"The courage to penetrate and power to see clearly the meaning of things hidden beyond the situation prevailing around us and to act up to the discovered meaning is what is known as revolutionary insight ... Revolution can take place only where there is this power of penetrating insight." --Vinoba Bhave
In these times of critical shift, standing up for a compassionate, sustainable, and just new society is the most exciting conversation on the planet. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, pointed out: "... If we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, then we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values." Now clearly beyond all connotations of violence or unconscious disruption, the word has taken on new meaning for the future that at once brings us back to the roots of independent thought, and our democracy as spiritually motivated citizens. In essence, it's all about evolution.
What IS the Evolution of Revolution? Standing on the premise that it is rooted in consciousness, we begin our journey by exploring the archives of thought that reveal "shift points" in the the way society has understood spirituality, science, and social governance throughout history. The Leadership Council of the Association for Global New Thought share dynamic passages that forever changed the prevailing worldview.
Dr. Michael Beckwith weaves these into a case for the evolution of consciousness, itself, demonstrating that historic shift-points always amplify some seed of perennial wisdom that holds a key to our common future.
Dr. Michael Beckwith is the Founder and Spiritual Director of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, CA., a 9000 member transdenominational, multi-cultural spiritual community. A Co-founder and current President of AGNT, he is a recipient of many humanitarian awards for his commitment to world peace.
B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.
The Conscious Universe: Where Buddhism and Physics Converge
Physicists have long assumed that the universe is fundamentally composed of matter and energy and that life and consciousness are accidental byproducts of configurations of matter. But a growing number of distinguished physicists are now suggesting that consciousness may play a much more fundamental role in nature than scientists previously believed. In this lecture Alan Wallace will review some of the most provocative theories presented by such leading physicists as John Wheeler, Stephen Hawking, and Andre Linde that challenge many of the materialist assumptions based on outdated19th-century physics. And he will discuss how these theories may relate to Buddhist theories and practices, including those of the Theravada, Mahayana, and Great Perfection traditions of Buddhism.
Lynne McTaggart is one of the preeminent spokespersons on consciousness, the new physics and the science of spirituality. She is the award-winning journalist and author of five books, including the worldwide bestsellers The Intention Experiment and The Field, both considered seminal books of the New Age. Wayne Dyer called The Field "the most profound and enlightening book I have ever read". Other plaudits have come from the late Arthur C. Clarke, Caroline Myss and some forty leaders in the field of science, consciousness and spirituality. Lynne is editor of the Living The Field master class (www.livingthefield.com) and runs highly popular conferences and workshops (www.theintentionworkshops.com), designed to help people adapt the ideas of the new scientific paradigm into their everyday lives. As co-founder and editorial director of What Doctors Don't Tell You (www.wddty.com), she publishes newsletters that are among the most widely praised in the world. Lynne is the architect of the Intention Experiments, a web -based 'global laboratory', involving an international consortium of prestigious scientists and thousands of people in countries around the world to test the power of intention to heal the world (www.theintentionexperiment.com). Lynne has spoken before many diverse audiences around the world and is regular on television and radio in many countries. She lives in London with her husband and business partner Bryan Hubbard and their two daughters.
B. Alan Wallace began his studies of Tibetan Buddhism, language, and culture in 1970 at the University of Göttingen in Germany and then continued his studies over the next fourteen years in India, Switzerland, and the United States. Ordained as a Buddhist monk by H. H. the Dalai Lama in 1975, he has taught Buddhist meditation and philosophy worldwide since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the philosophy of science, he returned his monastic vows and went on to earn his Ph.D. in religious studies at Stanford University. He then taught for four years in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and is now the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies (www.sbinstitute.com). He has edited, translated, authored, and contributed to more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion.
