GC SA launch poster 2

Galileo Commission Summit V – Spiritual Awakenings Book Launch


22 scientists and academics discuss how their earth-shattering experience of spiritual awakening changed their philosophical world-views and perceptions of realityfor the book launch of:

 Spiritual Awakenings: Scientists and Academics Share Their Experiences

edited by Marjorie Woollacott PhD and David Lorimer

See: https://spiritual-awakenings.net

 

The 57 essays in this volume are a wonderful and varied collection of personal insights into individual spiritual awakenings and the resulting transformation in the lives of scientists and academics. Scholars write about the experience of their own spiritual awakening and journey, including encountering challenges to their credibility in academia, if they shared these experiences. Their comments about transformation in values, beliefs, and approaches toward life are very moving, expressing a deep inner wisdom and connection, not only with humanity, but with the earth and cosmos.

The authors in this volume have shown the courage to ‘come out’ with a spiritual understanding of life based on their own experiences despite the taboo against this in academia dominated by materialist philosophies of consciousness and reality.

They share the views of the great pioneering physicists such as Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Sir James Jeans, Arthur Eddington, Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schroedinger and David Bohm that consciousness is fundamental – even primary – in our universe.

A Metaphysical Revolution is at hand and these authors are in the vanguard!

This unique event, which is hosted as a collaboration between the Scientific and Medical Network, Galileo Commission, Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences and Institute of Noetic Sciences, is absolutely not to be missed!

Please note: -This event is donation-based, and you may register for free, if you are not able to make a donation. However, if you can, we would greatly appreciate your contribution, which will continue to allow us to move forward with our mission. All proceedings from this event will go towards the cost of the website, audio book, and publicity outreach to the mainstream.

-One ticket includes both days.

 

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Format

Round tables on the following themes, below:

Questions to be answered in 7-10 minute roundtable, by each person, followed by general discussion of similarities/nuances, and Q and A with audience.

The authors will describe:

  1. Their initial experience(s),
  2. Shifts in their world view,
  3. Subsequent influences on both personal behaviour and professional life 

Programme

All timings are in London, BST

 

Saturday, 24 September

 

4 – 6 pm: Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs) Through Spiritual Practices

Chair: Marjorie Woollacott

Athena Potari

Marjorie Woollacott

Marilyn Monk

Bo Ahrenfelt

 

6:30 – 8:30 pm: STEs during or Awakening from Sleep or Occurring Spontaneously

Chair: David Lorimer

Jessica Corneille

Joan Walton

Chris Roe

Gary Schwartz

Sunday, 25 September

 

4 – 6 pm: STEs Triggered through the Word, NDE or Psychedelic Experience

Chair: Marjorie Woollacott

Neal Grossman

Federico Faggin

Vasileios Basios

Christopher Bache

Natalie Dyer

Joyce Hawkes

Eben Alexander

 

6:30– 8:30 pm: STEs Triggered by Psychic Experiences

Chair: Jude Currivan

Helané Wabeh

Michael Grosso

Kim Penberthy

Stephan Schwartz

Laurel Waterman

Steve Taylor


TICKETS

Please note: This event is donation-based, and you may register for free, if you are not able to make a donation. However, if you can, we would greatly appreciate your contribution, which will continue to allow us to move forward with our mission. All proceedings from this event will go towards the cost of the website, audio book, and publicity outreach to the mainstream.

One ticket includes both days.

All bookings will receive a link to view the RECORDING.

The event is over and ticket sales are now closed.

Date

Sun, 25 September 2022
Event has passed

Time

4:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Local Time

  • Timezone: America/New_York
  • Date: Sun, 25 September 2022
  • Time: 11:00 am - 3:30 pm

Labels

Webinars

Location

Online
Category

Speakers

  • Christopher Bache
    Christopher Bache
    Professor Emeritus, Author

    Dr Chris Bache is Professor Emeritus in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University where he taught for 33 years. He is also adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and on the Advisory Board of Grof Legacy Training. Chris’ passion has been the study of the philosophical implications of nonordinary states of consciousness, especially psychedelic states. An award winning teacher and international speaker, Chris has written four books: Lifecycles, Dark Night, Early Dawn, The Living Classroom, and LSD and the Mind of the Universe – the story of his 20 year journey with LSD. Chris is a father of three, a Vajrayana practitioner, and lives in Weaverville, NC, with his wife Christina Hardy.

