This month we welcomed back Bernard Carr who spoke to the group a few times in the past. PROF BERNARD CARR is Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London and is a former chair of the SMN. Bernard started by telling us how he found out about his personal life’s passion. When sent to his room for being a naughty boy in boarding school, he read books and out of those, three fundamentally determined his future: Bertrand Russell’s ABC of Relativity, Dunne’s An Experiment with Time and Rampa’s The Third Eye. These books underlie his three passions: science, psi and Buddhism and his talk this evening brought all three together. With the use of the Uroboros, Bernard showed us the history of the advance in scientific knowledge towards the very large and the very small scale. He explained in detail the various milestones in the progression towards what we know today. On the small scale end, we find the search for a theory that unifies all the forces, the M-theory and at a macro-scale we speculate the existence of a multiverse. This narrative demonstrates the triumph of physics. However, in this quest, one element is missing: consciousness. And this is what his lecture explored. Without consciousness, the physical reality is only a mental model. Scientists are looking for a theory of everything but how can that be achieved without the consideration of consciousness, our subjective experience? Bernard argues that we must move away from the matter centric perspective and include mind in our models. And, he says, the bridge between mind and matter is psi. Psi, includes phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis etc. Psi has the potential to explain Quantum Mechanics and vice-versa. We heard about entanglement and evidence for the non-locality of mind from psi experiences, giving us a glimpse into the holistic fabric of reality. As well as what we call the paranormal, psi includes also spiritual experiences and creativity. It is recognised and expressed by many artists that their creativity comes “through” them, rather than being the creation of ego. The evidence seems to point to mind having access to other levels of reality, explained by the principles of non-locality. Bernard’s “cri de coeur” is that we need an extended physics which will connect matter and mind, and an extended transpersonal psychology to connect mind and spirit. And connecting the extended physics and the transpersonal psychology is the new paradigm proposed.
