August 1-14, 2017
Invited speakers
Dr. William Richards, Psychologist
Edna Emmet, Painter
Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal, Philosopher and Religious Scholar
Karen Helle Grue, Jungian Analyst and Holotropic Breathwork Facilitator
Dale Millard, Botanist
Lectures by Dr William A. Richards
The Super Story Lectures, by Jeffrey Kripal
The Super Story is a diverse but interrelated set of emergent mythologies, largely unconscious but nevertheless extremely powerful, that have been developing for the last few centuries. As such, this Super Story appears to constitute a new worldview gradually coming into view, mostly through the floorboards of Western culture, that is, through the rejected and marginalized forms of extraordinary experience that we have come to call paranormal, which in turn, precisely because of their marginalized status, are often expressed through the genres of popular culture, especially science fiction.
Modern science (willing or no) has played a central role in the development of this Super Story, both through its own fund of new metaphors and ideas (“evolution,” the “Big Bang,” “space-time,” “entanglement,” the “God particle,” the role of consciousness in the quantum measurement problem, and so on) and–not to be underestimated–through the paranormal experiences and mystical convictions of select scientists. The result is a developing new narrative of where we have come from, who we are, and where we might be going, in short, a new cosmic humanism. This future cosmic humanism takes a strikingly empirical and experimental approach to what were once considered to be “religious” or “supernatural” experiences. The supernatural has become the super natural. The modern history of psychedelic literature is a perfect example of this.
The Super Story Lectures explores these ideas through the metaphors and personalities of three modern sciences (evolutionary biology, quantum physics and cosmology). By doing so, they demonstrate how these fields are fundamentally reshaping the modern religious imagination, even as they themselves have been inspired and secretly shaped by paranormal experiences and the imaginal worlds of science fiction.
Art workshop by Edna Kurtz Emmet
Edna Kurtz Emmet will facilitate artistic expression with interested participants. A range of art materials including masks and objects from nature will be provided to visually express unique personal and spiritual themes. No prior artistic knowledge or skill is required.
www.ednakurtzemmet.com