F. David Peat

Welcome to my Amazon page. One of the most enjoyable tasks of my life has been writing books. Or rather lying in bed dreaming about what I want to write tomorrow then jumping out of bed in the morning and rushing to my computer to get it all down before I forget!

My latest book is "Synchronicity: The Marriage of Matter and Psyche". This is an original exploration and not a revision of my earlier "Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind". In my new book I explore Carl Jung’s notion of the life-transforming nature of synchronicities. Synchronicities open the floodgates of the deeper levels of consciousness and matter, which, for a creative instant, sweep over the mind and heal the division between the internal and external. Since writing that first book a great deal more has come to light, in particular about the role the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli had in encouraging Carl Jung’s investigation of the phenomenon of “meaningful coincidence.” Much of this collaboration between the physicist and the depth psychologist is revealed in the fascinating correspondence between Jung and Pauli that has recently been published. My new book explores these discoveries and ends with a speculative and provocative chapter on the possible source of true synchronicities.

I was born and grew up in Liverpool. My father was an electrician and when his apprentice announced that he wanted to quit to go to Germany with his band my father told him, "George Harrison, one day you'll come crawling on your hands and knees to get your job back." I was also a little annoyed when my closest friend, Dot, told me she was seeing a really fascinating student at art college—John Lennon! It was that era!

After university I moved to Canada to carry out research in theoretical physics at the National Research Council of Canada. Then, while on a sabbatical with Roger Penrose, I met the physicist David Bohm and began a friendship that lasted until his death. Indeed, we were working together on a second book when he died.

I had also been involved in documentaries for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and was responsible for a twenty one-hour series on the development of physics in the 20th century. After leaving the NRC I turned to writing both books and plays for radio and the stage. I also made contact with Native American groups which ended up as a circle of Native Elders and Western Scientists sponsored by the Fetzer Institute. Some these experiences found themselves in Blackfoot Physics.

From Ottawa we moved briefly, and totally by chance, to the medieval hilltop village of Pari in Tuscany, and from there moved to London so I could do research for and write Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm. In London I made contact with the artists Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley and ended up organizing a weekend where artists and scientists could meet and talk informally.

From London I moved back to Pari and in 2000 opened the Pari Center for New Learning in order to run courses and conferences and have writers and artists come to visit for a month or so. Pari has also been an ideal place in which to reflect and write and to meet new people. It has been a time when I developed my idea of Gentle Action which can be found at www.gentleaction.org and well as in my book "Gentle Action: Bringing creative change to a turbulent world".

A recent book of mine is "A Flickering Reality: Cinema and the Nature of Reality". This shows how everything from Freud and Jung, quantum theory and chaos theory, the neurosciences and postmodernism have changed the way we look at ourselves and the world, and the most direct way to experience this is via films. I also have a blog on this topic at http://aflickeringreality.blogspot.com. And what a pleasure it was to see it in print. It was such a joy to write "A Flickering Reality" because it combined my interests in the changing nature of reality along with the chance to revisit so many films I had enjoyed in the past along with some very new ones.

And if you'd like to learn more then why not buy my biography, "Pathways of Chance" or look at my websites www.fdavidpeat.com or www.paricenter.com.