Conference Programme 2022

Near Death Experience, Extraordinary Perceptions, the Human Energy Field, Shamanic Dimensions, Meditative Experiences in States of Non-Duality, Bio-Photons, Organismic Reactions to Information from Beyond the Brain and the Holographic Universe.

Since his first conscious perception in life of greeting the sun at birth and his NDE when he drowned with 5 years old, and his commitment to come back to ‘bring light into people’s body’, Dr. Gerken lived with a knowing, that there is more than contemporary science could explain.

As a down-to-earth body-oriented, trauma-informed and Mindfulness-centred Psychotherapist he knows about the realm of interconnectedness between body and brain. However, his expanded practice of Transpersonal Psychology made him also clearly aware of the limitation of this realm. Besides that, life presented and still presents him with continuous Extraordinary Perceptions, Shamanic Dimensions and Meditative Experiences of Non-Duality that deeply motivates him to bridge spirituality and science with his research into the Human Energy Field and Bio-photons that he conducted with Acupuncturists, Medical Practitioners and the late world renown physicist and researcher on biological light, Prof. F. A. Popp.

Dr. Gerken will share some of his experiences and research in this comprehensive lecture, culminating in the exploration where does Mind and Awareness come in as participatory forces to connect to the larger field of Consciousness – the totality beyond space-time and with that also beyond the brain.

It’s time to get out of your logical mind and back into your body, time to re-energise, rest, and raise your vibration. Even if you have never meditated before or have found meditation challenging in the past – this is different, it’s an interactive session to shake off and reset before the next brain-led sessions. Sounding is not singing; there is no right or wrong note, and you will have your mic turned off so you won’t be heard by others. In this session Judith will guide you through breath and humming into sounding your voice – this might be challenging for you but if you go with it you will feel the benefits of this physical, mental, emotional and energetic release of any ‘stuckness’ – we then take a few minutes to rest in silence and stillness – and this is where the reset happens.

This presentation will cover highlights from Jeffrey Mishlove’s Bigelow Grand Prize essay. As most SMN members are likely to be familiar with the arguments for a post-materialist science, the presentation will largely focus on the strongest evidence for reincarnation, possession, near-death experience, after death communication and mediumship.

What does it mean to be a woman without children? How do women who remain childless experience and embody ideas around womanhood and motherhood? In this talk Fiona Hovsepian will discuss her research exploring the lived experiences and identities of women without children. She will address how predominant pronatalist discourses define what a female body should do and be and why this is a vital issue for all women, with or without children. In exploring how the experiences of women without children can challenge and surpass the boundaries of predominant conceptions of womanhood, she will highlight the limitations of collective conceptions that conflate ‘woman’ with ‘mother.’
In relation to the transformative nature of transpersonal research methods and their potential to create a bridge between the personal and the collective, Fiona Hovsepian will consider the ethical importance of critically exploring processes of meaning-making when conceiving of an archetypal collective consciousness, emphasising the participatory and co-creative nature of our realities. She will highlight the need for transparency in research and the questioning of underlying assumptions, seeing the exploration of inner experience as vital to the research process.

Fiona Hovsepian is part of the Alef Trust Alumni, holding an MSc (Distinction) in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology. She lives in Wiltshire (UK) on a biodynamic smallholding where she engages in research, creative writing, land work, and therapeutic practice. She offers one-to-one sessions, taking an integrative approach to biography work and offering transpersonal guidance in creating the conditions for health and wholeness. In 2023 she will also be joining Dr Rosy Daniel’s Health Creation team as a programme mentor. Her research interests have focused on censorship, relationship support, women without children, and transpersonal theory and methods.

In February 2018, SpaceX sent the Tesla Roadster and its mannequin driver ‘Starman’ into space. Over 2.3 million people came together online to watch the launch. It was YouTube’s second biggest live stream ever involving millions of concurrent views. Interestingly, during this event, the Overview Effect was experienced in real time by the viewers through the technological camera eyes of Starman. Prior to the launch, I collaborated with Bryan Williams of the Global Consciousness Project for the purpose of examining whether the event would be registered on the global network of Random Event Generators. This presentation offers a speculative analysis of the graphs of data from the entire GCP network during the two-hour period of the SpaceX launch. The aesthetics of the graph has triggered reflections on the graceful interaction of technology and human consciousness which is discussed through the methodological lenses of technoetics, second order cybernetics and ecstatic Kabbalah.

Dr Lila Moore is a transdisciplinary artist and theorist. She is a lecturer and dissertation supervisor for the Alef Trust and recipient of the Outstanding Lecturer award from the Department of Mysticism and Spirituality, Zefat Academic College.
Dr Moore holds a PhD in Dance on Screen (Middlesex University), MA in Independent Film (Central Saint Martins), B. Ed in Art History, Postdoc in Technoetic Arts and Cybernetics (Planetary Collegium), and her articles were published in academic journals. Lila’s films and performative artworks were exhibited in juried and curated exhibitions, festivals, academic conferences, and archived by SIGGRAPH and Archive of Digital Art.

By harnessing fossil fuels for personal use, humans have arguably become the most creative, and the most destructive, species on the planet. Indeed, most would agree that in order to survive as a species, humans need to develop a healthier and more considerate relationship with the ecosystem. Transpersonal ecopsychology is a field that considers these topics by exploring the role of individual transformation in contributing to a larger evolutionary process of psycho-spiritual development – a process that may help humans find their niche in the greater ecosystemic whole. Transpersonal ecopsychology often describes humans as behaving in a destructive fashion that is out of alignment with spiritual principles, and argues that we need to adjust this situation in order to avoid ecosystemic collapse. The current presentation will consider an alternative perspective, namely that human-caused ecological destruction might actually be a sacred and necessary aspect of the spiritual development and transformation of both humans and planet earth. In other words, humans might be undertaking the sacred role of acting as midwives for the earth’s dark night of the soul. While difficult and provocative to consider, this dark night might be necessary for the evolution of human consciousness, and could potentially result in a future where humans are no longer necessary. This presentation will begin with a description of the role of the dark night of the soul in spiritual awakening, followed by an exploration of the possible human role in midwifing the earth’s dark night, and conclude with a consideration of a potentially post-human future.

In the first half of the talk, Dr Robinson will present a definition and model of normal waking consciousness in human beings, based on three interdependent parts: the observer, the observed and the knower. This definition is influenced by the distinction between dreaming and lucid dreaming, with the latter being closer to normal waking consciousness than the former. He will also explain why identifying consciousness with subjective experience is problematic, arguing that the subjective/objective distinction is in fact a division within consciousness. In the second half of the talk, he will present a series of linked rational and empirical arguments to show that consciousness is definitively not in the brain. He will go on to provide an answer to where it is, on the basis that it is not in the brain.

PEN Award-winning historian and popular voice of esoteric ideas Mitch Horowitz presents a full-circle perspective of the most compelling psychical research and lays to rest all controversies and rhetorical dramas: vetted and longstanding evidence abounds for the extra-physicality of thought. The question we face is: what to do with it? As Mitch explores, the philosophy of materialism is today a position of sentiment. Now that we possess gold-standard evidence for nonlocal cognition, it falls to our generation to construct a view of life that persuasively encompasses the extra-physical.

Dr. Helané Wahbeh will share about the IONS Channeling Research program and how the Noetic Signature concept arose for its studies. The Noetic Signature is the unique way that we tap into information and energy not limited by our conventional notions of time and space. Dr. Wahbeh will review the studies that went into developing the Noetic Signature Inventory that allows people to discover and explore their Noetic Signature. She will also review the 12 characteristics that make up the Noetic Signature.