We begin the day with the Invited Guest Lecture by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, who will then be joined by two panelists discussing the rise tide of political and religious authoritarianism.

This is followed by a rich, in-depth consideration of how esoteric spirituality, time-tested Asian cultural wisdom, and the new coherence physics of the quantum vacuum (Akashic field) may contribute to a post-egoic, locally based but globally integrated political and cultural synthesis.

We complete this day with remarkable briefings from harbingers of our emerging cooperative planetary civilization. These are activist-scholars who connect the evolution of human consciousness to profound transformations underway in democratic political engagement, global security, ecological awareness, economic justice, transdisciplinary education, revised social organization, and the emergence of non-violent human relations.

We begin with a review of the promising emerging initiatives such as liquid democracy and cosmolocalism. We will also identify traditional and new scientific understandings and explore the promise of collective intelligence strategies, tools, and initiatives that can co-develop, expand, and integrate emerging networks at the meta-level.

We complete this day by outlining pathways for developing citizen-led global and decentralized self-governance, consensual models of decision-making and the initial foundations for the co-creation of a new “Earth Constitution” for guiding humanity through this challenging time of transition.

Our focus for this day is on inclusive engagement, collaboration, and the making of a participatory plan for collective action. We will explore how we can start to ‘constitutionalize’ the new paradigm principles and practices. This may eventually take the form of an Earth Constitution and support the constitutional reform that is required in many countries for becoming thrivable civilizations. This day also provides time for networking and collaboration.

He is the recipient of the Goi Peace Prize (2001), the International Mandir of Peace Prize (2005), the Conacreis Holistic Culture Prize (2009), the Ethics Prize of Milan (2014), and the Luxembourg World Peace Prize (2017). Laszlo is Honorary citizen of the City of Buenos Aires and Honorary Professor of the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology and holds Honorary Ph.D’s from the United States, Canada, Finland, and Hungary.

He is the author or co-author of hundred and one books translated into twenty-four languages. Laszlo was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and 2005.

Bill’s background in the history of consciousness, classical spirituality, and post-Cartesian political, scientific, artistic, and cultural paradigms, along with his work as author, lecturer, literary agent, editor, and publisher, gives him a broad knowledge of today’s nascent cultural renaissance. He is currently leading a group working to establish an innovative transdisciplinary college devoted to training a new generation of global leaders.

Ahmed is a Research Fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems; Special Investigations Reporter at Byline Times; and system shift columnist at VICE. He was previously an environment writer at The Guardian, and his journalism has been published in The Independent, The Times, Sunday Times, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, New York Observer, Boston Globe, Toronto Star, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, The Correspondent, Yes! Magazine, New Internationalist, Huffington Post UK, Al-Arabiya English, AlterNet, The Ecologist, and Asia Times, among other places.

He is a Commissioner at the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission, system change advisor on the COP26 Global Assembly’s Knowledge & Wisdom Committee, and was recently a Commissioner at the Cambridge University Sustainability Commission on Scaling Sustainable Behaviour Change. He is the author of seven books including Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence (Springer-Nature, 2018) and A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (Pluto, 2010).

He was the founding Director General of the Hungarian National Institute for Environment and served as the appointed Envoy for the Budapest Water Summit, held in October 2013 in Budapest.

He was a Board member of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe between 2009-2016. He also was a member of the Management Board of the European Environment Agency (EEA). Dr Teplán is a contributor of several articles and papers to international conferences and journals and taught at several universities.

As a scholar he contributed to the book, Budapest and New York, Studies in Metropolitan Transformation 1870-1930.

Dr. Istvan Teplán is a recipient of the Officers Cross of Merit of the Hungarian Republic.

As cofounder of America’s first doctoral program on mysticism, at Rice University (GEM, or Gnosticism, Esotericism, Mysticism), author of many books and articles using the field of comparative religion to engage contemporary topics as diverse as human sexuality, comic books, UFOs, paranormal phenomena, and contemporary science, and through collaborations and curated symposia on behalf of the Esalen Institute’s Center of Theory and Research and other institutions, he is bidding to instigate a public conversation that breaks the deep cultural impasse between secular and sacred worldviews.

