Programme
Friday 3rd
Saturday 4th
Sunday 5th
Prof Masayuki Ohkado: Cases of Children Claiming to Have Past-Life Memories in Japan
In this presentation, after providing the general information about cases of children claiming to have past-life memories in Japan and an overview of my research, I will focus on the case of Takeharu, a boy claiming to have fought on the battleship Yamato in the Second World War. The case has three interesting features. First, it is a fairly strong case in that it has many of the characteristic features of cases of the reincarnation type. Second, the child’s statements were recorded and the investigation started before the possible identification of the previous personality was made. Third, in a number of ways, it is comparable to the case of James Leininger, one of the best-known American cases.
Prof Masayuki Ohkado, trained in linguistics within the framework of generative grammar, has been working on past-life experiences with special focus on children claiming to have past-life and other prenatal memories, near-death experiences, and related phenomena, especially those occurring in Japan. He is currently affiliated with Chubu University (School of General Education, and Graduate School of Global Humanics) as a professor and with the University of Virginia (Division of Perceptual Studies) as an external researcher.
Dorothea Fuckert, MD, Life between Lives® Spiritual Regression
Life between Lives® Spiritual Regression (abbr. LBL Soul Journey) is a single session process, pioneered by the clinical psychologist, hypnotherapist, acclaimed researcher and author Dr. Michael Newton. His books, published in over 40 languages, gave hope to millions of people by touching their hearts and inherent knowing. Our perception of reality is usually restricted. That holds true as well for the perception of the human self. LBL applies deep hypnosis for a quick and wide access to the super-conscious memory of who we are as immortal identity. It enables a visceral re-experiencing of one’s existence beyond physical death in a higher-dimensional realm of light, peace and love. There, we perceive our soul as a fully conscious entity of energy and divine potentials, reunite with a spirit team of guides/angelic beings, meet with the soul group, deceased loved ones and explore some other fascinating spheres in the afterlife.
Vital life questions are answered by a source of higher wisdom. It is a deep, safe ‘Spiritual Transformative Experience’ which brings awareness of one’s soul identity, spiritual healing, meaning and purpose into the current life. Over 200 certified therapists worldwide have facilitated 75,000 LBL sessions. As a result, a vast knowledge of the human essence has been collected. Most fascinating for me is to witness how the individual soul incarnates with a unique blend out of hundreds of these divine potentials. In the body’s compacted light energy they build patterns at first, “masked marvels”, but then lead people gradually towards their chosen life purpose and evolutionary destination.
Dorothea Fuckert, MD, has been practising for four decades near Heidelberg/Germany, as a board-certified family physician and licensed psychotherapist. She is author of SOUL LIGHT. Our Divine Purpose Revealed on 2000 Afterlife Journeys (2022) and numerous papers in international journals; co-author of various books, spiritual teacher and LBL hypnotherapist. Her calling is to ensoul: helping people in unfolding their unique Divine potentials and fulfilling their life purpose. She is assistant teacher, mentor and columnist for the Michael Newton Institute, which offers trainings and talks, publishes books and the regular online journal ‘Stories of the Afterlife’.
Dr Oliver Robinson - A Year in the Life of an Aspiring Piano Composer: Integrating science and spirituality through music
This session will present my experiences from the past year, during which I have taken up piano playing and composing piano pieces. I will play recordings of 2 of the most meditative compositions. The work of composing and music , then recording it with digital audio software, is a balancing act between the spiritual state of open, non-linear receptive “unknowing”, to allow the music to come through, and the linear technology-enabled hard graft of recording, refining and producing. Running through all of the work is the invisible and beautiful mathematics of music, which I will also briefly discuss. If you would like to listen to any of the tunes in advance, go to this webpage: https://soundcloud.com/ollyrobinson
Dr Oliver Robinson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, author of Paths Between Head and Heart: The harmonies of science and spirituality. He is also an aspiring piano composer. He lives with his wife and daughter in London. His personal website is www.oliverrobinson.info
Prof. Jim Tucker - The Psychology of Children’s Past-Life Memories
Children’s reports of memories from a past life have been the focus of study at the University of Virginia for over 60 years. Often, the details the children give are found to match the life of one specific deceased individual. In addition, many of the children show psychological features that appear associated with the memories they report, such as phobias and post-traumatic symptoms, as well as gender nonconformity in cases involving a past life as a member of the opposite sex. Several groups of these children have undergone psychological evaluations, and the results of these studies will be reviewed. In addition, follow-up of these individuals into adulthood will also be discussed.
