Galileo Commission Summit X

Book Launch for  

The Playful Universe: Synchronicity and the Nature of Consciousness

edited by Marjorie Woollacott, David Lorimer and Gary Schwartz

Thursday 26 and Friday 27 September, 4-8:30 pm BST

This volume consists of essays by scientists and academics describing their own experiences of synchronicity and how these experiences transformed both their worldview and the way they lived their lives. The essays consider possible interpretations/explanations and implications of these synchronistic events for a deeper understanding of consciousness and the interconnected nature of reality in terms of epistemology and ontology. A major theme of the volume is, “What kind of universe makes synchronicity possible?”  We anticipate that you will be intrigued, and also perhaps feel a sense of participatory resonance and joy, at the answers you find in the essays. We truly believe that this is a fundamentally intelligent, benevolent, creative and playful universe in which we, as individual expressions of the one Universal Mind, co-create our reality.

Round table

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

Themes

1. Synchronicity experience(s) and their meaning (interpretations, implications)
2. Influences of synchronicities on the way you view the world
3. What kind of universe makes synchronicity possible?

Thursday, 26 September

Session 1: 4-6pm BST
Chair: Prof Marjorie Woollacott

Prof Roderick Main

Dr Joan Walton

Dr William Keepin

Prof Marjorie Woollacott

Session 2: 6.30-8.30pm BST
Chair: David Lorimer 

Prof Rick Tarnas

Laurel Waterman

Dr Laleh Quinn

David Lorimer

Friday, 27 September

Session 3: 4-6pm BST
Chair: Prof Gary Schwartz

Dr Vasileios Basios

Dr Bethany Butzer

Monica Bryant

Prof Gary Schwartz

Session 4: 6.30-8.30pm BST
Chair: Prof Bernard Beitman 

Dr Jeffrey Dunne

Dr Dean Radin

Sophia Demas

Prof Bernard Beitman

Vasileios Basios PhD is a senior researcher in the field of Physics of Complex Systems. At the University of Brussels, he specialises in interdisciplinary studies focusing on self-organisation and emergence in complex matter, as well as fundamental aspects of complex systems, in particular information, agency and time. Early in his career, he was mentored by Ilya Prigogine and Grégoire Nicolis at the Solvay Institutes of Physics and Chemistry in Brussels. Dr. Basios is deeply interested in the historical evolution of scientific ideas and their role in challenging the dominant materialist-reductionist worldview. He advocates a qualitative shift in science, stressing the urgency that complexity studies bring. He is passionate about integrating self-reflection into science, with the aim of contributing insights from complex systems science. To this end, he envisages the promotion of a resilient network of individuals, groups, organisations and research initiatives to steer science towards such a transformative process.

Monica Bryant, BSc (Hons), MA, has provided her leading-edge Evolutionary Consulting and Coaching since 1994, offering a transpersonal perspective to support inner and outer evolution. Her evolutionary approach is soul-based and helps to unveil deep patterns, cycles and meaning to support wholeness and well-being. With more than 40 years of experience in archetypal psychology, Monica has a Master’s degree in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred based on transformative learning and transpersonal research methodologies. She is an independent researcher and writer who has a transdisciplinary approach to the evolving holistic worldview. At the University of Sussex she taught courses such as The New Microbiology and Culture, Health and Healing. Her work draws on her life experience in the fields of human and planetary potential, natural health and new paradigm sciences.

Bethany Butzer PhD writes, teaches, and conducts research in the fields of positive psychology and transpersonal psychology, which emphasize the development of human strength and potential. She received her MA in clinical psychology and her PhD in social psychology from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Bethany has worked in the corporate world and in academia, and she has also spent several years as an entrepreneur. From 2013 to 2015 she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School, where she studied the effects of yoga in school settings. Bethany currently lives in Prague, where she was a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of New York in Prague from 2016 to 2022. She is currently a Lecturer for the Alef Trust MSc programme in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology and she is also the Assistant Director of the Alef Trust PhD programme in Applied Transpersonal Psychology. Bethany’s research focuses on yoga and mindfulness for youth, as well as transpersonal topics such as synchronicity, parapsychology, and ecopsychology.

