43 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Austrian philosopher at Liechtenstein University who studies consciousness, near-death experiences, and Viktor Frankl's logotherapy — co-edited The Self Does Not Die (anthology of veridical NDE cases) and works at the intersection of philosophy of mind and existential psychology.
David Bentley Hart's 2024 philosophical work — exploring panpsychism, consciousness, and the relationship between mind and nature — continuing his project of defending classical theism and the reality of consciousness against reductive materialism.
Diana Walsh Pasulka's 2019 book applying the sociology of religion to the UAP phenomenon — arguing that UAP belief exhibits all the features of an emerging religion, including sacred sites, transformation narratives, and a growing belief community.
American author and editor — married to Sam Harris — whose Conscious presents the hard problem of consciousness in accessible form, arguing that consciousness may be far more pervasive in nature than conventional scientific assumptions suggest.
Personal development podcast hosted by Joe Hudson — a coach who works with Silicon Valley executives — exploring emotional intelligence, leadership, presence, and the relationship between inner states and outer performance.
A book exploring the relationship between biological organisms and what have been traditionally conceived as divine or supernatural capacities — examining whether certain anomalous human capacities (psi, mystical experience) might be understood as biological rather than supernatural phenomena.
Late-night American radio program (originally hosted by Art Bell, currently by George Noory) that covers UFOs, paranormal phenomena, consciousness research, and fringe science — the most listened-to late-night radio program in North America, providing a platform for researchers whose work doesn't fit mainstream media.
American NDE experiencer whose three lightning-strike NDEs are among the most dramatic documented — Saved by the Light, At Peace in the Light — and who became a hospice volunteer, spending thousands of hours with the dying after his experiences.
Canadian quantum computing entrepreneur who has publicly described experiences of anomalous consciousness states and close encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena — combining technology entrepreneurship with advocacy for taking consciousness and UAP phenomena seriously.
American woman who had a near-death experience after being struck by lightning in 1988 — the experience transformed her psychologically and resulted in what she reported as precognitive dreams — and who co-authored Changed in a Flash with Jeffrey Kripal describing her experience and its implications.
Bruce Greyson's 2023 follow-up to After — exploring the religious and spiritual dimensions of near-death experiences — examining how NDEs challenge conventional religious frameworks while providing experiential evidence for spiritual realities.
American science writer and independent researcher who wrote Time Loops (2018) — arguing that precognition is real and that the mechanism involves information traveling backwards in time — a scientifically literate account of anomalous cognition.
German physicist and consciousness researcher at the Parmenides Foundation who has developed formal frameworks for understanding mind-matter relations and synchronicity — particularly the Atmanspacher-Römer framework connecting Pauli-Jung synchronicity to quantum non-locality.
American scholar of religion at Rice University who writes on paranormal phenomena, consciousness, and the history of alternative spirituality in America — The Superhumanities, Authors of the Impossible, Mutants and Mystics, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion — advocating for the academic study of anomalous experiences.
Retired CIA officer who served for 25 years and who co-founded To the Stars Academy with Tom DeLonge and Lou Elizondo — and who has publicly discussed his own anomalous experiences and advocated for serious government investigation of UAP phenomena.
Retired US Army colonel who ran non-lethal weapons research and was a key figure in government investigation of anomalous phenomena — his connections to remote viewing, UAP research, and consciousness studies making him an important bridge between the military-intelligence world and the consciousness research community.
Harvard professor of psychiatry who investigated alien abduction experiences and concluded — controversially for his academic career — that the abductees were not mentally ill and that their experiences pointed to something real beyond ordinary psychology.
American psychologist who wrote The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind — arguing that until approximately 1000 BC, human beings did not have the introspective consciousness we now experience but instead heard the voices of gods as auditory hallucinations from the right hemisphere — and that modern consciousness emerged from the breakdown of this bicameral mind.
American publisher and author who founded Science to Sage magazine — exploring the intersection of science, consciousness, and sacred geometry — and who has worked to bridge alternative science and mainstream research.
American philosopher who developed integral theory — a comprehensive meta-theory synthesizing psychology, spirituality, evolutionary biology, sociology, and postmodern theory through the AQAL framework (All Quadrants All Levels) — writing Spectrum of Consciousness, Sex Ecology Spirituality, A Brief History of Everything, and more than two dozen other books.
Robert Waggoner's 2009 account of his lucid dreaming practice — arguing that lucid dreaming allows direct experiential access to unconscious material and that the dream environment has its own intelligence beyond the dreamer's conscious direction.
French novelist who wrote In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) — the longest novel in world literature — a seven-volume meditation on memory, time, social class, and artistic vocation centered on the narrator's effort to recover the past through involuntary memory.
