Plenary Speakers
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Robin Carhart-HarrisTitle: How Psychedelics can Illuminate the Hidden Nature of the Human Mind-and-Brain
Robin Carhart-Harris Bio
Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, is an esteemed neuropharmacologist, psychologist, and became the Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor in Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco in 2021.With a PhD in psychopharmacology from the University of Bristol, Dr. Carhart-Harris and his colleagues have completed multimodal human functional neuroimaging studies with LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and DMT, and clinical trials of psilocybin therapy for various disorders. His current research program at UCSF is focused on the mechanisms of action of psychedelics and psychedelic-therapy. Dr. Carhart-Harris has published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Nature Medicine, Cell, Lancet Psychiatry, and more. He spoke was named among the top 31 medical scientists by The Times newspaper in 2020, listed in TIME magazine’s “100 Next” in 2021, voted psychedelic researcher of the year in 2021, and listed in Vox Magazine’s “Future 50” in 2023. Website: https://profiles.ucsf.edu/robin.carhart-harris Email: [email protected] |
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Andrew DavisTitle: Process Philosophy and Exceptional Experience:
Whitehead and Wild(er)ness of Non-Sensory Perception Andrew Davis Bio
Andrew Davis, PhD, is an American process philosopher, theologian, and scholar of cosmological wonder. He is research and academic director for the Center for Process Studies, where he researches, writes, teaches, and organizes conferences on various aspects of process-relational thought. He is author, editor, and co-editor of nearly a dozen books including Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy; Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy; and Metaphysics of Eco-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology. Website: https://ctr4process.org/about/team/ Email: [email protected] |
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Kathy DuffyTitle: Teilhard's Mysticism: Journey into Integration
Kathy Duffy Bio
Kathy Duffy, SSJ, PhD is a Professor Emerita of Physics and the current Director of the Institute for Religion and Science at Chestnut Hill College. Dr. Duffy serves as president of the American Teilhard Association, an Associate Editor of Teilhard Studies, and a Board member of Cosmos and Creation. Kathleen is the recipient of the Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, October 18, 2009; was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Catholic Witness, St. Hubert High School in 2005; and received the John Templeton Foundation Quality and Excellence in Teaching Award in 1998. Dr. Duffy’s current research interests concern the religious essays of Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his spirituality, and the relationship of his synthesis to modern developments in science. She has published Teilhard’s Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution (Orbis 2014; Catholic Book Award, Catholic Press Association, 2015); Teilhard’s Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution (Orbis 2019; Catholic Book Award, Catholic Press Association, 2020); an edited volume of essays about Teilhard’s life and work entitled Rediscovering Teilhard’s Fire (St. Joseph’s University 2010); and book chapters and articles including “Teilhard’s Synthesis as Impetus for Greater Care for Our Earth” in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Her IRAS presentation will focus on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his spirituality, and the relationship of his synthesis to modern developments in science, to prepare for a movie screening of Teilhard: Visionary Scientist. Email: [email protected] |
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Ashok GangadeanTitle: The Greatest Story Never Told: Breaking the Trance
Ashok Gangadean Bio
Ashok Gangadean, PhD, a philosopher, author, and spiritual activist, serves as the Margaret Gest Professor of Global Philosophy at Haverford College, where he has taught for the past fifty-seven years. Throughout his career, Dr. Gangadean has focused on clarifying the fundamental common ground across widely diverse worldviews and seeking to expand philosophy and cultural life into a wider global context: Global First Philosophy. In Meditative Reason: Toward Universal Grammar and Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason—Gangadean works to demonstrate that there is a fundamental Logos or Primal Field out of which all worldviews arise. This opens the way for deeper connections between widely diverse worldviews and paradigms, including Spirituality and the Sciences. He explores evidence that diverse First Narratives from the past 2,500 years, including our most revered enlightenment teachings and scriptures, point to an urgent need to profoundly shift how we conduct our minds, our consciousness, and our lives, for the well-being of our human family and our individual and collective flourishing. “However,” he notes, “it is evident that this call for a deep existential crossing to our Source of Life remained chronically eclipsed and marginalized by deeply entrenched patterns on “minding” that kept our diverse ((First Teachings)) in “silos” and alienation from the ((Primal Logos)) which is the Source of all lives, cultures, scriptures, narratives and forms of life. Once this frontier of ((Global Logos)) is opened and our diverse First Narratives is seen in a ((Global Light)) certain hitherto eclipsed astounding ((findings)) come to the fore with dramatic implications for our Human Journey to our ((Source)).” Gangadean recently inaugurated his ((Source Media Network)) initiative with five episodes of his lifelong quest for the missing ((Logos Code)). Here is his playlist: ((Gangadean's Life Quest)) Email: [email protected] |
