Consciousness Unbound

In his endorsement of this seminal volume, Alan Wallace states that 'the unquestioning allegiance of mainstream science to the materialistic reduction of mind to brain has caused researchers to ignore empirical evidence that challenges this metaphysical belief.' And in connection with Einstein and quantum non-locality, Heisenberg is quoted as saying 'most scientists are willing to accept new empirical data and to recognise new results, provided they fit into their philosophical framework. But in the course of scientific progress it can happen that a new range of empirical data can be completely understood only when the enormous effort is made to enlarge this framework and to change the very structure of the thought processes.' (p. 119)

These will be familiar observations – even laments - to readers of this journal and supporters of the Galileo Commission. This book is the third in a hugely significant series originating at the Esalen Institute in 1998 and evolving into the Survival Seminar, or Sursem for short. The original intent was to discuss empirical evidence suggestive of post-mortem survival and this evolved into a more systematic reassessment of materialist metaphysics that has become 'the received wisdom of the opinion elites of all today's "advanced" societies.' This led to the appearance of Irreducible Mind in 2007 and Beyond Physicalism in 2015. These books, along with the present one subtitled 'liberating mind from the tyranny of materialism' should be required reading for all undergraduates in psychology, philosophy and neuroscience, but it is regrettably doubtful that the faculty will ever have heard of them.

The book is structured in three parts: further empirical horizons, covering near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type and precognition; the second part lays out five transphysical theoretical perspectives that could account for the evidence of the first part; then the final part considers implications for science, humanities and philosophy. Edward Kelly provides both an introductory overview and an epilogue. In this way, the book combines field research with theory. David Presti sums up a central message when he remarks that 'a variety of metaphysical systems exist that can accommodate such an expanded science – neutral and dual-aspect and reflexive monisms and analytical idealism among them. We need not let our assumptions regarding metaphysical frames limit our capacity to expand a science of consciousness.' (p. 327)

The mechanistic and materialistic thinking that underpins transhumanism and the rapid deployment of technocratic systems regards the human as nothing more than a complex biological machine operating in a dead universe devoid of meaning and purpose. It seems self-evident within this worldview that the brain gives rise to consciousness and that survival beyond death is by definition impossible – I call this the central dogma of neuroscience. This view was not shared by the great 19^th century pioneers of psychology and psychical research - William James, Frederic Myers, Henri Bergson and, although he is not mentioned here, FCS Schiller. And despite the dominance of third-person perspectives for over 100 years, the evidence supporting their views has grown, and the authors in this volume arrive at similar conclusions for the same reasons, namely the theoretical inadequacy of physicalism in addressing the types and range of evidence considered here.

Bruce Greyson, Jim Tucker and Bob Rosenberg provide scholarly and authoritative accounts of near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type and precognition along with their implications for an expanded metaphysics and science of consciousness, especially with respect to the shortcomings of the mind-brain production theory. Greyson rightly concludes that 'only when we expand models of mind to accommodate extraordinary experiences such as NDEs will we progress in our understanding of the relationship between consciousness and the brain.' (p. 45) Similarly, after a thoroughgoing analysis of representative studies, Tucker concludes that 'none of the conventional interpretations can adequately explain large numbers of cases' which demonstrates 'the need for a post-physicalist conceptual framework that can incorporate the results into a larger understanding of reality.' (p. 83) Similarly, the chapter on precognition obliges us to reconsider conventional ideas of time, space and causality. Rosenberg arrives at a position that he calls determinationism rather than determinism where free will and an accurately foreseen future are not opposites.

The second part provides a range of different metaphysical perspectives and engages readers in a complex and careful philosophical analysis in arguing for specific positions. In the past decade, as Jeff Kripal notes in his contribution, there has been a move in philosophy towards various forms of panpsychism, which is also reflected here. Roderick Main considers mystical experience and the scope of CG Jung's holism, pivoting round his visionary experience of 1944 and taking into account his discussions of Indian insights into the psyche and the nature of the self in arriving at a formulation of panentheism – this also raises the more general question of the evolution of consciousness in the sense of God coming to know him/herself through human realisation, a theme taken up by Federico Faggin in his chapter entitled Consciousness Comes First.

Here he gives a detailed explanation of his theoretical perspectives derived from quantum field theory while reflecting on his own profound experience where he concluded that 'the essence of reality is a substance that knows itself by self-reflection, and its self-knowing feels like an irrepressible and dynamic love.' He notes that this experience contained 'an unprecedented force of truth because it felt true at all the levels of my being' and he has the profound realisation that 'I am a point of view of One.' (p. 285) This changes his world from the inside out. His subsequent discussion is both dense and clear, providing a new conceptual framework of consciousness units with the three fundamental properties of consciousness, identity and agency. The detail provides material for careful study that is impossible to summarise in a short review. Suffice to say that it advances an exciting new metaphysics that respects interiority, distinguishes between information and symbols, and demonstrates that computers can never be conscious in the sense of understanding.