American cultural critic and historian who wrote The Reenchantment of the World, Coming to Our Senses, The Twilight of American Culture, and Why America Failed — arguing that American culture represents a uniquely hollow form of civilization built entirely on hustling, materialism, and the absence of inner life.
Hegel's 1807 philosophical masterwork tracing the development of consciousness from immediate sense-certainty through self-consciousness, reason, spirit, religion, and absolute knowing — written in Jena while Napoleon fought outside the city.
German-American psychologist who was Timothy Leary's colleague at Harvard — co-writing The Psychedelic Experience with Leary and Alpert — and who went on to explore consciousness transformation, shamanism, and ecological spirituality, founding the Green Earth Foundation.
American philosopher and physician who coined the term 'near-death experience' in Life After Life (1975) — the book that launched modern NDE research — and who later wrote Reunions on shared death experiences and ADC (After Death Communication).
American psychologist who was Timothy Leary's colleague at Harvard, where he was dismissed for psychedelic research — then traveled to India, met Neem Karoli Baba, became Ram Dass — and whose Be Here Now (1971) and subsequent teaching made him one of the most influential spiritual teachers in America.
American lucid dreaming researcher and author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self — arguing that lucid dreams provide access to the deeper unconscious through direct experiential investigation — and co-editor of the Lucid Dreaming Experience journal.
American UAP researcher and podcaster (Bledsoe Said So) who is the son of Chris Bledsoe — an experiencer with a long history of UFO encounters in North Carolina — and who has continued his father's advocacy for taking contact experiences seriously.
American consciousness researcher who studied remote viewing at the Monroe Institute and wrote Opening Minds — exploring the relationship between resonance, consciousness, and anomalous phenomena — and who has researched crop circle phenomena.
American paranormal researcher who developed the concept of 'co-existing time lines' and 'time slips' — arguing that consciousness can access different time streams — and who has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and other alternative media platforms.
Henry James's 1903 novel following Lambert Strether — sent to Paris to bring back his patron's son — whose experience of Paris transforms his understanding of what it means to live fully, concluding with his famous injunction: 'Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.'
Aldous Huxley's 1954 account of his mescaline experience — arguing that psychedelics work by reducing the brain's filtering function, allowing more of reality (which Huxley associated with Bergson's Mind at Large) to enter consciousness — the founding text of the psychedelic intellectual movement.
Erich Neumann's 1949 Jungian masterwork — proposing that the development of human consciousness (from participation mystique through ego-consciousness to self) mirrors the development of world mythology — the most ambitious extension of Jungian archetypal theory.
A book exploring the relationship between modern physics and mystical experience — arguing that quantum mechanics, non-locality, and the measurement problem open conceptual space for understanding mystical claims about consciousness and non-ordinary reality.
Anthology edited by Titus Rivas, Anny Dirven, and Rudolf Smit — compiling over 100 veridical near-death experience cases where persons clinically dead accurately perceived events they could not have observed through normal sensory means — the most comprehensive case-based argument for consciousness's independence from the brain.
A book examining UFO phenomena through the lens of religious studies and consciousness research — arguing that UFO experiences share structural features with mystical and near-death experiences and may be evidence for a non-physical dimension of reality rather than extraterrestrial visitors.
Jeff Kripal's 2022 manifesto arguing that the humanities need to take seriously the anomalous experiences that have always been their primary subject — and that doing so requires expanding the humanities into what Kripal calls the 'superhumanities' where consciousness, paranormal experience, and academic rigor converge.
Indian religious and philosophical tradition founded by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha — c. 5th century BCE) — centered on the Four Noble Truths (suffering, its cause in craving, its cessation, the path) and the Eightfold Path — the third-largest world religion and the most psychologically sophisticated of the major traditions.
Philip Goff is a British philosopher at Durham University specializing in philosophy of mind, consciousness, and panpsychism. He is the leading contemporary defender of panpsychism — the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world — and has written several accessible books making the case for it.
Dr. Jack Symes is a British philosopher associated with Durham University and founder/host of The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast, one of the leading academic philosophy podcasts. He specializes in philosophy of mind, consciousness, and the hard problem, and authored Defeating the Evil God Challenge.
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast, hosted by Dr. Jack Symes, is one of the leading academic philosophy podcasts, covering the history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, consciousness, ethics, and metaphysics in an accessible yet rigorous format. It features interviews with prominent philosophers and episodic deep-dives into philosophical topics.
Philosophical position — holding that consciousness, experience, or proto-consciousness is a fundamental feature of all reality, not something that emerges solely in biological organisms — currently experiencing a major revival in analytic philosophy of mind as an alternative to physicalism and dualism.