Category: Talks

Iain McGilchrist: The Coincidence of Opposites

Ralston College presents a lecture by Dr Iain McGilchrist followed by a discussion with Dr Stephen Blackwood and questions from the audience. In his lecture Dr McGilchrist deals with certain themes that are treated at greater length in his recent book The Matter With Things. He focuses especially upon the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), which he explores (providing an extraordinary range of illustrative examples) in such a way as to make manifest both its universality and its particular relevance to our present historical moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh – Oprah Winfrey | Full Length Interview

This is the full-length version of a truly insightful, deep and powerful Interview. Oprah Winfrey talks to Thich Nhat Hanh about becoming a monk, meeting Martin Luther King Jr; The powers of mindfulness, insight, concentration and compassion, how to transform warring parties and how to deeply transform relationships.

The Afterlife and the Unconscious Mind with Betty Kovács: New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove

Betty J. Kovács, PhD, taught symbolic/mythic language for twenty-five years. She has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont, California, and sits on the Academic Advisory Board of Forever Family Foundation. Dr. Kovacs is author of Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World, winner of The Scientific and Medical Network 2019 Book Prize and a Nautilus Silver Award. She has also written The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life. Her website is www.kamlak.com.

Here she explains that consciousness is infinite and that, ultimately, there is no real separation between our waking consciousness, our subconscious mind, and the afterlife. It is all one. However, that realization is difficult to maintain in the face of daily life’s necessities. She describes several powerful examples of both archetypal, visionary experiences and after-death communications. They blend into each other. She closes with a riveting prophetic vision.

Dr. Hugo de Garis – Truth About AI: Artificial Intelligence Will Become Godlike Machines | Part 1/2

Professor Hugo de Garis is an expert in robotics and artificial intelligence, a distinguished author, and now-retired researcher, best known for his work on developing artificial brains and advocating for the creation of “artilects” (artificial intellects) – machines capable of intellectual achievements rivaling or surpassing humans.

Beyond Belief: Considering Evidence for Life After Life- Dr. Eben Alexander, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD.

Believing in the afterlife is one thing… proving it is another.

This year, people from around the world competed in an essay contest providing their rationale for life after death. Nearly $2 million in prize money was awarded with Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow putting up the prize money. Jeffrey Mishlove took home half a million dollars for the winning essay.

Dr. Eben Alexander, author of “Proof of Heaven,” does not need to be convinced–he lived it. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander was taught that although NDEs feel real, they are nothing more than fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then, Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness and shut down completely. Alexander spent a week in a coma. As his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back. Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.

Mishlove and Alexander come together to tackle big questions such as, what is the best evidence for postmortem survival of human consciousness? How can we accommodate this evidence within a contemporary scientific and philosophical framework? Where is research on postmortem survival leading? Join the Vail Symposium for a program that will plumb the depths of belief on this consequential topic.

Your Quantum Mind with Brenda Dunne

Brenda Dunne served for 28 years as laboratory manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program. With Robert G. Jahn, she is coauthor of Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, Consciousness and the Source of Reality: The PEAR Odyssey, Quirks of the Quantum Mind, and Molecular Memories. She also served as coeditor of Filters and Reflections: Perspectives on Reality and Being and Biology: Is Consciousness the Life-Force. She currently serves as president of the International Consciousness Research Lab (ICRL). Her website is http://icrl.org/

Here she suggests that the complementarity and uncertainty principles of quantum physics can be thought of as metaphors for the operation of the human mind. The term “metaphor” should not be thought of as trivial — as metaphors are always necessary when endeavoring to describe direct internal experience. All of the observations and thoughts that created quantum physics as we know it today are, in fact, products of the human psyche. The discussion focuses additionally on the experimenter effect in parapsychology.

Tony Parsons · Amsterdam March 2023 · Saturday 01

Disclaimer: The ideas that are expressed under Tony Parsons or The Open Secret communications obviously do not recommend or offer any kind of personal teaching, prescription, process, method or advice as to why or how any individual should or should not live his/her life. It is apparent therefore that any participant’s response or reaction to these communications is entirely and only a product of their own interpretation and their own responsibility.

Towards a Science of the Subjective | Robert Jahn

Although consciousness-correlated physical phenomena are widely and credibly documented, their appearance and behavior display substantial departures from conventional scientific criteria. Under even the most rigorous protocols, they are only irregularly replicable, and they appear to be insensitive to most basic physical coordinates, including distance and time. Rather, their strongest correlations are with various subjective parameters, such as intention, emotional resonance, uncertainty, attitude, and meaning, and information processing at an unconscious level appears to be involved. If science, by its most basic definition, is to pursue understanding and utilization of these extraordinary processes, it will need to expand its current paradigm to acknowledge and codify a proactive role for the mind in the establishment of physical events, and to accommodate the spectrum of empirically indicated subjective correlates. The challenges of quantitative measurement and theoretical conceptualization within such a ‘‘Science of the Subjective’’ are formidable, but its potential intellectual and cultural benefits could be immense, not least of all in improving the reach, the utility, the attitude, and the image of science itself.