By Genna Cherichello

Ashok Gangadean, professor and chair of philosophy and the founder-director of the Global Dialogue Institute, coordinated this year’s Annual Philosophy Forum, called “Consciousness, Connectivity, and Integral Models of Reality: A Deep Dialogue on Science and Philosophy in quest of the Unified Field of Reality.” The audience gathered on Saturday in Sharpless Auditorium to hear the scholars sitting on the panel.

Gangadean explained the word philosophy for the audience, sharing that it meant “loving wisdom.” His intention for this forum is to share his love for wisdom with the community, and to create a dialogue. On his philosophy for Haverford’s department, his goal is to “bring the different worlds together.”

“This forum captures the deepest energy of our culture, wisdom and the sciences for this generation and the millennium,” said Gangadean on his goals for the afternoon during his Opening Keynote.

“Most of us are in a very restricted lens” shaped by our culture, explained Gangadean. He discussed an example of a man who has all sort of different ideologies coming at him, like his Judaism, his responsibilities as a civil American, his job as an astronomer, his therapist’s Jungian advice, and his friends’ advice of feng shui and yoga. Although these are all separate, individuals have difficulty synthesizing it all to then reach beyond.

“There’s a deep fundamental field of reality that is called something different across cultures, but they all aim to reach the same truth,” he said, referencing the Tao and Om. He continued that Gandhi tried to bring the consciousness of the world into political action to act as a peaceful warrior. Major religious figures also all had the same aim: Abraham, Jesus, Allah, etc.

Gangadean explained that all cultures, “East, West, indigenous and science,” have the same aim, which is to find the truth.
The dialogue included three distinguished guests, Pim van Lommel, M.D., Joseph Chilton-Pearce, and Karen Malik. All three are somehow involved in the world of science, and they brought their wisdom to the dialogue.

Pim van Lommel, M.D. is a Dutch cardiologist who has done extensive research in the vein of near-death experiences (NDS). Lommel’s research has addressed various aspects of NDS. The most common symptoms of NDS include awareness of being death, seeing light, and positive feelings. After NDS, patients often experience changes in attitude like little fear of death, new insight on light involving compassion and love for other humans, and enhanced intuitive sensibility.

He discussed the continuity of consciousness during these experiences, specifically in survivors of cardiac arrest. His questions extended to topics of what happens to consciousness during sleep, coma, brain death, the dying process, cardiac arrest and after physical death.

“During period of coma, coma patients feel emotion, have memories and are aware of their surroundings,” he said, drawing on research and experience. He once took out the dentures of a patient while they were in coma, and the patient knew Lommel removed the teeth the first time he saw the doctor out of coma.

Lommel also addressed the cause of our fear of physical death. “Is our fear of death based on our ignorance of what death could be?” he asked.

He concluded with discussion of the brain during NDS, and whether consciousness is actually resultant of the brain or merely received by the neurons. Lommel used the analogy of technology like the radio, computer, and television. These instruments do not create the information they project; they merely receive it. Perhaps consciousness is the same way, he ponders.

Two other people sat on the panel and discussed their areas of expertise. Joseph Chilton-Pearce, author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child, Evolution’s End and the Biology of Transcendence, also spoke. His theories involve a synthesis of physics, biology and psychology to reveal the relationship between the mind and the scientific world. His lecture was entitled “Science of the Mind-Heart Connection: How We Can Serve the World.” Karen Malik, facilitator of the Monroe Institute programs, treats her patients with a transpersonal approach. Her speech was entitled “Doorways to the Soul: Pathways of the Brain.”

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