Category: Lectures

THE 2022 OPPENHEIMER LECTURE: THE QUANTUM ORIGINS OF GRAVITY

It was once thought that gravity and quantum mechanics were inconsistent with one another. Instead, we are discovering that they are so closely connected that one can almost say they are the same thing. Professor Susskind will explain how this view came into being over the last two decades, and illustrate how a number of gravitational phenomena have their roots in the ordinary principles of quantum mechanics.

Leonard Susskind is an American physicist, who is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics, and quantum cosmology.

Sean Carroll | The Passage of Time & the Meaning of Life

What is time? What is humankind’s role in the universe? What is the meaning of life? For much of human history, these questions have been the province of religion and philosophy. What answers can science provide?

In this talk, Sean Carroll will share what physicists know, and don’t yet know, about the nature of time. He’ll argue that while the universe might not have purpose, we can create meaning and purpose through how we approach reality, and how we live our lives.

Sean Carroll is a Research Professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research has focused on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe.

Recently, Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the emergence of spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. Carroll is the author of “Something Deeply Hidden”, “The Big Picture”, “The Particle at the End of the Universe” amongst other books and hosts the “Mindscapes” podcast.

A Scientific Introduction to Transcendental Meditation by Dr John Hagelin

Dr John Hagelin describes the Transcendental Meditation technique in scientific terms.

The Transcendental Meditation technique uses the natural tendency of the mind to go toward greater happiness, so the mind effortlessly transcends to its most silent state. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, speaking at Lake Louise, Canada (1968).

Cerebrospinal Fluid, Medium of the Spirit: Mauro Zappaterra

Harvard-trained physician Mauro Zappaterra describes how he brings his training in alternative therapies, such as Polarity Therapy and Reiki, to his physical medicine rehabilitation practice, and reports on some of the fascinating and pioneering discoveries of his Harvard Medical School lab about the remarkable role of cerebrospinal fluid.

The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise by Ian Baker

The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise tells the story of Ian Baker’s decades-long quest for the literary and geographical sources of Shangri-la, a mythical paradise in the remotest regions of the Himalayas. His research led him on multiple journeys in Tibet as well as into esoteric Tibetan texts describing beyul, or hidden-lands.

Tibetan prophecies proclaim that the greatest of these legendary hidden-lands lies in the world’s deepest gorge, at the eastern edge of the Himalayan range, veiled by a colossal waterfall in the depths of the forbidding Tsangpo gorge. After years of research and investigation, Buddhist scholar and world-class climber Ian Baker and his team made worldwide news by reaching the bottom of the Tsangpo gorge and finding a magnificent 108-foot-high waterfall – the legendary grail of both Western explorers and Tibetan seekers and the prophesied door to the innermost hidden-land of Beyul Pemakö, the Hidden Land Arrayed Like a Lotus.

The Heart of the World recounts one of the most captivating stories of exploration and discovery ever told – an extraordinary journey into one of the wildest and most inaccessible places on earth, a meditation on humankind’s place in nature, and a pilgrimage to the heart of Tibetan Buddhism.

About the Speaker: Ian Baker is an anthropologist, author, and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and Tantric yoga. He was recognised by The National Geographic Society as one of seven ‘Explorers for the Millennium’ for his fieldwork connected with the Tibetan tradition of hidden-lands (beyul) and the discovery of the lost ‘Falls of the Tsangpo’, the subject of his newly reissued book, The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise, which explores the geographical and literary sources of the legend of Shangri-la in the remotest regions of the Himalayas.

The Goodman Lectures: The Relatable and Extraordinary Life of Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé

“As the most prolific historical Tibetan Buddhist woman prior to the 1950s, Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé presents a candid and nuanced female perspective on what it means to embody Vajrayana Buddhist ideals. The eloquent and subtle Tibetan prose and verse that comprises her long autobiography is as inspiring as it is intensely expressive of a range of relatable human emotions, including rage, grief, love, and humor. In this talk I will share some tastes of a project I am currently immersed in to translate the richness of both the relatable and extraordinary elements of Sera Khandro’s writing from Tibetan into English.”

The Leading Edge Of The Unknown In The Human Being

Exploring lines, levels, and stages of Spiritual Development and Integral Theory. Ken Wilber is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology and his own integral theory, a philosophy which suggests the synthesis of all human knowledge and experience.

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