Mystics and Scientists Conference 2025

Name: Mystics and Scientists Conference 2025
Start: 2025-04-11
End: 2025-04-13
Location: Online

Grounding and Flourishing in an Era of Complexity, Chaos and Transformation

April 11-13, 2025, online

Speakers: Vasileios Basios, Rosie Bell, Jean Boulton, Filippo Dal Fiore, Rebecca Ford, Laurence Freeman, Vivien Leung, David Lorimer, Seán ÓLaoire, Athena Potari, Harrie Salman, Bill Sharpe, Julian Still, Arabella Thaïs, Neil Theise, Daniel Christian Wahl, Margaret Wheatley

The Warriors arise when the people need protection. We step into this role of contribution and service, learning to assess what is possible and what is not. We are broken-hearted in witnessing what is being lost. We are exhausted from efforts that can no longer bear fruit. Yet we have abiding faith in the human spirit, in the capacity of people to be generous, creative, kind and compassionate–no matter what. It is our faith in the human spirit that inspires us to undertake the discipline of training to be of service for this time. – Margaret Wheatley

Come and join us online for inspiration and illumination with our like-minded community at our 2025 annual Mystics and Scientists Conference – for over 45 years these meetings have been dedicated to forging a creative understanding of the complementary roles of rational scientific and intuitive mystical approaches to reality. Our hugely topical theme this year is Grounding and Flourishing in an Era of Complexity, Chaos and Transformation.

Programme Buy Tickets

We have a remarkable line-up of speakers to empower and inspire you on your path towards fulfilment and understanding of these crucial conference themes and strategies so important in our apocalyptic times driven by vicious cycles of trauma, fear, anger, retribution and revenge all leading to further division and polarisation.

These destructive drivers are unsustainable – as are authoritarian responses – so this conference provides you with an opportunity to step back and reflect on how we can best make sense of, ground ourselves and flourish in what are undoubtedly complex and powerful times of potential bifurcation and transformation – how can we best co-creatively reconfigure ourselves, our relationships and the many systems in which we are all embedded while upholding the spiritual essence of what it means to be human?

As the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov prophetically stated: “Today it is not just separate individuals but whole societies and nations that find themselves subjected to great pressure and tension, up against difficult situations that they are unable to resolve and balance. We are entering a period of liquidation… a new law and order are coming into the world…. It is only love that has the power to set the world to rights. In order to improve conditions on Earth, people must love. The future world is a world of love and understanding between people; it will be a world of brotherhood and freedom. The present world is destined to undergo a great transformation… the present sufferings are the birth pangs of the new human being.” (Prophet for our Times, The New Epoch)

The conference will begin on Friday morning with an interactive creative session curated by Members of the International Futures Forum. On Friday afternoon David will be in conversation with Meg Wheatley about how to see clearly and act wisely, followed by an interdisciplinary talk by Neil Theise covering the sciences, consciousness and contemplation.

On Saturday morning we have two scientific presentations on complexity by Vasileios Basios and Jean Boulton. After lunch, Julian Still will present a workshop on meta-issues related to practical complexity; then it will be the turn of the contemplatives Laurence Freeman and Seán ÓLaoire to share their insights and experience, and to dialogue together.

On Sunday morning we will hear from a younger generation – Athena Potari, Filippo Dal Fiore, and Arabella Thaïs about how they personally ground themselves in simplicity, order and beauty. Vivien Leung will use a poem by Nora Bateson to engage us in a visual listening exercise. The final two speakers – Rosie Bell and Harrie Salman – will explore inner systems change and the necessary transformation of the Western world order towards one based upon cooperation, peace and solidarity between human beings.

As you can see from this brief description, this very special conference is not be missed, so we are very much looking forward to your participation! And do spread the word among your friends!

Please note: All bookings will receive a link to view the recordings shortly after the event.

