Speakers and Chairs
let’s meet our
Speakers
Vasileios Basios
David Lorimer
Marjorie Woollacott
Les Lancaster
Edi Bilimoria
Joan Borysenko
Shulamit Elson
Federico Faggin
Donald Hoffman
Kristin Hoffman
Stuart Kauffman
Mary Neal
Adrian Parker
Marieta Pehlivanova
Gregory Shushan
Marina Weiler
Marc Wittman
Gary Lachman
Vasileios Basios
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.
David Lorimer
David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath, poet, spiritual activist, writer, lecturer 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. Originally a merchant banker and then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including The Spirit of Science, Thinking beyond the Brain, Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality, The Protein Crunch (with Jason Drew), and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). His most recent books are his essays A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems, Better Light a Candle. His early books on death and near-death experiences, Survival? and Resonant Mind, were republished in 2017.
He is a founding member of the International Futures Forum and was editor of its digest, Omnipedia – Thinking for Tomorrow. He was also a Trustee of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment and a Churchill Fellow. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince – has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. He is the originator of the Inspiring Purpose Values Poster Programmes, which have reached over 300,000 young people. See www.inspiringpurpose.org.uk
Marjorie Woollacott
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.
Les Lancaster
Prof Les Lancaster is a Founding Director and Dean of the Alef Trust. He is Professor Emeritus of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, an Honorary Research Fellow in Religions and Theology, University of Manchester, UK, and Associated Distinguished Professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, US. He has previously served as Chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, as President of the International Transpersonal Association, and as a Board member of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology. Les’ research interests focus on the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness and the connections between this topic and mysticism, specifically focusing on Kabbalistic Psychology. His published works include The essence of kabbalah and Approaches to consciousness: The marriage of science and mysticism.
Edi Bilimoria
Edi Bilimoria, D.Phil. is an award-winning engineer and consultant to the petrochemical, transportation, and construction industries, but he has also been an ardent student of the Wisdom Tradition and the Arts for more than 50 years, giving courses and lecturing extensively in the UK and abroad.
Edi is also a pianist of concert standard having trained at the Trinity College of Music in London and subsequently with international concert pianists. He has produced a CD of music by Chopin and Liszt, and is also a choral singer, currently with the Godalming Choral Society and previously with the Brighton Festival Chorus, one of the UK’s leading symphony choruses.
Edi’s book The Snake and the Rope was awarded a prize by the Scientific and Medical Network in 2008, and his latest four-volume work, Unfolding Consciousness: Exploring the Living Universe and Intelligent Powers in Nature and Humans contrasts Science with the Perennial Philosophy on Consciousness and Man. In 2023, this work was awarded the SMN’s Grand Prize.
Joan Borysenko
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. has been described – by Dean Ornish MD - as “a rare jewel: respected scientist, gifted therapist and unabashed mystic.”* Her vision for the past 50 years is bringing together science, psychology and spirituality in the service of healing and peace. Joan completed both doctoral and post-doctoral studies at the Harvard Medical School in cancer cell biology and behavioural medicine, returning later in her career as an Instructor in Medicine. After defecting from academic medicine in 1988, she founded Mind-Body Health Sciences, LLC. A licensed psychologist and spiritual mentor, Joan is the author or co-author of seventeen books on integrative medicine, psychology, spirituality and women’s studies. She lives in the sacred mountains of New Mexico with her husband Gordon Dveirin and their two standard poodles, Mitzi and Lola. You can find out more about her work at www.joanborysenko.com.
Shulamit Elson
Shulamit Elson is a profoundly gifted healer, mentor and spiritual teacher. She guides individuals in the use of the vibration of their own voices to a deepening self-awareness and an expanded consciousness using MediSounds®, a powerful meditative practice based on an ancient system described in 13th century literature.
She offers a revelatory connection to other worlds, and enables an insight into the interconnection of all things, bringing the peerless gift of joyous living.
Shulamit works with private clients throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the Holy Land, and she has taught at seminars and workshops in venues as diverse as Esalen and Omega Institutes, as well as Tibet House, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and the Ronald McDonald House in New York City.
She is the author of the highly acclaimed book Kabbalah of Prayer~Sacred Sounds and the Soul’s Journey, published by Anthroposophic Press, and is the creator of several apps to encourages sleep, as well the audio CD Vibration ~ Shulamit & the Drepung Gomang Monks. She holds an MA and a BA from New York University.
