Speculations about the Direct Effects of Intention on Physical Manifestation

A possible mechanism by which mental acts may be synchronized with physical states is postulated. It is argued that a layer of deep consciousness, similar to David Bohm’s implicate order, underlies and gives rise to both subjective, intentional consciousness and objective, physical manifestation. The influence of volition at the level of intentional consciousness can be conceptualized in the context of the Kochen-Specker theorem as the exercise of the unconstrained choice of observables, and, at the level of deep consciousness, as modulation of the activity of the creation and annihilation operators of a quantum field. The discrete nature of observations in quantum theory leads to the notion of a flicker universe in which temporal continuity of physical structures is maintained by morphic fields

An Experimental Test of Instrumental Transcommunication

As a result of a previous study in which electronic voice phenomenon failed to be found, the author introduced two new elements in an experiment seeking to produce instrumental transcommunication: the creation of text using random text generators and the presence of a medium. There were 26 experimental sessions carried out from April 28,2003 to August 30,2003 in the Psychology Laboratory at King\u27s University College. The random text generators were engaged a total of 715 times producing 23,281 discrete units of textual data. Only a yeslno generator produced anomalous results. Of the 49 times the yeslno generator was used, 11 of them were in response to questions for which the answers could be verified. Of those 11 responses, 9 were correct with a probability of occurrence by chance of .042. Such a result could be due to chance, anomalous human-machine interaction between the participants and the computer, or some other influences such as those arising from possibly existent unseen dimensions of reality. The use of text generators and the presence of a medium in instrumental transcommunication (ITC) research are discussed, including the potential provision of information by the medium regarding strategies that could facilitate ITC

Consciousness: Where We Are At

It is useful every couple of years to take a bird’s eye view of consciousness studies and reflect on what we see. When I look, I still see two streams, one of which is the social and political framework for the study of consciousness, and the other of which is the substance of what we know about consciousness. The former is still largely defined by the extent to which the scientific study of consciousness has been freed from a materialist agenda. The latter includes recent research into the clarity of cognitive functioning in the absence of sufficient neurological support for it, after-death communication, experimenter effects in anomalies research, and the psychodynamics of entering transcendent states of consciousness. Taken together, these two streams appear to converge on the discovery of the depth and meaning of existence that is being revealed through consciousness research

Overview of Consciousness Research

The purpose of this paper is to orient the reader to the contemporary scientific study of consciousness. One of the most noticeable features of research concerning consciousness is that there are three domains of discourse, the physiological, computational and experiential, each with its own methodology, and concerns. While confusion is often expressed about what it is that one is discussing, there are four main categories of definitions of the term consciousness: consciousness is the registration, processing and acting on information; behavioural consciousness is the explicit knowledge of one\u27s situation, mental states or actions as demonstrated by one\u27s behaviour; subjective consciousness is the subjective stream of thoughts, feelings and sensations that occur for a person; and consciousness is the sense of existence of the subject of mental acts. There are also disparate views concerning consciousness that surveys have revealed to be correlated with investigators beliefs about the nature of reality along a material-transcendent dimension. Those with materialist views tend to think that only that which is physical is real and that consciousness is an emergent property of neural or information-processing systems; those with conservatively transcendent views think that there is more to reality than that which is physical and emphasize subjective aspects of consciousness; while the extraordinarily transcendent conceptualize consciousness as ontologically primitive and place importance on self-transformation. An investigator\u27s contention that she has had anomalous experiences appears to incline her toward a transcendent position. The presence of these correlations indicates that research programs concerning consciousness proceed, not in an unbiased manner, but on the basis of personal beliefs about the nature of reality. Can beliefs change in the course of the educational process? Data from 129 undergraduate students indicates that beliefs about consciousness and reality can move in a transcendent direction in classes with an instructor with extraordinarily transcendent beliefs

