Most Recent Blog-Posts

• Death and Reincarnation

  
  

  Watch and listen to this 9-minute video, the tenth part of a 10-part dialogue with Ervin Laszlo and Marc Gafni in Tuscany on the topic of Evolutionary Love–envisioning a new Renaissance that will take us to the future. Watch previous posts from this series;

  • The New Renaissance, & Love as an Erotic Force
  • The Second Shock of Existence
  • Evolutionary Love, the True Nature of Reality, & Unique Self Enlightenment
  • Supercoherence
  • Self-Organization, the Ability to Receive Information from the Larger System, & the Spiritual Dimension
  • How to Open the Eye of the Spirit & The Unique Self Symphony
  • Evolutionary Love – Personal and Cosmic Love Are One – the Personal as a Quality of Essence
  • Appearing as the One – Unending Symphony
  • Prayer

  Transcript

  Dr. Marc Gafni: So let’s go to the next topic, which is death, life and death. I know that you’re working on a book now on kind of the nature of immortality. So once we talk about unique self, as not social, psychological, or cultural conditioning, once we talk about uniqueness as a quality of essence, so it begins to make sense that a quality of essence can’t disappear. So share with us, how does that begin to play in your studies. If it was just true self, you would disappear back into the one. If there’s unique self, then the notion of immortality begins to make sense, not as egoic immortality, not as separate self immortality, but as this unique quality that lives on, and what you’ve called … you’ve rediscovered and reintroduced into thought, this Akashic record.

  Dr. Ervin László: The key to it is, I think how you consider your mind, your consciousness, and you can say yourself. I’m using the term consciousness in this part. And I suggested earlier in our dialog, that our mind, our consciousness, is not in space time. It’s on a different level of reality, it’s on a deeper level. It’s connected with the rest. And it’s an expression in space time, like now there’s a scientific theory in quantum physics which says, the whole 3D, three dimensional universe is a projection of 2D codes beyond space time, and it sounds like a far out theory, but it explains very much how things are connected.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Understood, thank you.

  Dr. Ervin László: If your consciousness is really beyond this space time level, then it means that it’s also beyond your space time body and brain. That means that when your space time body, your living brain shuts down, your consciousness doesn’t necessarily shut down. It could persist, because it doesn’t persist here on this level, it persists on another level. So in you, it gets just projected into you. It’s never actually in you, it’s in association with you. It becomes an element in you, but the consciousness is something which is beyond space time, beyond the brain. And in that case, of course, it’s like, we talked about the symphony, it’s like a symphony, that’s broadcast over the air. You can pick it up, and you can turn off your radio, or your TV set, or whatever.

  The symphony doesn’t disappear. You don’t hear it anymore, and people say, of course, that’s a proof that if you turn off your brain, then consciousness disappears. It’s not a proof, because consciousness may not be limited to the brain. It appears in the brain. It’s in a very important essay that is not so much regarded, but it’s now being rediscovered, the great psychologist and philosopher, William James gave a talk in 1899, in the immortality series in Ingersoll talks on immortality. And he said there are really two theories of the relationship between brain and mind and consciousness, and one is the production theory, and the other one is the transmission.

  Now the production theory is, the brain somehow creates consciousness. It generates it in the same way a turbine, if it runs, it generates electricity, you stop the turbine, the electricity stops. This is the dominant common sense, western concept. It’s a product, a byproduct of the brain. We can’t explain how that a brain neural interactions produce something, a sensation of a qualitative sensation of we call consciousness. That’s a big problem, a real big problem in consciousness. These are so called hard problem. But if our brain and body, because the whole body, I think, is involved in it, the heart is involved in it very much, only transmits consciousness, then we perceive it while our body is operating, we participate in it.

  When the body dies, consciousness continues. It could conceivably become re-associated with another brain and body, you know, which is the concept of reincarnation, or rebirth. The whole idea of past lives, where we saw so much evidence that we are not limited to the single lifetime, so I think that is, I think, the key to idea of death, death is of the physical body. Consciousness is infinite.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Consciousness is infinite, and I want to … and I’m looking forward very much to this new book, and our mutual colleague, Michael Murphy, of Esalen, has spent a lot of his time in the last 15 years funding, through Esalen, the best research on reincarnation. He actually funded the chair of Ian Stevens, at University of Virginia, went to a lot of the collection. Michael said to me that, yeah, the classic work, he said that he had once said in public that he was agnostic on reincarnation, and he went home and he felt sleazy, because he was unwilling to admit it publicly, and he made a decision 15 years ago that it was actually immoral for him not to claim what he actually knows, based on all the research, that actually the best explanation of reincarnation, really the only one that he sees, and Michael’s a hardcore rationalist, is the survival of consciousness beyond the body.