With more than 40 years’ experience as an entrepreneur, Fred has worked successfully with business partners and governments in multiple markets across diverse cultures. Not afraid to push boundaries, as Chairman of Intercargo, Fred repositioned the dry bulk industry from a shipper to one that plays a role within the global supply chain.

He later founded Family Business Network Asia and served on the board of Family Business Network International, where he inspired the exploration of family businesses’ role within the global system. Fred founded East West Cultural Development Centre in Singapore in 1995 to research on sustainability and modernity. His exploration into Eastern Wisdom led him to focus on Chinese esoteric traditions and Western quantum science. Both are paradigms of conscientiousness and evolution.

Fred has since published over 30 books in Chinese, concluding that we are amidst a major consciousness shift and at the dawn of a new era of wellbeing. He advocates that business should transform and reform our era. For this, he founded OCTAVE Institute, a comprehensive integrated life journey approach towards wellbeing.

In 2019, Fred co-authored “Quantum Leadership, New Consciousness in Business” with Chris Laszlo, published by Stanford University Press. Fred also contributed a piece titled “Reconnecting to the Source in the Mirror of Chinese Culture” to the book by Ervin Laszlo titled “Reconnecting to the Source” published by St. Martin’s Press in 2020.

He is the founding president of the Association for the Study of Esotericism and the founder and editor of the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. His recent book The Mystical State: Politics, Gnosis, and Emergent Culture explores how mysticism can inspire political and cultural renewal.

He is President of the Mother’s Service Society, an educational and social science research institute in India. He is also President and CEO of the World Academy of Art and Science. He is author of two books on the process of business growth, a report to the UN on peace and development, a strategy to create 100 million jobs in India, a novel on spirituality in business, and more than one hundred articles applying principles of consciousness in various fields of life.

She is engaged in an exploration of the relationship between literature, psychology, history and social development, which examines the correlation between the characters and events depicted in literature and the changing human values and social behavior. This project is part of her larger career goal to evolve new criteria for literary criticism based on an understanding of the process of social evolution, that in turn leads to a deeper understanding of the principles that govern life.

He serves on numerous governing and advisory boards including: Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Fortune Forum, Jane Goodall Institute, the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, and Middle Powers Initiative. He is a recipient of the Rutgers University School of Law’s Arthur E. Armitage Distinguished Alumni Award and a 2014 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the Senior Advisor and United Nations Representative of the Permanent Secretariat of the World Summits of Nobel Peace Laureates, Ambassador for Peace, Security and Nuclear Disarmament of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and Chair of the Task Force on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Advisor to the Committee on National Security of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association.

Kurt’s current project involves setting up PFA training to prevent the development and escalation of psychosocial unrest and violence. This includes a preliminary survey on the correlation between the rise of temperature and increases in violence and unrest. He is also an Indigenous Talking Circle Leader and Facilitator, certified by the Four Worlds International Institute (FWII).

Kurt worked for many years in Europe and North America. He is also a registered Naturopathic Physician and applies this with his specialisation in psychology, psychotherapy & bio-feedback. Kurt was trained in psychotechnics and higher states of Consciousness for the bio-feedback by Maxwell Cade and Geoff Blandell from the Institute for Psychobiological Research in 1979. His research expertise includes the history of impact of eco-mutations on epidemics. Kurt’s rich multi-cultural background enables him to create important bridges of understanding and has made him a well sought-after adviser both in Mauritius and internationally. In 2004 he was Knighted in the Order of Academic Palms of the French Republic for his outstanding service.

Her groundbreaking Ph.D. dissertation “Into the Heart of Systems Change“, addresses how to diagnose and transform key systemic barriers of our world crisis through its proposed Transition Plan for a Thrivable Civilization. Anneloes is the co-author of the Future Humans Trilogy with Dr. Jean Houston, and is the author of the Amazon International Bestseller “Love Letters from Mother Earth – The Promise of a New Beginning”, as well as many scientific articles and chapters in international peer-reviewed journals and books. Anneloes is the lead architect of the EARTHwise Tipping Point System, the lead author of the r3.0 Educational Transformation Blueprint, an architect of the SEEDS Constitution and strategic advisor of Hypha for co-developing the Regenerative Renaissance tools, currencies, systems, and cultures. She is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle of the Source of Synergy Foundation.

