Cultivating Intellectual Life: Contributing to Discourse in the Biological Sciences

This morning's second panel is called cultivating intellectual life contributing to discourse in biological sciences. This panel will reflect on three years of collaborative effort to examine materialistic assumptions in the biological sciences and contribute to discourses in this field from a bahigh perspective. The panelists who are scientists, educators, and community builders will share their work developing seminars on evolution and consciousness accompanying youth in navigating intellectually materialistic university environments and engaging broader discourses through research, writing, teaching and conferences. The discussion will touch on both the intellectual and spiritual dimensions of this work, reflect on both the content and process of the contributions and imagine a path forward for discourses in the biological sciences. I have the pleasure of introducing the moderator of our panel who will then introduce the rest of our panel, Dr. Dr. Jasmine Miller Kleinhens is an assistant professor of population health science. She previously received a PhD in cancer biology and was a post-doal fellow in epidemiology. Her research focuses on breast cancer health disparities and social epigenomics, examining how factors like access to health care and environmental exposure beyond genetics shape breast cancer risk and outcomes, particularly for black women. Dr. Miller Kleinh currently serves on the Continental Board of Counselors for the Americas. [applause] Thank you so much Andreas for that introduction and we're so happy to be with you today. Amongst all the things that Andre said about myself, I'm also one of the facilitators of the evolution and consciousness seminar. And so I sit with my colleagues here today really for them to share about this uh evolution of the seminar and um hopefully in a way that's more conversational. We're really inviting you into a conversation that we often have with each other. Um and instead of just five of us, it's now 2005. Um, so just to to know that even though it says it's about biological assumptions and all these things, you might be like, why is this happening? Why are we all here? We're not scientists. Maybe some of you are, but maybe some of you don't consider yourself to be so. But one, you all are scientists. And two, you are all well familiar with these topics of evolution and consciousness. Who in this room has heard the word evolution before? It should be all of you because you all went to Mr. Razby's talk and he spoke about evolution last night. Who have all heard about the word consciousness? It should be all of you. It was also mentioned last night. These words are all around us and but also there's not clarity sometime about the relationship between these ideas and how the revelation sheds light on them. So we're going to spend some time talking about the seminar and how it's been developed as as Andreas mentioned. And but before all that, I'm going to ask that my colleagues share a little bit about themselves, uh their names, where they're from, their field of study, and their relationship to this seminar. So, we can start with >> Hello everyone. Hopefully the mic is working. My name is Yasmin Aman. I'm coming from Boston. I'm a neuroscience PhD student and I study the neuroscience of learning and decision-making. Um, I have a background in both neuroscience and philosophy and I have been involved with the seminar since its inception and I've helped with the development of the material and facilitating it both at ABS and in local seminars and it's truly such a joy to be here with this team and the honor of presenting in this panel at ABS. >> Hi dear friends, my name is Sujay. I'm I live in Montreal originally from Nepal. I'm also a neuroscientist. Uh today a little bit of nervous neuroscientist reb I get nervous I'm going to look at kudus calm me down um um I study long-term memory uh bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra bra brain processes and neural circuits underlying long-term memory from a very uh you know reductionist approach. So it's a very different experience to come into Bahigh and talk about evolution and consciousness from a different perspective. So for me it has been a very interesting learning experience. Um I currently I work at a nonprofit that I founded to that aims to raise resource capacity among youth populations certain populations in Nepal and Canada. Uh but I still practice neuroscience. Happy to be here. >> Good morning everybody. My name is Tara Ram. I am also a neuroscientist. Um, common theme here. I am from Northern California, the Bay Area of Northern California. Um, I work at UC Berkeley. I uh my research focuses on the neurobiology of uh group dynamics, social groups. Um, and I also teach undergraduate coursework about uh the mind, brain, and behavior. um have also been involved with these seminars for the past few years uh alongside all of these friends and it's really a joy to be here. Thank you. >> Hi everybody. Good morning. Um my name is Bayan Tuldi. I am not a neuroscientist. Um actually two years ago, not this ABS, not the past ABS but the one before that I was a participant in this seminar and now I also help to facilitate. Um I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I work um alongside youth and families in my neighborhood. And then also I'm about to start my graduate studies in public health and my interest in research have to do with how our neighborhoods and our social environment affect our our mental health and our biological outcomes. >> Very good. So maybe we can start by one of you telling us how these seminars came to be. Um but before these seminars existed, what were you noticing in yourselves or in the young people around you that suggested a need for this type of space? >> Yeah. So I've been fortunate enough to be attending ABS for 13 years now since I was a junior youth. And although there were so many intellectually riching uh spaces to engage in, I was noticing two needs as I was growing into my profession as a neuroscientist. One of them was a space for scientists to come together and talk about what does the harmony of science and religion look like in practice. Not in necessarily in abstract terms, but what does it actually look like when we're working in a lab and engaged in this very materialistic sort of physicalist framework but also are you know paying allegiance to the spiritual very rich spiritual lens that the writings can offer. And then the other need I was noticing was a space for youth who are actively um trying to forge their own path of service and their professions to explore these tensions that they may be um experiencing between these um