It's the future, Jim, but not as we know it...

There's more to tomorrow than robots, flying cars, and a faster internet.
22C+ is all about Deep Futures, futures that matter. Welcome to futures fantastic, unexpected, profound, but most of all deeply meaningful...

Showing posts with label non-local mind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label non-local mind. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The infancy of knowledge



Times are very busy at present, with books, papers, and promotional work to do. I don’t always have time to write an entirely new blog post. So today I thought I’d share with you one of my favourite passages from my book Integrated Intelligence.  This is an academic book about a spiritual intelligence which transcends the brain and extends into non-local space, which is based on my doctoral thesis. However I did write it in such a way that the knowledge contained in it would be readily accessible to most people. I even got in a quote from new age author Stuart Wilde! (my examiners probably didn’t know who he is). The following passage is found in the conclusion of the book, and gives perspective on the way we think of mind and intelligence at this time in human history. Sometimes it is easy to forget that the present in just one unique moment in history, and that the nature of our scientific knowledge defines not so much the boundaries of the cosmos, but the boundaries of our dominant worldview.

***


In this book I have compared and contrasted two different constructs of intelligence (Integrated Intelligence, and mainstream models of intelligence), which emerge from different ways of knowing, and different worldviews. It is appropriate to end with a reference from representatives of both schools. Contemporary mystic Stuart Wilde writes:

An energy shift that’s prevalent in the world today sees one group of people moving gradually from ego towards spirit, through the realignment of their consciousness, while anther group is threatened by changing circumstances and moves increasingly in the opposite direction, toward the ego, seeking greater manipulation, guarantee, and control over human affairs (Wilde, Whispering Winds of Change).

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Will This Change Anything?



I have often written about the way that mainstream discourses tend to marginalise discussions about subjects related to intuitive perception and spiritual experience. Here's an extract about exactly this problem, from a journal paper entitled "Entanglement: The idea that changes everything?", which I recently wrote for Foresight. I know many journal articles are about as fascinating as observing rocks erode, but I do try to make my papers personal, interesting and readable. I hope I have succeeded with that goal here. If interested, you can find the rest of the paper here, including relevant citations. (BTW, Brockman's This Will Change Everything is actually a very readable volume, and chock full of fascinating ideas for anyone interested in science and the future).



                                                                           ***

I recently received my copy of John Brockman’s This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future. No self-titled futurist could not be excited by the prospect of reading such a volume, which contains a collection of short essays by more than one hundred of the self-described brightest and most influential scientific and philosophical minds on the planet, including Daniel Dennett, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Freeman Dyson, and Rupert Sheldrake. Contributions are taken from the Edge website (www.theedge.org). Edge was formed by Brockman in 1991, and each year a volume is produced outlining some of the most provocative and innovative ideas emergi