Jim B. Tucker, M.D. is a child psychiatrist and the Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Ian Stevenson on children who report memories of previous lives. He is the author of two books that together have been translated into twenty languages, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives (2005) and Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives (2013), a New York Times bestseller. He has published numerous papers in scientific journals and given talks to both scientific and general audiences.
Dr Rupert Sheldrake and Dr Iain McGilchrist in Dialogue
Rupert Sheldrake PhD is a biologist and author of more than 90 scientific papers and 9 books, and the co-author of 6 books. His books have been published in 28 languages. He was among the top 100 Global Thought Leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute, Zurich, Switzerland’s leading think tank. On ResearchGate, the largest scientific and academic online network, his RG score of 34.4 puts him among the top 7.5% of researchers, based on citations of his peer-reviewed publications. For ten years running he has been recognized as one of the ‘most spiritually influential living people in the world‘ by Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine. His work has been featured in many magazines, newspapers and broadcast media, including New Scientist, The Guardian, Discover magazine, The Spectator, The Washington Post, Die Zeit and on BBC radio and television.
Since 1985, he has taught every year on courses at Schumacher College, in Devon, England, and has been part of the faculty for the MSc in Holistic Science programme since its inception in 1998. In 2000, he was the Steinbach Scholar in Residence at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. From 2003-2011, Visiting Professor and Academic Director of the Holistic Thinking Program at the Graduate Institute, Connecticut, USA. In 2005, Visiting Professor of Evolutionary Science at the Wisdom University, Oakland, California. From 2005-2010 he was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, a Fellow of Schumacher College in Devon, England, and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, London. He is an Honorary Member of the SMN.
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore, and a former Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He now lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland, where he continues to write, and lectures worldwide.
His books include Against Criticism (Faber), The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale UP), The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning; Why Are We So Unhappy? (Yale UP), and Ways of Attending (Routledge).
His latest publication is the two-volume work, The Matter with Things which was published in November 2021 by Perspectiva Press. This is a sustained critique of reductive materialism, and concerns such questions as ‘Who are we? What is the world? What is the nature of time and space? What do we mean by purpose, value and the divine? And how do we most reliably set about finding out?’ He has also been commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a book of reflections on the humanities and sciences; and plans to write a critique of contemporary society and culture from the standpoint of neuropsychology, as well as a study of what is revealed by the paintings of subjects with psychotic illnesses. He is an Honorary Member of the SMN.
Pascal Michael PhD – Existential Neuroscience: A journey from materialism to non-materialism to meta-materialism to the new materialism
The riddle of consciousness is one which may be purposefully embedded at the heart of the human story, yet neuroscientists at present are compelled by a promissory scientific view that materialism will ultimately demystify it. Some commentators with alternative views claim that psychedelic neuroimaging results provide decisive evidence of mind beyond brain, but even this is still a misconstruing of the data which can be subsumed under a neural model. The psychedelic neurosciences, though, do represent an extremely powerful example of the remarkable theoneurological nexus between the biological and the spiritual.
For instance, these substances’ enacting of the dissolution of the brain’s internal model of the world, a ‘controlled hallucination’, also occurring in other instances like the near-death experience, may be the source of Gnostic and other Eastern philosophies of having escaped illusion and revealed reality. Additionally, while the potent psychedelic DMT has been conceptualised as a ‘reality switch’ technology – where its generation of a novel world-model implies sensory information being received from an extra-terrestrial source – neural data on DMT gestures at the possibility that mnemonic and imaginational mechanisms may still explicate these other, albeit highly alien, worlds. In spite of these ideas which are sympathetic to the prevailing physicalism, there is a cluster of experiences, such as in NDE reports, which may glimpse at feasibility of life beyond the body – as well as a swathe of anomalous phenomena which consistently refuse to be explained away, though these may be more ‘meta-materialistic’, by their suggestion of non-local consciousness, while not per se heralding total independence from the neural system.