  • Vasileios Basios
    Vasileios Basios
    Physicist, Senior researcher

    Dr Vasileios Basios is a physicist, conducting interdisciplinary research on the foundations of complexity science and nonlinear systems, self-organization and complex matter. During his formative years, he was tutored by Ilya Prigogine (Nobel Laureate) at the Solvay Institutes in ULB and by Emilios Bouratinos on meditation and philosophy. He is interested in the complex interface between action and information and the history of ideas in science and their role in the transformation of science beyond the prevailing naïve materialistic reductionistic world-view. With others from PEAR Lab, he initiated the Mind-Matter-Mapping Project and has since published essays for ICRL where he now serves as a Trustee. He is a member of the Board of the Scientific and Medical Network and the Steering Team of the Galileo Commission.

  • Athena D. Potari
    Athena D. Potari
    Philosopher

    Dr Athena Potari is Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University, where she explores possibilities for an expanded practice of Philosophy by re-integrating elements and histories of the feminine. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford specializing in Political Philosophy, and her MA in Political Theory with Distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is recipient of the Academy of Athens Award of Philosophy (2020), author of “A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities” published by the Galileo Commission, and Member of the Galileo Commission Steering Committee. In 2019, she founded Athenoa, a School of Hellenic Philosophy based in Greece where Hellenism is approached as a living wisdom tradition whose core consists in the inextricable synthesis of scientific reason and spirituality. Her work aims to revive the deeper spiritual and experiential dimensions of Hellenic Philosophy as a living spiritual lineage, combining discursive rigor and embodied meditative practices, with the aim of awakening to the ever-present mystery of being – our true Self.

  • Natalie L. Dyer
    Natalie L. Dyer
    Research scientist

    Dr. Natalie Dyer, PhD is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals, University of California Irvine, and President of the Center for Reiki Research. She completed her bachelor of science degree at the University of Toronto, doctorate in neuroscience at Queen’s University and postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School. She has published many scientific papers and book chapters on postmaterialist science, psychedelics, and the therapeutic effects of integrative medicine practices, including Reiki, yoga, acupuncture, and mindfulness. Natalie is co-editor of the books Expanding Science: Visions of a Postmaterialist Paradigm and the forthcoming book Infinite Perception: The Power of Psychedelics for Global Transformation. She is also an energy medicine practitioner specializing in Reiki and North American, European, and Tibetan shamanic practices. She lives in the woods on the east coast of Canada with her husband, artist Louis Dyer, and their daughter.

  • Laurel Waterman
    Laurel Waterman
    Writer, Speaker

    Laurel Waterman, MA currently a doctoral student in Curriculum and Pedagogy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, has been teaching creative non-fiction writing at the University of Toronto since 2009. She published About Local Food: Four Conversations with Toronto Food Activists, a book based on her MA research in Adult Education and Community Development. Waterman has been a writer, researcher, and editor for several books, essays, research projects, and conference presentations throughout her academic career, mostly in the areas of non-fiction writing, education, food systems, and environmental sustainability. In 2021, she was awarded a grant from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship fund for her doctoral research in consciousness studies education. She is a student member of the Academy for the Advancement of Post-materialist Sciences (AAPS).

  • Neal Grossman
    Neal Grossman
    Professor of Philosophy, Author

    Dr Neal Grossman received his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University in 1971. He taught Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago until he retired in 2013. Relevant papers include: (i) Who’s Afraid of Life After Death?, JNDS, May, 2002; (ii) Four Errors Commonly Made by Professional Debunkers (JNDS, 26(3), Spring 2008) (iii) Review of “The Self Does Not Die”, JNDS, 34(4), Summer 2016. His first book, The Spirit of Spinoza: Healing the Mind, (ICRL, 2014) is a readable presentation of Spinoza’s remarkable system of spiritual psychotherapy. And his second book, Conversations with Socrates and Plato [iff books, 2019] describes “how a Post-Materialist Social Order Can Solve the Challenges of Modern Life and Insure Our Survival”.