His published works include The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford, 2000), Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment (John Wiley & Sons, 2005), The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind (Wisdom 2006), Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia University Press, 2007), Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (Columbia University Press, 2007), and Embracing Mind: The Common Ground of Science and Spirituality (Shambhala Publications, 2008). He has participated in numerous scientific studies of meditation, including Cultivating Emotional Balance (UCSF), the Shamatha Project (UC Davis), Mindful Awareness Project (UCLA), Meditation for Epilepsy Project (UCLA and University of Vienna), and the Compassion and Attention Longitudinal Meditation Study (Emory)
Recent scientific breakthroughs have revealed the ultimate unity of life and of humanity. Research also reveals that this ultimate reality of unity is open to direct experience in higher states of consciousness. Today, we can easily harness this cutting-edge knowledge to create a peaceful, enlightened, and unified world.
Superstring theories of quantum physics have discovered the ultimate reality: the "unified field"-the field of universal intelligence at the basis of mind and matter. Parallel research in the field of consciousness has shown that human awareness can directly experience this unified field using simple but powerful, scientifically proven meditation techniques.
This fundamental experience of the unified field represents a fourth major state of consciousness, distinct from waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. In this "meditative state," human intelligence becomes aligned with cosmic intelligence. Thoughts and actions become enormously powerful-life supporting and globally enriching.
Dr. John Hagelin is a world-renowned quantum physicist, educator, author, and leading researcher on higher states of consciousness. He was the 2000 Presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party, a new political party dedicated to sustainable, life-supporting policies and solutions that are in harmony with natural law. In recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements, Dr. Hagelin was named winner of the prestigious Kilby Award, which recognized Dr. Hagelin as "a scientist in the tradition of Einstein, Jeans, Bohr and Eddington." Dr. Hagelin has appeared many times on ABC's "Nightline" and "Politically Incorrect," NBC's "Meet the Press," and CNN's "Larry King Live" and "Inside Politics."
This presentation presents a groundbreaking reexamination of U.S. and global security based on Barnett's two books, "The Pentagon's New Map (2004) and "Blueprint for Action" (2005).
Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what?
Thomas Barnett has the answers. A former senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military policymakers-and now he gives it to you. The Pentagon's New Map is a cutting-edge approach to globalization that combines security, economic, political, and cultural factors to do no less than predict and explain the nature of war and peace in the twenty-first century.
Audrey Kitagawa
Spiritual Foundations for Personal and Global Change
As the dynamics of life on earth become increasingly understood as interdependent syntheses of factors, it is time to focus on whole system approaches. With regard to governance and society throughout the world, we cannot afford to be political or patriotic in the old sense of the words. In order to minimize the threat of continued breakdown, polarization and competition need to be replaced with a new paradigm based on unity and compassion. In the new paradigm, we collectively possess both the knowledge and experience to make this a reality; and further, we are a diverse community of individual people who realize that there is a transcendent power that infuses it all.
Thomas Barnett * Author of "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century" and "Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating."
Tom Barnett has been described by U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone as "one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time." A New York Times-bestselling author and a nationally-known public speaker who's been profiled on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Barnett is in high demand within government circles as a forecaster of global conflict and an expert of military transformation, as well as within corporate circles as a management consultant and conference presenter on issues relating to international security and economic globalization. An award-winning teacher, Prof. Barnett has written for Esquire, Wired, and the Washington Post, and has been interviewed in Rolling Stone, Epoca (Brazil), and Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japan's Nikkei News).
Dr. Barnett is best known as the author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004). Described by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius as "a combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Karl von Clausewitz on war," the wide-ranging volume has generated an enormous amount of reaction from around the world, leading to foreign rights already being sold in Japan, Turkey and China, as well as profiles in London's Daily Telegraph, Denmark's Borsen, and Switzerland's WeltWoche. Mr. Barnett's book was likewise the subject of a Book Notes show on C-SPAN (with Brian Lamb), an On Point show on National Public Radio, and many other national TV and radio segments.
Audrey Kitagawa was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is a cum laude graduate of the University of Southern California, and a graduate of Boston College Law School. She practiced law in Honolulu for approximately 20 years, and had a Martin-Dale Hubbell AV rating, (i.e. highest rating for professional and ethical excellence in the legal profession).