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Daniel IngramTitle: Ethically Scaling Emergence
Abstract
The talk will provide an overview of the current stage of and futures plans for efforts to strongly upgrade the clinical and mental health mainstream’s understandings of the deep end of human experience, the risks, benefits, and alternatives of a wide variety of modalities, including meditation and psychedelics, strategic approaches to real global systems change, efforts to create a new boarded post-doctoral specialty to own this territory, and recent neuroscientific developments. The linguistic, ontological, and epistemic implications of contemporary medical ethics will be considered. Daniel M. Ingram Bio
Daniel M. Ingram, MD, MSPH, served as a board certified emergency medicine physician for 12 years, primarily in major trauma centers. He also holds a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) in epidemiology. Co-founder of the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (EPRC) and CEO and founder of Emergence Benefactors, a charity dedicated to supporting the EPRC, Dr. Ingram’s current philanthropic work and research involves promoting teams, projects, and organizations to upgrade the global clinical and scientific world’s understanding of what is termed emergent phenomena (mystical, spiritual, magical, energetic, and psychedelic phenomena), to promote positive outcomes and integrate these understandings into global healthcare systems. Dr. Ingram is involved in advanced meditation neurophenomenology research with Harvard, Cambridge, and Florida State University; is a co-founder of the Dharma Overground, a resource for the support of practices that lead to beneficial, fundamental mental, perceptual and emotional transformations; and supports numerous other global public health projects. He is the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha and co-author of The Fire Kasina. His personal website is: Integrated Daniel Email: [email protected] |
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Kurt JohnsonTitle: The Landscape of Interspirituality and Science
Kurt Johnson BIO
Kurt Johnson, PhD, MPH, is an evolutionary biologist with BA, University of Wisconsin (biology), MA, University of Iowa, (biology), MPh, PhD Graduate Center, City University of New York (evolution, ecology, systematics and comparative biology) with seminary and ordination, Holy Cross and ordained, or certified, in five religious traditions. Resident Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History, NYC for 25 years, faculty of NYC Interfaith Seminary 15 years. He has worked in professional science and comparative religion for over 40 years and serves on many international committees, particularly at the United Nations. Author or co-author of the books The Coming Interspiritual Age, Our Moment of Choice (Gold Nautilus, COVR and Living Now Awards), Nabokov’s Blues and Fine Lines (Brian Boyd Prize for scholarly writing). Founder of the Light on Light Press (8 Nautilus Awards and Best in Small Press). He co-edits two magazines: The Convergence and Light on Light, cohosts the The Convergence Series on Voice America, is author of over 200 scientific articles and seven technical books. A former monastic, he is a co-founder or member of the Evolutionary Leaders, Unity Earth, Interspiritual Network, Contemplative Alliance, UN NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns, NGO Forum 21 Institute, UN Committee for International Yoga Day, and President of the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Websites: www.lightonlight.us and www.interspiritualilty.com Email: [email protected] |
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Sarbmeet KanwalTitle: Spiritual Experience as the 4th Stage of our Evolving Interconnected Universe
Sarbmeet Kanwal BIO
Sarbmeet Kanwal, PhD, is a professor of physics at Brookdale Community College where he has been recognized for his teaching innovations. He received a PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics from the California Institute of Technology, after which he worked for many years in wireless telecommunications research at Bell Labs. Sarbmeet is also an instructor for Deeptime Network, an organization which has a mission of orienting humanity to an evolving interconnected universe as a context for spiritual inspiration. He is a practicing Sikh who believes that Sikhism provides a pragmatic approach to cultivating spirituality based on a life of service and contemplation. As a member of New Jersey’s Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought, he founded an interfaith youth leadership program, MOSAIC (Mobilizing Our Students for Action to build Interfaith Community), and was awarded the Earl Thomas Teasley Humanitarian Award for this work in promoting peace building within the community. Sarbmeet is a sought-after speaker on topics that lie at the intersection of science and spirituality, and the author of two TEDx talks:Website: https://www.ashareduniverse.com/sarbmeet-kanwal Email: [email protected] |