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PROGRAMME

Thursday 10 April
Time (UK)	Speaker(s)	Topic
Pre-Conference Film
5.00 pm (Suggested start time)		Film – An Ecology Of Mind
7.00 – 8.30 pm		Chair: David Lorimer Panel Discussion: Nora Bateson and others to be announced!

Friday 11 April
Time (UK)	Speaker(s)	Topic
Session 1		Curated by the *International Futures Forum:* At the outset of the IFF in Scotland in 2001, we were promoting the idea of a Second Enlightenment to follow from and compensate the shortcomings of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment. We were also asking the question: how do we act responsibly in the world that we can neither fully understand nor control? I was among the original participants, as was Professor Brian Goodwin, a biologist, mathematician, and systems theorist who was familiar with Goethean science and was articulating a new world view based on what he called a science of qualities
		Chairs: David Lorimer and Rebecca Ford
9.10 am	David Lorimer	Conference and IFF Introduction – Flourishing in Powerful Times
9.30 am	Rebecca Ford	Playing with Complexity: Expanding our Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing – Interactive Workshop An essential IFF stance is to embrace expansive ways of knowing that allow us to draw on more of our capacities to make sense of the world and become comfortable with complexity. IFF has developed a series of prompts – 52 short, pithy statements in a deck of cards – derived from years of experience taking on complex, messy problems in the real world. They are rooted in a body of theory and practice, from philosophy, psychology, complexity theory, systems science, organisational development, management theory, biology and more. Each suggests what we might look for, appreciate, value, pay attention to, how we might behave, show up, take action when we encounter complex or confusing circumstances – beyond our stock responses and repertoire. In this interactive session, IFF Director Rebecca Ford will introduce the prompts and invite three IFF practitioners to pick one and share a brief reflection on the new perspectives it sparks for them, before inviting everyone to participate in small group parallel sessions where we’ll play with the prompts to explore challenges we are facing and expand our range of possible responses (the trick is that people bringing challenges into the breakout rooms do not even have to reveal what it is.)
10.30 am		BREAK
11.00 am	Bill Sharpe and Daniel Christian Wahl	*Bioregional Regeneration Through Three Horizons Framework: Navigating Change for a Thriving Future* The Three Horizons is a futures and systems change framework for exploring transformation and how to bring it about. It enables us to see challenges in the present (H1), aspirations for the future (H3) and the kinds of innovation creating change in the transition space (H2) as different patterns in dynamic interplay. These three patterns of activity are all visible today, in the present – and how they interact and play out over time creates the future. In this conversation, regenerative futures practitioners Bill Sharpe and Daniel Wahl explore how their longstanding collaboration has led to applying Three Horizons practice in service of bioregional regeneration – and why coming home to place is of critical urgency now, more than ever.
12.45 pm		BREAK

Session 2		Chair: TBC
3.00 pm	David Lorimer	*Introduction*
3.05 pm	Margaret Wheatley in conversation with David Lorimer	*How can we see clearly and act wisely?* This dialogue will explore a range of critical issues for our time, which require our activity to be deeply grounded within, especially at a time of impending societal collapse, where our connection to our own centre is endangered of being cut off by external distractions and busyness. We need to learn to become Warriors for the Spirit, seeing clearly so that we can act wisely. We need to understand the causes of chaos, while at the same time opening up of mystic sensibility to perceive beyond the five senses and to cooperate with other levels of being.
4.15 pm		BREAK
4.30 pm	Prof Neil Theise	*Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being* Complexity theory provides a unique way of understanding the processes whereby the universe gives rise to living, conscious beings and, indeed, may be considered living and conscious foundationally and its totality. This talk will move from using complexity to weave together contemporary understandings of biology, chemistry, and physics (including relativity and quantum mechanics) to perspectives on how consciousness and our universe are related. The talk will include insights from contemplative spiritual practices – wherein the mind examines itself.
5.40 pm		*Speakers Dialogue*
6.00 pm		*Q & A*
6.30 pm		*FRIDAY CLOSE and OPTIONAL VIRTUAL BAR*

Please note: With your Conference ticket you will be invited to the SMN Member’s Friday Virtual Bar, taking place at 6:30PM after the Conference has closed on Friday – the theme of the Virtual Bar discussion will be based on what has been discussed at the Conference on Friday.

