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The connection between brain, mind, and body has fueled scientific debate over the past few centuries. At IONS, it is one of our primary hypotheses that consciousness goes beyond the brain. Unlike ontological religious or spiritual beliefs, it is a scientific hypothesis, which we believe can be tested using the scientific method and the modern tools of science.
Meditation has been used as a transformational tool for thousands of years. In the West, meditation is a new practice that has increased in popularity over the last couple decades. Meditation research allows us to see exactly how it works and how it may improve our health and lives using rigorous scientific methods. I’ve been excited to study meditation research ever since I first tried it. I’ve always had a curious and inquisitive mind and wanted to know how things worked. This curiosity led me to become a naturopathic physician and then a clinical researcher. My research has always revolved around the mind and its relationship with the body, how the state of our mind can influence all levels of our existence (e.g. physical, emotional, spiritual, social, environmental). Many of us “know” this on a cellular level without being able to prove it. So, I wanted to demonstrate these relationships with solid scientific methods. My whole research career has been dedicated to this research question. And isn’t that what IONS is all about?! Being at IONS allows me the incredible supportive environment to continue this inquiry with a synergistic team of incredible minds. As a meditation researcher, I am always amazed at the variety of meditation traditions. Almost every spiritual tradition on the planet has some sort of meditation or prayer associated with it. I’ve come to believe, like other researchers, that the essential goal of all of these different meditation is the same: to reach a state where we are able to understand our underlying state or true nature (Baerentsen, 2010). People have given many different names to this state: Samadhi, nondual awareness, pure awareness or pure consciousness, no mind, unity consciousness, Transcendental Consciousness, pure Being, oneness, mental stillness, mystical knowledge, wisdom meditation, the list goes on and on.
Twenty years ago I was distributing research by the Union of Concerned Scientists to global executives of major corporations at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, trying to get their attention and hoping to influence their policies. The research concluded we had twenty years before Earth and humanity reached a climate tipping point, beyond which there was no turning back.
Four years after releasing my documentary Reality and the Extended Mind, and 350 thousand views later, I recently reflected on the life-changing story of how it all came about…
One of the most fundamental dualities in our everyday experience is the duality between consciousness and nonconsciousness; the contrast between that of which we are aware in our everyday experience (individual consciousness) and that of which we are not aware (everything else — all nonconscious processes). For example, your awareness of reading this blog post is conscious. But the mechanisms that allow you to read this post and become aware of it are entirely nonconscious. I use “nonconscious” instead of “unconscious” because “unconscious” has connotations in psychology that I don’t want to evoke. Also, based on my reading of Freud, he would consider “unconscious” to be only a portion of the nonconscious processes, which would include the preconscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious.
Have you ever thought of someone for no apparent reason and then that person called? Or have you known who was calling before you looked at the caller ID or answered the phone? If so you are in good company. Surveys show that more than 80% of people have had experiences like this.
As a mental health professional, part of your practice may be helping people who have serious mental illness.
Though the core activities at IONS focus on research, education and running a transformative learning center, we are well aware that the heart of this organization resides within our members and supporters. Our staff is touched daily by our interactions with people who resonate with our efforts to create a shift in consciousness that will impact this world in a positive way.
We may not think of drumming, chanting, dancing, meditation, and ceremony as types of technology, but they are actually the most ancient of technologies geared toward altering states of mind. While they’ve been available to us for thousands of years, a new set of high-tech tools is rising in the form of electronic devices and software applications that are being used to explore, guide, and even enhance human potential. These tools are being framed by a fairly new movement called Consciousness Hacking, and recently several of us from IONS attended the world’s first Transformative Technology Conference in Palo Alto to participate in defining this emerging area of development.
Although the majority of Americans in some form of God, only a quarter of graduate training programs in psychology offer even one course in religion or spirituality (Schafer et al. 2011). While a vast majority of mental health practitioners believe that these topics should be addressed in the therapeutic context (Vieten et al. 2015), few are properly equipped to do so, particularly when faced with clients whose religious or spiritual values differ from theirs.