She currently heads the Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family, a non-denominational, ecumenical, spiritual community. She is the former Advisor to the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations. Currently, she is an Advisor to the World Federation of United Nations Associations and Chairperson of the NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, New York, a committee of the Conference of Nongovernmental Organizations in Consultative Status with the United Nations. She is a member of the World Wisdom Council, the World Wisdom Academy, the international advisory council of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, the Executive Council of the World Commission for Global Consciousness and Spirituality, the National Council of Global Action To Prevent War, and the Spiritual Caucus at the United Nations. She is also the Co-Facilitator of the United Religions Initiative Cooperation Circle at the United Nations and member of the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions.
She has been enstooled into the royal family as the Nekoso Hemaa (i.e. Queen Mother of Development), of Ajiyamanti in Ghana, West Africa, and has a school named after her in her African name, the Nana Ode Anyankobea Junior Secondary School.
She has published articles in World Affairs The Journal Of International Issues, entitled, The Power of Om: Transformation of Consciousness, and Practical Spirituality. A chapter, Crossing World Views, The Power of Perspective in the Hawaii Japanese American Experience, has been published in a book about multiculturalism, communication and Asian American Women entitled, Learning In The Light. Her chapter, Globalization As The Fuel For Religious And Ethnic Conflict has been published in the book, Globalization And Identity, Cultural Diversity, Religion and Citizenship. Her chapter, The U.S. In Foreign Affairs: Source of Global Security, Or Source Of Global Fear? has been published in the book, America & The World The Double Bind.
She has been listed in Who's Who Of American Law, Who's Who Of American Women, Who's Who In America, Who's Who In The World, and Prominent People of Hawaii.
Civilizations have come and gone, and those long gone mostly vanished because they despoiled their commons, allowed small elites to control their economies and governments, and lived in ways that were unsustainable. Those that survived for centuries or millennia are the ones that learned how to protect their commons, engage in non-toxic commerce and governance, and organize their culture and lifestyles in ways that could continue in the same place and same way down through the ages. We have the power to think differently about our cultural story. The way through lies in learning to act as if we are part of, instead of separate from nature; in dispelling the belief that an abstraction - an economic system - is divine and separated from us; through integrating in ourselves and demanding in our leaders the realization that the best way to influence people is never through fear, but through the power of love, support, and compassion.
Thom Hartmann is the popular host of "Air America," a daily nationally syndicated radio program; award-winning, best-selling author of over a dozen books, including What Would Jefferson Do: A Return to Democracy and We the People: A Call to Take Back America.
Hartmann, who started in radio in 1968, is also is an internationally known speaker on culture and communications, an author, and an innovator in the fields of psychiatry, ecology, and economics. The co-founder (with his wife, Louise) of The New England Salem Children's Village (1978) and The Hunter School (1997), he has led national innovations in the areas of residential treatment for abused children and private/public education for learning-disabled children.
Hartmann is the four-time Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of nineteen books currently in print in over a dozen languages on five continents. He is the former executive director of a residential treatment program for emotionally disturbed and abused children, and has helped set up hospitals, famine relief programs, schools, and refugee centers in India, Uganda, Australia, Colombia, Russia, and the United States through the German-based Salem International program. Formerly rostered with the State of Vermont as a psychotherapist, founder of The Michigan Healing Arts Center, and licensed as an NLP Trainer by Richard Bandler (who wrote the foreword to one of Thom's books), he was the originator of the revolutionary "Hunter/Farmer Hypothesis" to understand the psychiatric condition known as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). A guest faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, he also synthesized the "Younger/Older Culture model" for describing the underpinnings - and possible solutions - to the world's ecological and socio-political crises, suggesting that many of our problems are grounded in cultural "stories" which go back thousands of years. His most recent books are "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class," "The Edison Gene," "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call to Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?"
