Beyond Flatland with Mark Vernon

Mark Vernon on the need for knowing beyond flatland, the first part of the day conference, Beyond Flatland.

This zoom event was held on Saturday 28th November 2020. Full details are online here - https://mysticsandscientists.org/index.php/beyond-flatland-a-day-on-transformative-ways-of-knowing/

Reductionism and literalism are often acknowledged as problems bequeathed to us by the 18th century Enlightenment. They foster tyrannical attitudes that disqualify ways of knowing widely enjoyed by our ancestors. 

Owen Barfield called it “camera consciousness”: the ability to look at but not into things. It has become so powerful that even those pursuing imaginative and intuitive modes of perception can run aground on the rocks of spiritual materialism, which can be defined as the tendency to collapse life’s multiple dimensions onto a flatland of mechanical existence.

What is lost is an ability to enter into the felt presence of the world. There is an art to experiencing life across vertical as well as horizontal aspects of reality. It is, at times, troubling as well as liberating, and requires not only challenging modern epistemologies, but embarking on journeys of personal transformation that foster the trust and discernment required to participate fully in the meaning of events and encounters. 

The day examined ways to recover and evolve a wider, expansive consciousness. It explored how the power of symbols and synchronicities, divination and everyday intimations of more might be reappraised as forms of knowing that have their own kind of relevance and validity, and help to make sense of our times. These modes of consciousness are crucial. They can reintroduce us to other worlds that are already here.

Programme:

Issues
Angela Voss, David Lorimer and Mark Vernon on alternative ways of knowing and the need for them today.

Practices
Mary Attwood and Geoffrey Cornelius discuss and demonstrate two practical alternative ways of knowing.

Meditation
Louise Livingstone introducing and offering a practice to explore a symbol in small groups.

Discoveries
William Rowlandson and Jules Evans on spiritual development, particularly in the thought of Frederick Meyers.

Flipping
Jeff Kripal interviewed by Mark Vernon and David Lorimer on the presence and meaning of other dimensions of reality.

Beyond Flatland is a partnership event between:
The Scientific and Medical Network
The Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred
The Fetzer Institute
Perspectiva

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