The Integral Solution: Transcending our Global Economic, Ecological, and Spiritual Crisis

"The scientific consensus now seems to be that we are in both a global economic and a biospheric crisis, the resolution of each of which will require an exacerbation of the other.  Crisis - on both the personal and societal levels — implies that conditions have reached an emergency level, a tipping point where what follows will lead to either destruction or transcendence.  In this PST, we will outline an integral solution to our current global crisis - one that can lead us to a whole, balanced, grounded, connected future."  –Carleton Schade

"Aren’t we all just “too through” with Descartes?  We believe our current ecological and economic crisis can integrate the Cartesian split of mind and matter.  If so, a true, deep solution will require a worldview broad enough to integrate seeming opposites: spirit and flesh, wealth and nature, global and local, societal and individual.  For THIS SUNDAY evening, June 7th, Poetry Science Talks East is pleased to present Ross science teacher Carleton Schade and local psychologist Neal Goldsmith for a discussion of the psychospiritual solution to the current environmental, economic - and personal - crisis." – Neal Goldsmith

 

PRODUCERS:  Carleton Schade and Neal Goldsmith

"Carleton Schade trained as a geologist and has worked for years as an educator, writer and futurist.  Through various media – the classroom, theatre, Internet, fiction, scientific journals, in conferences and salons – he has been involved in integrating the diverse fields of the human experience and sharing the synthesis with an audience.  His latest project is a book entitled, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse,which interprets the accelerating ecological collapse as a crisis in our cultural evolution."

"Neal Goldsmith is a psychologistspecializing in psychospiritual development.  He treats 'neurosis' as the natural unfolding of human maturation, the trigger and the key to completing one's childhood.  His formal psychotherapy influences include yoga psychology,Psychosynthesis, Imago Relationship Therapy, regressive psychotherapy, Rogerian client-centered counseling, and other humanistic, transpersonal, and Eastern traditions.  He is currently working on a book calledPsycheology: Psychotherapy and Change.

Joyful Gnosis: Mind, Meditation, and the Music of the Spheres

David Hykes' inspiring presentation will include a concert of mystic Harmonic Chant with 'sound mandala' video projections made by the human voice,  followed by the sharingof the work and research of his Harmonic Presence Foundation over the last 30 years relating music, meditation, healing and well-being.  Hykes will share key moments of his 35-year journey in wisdom traditions, from the Taos Pueblo to Tibetan Buddhism, in the music world from avant-garde New Yorkto sacred world music,  his scientific journey from musical cosmology to the Mind and Life Institute (which brings together neuroscientists and contemplative practitioners), and his transforming encounters and collaborations with rare beings of this world, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, elders from the Taos Pueblo, the Gyuto Monks and nuns of Nagi Gompa in Nepal, and his teachers, Tibetan Buddhist masters Tsoknyi Rinpoché and Chokyi Nyima Rinpoché. The light of both science and the wisdom traditions shows how deeply contemplative awareness practice can help us transform the mind and cultivate the deepest harmonic qualities ofbeing -- joy, compassion, presence, and openness.

[Please see the attached brochure for more information on David and his Harmonic Presence Foundation.]

PRODUCER:  David Hykes

David Hykes, visiting from France to give concerts and teachings in New York,  is a pioneering contempoary sacred music composer, singer, meditation teacher and visual artist. He leads contemplative music and meditation retreats around the world with the Harmonic Presence Foundation, exploring relationships between the mind, music, meditation and medicine.  In 1975 he founded Harmonic Chant, an approach to 'the music of the spheres' based on the harmonic series, found in all music and throughout the universe since the Big Bang (the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB), and the Harmonic Vision system for transforming music into visual mandalas. He was the first western musician to study and collaborate with musician-practitioners from Tibet, Tuva, and Mongolia, collaborating with the Dalai Lama, the Mind and Life Institute and the Gyuto Monks.  He is a noted 'sacred cinema' composer ('Travellers and Magicians,' 'Baraka,' 'Meetings with Remarkable Men'...) as well as for films such as 'Ghost,' and 'Dead Poets Society.'  Hykes’s work has been honored by UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and NYSCA. His 12 albums include 'Hearing Solar Winds,' the best-selling 'throat-singing' album of all time. Information: www.harmonicpresence.org.

