State of World 25 – Tribute to Rumi’s Night of Union
How should humanity refine its consciousness to creatively respond to the four most consequential truths of our time: planetary ecological collapse, turbulence at every level of human affairs, exponential growth in AI, and the reality of cosmic intelligence on Earth?
The online State of World Forum 2025, December 14-17, aims to answer this question: How can we refine our consciousness to integrate all the intelligences available to us — human intelligence, nature intelligence, artificial intelligence, cosmic intelligence — and co-create our future.
The forum features a wide variety of speakers from the spiritual and political worlds throughout the 4-day gathering.
Spiritual embodiment teacher and sacred dancer Banafsheh Sayyad joins the Forum during the closing ceremony on December 17th from 1:30-2pm PT, offering a Sufi whirling performance and tribute to Rumi’s night of union with the Beloved.
This Forum marks the first time that Cosmic Intelligence has been integrated with other world issues in an international gathering. We will consider how not only are we not alone in the universe, but why we cannot make it on our own — we must undertake a revolutionary shift in paradigm for human identity and for humanity’s relationship with the larger ecology of life.
Four Intelligences. One Future.
The State of the World Forum was launched from 1995 – 2000 by President Mikhail Gorbachev and Dr. Jim Garrison and many others to bring together global leaders, scientists, business executives, young people, indigenous elders, visionaries and change agents to engage with the defining issues challenging humanity at the end of the Cold War. It became one of the first high-level platforms to bring global diversity together to transform conversations that matter into actions that made a difference. It proved that when people gather with shared intention, something meaningful and transformational can happen.
The 2025 – 2030 State of the World Forum builds on that legacy, not as a replication but as a new response to a new moment. Our mission centers around four consequential truths – planetary ecological collapse, instability at every level of human affairs, exponential growth of artificial intelligence, the reality of Cosmic intelligence on Earth. These data points represent four converging domains of intelligence — human, nature, artificial, cosmic — and our responsibility to engage with each and all of them together in a spirit of wisdom, curiosity and care. These intersections raise profound questions about identity, governance, ethics, consciousness and the future of humanity in a radically changing world.
The momentous opportunity emerging in and through our global crises is for humanity, for the first time, to transition from the arrogance of human supremacy over nature to the humility of sacred reciprocity with nature by coming into the awareness that not only are we not alone, we cannot make it alone. We need the larger ecology of intelligences to guide us now. Only by embracing our planetary and cosmic dimensions in the consciousness of the web of life being an interconnected whole will we survive and ensure a flourishing future.
The world is not simply in crisis — it is in transition. What we are living through is both the end of something and the beginning of a deeper reckoning about human identity and our place in a vast ecology of being far larger, more complex, more potentiated than we have ever imagined.
The State of the World Forum exists to create a place — moral, intellectual and relational — where this transition can be named, met and shaped with integrity.
We are not here to offer instant answers. We are here to ask deep questions — together. Questions that span disciplines, cultures, cosmologies, timelines. Questions that invite both strategy and silence.Questions that make room for the kinds of knowing that cannot be reduced to metrics or markets but are inspired by ancestral memories and awe at the wonder of the universe.
We are also here to transform conversations that matter into actions that make a difference. Already several major strategic initiatives are emerging that are global in scope and designed to bring people together to build an abundant future. They will be housed in a Center for Planetary Intelligence designed to serve as a container for deep discussions over time about how the four intelligences present in our historic moment can dome together to create a common future.
Closing the Circle: The Spiral of Existence
We summarize the proceedings, drawing forth the learnings and challenges ahead. We look ahead to 2026- 2030 as the Forum unfolds. We then close the circle we opened on Sunday — with gratitude, with clarity, with the knowing that the process has begun and the potential has been unleashed to catalyze a new paradigm for humanity as we engage with Nature Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Cosmic Intelligence to co-create a flourishing future.
Member
Banafsheh - Dance of OnenessEvent MemberIranian-born master dance artist and transformational teacher, Banafsheh communicates the universal message of Sufi mysticism and Divine Feminine wisdom in a passionate yet serenely meditative way. Her dance is an interplay between trance and directed movement, precise yet abandoned and unrestrained. Her explosive yet fluid movement is sensual and ritualistic, uniting the feminine and masculine energies, body and soul, light and dark in a marriage of opposites. She invokes the ancient roots of dance as devotion, prayer and adoration while blazing an original trail in contemporary dance with her masterly fusion of high level dance technique and spirituality.
Her mesmerizing offering of the timeless Divine Feminine inside a contemporary gypsy dervish beckons all to engage, serve, exalt and honor our sexuality as sacred. She is one of the few bearers of authentic Persian dance in the world, an innovator of Sufi dance previously only performed by men and a pioneer in contemporary Persian dance, all of which characterize the form she has created called Dance of Oneness® geared towards empowering women and men through sacred embodiment.
Internationally known for her innovative movement vocabulary and high artistic and educational standards, she draws from her extensive background in Sufism, Persian dance and ritual, Tai Chi and flamenco to present a new form, rooted in tradition yet universal.
Banafsheh’s movement is comprised in part by the Persian alphabet translated into gestures and movement, which when put together dances out words and poetic stanzas, mostly taken from the works of the great mystic poet, Rumi, whom she has studied extensively, resonating with his fierce yet gentle essence that beckons each and everyone to break through conformity and limitation to find their individual glory.
Banafsheh comes from a long lineage of pioneering performing artists. Her father, the legendary Iranian filmmaker, theater director and actor, Parviz Sayyad, hailed as the Charlie Chaplin of Iran, is the most famous Iranian of his time. Banafsheh is a recipient of the prestigious James Irvine Foundation grant in Dance. She holds an MFA in Dance from UCLA where she taught Persian dance. She has studied with some of the great masters in dance and choreography including Antonia Rojos, Victoria Marks, David Rousseve and Donna Uchizono. Also an acupuncturist, she draws from the Taoist view of the internal functioning of the body to uncover the healing, rejuvenating aspects of movement. Banafsheh’s solo and ensemble work with her dance company, NAMAH has been presented extensively in festivals and by dance presenters in North America, Europe and Australia where she has gained tremendous audience and critical acclaim. She recently performed at the closing night of the Festival of Sacred Arts in Madrid at Teatros del Canal. Her 2011 dance film In the Fire of Grace with author and scholar, Andrew Harvey traces Rumi’s journey of the Soul in dance.
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