Mind Before Matter: Vision of a New Science of Consciousness

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 Containing the last unpublished writing of Pulitzer prize-winning author and scholar, the late John Mack, this anthology of essays from significant figures in the world of science and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 realit—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.

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.