Max Velmans asks if the universe is conscious in his lucid essay on Reflexive Monism and the Ground of Being. Here he extends his previous work while restating his basic premises in a position that potentially overcomes the challenges of previous formulations of idealism, dualism and reductive materialism, combining first-and third-person perspectives: there is no real separation 'between what we normally think of as the external physical world and what we normally think of as conscious experience.' (p. 185) William James made a similar point in his subtle discussion of rustling trees. Max compares his view with Advaita Vedanta and emerging formulations of cosmopsychism. He steers a careful course between reversion to the ground of being and monadic individualised conscious survival.

Bernardo Kastrup presents his understanding of analytic idealism after reviewing the main problems of mainstream physicalism as well as bottom-up panpsychism, a metaphysics that 'posits spatially unbounded, universal phenomenal consciousness to be nature's sole fundamental ground.' He argues that we and other living beings are 'merely dissociated mental complexes – alters – of this fundamentally unitary universal mind' and that this dissociation unravels at death. From this angle, 'Life – dissociation – may be the way universal consciousness becomes metacognitively aware of itself.' (p. 275) Readers can appreciate some parallels with Federico's views outlined above, and the possibility of consciousness becoming 'unbound'. Glenn Alexander Magee explains in his neo-Hegelian theory of mystical experience that we literally feel ourselves to be part of the whole and embody a process whereby 'the whole [Absolute Spirit for Hegel] achieves consciousness of itself.' (p. 252)

David Presti teaches neurobiology and psychology at UC Berkeley, and in his contribution reviews the back story of contemporary science that excludes the role of mind and consequently blocks the expansion of metaphysical assumptions where there is in fact a mutual enfolding of mind and world and an interconnectivity linking minds across space and time. He suggests five ways forward: adopting a more expansive metaphysical frame, radically expanding empiricism, connecting with fundamental physics, exploring mind-body medicine and placebo effects, and cultivating dialogue with spiritual traditions. Once more, the expansive work of William James comes to the fore, and David wonders if we need a collective spiritual emergency to catalyse the transformation of the physicalist worldview to allow for an expanded science of consciousness.

Jeff Kripal brilliantly summarises and extends the argument of his recent book The Flip by taking the kind of paranormal and mystical experiences discussed seriously as relatively reliable access 'to the actual structure and nature of consciousness and cosmos.' (p. 359) Such experiences are regarded as impossible within the dominant ethos of the humanities, and yet they lie at the origin of all major spiritual traditions and are now calling us to expand our worldview and reformulate the humanities as 'the practice of consciousness studying consciousness coded in culture', a move that brings humanity and human experience back to the centre – and in fact, consciousness also underpins the sciences. In classical Greece, nondual and direct gnosis was regarded as a higher form of knowledge, but this is currently relegated into the margins. The overall thrust of this book suggests that it should once again become central, in the process reconnecting ourselves with our metaphysical and cultural roots.

Co-editor Paul Marshall provides a magisterial survey of the metaphysical landscape of mind beyond brain, including a penetrating critical analysis of the philosophical perspectives in the second part while also outlining the importance of CD Broad's Basic Limiting Principles as limiting restrictions on current ways of thinking. In the context of the quantitative-qualitative property distinction, he raises 14 fundamental theoretical questions for consideration and also advances essential criteria for good theories (pp. 415-420). He then reviews the major philosophical positions, pointing out that they all create their own epistemological and ontological challenges, and showing how no representations in language can give a complete account of lived experience – a map can never be the territory. He himself recapitulates the arguments of his impressive 2019 book The Shape of the Soul, modifying Leibniz's monadology where 'each of us is one of these cosmic subjects at a deeper level of self – hence the potential accessibility of these experiences to us.' (p. 471)

In his epilogue on our emerging vision and why it matters, Ed Kelly argues that physicalism is not only incomplete but also unsound in its anchoring in classical physics – as a philosophical position that is no longer consistent with our deepest physical science (p. 485). We need to move towards 'some form of evolutionary panentheism' whereby 'this universal consciousness or universal self that is the source of the manifest world is in some sense slowly waking to itself…. as evolution of more complex biological forms enables fuller expression of its inherent capacities.' I agree that this vision is both scientifically defensible and spiritually satisfying while also expanding human possibilities potentials based on deep interconnectedness that entails mutual care and support not only of humans but of the whole of life on our planet. This is undoubtedly one of the most important books of the year and deserves the widest possible readership.