social forces around them or these materialist frameworks and the Bahigh writings and to explore that in a way that can resolve any dissonances they have throughout their studies. And so this is also coinciding with um the start of these seminars which many of you are familiar with these spaces where um participants can engage and can do deep dives of topics um a few days preceding the the annual conference. And so we embarked on this journey to uh start a seminar uh that explored key themes in uh the topics in in in biological sciences but that would also be broadly accessible to uh the wider community because these topics are so the topics we chose of evolution consciousness really lie at the interface of science and religion and I'm sure many of you who have expressed that you're religious in a setting um may have been asked so what about evolution or what about you know how what about the relation between the brain and the mind and the soul and so I similarly from stretching back from uh high school I was asked how can you be rational and spiritual or religious how can you be a scientist and spiritual and honestly when I'd get asked that question um when I was younger I would shudder it was like this chip on my shoulder I would wear that I had these views that I somehow you know believed so deeply in the system of knowledge um the science of science and the systems of knowledge of religion. But it was hard for me to articulate in concrete terms with that clarity of thought and intellectual rigor that Bahiser asked to think with what that actually means. And so we so in designing this seminar we wanted to create material that explored these topics in detail both the discourse at large. So what does you know Darwinian evolution or what does science have to say about these topics and then what does the revelation offer that can sort of that can add and and enrich these views and and one exercise I mean that um that we do with our participants through these materials is talk about assumptions laden in these fields. So these metaphysical assertions that are not actually in the science themselves but that the the discourse kind of has accepted. So for example in the field of evolution one metaphysical assertion is that there's no teiology no direction to evolution. Um whereas the writings obviously say that the fruit of evolution is man is the fruit of creation or the fruit of evolution. So how do you reconcile those two? Um and I think this panel will sort of get at um at get at sort of those those tensions also. And then another idea for example is this notion of the mind being fully reducible to neural processing and the mech the mechanisms of neuronal firing. Um so similarly how do we reconcile that with this idea of the human spirit that Mr. Razavi spoke to us about yesterday which is this highest expression of uh commonality and uh loyalty among men. And so yeah, so those were just two ideas that we felt were very important for Bahigh scientists and also the wider community to gain familiarity and clarity of thought with that was so beautifully said. I don't I [laughter] feel um uncomfortable going after that. But I wanted to also share a story. Um when I was in graduate school also in Boston um I was helping to support a number of youth who were serving as animators and children's classes in our in our cluster. Um, and of course this is a college town. The students are always learning about, you know, how to balance and and manage like their studies and their service and whatnot. And there was one youth who approached us at one point. He'd been serving as an animator for about a year uh while studying in an engineering and AI based program. And he said, "I don't think I can be an animator anymore." And uh, a few of us said, "Okay, well, let's let's get coffee and let's chat and and we'll talk about it." And I fully expected him to just say, "I'm really busy and my studies are really overwhelming. I don't have time, you know, whatever." And that was very, I think, very common. We're all learning about that. Um, but it was actually a very different conversation. And what he ended up saying was after taking these classes for about a year uh and being immersed in this university environment that has a very pervasive often unspoken accepted materialistic uh world view that um as Yasmin was mentioning kind of conceives of reality as purely physical purely material. He said, "I don't know if I believe in God anymore, and I don't know if I believe in the human soul, and I can't in good confer youth that they should rely on God for confirmation when I'm not I'm not certain of that myself." Um, and I lacked the language at the time. This was well over 10 years ago. Um, we didn't have these seminars. We had other spaces maybe, but we didn't have these seminars. And I and I personally lacked the the language and the depth to be able to grapple with that with him and help him explore um what it was that he was he was grappling with. Um but it left a really profound mark on me and it helped me at least has helped me see the relationship between these seminars and like our work our the community building work the nine-year plan. Like I think that these forces of materialism can be very paralyzing and if we're not equipped with the intellectual and spiritual capacity to analyze these forces, they actually can sap the energy of our youth and prevent them from seeing themselves as protagonists in the community building process. Um, and so I think that these seminars, of course, the, you know, the work of ABS is to nurture the intellectual life of the Bahai community, but I think these seminars also play a role honestly a little bit in protecting our youth and equipping them with the skills that they need to navigate um assumptions that are often not explicitly stated, but um but that carry really profound consequences for their lives. >> So maybe I can share another example kind of contrasting example. So you know as scientists we spend I spend a lot of time in the lab you just end up talking to your colleagues late at night odd hours. Uh so what happened was once they discovered I was religious and then there was a shock for one week I could not work every day I go to the lab I would be grilled all day how on earth are you religious so you know there was several conversations and at the end of the week my friend you know very close dear friend like this is all internally consistent and then I'm like okay so are you a bahigh now [laughter] so of course not right the the word god is so you And it provokes certain feelings maybe but so but what happened afterwards was they were extremely attracted to the words of Bahala and Abdul Bah so we started not a study circle but we started reading words directly