  And we have a wealth of empirical information. In your book on this, I’m sure will be an important watershed, in kind of bringing and integrating and up-leveling this conversation, and if we can bring the two things together, as long as we had a notion of enlightenment being merging into the one, then there was no real reason to assume the immortality of the unique individual. The second you actually realize the irreducible uniqueness, again, not as personality, not as social, psychological, and cultural conditioning, but there’s actually a unique essence, which is Ervining in the world, then actually it makes all the sense in the world to actually think about the immortality of consciousness, which is I think why Buddhism actually reintroduced reincarnation on the side, and it’s Buddhism had a strong sense of oneness, and yet reincarnation, what’s reincarnating if you’re only part of the one, well, so the essential structure of unique consciousness, and there’s more and more and more writing on that. When is your book gonna be available, when are we gonna get to see it?

  Dr. Ervin László: Well, I have to write it first. I have a draft of it now. I think it’ll be 2015-

  Dr. Marc Gafni: So we’re gonna wait for that book. Well that’s a good place to end, we’re waiting for one of Professor László’s upcoming books, on the immortality of the soul. I recommend it, and I want to recommend again, everyone, just go to Amazon, and to get The Self Actualizing Cosmos. This is actually a great place, it’s a good access point, i think, for all of Ervin’s work, to the extent I’ve read four or five books. There’s many, many more, but this is a great beginning, I think, to kind of enter into the work.

  Dr. Ervin László: But let me add, you can follow this up with a book that don’t have to wait until I finish the other one, which is coming out in October, so by the time perhaps you play this, by the time it will have been out, which is called “The Immortal Mind”.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: The Immortal Mind.

  Dr. Ervin László: The Continuity of Consciousness Beyond the Brain, that’s what the subtitle is.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Oh, so you already a backup, fantastic.

  Dr. Ervin László: Yes, with a lot of lot of case studies, of the 180 pages or so, so 120 are case studies.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Okay, so this is The Immortal Mind: The Continuity of Consciousness Beyond the Brain, and I’m sure we’ll have a band on the bottom of this screen by the time this actually goes public, with the Amazon place to go on Amazon and to actually find the book, and I just want to say in conclusion, my delight in actually meeting Ervin about two years ago, doing a dialog or two, two dialogs actually, and then speaking a number of times on the phone, and then coming here in person, is I’ve had the privilege of actually falling in love with this unique genius mind, with this gorgeous, gorgeous human expression of outrageous brilliance, outrageous love, that’s making such a stunning contribution to the evolution of consciousness, that it’s been just, every moment a delight, and I want to thank you.

  Dr. Ervin László: I can’t match your eloquence, but I can match your feeling. I feel just the same way about meeting you, and now getting to know you in person.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Thank you so much, what a delight, what a delight. Thank you everyone for being with us. Thank you.

  
  

  ---

  If you like the dialogue, you may be interested in our online course “ Becoming a Future Human”

  Who do we need to become in order for humanity to make it though its current dangerous technological adolescence and to create a world that is truly commensurate with our full human, scientific, social, spiritual, and technological capabilities? If you are here to embody your unique gift fully for the benefit of all life and play your role as a steward of the cosmos and the birth of a new humanity, then welcome! This course is for everyone that knows humanity is at the brink of an epochal shift, that believes we can create the world the great sages knew was possible, and that wants to be a part of co-creating that world together.

  >>> Learn more about the course here <<<

  
  
  

• A Tale of Two Futures

  
  

  Contents

  • 0.1 A Film Featuring Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Bernard Beckwith, & Marc Gafni
  • 0.2  
  • 1 Join the Church of Evolutionary Love
  • 2 Join Us Online Every Saturday at 9am PT/ Noon ET

  A Film Featuring Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Bernard Beckwith, & Marc Gafni

  Enjoy the movie above with Marc Gafni, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Michael Bernard Beckwith about our current crisis as driver for the evolution of love!

  We live in the best of times. We live in a time where the average human being has more human dignity, more possibility, more potential, more material prosperity, more education than at any other time in human history.

  We live in the worst of times. We live in a moment in which our progress itself threatens to consume us.

  We live in a world of outrageous pain. The only response to outrageous pain is outrageous love. – Dr. Marc Gafni

  We need to close the gap between our ability to feel the pain and our ability to heal the pain. Only outrageous love can do that. Only through committing our unique outrageous acts of love can we do that.

  Watch the video to learn more…

  For a transcript of the film, turn on the English captions under Settings > Subtitles/CC.

