About the Conference

A focus on love is more urgent now than ever. Unconditional love, altruistic love, compassion, and forgiveness all arise from the unlimited love present in creation and all are essential to our survival. All are essential to our survival—yet this fact does not seem to have penetrated deeply enough into our consciousness to be manifest in our behavior.

In part one of his scientific autobiography, Wilhelm Reich gave his view of what lay at the heart of his life’s work. “Its core remains, as always, the enigma of love, to which we all owe our being.” This sentence is the inspiration for The Mindshift Institute’s September 9-11, 2005 Conference, Cosmos and Consciousness III: The Cosmology of Love.

What is love? A primal force of creation? The origin of all that exists? God? An emotion associated with certain life forms that have evolved on Earth? Can Love save us from our many and serious problems? Or is that a naïve fantasy? Can love heal us in body and soul? Or is that a “new age” illusion?

Dozens of wars are raging on our planet. Human destructiveness and self-destructiveness are evident everyday in large and small scale in newspaper, magazine, radio and TV news reports. We seem to be fighting social problems the way conventional doctors fight illnesses—by treating the symptoms. Can anything be done at the root to help turn our world around? Reich believed that only “the re-establishment of the natural capacity for love” can eliminate human destructiveness.

The basic question, What is Love?, remains unanswered to this day after millennia of searching by human beings using the tools of science and spirit. We do not think that we will answer this question at our conference. However, by the end of the event, we may have a deeper sense of the role of love in our personal and social lives that can help us as we try our best to make our Earth a more livable and loving home.

Four Exciting Presenters

Love calls us to a higher order of vision. We have asked these specific men and women to guide us and help us look at Love through their separate lenses. They are people who are motivated by love and whose actions in the world demonstrate this fact. They will share with us their experiences and insights.

Our conference features author and cross-cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien; Institute of Noetic Sciences president James O’Dea; author, social architect and futurist, August T. Jaccaci; and surgeon, author and founder of the H.O.P.E. support groups, Ken Hamilton, MD. There will also be a panel of the presenters in the afternoon talking to one another and answering questions from the audience. Throughout the day, we will all have an opportunity to share with one another.

During the day-long conference, and also during an extended weekend event involving the presenters and 30 other participants, we will explore the subject of love. Together, we will try to understand better the role of love in our origins; its role as a force that sustains us as individuals and societies; its crucial function in health and healing, including sexual expression; and its cosmic manifestations.

During our time together, we may find that we resonate more with one presenter than another, or with some of their viewpoints but not others. But by opening up, letting the light of others pass through the prism of ourselves, we can see the spectrum of experiences that exists hidden in the light of day. By listening with love to others who are coming from love, we may hear and feel things that have the power to change us for the better. As psychologist and author Kenneth Ring, PhD has said, “That love is there for all of us, and, once you open to it, it will inevitably lead you to yourself—your real self.” Isn’t that the way love works?

Angeles Arrien
A Universal Experience: The Mystery of Love

Love is the most healing and catalytic force in the world. Universally, we are shaped by who and what we love individually and collectively. Love is a transformative fire that entices our spirits to grow and to move out of any constricted confines. It is an energy that never dominates, but instead cultivates, opens, expands, and deepens the human spirit. Cross-culturally, we will explore the indigenous view of the four-chambered heart; the four fires found in all the spiritual traditions; and the four ways we cultivate love universally.

How can we begin to see our life journey as a story of love unfolding? What experiences of love are greater than our concepts of romantic love? What experiences of love have ignited spiritual, mystical and transpersonal experiences? We will address these questions and our own mysterious experiences of love in order to honor its compelling, contagious, inclusive invitation to response in whatever seasons, cycles and rhythms and forms its presence emerges in our lives.

Angeles Arrien is a cultural anthropologist, award-winning author, educator, and consultant to many organizations and businesses. She lectures and conducts workshops worldwide, bridging cultural anthropology, psychology, and comparative religions. Her work is currently used in medical, academic, and corporate environments. Angeles is the President of the Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research, and author of many books, including The Four-Fold Way, Signs of Life and The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom. Her books have been translated into nine languages, and she has received three honorary doctorate degrees in recognition of her work.

James O’Dea
The Gnostic and The Scientist: Ways of Knowing Love

There is an ancient science that brings together love and knowledge. Mystics speak of universal love and states of oneness and the paths that lead to them. Yet most agree that intuition alone will not get us there, that knowledge and a teacher are both essential.

There are many paths available that may lead to an understanding of love. The Gnostic combines the practice of love with the study of wisdom or spiritual science. The Scientist uses various cognitive, rational, empirical methodologies to investigate and theorize about the nature of reality.