Saturday 12 April
Time (UK)	Speaker(s)	Topic

Session 3		Chair: Bernard Carr
9.15 am	Bernard Carr	Introduction
9.30 am	Vasileios Basios	Complexity, Emergence and the Fabric of Reality – Keeping Minds and Systems Open In his ground-breaking book “From Being to Becoming”, Ilya Prigogine brought the question of the nature of time and complexity to the fore. In the spirit of this book, we attempt an update of his short monograph in which he sketches the story of the third scientific revolution of the last century, complexity. We trace the fall of the dogma of the entropic “heat death” of the universe and the emergence of structures in open systems in the first part of this presentation. Against this background, entropy, information and the coming of age of the theory of algorithmic complexity will be discussed in the second part. Finally, the third part will examine how these developments in complexity theory set the absolute ‘hard limits’ of simulated intelligence, so-called ‘AI’, and the understanding that complexity theory brings to the fabric of reality as an interconnected, living, whole.
10.30 am		BREAK
11.00 am	Jean Boulton	*The Dao of Complexity – Making Sense and Making Waves in Turbulent Times* In this talk, Jean will introduce her new book, The Dao of Complexity: making sense and making waves in turbulent times, and explain the uncanny resonance between Daoist cosmology and process complexity, building on the legacy of Ilya Prigogine (who was an honorary member of the Network). She will discuss the implications for notions of transcendence and unity – as compared with a more emergent, contextual and relational perspective. Jean will also reflect on the view that quantum physics opens the door to mystery and ‘ontological indeterminism’ at the tiniest scales. Finally, working with the idea that ‘the path is made through walking,’ Jean will consider the implications of process complexity and Daoism for how to live with the future, the planet and the wider community in mind.
12.00 pm		*Dialogue*
12.30 pm		*Q & A*
1.00 pm	David Lorimer	*Presentation of SMN*
1.15 pm		BREAK


Session 4		Chair: David Lorimer
2.15 pm	Julian Still	Practical Complexity: Finding Resonant Pathways for Systemic Navigation – Workshop Complex human systems have collective intelligence as one of their emergent characteristics. This is important for the navigation of our world’s complex issues , full of unintended consequences. Human mycelia is a diagnostic, a philosophy and a practical approach to finding an optimal navigational path through the challenges facing us. By developing our innate 5th dimensional conscious awareness, we meet the collective spirit of our organisations, and can find resonant pathways which organic organisms need to travel. The necessary conditions for this emergent state can be found in the formula that ‘a system can be seen as the sum of its relationships to the power of the love in the relationships’ 0=∑ RL . Growth space, seen through Physical, Intellectual, Musical, Intuitive, Spiritual, Emotional and Ethical lenses is a second requirement, with of course starting and boundary conditions ever important in complex conditions.
3.00 pm	Laurence Freeman	Return to the Centre: Cultivating Stillness and Silence in an Age of Turmoil William James, founder of American psychology, a philosopher said, ‘Reality is where you place your attention.’ Attention matters. The loss of our capacity to pay attention (our distracted culture, the fact that we spend an average of three or four hours on our mobile devices every day, young people are spending at a very vulnerable age, hours, hours and hours on their social media) this is a fragmentation of our fundamental capacity which is attention: to be able to listen, to be able to observe, to be able to engage, to feel empathy, to see the wonder of the world in which we live and the relationships in which we are connected. Attention is the essence of prayer and meditation.
4.00 pm		BREAK
4.30 pm	Seán ÓLaoire	Pareidolia: An Illusion or a Mystical Level of Organisational Intelligence? Many years ago, I invented the term “mysticists” – the cross-pollination of mystics with scientists. Such people are what Carl Jung might have included in his term “gnostic intermediaries” – people who are expert in two different disciplines and can cross-fertilize them to their mutual advantage. I had in mind people like Teilhard de Chardin – who was both a Catholic mystic-priest and a renowned paleoanthropologist. I believe that such people represent the next phase of human evolution – a species I call “homo mysticus.” Key to this new phase is the ability to surf altered states of consciousness; to sequentially disidentify with “lower” versions of the self and soar from the “role self” to the “Soul self” to “Source Self” – the realization that we are simply God’s dream; that we are the Logos-made-flesh. And so, we dance seamlessly between the physical and the metaphysical; we pass effortlessly between the secular and the sacred – piercing the veil; what in Gaelic we call a “caol áit” or “thin place.” In this ascent through the various levels of the self, we recognize deeper and deeper algorithms that organize reality; we employ higher and higher faculties to unravel even apparent randomness for a greater intelligence which drops hints and breadcrumbs on our way to Truth. In this exciting journey, I believe that even pareidolia – which ‘common sense’ claims is merely mistakenly inferring meaningful patterns in utterly random data e.g., seeing an elephant in a cloud formation – will provide a new kind of Boolean Algebra that alerts us to the fact that it is not where we look but, rather, how we look that is important. Those who do not know how to look, will look everywhere and find nothing, whereas those who do know how to look can look anywhere and find everything. Order, chaos and randomness are simply three states demanding deeper and deeper levels of intelligent exploration to reveal their underlying ‘magical’ simplicity.
5.30 pm		Speakers Dialogue and Q&A
6.55 pm	David Lorimer	Closing Remarks
7.00 pm		*SATURDAY CLOSE*

