A History of Dream Interpretation: Finding Meaning in Dreams From Ancient Cultures to Modern Societies with Dr. Stanley Krippner

This presentation will discuss the important role that dream interpretation played in many shamanic practices, the institutionalization of dream work in the dream temples of ancient Greece, the lucid dream practices of Tibetan Buddhism, and the marginalization of dreams until Sigmund Freud made them a key part of Western psychotherapy. Currently, there are five major approaches to dream interpretation:  the cultural, the psychodynamic, the Gestalt, the associative, and group dream work. Examples of each will be given and dream reports from one volunteer will be used to show that dreams are of increasing relevance today.

Stanley Krippner, PhD, professor of psychology at Saybrook University in San Francisco, California, is a Fellow in four APA divisions, and past-president of two divisions (30 & 32). Formerly, he was director of the the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Research Laboratory, in Brooklyn, NY. He is co-author of Extraordinary Dreams (SUNY, 2002), The Mythic Path, 3rd ed. (Energy Psychology Press, 2006), and Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans (Greenwood, 2007), and co-editor of The Psychological Impact of War on Civilians: An International Perspective (Greenwood, 2003), Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (APA, 2000), and many other books. His most recent book is The Voice of Rolling Thunder (Inner Traditions, 2012).

For more information on the event please CLICK HERE to head over to The Observatory Room event page.

This event is event is produced as a joint collaboration between Liminal Analytics and photographer Shannon Taggart.

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Memory and Eternal Life: An Illustrated Presentation with Saul Brown

On Saturday, February 14th, 2014 at the Observatory: Brooklyn – Cultural Historian, Saul Brown will present an unforgettable illustrated lecture on memory and the concept of eternal life in Western culture. The mystery of what happens after death has always fascinated humanity, but how did ancient cultures understand this mystery? Was the afterlife merely an infinite extension of this life? We will explore how the myth of Sisyphus and the Cumean Sibyl’s wish for eternal life (but not eternal youth) suggest otherwise. We also find memory highly revered in ancient cultures, which is certainly understandable in preliterate and even preprint cultures. But why does the Art of Memory experience its greatest revival during the Renaissance and Baroque? Did its apparent transcendence of time also hold a key to immortality? Was the story of its inventor escaping the collapse of his patron’s palace an allegory for the soul transcending death? From the tombs of the earliest Egyptian dynasties to Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, we will explore the mysteries of death, rebirth and memory and see what the great periods of Western culture have to teach us not only about eternal life, but about how to live a life worthy of eternity.

Saul Brown is a cultural historian living in Brooklyn who is completing work on a study of the role of Memory in Western Culture and its unifying influence on civilization from Egypt and antiquity up to the Enlightenment. He has begun delivering a series of lectures and classes on the subject while also developing educational programs in symbolic modes of thought.

This event is event is produced as a joint collaboration between Liminal Analytics and photographer Shannon Taggart.

For more information on the event please head over to The Observatory Room event page.

Parapsychology Double Feature! Back-to-Back Presentations with George Hansen, Author of The Trickster and the Paranormal

On Saturday, June 15th, join us for an evening of parapsychology lectures and discussion with George Hansen, former parapsychology researcher and author of The Trickster and the Parnormal.

5 pm A History of Parapsychology and Psychical Research

The scientific investigation of psychic phenomena will be discussed—from the rise of Spiritualism in 1848, to the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882, to the laboratory research and the U.S. government’s psychic spying program of the 1970s and 1980s. Methods, findings, and applications of research will be discussed, including some examples from Hansen’s own research. The rise of organized attacks on paranormal research and belief will be covered.

6:30 pm  Break for Refreshment / Discussion

8 pm  The Decline of Parapsychology, or Whatever Happened to Parapsychology?

About 1990, U.S. research in parapsychology began a steep decline. Laboratories closed, attendance at professional conferences dropped, the average age of attendees trended strongly upward, and professional journals became thinner. This failure to flourish can be understood in terms of rationalization and disenchantment—concepts developed by sociologist Max Weber. Openness to, and engagement with, paranormal phenomena is rarely found in the large, hierarchical organizations of government, academe, business, or religion. The side effects of psi phenomena will be discussed.  Those effects are often overlooked, but they lead to the paranormal’s marginalization in our culture.  Although parapsychology is now nearly moribund in the U.S., growing paranormal interest is found in the academic fields of religious studies, anthropology, and studies of Western esotericism.

George Hansen was professionally employed in parapsychology laboratories for eight years—three at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, and five at Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey.  His experiments included remote viewing, card guessing, ganzfeld, electronic random number generators, séance phenomena, and ghosts. His papers in scientific journals cover mathematical statistics, fraud and deception, the skeptics movement, conjurors in parapsychology, and exposés of hoaxes.  He has been active in a number of psychic, UFO, and New Age organizations, and he helped found a skeptics group. He is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

This event is event is produced as a joint collaboration between Liminal Analytics and photographer Shannon Taggart.

For more information on the event please head over to The Observatory Room event page.

 

The Mystic as Performance Artist – The Strange Career of St. Joseph of Copertino: Presented by Author Michael Grosso

On Friday, June 7th, at the Observatory Room in Brooklyn, New York, author Michael Grosso will discuss the life of St. Joeseph of  Copertino, a 17^th century mystic famous for his remarkable physical phenomena, which often took place without warning and in public.

This lecture will detail his life, especially the spectacular levitations, and show how they aroused fear, awe, wonder, envy, and suspicion – especially from the Inquisition.  The story of Joseph shows how fame for miraculous performance almost destroyed his life, and how he used his saintly talents to protect himself from the church and his insatiable fans.

Michael Grosso studied classics and received his PH.D. in philosophy from Columbia University.  He taught philosophy at Marymount Manhattan College, City University of New York, and City University of New Jersey.  He is now affiliated with the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia.  His main interest is consciousness studies and philosophy of mind. Among his books, he co-authored Irreducible Mind, wrote The Millennium Myth, Experiencing the Next World Now,Soulmaking, etc. He is currently completing the book The Strange Case of St. Joseph of Copertino: Ecstasy and the Mind-Body Problem. Also a painter, Grosso is interested in the interface between art and psychical research.

This event is event is produced as a joint collaboration between Liminal Analytics and photographer Shannon Taggart.

For more information on the event please head over to The Observatory Room event page.

The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof and The Enigma of Physical Phenomena: An Illustrated Presentation with Rosemarie Pilkington

Photograph made of Dr. Bindelof via his instructions

“My name was Dr. Bindelof…Will you be the disciples of a dead man?”

The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof  focuses on one little known episode of physical mediumship, Gilbert Roller’s utterly charming and disarming autobiographical account of a group of teenagers who experimented with seance phenomena and contacted an alleged spirit named “Dr. Bindelof.”

On Tuesday, May 21st at the Observatory Room in Brooklyn, New York, photographer Shannon Taggart and Liminal Analytics will host author Rosemarie Pilkington for a presentation presenting the details of the Bindelof case using personal accounts, along with photographs and artifacts created during the Bindelof sessions. There will be a brief overview of extraordinary physical mediums and the feats they perform, placing the Bindelof case within this wider framework.

Rosemarie Pilkington, a writer, musician, and educator has a Ph.D. in psychology (consciousness studies) from Saybrook Institute. In addition to The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof, she recently compiled and edited Men and Women of Parapsychology: Personal Reflections Vol II,a follow up to the popular anthology Men and Women of Parapsychology: Personal Reflections Vol I.

For more information on the event please head over to The Observatory Room event page.