I’m trying to organize my thoughts about “the phenomenon” enough to have more cogent discussions with normies beyond, “I know this sounds crazy and I don’t have proof but this is what I believe” because it’s an invitation to just dismiss me as…crazy. Which I assume most do. It doesn’t help that I’m not a convincing speaker.
The evidence is thousands of peoples’ profound experiences with high strangeness, of course. But no one wants to hear about that, because they could be liars or “crazy”. In fact, my own interest in the subject is likely due to my willingness to see beyond these dismissals.
Scientific proof of UFOs, cryptids, ghosts, psychic abilities, and past lives is not available yet, obviously. If it was these things wouldn’t merely exist on the fringe of human knowledge. But to me, so much of the phenomenon, even if it is not all the same thing, comes down to consciousness. Is it merely an artifact of the brain that exists only within the skull? Or is it fundamental to material reality itself?
I used to think the best proof was in quantum physics. The double slit experiment is a good example. Google it if you’re not familiar, but very briefly quantum particles behave differently when they are observed vs when they are not. However I have since read a skeptical argument that the act of observing these particles necessarily involves physical interference. The details are lost on me because I’m not a scientist.
Is there a better example from any scientific study that shows human observation (consciousness) as a clear influence or force upon the physical world?
Failing that, how do you talk to people about this stuff, and help them be open to it, outside of direct experience? Not skeptics necessarily, who have their own bias and agenda, but the average person who accepts consensus, material reality and a rationalist point of view?
The simple fact that science has never found a way to detect consciousness. The only way we can tell if someone is experiencing consciousness is to ask them.
We can detect heartbeats, neural activity, all sorts of chemical reactions occurring, sensory information being sent to the brain, but we can never detect any actual consciousness of these things.
Even though our consciousness is the most obvious thing in the world and is literally at the center of our world, even the only way we know we or the world exists, it's a total mystery to any scientific effort to detect it.
Which means it really has to be considered a non-physical phenomena. How could the physical brain produce a non-physical thing like consciousness?
In a certain sense, it's not so much that consciousness is "outside" the brain, as that the brain is "inside" of our consciousness. We only know we have a brain because our consciousness tells us about its experience of brains.
The brain pumps consciousness the way the heart pumps blood, but the heart doesn't create blood, it simply pushes it through our system. Similarly, the brain doesn't create consciousness, but consciousness merely flows through the brain and allows consciousness to have a physical experience.
Well, it's a huge assumption, but it's not like anyone can definitively say otherwise.
Though, given the comparison, it'd be pretty ironic if in some odd future we found that consciousness, like blood, was also made in the bones.
That would be fun to find out. But if it is, why isn't it noticeable even now? We have amazing technology that should be able to find it, wherever it is or comes from, if it comes from some physical process and is itself a physical "thing". But it's more and more clear that it is neither.
It should be clear that we're looking for it in the wrong direction. We're looking for it outwardly, rather than inwardly where we actually experience consciousness.
I would add that it's really not a huge assumption I'm making. It's just common sense and based on the actual experience of consciousness. Right here and now, sitting at my computer, I see and feel and experience my consciousness extending itself into this physical body, experiencing the tapping of these keys by my fingers, making use of a brain to process signals and send new ones to my fingers, experiencing the visuals of my monitor in literally the same manner, as some sort of screen inside my consciousness observing body, mind, thoughts, and the physical world through my eyes and ears and senses.
This is far from any kind of wild conjecture. It's literally how every moment of my physical and mental and emotional life is experienced. It's all experienced in my consciousness, meditated by the body and brain that serve as the "pump" of sensory data to this self-same consciousness.
I'm not going to comment on the rest, but you have to understand that "common sense" is a terrible thing.
It's so easy to trust because it's what your mind wants to think, but time and time again in the past it's been proven wrong.
What we call "common sense" today is completely different than what someone would have called "common sense" in, say, the 1890's.