He served as the 57th President and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), was Director of the Doctoral Program in Management at the Graduate School of Business Administration & Leadership (EGADE-ITESM), Mexico, and Founding Director of the Doctoral Program in Leadership and Systemic Innovation at ITBA, Argentina. He is also President of the Honorary Board of Advisors of the World Complexity Science Academy (WCSA), and has been named a Level I Member of the National Research Academy of Mexico (SNI).

He is on the Editorial Boards of eleven internationally arbitered research journals, recipient of the Gertrude Albert Heller Award, the Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award, and the Förderpreis Akademischer Klub award, author of over 100 journal, book and encyclopedia publications, and a 6th Degree Black Belt in traditional Taekwon-do. Born in Fribourg, Switzerland, he is holder of a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Policy from the University of Pennsylvania from where he also received his MA in History and Sociology of Science. His BA is from Haverford College, with a major in International and Comparative Political Science and a minor in Human Physiology.

She is also a founder of the field of Social Artistry, “Human development in the light of social change.” She has been a key player in the empowerment of women around the world, and was awarded the Synergy Superstar Award 2020 by the Source of Synergy Foundation for her exemplary work inspiring us to source our highest human capacities. A powerful and dynamic speaker, and renowned for her gifts as a mythic storyteller, Dr Houston holds conferences, seminars, and mentoring programs with leaders and change agents worldwide. She has worked intensively in over 40 cultures, lectured in over 100 countries, and worked with major organizations such as UNICEF, UNDP, and NASA, as well as helping global state leaders, leading educational institutions, business organizations, and millions of people to enhance and deepen their own uniqueness.

She is the co-author of the Future Humans Trilogy with Dr. Anneloes Smitsman, and has authored over 35 published books and a great many unpublished books, plays, and manuscripts. Dr. Houston is Chancellor of Meridian University and has served on the faculties of Columbia University, Hunter College, Marymount College, The New School for Social Research, and the University of California.

Dr Houston was also President of the American Association of Humanistic Psychology, and is presently the Chair of the United Palace of Spiritual Arts in New York City. She is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle of the Source of Synergy Foundation.

For more information visit – www.jeanhouston.com

Prior to these assignments, he held other senior United Nations positions, notably as UN Resident Coordinator in Guyana, Director in the UN Department of Political Affairs, and Head of the Office of the Undersecretary-Secretary-General for Political Affairs. In 2015, he served as a member of the UN Secretary-General High-Level Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and simultaneously a member of the High-Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

In 2019, he led an independent strategic review of the UN peace operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 2463. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, and serves on the Boards of several non-profit organizations in the US and Tunisia. Dr. Mahmoud has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Dr Mahmoud is also the Co-Chair with Prof Jean Houston of Home for Humanity’s Unity Circle and Earth Agora, whose intention is to ‘co-create a just, inclusive and regenerative Earth Civilization’.

His book ‘Whose Peace are we Building: Leadership for Peace in Africa’ was just published in April 2021 by Tauris, a profound reflection on his life-times experiences and lessons as a UN leader heading peace operations and country-wide development programmes.

For more information visit – www.ipinst.org/by/youssef-mahmoud

In 2006, together with Professor Ronnie Lessem, Alexander co-founded TRANS4M Academy for Integral Transformation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with an active, interconnected community of transformative scholar-practitioners spread on all continents. Since 2019, Alexander is evolving TRANS4M further into a cohesive community of “worldmakers”, sharing the vision of “co-creating a world that’s a Home for Humanity”. To strengthen this vision, he co-founded, together with his wife and performer-peacebuilder Dr. Rama Mani, “HOME FOR HUMANITY” in rural France near Geneva, that serves as a living home-campus, integral role model and community hub for a growing global community of agents of transformation. For more information visit – www.homeforhumanity.earth

