Research on near-death experiences is unlikely to find evidence that human consciousness can survive without a brain. Sue Blackmore explains. 10|1|08 |
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is a bibliography of work in the philosophy of mind, of cognitive science, and the science of consciousness. 9|12|08 |
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Neal Goldsmith introduces us to the psychosocial development of the self-in-environment. As we evolved, we compartmentalized our lives. Science and spirit have been separated for millennia, and it’s time that we begin to reconcile them and try to fuse them together again. 9|1|08 |
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Mahatma Gandhi has become one of those saints from the distant past whose name is frequently invoked without thought to the nature of his achievements. When we consider the violence saturating the world today, it is remarkable to recall that satyagraha triumphed over the British Empire, winning independence for India. This victory required great sacrifice and acceptance of privations, violent attacks and imprisonment on the part of many thousands, Hindus and Muslims alike, who joined his movement. 6|27|08 |
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In his book, Digital Dharma (see below), Steven Vedro looks at the seven core spiritual communications challenges encoded by the different technologies of the Infosphere, and relate them to the "stages of consciousness" described by the world's esoteric traditions, the work of philosophers such as Ken Wilber, and the "spiral dynamics" model of Don Beck, Christopher Cowan, and Claire Graves. This excerpt looks at our current fascination with "coded reality," and connects it to the work of the esoteric third eye (at the sixth chakra) and the technologies of digital compression. 5|7|08 |
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What holds our world together is not only the laws of physics, but language, myth and story. Our narratives create the framework in which our actions and our intentions have meaning, or at least some kind of order. It is very hard for us to live without any coherence at all. It may even be impossible, as our minds immediately begin to weave together some type of fable to support whatever it is we find ourselves doing. A contribution by Daniel Pinchbeck. 4|21|08 |
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How do we bring awareness gained through shamanic practice or yogic discipline back into the gritty realities of political struggle and the fight against global inequity of wealth and resources? It seems there is still a lot of denial among Western mystics and "New Agers," as well as elitism and spiritual materialism. Whether someone does a flawless series of asanas, drinks ayahuasca with 20 different shamans or visits hidden monasteries in Bhutan has no value as a sign of spiritual attainment. How they live day by day, what they do with the psychic energy and time available to them and how their work helps to liberate others is what matters. Daniel Pinchbeck's thoughts and suggestions for the shift of "2012." Daniel Pinchbeck will be a key speaker at the World Psychedelic Forum. 3|12|08 |
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Five discussions on entheogens, shamanism and the planetary shift with John Lash. 2|29|08 |
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Virtual Reality (VR), especially in a technologically focused discourse, is defined by a class of hardware and software, among them head-mounted displays (HMDs), navigation and pointing devices; and stereoscopic imaging. This presentation examines the experiential aspect of VR. An abstract by Diana Reed Slattery. 2|22|08
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Some of the most exciting endeavors in neuroscience right now are trying to move beyond reductionism, says Jonah Lehrer, an editor at large for Seed magazine. The Blue Brain Project, for example, a collaboration between the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and IBM, is in the process of constructing a biologically accurate model of the brain that can be used to simulate experience on a supercomputer. 1|28|08 |
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explores the world, documenting and conserving healing practices and spiritual traditions. 2|1|08 |
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By thinking of religion in terms of evolutionary theory we can see just how and why the major religions of today are so harmful. A lively debate with consciousness researcher Susan Blackmore and Oxford theologian Alister McGrath. 1|11|08 |
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was recently interviewed by Joanna Harcourt-Smith, an early companion of Timothy Leary, who has a website on a variety of topics covered by the title Future Primitive. Their conversation ranges over the early Harvard psychedelic experiments, the Millbrook years, consciousness expansion and his present work in teaching alchemical divination practices. 12|21|07 |
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A little over a decade ago, he had a bona-fide, Grade A, no-shit "mystical" experience, or at least something that felt a hell of a lot like a mystical experience. He had never written about it before, didn't talk about it much, but has been thinking about it lately and thought he’d give it a shot now, ineffability and scare quotes and all. A "X-Mas Carol" by Eric Davis. 12|17|07 |
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Our memory for words can be modelled as a network in which each point represents a different word, with each linked to words that relate to it. Psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, wondered whether the ease with which the brain retrieves words is similar to the way that websites are ranked by PageRank: by the number of sites that link to them. 12|17|07 |
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Is an international venture led by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, Zhejiang University in China, the Indian Institute of Science in India and the Library at Alexandria in Egypt, has completed the digitization of more than 1.5 million books, which are now available online. 12|12|07 |
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Folk singer Donovan and film director David Lynch have campaigned to introduce transcendental meditation into schools and colleges as a crime and stress prevention tool. Now, the duo plans to open the Invincible Donovan University in Scotland. The pair expect big results: "For a country the size of Scotland it would take only 250 students meditating to protect Scotland from its enemies and to bring peace, to stop violence and drug abuse," says Lynch. 12|3|07 |
