News of speaking appearances

UPCOMING TALKS BY PAUL DEVEREUX

AUGUST 2007
Paul will be speaking at the European Society of Scientific Exploration conference, to be held near the earth lights infested valley of Hessdalen, Norway, over the weekend of 17-19 August. A wide range of topics will be covered during the conference, not only earth lights phenomena.
For further details contact: erling.p.strand@hiof.no

SEPTEMBER 2007
Paul will be taking part in a conference themed on Pilgrimage at the Sufi Order’s Abode of the Light, near Albany, New York state, USA, over the Labour Day weekend (1-3 September).
For further information contact: sg@sufiorder.org

Paul will be presenting an illustrated talk and leading a field trip at the British Society of Dowsers Annual Conference at Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, over the weekend of 15/16th September. This conference will provide the opportunity for Paul to meet up with author and dowser Tom Graves after a great many years!
For further details contact: director@britishdowsers.org

NOVEMBER 2007
Paul will be taking part in the “Metageum ’07: Exploring the Megalithic Mind” Conference on Malta, 3-11 November.
For further information see: www.metageum.org

Report on a special event

The "OTHERWORLD REALITY- Exploring the Ontological Status of Imaginal Consciousness" conference that we gave notice of here duly took place at the Royal Society of Arts in London on 1 & 2 May, 1999.It was very successful and we have had much good feedback from it. In due course, there will be either a book or proceedings issuing from it. For now, here is the programme and the abstracts of papers.

Part of the audience at the "Otherworld Reality" conference held in the Great Room at the Royal Society of Arts.
(Photo: Gerald Frawley)

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

SATURDAY, 1st MAY

9:00 - 9:35am Registration

9:45 - 10:15am PAUL DEVEREUX - Opening remarks and introductory paper:

'The Imaginal in Ancient Persian Religion and Modern Experience'

10:15 - 11:00am MICHAEL GROSSO - 'Death and the City of Imagination:

William Blake and Otherworld Realities'

11:00 - 11:15am Brief Break

11:15 - 12:00 IAN MARSHALL - 'The Otherworld and the Physical World - Some Unifying Perspectives'

12:00 - 2:00pm Lunch

2:00 - 2:45pm CHARLES LAUGHLIN - 'Imagination and Reality: On the Relations Between Myth, Consciousness and the Quantum Sea'

2:45 - 3:30pm ALAN WORSLEY - 'Lucid Encounters in the Imaginal State: Controlled Explorations in the Realm of the Metachoric'

3:30 - 4:00pm Tea Break

4:00- 4:45pm JACQUES VALLEE - 'The Rise of the Replicants: Four Scenarios

Impacting Consciousness in the Years 2000-2025

4:45 - 5:00pm Appropriate announcements

SUNDAY, 2nd MAY

9:00 -9:30am Morning Announcements

9:30- 10:15am PETER ROJCEWICZ - 'Beware the Physical in the Material: Imaginalia, Folk Belief and the Eclipse of the Literal'

10:15 - 11:00am RICHARD RUDGLEY - 'The Ethnography of the Imaginal'

11:00 - 11:30am Coffee Break

11:30 - 12:15pm KARL JANSEN - 'Ketamine and the Near-Death Experience'

2:15 - 1:30pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:15pm DEAN RADIN - 'Experimental Evidence for an Intersubjective Reality'

2:15 - 2:30pm Brief Break

2:30 - 2:45pm STANLEY KRIPPNER: Introductory Remarks

2:30 - 4:15pm PANEL DISCUSSION

Some of the members of the Panel, held on the second day (Sunday) of the conference. Left to right:Alan Worsely, Ian Marshall, Richard Rudgely, Peter Rojcewicz, Michael Grosso, Dean Radin.
(Photo: Gerald Frawley)

Other members of the panel included Paul Devereux (left) and Professor Charles Laughlin (second left).
(Photo: Gerald Frawley)

 Dr Stanley Krippner, of the Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, who chaired the Sunday Panel, and delivered a paper on behalf of Jacques Vallee.
(Photo: Gerald Frawley)

ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS

Michael Grosso

"Death and the City of Imagination: William Blake and Otherworld Realities"

William Blake, prophet of the Mundus Imaginalis, once declared that after death we enter the world of imagination. With the help of psychical research, and related studies, we can begin to map the nature of imaginal states: their distinctive properties, and how they may relate to the possibility of life after death. With Blake as our mentor, we conclude with remarks on how this might be of use in the art of living and dying.

Karl Jansen

"Ketamine and the Near-Death Experience"

Ketamine (K)is a dissociative anaesthetic which can produce trips to other realities which areidentical to near-death experiences. In this session, Iwill discussthe most recent explanations for this finding. These range from events in the brain itself to the possibility that the brain acts as a transceiver, converting energy fields beyond the brain into features of the mind - as a television converts waves in the air into a visible and audible drama. K may retune the brain to provide access to certain fields and which are usually inaccessible. This retuning may open doors to realms which are always there, rather than actually producing those realms, just as the broadcast of one channel continues when we change channels. The dramatic effect on the mind of adding Kto the brain raises important questions about the relationship between the Universe, Spirit,Mind, and Body.

