The Extended Mind
Rupert Sheldrake, PhD

We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is much too limited. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even if they look from behind and if all sensory clues are eliminated. And people’s intentions can be detected by animals from miles away. But perhaps the commonest kind of non-local interaction mental influence occurs in connection with telephone calls, where most people have had the experience of thinking of someone shortly before they ring, or knowing who is calling when the phone starts ringing. Recent experiments on telephone telepathy have given highly significant positive results.

The mind may be extended not only in space but also in time. We may all draw upon a collective memory, similar to the collective unconscious postulated by C.G. Jung. Rupert will show how his hypothesis of morphic fields and morphic resonance could provide a new way of understanding the extended mind, and of going beyond the usual mind/brain problem.

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Presenter Bio: With a PhD in biochemistry, Rupert was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Cambridge, and as a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, carried out research in developmental biology. From 1974 to 1978 he was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India, where he worked on the physiology of tropical legume crops, and remained Consultant Physiologist until 1985.  He lived for a year and a half at the ashram of Fr. Bede Griffiths in South India, where he wrote A New Science of Life. He is also the author of The Presence of the Past; The Rebirth of Nature; Seven Experiments that Could Change the World; and with Matthew Fox, Natural Grace: Dialogues on Science and Spirituality and The Physics of Angels. His most recent book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals was selected as Book of The Year by the British Scientific and Medical Network.  He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, in California and lives in London.

www.sheldrake.org

A New Vista! For a New Millennium
Elizabet Sahtouris, PhD

A new cosmological context for our scientific description of Nature makes consciousness primary and each of us unique players in an intelligent, omnicentric, fractal, participatory universe. This also gives us enormous responsibility as each of us affects the Whole. In biological evolution we discover a natural ethics and guidance for this critical time of globalization, when reducing our fear of crisis can help us respond to it creatively and effectively.

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Presenter Bio: An evolution biologist, Elisabet did her post-doctoral work at the American Museum of Natural History, taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts, wrote EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution and studied a variety of indigenous cultures in her quest to expand the western scientific worldview to include consciousness. She also wrote A Walk through Time: From Stardust to Us and coauthored Biology Revisioned with Willis Harman. She gives lectures and workshops to business leaders on practical ways to understand businesses as organisms and bring them to greater health and productivity, with increased benefits to producers, consumers and the environment.

www.Ratical.com/lifeweb

Sexuality And Spirituality
Richard Moss, MD

We deceive ourselves about sexuality. We enoble it, romanticize it, and make ourselves the victims of what we want to believe it should be. We do the same with spirituality. But deeply intimate sexuality, like dedicated spiritual work, has the power to shatter us, to break our hearts open. When we are the most vulnerable, sexuality is the most alive, consequently we crave it and avoid it at the same time. To live sexuality deeply can lead us to ecstatic openness but not unless we can face exposure to feelings of loss of self and our most terrifying "untamed" emotions. This means we have to be rooted in our True Self as well as psychologically naked and profoundly honest if we are to know the place where sexuality and spirituality open us to timeless presence.

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Presenter Bio: Richard is an international spiritual teacher and visionary thinker. He has guided students from all over the world into increasing spiritual maturity, helping people of many disciplines and backgrounds to honor their own essential spirituality and become more authentically and fully human. His work has inspired changes of consciousness in healthcare, business and teaching organizations. The teachings of Richard are a contemporary psychology of consciousness, that stands squarely in the lineage of the great wisdom traditions. He is the author of The I That is We, How Shall I Live, The Second Miracle and others.

www.richardmoss.com