Sophia Demas MA has enjoyed three diverse careers: a decade in architecture that included working with notable 20th century visionary Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller, running her own couture fashion business, and working as a mental health therapist in private practice. She also created Living a Fearless Life, a twelve-workshop program. She is author of two books. In The Divine Language of Coincidence, Sophia chronicles the miracles she has experienced since the age of 19. After discovering the key in turning a coincidence into a potential miracle, she was propelled to share with the world how miracles are accessible to anyone. By paying attention to divine nudging and taking action, not only did she receive, against her free will, what was best for her, but had her marriage saved from the brink of divorce, was saved from almost certain death, and many other extraordinary events that have led her to her true purpose. Her experiences related to death and after-death communications are included in her second book, Consciousness Beyond Death, recently released.

Jeffrey Dunne, PhD is President of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL, www.icrl.org), an organization established to continue research on the nature of consciousness carried out at Princeton University from 1979-2007.  Beyond his own explorations into the nature of consciousness through ICRL, and several decades of research at Johns Hopkins in fields ranging from acoustics to data science and AI, Dr. Dunne is an award-winning playwright and author.  His recently published novel, Nexus, weaves the concepts of syntropy and the nature of consciousness into a story that addresses the potentially-existential challenges humanity is facing, highlighting a path by which we can navigate towards a healthier, sustainable future.

William Keepin, PhD, is a mathematical physicist with extensive training in contemplative meditation and transpersonal psychology. His research on sustainable energy to mitigate climate change influenced international environmental policy, and he was a whistleblower in nuclear science policy. Will co-founded Gender Equity and Reconciliation International which has conducted 300 trainings in 14 countries on gender equality, and also Satyana Institute which organizes conferences to bring contemplative mystics together across the religions and science. His books include Belonging to God: Science, Spirituality, and a Universal Path of Divine Love (2016), and Gender Equity and Reconciliation: Thirty Years of Healing the Most Ancient Wound in the Human Family (2023). 

David Lorimer is a visionary polymath, poet and spiritual activist who is Global Ambassador and Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network, Editor of Paradigm Explorer and Co-Chair of the Galileo Commission. His most recent books are A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems Better Light a Candle. He is also co-editor with Marjorie Woollacott of Spiritual Awakenings and with Ervin Laszlo of The Great Upshift

Dr. Laleh Quinn has been a research faculty member in the Cognitive Science department at the University of California San Diego for 25 years. She obtained her Ph.D. in Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Arizona. Her research has ranged from neurophysiological recordings of brain activity in awake behaving animals to understanding the roots of empathy and compassion. She has taught mindfulness and meditation to students and faculty at UCSD and is currently devoting much of her time to writing about her experiences of expanded reality beyond the confines of materialism.

Dean Radin, PhD is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Associated Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and chairman of the genetic neuroengineering company, Cognigenics Inc. He earned an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining IONS in 2001, Radin worked at AT&T Bell Labs, Princeton University, and the University of Edinburgh. He has given over 750 invited talks and interviews worldwide, and published some 300 articles, four dozen book chapters, and four best-selling books translated into 15 foreign languages.

Gary E. Schwartz, PhD, 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 (www.lach.arizona.edu) and served as the founding president of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (www.AAPSglobal.com).

Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He has taught courses in the history of ideas, depth psychology, archetypal cosmology, cultural history, and the evolution of consciousness. He also frequently lectured on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern that is widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network, and contains an exploration of the phenomenon of synchronicity. He is also the co-editor of Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof. Richard Tarnas is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and member of the Board of Governors for the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.

Joan Walton, PhD, received her first degree 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.

Laurel Waterman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Curriculum and Pedagogy, Wellbeing Emphasis, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. She teaches narrative non-fiction writing at the University of Toronto and is an adjunct faculty member in the Alef Trust’s MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology.  She is a board member of The Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) and a student member of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS Global). Laurel’s research focuses on consciousness education, aiming to popularize participatory and postmaterialist paradigms of consciousness in education.

Marjorie Woollacott, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Human Physiology, and member of the Institute of Neuroscience, at the University of Oregon. 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). She has published more than 200 scientific articles and written or co-edited eight books. Her latest book, Infinite Awareness (2015) (winner of eight awards) 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.