Strange that you would pick that one phrase out as some sort of rebuttal of all that I said, without any kind of argument to support your position. When mine is based on actual common experience by literally everyone.
Well, if you're going to be like that, sure.
Why should we be able to find it?
What is it that we're even supposed to look for?
If it's an emergent property, as materialism would suggest, then it arises from complexity in the combined behavior of billions and trillions of little interactions, most of which are undetectable by modern standards, how in the world would you even start?
Okay, and?
All of that is sensory input that can be tracked.
All of that goes to the brain in a detectable way, the feeling in your fingers stops if you cut the right nerve at the right spot.
Do nerves pump consciousness, then?
Well of course you experience everything in your consciousness, that's what we call the experience of experiencing things.
That doesn't answer anything about consciousness but that it exists and you have it.
Do you actually know that?
You've only ever experienced your own consciousness, not anyone else's.
Why should we be able to find it?
If it's a physical phenomena, we should clearly be able to physically find it. If it isn't, we'll never find it by looking at physical phenomena.
What is it that we're even supposed to look for?
Consciousness, obviously. But what is consciousness? That's the underlying question. Is it at all physical? Apparently not, or we'd be able to find it, since it's literally the very thing we use to recognize everything.
If it's an emergent property, as materialism would suggest, then it arises from complexity in the combined behavior of billions and trillions of little interactions, most of which are undetectable by modern standards, how in the world would you even start?
I hear this argument a lot, and it betrays an ignorance of what an emergent phenomena is. You actually have to be able to detect the emergent phenomena to even call it that. If you can't detect it, what are you even talking about?
As an example, hurricanes are an emergent phenomena. We can study how they work, how a combination of wind and clouds and water and vapor and dust and wind shear and temperature creates a hurricane. It emerges from these things. But guess what? You can actually observe a hurricane. You can see its components functioning together.
You can't observe consciousness however. You can't detect it in any way shape or form. You can't say what it even emerges from, or if it is emerging at all.
Now, you can see how brain activity emerges from all the various factors of electromagnetism and neural activity and chemical interactions in the brain, the blood, and the entire nervous system. We don't know all of how it works, but we can see it in operation and can call all of that a complex emergent system. But nowhere in any of that do we see something we could call consciousness emerge.
To study consciousness, we have to ask people what they are experiencing. That's not science, that's subjective story-telling. But it's the only thing we have, so we do it anyway. But that's a sign that we aren't dealing with any kind of physical emergent phenomena. Consciousness is in a very different category.
Cont.
cont
All of that is sensory input that can be tracked.
All of that goes to the brain in a detectable way, the feeling in your fingers stops if you cut the right nerve at the right spot.
Yes, clearly that activity is all detectable and an emergent phenomena. But nowhere in that is there any detectable thing called consciousness. Nor is there even a testable theory about how you could detect consciousness. Other than just asking someone.
Do nerves pump consciousness, then?
Obviously I'm using the word "pump" as a metaphor, comparing it to a heart that pumps blood. The difference of course is that we can detect blood, but we can't detect consciousness. So we can't physically say how consciousness operates in relation to the brain or senses, we only know that it does, because we have conscious experiences via these things, and if they don't work, that affects our ability to sense them and experience them.
A blind person can't see because something in their eyes or nerves or brain isn't working properly. And yet they are still experiencing consciousness. So those sensory inputs aren't creating consciousness, they are simply limiting the information it receives.
But it should also be obvious that our eyes don't "see" anything. They are simply receivers of light and transmitters of electrical impulses to the brain, which processes the information. And then, somehow, our consciousness "sees" that processed information as a literal field of vision. The brain doesn't "see" anything, it just displays a visual image to our consciousness, similar in a sense to how our computers are displaying images on the monitor screen, without actually "seeing" anything.
We see it, as consciousness, not our eyes or brains.
Do you actually know that?
You've only ever experienced your own consciousness, not anyone else's.
Well that's a very interesting question, and the answer of course is yes, I do know that. As do you. As does everyone. The really interesting question then becomes, how do we know this?