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Had René Descartes lived to share coffee with James Clerk Maxwell, he might never have articulated that bête noir of modernity, the "mind- body problem." Many thanks to plodding philosophical progress: contemporary dictionaries tie the word "wave" to swells of both the physical and the affective, matter and mind. Bliss can be "oceanic," just as a saw-tooth synthesizer tone can be "aggressive". Vibration is a language that we use to mediate experience and description – or, perhaps more accurately, it is a medium beyond language, allowing us to bypass intermediary signifiers and communicate with a directness and clarity inaccessible to contemporary tongues. Physical vibration is fundamentally psychoactive, and its study reveals the long-sought- after explanatory bridge between matter and mind, description and experience. At the heart of the world, there is a wave that throbs, coiled and twisting. 11|19|07 |
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is a bibliography of work in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognitive science, and the science of consciousness. It consists of 18322 entries, and is divided into 8 parts, each of which is further divided by topic and subtopic. Both online and offline material is included, with links wherever possible. 11|16|07 |
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is about the history and future of civilization from a unique perspective: the evolution of the human sense of self. The book describes how all the expressions of our civilization—its miraculous technology as well as the pillage of earth, culture, goodness, and beauty—arise from our identity, our way of being, "the discrete and separate self". The gathering crises of our age demonstrate that this way of being is on the verge of collapse. And this collapse is setting the stage for a revolution in human beingness whose stirrings we already begin to feel. 11|23|07
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Through transdisciplinary inquiry and shared discourse, the Planetary Collegium aims to produce new knowledge in the context of the arts, with special reference to technoetic research and to advances in science and technology. It seeks outcomes that involve new language, systems, structures, and behaviours, and insight into the nature of mind, matter and human identity. Its research reflects the social, technological and spiritual aspirations of emerging planetary society, while sustaining a critical awareness of the retrograde forces and fields that inhibit social development. 11|5|07 |
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Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith. 10|17|07 |
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Music, writes neurologist Oliver Sacks in his new book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, opens a window into almost every aspect of life and brain function. For his previous case-history collections Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks studied the lives of people with disorders like autism and Tourette's syndrome, turning up startling insights about the brain's capacity to heal and adapt. Sacks, 74, shared his thoughts about music in his Greenwich Village office. 10|17|07 |
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One of the deeper, underlying archetypal patterns which is being constellated in the human psyche that is playing itself out collectively on the world stage is the archetype of the "wounded healer." To quote Kerenyi, a colleague of Jung who elucidated this archetype, the wounded healer refers psychologically to the capacity "to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sunlike healer." 10|3|07 |
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The soul is not a supernatural construct. I see the soul as one's
personality, including deeper levels that are typically beyond
conscious awareness. The soul is embodied within us as software,
running on the hardware of our brains and bodies. An opinion by Glen
Allport. 9|1|07
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In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee. 8|15|07 |
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It looks like the noosphere is an idea whose time has come, and it may well be the idea that defines its time, and frames the time ahead—but is it a good idea? Is it a viable, sound idea in social, spiritual, and evolutionary terms? Widespread enthusiasm about the noosphere dominates the discussion over its importance; indeed, over its very nature. An article by and a blog with John Lamb Lash. 7|29|07 |
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Dreaming is scientifically thought to occur when Alpha brain waves are dominant and the brain enters a deep state of relaxation or meditative rest. In the early 1960's the Parisian artist Brion Gysin, with the help of his friend the mathematician Ian Sommerville, invented a type of stroboscopic machine, popularly known as the Dreamachine. 6|17|07 |
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Moving your eyes from side to side can help improve the accuracy of your memory. That's according to psychologists Andrew Parker and Neil Dagnall, who say the beneficial effect could be related to sideways eye movements increasing interactive neural activity across the front of the two brain hemispheres. 5|31|07 |
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Aldous Huxley wrote: "Is there, one wonders, some area in the brain from which the probing electrode could elicit Blake's Cherubim?". It seems we might be very close to it. 5|31|07 |
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The goal of CE as a company is to globally support, fund, and or create various companies that offer information, products and services for like-minded people in a world community. CE is the manifestation of the idea that people of all cultures, religions, ethnicities, and nationalities share more commonalities than differences and that by recognizing the thread of similarities that connect us all, CE can weave a tapestry of companies that span the globe, offering a wide and unique blend of information, goods, and services that appeal to the conscious community. 5|5|07 |
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by social visionary Joseph Chilton Pearce's is an indictment of cultural imprinting as the cause of humankind's cruel and violent behavior, and it present a way to return to the intelligence of the heart. (4/13/07) |
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is an intriguing "Intentional community as both a lifestyle of choice
and a strategy to anticipate, reflect and quicken social change", created by A. Allen Butcher. (4/3/07) |
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