Examples include any non-socially transmitted, yet intersubjectively identical, content of psychedelic or near-death states which may rely on brain-states resonating with morphic fields; the potential for parapsychological phenomena to be expressed arising from the disinhibition of top-down neural control networks and release of unconscious, or collective unconscious, information; or theories that communication with the dead requires that data from the akashic fields connects to the nervous system of a receptive medium. Other phenomena, such as curious tropes in alien abduction accounts, may also point not to non-locality of mind but the manipulation of physical systems by high-order beings to facilitate out-of-body experiences. Finally, even if in the last analysis consciousness does indeed depend on the brain, there is a wealth of opportunity to re-imagine the brain, in the spirit of a radical groundedness and the ‘new materialism’, as a material organ uniquely designed to provide beings with an experience of the very reality within which we immanently, undeniably and thus gratefully and likely purposefully, find ourselves. As Plotinus said, ‘we are within a reality that is also within us.’
Pascal Michael BSc, MSc completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of Greenwich on a comparative analysis of the neurophenomenology of both DMT (and analogous) experiences and the near-death experience (NDE). He is currently a lecturer there, teaching and researching on his particular interests of the phenomenology, neuroscience and implications of psychedelics, survival research such as NDEs and mediumship, alien abduction/UFOlogy, and their intersections. He has presented at Breaking Conventions and for the Tyringham Initiative, and published in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology. He is co-leader of the ALEF Trust’s certificate in Psychedelics, ASCs and Transpersonal Psychology, and the 2020 recipient of the Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award.
Evan Premo - That Art Thou: Integrating Cosmic Oneness Through Music
Evan Premo’s drone based, ambient-style music played on acoustic instruments helps to facilitate a deep meditative experience which connects listeners to one another and all consciousness. Sound has the ability to facilitate the integration and embodiment of concepts of metaphysical idealism. Joined by singer and narrator Mary Bonhag, Evan’s live instrumental music will be layered with spoken and sung texts from The Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, The Gospel of Thomas, The Trimorphic Protennoia, and The Thunder: Perfect Mind. Participants are invited to meditate along with the music and texts using the meditation modality they are most comfortable with or to simply listen deeply. The meditation will include the “I am” chant from Evan’s work The Primacy of Consciousness based Marjorie Woollacott’s book: Infinite Awareness, The Awakening of a Scientific Mind.
Composer / Musician Evan Premo creates musical experiences for exploring the intersection of consciousness, spirituality, and artistic expression. His cutting-edge work traverses the boundaries of knowing through the language of sound. Evan has extensive experience engaging audiences of all ages in music as an educational and connective tool, and has performed at Carnegie Hall and on National Public Radio’s Performance Today as well as many other stages globally. Evan’s compositions have been commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra, The Pine Mountain Music Festival, and Aizuri Quartet, among others. Evan is the Founder and co-Artistic Director of Scrag Mountain Music and the genre-bending Beethoven and Banjos festival. When Evan’s not performing and composing, he may be found communing with nature or tinkering with his latest homemade instrument.
Prof Paul Mills and Prof Marjorie Woollacott – Dialogue on the Spiritual Lives of Scientists
Paul J. Mills PhD is Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health. The Center is advancing research excellence in integrative health to transform how medicine is practiced, supporting education and mentorship in integrative health research for students as well as healthcare professionals, and helping to guide the creation of new models of clinical care, combining the best of traditional medicine and evidence-based integrative therapies. The overarching goal is to advance the investigation of integrative health approaches and the integration of effective approaches in health care.?
He is also Chief of the UC San Diego Behavioral Medicine Division, Director of the UC San Diego Clinical Research Biomarker Laboratory, and Co-director of the UC San Diego Clinical and Translational Research Institute’s Translational Research Technology (TRT) Program. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation.
He has expertise in Integrative Medicine, Traditional Medical systems, and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing numerous manuscripts and book chapters on these topics. He is the author of The Spiritual Lives of Scientists.
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 She was also a research professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Umea in Umea, Sweden, and in the National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille, France.
Marjorie has received over 7.2 million dollars in research funding for her research in child development, aging, rehabilitation medicine and most recently, meditation. 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, including the 2017 Parapsychological Association Book Award, Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Nautilus Book Award) 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.
Alef Trust: Round Table
Chair: Dr Jessica Bockler
Presenters:
Cheyenne Cheyenne Loana Lückemeier
Valerie Reichmann Popowski
Terence Sexton
Explorations of whether and how consciousness may extend beyond the individual brain and body invite us to consider new perspectives on human nature, our cultural evolution, and what are our roles and responsibilities for one another and for nature and earth. Researchers and practitioners working in the climate and sustainability sciences have begun to assert that purely external, technical solutions are insufficient in addressing the multifaceted ecological and social problems of our time, because they are bypassing the inner dimensions of the crises we have been experiencing. There is a growing recognition that our global challenges are rooted in dysfunctional mental states and social dynamics, and that we need to engage in inner work to evolve our capacities and skills in addressing world-wide insecurities and volatilities.