Calls for speculation, but as the Max Planck quote going around says, perhaps the number of truly conscious minds in the universe really is one.
So perhaps our consciousness recognizes the consciousness of others because they aren't truly separate phenomena at all.
My view is that if you really want to understand consciousness, study your own consciousness directly, not indirectly as science tries to and fails. Contemplate this most commonplace and yet extraordinary experience we are all having of our own consciousness. It might reveal some astonishing things.
I feel like you've already denied that consciousness could be a result of physical reality, here, and instead must be a specific thing.
In your hurricane example you said that you can observe a hurricane.
But you're only observing individual patches of cloud, wind, and water, and categorizing the whole system as the emergent "hurricane."
There's nothing inherent about any specific part of a hurricane that makes it a hurricane; fast winds occur in isolation or in other storms, heavy downpours are the same, high waves can be caused by many things.
It's the behavior of a hurricane that makes it a hurricane, and it's the behavior of consciousness that you probe when you ask if someone is conscious.
It's just a system that's harder to see.
If that hypothesis is correct.
Obviously there's no way to rule out a non-material answer by material means.
I believe this is as inherently incapable as materialism, though.
You cannot study a system from within it, and you cannot be outside of your consciousness.
Yes, you can observe a hurricane. We have satellite photos of hurricanes! You don't need to analyze each particle's contribution to call it a hurricane, though I suppose you could if you like.
So what is observed as consciousness? Anything? No, it isn't observed either in whole or in part.
What is observed is bodies and brains in action. But none of that requires a consciousness to explain where those activities come from. All of that works just fine without saying that consciousness has to be invoked to explain any of it.
That's why guys like Dennett claim that consciousness doesn't exist. Because there's no scientific need for it as a causative factor. When you analyze brains and nervous systems and sensory inputs, you can account for everything seen as behavior without using consciousness as a factor in any of it.
And yet, here we are, conscious beings experiencing all of that and even feeling that we are making conscious decisions and participating in the bodily life.
The system we see is the body and brain. What we don't see is consciousness. We don't see it emerging from body or brain, we don't see it directing body or brain, and yet, to see any of this at all, we have to be conscious of it.
Consciousness is what sees everything, without being seen by anything.
So how can anyone possibly claim that it's some physical phenomena, emergent or causative or being caused by any physical process?
Now, sure, maybe we are missing something. Obviously we are.
As for studying a system while within it, we do this all the time. We study our own bodies. We study the earth while living within it. Maybe you can't get perfect results from within it, but you can do quite a lot.
What I think you mean is that consciousness isn't objective at all, but subjective, and you think subjective can't study subjective. I don't see why not. I do it all the time. I examine my own mind and thoughts and awareness, and contemplate the whole thing. It's not really hard at all. People have been doing this for thousands of years. They call it spirituality, or yoga, or Buddhism, Vedanta, mindfulness, etc. And the results of such study of oneself in consciousness can be quite remarkable. Just not "scientific" in the objective sense. But quite scientific in the empirical sense.
University of Virginia past life research. Some of it is too compelling to ignore. You can also find similar evidence around AP, NDEs, Remote viewing… Also look at IONS and Dr. Radin. Scrutiny around psychic abilities requires a higher standard of statistical significance, and they have a big db of research to pick through
there seems to be quite a bit. any suggestion on where to start?
THIS
Monroe Institute as well I believe
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Planck
Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONs), David M. Gibbs, MD (he is here on Reddit with a book about this - The Death of Materialism), Eben Alexander, MD - those are the ones who come to mind readily. There are tons more.
Tbh I don't really talk about these things with others bc they're almost all religious and every time I try it seems to frighten them.
Ultimately we all have to believe in something that can't be proven. Every second we're aware we have to believe our senses and that what we experience is all there is to reality (which is easily shown to be scientifically false, from infrared to ultrasound to the limited human perception of matter)
Donald Hoffman.
