A touch of Hollywood at the Science and Nonduality Conference

Photo by Gino Nichols

All things are one.  That’s the idea at the heart of nonduality, a concept that deconstructs the basic nature of reality itself!  For five days, starting on October 21, top scientists, philosophers and nondual spiritual practitioners will converge for an event that’s part seminar, part festival and part conference that will explore how science combines with meditation, philosophy, art, music, dance, lovemaking, shamanism, and entheogens to point the way to nondual experience.

So what’s a nice gal like actress/producer Chase Masterson doing with a motley crew like this?  Masterson produced and co-stars in the visionary film noir fantasy Yesterday Was a Lie, and (SPOILER) her film ultimately deals directly with those heady themes.  Masterson will appear with the film’s award-winning writer-director James Kerwin for a Q&A session promoting the movie’s forthcoming release.

“I have to be honest,” Masterson says, “Like most people, before I began really looking at this subject, I didn't know what 'non-duality' meant. But I was already well aware of the scientific evidence for the existence of God.  There are scientists at this conference from all over the world, people at the top of their fields, who have a lot to say on this subject. In fact, I was really surprised to find that the 'science and spirituality' community is extremely strong.”

Purists will tell you there are many shades of meaning to the word nonduality, the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific understanding of non-separation and fundamental oneness.  The group’s jumping-off point is the statement “we are all one,” not some hippie-dippy catch-phrase but the axiom at the deepest level of existence. 

Producer Masterson and writer-director Kerwin

"These are themes that Carl Jung, 100 years ago, realized to be true," Kerwin states. "And quantum physicists, both then and now, have continued to discover scientific evidence that he was correct."

Duality, or separation between the observer and the observed, is an illusion that the Eastern mystics have long recognized and Western science has more recently come to understand through quantum mechanics.

And clearly, these brain-bending concepts inspired Kerwin when he wrote Yesterday was a Lie. "Absolutely. The very basic theme of the film is that actions have consequences. The outdated dualistic world-view -- left brain vs. right brain, logic vs. anything spiritual -- is challenged when Hoyle (played by Kipleigh Brown) encounters Singer (Masterson), who ultimately teaches her about the interconnectedness of consciousness.”

And lest we suggest the film is filled with impenetrable ideas, it’s worth noting it has been enormously successful across the world at a myriad of film festivals: Yesterday Was a Lie received 24 awards (12 of them for "Best Feature") in 54 festivals on four continents and will be released in theaters in December and on DVD next March.

If that many people have responded so strongly to this film, perhaps it’s fair to say there is something, dare we say, interconnected, about the viewing experience?

Kerwin is particularly thrilled to meet Dean Radin, a respected researcher and author in the field of parapsychology. Some of Radin's pioneering experiments are alluded to in Yesterday Was a Lie, making the conference a "full circle" event for the director.

The main conference opens on Thursday October 22 at 7.30pm at the Embassy Suites & Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, CA.