Neal Rogin is an Emmy winning, Oscar-nominated writer, filmmaker and social observer whose work has had an impact on millions of people around the world. His latest film, "The Awakening Universe", based upon the Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, explores how the New Cosmology is changing the very definition of what it means to be a person. He is a member of the board of directors of The Pachamama Alliance, a non-profit partnership between people from the modern world and indigenous people in the Amazon region of Ecuador, and is part of the development team that has created the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium, the purpose of which is to bring forth and environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this planet as the guiding principle of our time. He is the co-author of three critically acclaimed books, and is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, along with Jack Canfield, Marianne Williamson, John Gray, Michael Beckwith among others.
In a gift economy, goods and services are given without any strings attached; it is an economic system where wealth is decreased by hoarding and it is the circulation of the gifts within the community that leads to increase -- increase in connections, increase in relationship strength.
Gift-Economy is an ancient, indigenous idea that is curiously finding its footing in the modern, Internet economy. People have always put together birthday parties, just for the love of it. But now, people are writing entire encyclopedias in that spirit! Throw in some collaboration tools, and unpaid engineers are producing an operating system to rival a $400 billion company. Add the power of self-publishing, and volunteer-citizens are able to topple lobbyists and bring radical policy changes. In the past, we could do little things as gifts, but big things required money, power and influence. Not anymore. The web is increasingly becoming a land of the free. Now, the Internet is able to aggregate non-financial motivations of "amateurs" to organize into significant social movements, purely for the sake of goodness.
In this gathering, Nipun Mehta will share lessons from his experiments with the gift-economy, both personally and institutionally, and discuss small steps that anyone can take to align with the trust and abundance of the gift-economy.
Nipun Mehta
Dissatisfied by Silicon Valley's dot-com greed, Nipun Mehta went to a homeless shelter with three friends to "give with absolutely no agendas." In April 1999, they ended up creating a website, and also an organization named CharityFocus.org -- a fully volunteer-run organization that leverages technology to inspire greater volunteerism and shift our cultural ethos towards generosity. Today, CharityFocus has grown into an incubator of "gift-economy" projects ranging from web services to a film production company to a print magazine to a restaurant; with a growing membership base of 200K, they serve millions of global viewers to their websites and send more than 50 million solicited newsletters every year. In 2005, Nipun and his wife embarked on an unscripted walking pilgrimage in India that dramatically deepened their understanding of gift-economy values. While Nipun's childhood dream was to either become a tennis-pro or a Himalayan Yogi, the current mission statement of his life simply reads: "Bring smiles in the world and stillness in my heart." More at: http://nipun.charityfocus.org/about
Nipun is joined by friends: Silas Hagerty; Suzanne Schafer; Sukh Chugh
Deva Premal & Miten are living proof that mantras are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. With over half a million CDs sold worldwide and regular performances across North America, Asia, Europe and Australia, this couple, in both life and music, have touched the hearts of millions of seekers throughout the world. Their fans include The Dalai Lama, Cher, Anthony Robbins, Brandon Bays and Eckhart Tolle. As one recent concert attendee shared, "I've been going to concerts since 1965, but never have I experienced the peace, the joy and the depth of stillness that I felt in your concert."
There is among many of us an ominous fear of failure, a sense that something has gone terribly wrong. Whatever we actually believe, the Old Story of Genesis and the Bible is coded deep in our psyche. It foreshadows the real possibility now of Armageddon or environmental/social collapse. What is the fundamental cause of this crisis? In this first dramatic presentation of "The Cosmic Family Reunion," Hubbard explores the effect of our ancient image of the God of the Old Testament. She imagines a new, transformative sequel to the Old Story, bringing the mythical characters to life as modern archetypes. Eve, an evolutionary woman, writes to the Lord God Yahweh, (as a local creator god of planet Earth) demanding to see him face to face. _Father, I have always loved you. I worshipped your magnificence, your creativity, your power, and your vision for your people_but you were angry, violent, unpredictable and cruel_ We were created in your image_and that is the problem_we are all children of a dysfunctional Cosmic Family._ She is transported to the Garden and meets with the Lord God Yahweh. As Father and daughter embrace one another in a world changing reunion, he asks her to _bring the Cosmic Family home to God._ A new _plan_ and a yet unwritten chapter in the Old Story unfold.