In this session we will hear from a number of practitioners and researchers active in the Alef Trust community, who are working with holistic, consciousness-centred approaches to peace-building, mental health in climate activism, and change facilitation.
Postmaterialist and integrative perspectives on consciousness have ethical implications. This session invites us to reflect on what these new perspectives mean for us in our daily lives and our professional practices. The session is structured as a round table which will be initiated by three ‘seed’ presentations covering the following topics:
Mental health in climate activism and eco-grief: With the growing awareness and distress over worldwide ecological degradation, there has been a surge in environmental activism on a global scale. While research increasingly acknowledges the emotional impact of the climate and ecological crises under the umbrella term ‘eco-anxiety’, literature on supporting and sustaining activists’ wellbeing is scarce. Informed by her own engagement in the climate justice movement, Cheyenne Loana Lückemeier will explore the impact of the climate and ecological emergency on activists’ mental health, arguing that activists are at a disproportionately higher risk to experience mental health challenges. Focusing on the under-researched experience of eco-grief, Cheyenne’s research explored how therapeutic practitioners can better support environmental activists in their lived experience of eco-grief, and nurture individual and collective wellbeing. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with psychotherapists and mindfulness practitioners, Cheyenne’s research findings invite us to explore more embodied and creative ways of responding to the complexities of our time, to cultivate a more holistic approach to activism and our relationship with Nature.
Transpersonal approaches to peace-building: Valerie Reichmann Popowski will present her research into transpersonal approaches to Palestinian-and-Israeli peacebuilding. In 2021 and 2022 she explored the lived experience of Israelis and Palestinians who participated in or facilitated peace-building initiatives rooted in spiritual, holistic, and integrative methods. Valerie also undertook field work, joining and observing several peace initiatives, gathering data through direct participation. In her research she explored if and how transpersonal approaches to peace-building foster understanding and empathy among conflicting parties, and she examined if such approaches may transcend the divisive narratives and entrenched beliefs that perpetuate conflict.
Conscious leadership: It is increasingly being recognised that our inner dimensions are deep leverage points for change, as we tackle the root causes of climate change and other sustainability challenges. While it has no agreed definition, consciousness can be considered to encompass all our inner dimensions. However, there currently appears to be a focus on developing our inner dimensions through expanding consciousness awareness. Informed by his ongoing research using co-operative inquiry to explore how changemakers experience their consciousness in relation to their leadership, Terence Sexton will propose that consciousness also needs to be developed in other ways. These include developing the contents of consciousness (such as values, beliefs, and worldviews) that are associated with pro-environmental behaviours and gaining greater cognitive, emotional and behavioural agility by developing to the higher (post-conventional) stages of consciousness.
Michael Nahm - Terminal Lucidity in Children and in Animals: recent research and implications
Terminal lucidity (TL) refers to an unexpected surge of mental clarity before death in people who have previously been dull, confused, or nonresponsive. Such occurrences can happen in the last minutes, hours, or days before a person’s death, and they are particularly astonishing when the brains of the affected people have been affected by neurological damage, for example by strokes, brain tumours or Alzheimer’s disease. In recent years, the investigation of TL has gained increased attention in academic and medical settings.
In this presentation, I introduce recent developments of research into TL. These include a study on TL in children and one on TL and related end-of-life experiences in animals, such as dogs, cats, and other pets. Unexpected end-of-life experiences such as TL appear to be not uncommon and knowing about them may help people to recognise them as they occur and to deal with them in appropriate manners. Some of their implications may also advance our understanding of the nature of the mind in higher animals including human beings.
Michael Nahm is a biologist and research associate at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) in Freiburg, Germany. His research interests focus on riddles of biology and the mind. These include terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, other unusual brain-related findings, and reincarnation cases. Nahm has published four books and numerous scientific articles on these matters.
Grainne McAnallen - What the Ancient Practice of Yoga Nidra can Teach us about the Relationship between Energy and Consciousness
Shiva and Shakti, Consciousness and Energy, are the Yin and Yang of Yogic Philosophy, which consists of a large body of scriptures and practices to support self-realisation or living at higher states of consciousness. The interplay of energy and consciousness is the cornerstone of this tradition.