Sunday 13 April
Time (UK)	Speaker(s)	Topic
Session 5		Chair: Vasileios Basios
9.15 am	Vasileios Basios	*Introduction*
9.25 am	Athena Potari, Arabella Thaïs, Filippo dal Fiore	*Timeless Principles in Being and Becoming (Athena)* *The Temple of Truth – Poetry, Mathematics, Beauty and Time (Arabella)* *Grounding and Living with Simplicity and Integrity (Fillippo)* In this creative session, three younger visionary thinkers will share their understandings of the conference themes from their various disciplinary perspectives and rich personal life experience. Among the themes they will raise are: The opposites of the title in terms of timeless principles, being as opposed to becoming, order rather than flux, the unchangeable rather than the changeable The ways in which these principles can structure our minds and behaviour, also corresponding to mathematics, numbers and geometry Lessons to be learned from Stoicism and the situation of Emperor Marcus Aurelius Role of catharsis, purification, emergence Harmony as a reconciliation of opposites Life at the boundary between order and chaos How we can live with simplicity and integrity What works for us in terms of practice Grounding: how do we personally pursue simplicity


10.55 am		BREAK
11.20 am		*Speakers Trialogue*
12.00 pm		*Small Group discussions*
12.30 pm		*Q & A*
1.00 pm		BREAK
Session 6
		Chair: Jessica Bockler
2.00 pm	Jessica Bockler	*Introduction – Nurturing Fields of Change*
2.15 pm	Vivien Leung	The Art of Listening: Exploring Complexity Through Visual Expression – Workshop In this experimental workshop, Vivien will lead a short visual listening exercise where participants will explore listening through mark making or drawing/painting. The session is focused on exploring and reflecting on the art of listening.
3.00 pm	Rosie Bell	Inner Systems Change: Addressing the Psychological Dimension of Global Transformation Lack of attention to the psychological and cultural dimension of systems is widespread – but inner factors are fundamental to global crises and the approaches we require. Commissioned in response to the Earth for All report for the Club of Rome, the System Within asks what it will take to redress the balance. This deep-dive paper insists on a sixth ‘extraordinary turnaround’ towards the under-appreciated inner in all system thinking, discourse, policies, allocation of resources and strategies for change. Without such a turn, systems solutions of the necessary depth will continue to evade us. To achieve it could open the field of possibility not only to adequate crisis response, but to a level of flourishing and quality of life that we have not yet learned collectively to hope for. Co-author Rosie Bell introduces the paper and its models for framing the inner challenge.
4.15 pm		BREAK
4.45 pm	Harrie Salman	*The Western World Order – A Spiritual Perspective on its Origin and Necessary Transformation* The modern world order has its origin in the specific historical and psychological conditions of the 1500s and 1600s. The rise of modern individualism, upon which its foundation is based, took place in a social context that favoured competition, egotism and violence. The dominant soul qualities of the leading classes were unbalanced and have become even more so in the many wars that have been fought to establish global domination. In the course of the 20th century these soul qualities have attracted the most destructive impulses of apocalyptic dimensions. A transformation of modern aggressive individualism into a balancing of individual and social, masculine and feminine qualities, has been prepared for many decades and has become an urgent task for our present times. We need a world order based upon cooperation, peace and solidarity between human beings.
