Mystics and Scientists 34

The Nature of Dreams: On the Threshold of Other Realities

15 April 2011 - 17 April 2011

Venue: University of Winchester

Chairs: Dr. Peter Fenwick, David Lorimer

Speakers: Dr. Larry Dossey, Prof. Charles Laughlin, Prof. Mark Blagrove, Paul Devereux, Dr. Cedrus Monte, Dr. Morton Schatzman

The Mystics and Scientists conferences have been held every year since 1978, and are dedicated to forging a creative understanding of the complementary roles of scientific and mystical approaches to reality.

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DETAILS OF SPEAKERS and PROGRAMME

FRIDAY 15th April

Opening Wine Reception followed by dinner and introductions

Paul Devereux: Introduction: Aspects of Dreams and Dreaming

Paul Devereux is managing editor of the academic publication, Time & Mind – The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture (www.bergpublishers.com), a research affiliate with the Royal College of Art, and a Senior Research Fellow of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL). He has written a great many articles for general publications, a string of peer-reviewed papers, and has contributed to numerous anthologies, and contributed to and co-edited Mind Before Matter (O Books).  He is author of 27 books, dealing variously with  the anthropologies of consciousness, archaeoacoustics and other aspects of ancient sites, landscapes and lifeways,  and also anomalous geophysical and psychological phenomena. His latest work is Sacred Geography (Gaia Books, October 2010). He lectures in Europe, the UK and North America. His website is: www.pauldevereux.co.uk

SATURDAY  16th April

Dr. Larry Dossey: Dreams and Premonitions:  What They Tell us about Healing, Consciousness, and Our Destiny

Throughout recorded history, people have claimed the ability to see the future through information acquired in dreams. These so-called precognitive or premonitory dreams are part of a spectrum that includes waking experiences such as intuition, hunches, or “gut feelings.”  This ability is generally dismissed as anecdotal, fanciful, and impossible by conventional science. Recently, however, this dialogue has changed.  Many computer-based laboratory and other experiments, now replicated worldwide, indicate an innate ability to sense future developments.  “Premonition” comes from words meaning “forewarning.” Dr. Dossey will describe reports from patients and physicians of health-related premonitions, most commonly in dreams.  He will show why premonitions should be considered a form of preventive medicine. He will propose that these experiences contain lessons that go far beyond pragmatic benefits. Premonitory dreams offer a new image of consciousness — a nonlocal image, in which consciousness manifests infinitely in space and time, with stunning implications for the survival of bodily death and the immortality of some aspect of human consciousness.

Dr. Larry Dossey is a former physician of internal medicine and former Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital. He has lectured at medical schools and hospitals throughout the United States and abroad. In 1988 he delivered the annual Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, India, the only physician ever invited to do so. He is the author of eleven books dealing with consciousness, spirituality, and healing, including the New York Times bestseller Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, and most recently The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future can Shape our Lives. Dr. Dossey is the former co-chairman of the Panel on Mind/Body Interventions, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health.  He is the executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal EXPLORE:  The Journal of Science and Healing.  Dr. Dossey  lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife Barbara, a nurse-consultant and the author of several award-winning books.

 

Prof.Mark Blagrove: The Psychology and Neuroscience of Dreaming

This talk will address how the brain produces dreams, and the relationship of dreaming to the different physiological stages of sleep; how waking life affects dreams;why some people have nightmares; why some people realise in a dream that they are dreaming, and why this lucid dreaming is so rare; how dream content is scientifically investigated;whether dreams can give us personal insight, and the value of free-associating to the components our dreams; the relationship of dreams to the increasing evidence that sleep has a role in memory consolidation; and whether dreams have a function, and how we could ever find that out scientifically.

Prof.Mark Blagrove studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, thereafter doing a PhD on the content of dreams at Brunel University, then was a Research Fellow at the Loughborough University Sleep Laboratory, and since 1991 has been at Swansea University, where he was made Professor in 2008. He runs a 2 bedroom sleep laboratory and investigates the aetiology of nightmares, the functions of sleep, and the experimental psychology of dreaming. He is on the editorial board of the academic journal Dreaming, and of the Journal of Sleep Research, and has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. He is a past-president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (www.asdreams.org), and is currently on the board of directors of the IASD.


