologist, writer, and Sufi whirling dervish) on wholeness and mysticism

Jeffrey Mishlove (creator and host of New Thinking Allowed) on healing and sensitive children

Jordi Imbert (head of Intuitu) on extra-ocular and intuitive vision

Lizette Arditti (Jacobo’s first wife) on painting and Jacobo’s life

Kehlan Morgan (creator and host at Formscapes) on phenomenology of space and perception

Manuel Delaflor (Jacobo’s former student and head of Metacognition Institute) on model dependent ontology

Marina Weiler (neuroscientist at the Division of Perceptual Studies of the University of Virginia School of Medicine) on anomalous teleportation and materialization

Natalia Rodríguez (editor at Penguin Random House) on books, science, and culture

Pavel Ibarra (host of Psicoativo Podcast) on media, science, and anomalous phenomena

Richard Silberstein (professor of neuroscience at the Brain Sciences Institute of Swinburne University) on brain-to-brain communication between twins

Robert Lawrence Kuhn (creator and host of Closer to Truth) on theories of consciousness

and more..!

Some related links:

The Brain and the Universe: The Jacobo Grinberg Story, with Alex Gomez-Marin & Jeffrey Mishlove

A Landscape of Consciousness (see 17.10), research article by Robert Lawrence Kuhnhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128

The Secret of Doctor Grinberg, documentary by Ida Cuéllarhttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt11898888

Ciencia de la conciencia: un regreso al futuro, artículo de Alex Gómez-Marínhttps://www.razon.com.mx/el-cultural/2022/10/28/ciencia-de-la-conciencia-un-regreso-al-futuro

Leyendo a Jacobo Grinberg (introducción), con Alex Gómez-Marín

Beyond Jung 2024 - An Arc of Synchronicities
2024-12-14 18:00 - 19:30
An Arc of Synchronicities

with Dr Joe Cambray

Saturday, December 14, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 5 of 6

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

Across the span of my career as an analyst and academic, experiences with synchronistic qualities have challenged the world view of my first, scientific education. In this lecture I will detail a series of events, personal and professional, spanning my career that have led me to critically explore Jung’s synchronicity hypothesis on an on-going basis. Consequently, I have found it useful to reformulate the concept in terms of complexity theory with a focus on complex adaptive systems, which can spontaneously reorganize, exhibiting emergent properties. The reframing of several categories of synchronicities in this manner has facilitated examination of the implicit interconnectedness underlying these phenomena. As a result, a variety of cultural, historical, and environmental processes have been identified as having meaningful coincidence at multiple levels, including individual, collective and global dimensions, often overlapping. Numerous examples will be offered to ground theory in observation.

Joe Cambray, PhD, is Past-President-CEO of Pacifica Graduate Institute; he is also Past-President of the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and has served as the U.S. Editor for The Journal of Analytical Psychology as well as being on various editorial boards. He was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, and former President of the C. G. Jung Institute of Boston. Dr. Cambray is a Jungian analyst currently living in the Santa Barbara area of California. His numerous publications include the book based on his Fay Lectures: Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe, several edited volumes: one with Leslie Sawin, Research in Analytical Psychology: Applications from Scientific, Historical, and (Cross)-Cultural Research,and another with Linda Carter, Analytical Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives in Jungian Psychology. He has published numerous papers in a range of international journals and books; he regularly teaches internationally.

Beyond Jung 2024 - Four Shillings and Sixpence: Synchronicity and Poetry
2024-12-15 18:00 - 19:30
Four Shillings and Sixpence: Synchronicity and Poetry

with Richard Berengarten

Sunday, December 15, 20249am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 6 of 6

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

As a working poet, Richard Berengarten is interested, both theoretically and practically, in how Jung’s theory of synchronicity—with all its connections of specificity in time and place—is entangled in our ideas and experiences of inspiration, imagination, discovery and creativity. This means that he’s interested in how Jung’s theory is intervolved in both the sciences and the arts, and as much in our day-to-day experiences and dream-life as in, say, religious and visionary experience. To explore his themes and ideas, and to broach some questions arising from them, he’ll read a small selection of his own poems connected with synchronicity, which he’ll open for discussion. He aims, too, to broach some conjectures about the fractal geometries and symbolic configurations of both four (as in the Christian cross and the quaternity favoured by Jung) and six (as in the hexagonal forms that often occur in nature, in the hexagrams of the I Ching, and in the Star of Solomon), and the ways in which configurations such as these connect with synchronistic experience.

