IS CONSCIOUSNESS PRIMARY?

The American writer Charles F. Haanel (1866-1949) published his book The New Psychology in 1924, just as JB Watson's behaviourism was on the rise, and this became the new psychology, or even non-psychology of the day, since it denied the very existence of consciousness. Haanel was part of the influential New Thought movement, which I have studied in some detail, and he is best-known for his remarkable work – originally a correspondence course – called The Master Key System published in 1916 and that had a huge influence on Napoleon Hill. Other notable thinkers in this mode were the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (see his essay on the Oversoul), Ralph Waldo Trine (In Tune with the Infinite, which sold 2 million copies), William James, Judge Thomas Troward (The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science etc.) Wallace Wattles (who influenced Rhonda Byrne), the extraordinary Walter Russell and Earl Nightingale.

A central contention of New Thought is that 'there is one Principle or Consciousness pervading the entire universe. As this Consciousness is omnipresent it must be present within every individual; each individual must be a manifestation of that Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent Consciousness. Your consciousness is (therefore) identical with the Universal Consciousness, all mind is one mind. Each individual is the individualisation of the Universal, the Cosmic Mind.' (Charles Haanel) Other writers express this view in almost identical terms, in other words they would all answer the question posed by the title of this book with a resounding yes. It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine that New Thought had been adopted by mainstream psychology instead of behaviourism, with its insistence on the adequacy of a third-person perspective to the exclusion of first-person experience. Interestingly, Harvard already turned down the offer of money for a chair of psychical research as early as 1911, the year after William James's death – one can't help thinking that his influence might have led to a different outcome.

It has taken us over 100 years to catch up with where William James and some of his contemporaries left off – already in his Ingersoll lecture on immortality published in 1898, he was arguing for the plausibility of what is now called filter theory of the relationship between consciousness and the brain, as argued by many contributors to this volume, a view also espoused by F.C.S. Schiller at Oxford and by Henri Bergson in Paris. This book is the first in a series of volumes by the Academy for the Advancement of Post-materialist Sciences (www.aapsglobal.net) under the general heading Advances in Post-materialist Sciences. As such, it is a seminal volume that is required reading for open-minded scientists and academics seeking a rigorous expansion of our understanding of consciousness and who are dissatisfied with the limitations and restrictions imposed by the pervasive materialistic mindset in academia. Importantly, the authors draw on both their personal and professional experience, and in this way address issues linking science, philosophy and spirituality.

The 12 chapters are divided into three sections: maths, physics and consciousness; neuroscience and consciousness; and psychology, psychiatry and consciousness. The authors are all well-known researchers in these fields, and it is possible in a relatively short review to highlight only a few themes and contributions, although they are uniformly of a high standard. One central theme is how scientists change their minds about the nature of consciousness, when they were all trained within the world view of scientific and medical materialism. The broad answer is personal experience combined with pioneering experiments and logically analysis.

Gary Schwartz considers this issue in relation to belief in survival of consciousness after physical death, emphasising the importance of convergent information and outlining five essential additive criteria of assessment: reason and scientific theory, scientific evidence, a community of credible and trustworthy believers, direct personal experiences, and finally responsible consideration of scepticism about criteria 1 to 4. This calls for what he characterises as Eagle science rather than Ostrich science towards integrated big picture thinking. Gary also proposes three types of post-materialist theories: a) those that are a subclass of physicalist theories, b) dualist and panpsychic theories where two tracks exist alongside each other, and c) those where post-materialist theories are seen as primary - which is the main focus of this volume. He builds up his case with great logical rigour, describing a number of experiences totally inexplicable on the basis of Type I theories, all of which puts his conclusions beyond reasonable doubt.

Few readers will be familiar with the work of Edward Close, whose chapter is concerned with the mathematical unification of space, time, mass, energy and consciousness. On the basis of his theoretical work and personal experiences, he has no hesitation in stating that consciousness is primary, 'because I have proved it to my satisfaction using hard evidence, including experimental data and rigorous mathematical logic.' He makes the obvious point that 'our only direct knowledge of reality is through the experience of consciousness', which means that 'consciousness must be included in any truly scientific analysis of reality' as many of the great physicists like Max Planck and Schroedinger had already realised nearly 100 years ago. For Close, Pure Consciousness is pervasive, undifferentiated and unlimited, which sounds a lot like the Universal Mind of Charles Haanel.

