Journal Articles
Nonlocal consciousness as fundamental – Stephan Schwartz
This change is coming, and I think we should start thinking about this: What will science be like when consciousness becomes a regularly considered aspect in the design of experimental protocols, and how will it affect emerging technologies?
On the Matrix of Consciousness – Stephen Schwartz
Incorporating a shared vision of what the world could be like if consciousness were acknowledged to be fundamental, then fostering wellbeing at every level, is how you make social change happen. The most powerful human force is the power of shared intention. It is a worldview, not a technology.
Twin 5×5 Matrices of Consciousness in the Light of Co∼Eventum Mechanics
The generation and resolution of that counterintuitivity is imputed to the non-verbal experience of the classical gamut of state experiences, for which I deduce five lines of indirect evidence, including, perhaps most conclusively, the occurrence of samadhi itself at key junctures of level and state, which provide the stability and ongoing expansion of content of the matrices.
Vertical Hierarchy, The Invariance Principle and Consciousness
My intention is to make it easier for the health care community and others to recognize a possible relationship between their own preferred models and those in disciplines that may not currently appear cognate, as well as to enrich and further define themselves with what is offered in those disciplines.
Water, Healthcare, and Destiny – Stephen Schwartz
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.
Consciousness and Cosmos: Building an Ontological Frameworк
Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of reality, envisaged as a universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or ‘mental’; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, ‘informational’, and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications.
Books & Chapters
Our Fundamental Problem – Nicholas Maxwell
How our human world can exist and best flourish even though it is embedded in the physical universe.
Radical Provincialism in the Life Sciences – Chapter 2 from Crimes of Reason – Stephen Braude, 2014
However, my own assessment was that Sheldrake’s staunchest supporters and detractors were both wrong: Sheldrake’s view of formative causation was neither viable nor as radical as it seemed. But it wasn’t crazy either; in fact, Sheldrake’s proposal revealed considerable intelligence, insight, and originality. Nevertheless, it was seriously flawed, and to my surprise I found it to be flawed for the same reasons as the theories Sheldrake was concerned with rejecting.
The “Quantum Soul”: A Scientific Hypothesis – Hameroff & Chopra, 2012
Recent evidence for significant quantum coherence in warm biological systems, scale-free dynamics and end-of-life brain activity support the notion of a quantum basis for consciousness which could conceivably exist independent of biology in various scalar planes in spacetime geometry. Sir Roger Penrose does not necessarily endorse such proposals which relate to his ideas in physics. Based on Orch OR, we offer a scientific hypothesis for a 'quantum soul'.
The Collective Dynamics of Contemplative Practice – Bache, 2011
If my students could share one message with teachers of contemplative studies, I think it would be this. If you are an educator who is doing a form of spiritual practice that has the capacity to activate deep levels of the unconscious, especially at the level of the collective psyche, you can expect to stimulate sympathetic resonances with at least some of your students.
The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science – Kohl, 2016
Key term: ‘Emptiness’. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna ( 2nd century Current Era) is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’.
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.
Book Reviews
Beyond Matter: Why Science Needs Metaphysics
Here is Roger Trigg at his most incisive and succinct as he returns to his examination of where the limits of the modern scientific enterprise might legitimately lie. He makes a clear and persuasive case for the validity of explanations in metaphysics, ethics, and theology, against both the reductive stance we have inherited (through various permutations) from positivism and the abnegation of universal truth claims of post-modernism.
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon – Book Review
Atheists used to believe that with the spread of secular education, religion would fade away and science reign supreme. But this has not happened. Breaking the Spell is part of a wave of new books by militant atheists who feel threatened by the power of religion.
Consciousness, Ghandi and Yoga ; Ageless Mind and Timeless Ideas ; Cultivating Consciousness
In elucidating these topics, Rao has exhibited a commendable intellectual courage in the face of academic pressure to dismiss or ignore parapsychology. He identifies the limitations of scientific materialism with respect to both parapsychology and spirituality.
Cosmosapiens
10 years in the making, this tour de force is a critical examination of scientific theories and evidence - systematic observation or experiment - about the origin and evolution of matter, life, consciousness and humankind. As such, it could scarcely be more ambitious, but the result is a triumph of detailed conceptual analysis covering the fields of fundamental cosmology, physics, biology and the evolution of philosophical and religious ideas.
Does It Matter? The Unsustainable World of the Materialists
It is still the reigning paradigm in science that consciousness can be reduced to the operations of the brain. Graham Martin sets out a powerful case against this dogma: one wishes that most of the contributors to the Journal of Consciousness Studies could be made to read it.
Dying to Wake Up
This extraordinary story joins the likes of Proof of Heaven by Dr Eben Alexander and Dying to be Me by Anita Moorjani as a classic of recent NDE literature and with the same essential message of healing, love and wisdom. It is as if the spiritual world is trying to wake us up to the wider and deeper context of life, as the title of this book suggests.
Essays
Can we Crack the Mind-Body Problem? Part I – Emmanuel Ransford
This paper is in three parts. In this Part One, the randomness displayed by quantum objects is explored. The notion of quantumhood is then introduced. It refers to a kind of “wave wholeness” of elementary particles that, most significantly, turns out to be necessary to sustain nature’s consistency. When this quantumhood is in danger of being lost, a wave collapse, or quantum jump, is in order.
Consciousness cannot have evolved – Bernardo Kastrup
Sounds crazy? The main thing to see is that the field of consciousness studies is in deep trouble and Kastrup’s is actually one of the more plausible suggestions.
Cosmology of Esotericism – Holman, 2019
The following is taken from the author’s forthcoming book How To Run A Planet: Global Governance for an Inclusive and Sustainable World. It is presented here as a contribution to the Galileo Commission debate on expanding the scope of science beyond a narrow materialism and naturalism.
Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? – Jay Fitzgerald
When a star scientist dies, outsiders often tackle mainstream questions in the field by leveraging new ideas that arise in other domains.
Dude, where’s my paradigm shift? – Jules Evans, 2019
I asked some of the leading figures in the field of transpersonal psychology and empirical spirituality. Has the long-awaited paradigm shift not happened because of weak evidence, or institutional and psychological resistance?
Essay of the Month: Andrew Lohrey’s ‘A New Paradigm’
Harold Walach, the author of the Report, has written an excellent exposition of the current distortions that have erased consciousness from mainstream science. I would respectfully suggest, however, that the paradigm of scientific materialism does not only erase consciousness, it also erases, ignores or forgets about language, meaning and mind.
Quotes
– Erwin Schrödinger
– Prof David Bohm
– Albert Einstein
Other Materials
