AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness – Theatrical trailer

“I found AWARE to be in many ways the most moving and beautiful depiction of deep understanding of consciousness and of who we are that I have seen depicted through film.” – Jack Kornfield, author and Buddhist teacher “

Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness is a heady experience – dare I say spiritual? – that stirs feelings of awe and wonder, humility and connection… the film creates a contemplative openness that words alone might find hard to describe. It’s a remarkable film.” – Valerie Kalfrin, Alliance of Women Film Journalists

What is consciousness? Is it in all living beings? What happens when we die? Why do we seem to be hardwired for mystical experience? In these times of existential crisis, there has been an explosion of research into consciousness. AWARE follows six brilliant researchers, approaching the greatest of all mysteries from radically different perspectives, from within and without: through high-tech brain research and Eastern meditation, by scientifically exploring inner space through psychedelic substances and by investigating the consciousness of plants.

With Richard Boothby, Monica Gagliano, Roland Griffiths, Josefa Kirvin Kulix, Christof Koch, Matthieu Ricard and Mingyur Rinpoche

Quantum Bayesianism and the embodied agent

The Nobel Prize in physics in 2022 went the scientists who, for over 40 years, have carried out a series of experiments indicating that, contrary to materialist expectations, physical entities do not have standalone existence but are, in fact, products of observation. This result is extraordinarily relevant to our understanding of the nature of reality, and so Essentia Foundation, in collaboration with the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Vienna, of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (home to Prof. Anton Zeilinger, one of this year’s Nobel Laureates in physics), organized a conference discussing the implications of this result. The conference was hosted by IQOQI-Vienna’s Dr. Markus Müller and featured seven other speakers. In this presentation, Dr. Jacques Pienaar discusses the notion of an embodied agent in the context of Quantum Bayesianism (‘QBism,’ for short). QBism is an interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which the wave function represents simply what we know about reality—a kind of betting strategy about what we will see next—as opposed to reality itself.

Holographic Universe FULL movie

The perceptions we observe may well be coming from an artificial source. Suppose we could take our brain out of our body and keep it alive in a glass jar. Put a computer in which all kinds of information can be recorded. Transmit the electrical signals of all the data related to a setting such as image, sound and smell into this computer. Connect this computer to the sensory centers in our brain with electrodes and send the pre-recorded data to our brain. As our brain perceives these signals it will see and live the setting correlated with these.

Immanuel Velikovsky – Bonds of the Past – CBC Documentary 1972

This is a documentary about Immanuel Velikovsky’s discoveries by Henry Zemel. First telecast on February 22, 1972 by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Immanuel Velikovsky proposed in his 1950’s book “Worlds in Collision” that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events: worldwide global catastrophes of a celestial origin, which had a profound effect on the lives, beliefs and writings of early mankind.

Connecting with a Conscious Universe

What do ancient religious leaders and cutting-edge scientists have in common? They are all great thinkers seeking our deepest connection with the universe and where we fit in with everything. Ervin Laszlo explores where we come from, with an understanding that our universe is not just holographic, but holotropic – which means, moving toward wholeness. As we collectively come into awareness that everything in the universe acts as one and that nothing is ever truly disconnected, we stand at the cusp of an evolutionary leap in consciousness.

A Conscious Universe? – Dr Rupert Sheldrake

The sciences are pointing toward a new sense of a living world. The cosmos is like a developing organism, and so is our planet, Gaia. The laws of Nature may be more like habits. Partly as a result of the ‘hard problem’ of finding space for human consciousness in the materialist worldview, there is a renewed interest in panpsychist philosophies, according to which some form of mind, experience or consciousness is associated with all self-organizing systems, including atoms, molecules and plants. Maybe the sun is conscious, and so are other stars, and entire galaxies. If so, what about the mind of the universe as a whole? Rupert Sheldrake will explore some of the implications of this idea.