It turns out that consciousness is the missing element in a theory of everything as envisaged by the standard model. Close develops his case with exemplary rigour, proposing the primary function of consciousness as drawing the distinction of self from other as the basis of all cognition, then organising this into meaningful patterns. He proposes a triadic rather than binary calculus, which he elaborates in considerable technical detail, introducing the new term 'gimmel' to denote a third nonphysical form of reality beyond relativity and quantum physics that is required for atomic and subatomic stability, allowing them to 'quantify the impact of consciousness on physical reality in the equations of science' (p. 106) and removing the need to postulate dark matter and dark energy. Much of the detail is beyond the general reader, but will be readily understandable by mathematical physicists – this also applies to the following contribution by Menas Kafatos on bridging the perceived gap between science and metaphysics, although his three principles of complementarity, recursion and creative interactivity are readily understandable as part of a participatory universe in which we 'live the Living Presence' and realise that we are essentially this.

Dean Radin, Marjorie Woollacott, Stephan Schwartz, Diane Hennacy Powell, Larry Dossey and Mario Beauregard all weave significant elements of their personal journeys into their chapters, and these frequently open them to enlarged modes of perception that call into question the limits of their professional education (the same happened to Swedenborg in 1743). They systematically outline lines of empirical evidence that challenge scientific materialism, all of which is extensively researched and documented. This leads them to postulate the primacy of consciousness, whereby mind is not produced by the brain. Marjorie explains her own energy-matter continuum model, contrasting it with the materialist/Newtonian model and recounting a remarkably evidential NDE from Dr Bettina Peyton, who, prior to this experience during the birth of her third child, was a paid-up materialist.

I found Diane Powell's chapter of particular interest – her initial curiosity was piqued by an unsolicited psychic reading, and in her book The ESP Enigma she argues that consciousness acts like a force field, adding that the neuroscientific model is not only incomplete, but seriously out of date. It is sobering to realise that early SMN Member Arthur Koestler published his book The Roots of Coincidence nearly 50 years ago. Diane attributes some of the resistance to ESP to a predominantly chemical rather than electromagnetic view of consciousness: 'once the chemical model was adopted, evidence for telepathy no longer fitted science's paradigm.' She has made as special study of acquired savant syndrome, and will be presenting some of this research at our Beyond the Brain conference later this year. Interestingly, Thomas Jay Hudson discusses this syndrome in relation to the Universal Mind in his influential 1890 book The Law of Psychic Phenomena. One of her original contributions relates to the role of glial cells and astrocytes broadly within a quantum neuroscience model involving microtubules and magnetic dipoles that reflect and transmit biological light in our cells; she also discusses the potential role of the angular gyrus in psychic sensitivity.

Larry Dossey summarises his work on the three eras of medicine, coining the term telecebo as a nonlocal exteriorisation of a health professional's thoughts and intentions for the welfare of the patient. Philosophically, his framework of the One Mind is a recontextualised statement of the Universal Mind, with its implications that our sense of separateness is an illusion, also in ethical terms: we live in a deeply interconnected world where bonded people can telesomatically feel each other's bodily sensations as the distance – I call this empathetic resonance. Gary follows up with another chapter on what he calls supersynchronicity with his own formulation of Universal Intelligent Consciousness. He identifies the dogma of randomness as partly responsible for resistance to the phenomenon of synchronicity, for which he not only provides his own experiences and classification, but also a staircase of possible explanations with widening implications. He explains how he came to change his own mind and deconstructs the conventional notion of randomness as part of his argument. He then applies his own criteria from the first chapter in terms of analysis.

The final contribution comes from the esteemed Charley Tart, who has been working in this field for more than 50 years. He gives some useful definitions of what he calls essential science, essential spirituality, scientism and total materialism, citing both scientific evidence and personal experience in formulating his own working hypothesis while remaining both humble and open in his conclusions. Sadly, due to lack of interest and time, the number of academics and scientists who will read even the best books arguing for a post-materialist perspective is very limited. For this reason, we have recently set up a communications group within the Galileo Commission to see how we can best structure and convey a coherent series of messages and talking points as part of our outreach to expand the evidence base of a science of consciousness. We need a more sophisticated articulation of the overall conclusions that can be referred back to the literature and help counter the political and social power of institutionalised materialism and the pseudo-sceptical movement, which we hope will in turn embolden people to stand up and be counted in favour of a post-materialist worldview.