from tablets and you know tablet to the H for example so they would say comments like you know you're speaking to the choir you know when you think about one language and no borders and then even to the point that you know one person points out what But what Abdullah is saying is not exactly true. And the other person I get nervous. Another person says, "Hold hold on. He's actually making a rhetoric here. So we should not take this literally." I'm like, "Oh, perfect. Thank you." I mean, these are the students at forefront of science. They've learned how to think independently. They're pushing boundaries of science, right? And then they recognize what Abdullah is saying. They're saying, "Oh, yeah, we agree with this." But then when it comes to taking action, we're talking about social action. there's a lens they're wearing and they see everything from that lens and immediately there's they hit a wall. Everyone says you know in that specific circle there was one phrase lizard brain. Anything anything that comes up about social action people would say lizard brain and it's over. What that means basically is all our thoughts and action are ultimately driven by our biological impulse to survive and propagate our genes. So everything is explained by that. So all this altruism and you know contributing society is just it's kind of like a thing. It just happens. So individual action is just not in the picture. So I found this glaring incoherence in people's desire to learn and acquire new knowledge recognizing there's internal consistency in these arguments but participating and taking action just seems so far removed because of what you know Dar was saying this materialistic view of human nature. Uh we I actually ended up doing the seminar with them when they visited me in Montreal over over two nights and it was amazing. I mean they I mean you know some of the things we cover in in in the in the materials on evolution it's it's a very well-known scientific theory but many scientists are not aware of different developments that has happened in the field. So it was kind of eye openening for you know those friends. They are still friends of the faith. But yeah, >> thank you all so much for sharing. And I think the last part you're making, SUJ, about these these materials that the the seminar tries to cover. Um Tara, you mentioned 10 years ago you were trying to have this conversation and you were like, I actually don't really know what to say to this youth who's having this crisis of faith. >> And this one youth isn't the only one. There was many many people who are trying to grapple with this very this world that is described as very physical. It's just material. Only things that you can observe with your eyes exist and everything else is somehow you know you know an emotional appeal. It's logical all these things but we know that that's not true. So then how do we describe that? And at about five years ago, uh those who were serving ABS in various ways were thinking about how to help um undergraduate students with developing this kind of language and mental framework. And at the time there was a seminar for called Econ 101. So for students who were starting to take uh classes in economics, how might they interact with those uh theories without while also holding the revelation at the same time? But then we noticed that there's many bahay youth going into the natural sciences but they didn't have the same type of space to grapple with these ideas and particularly with evolution where again it's this wellknown theory but it also there's this wide um valley between those who are creationist and those are purely like physical materialists who believe that humans are just animals. And we know that neither side is is where we really are at. And the the revelation really shines a lot of light on the in between. So yeah, around five years ago, a friend from ABS, we said we wouldn't say his name, but he's in the room, started developing these materials so that we could have this seminar uh because this topic was very important. But then also the topic of consciousness kept coming up as well. And so the very first seminar, we had a well-formed document on evolution. But the one on consciousness was primarily just some quotes. It was a few pages. It wasn't really wellformed. Um but maybe it'd be helpful if someone here would want to share a little bit about the creation of the consciousness document and its iterations and maybe also what's in the content itself some of the ideas. >> Sure. Maybe I can start and I can fill in >> it will I'll say a little bit about the content in the way the way the evolutions there are two documents we have in the seminar evolution and consciousness and the way evolution document unfolds is you go through several theories of evolution how he has evolved in last you know two or 30 hund years especially last 50 to 70 years and the way it ends and then we synthesize it in light of the writings the way the document ends is we kind of arrive at this conclusion that man is the fruit of evolution and and one characteristic of that fruit is being aware of being conscious of the existence of God and recognizing the manifestation of the day. So this is part of the evolutionary process that has started many many many years ago. Um so on the under this view then rather than looking at consciousness as a state or a noun form that's how it's studied mostly in neuroscience and other fields maybe it's better to you know conceptualized as a transitive form being conscious of something in conscious of manifestation conscious of your social reality conscious of your capacity. So the challenge to us was how do we arrive at this conception logically by synthesizing literature on consciousness which is vast philosophy psychology now even now neuroscience is really sort of like a hot topic uh so that's what our our document sort of does try to arrive there but of course we're still learning and you know the document is evolving uh so maybe someone can chime in. Yeah. So when we first started working on this document, as S was saying, it was a daunting task and we're now on version 13. So we've come a long way. But it was um it was first, you know, a group of us neuroscientists just trying to survey everything neuroscience has to say and then offer what the revelation sort of can can, you know, um sort of add and and how that it can enrich this framework. And we realized that it's such an interdisciplinary top uh field. It you know there's psychology, there's philosophy, there's these key sort of other fields that also have a lot to say on consciousness. And so one idea for example is this idea of dualism. A lot of the times when we talk about um consciousness um you know to to different