Leaping into the Void - No Where and Know How

In this era of 'after the party's over' as some stagger haggard across the planet with a pounding headache, asking: 'Why, where and whaaaaat?' I'd like to raise the question of - oh no, what is it? - art: what the heck is going on with it, what is its value – how do we perceive it – and does it perceive us?  

Let's take a look at more extreme art forms and understand what they do, where they take us, and how they are relevant and why they should be supported as an important element of our culture, not just as an elitist art form that no one understands, but as part of the process of stretching intellect and developing new perceptions in our culture.  

Many other nations in the world support more avant garde arts and artists than we do.  America – even more notably over these past eight years – supports only the safest of art activities.  How can America integrate more rigorous thought, curiosity, personal intention – and support – for the arts into its culture?  How can we make art a part of our national identity, instead of the faded, superficial notion of The American Dream, that ultimately explodes in our faces. 

Let's get back to where we have never been.

To open up the discussion, we'll view slides, some works on the Web, and videos of various artists' works (in addition to some of her own).

PRODUCER:  Caterina Verde

Caterina Verde is an artist and curator, focusing in part on issues of identity construction + constriction within the cultural framework of a world of multifluence.  Verde's work is perhaps comparable to a seeming tourbillon of disconnected parts, referencing historical, psychological, and perceptual content that manifests itself in disarmingly simple and enigmatically melancholic and humorous works.

"Verde was the curator of Hybrid/Performance Art at The Kitchen, New York City for three years and was the recipient of a two-year artist residency in Paris from the American Center in Paris.  She has produced commissioned video projects for the New York Hall of Science and has been published in Leonardo: The MIT Journal of Art and Science, among others.  Verde has exhibited her multimedia works at Galerie Eof, Paris, Journee Photographiques de Bienne, Switzerland, Galerie Pennings, The Netherlands, and domestically in New York, Santa Fe, and Atlanta.  She is currently curating an international performance art series, "Strange Positioning Systems" that is incubating at Artspace in New Haven, CT.

Verde lives and works in East Hampton, NY.

Being Here: The Geologic History of Long Island

Sure, those living on Long Island are often aware of existence at the nexus of solid, liquid and gas, particularly the tremendous forces of wind and wave.  However, because of scale, less apparent to us are the enormous astronomical and geological forces that influence nearly every move we make.   For nearly a billion years, heat from deep in the Earth made our location the locus of mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes.  The next major influence were the vast continental ice sheets of the past two million years, the last of which strew this island about like so much flotsam over a thick blanket of mountain tailings.  Lastly, humans have changed the island’s biota and groundwater chemistry.

PRODUCER:  Carleton Schade
http://diebackandcollapse.com

Carleton Schade trained as a geologist and has worked for years as an educator, writer and futurist.  Through various media – the classroom, theatre, Internet, scientific journals, in conferences and salons – he has been involved in integrating the diverse fields of the human experience and sharing the synthesis with an audience.  His latest project is a book entitled, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, which interprets the accelerating ecological collapse as a crisis in our cultural evolution.

My Stroke of Insight (TED talk screening)

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. 

This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.  This screening will be followed by our usual open discussion.

PRODUCER:  Jill Bolte Taylor (screening only; not live)

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. On the afternoon of this rare form of stroke (AVM), she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. It took eight years for Dr. Jill to completely recover all of her functions and thinking ability. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (published in 2008 by Viking Penguin) and was chosen as one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008. In addition, Dr. Jill was the premiere guest on Oprah's Soul Series webcast and her interview with Oprah and Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey Show was aired on Tuesday, October 21, 2008.