Dr. Michael Levin, Rupert Sheldrake, Jung
Roger Penrose as well.
TL;DR: Consciousness is the underlying substrate of reality, not matter. There is an abundance of evidence which supports that.
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There exists an extremely large body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence which validates that humans are innately psychic. This is simply not possible id consciousness is contained solely within our brains.
By the standards of any other science, the psi researchers made their case for telepathy. Take particle physics for example. Physicists use the standard of 5 sigma (3.5 million-to-one) to establish new particles such as the Higgs boson. The parapsychology researcher’s ganzfeld telepathy experiments exceed the significance level of 5 sig1ma by a factor of more than aI million.
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There also exists a large amount of peer-reviewed scientific evidence that supports the validity of near death experiences.
Conscious experiences continue after the brain has stopped functioning and the patient is clinically dead.
It's important that we follow the scientific evidence, and not our personal feelings.
"Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands"
Van Lommel et al., The Lancet (2001): 344 cardiac-arrest survivors; systematically compared people with vs. without NDEs and followed them 2 and 8 years later for life changes. A landmark prospective design in a top journal.
"AWARE - Awareness During Resuscitation - A Prospective Study"
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2014): Large, multi-center prospective study; documented cognitive themes during cardiac arrest, with a small subset showing “full awareness.” Includes targeted tests for veridical recall.
"Awareness During Resuscitation - II: A Multi-center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest"
Parnia et al., Resuscitation (2023): Examined consciousness and electrocortical biomarkers during CPR; reported a spectrum of experiences including NDE-like recall and measurable brain activity patterns during resuscitation.
"Measurement Foundation for NDE Research"
Greyson, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1983): Construction, reliability, and validity of the Greyson NDE Scale, the field’s most widely used, validated instrument for distinguishing NDEs from other states, crucial for rigorous, comparable results. (PDF).
Researchers like Pim van Lommel have shown that consciousness can exist independently of the brain. Near-death experiences (NDEs) provide strong support for this, as individuals report heightened awareness during times when brain activity is severely diminished. Van Lommel compares consciousness to information in electromagnetic fields, which are always present, even when the brain (like a TV) is switched off.
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Additionally, there exists scientific evidence that supports past life memories, and therefore reincarnation.
Rigorous, peer-reviewed research done at the University of Virginia has documented over 2,500 examples of children who have memories of past lives.
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We also have peer-reviewed studies which support the primacy of consciousness.
It's important that we follow the evidence no matter what, even when it leads to initially-uncomfortable conclusions. We should never lose our intellectual curiosity in life.
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this comment should be highlighted
It really shouldn't. Parnia's own studies have failed to demonstrate any ESP associated with NDEs, especially AWARE II which is freely accessible. This is despite Parnia's own bias towards defining NDEs in a christian culture context.
Reincarnation studies consist solely of cherrypicked anecdotes and Stevenson was the worst offender for this.
Basically the whole agument comes down to a god of the gaps fallacy that since consciousness is ill-defined by science it must be magic. Citing pseudoscience that can't show any causation for its claims isn't evidence for anything more than pareidolia.
Thank you! This is great
Oh, they're real all right. Not only does that other side know what's going on here, but they know what's going to be happening here at least decades ahead.
And the consciousnesses over there can allow you to interface into that energy, unbound by time, that too is present here. And yes, historical documentations were indeed real they, too, saw avatars of similar beings. I do not quite know much more of their nature, but they are definitely not only present there - but present in some way, shape, or form here too and too they know that is truth.
You will have a hard time proving Metaphysics via science. The same goes for the Metaphysics that science uses as it's default - Physicalism.
"how do you talk to people about this stuff" - by talking and arguing for Idealism and limiting claims.
It’s not that consciousness exists ‘outside’ the brain - it is more like the brain (and all matter) is made out of consciousness
I try to understand and keep it simple. We have too much info to hold in our brain. Quantum field comes in on this. We die but our spirit arrives at a new destination. I believe this and know we do not end here. I think time is our lesson because it doesn’t exist where we go next. Time teaches us. Being loved and being loved makes our meaning filled with exquisite joy and pain.