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Julia MossbridgeTitle: Transcendent Mind and Personal Time
Workshop: Everything You Want to Know About Your Future Self but Are Afraid to Ask Julia Mossbridge Bio
Julia Mossbridge, PhD, is an American cognitive neuroscientist, author, and educator whose studies at the edge of science and technology include precognition and presentiment effects, artificial intelligence, consciousness, and how unconditional love can support well-being. Dr. Mossbridge is co-author of Transcendent Mind, the first American Psychological Association textbook on consciousness that does not presume a materialist position, as her work is designed to unify thinking across fields. She is focused on developing a deep understanding of love, time, technology, and how these human experiences relate to corresponding physical forces. Dr. Mossbridge is the president of Mossbridge Institute; founder of RISE: Research and Innovation at the Scientific Edge; Senior Distinguished Fellow in Human Potential at the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University’ an Alfred Lee Loomis Innovation Council Member; Human Potential Research Lead at The Telepathy Tapes; and Founder/Board Chair of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit TILT: The Institute for Love and Time. Her most recent projects include creating a Socratic GPT to guide intelligence analysts through the critical thinking process, leading a diverse team of technologists and designers to create a scalable, self-guided digital tool that increases overall wellbeing and is now being developed further within Native American communities, and leading an international group of AI developers and roboticists toward creating an unconditionally loving robot that reduced anger and cognitive load in humans. Websites: Mossbridge Institute, RISE: Research and Innovation at the Scientific Edge, TILT: The Institute for Love and Time Email: [email protected] |
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Ralph PiedmontTitle: The Numinous: The Psychological Soul of Spirituality
Ralph Piedmont BIO
Ralph Piedmont, PhD, is a personality psychologist with areas of interest that include the Five Factor Model and the assessment of spiritual and religious motivations. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute on Aging, where he was trained in taxonomic models of personality and their relevance for understanding mental and physical outcomes. Formerly a full professor in the Department of Pastoral Counseling at Loyola University in Maryland, Dr. Piedmont is now the Managing Director of the Center for Professional Studies working to advance the scientific agenda of the social sciences by offering comprehensive conceptual and empirical models of human psychological functioning that promotes insight, supports effective assessment, and provides a foundation for the development in clinical techniques that can not only resolve clients’ issues surrounding psychosocial adaptation, but also encourage personal transformation and ultimate flourishing. Dr. Piedmont’s current research interests focus on the measurement of Spiritual Transcendence, a construct that represents a broad, nondenominational, motivational measure of spirituality. He has demonstrated the predictive value of this construct in both normal and clinical contexts, using both American and cross-cultural samples. Dr. Piedmont serves on the editorial boards for Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, Assessment, and Journal of Personality Assessment. He was the founding editor of the new APA journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA), Dr. Piedmont is also closely involved in Division 36, the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for the APA, and ACA’s Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling. Selected Publications include
Email: [email protected] |
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Roberta PugheTitle: Embodied Enlightenment: The Body’s Journey to Awakening
Roberta Pughe Bio
Roberta Pughe, PhD, serves as Clinical Director at The Center for Relationship, LLC, in Princeton, NJ. She has a PhD in Educational Leadership, an EdS in Marriage and Family Therapy, and a Master of Arts in Theology, and works as a contemporary Shaman, Gestalt Therapist, Feminist Theologian and Marriage and Family Therapist. Dr. Pughe’s clinical work encompasses 39+ years in private practice as well as inpatient and outpatient hospital settings. She pioneers Embodied Enlightenment, an integrative approach to mental health and well-being that grounds humans in their bodies while also exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness. The reports from these embodiment practices promote and sustain spiritual experience. She is the author of Resurrecting Eve: Women of Faith Challenge the Fundamentalist Agenda (2002) and Body as Sanctuary for Soul: An Embodied Enlightenment Practice (2015). Email: [email protected] |
