ConnectIONS Live!
Co-produced by the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Scientific and Medical Network.
How can we move from a sense of separation to interconnectedness?
In this free webinar based on his recent book Spiritual Science, Steve Taylor explains how human goodness — as manifested in qualities such as compassion, altruism and justice — is related to a sense of connection. Conversely, what we think of as ‘evil’ is related to a sense of separation. A sense of separation brings an inability to empathize, or take other people’s perspectives, and a preoccupation with one’s own desires and goals.
How Oneness Leads to Goodness: The Spiritual Source of Compassion and Altruism
Friday, January 22, 2021
11:00am – 12:30pm Pacific
Steve will then explore whether separateness or connection are fundamental to human beings. Our culture assumes that separateness is fundamental, and this has had a disastrous effect, emphasizing and encouraging individualism and selfishness. As Steve’s philosophy of panspiritism suggests, human consciousness is a manifestation of a more fundamental universal consciousness, which is ‘transmitted’ into us via (primarily) the brain. When human beings experience our interconnection, we feel empathy and compassion. Altruism and social justice result from this. Our sense of separation is superficial and aberrational. One of the goals — arguably the main goal — of spiritual practices and paths is to transcend the sense of separateness and attune to our fundamental oneness. In this way, spiritual development is intimately connected with altruism and social justice.
HOST
David Lorimer is a writer, lecturer, poet and editor who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society. He has also been editor of Paradigm Explorer since 1986 and completed his 100th issue in 2019. He is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Survival? Death as Transition, Resonant Mind (originally Whole in One), The Spirit of Science, Thinking Beyond the Brain, and Radical Prince about the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales. He is the originator of the Inspiring Purpose Values Poster Programmes, which has reached over 350,000 young people. He is also Chair of the Galileo Commission which seeks to widen science beyond a materialistic world view.
SPEAKER
Steve Taylor, PhD is the author of several best-selling books on psychology and spirituality, and is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He is the current chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. His books include Spiritual Science, Waking From Sleep, The Fall, Out of the Darkness, Back to Sanity, The Calm Center and The Leap. His books have been published in 20 languages, and Eckhart Tolle has described his work as “an important contribution to the shift in consciousness which is happening on our planet at present.” His new book The Clear Light has just been published. His articles and essays have been published in many academic journals, magazines and newspapers, including Philosophy Now, The Psychologist, The Journal of Humanistic Psychology and The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. He writes blog articles for Scientific American and for Psychology Today. Steve lives in Manchester, England with his wife and three young children.
