Product Description

Materialism is the dominant worldview in the West today. But it is only one worldview, and it doesn't completely work, even, ironically, being gradually undermined by the science that gave rise to it. Containing the last unpublished writing of Pulitzer prize-winning author and scholar, the late John Mack, this anthology of essays from significant figures in the world of science and consciousness studies sketches the framework for a new model of reality - one based on the primacy of consciousness rather than of matter. It is a model we will need for survival on this planet. "Mind Before Matter" represents the first concerted salvo in a debate that could affect the worldview held by the modern, dominant culture.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63203 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Co-editor and initiator of the anthology, Trish Pfeiffer, was co-chair with John Mack in the Center for Psychology and Social Change. She was also Creative Director for Superlearning, Inc. in New York City and a founder of the Marion (Foundation) Institute co-creating programs exploring frontier science and human potential. She is on the Advisory Board of the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. John E. Mack, M.D. (1929-2004) was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer whose efforts to bridge psychiatry and spirituality were compared by The New York Times to that of fellow Harvard professor William James. Larry Dossey, M.D. is a lecturer and author of ten books on the interrelationship of consciousness, spirituality and healing. Contributors include Christopher Bache, Anne Baring, Amit Goswami, Ervin Laszlo, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Elisabet Sahtouris, Riachard Tarnas and Hank Wesselman.

Customer Reviews

The primacy of consciousness
Mind Before Matter: Visions of a new science of consciousness, Trish Pfeiffer and John E. Mack (eds.), O Books, 2007, 310 ff.

The primacy of consciousness
By Howard A. Jones

This volume is about the primacy of mind or consciousness. In the micro world, all is derived from the quantum field energy or zero point field energy; this is capable of cohering as subatomic particles, which form atoms, which form molecules, which make up the material world we recognize. At the macro level of living organisms, everything is derived from consciousness, eternal and infinite, which enables us to interact with the inanimate world and which exists in some sense before our physical birth and survives our mortal death.

The book is a collection of essays by 22 contributors who are eminent researchers into various aspects of this concept. There isn't room to list them all here and it may be invidious to pick out just a few, but probably the best known include the physicist Amit Goswami, Larry Dossey, Dean Radin, Ervin Laszlo, David Korten and Elisabet Sahtouris. The message of the book is to extend the idea of non-locality or entanglement (interaction at a distance between two physically unconnected particles) found in quantum physics to the universe as a whole. For the non-scientist it means that, in the macro world, you, the reader, and I and everyone else on the planet are interconnected at least in some subtle way, and that in turn we are all interacting with our environment in every moment of our earthly existence. What a breathtaking thought! What an incentive to make love, not war, to care for others on the planet, to dispel hatred born of the lust for wealth and power or fundamentalist religious sectarianism and replace it with universal beneficence!

Goswami's chapter focuses on transformation of the human psyche to give us intuitive access to health, beauty and justice through the cultivation of a `supramental intelligence'. Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch focuses on the limitations of a materialist, reductionist world-view - how it ignores a huge and important mass of human experience. Neurophysiologist Mary Schmitt examines what it is to have a `body', if all is mind. If consciousness pervades the universe, it must be a different kind of experience for a tree or a rock. Duane Elgin, described as a social visionary, examines the shift in the ethos of humankind since we were made aware of Earth as a living, interactive organism and sees a new perceptual paradigm emerging that directs us towards a living universe.

These are just the first four of the many chapters, contained in a section called Science, but they give a sense of the diversity of the exploration of this subject, directed towards the one concept of a Universal Mind. There follow other sections on Philosophy, Psi and Communion. There are numerous references throughout that enable the reader to further explore whatever aspect of this world-view they wish. Surely this is one of the most important books of the early twenty-first century, especially if it helps to expand the views of those academics obsessed with scientism and its materialist world-view.

Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.

The Divine Universe: An Alternative To The Scientific Worldview
Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena

Mind Before Matter
The debate between science and religion is a no win situation. Religion is based upon faith that by definition defies the notion of needing proof. Science, on the other hand, looks only to the facts, as they can be tested at this particular time. The two come from such polar opposites that any sort of compromise seems impossible. Religion fixated on the hereafter. Science stuck in the physical.

What if a compromise were possible? Could the best of both views be used for the betterment of our world? What would our world look like if we took our desire to investigate and question our surroundings while seeking to make our world a more loving, connected place?

Mind Before Matter is a series of essays and articles written about the potentials of science and religion. Many of these pieces look to use science in new ways to move past the local, finite world of science into further exploration of the nonlocal nature of the subconscious. All invite the reader to look past the normal one dimensional way of thinking to investigate the potentials of the subconscious, the mind, and the spirit.

Mind Before Matter presents some very intriguing insight into the possibilities of science and the subconscious. While not really light reading, I do highly suggest tackling this compilation to anyone remotely interested in this subject. It's well worth the effort.