Thursday Plenaries:Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Andrew Harvey and James O'Dea

 
Thursday Plenary Sessions A Time Between Stories: Finding the Place for Creative Convergence—Marilyn Mandala Schlitz It is a time of enormous change and complexity. How are the noetic sciences helping to track an emerging story for humanity? What are the tools and skills that will be needed as we navigate life in the 21st century? How can we promote individual and social healing? Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, PhD, is Vice President for Research and Education at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California and Senior Scientist at California Pacific Medical Center. She is co-editor of Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine and co-author of the upcoming Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation (Noetic Press/New Harbinger, Jan. 2008) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sacred Activism: The Power of Love and Wisdom in Action—Andrew Harvey When a profound and grounded mystical vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing economic and political institutions, a tremendous holy force— the power of wisdom and love in action—is born. It is a force that can unleash, even in the middle of growing catastrophe, an unstoppable steady energy of hope and compassion. Andrew Harvey was the youngest person ever awarded a fellowship to All Soul’s College at Oxford University. He is the author of The Direct Path, Son of Man, The Return of the Mother, and Sun at Midnight. He was the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic and is Professor of Sacred Activism at Wisdom University. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Witnessing Shift and Experiencing Transformation—James O’Dea We live at a time when scientific, spiritual, and psychological insight help us to witness evolutionary shifts that challenge the very foundation of prevailing worldviews. These shifts herald more than a change in views and beliefs; they offer us the possibility of profoundly transformative experiences with the power to reveal and activate the core of our humanness. James O'Dea is president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a member of the World Wisdom Council founded by Ervin Laszlo. He was director of the Washington, DC, office of Amnesty International for ten years and spent six years as executive director of the Seva Foundation