Plenary 2 Friday, October 22, 2010
P2. PL2. The Primacy of Consciousness
The Inner Revolution of Spiritual Awakening. Adyashantiy (Nondual Teacher)
Spiritual awakening opens the door to a life beyond ego; a life lived directly from spirit rather than from the mind. In order to live this way we must stand alone not as an island or a defense, isolated within the structure of ideology, but as a free being. We must step completely out of the known, out of every conceptual box, every container that humanity has ever created, so that the freshness of spirit can flower ever new and free.
Towards a Science of Being. Peter Russell, (M.A., D.C.S., ES.P.)
What is consciousness? How does it arise? Is everything conscious to some degree? Does consciousness create reality? And what is reality anyway? Can science and spirituality be reconciled? And what do we really mean by "I"? With his distinctive blend of physics, psychology, and philosophy, Peter Russell shows that we are on threshold of revolution in worldview even more far-reaching than that initiated by Copernicus 500 years ago. All the pieces for the new worldview are in place. Nothing new needs to be discovered. What is required is for us to put the pieces together and explore the new picture of the cosmos that emerges–one that bridges science and spirituality. The key is the nature of consciousness. Despite the success of modern science in so many areas, it encounters great difficulty around the fundamental questions of consciousness. Western science is based on the assumption that the ultimate essence of the cosmos is matter-energy, in some shape for form. In this talk, Peter will share his latest thinking on why consciousness is the fundamental essence of the cosmos. Many have claimed this from metaphysical perspectives; what makes Peter's model unique is that he arrives at this conclusion using contemporary physics and psychology.
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Robert Lanza, MD (CSO at Advanced Cell Technology)
Every now and then a simple yet radical idea shakes the very foundations of knowledge. The startling discovery that the world was not flat challenged and ultimately changed the way people perceived themselves and their relationship with the world. For most humans of the 15th century, the notion of Earth as ball of rock was nonsense. The whole of natural philosophy is undergoing a sea change again, increasingly being forced upon us by the experimental findings of quantum theory, and at the same time, toward doubt and uncertainty in the physical explanations of the universe s genesis and structure. Biocentrism completes this shift in worldview, turning the world upside down again with the view that life creates the universe instead of the other way around. In this paradigm, life is not an accidental byproduct of the laws of physics. Switching perspective from physics to biology unlocks the cages in which science has unwittingly managed to confine itself. Biocentrism shatters our ideas of life, time and space, and even death. At the same time it releases us from the dull worldview of life being merely the activity of an admixture of carbon and a few other elements; it suggests the exhilarating possibility that life is fundamentally immortal. Biocentrism awakens a new sense of possibility, and opens new approaches to understanding cognition, from unraveling the nature of consciousness to developing thinking machines that experience the world the same way we do. Biocentrism should also provide stronger bases for solving problems associated with quantum physics and the Big Bang. Accepting space and time as forms of animal understanding (as biologic), rather than as external physical objects, offers a new way of understanding everything from the microworld (for instance, the reason for the uncertainty principle and the strange results of the two-slit experiment) to the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe. Above all, biocentrism offers a more promising way to bring together all of physics, as scientists have been attempting to do since Einstein. Without recognizing the essential role of biology, attempts to truly unify the universe will remain a train to nowhere.
White Robed Monks of St. Benedict