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Gaia and the Evolution of Consciousness
June 21 – July 2, 2010
One, and two-week options (but see below *)
Sean Kelly, Rupert Sheldrake and Stephan Harding
This course is open for bookings.
Course Overview
Gaia theory has developed out of rigorous scientific research and provides an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to understanding the health and life of our planet. The study of Gaia theory raises crucial questions on the role of humans within the planetary ecosystem.
This course will explore the scientific basis of Gaia theory and its implications for human consciousness. How does the fact that we can think of our planet as being a living entity in its own right affect our relationship to the natural world? These issues will be discussed from philosophical, psychological and scientific perspectives, and participants’ understanding will be enhanced with a range of experiential exercises which enable people to reconnect with nature and their own expanded consciousness.
Further details
The course has developed out of a collaboration between holistic scientist, Stephan Harding, and philosopher/integral ecologist, Sean Kelly. The intention is to give participants the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of the science underlying Gaia theory and to set this within the context of the evolution of consciousness. *Because both the main teachers will be present throughout, the course is designed as a two-week course and the material each day will build on what has gone before. Therefore, participants are encouraged to book for the whole course. It is unlikely bookings will be accepted for week two only.
Weeks 1 and 2: Gaia Theory, Stephan Harding
The basis of Gaia theory – that interactions between living beings and their nonliving environment give rise to emergent self-regulation at the level of the Earth itself and that the health and well-being of individual organisms and entire ecosystems contribute to the health of the planet as a whole – involves a profoundly different way of understanding our world from the atomistic approach of most modern science. Stephan will introduce the science underlying Gaia theory using a combination of rational analysis and experiential work, enabling participants both to understand it in their heads and feel it in their hearts.
Weeks 1 and 2: Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era, Sean Kelly
Sean will place this new way of understanding our earth within the wider context of humanity’s shift into the Planetary Era, which began some five hundred years ago with the conquest of the Americas and the Copernican revolution in cosmology. How did the Planetary Era come about, and why was it initiated in the European West? What elements in the evolution of the Western worldview might contribute to the actualization of a sustainable planetary culture? Drawing from a wide range of panoptic or “big-picture” thinkers—from Hegel, Teilhard, Jaspers, and Campbell, to Ken Wilber, Richard Tarnas, and Edgar Morin, among others—Sean will explore such questions while presenting his own synthetic theory of the evolution of consciousness leading to the birth and transformation of the Planetary Era. Beginning with a consideration of the fundamental pattern of world history, he reveals the role of a “Great Code” and the turnings of a tightening spiral in the evolution of the last two thousand years of Western, and now increasingly planetary, consciousness. Along with a vision of the path that has lead to our vexed and complex present, he gives reason to hope that we are on the threshold of a new countercultural resurgence, a new planetary wisdom culture, that might signal the homecoming for which our troubled world so desperately longs.
These presentations and discussions will be complemented by some experiential exercises from the “work that reconnects” that have been developed during Sean’s work with Joanna Macy in the last few years. He will also introduce the class to a simple but powerful kind of standing meditation/qigong , adapted from his taiji and yiquan practice, as a way of grounding in, and resonating with, the larger body-mind of Gaia.
Week 2 (29th & 30th June): Science, Mind and Consciousness, Rupert Sheldrake
In the second week, Rupert Sheldrake will join the course on Tuesday and Wednesday to reflect on what new advances in science can tell us about our minds and the nature of the cosmos as a whole. The old idea that nature is nothing but inanimate mechanism is being superseded by the advances of science itself. The cosmos is no longer seen as an eternal machine slowly running out of steam, but is more like a developing organism, with the Big Bang resembling myths of the hatching of the cosmic egg. Rigid determinism has given way to indeterminism in quantum theory, and through chaos theory to the recognition of unpredictability in natural processes at all levels. Evolution has revealed creative processes not only in the realm of life, but in the development of the entire cosmos. The idea that the cosmos was totally knowable has given way to a recognition that the majority of nature, up to 90%, consists of dark matter and dark energy whose nature is completely unknown. It is as if science has recognised the cosmic unconscious.
Mechanistic theories of the mind have proved hopelessly inadequate in consciousness studies, which is now one of the most exciting areas of scientific exploration. Research on unexplained animal and human phenomena suggests that minds extend far beyond brains. And the old idea that nature is governed by eternal laws turns out to have no justification. Nature may well be driven by habits which evolve along with the universe itself. All these changes alter the frontiers of science and open up new possibilities for dialogues between science and spirituality, some of which will be explored during these two days.
Who will come on this course?
This course merges the scientific and philosophical disciplines dedicated to the study of human consciousness and Gaia theory, extending to the study of our planet Earth as an evolving consciousness. This course is therefore intended for anyone with a professional or personal interest in consciousness and the worldview that underpins our understanding of it. Participants are not expected to have scientific or philosophical academic qualifications; however, you should be willing to listen and contribute to group sessions as appropriate.
Teachers
Sean Kelly, Ph.D. is Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He has published numerous articles on Jung, Hegel, transpersonal psychology, and the new science and is the author of Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era (in press) and Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung, and the Path toward Wholeness. Sean is also co-editor, with Donald Rothberg, of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers and co-translator, with Roger Lapointe, of French thinker Edgar Morin’s book, Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium. Along with his academic work, Sean has trained intensively in the Chinese internal arts (taiji, bagua, and xingyi) and has been teaching taiji since 1990.
Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of of more than 75 scientific papers and several books, including The Rebirth of Nature and, with Matthew Fox, Nature Grace: Dialogues on Science and Spirituality.
Stephan Harding is Coordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. He is a close associate of James Lovelock and an expert in the study of Gaia theory and deep ecology. He is the author of Animate Earth. See staff page for more information about Stephan.
Course Fees
One week: £750, Two weeks £1,300
(Participants are encouraged to book for two weeks – see text above)
All course fees include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.
For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College
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Reserve your place now
To provisionally reserve a place for 5 days, email us your contact details and the name of the course admin@schumachercollege.org.uk
We will hold the place for five working days for reservations – three weeks before a course or earlier. After five days we will automatically offer your place to someone else if we have not received your application.
Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.