Neural Fabrics of the Mind – AK Mukhopadhyay, 2015
What we see as mental disorders, have deep roots in cell signaling and in failure of handling of information by operations of mind, self and ‘life’. The purpose of this review is to take lead from the renaissance in emerging knowledge in glia-neuron relationship for developing the molecular foundation of a systems neuroscience, which is inclusive of cognition and consciousness and excludes nothing from the behavior.
Near-Death Experiences, The Mind-Body Debate, and the Nature of Reality – Alexander III, 2014
The truth is that the more we come to understand the physical workings of the brain, the more we realize it does not create consciousness at all. We are conscious in spite of our brain!
Is the Brain a ‘Wet Computer’: Are Humans ‘Lumbering Robots’? – Bilimoria, 2018
This is the foremost view about the mind amongst mainstream scientists – never mind (excuse the pun) that science (by its own admission) has to date barely understood the subtleties of human consciousness.
Intelligence in perspectives of the Systems Psyche: Natural, Human and Artificial – AK Mukhopadhyay, 2017
Lessons for devising open-ended AI device could also be learnt from how the message in neural signals could reach the domain of consciousness by climbing up, and how the ‘will’ of consciousness is translated as neural signal by climbing down the ladder of cognition within the systems psyche.
Information Holograph – The Structure, the Source and its Operation – AK Mukhopadhyay, 2012
Does the Whole communicate with trillions and trillions of miniature wholes? If so, it is how and why? These questions have given birth to this conceptual paper where First person‘s experiential realm has been expressed in Third Person‘s perspectives.
Global Unity through a World State and a World Constitution – Hagger, 2018
My two books, which came out at the end of June 2018, foresee a world in which all members of humankind will have their lot improved. Before the mystic Light all human beings are spiritually equal, and I hold up the possibility of a world not too far ahead in which all can dwell at peace without the need for refugees.
Experiment and Experience: Complementary Approaches to Truth – Lorimer, 1997
Then what is the purpose of apprehending truth? It is to accumulate information, gain knowledge, acquire wisdom or a combination of all three? I would contend that we are all seeking insight and understanding, which is surely one reason why we attend conferences like this one!
Emerging patterns in the complexity – AK Mukhopadhyay, 2016
An emerging new psychology has been identified where the psyche could be considered a five-piece structure and process, which has relevance in cell biology where the cellular cognition is dynamically supported by signal networks of downstream informational molecules. The overall map thus constructed is non-reductive, holistic and falls within the ambits of systems science.
Complexity, Interdependence & Objectification – Basios, 2012
During the last twenty years or so, the investigation of fundamental aspects of complex systems in connection with the observer's participatory role in determining their understanding brings forth a novel perspective in science.
Expanding Grof’s Concept Of The Perinatal – Bache, 1996
I propose that in order to explain the phenomenology of perinatal experience, we must hypothesize that the patient in these instances has expanded beyond the individual subject. Rupert Sheldrake's concept of morphic fields is incorporated to suggest that the patient in these sessions might best be conceptualized as the species itself, or the morphic field of the species mind.
Cultural U-Turns in Mental Well-Being: Acknowledging the Dilemma – Tobert, 2018
I wrote this article to acknowledge our dilemma between challenging frameworks of knowledge, to explore the gap between different perspectives, and to suggest that we need a cultural U-turn toward more sensitive training in our educational institutions.
Death and Rebirth in LSD Therapy: An Autobiographical Study – Bache, 2015
This article explores the dynamic of death and rebirth in LSD therapy beyond ego-death. Drawing upon my experience in 73 high dose LSD sessions conducted between 1979 and 1999, it asks three questions: (1) Why does death become as large as it sometimes does in psychedelic therapy? (2) Why does death repeat itself so many times? And (3) what is actually dying and being reborn in this extended transformative process?