populations they're like oh um so the mind and body are separate. So that's this dualism take that the mind and body are separate and so then how do they interact if they're separate? Um and so that was an idea that really sort of lended itself to an exploration from both philosophy and um and neuroscience and also the revelation because we know that reality is one that's the spiritual and material dimensions are part of one reality and that's and one manifests itself in the other and so um really you know taking it upon ourselves to explore um through these different fields and then also to iterate and so every version of the document was iterating on what different participants felt was a lens or a framework or a uh viewpoint that they were seeing in their studies that would be helpful for them to flesh out further. >> Yeah, I think another thing that we tried to do also is to reframe and expand on the concept of consciousness entirely. So I think as we all were reading like the literature on consciousness and how neuroscientists study consciousness, we realized um there's a very particular way that neuroscientists are thinking of what consciousness is and more or less it's sensory stimuli. So it's like um what is it like to uh see like what is how do you how does the brain see the color red? How do you taste uh what an apple tastes like? Right? like uh and to be fair that on its own is quite complex and so I can't really blame people for trying to pick something simple to start with. Um another way neuroscientists might think of um consciousness is uh states of awareness. Are you awake? Are you asleep? Are you comeomaos? Are you under anesthesia? Right? These are different like states of wakefulness. But more or less these are all animal states. like you can study all those things in mice, in uh fruitfly, in um you know chimpanzeee. So like these aren't things that are actually particular about the human being. But then some of these things that SUJ was mentioning about like what does it mean to be conscious of a principle actually is something quite different than like what does it mean to taste an apple, right? So, uh, we were thinking a little bit about the implications of this and we were thinking about how the way neuroscientists are thinking of consciousness as the moment has a little bit of passivity baked into it. Like you're just a passive being. You're either awake asleep or under anesthesia and then you are responding to sensory stimuli, right? Experiencing sensory stimuli. But maybe like the highest expression of our consciousness. If you are conscious of the principle of the oneness of mankind, if you are conscious of injustices in your society, it's very far from a passive state. Actually, you then would be quite active, I would hope, in response to consciousness at that level. And so I think we also tried to elevate and reframe um what like just what does this term even mean? It's a very illdefined term, frankly. And so I think there's a lot of room for us to expand on it. Um, so that was also one kind of I think in general with discourses we want to ask ourselves the question of like to what extent are we reframing or expanding on some of the concepts that already exist in the field. Um, and I know Bayon you were part of the first cohort of people to study that document in its first form. So I'm curious like what was your experience as a participant and then growing into now facilitating the document multiple times? >> Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because I feel like at least for me a testament to the work that was put into it. I think hearing after the fact that actually the field of neuroscience isn't so clear on like a definition of consciousness wasn't I mean it was apparent to me but it also was not hard for me to begin forming my own conception of what it could look like to be conscious of an idea especially like following this this frame of thought of of how the processes of evolution have actually brought forth man in this unique form to be able to be conscious of ideas to shape social reality and I think that that work kind of continues continues and as like you were mentioning Tara as like our conception of consciousness expands I think it's also natural that the people who would be able to interact with this material the the population that it serves would also expand um and earlier yeah I think this idea of like being aware or conscious of an idea and then having the language for it and how it shapes our reality around us is something that became introduced into like actually the material I think you edited it after my first time taking it. But then I remember facilitating it and just like my mind was blown and I was thinking like okay this relationship between consciousness and our own language like what does it look like? And it wasn't until like we actually facilitated a local seminar where one of the participants shared something that I think helped to shed some light on this and the question that we asked was like what what's an example of an idea that before you like once you got the language to describe it it changed your reality. Excuse me. And it was confirmation that they brought up and they mentioned how this this word or this concept of confirmation allowed for them to have this framework of I will make effort towards lofty goals and God will assist and confirm me. And this and then this example if you can extrapolate it out further. Now imagine communities where many many people in fact entire populations are becoming increasingly conscious of what it looks like to yeah to be confirmed and to actually in an essence like align their will with God's will. And so then what will that determine for the future of humanity as we try to advance together if we are able to collectively more increase this consciousness around the ideas and the principles that will help to allow us to advance. >> Um thank you so much. It was really helpful to hear not just the expansion of the ideas over time which like Yasi mentioned now on iteration 13 >> but also the expansion of those who can experience the material. So we talked about this is a seminar and it's also it's offered at the conference but it's also offered locally. >> And so it'd be nice to if someone could maybe share a little bit about the experience of offering local seminars, what we're learning there, how it's helping us to expand. Yeah, I can share a little bit about that. So, we started offering the seminar at the ABS annual conference in 2023. So, this is now our fourth year doing it here at the conference. But I think as we were all consulting, we also knew that there were plenty of youth like in our communities, in our clusters that would that would want to study these