6.00 pm	All Speakers	*Dialogue and Q & A*
6.30 pm	David Lorimer	*Closing Remarks*
6.40 pm		*CONFERENCE CLOSE, OPTIONAL MEDITATION*

Please note: With your Conference ticket you will be invited to the SMN Member’s Sunday Meditation, taking place at 7PM after the Conference has closed on Sunday – the Sunday Meditation will last 30-40 minutes.

TICKETS

Ticket sales open now! All bookings will receive a link to view the RECORDINGS.

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Tags: chaos, Complexity, Conference, Consciousness, consciousness conference, mysticism, Science, spiritual conference, Spirituality, Transformation

Date

Fri - Sun, 11 - 13 April 2025

Time

All Day

Local Time

Timezone: America/New_York
Date: Fri - Sun, 11 - 13 April 2025
Time: All Day

Labels

Conference

Location

Online

Speakers

David Lorimer Writer, Lecturer, Poet, Editor

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.
Vasileios Basios Physicist, Senior researcher

Vasileios Basios

Physicist, Senior researcher

Dr Vasileios Basios is a senior researcher in the Physics of Complex Systems at the University of Brussels, with over 25 years of experience in research and coaching. His interdisciplinary work focuses on self-organisation, emergence in complex matter, complementarity and the foundations of complex systems. Mentored by Nobel laureates Ilya Prigogine and Grégoire Nicolis, Dr Basios received his Ph.D. from the University of Brussels after studying cybernetics with John S. Nicolis. His research interests include foundations of complexity science, emergence in complex matter, nonlinear dynamics and chaos in biological information processing, computability and the logic of extended Bayesian inference.

He is deeply interested in the history of scientific ideas and their role in transforming science beyond the mechanistic worldview. His work aims to bring insights from complex systems science to consciousness studies, working towards an inclusive and self-reflexive interdisciplinary science of consciousness. In 2023, his research team received the inaugural Linda G. O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize for their study on detecting deviations from random activity as indicators of nonlocal consciousness correlates beyond the brain. By contributing to complexity and consciousness research in a variety of formats, from podcasts to books to peer-reviewed papers, he aspires to advance knowledge in this evolving field.
Bernard Carr Emeritus Professor, SMN President

Bernard Carr

Emeritus Professor, SMN President

Prof Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London. For his PhD, he studied the first second of the universe with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University and Caltech. His professional area of research is cosmology and astrophysics and includes such topics as the early universe, black holes, dark matter, and the anthropic principle. He is a former chairman and current President of the Scientific and Medical Network and a former President of the Society for Psychical Research.
Laurence Freeman Monk

Laurence Freeman

Monk

With Irish and English roots, Laurence Freeman, OSB was educated by the Benedictines and studied English Literature at New College, Oxford University. Before entering monastic life, he worked with the United Nations in New York, in Banking and Journalism. He is Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) a global, inclusive contemplative community.

