Bringing Meaning Back to Life: 25 years at the Pari Center

If the time it took for life to evolve on earth were a day, human beings wouldn’t appear until fifty seconds before midnight. Evolutionarily speaking we’re instantaneous.

But in that instant science has achieved a deep understanding of the world and the technology it has made possible has greatly enhanced our lives. So much so that in last few centuries science has replaced religion as the framework for our existence.

But that understanding comes with costs. One is the ecological damage that is the darker side-effect of technology. Another, less apparent but just as damaging, is that with the loss of a religious framework, life, and therefore death as well, may have come to seem virtually meaningless.

C.G. Jung said: ‘Man cannot stand a meaningless life.’ Iain McGilchrist seems to agree: ‘Death is not the opposite of life but its fulfilment. The opposite of life is the machine.’ Like David Bohm and David Peat, McGilchrist rejects the idea that science requires us to conceive of the cosmos, and ourselves, as nothing but mechanisms.

But science is in any case changing, as it always has. Classical mechanistic materialism has been left behind, but quite what is to replace it is unclear. Religion is perhaps less apt to change, but Whitehead said ‘Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.’

We are moving on from the idea that there’s a necessary opposition between science and religion. This year’s meeting in Pari will be part of that move. It will look at how spiritual traditions, the sciences and the arts offer ways to celebrate life and accept death as complementary parts of living authentically.

It will bring together speakers from the sciences, arts, faiths and healing traditions to create an open dialogue and supportive experience in which all can participate. We’ll explore the leading edge of quantum physics, examine the relationship of science to Christianity, Islam and Vedanta. We’ll also hear speakers on how Shamanism, music and ritual have and continue to have a role in facing the end of our lives.

This will be an informal meeting with presentations by experts followed by roundtable discussions.

Participating in an event at the Pari Center means not only meeting with scholars and experts but living for a week in a medieval village, mingling with the tiny local population, eating local dishes and drinking local wines, appreciating the beauty of the surrounding countryside, and participating in a very gentle way of life far from the frenzy of work and city living. David Peat compared Pari to an alchemical vessel—a place where transformation can come about—as well as an opportunity to pause for a moment and re-assess one’s life. It’s a unique opportunity open to everyone.

We at the Pari Center seek to bring together world-renowned experts from a great range of disciplines, approaches, and sensibilities to meet together in person and deepen our insights on the workings and origin of human experience, while also exploring creative and rigorous frameworks to integrate such wonderful mysteries hidden in plain sight into a coherent evolutionary understanding. You are cordially invited to join us.