Richmond IONS October 2021 Meeting (October 16) and Central Virginia IONS Community Group Meeting. It will feature a talk by Ravi Tallapragada.
Where: Online and in person, through ZOOM and at River Road United Methodist Church, Contemporary Worship Center, 8800 River Road, Henrico, VA 23229.
When: On Saturday, October 16, 2021, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, followed by a potluck lunch. See the detailed ZOOM instructions in the email.
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Richmond IONS October 2021 Meeting
“My Journeys in Consciousness.”
Our October 16, 2021 program will feature a talk by Ravi Tallapragada, Indian-American Engineer, Philosopher and Mystic.
Every life is a journey in consciousness, mostly meandering, seldom a straight line. Many among us seem to pass through their lives from beginning to end in a trance-like in an somnambulistic state, without ever seeing or appreciating the infinite variety of divine connections life offers at every turn, in every nook and cranny.
A lesser number of others seek to bring greater degrees of awakening, self-awareness and intentionality to their lives, and dedicate themselves to exploring and understanding the grander, broader and deeper aspects of meaning and existence − both in respect to their own individual lives and in respect to all life and all that is.
Ravi Tallapragada, our guest speaker this month, falls squarely into the latter category of fully awake, intentional seekers (“Enlightenment cannot be found by seeking, but it can only be found by seekers.”). His talk this month will be a fascinating sketch of his journey to date.
The search for meaning, for essence (soul or atman) and for humanity’s connection (or not) with the divine is as ancient as humanity itself, and began literally at the dawn of the emergence of humans on Earth as a sentient species, if not before.
Among the oldest extant writings and teachings on such subjects are the four Sanskrit Vedas (circa 1500 BCE) − the Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda and the Athar-Veda − which, collecively are both the foundations and the Bible of Hinduism, Earth’s oldest religion and still one of its largest.
From his early childhood, Ravi, born of a Hindu family in India, began attending a Roman Catholic (Jesuit/Salesian) parochial school. As a precocious and perennially contemplative student, he began seeking common threads, patterns and motifs from and within the Hindu teachings and traditions of his family and culture and the Christian teachings and traditions of his scholastic education.
As he grew, his horizons expanded, he emigrated to America, and his conceptual framework expanded as well, eventually encompassing all sacred traditions worldwide, and the deepest understandings of self and soul which accompany them.
Ravi’s path has been (and continues to be) one of applying a “beginner’s mind” of endless curiosity, wonder and delight, with a heavy dose of critical thinking skills thrown in for good measure, to all waypoints of his journey, and we look forward to him sharing it with us.
About Ravi Tallapragada, our Richmond IONS October 2021 Presenter
Ravi, a native of Chennai, India (formerly Madras), was influenced by JFK’s Moonshot speech to the US Congress to pursue engineering with strong desire to work at NASA.
After college in India, he came to the U.S. for graduate school. His career was in Telecommunications and Digital Signal Processing in R&D, Product Designs, and Services Development, and later as an IT consultant to the U.S. government in the D.C. area for many years, where his late wife was a neonatologist.
He had a weekly local TV show in Northern Virginia on Hinduism for several years, drawing upon the study of literature and commentaries in Comparative Religion and the Spirituality of India.
In 2019, Ravi, along with several of his college mates, had a personal visit with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India. He has one son Naren, who is a graduate of MIT in Physics and Electrical Engineering and has a PhD from Harvard in the Field of Cancer Cell Biology.
About Central VA IONS Community Group:
Central VA IONS Community Group is an unincorporated association and a local community group of The Institute of Noetic Sciences, an international association based in Petaluma, California (www.noetic.org).
We do not promote any religion, religious organization, doctrine or set of beliefs or practices and we are open to all. Central VA IONS entirely depends on voluntary donations of its members and friends to support its programs, mailings and other costs.
We appreciate a love offering at each meeting from those attending who are not dues paying members. Richmond IONS/Central VA IONS meetings take place each month at locations announced in its program notices (currently on Zoom) and are open to all. Our website is at richmondions.com.
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Richmond IONS July 2021 Meeting (July 17) and Central Virginia IONS Community Group Meeting. It will feature a talk by Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.d., Ph.D.