The fourth annual Science and Nonduality (SAND) conference took place in San Rafael, California in late October, and I had the good fortune to attend for the second year in a row.
In its magnificent interdisciplinarity, the event had some of the flavor of an IBA residency, with presentations by cosmologists, therapists, Vedantists, neurobiologists, Buddhists, quantum theorists, artists, Christian mystics, parapsychologists, Sufis, philosophers, and those who simply describe themselves as non-dualists, in attendance.
The organizers, the Italian couple Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo, who formerly made documentary films, now bring their Mediterranean flair to these unique conferences, creating an atmosphere in which dialogue flourishes and arguments are rare.
Attendance has been growing, with over 600 attendees this year, so that even such an esoteric title as my Deflating Infinity by Inverting Set Theory attracted over 30 people, including IBA student Colin Morgan.
Among the many events which I found deeply enlightening were the linked talks, “Consciousness of the Cosmos” by the cosmologist and dark energy theorist Joel Primack, and “Cosmic Consciousness in the Real World” by the lawyer and scholar of science and religion Nancy Ellen Abrams.
At the center of their presentations was the Cosmic Uruboros, which depicts the entire range of sizes, from the diameter of the visible universe, to the smallest size that quantum science allows, brought full circle by the not yet achieved grand unified theory (GUT). Note the central position of humanity. The gist of their message, which ended with the slogan Think Cosmic, Act Global, Eat Local, can be found in their TED talk.