materials, would have a thirst for these materials, university students who were studying in the biological sciences or maybe in adjacent fields, but would take a biology class as part of their general ed requirements and would confront some of these um you know, these ideas in their in their coursework. And so we thought, well, you know, what's stopping us from studying these materials? in in a local setting or a subregional regional or subregional setting. Um I think you know generally the the association is trying to learn about bringing the work of the association closer to the grassroots to make it more accessible to more people. Um and to ensure that you know the work of the association is not uh restricted to one annual conference every year as vital and important as it is but that there's a variety of spaces that people have access to. Um and so at this point in time I think all of us and and a few others of our f we're not the only facilitators of this seminar. There are others who've also been learning about this process but uh we've all been able to facilitate at least one or two sometimes more local seminars um across North America in Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Northern and Southern California, Atlanta, the Triangle, Texas. Um I'm looking at a friend over there. Um and so uh I think at this time around 200 or so friends have been able to study these materials through through these settings. Um and I think what we've been able to learn one is like the local Bahigh community and the institutions learn so much about what ABS is when we offer these things locally when we uh invite for example our um auxiliary board members or um members of a local assembly to come visit to hear from the youth what they're learning what implications it has for their studies and their service. I think we really saw that a lot of um yeah just communities and institutions were able to gain a deeper understanding of what the work of ABS is and how vital it is in the nine-year plan. Um I think that we um we also found that um you know the youth already know each other in the local setting and many of them are already studying the materials of the institute together or going to ISGP together. So they already have like a rapport and relationships and so the materials kind of um were very smooth and easy to study and um yeah it just it there was a vibrancy and the dynamic that comes with studying in a local setting and and our ability to reach youth that um frankly might not ever make it to an ABS conference because of limitations on time or um distance and whatnot. Um and so I think um this has been a really fruitful learning process for us. I don't know if others want to share some of their experiences with local seminars. Oh >> yeah, >> go ahead. You can you can talk local the multi-seminar. Yeah. >> Yeah. We were so in Boston for example and I believe you also did it in California. We uh offered a few we had like a seminar weekend where we offered the mental health, economics, technology and um the evolution consciousness seminar all um sort of in one space over a weekend in Boston and it was a very special space because there are so many universities in Boston. There are a lot of Bahigh and um and friends of the faith who are engaged in sort of their academics um and are really thirsting for this space and it was really beautiful to see the synergies between these groups um as we would meet together after and discuss what we had learned and you know obviously when it comes to you know AI tech there's synergies between technology and consciousness um which we may talk about later in the panel sort of our efforts to to reconcile those two um and and it was a very special place and also it was it was an opportunity to seamlessly integrate with those academic spaces. So um I was able to actually talk about this with some of my lab mates and one of my lab mates actually came and studied some of the consciousness material with us. So when you're in a local setting, it's not like this isolated space um in ABS, which is obviously such a haven for us, but it's it's you're in sort of your your environment, your um uh or environment that can then organically sort of interact with your contribution to discourse. >> Well, I'll just share one thing. I think local seminars have a different dynamics from annual seminar. people who have been serving together and working together in different ways come together in this environment and it just creates a very very rich learning environment. I think local seminars complementing the annual seminar has been really great. Yeah, I think something that at least for the local seminars for me it it started another curiosity because I think because like you were mentioning the the population is different and many of whom are like much younger and so the population leans towards high school early college age students who may not have as much like field specific familiarity with neuroscience or with evolutionary biology. Like many of us know, these are concepts that we're all aware of. But then beyond that, it just seemed like, at least initially, that the concepts of evolution and consciousness are also intimately related to just how a young person will conceptualize their own purpose and how they'll conceptualize the actions that they take. And and like Tara was mentioning, like moving beyond passivity, being a passive recipient, into actually trying to like shape the world around them. And I think some of those things that I mentioned earlier started to crystallize like during the the local seminars. >> Thank you. And so I think just kind of what you're saying towards the end where it's we're no longer passive, it's motivating people and thinking about the aim of the nine-year plan to release the society building powers of the faith in ever greater measures. How how is the seminar and these themes related to that? How does it um release these these powers? