August 26, 2023, 2:30 pm, New England Daoist Assembly,  Eastover, 430 East Street, Lenox Mass: 
"Is Dao ‘a Circle Whose Center is Everywhere and Circumference Nowhere’?"

Abstract:  The 6th century BCE featured several prominent circle-oriented mystics, such as Pythagoras,
Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Heraclitus. Was Lao Tzu one of them? Does replacing God
with Dao in the renowned title quote (of uncertain origin) provide a key to Daoist metaphysics?
There are no facets in a circle; the connection between any moment on a circumference to the
next moment is thus not a knowable way/dao; connections between circumferential moments
can only be inferred as the ‘unfolding’ of radial endpoints from a single centerpoint. This
solitary centerpoint, mutually defining and defined by an indeterminably sized circumference,
‘does not act yet is the root of all motion; does not move yet is the root of all creation.’ And this
root is ‘everywhere,’ ‘has become everything,’ and brings ‘all things to completion without
their even knowing it.’ While the Wuji symbol of an empty circle is identified with the
primordial Dao, might the infinite, invisible radii of the circle prevail over the yin and yang
that the circle later fills up with? Do not such eternal radii ‘where yin and yang do not
penetrate’ best account for what Harold Roth called Daoism’s ‘most profound level
consciousness,’ the shen ming (numinous clarity) that ‘provides humans with metaphysical
knowledge such as precognition’? So, too, is not orientation toward a centerpoint, rather than
the forging of a linear path, more conducive to the fundamental Daoist practice of wei wu wei?


July 21, 2023, 1:30 pm, Eastern Naturist Festival, Eastover, 430 East Street, Lenox Mass: "Taiji by Way of a Mystical Experience"
[See Below]

October 2, 2022, 11 am, Unitarian Church, 312 Fillmore Street, Staten Island: “Something Like God”
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April 30, 2022, 10 am, Eastover,430 East Street, Lenox Mass: "Led to Taiji by a Mystical Experience"

August 29, 2021, 11 am, Unitarian Church, 312 Fillmore Street, Staten Island [via Zoom]: "God is a Circle whose Center is Everywhere and Circumference Nowhere"

October 25, 2020, 5 pm, New York Open Center 25th Esoteric Quest [online]: "The Prime Reality of Second Sight"

May 31, 2019, 10:30 am, Society for Consciousness Studies, Yale Divinity School: "James's 'Filmiest of Screens'"

January 18, 2019, 7:30 pm, ETG Book Cafe, Staten Island: "Six Lines of Greek: Homer, Sappho, Parmenides, Euripides, New Testament, Epictetus"

October 19, 2018, 7 pm, Eastover, 430 East St, Lenox Mass.: "The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment"
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July 27, 2018, 7 pm, Poetry/Science Talks North, Woodstock, NYC: "The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment"

July 12, 2018, 7 pm, Poetry/Science Talks, Soho NYC: "The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment"

April 26, 2018, 7 pm, Eastover, 430 East St, Lenox Mass.: "The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment"

August 26, 2017, New York Open Center Esoteric Quest, Isle of Lewis, Scotland: "Second Sight"

June 4, 2017, Society for Consciousness Studies, Yale University: "What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James"

March 14, 2017, St. John's University, Staten Island: "Is Free Will an Illusion?"

June 4, 2015, Society for Consciousness Studies, Yale University, Inaugural Lecture of the Eugene Taylor Memorial Lecture Series: "The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment"

October 23, 2010, Science and Nonduality Conference, San Rafael, Ca.: "A Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment: William James and the Non-Reality of Will, Self, and Time"​

October 1, 2010, New York Open Center, NYC: "A Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment: William James on Non-Dual Reality"

April 16, 2010, Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, Tucson, Arizona: "William James's Veridical Revelation"
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April 12, 2010, Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, Tucson, Arizona: "Consciousness Already There Waiting to be Uncovered?"

April 23, 2009, “Faces of God Lecture Series," Wagner College, Staten Island, New York: "Is Spirituality Still Possible?"
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