Prayer: A Challenge for Science

Prayer: A Challenge for Science
Since ancient times, a strong and pervasive belief in the efficacy of prayer–for the living and the dead–reinforces the notion that consciousness is not limited to the physical body. Not only do traditions throughout the world share a belief that prayers may in some way help (or invoke help from)...
March 11th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Can You Find Consciousness In The Brain?

Can You Find Consciousness In The Brain?
MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those...
February 23rd, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Psychedelics and Species Connectedness

Psychedelics and Species Connectedness
Evidence suggests that at the very least the consumption of psychedelic substances leads to an increased concern for Nature and ecological issues. On one level we can understand that this may be due to a basic appreciation of place and aesthetics that accompanies the increased sensory experience, or...
February 8th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Can we crack the Consciousness Puzzle?

Can we crack the Consciousness Puzzle?
CONSCIOUS experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is extraordinarily hard to reconcile it with everything else we know. Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it possibly arise from...
January 28th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Shifting Consciousness: Six Years with Yogis and Tibetan Buddhists

Shifting Consciousness: Six Years with Yogis and Tibetan Buddhists
The data from parapsychological research is slowly becoming more accepted by the scientific community. The main sticking point is still a good theory into which psi fits. This is essentially the same sticking point for what has been called the “hard problem” in consciousness research – how can...
January 3rd, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Education Increases Your Chances of Believing in ESP

Education Increases Your Chances of Believing in ESP
Quantum physicist Dean Radin claims that there is a surprising correlation between education and the likelihood of you believing in telepathy and other para-psychological phenomena: the more educated you are the more likely you are to believe in ESP. However, according to Radin, the academic culture...
December 30th, 2009 | Extended Mind | Read More

Opening to the Infinite

Opening to the Infinite
“Three of the most mysterious things a person can experience are spiritual ecstasy, the ah–ha! moment of creative genius, and a verifiable “nonlocal awareness” event—what is often called a psychic event. Let me propose what I think a growing body of interdisciplinary research and a millennia...
December 18th, 2009 | Extended Mind | Read More

Direct Observation of Atoms through Clairvoyance

Direct Observation of Atoms through Clairvoyance
In August, 1895, a small group of Theosophists [1] gathered for a weekend in Box Hill, Surrey, to escape “malevolent thought-forms”[N2 p. 49]. There, and at a subsequent meeting on a sloping bank beside the Finchley Road on Hampstead Heath, they exercised clairvoyant powers to achieve direct...
November 18th, 2009 | Extended Mind | Read More

Psi-verts and psychic piracy: The future of parapsychology?

Psi-verts and psychic piracy: The future of parapsychology?
I woke up this morning with a psychic advert left lingering in my dreaming mind. It was some kind of oneiric flyer for a new type of yoga, it even had a telephone number on it to call. This fanciful hypnopompic intrusion brought me back to the idea that if science can identify techniques for reliably...
October 28th, 2009 | Extended Mind | Read More

Starting to make SENS

Starting to make SENS
A book review of Aubrey de Grey’s Ending Aging, by Eddie Germino Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a man who hates seeing people suffer and die from old age. In fact, he has such contempt for it that he considers the aging process itself to be just another disease (albeit a very complex one) like AIDS or malaria….. VN:F...
September 29th, 2009 | Extended Mind | Read More
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