Fr. Laurence Freeman is a monk of the Benedictine Congregation of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. His is the director and spiritual guide of the World Community for Christian Meditation. John Main was his teacher and Fr. Laurence assisted him in establishing the foundations of the Community. Fr. Laurence is the author of a number of books on Christian Meditation. He travels extensively giving presentations and leading Christian Meditation Retreats.
Athena D. Potari Philosopher

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.
Filippo Dal Fiore Senior consultant

Filippo Dal Fiore

Senior consultant

Dr Filippo Dal Fiore has always been driven by love for life and for our common humanity, despite all tribulations. He does his best every day to honour this by cultivating the deepest desires of his heart, including pursuing his vocation to reconcile science to Love (what happens if we say God?). Over the years he has been working behind the scenes on his own personal and spiritual development, all the while vigorously contributing to family life as well as serving students and organizations (as an adjunct professor at the University of Bologna and a senior consultant at the Great Place To Work Institute). His social scientific background is multi-disciplinary and international: he holds university degrees in Communication Science and Applied Economics, with significant research experience accrued in the USA, The Netherlands and Italy.
Arabella Thaïs Writer, Artist

Arabella Thaïs

Writer, Artist

Arabella Thaïs is a writer, speaker, philosopher, and artist, candidate for a PhD in cosmology and consciousness. Committed to the evolution of humanity, her work explores the intersection of poetry, mathematics, beauty, and time, which she teaches at her online school of consciousness, The Temple. She uses various aesthetic mediums – such as music, film, and experience design – in order to communicate ideas and propel human transformation.
Rebecca Ford Director of International Futures Forum

Rebecca Ford

Director of International Futures Forum

Rebecca Ford’s big motivating question: How can the ways we come together, relate and learn create transformative change towards a radically hopeful, regenerative future?

Rebecca is the Director of International Futures Forum (IFF), a charity which enables people, communities and organisations to flourish as effective agents in powerful times. IFF releases potential and develops capacity to meet complex challenges with a transformative growth response, generating practical hope, agency and an expanded sense of what’s possible. Rebecca has spent the last 15 years designing and leading innovative responses to intractable issues; her work integrates many disciplines and practices around a core of strategic design, systems convening, facilitation, collaboration and learning. She joined IFF in 2024, succeeding its Founding Director Graham Leicester.

Previously she spent 10 years working at the RSA, and during that time held several senior leadership roles, led a new Design & Innovation function and developed the RSA’s regenerative futures programme. Prior to that she co-founded and led social enterprise The Digital Disruption Project and worked at social innovation agency Bold Creative. She is a member of the Huddlecraft CIC Collective which multiplies potential through peer-led learning and action, Chaired the Board of Trustees for youth coaching charity Spear Bethnal Green until 2023, and holds an MSc in Social Anthropology from UCL.
Harrie Salman Philosopher, writer

Harrie Salman

Philosopher, writer

Harrie Salman, PhD is a philosopher of culture and traveller who speaks nine European languages and who has lectured at a number of universities. In September 1986, he founded the Rembrandt Foundation for the study of Central European Culture, for which he organised about 30 conferences at the University of Leiden (until 1993). Between 1989 and 2003 he spent about 18 months in the countries of the former Soviet Union, doing research on Russian culture and giving lectures and seminars. Between 1990 and 2001, he taught courses on ‘Science and Culture in Central Europe’ at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Prague, Czech Republic. From 1993 to 2019 I taught courses on Anthroposophy at the department of Art Therapy at the State University of professional education in Leiden, Holland.