She was made a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences in January 2021. Dr. Rama Mani is the Founder of Theatre of Transformation Academy, whose purpose is to champion and support the creative power of humanity to shape our shared future.
She is the Convenor of the Enacting Global Transformation Collaborative Initiative at the University of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies, which seeks to redefine paradigms of power, and shape creative and humane responses to current global crises. Rama is the Co-Founder, with her husband, Professor Alexander Schieffer, of Home for Humanity: a global vision, transcultural alliance and catalytic home campus for integral transformation, to enact a just and regenerative future for all life on our home planet. Rama is a Councilor of the World Future Council which protects the rights of future generations and awards the Future Policy Awards. She was a Jury member of the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ or Right Livelihood Award.

Rama has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cambridge, UK, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University, USA, and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College USA in Politics and French Literature. She is a French national and an Overseas Citizen of India, where she grew up.

Her work often involves the creation of networks and develop strategies that address societal demands for greater connectivity, mobility and global awareness. As European Commissioner for Transport, her policy goals aim to make mobility solutions environmentally friendly, competitive and inclusive, to create jobs, growth and maintain social fairness. She is well recognised innovator, entrepreneur, politician (former Deputy Prime Minister of Republic of Slovenia), sports person and much more.

Her work at Unstitution is focused on building binding coalitions across sectors. At Fractal, she is co-creating a vibrant live-work-play community in a smaller Canadian city. In her roles at Unstitution and Fractal and in her private practice, she helps translate broad-brush strategy into a grounded working narrative. She researches globally, travelling down rabbit holes and building bridges between disciplines, industries and sectors. An abundance mindset guides her moral compass and helps her communicate meaningfully with varied stakeholders.

He has broad international experience as an entrepreneur and business consultant in Fortune TOP 500 industries, and the service sector as well as in public administration and cultural and educational organizations. He has taught entrepreneurship, leadership, creativity and innovation management, digital business, future studies, and various systems theories and approaches at several Universities and in professional management training programs in Austria, Germany, Slovenia, France, Belgium, Vietnam, Taiwan, China and the USA.

From 2016 to 2018, Stefan was appointed as Special Adviser to the European Commissioner for Transport. He served as Secretary General and Vice President of the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR), the largest global umbrella organization of systems research organizations in the natural, social, and technological sciences and systems engineering organizations, and Vice President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), initially conceived in 1954 as the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory (by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, and Anatol Rapoport in cooperation with James Grier Miller).

His current work is focused on the development of a General Systems Transdiscipline, developing educational and applied research opportunities on systems design, systemic innovation, nudging, and impact assessment at the intersection of the regenerative economy and digitalization, to improve methods for addressing complex challenges towards the so called Next Economy, in particular the Circular Economy.

Alongside this role, Ollie is a steward of the Collaborative Technology Alliance and of the Open Co-Op, working on protocols for inter-network synergies, as well as a Teaching Associate at the University of Nottingham, where he leads a participatory course in Futures Studies. He has previously co-founded a UK-based social enterprise in alternative secondary education (TftFuture) and co-directed an international social arts enterprise (POTS CIC).

Pavel works with systemic social innovations in education, business, social entrepreneurship, culture, and urban development. Prior to his work in education, Pavel has spent 10+ years in corporate management, investment sector, professional services, and startups, working with strategy, business planning, and operations. He also pursued the academic research career in system sciences and evolutionary economics, working with the Institute of Economics in the Russian Academy of Sciences, The Higher School of Economics University, and the University of Hertfordshire in the UK.

Pim has broad experience in Strategy, Marketing, Finance, (Executive) Education, International Business and ICT in different industries such as Education, Healthcare, Asset Management and others. And a broad network in the corporate and academic world. He is a highly associative thinker with a strong personal commitment to his clients and projects. Pim has a passion for Russia, and for connecting Russian and Dutch businesses and governments, and is partner in Bontemantel, a company that relates European and Russian businesses and governments through corporate development, executive education and public private partnerships.

Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy and spent the next ten years as a Chinese–English translator. The author of Sacred Economics and, Ascent of Humanity, he currently lives in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

Naresh has more than 30 years’ experience in international development and has held several senior positions including as Senior Scientist and then Executive Director of the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute; Program Director at IISD (International Institute for Sustainable Development), Principal Adviser on Poverty and Sustainable Livelihoods at UNDP, New York and Director-General at the CIDA, Federal Government of Canada. He was also Executive Director of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto and hosted by UNDP.

Dr. Singh has been recognized globally for his work on sustainable livelihoods which offers win-win options for poor people get out of poverty with conserving the environment. He has been a visiting professor at several Universities in Canada, USA and the Caribbean and is widely published. His book Legal Rights of the Poor was published in 2014. A new book chapter entitled Development as Emergent Creativity has just been published in Transforming: Applying Spirituality, Emergent Creativity and Reconciliation. (Lexington 2021) edited by Vern and Gloria Redekop.

Current Research Interests:

• Complexity and Public Policy: How to address wicked public policy problems in a world that is increasingly complex, nonlinear, uncertain, emergent m self-organizing and shows other characteristics of complex adaptive systems.
• Applied Spirituality and Public Policy: What would politics and public policy look like if these were informed by a shared consciousness of human beings, a recognition of the illusory sense of separateness from nature and each other and understanding of our true nature beyond the imaginary ego.
• Sustainable Development and Resilience. How can 1 and 2 above be used to help accelerate or initiate the transformations required in socio-ecological systems to help achieve the UN SDGs and beyond.
• Quantum Social Science. What can w learn from quantum like modeling and consciousness studies to address public policy problems.

From 2005-2010 he explored possibilities for the conscious evolution of social systems, grounded in a sacred science-based understanding of evolutionary dynamics. During 2011-2015 he focused on public wisdom, co-intelligent economics and participatory sustainability. Seeking more practice-based ways to engage people around the idea of wise democracy, he is now doing courses and developing a community of practice around the wise democracy pattern language. He hopes these intertwined, expanding explorations can help channel the energies surrounding our 21st century social and environmental crises into positive possibiities and system-transforming initiatives.

Tom’s social change vision is grounded most deeply in new understandings of evolving wholeness which recognize the value of diversity, unity, relationship, context, uniqueness and the spirit inside each of us and the world. Co-intelligence is intelligence that arises from that kind of wholeness. It has collaborative and collective dimensions, and intrinsic interconnectedness which we see clearly in wholesome forms of politics, governance and economics. Co-intelligence theory also highlights the many facets of intelligence (like head and heart), wisdom, and the higher forms of intelligence (natural and sacred) that move through and beyond us. Although Tom and the Institute focus on very practical issues of group, social, political, and economic dynamics, co-intelligence has many esoteric dimensions as well.

An early theoretician and advocate of collective intelligence, Tom’s inclusive mapping of the field has been featured in two major books on the subject – Mark Tovey’s Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (2008) and Nasreen Taher’s Collective Intelligence: An Introduction (2006).

His work on “wise democracy” features his coined category of existing forms of “citizen deliberative councils” which he promotes in his books The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All (2003) and Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics (2012). He has been a significant theoretician in the field of dialogue and deliberation, being lead integrator of the Core Principles of Public Engagement (2009) and a major contributor to the GroupWorks pattern language of group process (2008-2012), as well as a steering committee member of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (2002-2005).

Much of his work features new visions of social change agentry – from the co-intelligent activism articulated in his books Participatory Sustainability,The Tao of Democracy and Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, Poems and Prayers from an Emerging Field of Sacred Social Change (2009), to his co-organizing of the Evolutionary Salon on Philanthropy (2006) and the Storyfield Conference (2007) to his many blog posts on social issues and action.

In addition to his books, blogs and websites, Tom has published extensively in alternative journals and publishes a newsletter featuring significant articles and websites by other commentators, as well as his own writings. He has also worked with a number of other leading authors on their books.

Tom’s complete BIO here: www.co-intelligence.org/tomatleebio.html