Barbara Marx Hubbard is President of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution. A speaker, social innovator and author of 5 books, Barbara is an evolutionary educator, communicating the new worldview of conscious evolution. She is currently producing a film series entitled Humanity Ascending: A New Way through Together. Her educational program Gateway to Conscious Evolution, a guided evolutionary curriculum on line is reaching over a 1000 people worldwide. She is establishing a Chair in Conscious Evolution for Wisdom University and has formed an Education Core developing a Meta Syllabus in Conscious Evolution as a framework supporting evolutionary leadership and social connectivity. She produced 25 SYNCON conferences to bring opposing groups together in the light of the potential of the whole system, and is now reviving the SYNCON process and the Wheel of Cocreation. Her name was placed in nomination for the vice-presidency of the United States on the Democratic ticket in 1984 proposing a Peace Room in the office of the vice presidency to scan for, map, connect and communicate what is working in America and the world.
Dr. Michael Beckwith is the Founder and Spiritual Director of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, CA., a 9000 member transdenominational, multi-cultural spiritual community. A Co-founder and current President of AGNT, he is a recipient of many humanitarian awards for his commitment to world peace.
Artist, Anne-Marie Pochat and images from Dreaming the Universe
"French-born artist Anne-Marie Pochat is inviting the public to dialogue about the 'stranger than fiction' threads that weave through contemporary cosmology and quantum physics. Pochat, who has a master degree in biochemistry and studied in the most famous schools of fine art around the world, (In Paris: Ecole Nationale Superieure de Beaux Arts de Paris, Studiot Frochot, La Grande Chaumiere; in Florence: the Scuola Lorenzo di Medici , and in Jerusalem: the Bezalel Art School) has created a narrative installation which leads the viewer through a symbolic and scientific journey. She worked closely with astrophysicist Jean Pierre Luminet to design the show. Luminet is best known for his work interpreting the data provided by the WMAP satellite, proposing that the shape of the universe could best understood as " a crumpled space". Informed by her dialogue with the scientist, Pochat's paintings are a stunning visual exploration that opens perception to the quantum realities that underlie the universe. Next to each piece is both a poem by Pochat and a scientific encapsulation written with Luminet, The artist unites art and science, heart and mind in a body of work that is filled with vibrant color and galactic imagery, vibrating with molecular and spiritual energy.
In 1992 Pochat created the "Origins of Life", a exhibition of 40 pastels and paintings, and in 1994 she created a Signal tower for the lobby of the Biotechnology and Plant Institute in Gif sur Yvette a center of science and culture well known in Europe. "Origins of Life"explored in visual expression the cellular and molecular levels of reality. For Dreaming the universe, Pochat has turned her generative gaze from the microcosm to the macrocosm."
D.L.Anderson (2006)
"Dreaming the Universe is an extension of the concept of the correlation of the Inner and Outer worlds. Anne-Marie Pochat images are the material manifestation of creative visualization, the artist being caught in a web of her own desire to understand and celebrate the cosmos. Her paintings combine the amorphous and the direct to create the reflection of a daydream. The paintings become believable environments, rearranging elemental truths to draw new mathematical dimensions and possibility to the surface.
Marjorie -Director- Caladan Gallery (2006).
Through her power of artistic suggestion, Anne-Marie's artwork evokes the infinitesimal in the heart of all matter, the curvatures of the universe, and the paradoxes of space and time of a crumpled universe. In the final analysis, the canvases produced by the artist pose a quizzically nagging question:
How much do we really know about our own conscience or even about the matter which makes up our world?
Art and the sublimination of our intuition might well provide us with one of the keys to unravel the mystery to this age old enigma"
François Jacob-Saint Denis de la Reunion