United Consciousness Conclave 2025
In February 2025, Yoga Australia CEO Josh Pryor attended and presented at the United Consciousness Conclave, held in India. Now in it’s second year, this global event was a blazing success, with European and Indian Speakers making up the majority of the schedule. Here is a summary of Josh’s speech, contemplating the mechanics of service, the automatic ethics imposed by nonduality, and the call to live from this a new perspective in contemporary life.
Service is Conscious Attention
To serve is to direct conscious attention—toward people, ideas, or higher truths. When individual life is coordinated by intellect, the effect is a scattering of focus into distractions or fleeting pleasures that seem inconsequential. But every thought and action ripples through the fabric of existence (brahman), shaping our reality.
The Upanishads reveal that all form arises first in consciousness, beginning as a subtle idea (sat-cit-ānanda) before manifesting as name and form (nāma-rūpa) for willing participants. By aligning the beliefs and behaviour of our intellect with the subtle body (sūkṣma-śarīra) that contains precursor ideas and movements, we access ancestral wisdom and creativity.
Only a lived nondual (advaita) perspective delivers enduring joy, confidence, novelty, and fulfillment.
The world of material appearances serves us like a school, it allows experimentation with action (karma) until we tire of partial vision and sense of illusion lingering in the background. When we seek liberation (mokṣa) we attract teachings, but intellectual understanding of advaita is not enough—we must cultivate a permanent and joyful awareness of the subtle fields which precede material manifestation.
From the nondual perspective, every moment offers opportunity for virtuous actions that uplift ourselves and the entire cosmic web.
The modern path to awakening lies in integrating these teachings into daily life. Since we spend so much time in workplaces and communities, integration must be applied there also.
Spiritual leadership today means making this wisdom accessible and increasing embedded—whether through texts, oral teaching, or revolutionarily informed practices. By embracing total responsibility for environment and circumstances, we gradually dissolve separation and recognise that to serve another is to serve ourself.
Speaker Profile
Josh Pryor is an experienced international speaker specialising in non-duality, yogic philosophy, and the science of meditation. He has presented at conferences in India and Australia, and regularly facilitates short courses on contemplative practice.
Josh is the CEO of Yoga Australia and a a long-time advocate of the traditional Mysore-style Ashtanga method. He has studied with senior teachers across India and is a scholar of Sanskrit, with training in both Australian and Indian institutions.
As the author of two books bringing historical texts to contemporary life, Josh brings deep knowledge of Eastern contemplative traditions.