It's either matter or consciousness and as nothing can come from nothing it's not matter.
If nothing can come from nothing then all thats says is there was never nothing.
Remote viewing which military documents prove is a reality. If we can obtain information at a distance like that, that means our minds / consciousness are apart of a field.
I love these quotes without citations. Like you can be pretty sure this is talking about DoD research that was cancelled because it failed to produce results but you never know what nonsense they're talking about.
I just love when people leave comments like this. If you were interested in the topic, you could easily do some google searches or at the very least have me do it for so i can give you sources instead of leaving a comment like that.
Pseudoscience is interesting in a gazing into the asylum sort of way. ESP is not reproducible, no study has been able to demonstrate ESP in any form better than a guess. If you think I'm wrong you can try to show me the studies I missed.
Actually, you’re wrong. Many studies by the government that say otherwise. But keep talking if it makes you feel better. ❤️🩹Stargate, grill-flame, astral caper, sun-streak, not to mention all the independent studies. Literally side by side photos of what the remote viewer sketched and the actual target, in many government studies, that prove remote viewing. They may say that it wasn’t consistent enough, but the proof is there. It is and has been demonstrated many, many times, and you can literally look at it. Instead of commenting to redditers telling them they are wrong, do some actual research for a little while please.
And by "many" you mean the CIA study back when just about anything could get funding, which textually had to admit an inability to reproduce results while claiming a whopping 33% "hit" rate. But if you cared about any level of scientific rigour you'd back your nonsense up.
EDIT: the SRI remote viewing experiments were, from what I could find, critically reviewed once by the CIA.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/st36.pdf
In short, the reviewer deems the experiment a failure from a total lack of controls and multiple errors/vague "hits" confounding any possible utility. And if this doesn't make you at least somewhat critical; SG1J is Uri Geller; a magician and conman.
Your comments are nonsense. Even if it was just 33% as you claim, that is beyond coincidence. People sketching out these targets, almost exactly or very close to them, and you call that nonsense? I say that deserves more “scientific rigour” and we should be doing more studies in the public sector, because to me that seems like it is much more than coincidence. Look at the damn pictures in the documents and the statements that were made. In a lot of them they conclude it is beyond coincidence.
Re read my commented i edited for you. Keep talking. It has been demonstrated many times, and it goes beyond coincidence, even if its not consistently demonstrable. Oh yeah, and go ahead and believe whatever the government tells you. Of course, if they found something like this they would probably keep it under wraps. Say that it wasn’t enough. “Close” the program, and put it under a new name… hmmm how many times have they done that before? But i’m not even going to go there, because you don’t have to get into theories. Read the studies. They have mentioned it happened enough that it wasn’t just coincidence. READ. RESEARCH MORE. Before you keep commenting saying belittling crap to make yourself feel better.
“If i cared about any scientific rigour” grow up. I’ll hit you back with that. If you cared anything about this subject, you’d actually read a fair amount of documents related to all those programs I just mentioned before coming back here and commenting to me. I’m not going to hold your hand. I told you the program names.
Telepathy tapes
Yes! I was about to comment this myself. I’m also grappling with a lot of the same questions as OP. The Telepathy Tapes podcast and Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcast have been so helpful with explaining the theory that consciousness is fundamental. Mayim is also a neuroscientist, but her ability to explain this stuff in layman’s terms is amazing.
What makes the matter in your brain any different to the one outside your brain?
There are four cracks that materialism can’t explain (consciousness arising in the brain) that consciousness first models can explain:
Materialism can’t explain any of these. Cosmopsychism can.
There is no distinction between why and how in physics. The how is the why. The hard problem is just god of the gaps.
Measuring the particle affects the particle. Crazy I know.
Cite one, they aren't replicable and they are wrong.
