Virato dialogues with Dr. Alan Rayner at The University of Bath in England


Dr. Rayner is an ecological thinker who brings together scientific, artistic and spiritual perspectives in a radical new way of understanding evolutionary creativity, which he calls ‘inclusionality’. This understanding is based on an awareness of all form as flow-form, a dynamic relational inclusion - not an occupier - of space. It takes us beyond the divisive ‘to be or not to be’ logic of independent objects that alienates humanity from our natural neighbourhood. It liberates us from the self-imposed barriers that entrap us in all kinds of conflicts, obsessions, compulsions and addictions borne of our incompatible and insatiable desires for complete freedom and complete security in an uncertain, ever-changing world without fixed corners. It sees nature, divinity and evolution as synonymous and so finds no need for contest between neo-Darwinian and religious perceptions of our human place in the natural world. It dissolves the ‘clot’ between ‘head’ and ‘heart’ - intellect and emotion - and so opens up possibility for the creative and lovingly receptive-responsive transformation that could enable us to live in sustainable, compassionate relationship with one another and our living space. This possibility is angrily rejected, however, by those most deeply attached to concrete notions of individual or collective free agency, power and control. Alan is author of Inclusional Nature: Bringing Life and Love to Science. Many of his writings and artworks can be found at http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr.



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