  • Stephan Schwartz
    Stephan Schwartz
    Writer, Researcher

    Stephan A. Schwartz is a Distinguished Consulting Faculty of Saybrook University, a BIAL Foundation Fellow, columnist for the journal Explore, and editor of the daily web publication Schwartzreport.net. He is one of the founders of Remote Viewing research, and the author of nearly two hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals covering a spectrum of disciplines, two dozen book chapters, and an award-winning author of four non-fiction books, and three novels. He is the recipient of the Parapsychological Association Outstanding Contribution Award, OOOM Magazine (Germany) 100 Most Inspiring People in the World award, and the 2018 Albert Nelson Marquis Award for Outstanding Contributions. He is listed in: Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the West, Who’s Who in Healthcare and Medicine.

  • Gary E. Schwartz
    Gary E. Schwartz
    Professor, Author

    Dr Gary E. Schwartz has been a Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona for more than thirty years. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and a tenured Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Yale University. His integrative research bridging mind-body medicine, energy medicine, and spiritual medicine has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, and numerous private foundations. He has published more than 500 scientific articles and chapters and authored or edited 25 books. He directs the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health at the University of Arizona and served as the founding president of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences

  • Joyce Hawkes
    Joyce Hawkes
    Scientist, Public Speaker

    Dr Joyce Hawkes’ doctorate in Biophysics opened her to a career at the depths of cellular function. She received a National Honorary Award and was elected as Fellow in the AAAS based on her research. Seven years after an NDE in the late 70s she was ‘called’ to change careers and became a healing facilitator, teacher, and author. She has published books, taught internationally and has a TEDx talk with over 1 million views. Additional television appearances and interviews are linked on her web site: CellLevelHealing.com. Joyce has followed a deep sense of guidance to combine science and spirit for physical, mental, and emotional healing for nearly 40 years. The efficacy of this approach for the unique needs of each individual has led to abundant results.

  • Marjorie Woollacott
    Marjorie Woollacott
    Researcher, Author

    Marjorie Woollacott, PhD is an Emeritus Professor of Human Physiology, and member of the Institute of Neuroscience, at the University of Oregon. She was chair of the Human Physiology Department for seven years. In addition to teaching courses on neuroscience and rehabilitation, she taught courses on complementary and alternative medicine and meditation. She is Research Director for the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is President of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS). 

    Marjorie has published more than 200 scientific articles and written or co-edited eight books. Her latest book, Infinite Awareness describes her research as a neuroscientist with her self-revelations about the mind’s spiritual power. Between the scientific and spiritual worlds, she breaks open the definition of human consciousness to investigate the existence of a non-physical and infinitely powerful mind. She is Co-Chair of the Galileo Commission, co-editor of Spiritual Awakenings and an Honorary Member of the SMN.

  • Chris Roe
    Chris Roe
    Chair in Psychology, Director

    Dr Chris Roe holds a Chair in Psychology at the University of Northampton, UK, and is Director of their Centre for the Psychology and Social Sciences. He is the International Affiliate for England of the Parapsychology Foundation and a Vice-President of the Society for Psychical Research, and served terms as President of the Parapsychological Association and as Chair of the British Psychological Society Transpersonal Psychology Section. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Parapsychology and is on the editorial board for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research and the Transpersonal Psychology Review. His research interests are around the phenomenology of paranormal experience, particularly as it affects wellbeing, as well as experimental approaches to test claims for extrasensory perception and psychokinesis.

  • Jude Currivan
    Jude Currivan
    Cosmologist, Author

    Dr Jude Currivan has a master’s degree in physics from Oxford University and a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Reading. She is a cosmologist, planetary healer, futurist, author who was previously one of the most senior business women in the UK and in 2017 she co-founded WholeWorld-View. Integrating leading edge science, research into consciousness, and universal wisdom teachings into a wholistic world-view underpins her work serving conscious evolution and empowering transformational and emergent resolutions to collective human and planetary issues. For over two decades she has also travelled around the world in service to planetary healing. A member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle (www.evolutionaryleaders.net) she is also the international and award-winning author of six books to date, latterly The Cosmic Hologram: In-formation at the Center of Creation. Her next book, Gaia: Her-Story will be published in 2022.

  • Joan Walton
    Joan Walton
    University researcher and educator

    Dr Joan Walton’s first degree was in Social Theory and Institutions (University of Bangor, North Wales). Following University, she travelled for a year in India and South East Asia, including working in one of Mother Teresa’s children’s homes in Calcutta. Her early professional career was in social work, mainly working with children and families in residential and community settings. In 1995 she established an independent Centre for Action Research and Education, which enabled her to be involved in a wide range of staff development and research projects in the public, private and not-for profit sectors. Following completion of her PhD in 2008, she had a career change, and entered the academic world, initially at Liverpool Hope University, and now at York St John University in the School of Education.