If any of this were true hospitals would solely employ quacks like you. But for some reason industrialized medicine has saved millions upon millions of lives. Fucking cite your bullshit.
I cite it in my book feel free to read it.
There are more original con artists out there.
lol typical. “No evidence exists”. Shows them where the evidence is. I’m not going to look, you’re a con artist.
I’m a physician who reviews evidenced based studies for a living. I literally do it for my group. Here are just a few of the studies included in my book:
Top 10 Psi & Intention Healing Studies / Meta-Analyses 1. Moseley et al. (2002) – Sham Knee Surgery • Journal: New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) • Design: Randomized controlled trial, 180 patients with knee osteoarthritis. Real vs. sham (fake) arthroscopic surgery. • Results: No difference in pain/function at 2 years (p > 0.05 for all measures). Sham group did as well as real surgery group. • Plain English: Belief/expectation alone healed knees just as effectively as actual surgery. Odds of this happening by chance alone are extremely low given the controlled design. • Implication: Intention/belief directly influences physical healing outcomes. 2. Bengston & Krinsley (2000) + Replications (multiple, up to 2010s) • Journal: Journal of Scientific Exploration & others • Design: Mice injected with 100% fatal mammary cancer; treated with hands-on intention healing by trained healers. • Results: 88% remission rate in treated mice vs. 0% in controls (p < 0.0001 across replications). Replicated in multiple labs. • Plain English: Healing intention cured cancer in mice that should have died 100% of the time. Odds against chance are astronomical (millions to one). • Implication: Focused human intention can override biological destiny. 3. Tressoldi & Katz (2023) – Remote Viewing Meta-Analysis • Journal: Journal of Parapsychology / systematic review • Design: 37 controlled RV experiments (1974–2022). • Results: Overall effect size ~0.34 (Cohen’s d), p < 10⁻¹⁰ (extremely significant). Odds against chance: billions to one. • Plain English: People consistently described hidden targets they couldn’t see — far better than guessing. Not random luck. • Implication: Mind accesses information non-locally (beyond space/time). 4. Storm et al. (2010 & 2023 update) – Ganzfeld Telepathy Meta-Analysis • Journal: Psychological Bulletin / updated meta-analyses • Design: 30+ studies, thousands of trials (sender sends image, receiver describes it blind). • Results: Hit rate 32% vs. 25% chance (effect size 0.20, p < 10⁻¹⁰). Odds against chance: trillions to one. • Plain English: Telepathy-like communication works consistently in labs. Not coincidence. • Implication: Consciousness connects minds directly. 5. Leibovici (2001) – Retroactive Prayer • Journal: BMJ (British Medical Journal) • Design: 3,393 bloodstream infection patients (1990–1996); retroactive prayer done in 2000 (years later). • Results: Prayed-for group had shorter stays (p=0.04) and less fever (p=0.04). • Plain English: Prayer/intention improved outcomes after the fact. Time doesn’t block it. • Implication: Intention acts non-locally, even backward in time. 6. Radin et al. (2015–2016) – Double-Blind Intention on Cells • Journal: Explore / Global Consciousness Project extensions • Design: Human intention directed at living cells (e.g., cancer cells) in sealed, distant chambers. • Results: Significant growth inhibition (p < 0.001 in multiple trials). Odds against chance: thousands to one. • Plain English: People’s focused thoughts slowed cancer cell growth from miles away. • Implication: Intention affects biology non-locally. 7. AWARE-II Study (Parnia et al., ongoing updates 2023–2025) • Journal: Resuscitation / updates in various journals • Design: Cardiac arrest patients with hidden visual targets; measured awareness during flat EEG. • Results: Veridical perceptions reported (patients accurately described events while clinically dead). Ongoing replication shows above-chance results. • Plain English: People are aware during clinical death — brain is off, yet consciousness continues. • Implication: Consciousness exists independently of brain activity. 8. Hameroff & Penrose Orch-OR Updates (2024–2025) • Journal: Physics of Life Reviews & others • Key Data: Microtubules in warm brains sustain quantum coherence ~10⁻³ seconds (long enough for computation). Anesthetics disrupt these vibrations to block consciousness. • Plain English: Tiny structures in brain cells use quantum effects to produce consciousness. • Implication: Consciousness may be tied to fundamental quantum processes, not classical brain activity. 