Richard Berengarten (b. London, 1943) is a poet who lives in Cambridge UK. He has also lived in Italy, Greece, the USA, and former Yugoslavia. His poetry and poetics have been influenced by Jung for sixty years, especially vis-à-vis synchronicity and the imagination. His long poem, Changing (2016) is based on the I Ching and is a homage to this ancient classic. His ongoing series of chapbooks, Imagems (2013, 2019, 2025), presents succinct 12-point statements on poetics, and his monograph Keys to Transformation: Ceri Richards and Dylan Thomas (1980) engages with poetry and visual art in Jungian terms. He has published over 30 books and received many poetry awards, and his work has been translated into more than 100 languages. He is a Bye-Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge, Academic Associate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Fellow of the English Association.

The Future Mind - A conversation with Jonathan Rowson
2024-12-19 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSBWupp2wg

A Conversation between Jonathan Rowson and Àlex Gómez-Marín

Thursday, December 199:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

Jonathan is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Perspectiva, a publishing house and praxis collective based primarily in London. Perspectiva describes itself as an urgent one-hundred-year project to improve the relationship between systems, souls, and society in theory and practice. Jonathan is a philosopher and social scientist by academic training and has degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Bristol Universities. He has written extensively on the idea of metacrisis as our multi-faceted delusion, and he is increasingly focused on experiments in community and spiritual praxis to help shift socio-economic immunity to change. He is an Open Society Fellow and a Fellow at The Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey. In his prior role as Director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts he authored influential research reports including A New Agenda on Climate Change, Money Talks, and Spiritualise, and curated and chaired related events. He is also a Chess Grandmaster and three-time British Champion (2004–6) and views the game as a continuing source of insight and inspiration. His book, The Moves that Matter – A Grandmaster on the Game of Life was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. He hails from Aberdeen in Scotland, and now lives in Putney, London, with his wife Siva, and their two sons, Kailash and Vishnu. You can find Jonathan on his substack, The Joyous Struggle.

Book-a-Month Club - Verifying Spiritual Reality
2025-01-09 18:00 - 19:30
Watch the recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbvK4NYrsZ0

Verifying Spiritual Realityby Robert Traer

Host: Dr Jeffrey Dunne

Thursday, January 9, 20259:00am PST | 12:00pm EST | 5:00pm GMT | 6:00pm CET

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

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

The precepts of materialism—that we are fundamentally a clever arrangement of particles and that consciousness is an emergent self-delusion—is a comparatively modern hypothesis, and one that does not hold up well in the face of evidence, neither logical nor experiential. Robert Traer’s newly released book, Verifying Spiritual Reality, brings together a wealth of information that disproves that hypothesis of materialism, painting a much older, enduring perspective on the nature of humanity: that we are spiritual beings within a much deeper reality, one grounded in love and interconnectedness. There are, of course, numerous books that relate experiences supporting that conclusion, but if one seeks a single, comparatively short overview, Traer’s book, which provides an overview/survey of the evidence, provides enough specific information to convince any reader that our spiritual nature is undeniable.

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

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

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

Donate to the Pari Center

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

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

A Conversation between John Vervaeke and Àlex Gómez-Marín

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

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

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

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

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

With Jonathan Allday and Bernard Carr

Thursday January 16 and 23, 2025

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

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

All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Part 1

Thursday January 16, 2025

A Gentle Introduction to the Physics of Space with Jonathan Allday

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

Part 2

Thursday January 23, 2025

Spaced Out: A Conversation Between Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donate to the Pari Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links

1. Sheldrake’s criticisms

2. Kastrup’s responses

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

3. Sheldrake’s rejoinder

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

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

Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect‘ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years now, having co-founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Bernardo has most recently started AI hardware company Syncthetics B.V., currently in stealth mode. Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, Bernardo’s ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association, and Big Think, among others. Bernardo’s 11th book, coming in 2024, is Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.

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

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

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

With Jonathan Allday and Bernard Carr

Thursday January 16 and 23, 2025

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

All registered participants will receive the RECORDING.

Part 1

Thursday January 16, 2025

A Gentle Introduction to the Physics of Space with Jonathan Allday

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

Part 2

Thursday January 23, 2025

Spaced Out: A Conversation Between Bernard Carr and Jonathan Allday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donate to the Pari Center

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

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

PSI: Back to the Future

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

Curated and chaired by: Alex Gomez-Marin

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

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

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