 

Cedrus Monte: Something Happens when we Dream: a Phenomenological View of the Dream World

For pharaohs and prophets, indigenous elders, contemplative scientists and questing seekers of all kinds across all continents, dreams are a place where two worlds meet: the world of the familiar and known and the world of the mysterious and unknown.  What happens when these worlds meet? How does one world touch and change the other? What happens in the human psyche at the juncture of these meeting worlds and how can that bring about both individual and collective change?  We dream of a door opening…we dream of meeting a fox on the open road…we dream of a pillar of fire blazing benignly amidst a large gathering of people.   How are these images, and others, experienced within you, and where might the understanding of those experiences lead? 

Cedrus Monte, PhD, is a Jungian Analyst, graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1997. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she has lived and practised in Switzerland for many years where she has a body-centered, psychoanalytic practice focusing on the exploration of dreams, visual imagery, psychosomatic symptoms and other symbolic messages from the unconscious. (For further information about Cedrus Monte you can go to www.cedrusmonte.org)

SUNDAY 17th April

Prof. Charles Laughlin: Communing with the Gods: Dreaming in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Charles Laughlin will suggest a theory of lucidity that can better account for the range of dream experiences had by people in non-Western cultures in which dreaming is considered as important.  He will discuss the range of dream cultures in which empowerment, divination, sorcery and knowledge are sought in the dream state.  He will focus especially upon his own lucid dream experiences had while researching Tibetan Tantric dream yoga.

Charles D. Laughlin, Ph.D. is an emeritus professor of anthropology and religion in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  He has done ethnographic fieldwork among the So people of northeastern Uganda, Tibetan Buddhist lamas in Nepal, and the Navajo people of the American southwest.  He is co-author of Biogenetic Structuralism (1974, The Spectrum of Ritual (1979) and Brain, Symbol and Experience (1990).  He is an authority on the neuroanthropology of alternative states of consciousness and ritual.

Dr. Morton Schatzman: In the Light of Dreams: Consciousness and Creativity

Can we use the creativity of dreams to enrich and enlarge our pursuit of waking-life goals? I will trace people’s attempts to do this from their beds, in the lab and with help from added devices, illustrating different states of consciousness in dreams, including lucid dreams. I will present unusual historical material and original experimental data.

Morton Schatzman is an American-trained medical doctor and psychiatrist working in London as a psychotherapist. He is in the private practice of individual, couple, and family psychotherapy. He has authored two books Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family, and The Story of Ruth. He is the editor of Dreams and How to Guide Them, a translation from French of a classic book by Hervey de Saint Denys. Outside psychiatry and psychotherapy he has a wide range of interests, which include medicine, biology, cosmology, social sciences, and literature. For many years he has been interested in dreams, and will here distil some of his thoughts about dreams.

Chairs:

Dr. Peter Fenwick is Emeritus Consultant Neuropsychiatrist, Maudsley Hospital and Honorary Consultant Neurophysiologist, St. Thomas’s Hospital. He is a President of the Scientific and Medical Network and President of the Horizon Foundation.

David Lorimer  is Programme  Director of  the Scientific and Medical Network and Vice-President of Wrekin Trust. He is editor of The Spirit of Science, Thinking Beyond the Brain and Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality. His book on the Prince of Wales’s philosophy and work – Radical Prince -  has been translated into French, Spanish and Dutch.

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Accommodation 

On site - in single rooms. Please indicate if you require special accommodation considerations due to a physical disability.

Off site – we have reserved 20 en suite rooms at the Winchester Hotel, with a bed and breakfast rate of £152 per room for two nights. These rooms will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis and must be booked and paid for directly by delegates (i.e. not through the SMN office) in addition to the non-residential conference fee. Address: the Winchester Hotel, Worthy Lane, Winchester SO23 7AB, telephone 01962 709988/ fax 01962 840862. You will need to quote the booking reference SMN1504. The rooms will only be held until the end of January.

Conference Fees

Members

Residential £240       (early bird - £220)
Non-residential £205   (early bird - £185)

Non-Members

Residential £255       (early bird - £235)
Non-residential £220 (early bird - £200) 

Fees include accommodation (for residential delegates), lecture programme, and all meals. They are payable in full on booking. Vegetarian meals provided   A small number of bursaries are available – please contact the office to discuss.

Concessions available – please enquire: info@scimednet

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