Yoga Nidra, or conscious sleep, is a less well-known practice developed by the Yogis and is designed to allow the practitioner to experience the low brainwave frequencies, normally only experienced during sleep. It brings clarity to how lower brainwave frequencies equate to higher stages of consciousness and to how these higher stages of consciousness manifest themselves in our bodies.
As brain activity is reduced, less energy is demanded by the brain to process information and that energy is freed up in our bodies. As we drop into lower brainwave frequencies, it becomes easier to sense into the energy field that surrounds us, to direct our own energy for healing, and to rest and restore just as we would in normal sleep.
With regular practice, the practitioner strengthens the neural pathways, breathing patterns, energetic blueprint and balancing of the nervous system that equates to higher states of consciousness, thereby training the bodymind to access these states more easily, and supporting the evolution to higher stages of consciousness.
This session will include:
- a guided experience of Yoga Nidra or conscious sleep, in order to experience or have a felt sense of higher states of consciousness,
- a discussion of the significance of energy and consciousness from the Yogic perspective
- time for questions
Grainne McAnallen is an Executive Coach and an Advanced Yoga Nidra Instructor. As a coach, she uses a variety of techniques, including Yoga Nidra, to enable clients to access both left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere capabilities so that they effectively use a “different mind to solve the problem than the mind that created it” as per Albert Einstein. Prior to qualifying as a coach, she worked in the hedge fund business in New York and London, analysing and investing in hedge funds on behalf of institutional investors. She has a Bachelor of Civil Law from University College Dublin, Ireland, is a Chartered Financial Analyst and has many qualifications in the field of coaching, yoga and systemic constellations.
Dr Mona Sobhani – Neuroscience and Spirituality – A Personal Journey
Cognitive neuroscientist Mona Sobhani, PhD tells the story of how a series of life-changing events initiated her transformation from a die-hard materialist into an open-minded spiritual seeker. The journey started with experiences that couldn’t be easily explained and turned into a search for both scientific and personal “proof” that there’s an unseen dimension to life. Working through an identity crisis along the way, she dove into psychology, quantum physics, neuroscience, philosophy, and esoteric literature, exploring the relationship between anomalous phenomena, consciousness, the brain, and spirituality — ultimately finding that the mysteries of the human experience go far beyond what the present scientific materialist paradigm can comprehend and that it is time to move beyond this approach if we want to engage in a meaningful way with the inexplicable Universe we inhabit.
Mona Sobhani, PhD is a cognitive neuroscientist, author, and entrepreneur. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. She is the author of Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe (Park City Press/Inner Traditions), which details her transformation from a diehard scientific materialist to an open-minded spiritual seeker. In the Brave New World of Psychedelic Science substack, she writes about the psychedelic renaissance, altered states of consciousness, and the transpersonal. She is co-founder of Exploring Consciousness, a community of curious scientists who are seeking to understand consciousness, spirituality, and the nature of our reality. www.monasobhaniphd.com
Dr Dean Radin and Prof Bill Bengston in Dialogue – Energy Medicine and Healing Experiments
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 and cofounder of the genetic neuroengineering company, Cognigenics. He earned an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the IONS research staff in 2001, Radin worked at AT&T Bell Labs, Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, and SRI International. He has given over 700 talks and interviews worldwide, and he is author or co-author of some 300 scientific and popular articles, four dozen book chapters, and nine books, four of which have been translated into 15 foreign languages, including Real Magic (2018).
William F. Bengston PhD is an emeritus professor of statistics and research methods at St. Joseph’s University in New York, and the past President (2010-2022) of the Society for Scientific Exploration, an international group of scientists who study anomalies. Dr. Bengston has been doing research into anomalous healing for over forty years, and has numerous peer reviewed academic publications. His memoir, The Energy Cure, is published by Sounds True Publishers. He has also lectured widely in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Dr. Bengston’s research has produced the first successful full cures of transplanted mammary cancer and methylcholanthrene induced sarcomas in mice by energy healing techniques that he helped to develop. He has also investigated assorted correlates to healing such as EEG and fMRI entrainment, and geomagnetic micropulsation anomalies in healing space. His current work involves the attempt to reverse engineer healing and reproduce healing without the healer, and to develop therapies that can be scaled. To read more, see bengstonresearch.com.