CONSCIOUSNESS UNBOUND: LIBERATING MIND FROM THE TYRANNY OF MATERIALISM

Building on the groundbreaking research of Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism, Edward Kelly and Paul Marshall gather a cohort of leading scholars to consider the significance of extraordinary experiences for our understanding of reality. Currently emerging as a middle ground between warring fundamentalisms of religion andscience, an expanded science-based understanding of nature finally accommodates empirical realities of spiritual sorts while also rejecting rationally untenable overbeliefs.

The vision sketched here provides an antidote to the prevailing postmodern disenchantment of the world and demeaning of human possibilities. It not only more accurately and fully reflects our human condition but engenders hope and encourages ego-surpassing forms of human flourishing. It offers reasons for us to believe that freedom is real, that our human choices matter, and that we have barely scratched the surface of our human potentials. It also addresses the urgent need for a greater sense of worldwide community and interdependence - a sustainable ethos - by demonstrating that under the surface we and the world are much more extensively interconnected than previously recognized.

Edward F. Kelly is a research professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, with interests in psychical research and functional neuroimaging. He is lead author of three previous books: Computer Recognition of English Word Senses; Altered States of Consciousness and Psi: An Historical Survey and Research Prospectus; and Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century.

Paul Marshall is an independent researcher with interests in mysticism, philosophy and psychology of religion, science-religion relations, and consciousness studies. He is author of three previous books, The Living Mirror: Images of Reality in Science and Mysticism; Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations; and The Shape of the Soul: What Mystical Experience Tells Us about Ourselves and Reality.