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, >> I think that's a good question. Um thanks. Uh it's it's it's also a question that I have been thinking about a lot and I also am curious to learn about it. kind of connects to what we've begun to see in some of these local seminars of how these these ideas around evolution and around consciousness help to like stir something or release something in young people in which they see their yeah their role on this planet a little bit differently and also begin to connect it even to their yeah their um their service in the institute and say that it reminds them of of book one and how like this is closely tied to our purpose. At the same time, I've seen like this question or like this initial um curiosity and connection between my involvement with the Institute for Studies and Global Prosperity and also working alongside youth in my neighborhood. And in the conversations that I've had, I've noticed there this question around human identity. And like both of these spaces are spaces where young people come in to to try to learn more about their identity and shape it in light of um science and also in light of the revelation. But then this question emerges of like who are we and like why are we distinct? Yeah. >> And often times in ISGP or in the context of like a neighborhood or a study circle, there isn't maybe the purpose of the space is not to be able to adequately explore some of those questions. But at the same time, if you enter that space without being able to explore, without having these conceptions strengthened, then it can also be hard to engage with the material or to also form like rational thoughts around religion. So this is I guess a question for me and for I think many of us as we continue to learn about the seminar is like how is it that we can broaden it further to allow for many young people to interact with it but also in such a way that it actually like helps to strengthen their involvement in the core activities in the institute process in ISTP excuse me and I think just for me like it's also So [clears throat] something that yeah was very substantial like just this idea excuse me you know we're talking about rational thinking it would be rational that I should drink some water if I'm [laughter] but yeah I think the the thing that one of the ideas that helped me at least in my thinking and that helped me to start to see that actually my belief in God, my um belief in yeah the the idea that this piece that we all envision that is actually like a core fundamental like conviction of ours is possible is that it's rational and even having the space to rationally explore it and I think young people need more spaces to be able to not only develop the capacity to like think this way but also to articulate this belief because in that articulation And that confidence that comes from being able to relay this idea I think also for me came yeah the confidence in the ability to structure my own beliefs and also it strengthened my own faith and I think resilience >> I I find you know in terms of the nine-year plan society releasing society building power I find the concept of human nature that is prevalent in society that humans are you know result of evolution like any other animal there as I mentioned earlier selfish gene and all those things these ideas are so entrenched in our society I think it's actually like a big dam blocking the river of creativity and social action so if we can even make a little bit of a dent in this dam through the seminars and you know rethinking evolution and reconceptualizing consciousness I think you'll release powers you know we cannot pinpoint what kind of powers but it's sort of unblocking what's stopping our society to progress. Yeah, just building on that, we were in our seminar this uh year talking about what would it look like if we move beyond this notion that we are just the you know um our thoughts and actions are uh this biological impulse to propagate our genes or to survive and instead move um towards sort of this this enriched um view of human nature and our latent our capacities to contribute to social progress to be practic practitioners of peace and how that can that is what will motivate social action and also reframe how what we're capable of. And so what might it look like if we adopted that notion which is compatible with scientific findings but just rest on a different metaphysical assumption that we are not just the product of neuronal firing or the interaction between um you know genes uh but rather um you know have this sort of this distinct nature and so yeah that was it's it's a I think an important step. It's an indispensable step to to achieving that society building power. I think um just to build and add to all of that um I think that you know one way that these seminars also um fit into the constellation of activities within the 9-year plan is I think um you know I think young people are all of us really are appreciating that expansion and consolidation is one very very critical facet of the 9-year plan. uh arguably it's central to the plan but then there are these these other areas arenas of activity there's social action there's engaging in the discourses of society um and that we need space like like we have the training institute to train us to engage in expansion and consolidation we need spaces that train and accompany us to engage in the discourses of society and so I think one way that you know broadly the work of the association but these seminars in particular is helping young people to um see coherence in their lives and not to see their studies as separate from their service. I know that for me when I was a university student I felt like my service was being an animator or a children's class teacher and then my studies were something that competed with that and like created an obstacle for that. But I think spaces such as these and variety of other spaces the institute for studies and global prosperities was also mentioned are helping young people to see that like service is not a component of your life. it's like an underlying principle that gives expression in all the different areas of our lives whether it's our studies, our work, our family life um serving as an animator. Um and so I think you know these spaces are helping give coherence to the lives of youth and and also these spaces are benefiting from the other spaces of the plan. So I know all of us have sort of reflected and and noticed that the youth who were able to grasp the concepts most clearly and to contribute most effectively to the discussions uh and who really got the most out of the space were not necessarily the ones who had like a ton of experience with biology coursework. They actually sometimes were the youngest ones in the room. Some of them actually had not even started university yet. They were just finishing their year of service after high school and they had been immersed in the institute really for you know especially that year but even the years before it and they developed a really remarkable capacity to think clearly and to stick with a concept and not get distracted into tangential ideas and um to rely on the guidance of the house of justice and trust the guidance of the house of justice. And I think that those intellectual capacities that we are developing in the spaces of the institute are so critical to these other arenas of activity that we are um expanding into. And so I think that was a really profound reflection I think for all of us. So you've shared a lot about