Conversations with individual presenters & contributors

During the conference an extended interview was recorded with each presenter, discussing their motivation and understanding. These interviews will be released in the full program version in the coming period. The following is a short segment of the longer interview.

Ravi Ravindra

‘I often tend to think, or who am I? They say I say what am I? Am I just this body? Or am I just the mind? So these questions have actually engaged me for a long time. Growing up in India, especially immediately after independence, which was in 1947, I finished my school in 54. So that is very few years after independence, very strong. Pressure. That if you are a smart student. You should go into technology. In fact, at that time, if anybody went to study philosophy or literature, that meant they were bad students. So whether I wanted to study technology or not, it was just a social pressure. So this is how I ended up there. But for me personally. Wish to know something about myself’

Ravi Ravindra interview

Fr Joe Pereira

‘Now Rita Dharma is the configuration of the whole world and Mother Teresa would say I am a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was missing. The world would be empowered so that self worth you know when you recognise that I am very special. That God has loved me. And. When you feel that love, you cannot keep it to yourself. You have to let it flow so and that flowing will be only genuine in the measure in which I authentically feel loved. I can’t fake it to make it, you know’

Fr Joe Pereira interview

Rita Keller

‘The house, everything has been now renovated or re rebuilt. Actually to make your wheelchair happen here, I could help you. And my father said uhm. Well, you know, we still discuss Catholic and yogic. And I have a Catholic mind, and you have a yogic mind. There are two separate things. And I said OK. I could help you, but this time you know it’s enough for me. I will not. I will not say I will not beg to help you ioffer it if you think that you will help yourself. Help yourself or that probably some divine thing will come. But I do not. Believe that God is made for this. He will not help you there, but I I really offer help. And I said I will not come home anymore. And then I left house and. So it was after couple of days my father gave me a phone call …

Rita Keller interview

Alan Goode

‘… the greatness of an artist is to communicate through their art, to communicate their experience and for another individual in that piece to see themselves, and it is that not telling the student what it is, but to create a space or an environment in which a person can see themselves and can relate. Often instruction ends where instruction ends metaphor or imagary begins because it allows the human element. It allows the person to exist with the thing’.

Alan Goode interview

Caroline Coggins

‘And it was powerful for me. And then honestly, it felt like this. I thought like someone got me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me into the into the place where the secretary and the priest were. And I said hello, is there someone here that could talk to? Me. Certainly they said welcome. So I. The priest came out and he said, come, come, come in and. I said this is what’s going on in me and he said good. You’re chosen and I thought, what is? What have I stepped into?’

Caroline Coggins interview