Can we use empirical investigations to confirm the reality that is spoken of in mysticism? Can we combine different ways of knowing/accessing truth effectively? How do various explorations in the field of consciousness contribute to the mystical perspective? How does rational scientific inquiry contribute to something that is considered to be beyond the realm of the rational? Can we confirm multiple ways of knowing—and unite the gnostic and the scientist to deepen our understanding of love…and ourselves?

James O’Dea is president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He was formerly the Director of Amnesty International’s Washington DC office and former Executive Director of the Seva Foundation. He speaks to groups around the world on issues of personal and global healing.

Ken Hamilton, MD
HOPE and Health Care: A Window to its Cosmology

Love is indefinable and immeasurable. That which can not be measured lies outside of the realm of science. Science and reason do not consider the existence of that which cannot be measured, e.g. love and the soul. Poets have described the power and effects of love for centuries. Contemporary scientists have too, but they just don't call it love. Rather, they talk about relationships, fields, energies, attractions, etc. And isn't love inclusive of all these?

Relationships manifest love's power and its effects; love’s effects are measurable. Medicine has known of the healing power of relationships for centuries. The seductive power of reason and intellect have nearly destroyed that knowing… that intelligence. However, the power of love shows up repeatedly in clinical work euphemistically called "the placebo effect". The effects of love show up with increasing frequency now that medicine has begun to adopt that which it calls "evidence-based" practices. Furthermore, "Relationship-centered Care" was the subject of joint scrutiny by the Pew Health Profession Commission and the Fetzer Institute in the past decade. Change is afoot.

In this context, we shall look at some beautiful examples of love at work in the course of disease, how it could possibly work, and ways in which modern health care can open a window to the Cosmology of Love.

Ken Hamilton is a board-certified allopathic general surgeon. His roots comprise allopathic medicine and Christian Science. As a small boy, he knew that God and Love were synonymous, and that healing was as much psychospiritual as it was physical. His curiosity about healing led him into medicine and surgery. His patients showed him that the surgeon-patient relationship had a powerful impact on the outcome of surgical therapies. He started a support group in his practice in 1987. Its participants chose to call it a HOPE Group, using the acronym, Healing of Persons Exceptional. He sheathed his scalpel in 1988 to concentrate on bringing hope and love into healthcare. He is the author of SoulCircling: the Journey to the Who.

August T. Jaccaci
A Cosmology of Love

Love is the source, the substance and the future of all being of the cosmos and everything within it. Nature is the architecture of love. This talk will explore the reality of love as energy, idea, value and intention in the cosmos and in all human lives. The presentation will also explore the emergence of a new planetary political economy, increasingly influenced by love. We are now beginning to understand that the benevolent use of spirit in our lives is the next stage of human evolution. Our entrance into that next stage of consciousness is the purpose of our newly forming cosmology and its complementary spiritual technologies.

August T. Jaccaci has worked with leaders throughout the world who want to envision and architect an ideal future for themselves and their enterprises. He is a gifted speaker, a respected visionary and a leading social inventor. He earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University. He is president of the nonprofit organization Unity Scholars and the founder of the Nature Planning Network and the author of two books, Chief Evolutionary Officer—Leaders Mapping the Future and General Periodicity: Nature’s Creative Dynamics.

More About the Conference

Has There Ever Been A Cosmology of Love?

From the ancient thought systems of the East to contemporary scientific explorations in the West, the phenomenon of love has held a central place in many of humanity’s attempts to understand itself and the cosmos in which it exists. In one way or another, all human cultures have known that love is fundamental to our existence.

In the earliest religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the essence of creation was understood to be love. For many natural philosophers in ancient Greece, love was the source or origin of existence. Empedocles (495-435 BC) wrote, “At the beginning of time, Love completely dominated the universe.” And at least while Jesus was alive, the message of Christianity was a gospel of love. As is clearly evident in the savage sectarian conflicts since then, the organized religions of the world have strayed far from their focus on love.

Artists have understood that love is the central phenomenon of existence and expressed it in many ways. For example, the poet Dante wrote that “love moves the sun and the other stars.” Over the centuries, philosophers have explored the meaning of love without, unfortunately, coming closer to comprehending it.

People in the sociopolitical sphere have tried to create more compassionate, loving societies. Yet Marx’s humanitarian sociology became the Gulags and death camps of communism; democracies created to bring liberty and hope to people have been undermined by crude capitalism; and plans for achieving “One World” equality for all Earthlings are fading before the rise of the global transnational corporate state.

For the past 100 years in the West, psychologists have focused on love, but more on its absence and pathological forms or on the inability to love, rather than on love itself. However, in Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud wrote of a way of living that “does not turn away from the external world” and that “is not content to aim at an avoidance of unpleasure—a, goal as we might call it, of weary resignation.”

