Science Ignores Consciousness (STRETCH)

STRETCH

Monday, May 16th, 3:00 to 5:00 PM

Myron Stratton Home

No cost

Facilitator:  Charlie Coon

In this session we will view and discuss a film narrated by Peter Russell on 

the nature of Consciousness.  Here is his perspective:

Interviewer:  This mind/brain duality problem is a consciousness issue.  It says we can’t measure things the way that we thought we could. We now have to realize that we have to put an asterisk by everything we measure because we haven’t factored in consciousness.

Peter Russell: I think it was through just observing my own experience in meditation. I think that has been a fundamental thing is in a way recognizing that all of what we call the material world is actually an appearance in the mind. And in that sense consciousness is really fundamental and comes before the material world in the sense that all I ever know is my experience. And it is out of my experience that comes my ideas and theories and models of what the world is like. And in that sense, just realizing that consciousness is absolutely fundamental. Without consciousness there would be no science. It all takes place in the mind. And yet you could say it is a fundamental tool of science and yet it is totally ignored by science. 

(Peter Russell is on the faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation.  He also has a post-graduate degree in computer science, and conducted some of the early work on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual reality.)