um how this seminar has shaped other the participants who come about whether in the conference or locally but maybe you can also share how this seminar has shaped your ability to contribute to discourse or your own lives >> yeah so it's it's hard to sort of summarize how it has um impacted me because I can't imagine sort of my trajectory in neuroscience without these spaces. Um but I would I feel like I would have gotten so disillusioned or discouraged but um yeah I think on an abstract level having the courage to challenge orthodoxies in a field and not just um Dr. Arab in his um in his speech at the 2016 um conference talks about having the courage to um challenge orthodoxies and also to not just label what we don't like as materialism but to actually have that clarity of thought to articulate what it is that we the Bahigh are saying and and or what it what is our understanding of the revelation and and what is our understanding of the discourse and how how does it um yeah and and what are the sort of um differences that that are ironed out there and so having yeah that courage I think is a more abstract thing that I've gained u but more sort of specifically um this uh a few things throughout um especially my PhD studies I uh started a consciousness reading group a few years ago with my PhD um classmates uh where we would meet every uh two weeks and discuss sort of neuroscience articles and discuss the shortcomings of the neuroscience and offer different frames. I'm also part of a think tank that organizes interdisciplinary uh conferences on the study of intelligence. And so that was an a space where we've invited uh I think this conference really gave me the language and also again the courage to invite and welcome thinkers from different spaces and different viewpoints to sort of to you know um uh find these commonalities and synergies across fields and and um um conceptual frameworks. And then finally also um mental health I think is a topic that I'm very passionate about. obviously neuroscience interfaces with and I think is a really um key example of these um mutually reinforcing uh powers of uh discourse contributing to discourse and social action because you know the neuroscience and psychology can describe sort of mental health and in in you know all these very detailed and and you know descriptive ways but then the lens that for example the junior youth spiritual empowerment program offers to mental mental health and youth is is an example of how we need these two um sort of systems of knowledge to really move forward. Um and so I think in those three areas I've been this seminar has really informed my my contributions. Um but I'm sure sort of the energy that's been infu that I've been infused in me throughout these spaces and through working with these um with my amazing colleagues is has really in ways that I can't describe I think invigorated me and given me um yeah so much excitement to I think be a scientist um be a bahigh scientist in this this day and age. >> So [clears throat] the evolution document particularly has directly influenced my research program in neuroscience actually you know in neuroscience we've kind of internally hit a wall sort of it's very reductionist research program and the technology is really advancing we have a lot of data but the theories to synthesize those data is impossity so everyone knows this in neuroscience and there's some voice that saying that we should look at evolution uh but it's a minority voice I was also ignoring that for a long time. But then after this document, it really led me into a path to you know study neuro evolution a little bit and see if you know it started as a hobby after reading this evolution document but then what happened was you know it'll be a little bit jargonistic. So if you look at any animal or you know any behavior or morphology of animal most of this can be explained by what's called common homology. You can look at the history of the evolution and ask okay these two animals had similar traits. So most of the variants can be explained like that. But there are these other cases where very distant relatives in animal kingdom in the tree of life somehow they show similar traits. So this you know canonical evolutionary theory does not explain. So what is this phenomenon and people have come up with a with concept called convergent evolution. So because of ecological pressure or some other factors these two distant animals show similar behavior. So you know crow counting and humans counting is one example. Insects and birds and bats flying is another example. These are very distant animals in terms of their genetic makeup or other things but they all fly. So how is this possible? One answer is convergent evolution but this is just a concept right. uh so then you know people don't really study underlying is there a latent cause for this is there something special about the neural circuits that is so general that these potentialities can emerge given the right conditions so this way of thinking all of a sudden to me was very resonant with what we had in the evolution document of latency that you know the concept of latency that Abdul Baha uses uh so I started thinking and then you know after two or three years it's become part of my research program that I put in my applications and you know people are taking it seriously and I'm going to pursue I've already started pursuing some of the experiments across multiple species and this is all traces back to you know first time I read the original document so thank you ABS [laughter] >> that's amazing um so um as I mentioned earlier I teach undergraduate coursework and um the chair of our department approached me and said Tara do you want to teach this class on mind, brain, and behavior. And I said, [laughter] I I would love to teach that class, right? This is so aligned with um you know, what I'm learning in these spaces with ABS. And so, as I was uh I was handed a bunch of materials that somebody else had developed uh for, you know, previous years. Um but I was thinking, how do I teach this class in a way that isn't through this materialistic lens that teaches the science? Like obviously they have to learn the science, right? This is a neuroscience course. Um, but I wanted them to be able to ask certain questions. So, as I was teaching, I weaved in a lot of like philosophy, some of the philosophers that we quote in the consciousness document. Like I weaved them in. Um, so I kind of like actually there was a Bahigh student who took the course. So I was able to reflect with her about it after. But um I I tried to weave in some of the elements of the concepts that we you know that we were exploring together in the consciousness document. And um I had them do a series