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Harriet RosettoTitle: From Broken Soul to Whole Soul
Harriet Rossetto Bio
Harriet Rossetto, LCSW, MSW, serves as a a trainer for the National Association of Social Workers, teaching classes about the treatment and philosophy of the “dis-ease” of addiction. She started Beit T’Shuvah, a Jewish foundation spiritual recovery for Jewish criminals in California, over 30 years ago with a tremendous humanizing task: to help broken souls and change a broken system. Harriet’s belief that addiction is a malady of the soul requiring spiritual healing inspired her to create a thriving community that supports addicts of all kinds, wherever they are in life. Her greatest reward is witnessing and participating in the miracle of transformation. Her view that everyone is capable of redemption is at the core of why she empowers the residents of Beit T’Shuvah with employment, hiring 90% of her staff from within. Today they are the lifeblood of the organization. Harriet is also author of the book Sacred Housekeeping: a Spiritual Memoir. Website: https://harrietrossetto.com/ Email: [email protected] |
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Michael WinkelmanTitle: Shamanism, Entheogens, and the Evolution of the Self:
Neurognostic Perspectives Abstract
A cross-cultural and evolutionary approach reveals shamanism’s relationships to our social, emotional, and spiritual evolution and the structures of humans’ evolved psychology. Shamanism of foraging and simple agricultural societies of the pre-modern world manifested recurrent patterns such as the wounded healer, the mimetic ritual, engagement with ecstasy and spirits, animal transformation and soul flight, and expressions of innate capacity for healing and self transformation through the holistic imperative. The psychobiology of consciousness reveals the foundation of shamanic capacities in the biogenetic structures of self and other awareness and unconsciousness psychic functions such as innate cognitive operators. The ritual induction of alterations of consciousness enabled the elevation of these structures and transformation of the content to enhance human adaptations through production and modification of forms of the self. A central shamanic tool for self-transformation involved use of natural substances and ritual processes with entheogenic effects, stimulating experiences of other forms of consciousness and intelligence. Entheogenic relations are central to shamanic self transformations and the institutionalization of religious impulses in innumerous cultures and across time. The relations of psychedelic substances to the functional re-organization of the brain and its innate processes are mechanisms of entheogenic experience and self transformation and sources of intrinsic spirituality. The spiritual emergence and self transformation provoked by psychedelics are characterized in terms of their effects on the brain’s major resting state networks, particularly their integration into novel patterns that enhance the expression of ancient brain processes underlying various forms of the self. This stimulation and elevation of neurognostic structures enables the evolution and transformation of self forms and consciousness by the integration and elevation provided by symbolic systems of reference in the spirit world. Michael Winkelman BIO
Michael Winkelman MPH, PhD, engages cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research on shamanism and its biological bases in Shamans, Priests and Witches (1992) and Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing (2010). He addressed the therapeutic applications of psychedelics in his co-edited Advances in Psychedelic Medicine (2019). Winkelman examines the intersection of psychedelics and the evolutionary origins of religion, and explores the applications of shamanism and psychedelics to the treatment of addiction. Dr. Winkelman retired from his role of professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, and currently resides in central Brazil, where he lives as a gentleman farmer, practicing permaculture and continuing his research. Email: [email protected] |
Musical Programing
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Frank ToppaMusic Director
Frank Toppa Bio
Frank Toppa, as a music director, works in a collaborative spirit with various ensembles and with a dedication to musical exploration. Conferees with a musical performing background are encouraged to connect with him before the conference. Website: ToppaToons.Com |
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Jessica SanseverinoJessica Sanseverino Bio