  • Eben Alexander
    Eben Alexander
    Scientist, Author

    Dr Eben Alexander III received his BA in Chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1976, MD from Duke University in 1980, completed neurosurgical residency at Duke in 1987, and a cerebrovascular fellowship at Newcastle General Hospital in the UK, before teaching neurosurgery at the Brigham & Women’s and Childrens’ Hospitals and Harvard Medical School in Boston for 15 years, achieving the rank of Associate Professor. He also held academic positions at UMass Memorial and the University of Virginia, and wrote over 150 peer-reviewed papers and chapters. His clinical expertise and leadership included advances in linear accelerator-based stereotactic radiosurgery for numerous indications, development of the world’s first intra-operative MRI system, and advanced management of brain tumors and functional disorders (movement disorders, refractory pain syndromes).

  • Jessica Corneille
    Jessica Corneille
    Research Psychologist

    Following her own sudden non-dual experience one morning in February 2016, Jessica Corneille, MSc decided to change the course of her life by quitting her career in the arts/cultural heritage preservation (and as an aspiring art curator), to play her part, instead, in helping to de-stigmatise, de-pathologise and raise awareness around spiritual awakening, enlightenment, and non-dual experiences within mainstream psychology.
    She graduated with Distinction from a Masters Degree in Psychology from the University of Greenwich, where she focused her studies on the psychology of exceptional human experiences (transpersonal, anomalistic and parapsychology), under the guidance of Dr David Luke. She is now a fully-qualified research psychologist specialising predominantly in spiritual awakenings of a spontaneous nature, as well as other non-ordinary states of consciousness. Jessica has presented her work at a number of academic conferences, including with the British Psychological Society. She also works for the Scientific and Medical Network, is a member of the Galileo Commission steering committee, a collaborator of the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium and Spiritual Crisis Network, and a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher. She also runs peer-support groups for people undergoing spiritually transformative experiences, both with the Psychedelic Society UK and Spiritual Awakenings International.
    Her greatest missions in life are to challenge the default pathologisation of awakening experiences by helping to inform and encourage mainstream psychology to look beyond the current designated spectrum of ‘normality’, to encompass the transpersonal as something that is intrinsic to the human experience, and in helping individuals come to the realisation of their highest human potential.

  • Helané Wahbeh
    Helané Wahbeh
    Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences

    Dr Helané Wahbeh is the Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Oregon Health & Science University, and President of the Parapsychological Association. Dr Wahbeh is clinically trained as a naturopathic physician and research trained with a Master of Clinical Research and two post-doctoral research fellowships. She has published on and spoken internationally about her studies on complementary and alternative medicine, mind-body medicine, extended human capacities, stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, and their relationships to physiology, health, and healing. Dr Wahbeh is especially known for her research around — and noetic approach to — channeling.

  • Bo Ahrenfelt
    Bo Ahrenfelt
    Former Psychiatrist, Radio producer

    Dr Bo Ahrenfelt, MD is a former psychiatrist at St. Sigfrid’s mental hospital in Växjö and visiting consultant in private institution in Hovmantorp, Sweden. Also, radio producer at the Swedish national network within his fields of competence, and founder of Institutet för Liv och Arbete (Inst for Life and Work), which he led for twenty-five years, a network of professionals working with change and development on individual, group and system level in the private and public sectors. Author of Conflict Management Handbook (1993), Territories and Leadership (2012) and Change as Being State (3rd edition 2013). Currently partner of SustainChange AB, with a focus on human sustainability.

  • Steve Taylor
    Steve Taylor
    Psychologist, Researcher, Speaker, Author

    Steve Taylor, PhD is the author of many best-selling books on psychology and spirituality including Extraordinary Awakenings, The Leap, and Spiritual Science. His books have been published in 20 languages, and Eckhart Tolle has described his work as ‘an important contribution to the shift in consciousness which is happening on our planet at present.’ He is a senior lecturer and researcher in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and past chair of the BPS Transpersonal Psychology Section.