of writing assignments throughout the course. Um and their very last writing assignment was on the last day of the class and I decided I wanted it to be like a broad reflective exercise. Um so I asked them the assignment was write you know a few paragraphs about this idea that the mind is fully reducible to the brain. Do you agree or or do you disagree? And and I actually told them I don't care your answer. like you're free to take whatever stance you want. I'm not grading you on the what you say. I just I want to see you, you know, think about this and and make an argument about it. And so, um, do you know, do you think that the mind is fully reducible to the brain? Why or why not? Um, and, you know, what other sources of knowledge do you think are necessary for us to have a fuller understanding of um of the of the mind? And yeah, this is UC Berkeley like it's in the heart of the tech industry. A lot of the students are like probably engineering students who need to take like a biology class to graduate. And so I actually fully expected the majority of my students to say, "Yeah, yeah, the mind is fully reducible to the brain." >> And what I ended up finding was I actually was kind of shocked. Twothirds of my students said, "No, the mind is not fully reducible to the brain." And here are all these other sources of knowledge that we need to draw on. We need philosophy. We need linguistics. We need psychology. We need to understand culture. We need to understand society. uh a handful of them actually said we need to understand religion which I was really I didn't mention religion actually I kind of stayed away I I wasn't that courageous we need to have courage as was mentioned but I wasn't that courageous to talk about religion in my class maybe maybe I'll develop more courage over time um but some of them did talk about the need for religion um and so I was actually it gave me a lot of hope in this next generation of youth um I think they're very perceptive I think they um are very clearsighted and so I that was a very encouraging um that was very encouraging for me and it was funny because a couple days before the lecture uh a colleague in the department reached out to me very senior colleague this is someone who's been there for a couple decades and we have this practice in our department of uh peer feedback on teaching and all of us are supposed to do one in the semester to give each other attend a lecture of your colleague and give feedback and so he reached out and he said I haven't done my peer feedback for the semester yet can I come to your last lecture and watch I was like oh god >> [laughter] >> because I didn't know what he would think of this assignment, right? Like he may have a very materialistic view himself. Um, and so but I decided to just I'm going to go through with it. You know, whatever. This is my teaching style and you know, he can think what he thinks. And he came and then we reflected together afterwards. And actually the most positive feedback I got from him was I loved that assignment at the very end. >> Like I think that's a really excellent question. These are exactly the questions our students should be asking. And so I think um you know this space that we're in um together and the conversations we've had the materials themselves have helped me see that there are ways to express these ideas that are scientifically rigorous and that will be wellreceived by maybe not everybody but a lot of people will be appreciative and receptive to these ideas. Um, you know, I know a few of us have talked with each other over time about like having a little bit of anxiety of how we're perceived by our colleagues and like what will somebody think if I, you know, talk about this? What will someone think if I publish an essay or an article and it's on Google and they Google me and then they find this thing and it talks about the Bahigh F? Like I I think we all had a little bit of nervousness about um being taken seriously in our fields. Um and I think for me at least like being part of this space has helped me see that I can be exactly who I am be a bahigh be a scientist do both of those things together and that I can still be taken seriously and I don't know maybe there are people who don't take me seriously and they just don't tell me to my face but I think the feedback I've gotten on a whole has been overwhelmingly positive um so I think I'm very appreciative of these spaces I mean the process of co-creating creating them together has given me um yeah just like a confidence and a courage to to um be a bit more bold in the way that I um express these ideas in a more open way. >> Yeah. So um when I first was a participant in the seminar, it was kind of at a moment in my life where I was just thinking and questioning my field, what I was contributing to society just at the level of like the intellectual life like recently I started animating a junior youth group. I was becoming more like intimately involved with like what was happening in my neighborhood. But you know a study of book seven kind of brought me to this ide just the thought that I need to also intellectually like advance and this will also has to be related to the intellectual advancement of my community. And so the the seminar kind of like started it was very much so like the the beginning point of a process that now has kind of led to me yeah I actually in December I I stopped working at the job that I was working at and I'm now pursuing like a a pretty it could be seen as like a drastic shift but I think for me it has always been what my interests are and just I think yeah like people were saying the courage to be able to do that but also the clarity of like yeah one other thing is okay like if I'm one thing that comes up as we think about contributing to discourse is like what are people around me actually talking about like the first step in analyzing discourse is to actually familiarize yourself with the social spaces that you exist in and I was just finding that for my field that I was in I I couldn't see that nor could I see like that curiosity and so this seminar really helped with that and I think in the future a lot of now like my the bridging of of where my education is headed, but also my my work in in my neighborhood and in my community is like just this curiosity of like what what does it take to build like healthy, safe, vibrant communities and also healthy, safe, vibrant people and like how can we analyze these things? How can we understand like what contributes to their unfoldment so that we are able to to continue to support um our friends and our families and yeah >> thank you all so much. I hope you all enjoyed this rich discussion and that's the end of our panel. Thank you guys. [applause]