Researcher • Consultant • Facilitator
ABRE FOURNIER, PhD
INTEGRATIVE SCIENCES OF TRANSFORMATION
Mindfulness • Investigation • Awakening
walking the path of wakefulness and deep self-reflection
the potential to experience everything in a new way
CONSULTING SERVICES & FACILITATION
Personal – Collective
I work with clients, meditation practitioners, organizations, providing consultations and guidance toward personal and collective transformation
PRIVATE CONSULTATION - INDIVIDUALIZED TEACHING & GUIDANCE
Breaking through the predicament of
every living being. Enhancing the view and experience of one's reality.
PRIVATE CONSULTATION - INDIVIDUALIZED TEACHING & GUIDANCE
Breaking through the predicament of
every living being. Enhancing the view and experience of one's reality.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS - CONSULTATIONS - TEACHING - SEMINARS & RETREATS
Engaging in action that brings
beneficial results personally
and collectively.
Please contact me to discuss any participation, collaborations and services.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Abre G. Fournier & Brian T. Swimme
Humanity's Transformation from Industrial to Noospheric Selves
During the last two centuries, humans had a common understanding concerning self and world. In almost every industrial society they have regarded themselves as separate from the world, a world composed of inert matter. These views are no longer viable. Recent work in the physical and cognitive sciences overturns this common understanding of self and world. The natural sciences narrate a story of self-organizing universe that has complexified into rocky planets such as Earth, which began as a geosphere, evolved over billions of years into a biosphere, and now into a noosphere, a self-organizing Earth composed of networks of sentient beings. Even more recently, the cognitive sciences, especially the theories of dynamical embodiment, have come to the view of the relational brain-body-world as constitutive of human consciousness. As this integral narrative combining physical and cognitive sciences is reaffirmed and adjusted to all around the world, a new self is reified, one we can name a "noospheric self." We assert this transformation of self-consciousness in which the industrial selves are replaced by dynamical noospheric selves is the emergence of a new form of humanity.
https://www.ciis.edu/public-programs
Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXEP73Br5Y
RECENT EVENT
Both science and philosophy have traditionally conceived of the self as though it were separate from the world. Italian philosopher, psychologist, and AI engineer Riccardo Manzotti asks us to consider consciousness in a radical new way: Our conscious experience is actually one and the same with the external world.
In his Spread Mind Theory, Riccardo asserts that we are the starry sky, the clouds, a rainbow, trees, people, even simple objects such as an apple or a stone. We are not inside our bodies, we are out there, in the world. Perceiving is being.
In this unique conversation, I join Riccardo as he offers an exploration of the nature of consciousness and our everyday life through Spread Mind Theory.
Abre G. Fournier: Cognitive Sciences of Non-Self
–The Self that Strives to go Beyond Itself
Can we as human beings really understand what it would mean to have a conscious experience without a sense of self? Some researchers insist that such an understanding is beyond us, that experience only happens with an experiencer, that it is impossible to imagine what it would be like for a healthy subject to be in a state of consciousness devoid of any kind of self-consciousness. In contrast to those views, I argue that though there is currently no accurate cognitive science account of the transformative experiences and states that emerge along the gradual Buddhist path of development toward the non-self insight, it is indeed possible to articulate a model of human self-consciousness that allows us to understand the liberative experience of non-self.
I invite you to join me in a presentation where we will delve into the intriguing and elusive nature of consciousness and non-self.Embark on a journey with me as we delve into the fascinating realms of consciousness and non-self.
ABOUT ME
I am a scientifically oriented philosopher of consciousness with a focus on mind transformation that builds on the teachings and practices of Asian wisdom traditions directed to states of awakening. Through teaching and facilitation, I lead explorations in the self-evolution of human consciousness internationally. My work draws on several Eastern spiritual traditions and contemporary theories of mind from the cognitive sciences. I am currently synthesizing in my research the transformative meditation praxis of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness with theories of dynamical systems, extended mind, and predictive processing. I have also been active in the visual and media arts with a career in higher education in executive management and as a faculty member in the arts at the State University of New York (SUNY). My work as a practicing artist in films and new-media collaborations with musicians and composers has been shown in art museums and galleries, film festivals, and in live concerts in the US and abroad. Originally from France, I currently live in New York.