Visit www.shulamitelson.com and www.greatoctave.com for more information and YouTube.com/@medisounds for audio and video clips.
Federico Faggin
Federico Faggin is an Italian-American physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. His company Cygnet Technologies, Inc. introduced a pioneering personal communication product for voice, data, and electronic mail in 1984. His companies also developed artificial neural network chips to perform pattern recognition, and advanced image sensors and digital cameras for mobile devices. Federico Faggin has received many prizes and awards, including the Marconi Prize and the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, from President Barack Obama. He is currently president of Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation, dedicated to the science of consciousness. He is an Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network. His autobiography Silicon was published in 2021 and his latest book Irreducible in 2024.
Donald Hoffman
Donald Hoffman received his PhD from MIT, and joined the faculty of the University of California, Irvine in 1983, where he is a Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Sciences. He is an author of over 100 scientific papers and three books, including Visual Intelligence, and his new book, The Case Against Reality. He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences. His writing has appeared in Edge, New Scientist, LA Review of Books, and Scientific American and his work has been featured in Wired, Quanta, The Atlantic, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. He has a TED Talk titled “Do we see reality as it is?” and a podcast with Lex Fridman titled “Reality is an illusion.”
Kristin Hoffman
Kristin Hoffmann is a Juilliard trained singer, conscious musician, and producer. A strong advocate for peace and Earth/Ocean conservation, Kristin opens sonic-emotional heart spaces in which powerful new awareness, connection and healing can flourish. She works regularly with other thought leaders and change-makers to amplify important wisdom for our times through the powerful vehicle of music.
Kristin trained in opera with acclaimed teachers Lorraine Nubar and Zehava Gal and composition with Rob Mathes and Behzad Ranjbaran. After spending multiple years in her early career on major labels, Capitol Records and Interscope Records, Kristin concluded that in order to be in highest alignment with her life’s mission, she would need to think outside of the traditional music industry box and embark on a road less travelled. Fascinated with music’s regenerative and transformational capabilities, she went on to study with French sound healing pioneer, Fabian Maman, and in most recent years with legendary harmonic overtone singer, Timothy Hill (of the Harmonic Choir).
Kristin has performed throughout the world, from environmental concerts to peace symposiums. Her Song for the Ocean was performed at Sydney Opera House by a choir of 800 Australian children. She is currently an active member of The Evolutionary Leaders, and a musical ambassador for the organization UNITY EARTH.
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Most recently, Kristin composed and produced the new anthem for The Holomovement, supporting radical collaboration in action, and welcomed a brand-new album into the world entitled, RainShine ~ Sonic Alchemy for Soul Awakening. She hosts an inspirational online event on the 3rd Sunday of each month at 6pm ET called SONIC SOUL FAMILY GATHERINGS, combining live music and deep dialogue around a theme. All are invited to join by becoming a “Core Member” on her website: https://kristinhoffmann.com
Stuart Kauffman
Prof Stuart Kauffman MD, PhD, FRSC (Canada) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruit fly, genetic regulatory networks, and origin of life, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago 1969-1973, National Cancer Institute 1973-1975, then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, where he served as Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship, 1987–1992. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He also holds an Honorary Degree in Science from the University of Louvain; and was awarded a Gold Medal of the Accademia Lincea in Rome.
Recently, Kauffman and Andrea Roli have published “The World is Not a Theorem”, in Entropy (2021), and “A Third Transition in Science?”, J. Roy. Soc. Interface 4/14/2023, maintaining that the evolving biosphere is a propagating construction, not an entailed deduction, and that no mathematics based on set theory can be used to deduce the diachronic emergence of adaptations in evolution. The implication is that there can be no Final Theory that entails the becoming of the universe. Dr. Kauffman has published over 400 articles and 6 books: The Origins of Order (1993), At Home in the Universe (1995), Investigations (2000), Reinventing the Sacred (2008), Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016) and A World Beyond Physics (2019). He is an Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network.
Mary Neal
Dr. Mary C. Neal is a board-certified orthopaedic spine surgeon who drowned while kayaking on a South American river. She experienced life after death. She went to heaven and back, conversed with Jesus and experienced God's encompassing love. She was returned to Earth with some specific instructions for work she still needed to do. Her life has been one filled with miracles and intervention of God. Her story gives reason to live by faith and is a story of hope.
