Lucid Art: From Form to Formless

Can non-dual experiences be expressed in visual imagery? Can artistic process be a vehicle to explore the non-dual nature of reality? Through exploring the work of four visionary Surrealists, the California movement of Dynaton, and the consciousness research leading to Lucid Art, this presentation focuses on the non-dual nature of the mind through the lens of contemporary art. This lecture evolves from visual imagery within narrative symbolic realms, to non-representational concepts, to an inquiry into creative consciousness.

Time in Language and Mind

Time is built in to the nervous system at many levels and scales. What is the role of conceptual schemas of time in cognition, and how do they relate to their preconscious precursors and to their linguistic representations? What different linguistic framings of time exist, and to what extent do they effect conceptualization? Among the topics discussed will be linguistic relativity, the research behind some conceptualizations of time such as Hopi ‘non-time’ and ‘cyclic time’, and the relationship between language and the conceptualization of time itself.

Psychedelic Medicines and the Neuroscience of Consciousness

Psychedelic medicines have a long history of shamanic use as therapeutic agents. They have also contributed in profound ways to the current neurochemical understanding of brain function. Recent clinical research has reconnected with the ancient shamanic uses of these medicines and also with work explored by clinical researchers more than half a century ago. Psychedelics are also powerful probes of the connection between brain and mind, a relationship that remains in many ways as poorly understood now as it was centuries ago. The prevailing model in contemporary neuroscience is that whatever mind, consciousness, and mental processes are, they are completely determined by physical properties of the brain. Psychedelics and some of the changes in mental function they facilitate may call into question the narrow physicalist model of the relation between brain and mind and provide opportunities for new directions of research in exploring the connection between brain physiology and consciousness.

Is Time an Arrow?

If you were a little ant living on a wire in one dimension, there would be only one possible move in your universe : you would go forward, forever. For an external observer however, seeing the scene from above, the movement of the ant takes two possible forms (or topologies) -- it can be linear, or cyclic. It cannot be anything else, only linear or cyclic. Not surprisingly, the human apprehension of Time has always been oscillating between those two visions. Does Time go on linearly forward or does it comes back to itself cyclically, forever ? In this talk we will review the scientific paradigm about Time from Einstein’s Relative Time, Bergson’s notion of simultaneity and duration, to Quantum Mechanics Time/Energy duality. Does the ``Arrow Time’’ of the Scientist exist? If so, ``where’’ did God ``draw’’ this Arrow? Does Non Dual Time exist? If so, how can Time be One moment only, and at the same time an Arrow? We will see that at the smallest scales, in the world of the microcosm, Time doesn’t flow. All the microscopic equations of physics are reversible. The Arrow of Time emerges only with the ``Many’’ at the macroscale, when particles start to interact with each other, to rub against one another in a thermodynamic friction. Entropy, friction, are thus lying at the heart of any notion of Evolutionary Emergence. A deep contemplation of the nature of Change, however, can convince us that it is strongly constrained by the presence of Invariant Laws, of simple Truths, valid at any scale of observation. Those Thruths act like the skleton of Evolution, its DNA. They are context-transcendant. In this way, Simplicity and Complexity are entangled in the evolutionary Telos, and in their intrication maybe lies the secret fabrics of life.

Altered States of Time

Much has been learned observing the effects of altered states on the nature, structure, and durability of time. Like other duality-based delusions, “time” is not what they taught us, not exactly what we experience and not easily fenced in by the definitions physics still uses. When we stop assuming that the exceptional is the norm, the alterative possibilities more easily illuminate other ways of seeing, sensing and knowing. “Altered states” themselves need to be “re-cognized” as well as the term artfully obscures what actually goes on within us and in the world at large. While there are a host of ways to evoke altered states of consciousness, including sleep, hypnosis, fasting, prayer, drumming and meditation, psychedelics remain an almost ideal investigative research tool, given the vast array of substances, each opening a slightly different widow, and the capacity to control the dose, set, setting, focus, etc. Beginning with the observations of Hofmann and Huxley, we will consider the varying forms of time-as-experienced and the implications for therapy, psychology and cross-cultural empathy as well as questioning religious and scientific doctrines. After exploring the accepted delusion of time as stable, we will consider the practical implication of a more realistic and expanded view of time. Circling back we will consider how this larger view in turn helps to revise and replace our current inappropriate dualistic labels of ordinary and non-ordinary states with something closer to the reality underlying consciousness and the material world. As some members of the audience will consider these reformulations as speculations, there will be ample time for questions.