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For centuries, people have wondered what consciousness really is. Most of us grow up assuming that our thoughts live only inside our brains and that our “self” is a private bubble sealed off from the rest of the world. This view feels safe and familiar, but it may be incomplete. Today, scientists are exploring whether consciousness has non-local features. This idea suggests that parts of conscious experience might spread, connect, or depend on interactions that are not limited to one spot in the brain or even one classical physical location in space and time.

Enjoy this excerpt from Truth Medicine: Healing and Living Authentically Through Psychedelic Psychotherapy, written by IONS Fellow Michael Ryoshin Sapiro, PsyD. The book explains why we often feel stuck and are unable to move forward into a life of thriving, and how psychedelic psychotherapy addresses these essential questions for our well-being.

WISER—the Worldwide Initiative for Super Experiencer Research—is a multi-year, multi-phase, mixed methods study dedicated to exploring and honoring extraordinary experiences and those who live them. We are excited to announce that the full WISER Super Experiencer Survey is now live! 

The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) will announce the winners of the third annual Linda G. O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize at a special public event, “From Algorithm to Awareness: A Noetic Exploration of Conscious AI”, on Friday, November 21, 2025. This year’s theme, How to Conceive of a Conscious AI, builds on IONS’ legacy of advancing theories that challenge conventional, materialist assumptions about the mind. The 2025 prize supports innovative research in developing frameworks for AI systems that incorporate key attributes similar to human consciousness, such as self-awareness, moral values, adaptive decision-making, and more. 

Have you ever been asleep and realized you were in a dream, and were able to change the structure or outcome as you pleased? This type of dreaming is called lucid dreaming, which is the ability to recognize and sometimes control your own dreams. Not everyone has experienced lucid dreaming, and not everyone who becomes aware they are dreaming has been able to affect the outcomes of their dreams.

In our fast-paced, overstimulated world, finding calm in the chaos can feel like a challenge. Yet within each of us lies an extraordinary tool for balance and renewal – our heart.

With the Thanksgiving season upon us, it’s a beautiful time to take inventory of your gratitude levels. Do you look at the bright side of life, or do you focus on what’s missing? 

Our mind is a complex powerhouse that can conjure up various types of imagery, from those that are purely mental to those based on what we see with our physical eyes. When we see things from the outside world with our eyes, our visual system takes the photons hitting our retinas, converts them into electrical signals, and sends this information to the brain’s visual areas. The brain then processes this visual information through different pathways, helping us understand motion and spatial location. Finally, the brain uses higher-level processing to tie visual information to memory, attention, and other cognitive functions to create our conscious visual experience.

Enjoy this excerpt from The Science of Magic: How the Mind Weaves the Fabric of Reality

The Linda G. O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize is a $100,000 annual award administered by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) to advance research at the frontier of consciousness and technology. The 2025 theme, “How to Conceive of a Conscious AI,” invites proposals that explore theoretical frameworks and empirical methods for developing and assessing artificial systems capable of genuine self-awareness and subjective experience.