Charles D. Laughlin

"Imagination and Reality: On the Relations Between Myth, Consciousness, and the Quantum Sea"

While it is true that we may imagine worlds that do not exist, and may fail to imagine worlds that do, there often appears to

be a striking correspondence between mythic stories and aspects of reality. We will examine the process of creative imagination within a neurobiological frame, and suggest a theory that may explain the functions of myth in relation to the hidden aspects of reality. True myth is peppered with archetypal entities and interactions that operate to reveal hidden processes in reality relative to the human condition. The imagery in myths in a sense "sustains the true." That is, mythopoetic imagery keeps the interpretative processes of experience closer to the actual nature of reality than rationality operating alone is able to do. Indeed, while the rational faculties can easily lead us awry, genuine myth rarely does. Explanations of events offered by traditional peoples are frequently couched in terms of mythic themes and events. This talk will focus especially upon those mythic themes that represent facets of the quantum universe, and which give us clues as to the relationship between consciousness, symbolism and reality.

Ian Marshall

"The Otherworld and the Physical World: Some Unifying Perspectives"

I assume a double-aspect, emergent view of the universe; its basic entities possess mass, position, charge, proto-consciousness and proto-intention. Hence neurology and physics may cast light on mental phenomena. The brain EEG or MEG of lucid dreaming or trance resembles that of waking consciousness, except for the reduced or absent response to sensory input. This gives each person a private, subjective Otherworld. Can there be other forms of input to this state, to give a shared, objective Otherworld? I will discuss three physical models which, though speculative, allow this to varying degrees.

Peter M. Rojcewicz

"Beware the Physical in the Material: Imaginalia, Folk Belief, and the Eclipse of the Literal"

[Peter changed his paper at the last moment, and so there is abstract of it available]

Richard Rudgley

"The Ethnography of the Imaginal"

Henri Corbin used the term imaginal in order to provide an adequate cultural translation of Iranian notions concerning the faculty of imagination, finding our word imaginary having been subverted by reductionist thinking. The relevance of his pioneering research in this sphere has not been appreciated by anthropologists. The potential of an 'ethnography of the imaginal' is outlined. The idea of the imaginal world is used in the interpretation of Amerindian and Melanesian cosmologies. Particular emphasis is placed on shamanism and ritual activities involving psychoactive plants. Indigenous beliefs concerning the ontological status of the imaginal world (and the role of hallucinogenic agents in entering altered states of consciousness) are compared with our own cultural ideas. Cross-cultural study reveals that the ontological and social status of imaginal consciousness is radically different in many indigenous societies and that our own denigration of this human faculty is the exception, rather than the rule, in human cultural experience.

Jacques F. Vallee

"The Rise of the Replicants: Four Scenarios Impacting Consciousness in the Years 2000-2025"

[Jacques was unable to attend at the last moment, and his paper was read by Stanley Krippner.]

At a time when the stability of the world's economy is in question, and the technical community faces its greatest challenge ever in the passage to the Euro and the Year 2000, it is not difficult to think of dramatic developments impacting the human environment.History teaches, however, that profound change in consciousness is subtler than mere extrapolation of today's crises. Here we attempt to reframe several future scenarios around fundamental issues: will the development of novel technical structures such as the quantum computer challenge the very notion of what it means to be human? Can the new communications media continue to grow without precipitating a major restructuring of social systems, and what are the implications? Survival (both individual and societal) will mean something different in the next century, and so will

novel spiritual movements based on the Web. These developments will carry danger as well as seduction. Those who try to ignore them may find themselves trapped in visionary fantasies with which humanity hasn't had any previous experience.

Alan Worsley

"Lucid Encounters in the Imaginal State: Controlled Exploration in the Realm of the Metachoric"

Convincing imaginal experiences - dreams, OOBEs, NDEs, alien abduction - occur unexpectedly to people who are unprepared, possibly frightened, with specific cultural expectations. In these circumstances ontological considerations ("Is it real?") tend to be neglected. Consequently, coherent informed pre-arranged experiments concurrent with the experience are unusual. Techniques to induce comparable experiences predictably while maintaining clarity of thought allow intra-state experiments to investigate phenomenology. They afford opportunities to observe, even guide, subjective content and also obtain physiological measures (EEG, brain scan). Evidence thus gathered and verified suggests induced alternate realities can be as remarkable and realistic as spontaneous cases.

Introductory Talk:

Paul Devereux

"The Imaginal in Ancient Persian Religion and Modern Experience"

Henri Corbin coined the term "imaginal" to describe a particular state of consciousness coveted by the mystics of ancient Persia. While this was understood within a religious context, the imaginal state still occurs in people today outside of any coherent cultural context. Rather, we have a fragmented range of contexts, so we talk of lucid dreaming, alien abductions, out-of-body experiences, hallucinogenic visions, and so forth. It is a remarkable level of mind in which the senses can seem to be operative within a stable visual reality possessing full spatial fidelity - it is just that the "reality channel" has changed. Is this simply the product of neurophysiology, or is some objective, if different and non-consensus level of reality involved?

The co-organisers of the conference, and directors of The Consciousness Connection. Left to right: Trish Pfeiffer, Charla Devereux, Paul Devereux.
(Photo: Gerald Frawley)

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