He talked of a passionate way of being that strives for happiness and may come closer to achieving happiness than any other lifestyle people have devised. “I am, of course, speaking of the way of life which makes love the center of everything, which looks for all satisfaction in loving and being loved. A psychical attitude of this sort comes naturally enough to all of us…” But Freud and his followers rejected “the way of life which makes love the center of everything.” They chose, instead, adaptation to society.

All of the ancient schools of healing recognized that healers or physicians did not themselves heal or cure. They merely assisted the Life Force, or the power of love, within individuals. Healing was achieved by the Life Force itself. Complementary or integrative healers have returned to this ancient wisdom today but this truth has not yet penetrated into conventional medicine or society in general.

Despite powerful insights and intuitions among religious, artistic, scientific, medical and socially conscious men and women over the millennia, a true cosmology of love has not yet taken hold on Earth. All of the great efforts to make our world more loving have failed so far despite the best intentions of so many.

Can a cosmology of love become a reality if we do not understand why the great life-positive contributions of the past 4-6,000 years have left things unchanged or even made the situation worse?

How Would a Cosmology of Love Change Our World?

We are using the word cosmology in an expanded sense, to mean a specific view of the universe that is shaped by wisdom and knowledge gained, not only from scientific study, but also, from other ways of knowing.

In the traditional religious cosmology, of which there are a number of variations, the universe was created by God. In today’s dominant materialist, scientific view, the cosmos came about accidentally as the result of a “Big Bang.” An ancient cosmology has returned in a contemporary form and, in this view, “Consciousness” is primary and has created the physical world. In the absence of certain knowledge and understanding, a thousand hypotheses flourish.

In all of today’s various cosmologies or worldviews, people’s actions are motivated by their deepest conscious and unconscious beliefs. What would life on Earth be like if our deepest belief is that Love is All and that we are all One in Love?

If humanity were to perceive fully and completely, that Love is the “Source,” “Origin,” or “Creator” of existence, how would our lives—personal and societal—be different? Fundamental changes in the way we live on Earth would become evident in the functioning of our governments, businesses, scientific, medical, religious and educational institutions.

Imagine the power of healing we could bring to all of our relationships—with each other, with the other living beings on our planet, and with the planet itself—if each decision we made was based on love. The words “revolutionary” and “radical” fail to convey the magnitude of the change that would occur in health and healing, for example, if a cosmology of love existed on Earth.

Imagine the impact a cosmology of love would have on the institution of marriage; family structure; fetal and neonatal care; birthing practices; child-rearing; attitudes toward human sexuality, especially during adolescence; relations between men and women, particularly intimate ones; the emotional connections between parents and children, old and young, people of diverse backgrounds, interests, beliefs or origins—all of these would be radically different.

Are we any closer to understanding Love and its role in our lives? Pierre Teihard de Chardin believed that, “Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness…the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.”

It may be that Teihard’s intuition will find its fruition in the life-positive work being done in our era, perhaps in the science developed by Wilhelm Reich which has the potential to be the foundation of a cosmology of love. Reich understood that the primordial cosmic energy he discovered and called orgone is the energy of love.

We invite you to join with us in September and become a co-creator of this uplifting and expansive event!

Premium Weekend Package Cosmos and Consciousness III: The Cosmology of Love An Exciting Weekend in Marion, MA In Association with the Marion Institute September 9-11, 2005 The Mindshift Institute is presenting an exciting day-long conference with a deeper weekend experience from September 9-11, 2005, Cosmos and Consciousness III—The Cosmology of Love. The first two Cosmos and Consciousness conferences have demonstrated that participating in this weekend is indeed a special opportunity. This year, it is being held in beautiful Marion, MA, a peaceful and serene New England coastal town. Marion provides a wonderful setting for expansive thinking and exploration. While the one-day conference on Saturday, September 10 is open to the public, we want to invite you to join us and the presenters—Angeles Arrien, James O’Dea, Dr. Ken Hamilton and August T. Jacacci—for an extraordinary weekend. You will have a rare opportunity to spend one-on-one time with four creative leaders who are making important contributions to the new worldview now emerging. Because we want to ensure that each participant has time to connect with the presenters, there are only a limited number of places available for the Premium Weekend Package, which includes: a very special evening Friday with the speakers and fellow guests; including dessert, coffee, tea, soft drinks and wine admission to the Saturday conference itself an excellent dinner in a lovely Marion home Saturday night for the guests and speakers with much stimulating conversation a thought-provoking Sunday morning session with the presenters and the weekend guests