Upcoming Events – Hemispheric Intelligence / Spirit in the Humanities / The Sense of the Sacred

Over the coming days, Iain McGilchrist will be taking part in a number of online events which include exploring the divided brain in relation to the sacred, hemispheric intelligence, the need for a renaissance of the spirit in the Humanities, and a talk and discussion on the sense of the sacred, the final chapter of The Matter with Things. You can find all the details below including how to book.

Iain McGilchrist will be in conversation with Nick Spencer to discuss science, religion, the brain, the sacred, and the future of humanity.

Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World is already an acknowledged classic. His recently published follow up The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World is destined to become one.

Covering an astonishingly wide intellectual range, its final chapter – 60,000 words long – focuses in on what his thesis about divided brain has to say about our “sense of the sacred” (Spoiler alert: the answer is a lot).

For more information and to register for free, click here.

The term ‘intellect’ is understood by traditional philosophers to refer to our capacity for gnosis or transcendent knowledge through the experience of sharing identity of being the One. It is more than reason as our capacity for analysis (the roots of this word suggest ‘to loosen)’. It transcends the over-domination of the left hemisphere as described in the recent profound work of neuroscientist and philosopher Dr Iain McGilchrist in his Magnum Opus The Matter with Things. It is this left hemisphere mode of attention and perception that now dominates our culture and has created our serious imbalance and existential unease.

For more information and to book click here.

A Call for a Renaissance of the Spirit in the Humanities follows on from the 2014 Manifesto for a Post-Materialist Science and the 2018 Galileo Commission Report, Beyond a Materialist Worldview: Towards an Expanded Science as a corresponding call to expand the scope of the Humanities to encompass the emerging scientific insights regarding the ontological primacy and unity of consciousness, with the purpose of recovering the depth dimension of human spiritual identity. In this Call, we argue that, based on recent scientific research, there is good evidence to refute the claim that we are merely ‘hackable animals‘ (in Yuval Noah Harari’s words) or at best complex biological machines in need of an upgraded operating system as proposed by the recent movement of Transhumanism.

For more information and to book click here.

In this seminar with The Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, Iain McGilchrist draws on his new work, The Matter with Things, and specifically the final chapter, The Sense of the Sacred, and addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces – ones that have a practical urgency for all of us today. He will ask; what has happened to our sense of the sacred and divine? Does it matter any longer? Is it true that it has been driven out of our world by science and reason? How could an understanding of the structure and function of the human brain even begin to make sense of what has happened – and is still happening? And should we be concerned?

This seminar will be followed by a Q&A with Iain.

For those people who cannot attend live, this event will be recorded and all links to the recordings will be sent to everyone who has purchased a ticket.

For more information and to book click here.

Thank you for reading,

The Team at Channel McGilchrist