His 26 books and numerous articles, published in many languages, deal with aspects of cultural history, social development and Dutch regional history. His books include publications on European culture (Die Heilung Europas), Russian culture (De onzichtbare stad), Anthroposophy and the White Brotherhood (The Social World as Mystery Center, The Rising of the Inner Sun, Peter Deunov, Valentin Tomberg, Rudolf Steiner and Peter Deunov), global economy (Stolen Wealth) and social issues (De Corona Epidemie, The Great Reset). Since 1981, he has been giving lectures, seminars and workshops internationally on questions of social and cultural development, psychology and spirituality, the cultures of Central Europe and Russia, and economic systems.
Neil Theise Professor

Neil Theise

Professor

Prof Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr Theise’s studies in complexity theory have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields such as integrative medicine, consciousness studies, and science-religion dialogue. He comes from a spiritual background of devotional Jewish practices, is a Senior Student at the Village Zendo in NYC, and has been initiated into shamanic practice. Details of his book can be found at https://www.neiltheiseofficial.com/.
Jessica Bockler PhD, Deputy CEO

Jessica Bockler

PhD, Deputy CEO

Jessica Bockler, PhD is an applied performance artist, a transpersonal psychologist and a co-founding director of the Alef Trust. She serves as Deputy CEO and works across Alef Trust’s academic and applied portfolios. Jessica specialises in integral theory, creativity, transpersonal research methods, and the application of transpersonal psychology in service of paradigm change and global regeneration. Jessica is the lead of Alef Trust’s Conscious Community Initiative and the Nurturing the Fields of Change programme, which supports an international community of change facilitators in their projects for social transformation. She is an academic advisor for the Inner Development Goals initiative which aims to promote inner work to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. She is also a member of the UN’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance and an active researcher in the network of the Presencing Institute exploring awareness-based systems change. She is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Presencing Leadership & Coaching, and she acts as a reviewer for the Journal of Awareness-based Systems Change.
Bill Sharpe Futures and Systems Practitioner, Advisor

Bill Sharpe

Futures and Systems Practitioner, Advisor

Bill Sharpe is a futures and systems practitioner specialising in the intersection between science, technology, and society. He is a founding partner of Future Stewards and an adviser to leading figures across the climate, technology, and policy arenas. He is also and a member of the International Futures Forum and H3Uni, with whom he works to build a global commons of futures practice for transformative change.

Following a career of innovation in the computer industry he is now dedicated to bringing that experience to our challenge of enabling ten billion people to thrive on one planet. He is one of the originators of the Three Horizons approach to futures which he is pioneering with colleagues as a basis for a global commons of futures and systems change practice. He is the author of Three Horizons: the patterning of hope and Economies of Life: patterns of health and wealth. Bill has been deeply involved in the framework’s ongoing evolution and dissemination, consistently working to expand its accessibility and impact across diverse fields.
Daniel Christian Wahl Author, Consultant, Educator and Activist

Daniel Christian Wahl

Author, Consultant, Educator and Activist

Daniel Christian Wahl PhD is one of the catalysts of the rising reGeneration and the author of Designing Regenerative Cultures – so far translated into seven languages. He works as a consultant, educator and activist with NGOs, businesses, governments and global change agents. With degrees in biology and holistic science, and a PhD in Design for Human and Planetary Health, his work has influenced the emerging fields of regenerative design and salutogenic design. He is the winner of the 2021 RSA Bicentenary Medal for applying design in service to society, and was awarded a two-year Volans-Fellowship in 2022.
Jean Boulton Theoretical physicist, Lecturer, Researcher, Writer

Jean Boulton

Theoretical physicist, Lecturer, Researcher, Writer

Jean Boulton PhD, MPhil, MBA studied physics at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. Jean is well known for her scholarship in the field of complexity theory and teaches and consults worldwide. See www.embracingcomplexity.com. She came across Daoism and Buddhism in her teenage years and brings a transdisciplinary, integrative approach to both her metaphysical musings and to personal practice.
Julian Still Complex navigator, transcontextual weving & warm data host at Human Mycelia

Julian Still

Complex navigator, transcontextual weving & warm data host at Human Mycelia

Born in 1957, on a farm in Kent, UK. The year the space age started, the treaty of Rome, electric watches and the laser. Childhood trauma of 14 school changes, my parents divorced when I was 4, had the upside of seeing many types of education, and to realise that I caught on quickly. Never conforming, I completed a dual honours French and Economics at Sheffield and Lyon. To win a bet as best paid graduate, I joined Shell, got stuck in the UK and left. A move to Belgium in 1989, because I spoke French, led to learning Dutch, but despite being the youngest CEO of the Finnish group, and working in France, Sweden, Quebec, Holland and Germany, I left employed work frustrated with Employers.