Perspective Awareness and Postmortem Survival – Braude, 2009
Thus (they argue), since by hypothesis postmortem individuals such as ostensible mediumistic communicators have no physical body, there’s something wrong with the very idea of a postmortem person, personality or experience. However, critics can’t simply beg the question and assert that physical embodiment is essential to personhood, personality, or experience, because the evidence suggesting survival is a prima facie challenge to the contrary.
Personal Identity and Postmortem Survival – Braude, 2005
As many have noted, what is often called the "problem" of personal identity can be understood either as a metaphysical issue or as an epistemological (and somewhat more practical) issue. Metaphysicians typically want to know what it is for one individual to be the same person as another.
Parapsychological Phenomena as Examples of Generalized Nonlocal Correlations – Walach et al., 2014
We will analyze the standard paradigms of PSI-research along those lines and describe how they can be reconceptualized as instances of such generalized nonlocal correlations. A direct consequence of this conceptual framework is that misrepresentations of these phenomena as local causes, as is done in direct experimentation, is bound to fail long-term. Strategies to escape this problem are discussed.
On Some Essential Requirements for a Fruitful Consciousness Research – AK Mukhopadhyay, 2014
By weaving several novel ideas in series, in parallel and at multiple levels overarching several disciplines, a distinct roadmap has been drawn for a dispassionate consciousness research. Several workable propositions in the paper, interdisciplinary in its true sense, might lead to opening of multiple new doors of science.
Non-Observable Influential(s) in the Domain of Consciousness – AK Mukhopadhyay, 2013
There are non-observable factors, which influence behavior of a living system at the observable level. If science has to be expanded beyond Planck’s scale of measurement, then these non-observable influential(s) are required to be conceptually defined, localized and described. Their operational mechanism is to be explored.
Near-Death Experiences The Last Word – Alexander III, 2015
Any evaluation of reports of near-death experiences must involve a mindset that is suitable to the task. These experiences challenge our understanding about the fundamental nature of consciousness, indeed of all of existence, at the most basic of levels, and if the mindset is too limited, we compromise our ability to approach the grander truth underlying our observations and attempts to understand them.
Mysticism and Psychedelics: The Case of the Dark Night – Bache, 1991
This study uses a model of consciousness derived from LSD-assisted psychotherapy to illumine an enigmatic set of painful experiences that occur on the mystic's path known in Western circles as the "dark night."
Moments of Grace – Reason, 2015
For me, moments of grace occur when, contra Pascal, the reason of the heart is at one with the reason of reason.
Kuhn, Consciousness, and Paradigms – Schwartz, 2018
The Schwartzreport tracks emerging trends that will affect the world, particularly the United States. For EXPLORE it focuses on matters of health in the broadest sense of that term, including medical issues, changes in the biosphere, technology, and policy considerations, all of which will shape our culture and our lives.
Is the Sacred Medicine Path a Legitimate Spiritual Path? – Bache, 2003
In the latter vision, life is deeply and inherently integrated. Though we may value our boundaries and exalt our differences, the deeper currents of life nourish the connective tissue of our collective existence.
The Participatory Turn in Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies – Ferrer & Sherman, 2008
Do we really need another 'turn' in academia and the study of religion? After all, it seems that when one or another turn has been proposed - whether linguistic, interpretive, narrative, pragmatic, or postcolonial - scholars often presented it as a kind of epistemic rupture with the past, a revolutionary paradigmatic shift that would drastically change the way the phenomena studied in their disciplines are to be approached.
How quantum brain biology can rescue conscious free will – Hameroff, 2012
Orch OR can account for real-time conscious causal agency, avoiding the need for consciousness to be seen as epiphenomenal illusion. Orch OR can rescue conscious free will.
Reincarnation and the Akashic Field – Bache, 2006
This article argues that Laszlo's concept of the Akashic Field (A-fleld) does not render the concept of reincarnation either redundant or unnecessary, that reincamation is a fact of nature, something the universe is doing at this stage of its evolution. Not only is Laszlo's theory compatible with the concept of rebirth, it actually strengthens that theory by clarifying some of the processes involved.