Dr. Neal was born and raised in Michigan and graduated from the University of Kentucky before attending the UCLA medical school. She completed her orthopaedic surgery training at the University of Southern California after which she lived in Sweden, Switzerland, and Los Angeles while undergoing 1 1/2 years of specialty training in spinal surgery before becoming the Director of spine surgery at USC. Five years later, she left the University for private practice.
She currently lives and works in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she and her family enjoy everything the outdoor world offers, especially all forms of skiing, bicycling, boating, and hiking.
Adrian Parker
Prof. Adrian Parker is a clinical psychologist educated at the Tavistock Clinic and with a medical education from the University of Gothenburg where he is now professor emeritus. While the recipient of the Perrot Warrick Scholarship from Trinity College Cambridge, he became the first at Edinburgh University to gain a doctorate with a thesis on psychic phenomena and altered states of consciousness. This led him to being a co-founder (with Charles Honorton and William Braud) of the now standard laboratory technique for inducing dream-onset states known as the ganzfeld technique.
Having received state funding, he went on to develop the current “state of the art” version of the technique whereby remarkable correspondences between dream imagery and external events are recorded in real time. Adrian has a wide interest in altered states of consciousness, medical psychology and the mind-body relationship. He is author of the book States of Mind and co-author with Annekatrin Puhole of Shakespeare’s Ghost Live. He received in 2014 the Gothenburg Student Award in Pedagogics for teaching open-minded scepticism and in 2019 was an Axel Munthe scholar at San Michele, Capri. Adrian is currently the President of the Society for Psychical Research and is on the faculty of the Scandinavian International University, Örebro, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Marieta Pehlivanova
Marieta Pehlivanova, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences within the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Marieta earned her PhD in Experimental and Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from American University. Her research primarily focuses on near-death experiences and children who report past-life memories. She is interested in various aspects of these experiences, including factors contributing to their occurrence, their effects on individuals, cross-cultural comparisons, and the development of support resources for those who undergo such experiences within healthcare settings.
Gregory Shushan
Gregory Shushan, PhD, is the author of Near-Death Experiences in Indigenous Religions (winner of the Parapsychological Association Book Award), The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife, and Near-Death Experience in Ancient Civilizations (forthcoming from Inner Traditions), and editor of Mind Dust and White Crows: The Psychical Research of William James. Dr Shushan is Visiting Research Fellow at University of Winchester's Centre for Death, Religion and Culture, Adjunct Professor in Thanatology at Marian University, Research Fellow of the Parapsychology Foundation, and candidate for a second PhD at Newman University, Birmingham, with a project on near-death experience in Classical antiquity. He is also the founder and commissioning editor of Afterworlds Press, an imprint of White Crow Books.
Websites and social media:
www.gregoryshushan.com
patreon.com/gregoryshushan
twitter.com/GregoryShushan
facebook.com/gregoryshushan
instagram.com/gregoryshushan
linkedin.com/in/gregory-shushan/
Marina Weiler
Marina Weiler is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS), University of Virginia. She’s a trained neuroscientist with a background in neuroimaging, brain stimulation, and basic neuroscience. Marina's contributions to the field have earned her prestigious awards from institutions such as Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES, Brazil), the Brazilian Academy of Neurology, the National Institutes of Health (NIH, U.S.), the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Research.
Marc Wittman
Marc Wittmann, Ph.D., studied Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich, Germany. He received his Ph.D. (1997) and his Habilitation (2007) at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Medical School, University of Munich. Between 2004 and 2009 he was Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego. Since 2009 he has been employed at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany. His research in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience is focused on the perception of time in ordinary states of consciousness, such as related to cognition, emotion and bodily feelings, as well as in altered states of consciousness such as induced through meditation, Floatation-REST, and psychedelics. He is author of the books Felt Time (2016) and Altered States of Consciousness (2018), both published by MIT Press.
Gary Lachman
Gary Lachman is the author of several books about consciousness, culture, and the Western esoteric tradition, including Dreaming Ahead of Time, The Return of Holy Russia, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson, and, most recently, Maurice Nicoll: Forgotten Teacher of the Fourth Way. He has written biographies of C G Jung, Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Emanuel Swedenborg, P D Ouspensky, and Aleister Crowley. He writes for several journals in the US, UK, and Europe, lectures around the world and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a former life he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Before moving to London in 1996 and becoming a full-time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a metaphysical book shop, taught English literature, and was Science Writer for UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He can be reached at https://www.gary-lachman.com/, www.facebook.com/GVLachman/ and twitter.com/GaryLachman