Jessica Goodenough Sanseverino is a passionate educator and accomplished soprano dedicated to nurturing young voices and enriching communities through music. She designs and teaches vocal music curriculum across nine grade levels, with a focus on individualized training that helps students discover and develop their unique voices. As a performer, Ms. Sanseverino has served as a soprano section leader and soloist with respected ensembles and churches including St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and First Congregational Church of Nantucket. She also regularly creates innovative solo recitals, collaborating with diverse ensembles. A Baroque vocal performance specialist, she has co-created music festivals and concerts featuring jazz ensembles and women’s singing circles. A leader in community music initiatives, Ms. Sanseverino pioneered the Music Together curriculum on Nantucket and founded the Stars Youth Chorus, a tuition-free ensemble for youth ages 9–14. She also developed a district-wide choral opportunity for elementary students across Martha’s Vineyard, expanding access to collaborative music-making. She holds a B.A. in Music from Washington University in St. Louis, and has pursued advanced studies in Baroque performance at Early Music Vancouver, Longy School of Music, and the University of North Texas. Email: [email protected] |
Chaplain
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Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’AlessioChaplain
Mark D’Alessio Bio
Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’Alessio is a Franciscan friar, Christian bishop and priest, ordained lay Buddhist, spiritual director, chaplain and retreat leader, author, and past president and executive director of the Psychotherapy & Spirituality Institute. A long-time seeker and practitioner of spiritual wisdom, he is ordained into multiple spiritual lineages, both East (Buddhist) and West (Christian), with a teaching ministry that affirms the Christian Wisdom tradition within a wider interspiritual framework. Br. Mark lives on Long Island; is on the faculty of All Faiths Seminary International, NYC; serves as a crisis counselor at an emergency shelter with outreach services for men and women who are homeless; and serves as a chaplain at a school and orphanage for children with developmental and mental health disabilities. Email: [email protected] |
Program Chairs
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Calvin ChatlosProgram Co-Chair
Title: A Framework of Spirituality to Guide the Heart and Soul of Humanity
Calvin Chatlos Bio
John Calvin Chatlos, MD, is a professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers University-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. An addiction, adult and child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Chatlos served his pediatrics residency at Montefiore Hospital, NYC and his psychiatry residency at NYU-Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, and had a child and adolescent fellowship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, NYC. He is a graduate of the Humanist Institute, NYC; an Institute of Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) Council member; a long-time member of the Society for Ethical Culture and of the UU Congregation of Monmouth County (UUCMC); and a board member of the United Religions Initiative (URI) Cooperation Circle of the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought (MCWRET). A Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dr. Chatlos has studied the nature of spiritual experience, developed a specific Framework of Spirituality, and incorporates spiritual principles into recovery from addiction and trauma. He is developer of the “Human Faith Project” focused on empowering self-worth and dignity through opening a universal core of spiritual experience and its connection to creativity. |
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Barbara Whittaker-JohnsProgram Co-Chair
Title: Telling Our Credo Stories: A Spiritual Practice for Being at Home in the Universe
Practicum: Gathering Up the Stories Barbara Whittaker-Johns Bio
Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns grew up in Maine, in the environs of Bangor Theological Seminary during her father’s presidency there. After medical studies/practice in nursing, she abandoned her first effort at graduate work in theology to put her first husband through his doctoral studies; simultaneously, she completed a Master’s program at Yeshiva University, NYC, and began a sixteen-year teaching career, with a focus on the neurodiversity associated with learning disabilities in youngsters. In 1984 she completed the MDiv program at Harvard, began what is now a long career in UU parish ministry, and later completed a DMin program in theology, focusing on the power of our personal narratives of spiritual experience — at any age — to ground faith development in a scientific world view. Rev. Dr. Whittaker-Johns has served for nearly four decades in leadership positions for the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), including a recent five-year stint as President; seven years as VP for Summer Conferences; six years as a conference Co-Chair/presenter; and five years as Chaplain/Chapel Speaker at summer conferences. Currently, she serves IRAS as an Honorary Vice President. Since the late 1980s she often has been accompanied to the IRAS week by her spouse, Frank Toppa, who for many years served, and will serve again this year, as Music Director; and by their now adult son, Isaac Toppa. Her spiritual practices are varied. Besides prayer, they include leading worship, scratching quahogs and digging clams on Cape Cod, driving her truck off-road in Maine, dancing, and playing her violin. And her most significant spiritual experiences as an adult, have, directly or indirectly, evolved in concert with this beloved community of IRAS. |
Copyright by The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science