From 1995 to my retirement in 2024, I was a self employed interim manager, ‘crisis manager’ as my kids prefer. Working in Utilities, Construction, Industrial Coatings, Distribution, and others, with an average contract of 12 months. In 2003 I won the Interim Manager of the year award for a 5 way merger that created Scarlet Telecom, today Belgiums 4th largest. So much for time lines, the interesting part is my unusual approach to crisis. Using Snowden’s Cynefin as language, I was able to start to explain what I knew. Complex human systems and Bateson’s living complexity added to the language. Helen Russ’s PhD on collective spirit, had her asking me if I was consciously communicating with the Lexion? This enabled me to better tune into the energy or spirt of a group, see it and find out how it could move. This involves 5th and 6th dimensional consciousness. Organic systems only move along resonant pathways – my gift is to sift possible futures, help rewrite identity stories and get stuff done.
Seán ÓLaoire Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer, Researcher, Catholic Priest, Co-Founder and Spiritual Director of Companions on the Journey (COJ)
Seán ÓLaoire

Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer, Researcher, Catholic Priest, Co-Founder and Spiritual Director of Companions on the Journey (COJ)
Fr Seán ÓLaoire was born in Ireland and earned a B.Sc. degree (major in Mathematics) from the National University of Ireland. Ordained a catholic priest in 1972, he spent 14 years working in Kenya. He is multi-lingual and has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology; he is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice. He is co-founder and the Spiritual Director of a non-denominational community called “Companions on the Journey” based in Palo Alto. He is the author of five books and co-author of a sixth:
1. “Ukweli ni Nini?”(What is Truth?) – written and published in Swahili in 1983
2. “Spirits in Spacesuits”- published in 2003
3. “Souls on Safari” – published in 2006
4. “A Sensible God” – published in 2008
5. “Why? What Your Life Is Telling You about Who You Are and Why You’re Here” – published in 2013 (with Matthew McKay, PhD and Ralph Metzner, PhD)
6. ”Setting God Free: Moving Beyond the Caricature We’ve Created in Our Own Image” – published in 2021
Vivien Leung Creative Producer, Facilitator, Embodied Social Art Practitioner

Vivien Leung

Creative Producer, Facilitator, Embodied Social Art Practitioner

As a visual practitioner, Vivien Leung tends to the unknown and unseen spaces. She offers live visual scribing at dialogue events, workshops and conferences where she listens, traces and reveals the inner quality of the social field through visualisation, helping participants notice and reflect on the unseen, yet felt sense of relational information. Her visual practice is influenced and deepened by her trainings with Kelvy Bird and Nora Bateson respectively. www.ofdeeplistening.com
Rosie Bell Writer, Copywriter, Mindfulness teacher

Rosie Bell

Writer, Copywriter, Mindfulness teacher

Rosie Bell once earned her living on the opera stage. Now a writer working primarily in public climate narrative and inner-outer transformation for sustainability, she collaborates regularly with the Climate Majority Project, the Life Itself institute, and the Mindfulness Initiative, with whom she co-authored the landmark policy report “Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out.” A mindfulness practitioner and teacher trainee, she brings an academic background in philosophy (University of Edinburgh) and political communication (University of Sheffield) to a decade of work with think tanks, NGOs, thought leaders, and wellbeing innovators. She is co-author of “The System Within – addressing the inner dimension of system change and sustainability” for the Club of Rome.