  
  

  ---

   

  Join the Church of Evolutionary Love

  
  

  Join Us Online Every Saturday at 9am PT/ Noon ET

  
  
  

• Prayer

  
  

  Watch and listen to this 5-minute video, the ninth part of a 10-part dialogue with Ervin Laszlo and Marc Gafni in Tuscany on the topic of Evolutionary Love–envisioning a new Renaissance that will take us to the future. Watch previous posts from this series;

  • The New Renaissance, & Love as an Erotic Force
  • The Second Shock of Existence
  • Evolutionary Love, the True Nature of Reality, & Unique Self Enlightenment
  • Supercoherence
  • Self-Organization, the Ability to Receive Information from the Larger System, & the Spiritual Dimension
  • How to Open the Eye of the Spirit & The Unique Self Symphony
  • Evolutionary Love – Personal and Cosmic Love Are One – the Personal as a Quality of Essence
  • Appearing as the One – Unending Symphony

  Enjoy the ninth part of the dialogue here:

  Transcript

  Dr. Marc Gafni: So Ervin, you mentioned prayer, so I think prayer is an important conversation, because we hear so much about meditation, and meditation is a critical practice. I practice meditation. It’s a beautiful practice that allows you to move beyond your separate self, and access your location in this larger context of ultimate ground of being Buddha nature, in Kabbalah we call it Ayin.

  Prayer I a different practice. Prayer is your access what we just called the personal face of the cosmos. If ervin is personal, ervin’s personal-ness represents this larger personal-ness. If I say i was at Ervin László’s house, and he was really impersonal, which I would never say, it was actually the opposite, but that wouldn’t be a compliment. Wouldn’t say he was impersonal. I would be like, I couldn’t quite find his divinity. When I say, well, I felt so personally welcomed, and so at home, what I mean is, I located the divine essence space that received me, so prayer is, in some sense, turning to the personal face of essence, and creating the personal relationship with the interior personal essence that animates the entire system.

  And when I begin to understand prayer that way, and not as a mythological cosmic vending machine, put in a quarter and get Ankara prayer, then we can actually begin to reclaim prayer, which is what I think you were pointing to. And I noticed that you actually, in all of your lists of practices, you always mention prayer.

  Dr. Ervin László: Prayer, to me, just in my experience, is a way to meditate, because I’m not sharing that belief, let’s say, in a system, which says that through prayer I’m addressing one particular personality, to whom I am praying. I’m not praying to anybody. What I’m doing, I suppose I’m meditating, maybe I’m not praying. I feel that I’m entering into a deeper field, and prayer, I think, to other people maybe, and you would know much more about this, may be addressing to whom you pray.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Are you willing to play with me on this for a second? Okay, let’s play. So, prayer to a personality is the old prayer, ’cause that’s not the prayer I’m talking about. Let me try and talk about it differently. So, if I say, let’s see if we can kind of … we’ll do this spontaneously, if I say, I hear Professor László talking, so I hear you, so question is, how do I hear you? So I hear you through my ears, but not really through my ears. My ears are just the exterior expression of my intelligence, hears you, so now I think I’m pretty intelligent, but I’m not the most intelligent person in Italy, because you live here, and then there’s a larger intelligence of all of Europe, and then there’s the intelligence of the whole world.

  So if I hear you through my intelligence, so my intelligence participates in the larger intelligence of reality, it’s inseparable from that intelligence. I’m part of a larger intelligence, so in that sense I mean prayer. So, if ervin speaks, and Marc hears Ervin, through his intelligence, then obviously the intelligence of reality hears ervin. That’s what I mean by prayer.

  Dr. Ervin László: I’m perfectly happy to pray to the cosmic consciousness that infuses all of reality.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Right, but it’s different than meditation, because meditation I’m merging with it, and prayer is I’m actually feeling that that personal quality isn’t only in ervin, the personal quality in Ervin reflects the personal quality of reality, and the reason this is so important, my friend, is because without this, we have this cultural divide. There’s the people that pray, and the fundamentalist world has so much trouble with the liberal world, because the liberal doesn’t pray. And the fundamentalist world, of course, has exiled prayer to a personality, gut they have an intuition that’s right. And the intuition is, that there’s a personal quality of the cosmos.

  And actually, everything you write about indicates that personal quality, so I’m gonna kind of suggest that we actually make that quality visible, not as personality, but as the personal essence of Ervin, and that intelligence participates in the larger personal quality of cosmos. We don’t exile personal to separate self.

  Dr. Ervin László: Okay, I certainly agree with that. In that sense, I am praying. I can’t pray if it’s not in the personal level. It’s the person is the cosmos.

  Dr. Marc Gafni: Right, the person and cosmos meet in some way, so that’s one … that just allows us to kind of heal a cultural divide, the kind of exile of prayer to this very narrow place.

  ---

  If you like the dialogue, you may be interested in our online course “ Becoming a Future Human”

  Who do we need to become in order for humanity to make it though its current dangerous technological adolescence and to create a world that is truly commensurate with our full human, scientific, social, spiritual, and technological capabilities? If you are here to embody your unique gift fully for the benefit of all life and play your role as a steward of the cosmos and the birth of a new humanity, then welcome! This course is for everyone that knows humanity is at the brink of an epochal shift, that believes we can create the world the great sages knew was possible, and that wants to be a part of co-creating that world together.

  >>> Learn more about the course here <<<