  • Michael Grosso
    Michael Grosso
    Writer

    Dr Michael Grosso studied classics and received his PhD in philosophy from Columbia University. He has taught philosophy and the humanities at New Jersey City University, CUNY (City University of New York), and Kennedy University, CA. His recent books include Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of DisbeliefThe Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation; The final Choice: Death or Transcendence; Experiencing the Next World Now. Michael’s focus is on the science of extraordinary human experience and the creative implications of altered states of consciousness.   He is also a painter who works at the interface of art and the paranormal.

  • Marilyn Monk
    Marilyn Monk
    Professor Emerita at University College London Institute of Child Health

    Prof Marilyn Monk, BScHons, MScHons, PhD is Professor Emerita at University College London Institute of Child Health. She has been a research scientist for 60 years, university lecturer, head of UCL Molecular Embryology Unit, and has published over 200 scholarly papers. She is known for her work on DNA replication and repair, amoeboid cell signalling, regulation of differential gene expression in development, discovery and establishment of epigenetics, discovery of deprogramming to stem cells and, technically, the miniaturization of molecular analyses to the sensitivity of the single cell. Her pioneering work on preimplantation diagnosis of genetic disease earned her an invitation from the Nobel Secretariat to speak at Karlskoga. Marilyn Monk is also an Alexander Technique teacher and Psychosynthesis Counsellor.

  • David Lorimer
    David Lorimer
    Writer, Lecturer, Poet, Editor

    David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath – writer, lecturer, poet and editor who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network  and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society. David is also the Editor of Paradigm Explorer, and Chair of the Galileo Commission, which seeks the expand the evidence base of science of consciousness beyond a materialistic world view.

    Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Survival? Death as Transition (1984,2017) Resonant Mind (originally Whole in One) (1990/2017), The Spirit of Science (1998), Thinking Beyond the Brain (2001), The Protein Crunch (with Jason Drew) and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). He has edited three books about the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov): Prophet for our Times (1991, 2015), The Circle of Sacred Dance, and Gems of Love, which is a translation of his prayers and formulas into English. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince (2003) – has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. His most recent books are A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems, Better Light a Candle.

  • Federico Faggin
    Federico Faggin
    Physicist, Engineer, Inventor, Entrepreneur

    Federico Faggin received a Laurea degree in Physics, summa cum laude, from the University of Padua, Italy, in 1965, and moved to Silicon Valley in 1968. He developed the MOS Silicon Gate Technology in 1968; the world’s first microprocessor, the Intel 4004 in 1971, and several highly successful microprocessors, like the Intel 8080 and the Z80 produced by Zilog, his first startup company. Faggin was CEO of several high-tech startup companies he founded and directed since 1974. He is currently president of Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation, dedicated to the science of consciousness. Faggin has received many international awards, including the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, from President Barack Obama. In 2021 he published his autobiography Silicon.

  • Kim Penberthy
    Kim Penberthy
    Clinical Psychologist, Researcher

    Dr. J. Kim Penberthy, Ph.D., ABPP, is a distinguished clinical psychologist and researcher.  She holds the Chester F. Carlson Professorship in Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine, where she is also a member of the Division of Perceptual Studies. Her research and clinical work focus on mindfulness, contemplative practices, and their applications in treating chronic illnesses, addictions, and mental health disorders. She also researches altered states of consciousness and extraordinary experiences such and near death and out of body experiences and after death communications. Throughout her career, Dr. Penberthy has integrated contemplative practices into her therapeutic approach. She has developed and tested innovative interventions for various conditions, including a contemplative intervention for patients with lupus, aimed at improving both psychological and physiological outcomes. Dr. Penberthy has also contributed significantly to the field through her work on the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) and her research on mindfulness-based therapies for smoking cessation and other addictions. In addition to her clinical and research work, Dr. Penberthy is dedicated to education and has published extensively. She has co-authored books, including “Living Mindfully Across the Lifespan: An Intergenerational Guide,” and has presented her findings at conferences worldwide. Her contributions to psychology have been recognized with numerous awards, including being named the Virginia Psychologist of the Year in 2023. Dr. Penberthy’s holistic approach to treatment emphasizes the importance of addressing both the mind and body, and she is committed to advancing the use of contemplative practices in healthcare to enhance overall well-being. This includes exploring extraordinary experiences such as near death experiences, after death experiences, and other mystical and transcendent experiences to understand the implications for theories of consciousness, as well as, the impact on health and wellbeing in those who experience them.