Failure to Replicate Electronic Voice Phenomenon

Electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) refers to the purported manifestation of voices of the dead and other discarnate entities through electronic means. This has typically involved tuning radios between stations and recording the output on audiotape, although more recently anomalous voices, visual images and text have purportedly been found using telephones, television sets and computers in a phenomenon known as instrumental transcommunication. Given the lack of documentation of EVP in mainstream scientific journals, a review of its history is given based on English language information found in psychical research and parapsychology periodicals and various trade publications and newsletters. An effort was made to replicate EVP by having research assistants simulate interaction with discarnate entities while taping the output from two radios tuned between stations onto audio cassettes. There were 81 sessions with an average of approximately 45 minutes per session for a total of about 60 hours and 11 minutes of recording. While there are some apparent voices and interesting noises upon playback, none of these is sufficiently distinctive to merit being considered anomalous. Some speculative reasons are given for the negative result although the possibility that there are no anomalous phenomena associated with EVP is offered as an explanation for consideration alongside the hypothesis that experimenters create EVP effects through anomalous human—machine interactions and an exosomatic theory of actual influence of electronic equipment by discarnate entities

Beyond Scientific Materialism: Toward a Transcendent Theory of Consciousness

Analysis of the social-cognitive substrate of scientific activity reveals that much of science functions in an inauthentic mode whereby a materialist world view constrains the authentic practice of science. But materialism cannot explain matter, as evidenced by empirical data concerning the nature of physical manifestation. Nor, then, should materialism be the basis for our interpretation of consciousness. It is time to move beyond scientific materialism and develop transcendent theories of consciousness. Such theories should minimally meet the following criteria: they should be based on all of the usual empirical data concerning consciousness, including altered states of consciousness; they should take into account data about anomalous phenomena and transcendent states of consciousness; they should address the issue of existential meaning and provide soteriological guidance; and they should be consistent with the most accurate theories of physical manifestation, such as relativistic quantum field theories. Speculating within a quantum-theoretic context, consciousness could be inserted as a primitive element into reality by providing a role for intention in the selection process of observables, the collapse of the state vector, or the ordering of quantum fluctuations. But consciousness could be more fundamental, in the sense of a deep consciousness coinciding with a pre-physical substrate, from which intention shapes both mental experience and physical manifestation. If any significance can be attached to the mathematical formalism of relativistic quantum field theories, perhaps creation and annihilation operators, which determine the fluctuations of a quantum field, can metaphorically be regarded as the avenue through which intention acts. Morphic fields within the pre-physical substrate could hold in place patterns that shape the reality that we experience. Among such morphic fields could be ones that correspond to the world view of scientism. By becoming authentic, one could break from such constraints and consider alternative possibilities that can include various forms of radical transformation

The Art of Science: Science of the Future in Light of Alterations of Consciousness

In presenting the data concerning altered states of consciousness in an even-handed manner, I have found that I cannot at the outset assume that materialism is the correct theory of reality. As demonstrated by survey data, the beliefs about consciousness and reality of academics and scientists who could write about consciousness in the academic literature range along a material-transcendent dimension from materialist through conservatively transcendent to extraordinarily transcendent positions, each with its corresponding notions of consciousness and proper methodology. Scientists need to undertake a process of self-examination in order to determine their personal beliefs and learn to set them aside in order to be free to examine the evidence. A materialist position cannot be presupposed at the outset, given that some altered states phenomena suggest that consciousness may be non-local. Given the subjective nature of experiences in altered states of consciousness, the acquisition of introspective skills on the part of the investigator may be a necessary methodological extension of science, along with a concomitant development of personal integrity, determination of physiological and behavioral correlates of subjective experiences, evaluation of judgments of certitude with regard to the reality of subjective events, and development of the ability to interpret the meanings of symbols. Experiences with psychedelic drugs and, more forcefully, transcendent events raise the possibility of the presence of a mode of understanding superior to sensory perception and ratiocination. In effect, extensions of science could involve various degrees of self-transformation of the scientist herself in such a manner that, in some cases, the science of the future may be more art than science

Franklin Wolff\u27s Mathematical Resolution of Existential Issues

Just like anyone else, scientists can be troubled by existential questions such as What is the purpose of life? and Why is there something instead of nothing? One strategy for approaching such questions has been to suggest that a latent cognitive faculty needs to be activated in order to answer them. In effect, this means that a questioner needs to undergo a process of self-transformation leading to a transcendent state of consciousness in which such an ability is awakened. Franklin Wolff has proposed that there is a way of doing so, namely mathematical yoga, that is particularly suited for scientists. Such a spiritual practice consists of doing mathematics, while understanding what one is doing and maintaining a self-giving attitude. Although Wolff has attributed his own enlightenment to this mathematical path, it needs further empirical verification. Wolff s notions also suggest that, even without the occurrence of transcendent states of consciousness, abstract thinking could lead to states of consciousness characterized by greater than ordinary meaningfulness