9. Keppler (2025) – ZPE as Consciousness Substrate • Journal: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience • Key Data: Brain resonates with quantum vacuum (ZPE) at 10–100 Hz frequencies. Coherence times ~10⁻³ s. • Plain English: Consciousness may arise from interaction with the infinite quantum vacuum field. • Implication: Consciousness is the field itself, not produced by the brain. 10. Optimism & Longevity Meta-Analysis (Hernandez et al., 2025) • Journal: JAMA Network Open • Key Data: 85 studies, >300,000 participants. High optimism = 11–15% longer lifespan (HR 0.85–0.89, p < 0.001), 50–70% higher odds of reaching 85+ (OR 1.5–1.7). • Plain English: People with positive beliefs live longer and healthier — independent of other factors. • Implication: Belief/intention influences physical longevity. What This Means in Common Terms (Odds Against Chance) These studies are statistically overwhelming: • p < 0.05 = less than 5% chance of random occurrence (95% confidence). • p < 0.001 = less than 1 in 1,000 chance (99.9% confidence). • p < 10⁻¹⁰ = less than 1 in 10 billion chance — basically impossible by random luck. In plain terms: These results are not flukes. The odds against them being due to chance are trillions to one in many cases. The data is consistent, peer-reviewed, and replicated — that’s why it’s so hard to dismiss.
Now go look at the studies and we’ll talk
Start meditating Experience it yourself Then realize you cannot prove it to anyone until you experience it And completely open your eyes to everything you thought and were told growing up as not being the truth.
But check out life after death by raymond moody, many lives many masters by Brian Weiss These are well known doctors who have been covering this for decades Consciousness exists after death Even if our earths bodies perish From there we experience differently before the return
You can prove this yourself by meditating But you must quiet your mind And that takes time and practice - Then meditation’s become a whole new world. You’ll begin to see with your eyes closed Move with your body at rest And can prove this to yourself -
Science can only discover evidence in the material world. There's a rapper who took salvia and recalls his trip living 5 years as a female but in reality less than a minute had actually passed. As a female he took piano lessons and the remembered the ability to play piano even though he never took piano lessons in his reality. He was stuck in another person's life for only 50 seconds but to him it was five years where he had a completely different life with family and friends and a job
Do you have the rapper's name or a link to this story? I'm curious to give it a read.
First and foremost, with things like theories with little to no proof: Your goal should not be to convince as many people as you can that something is objectively true or a fact “cuz I think it is.” Surefire way to chase people out of your life.
Second, it’s fine to have an open mind. But it’s also important to be educated in whatever topic it is you’ve based your conspiracy theory around. In this case the human brain. It’s absolutely possible that “High strangeness” occurrences are a result of the human brains powerful imagination and need to fill in information that isn’t available. This is why we as humans can make ourselves hallucinate just by overwhelming our senses.
I’m not saying any of this to say that I don’t believe in any paranormal or fringe conspiracies, but moreso to say it’s good to be more skeptical from time to time.
Arguments don't matter, because arguments never propel belief. If you can't experience a thing directly, then you're either going to "believe" it through group/tribal identity or through some assumed facade of "selfness".
The best "argument" is to directly, consciously experience your own existence at a deep level. Whatever that means to you.
Instinct over the air updates. Look up Rupert sheldrakes rat maze.
Savant syndrome
I started my substack with this goal in mind (and I often post on reddit). There is enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt. It is, indeed my view, a matter of changing an existing paradigm.
Listen to the podcast The Telepathy Tapes.
At the end of the day, it is very hard to give a definite proof that the body (and with that, the physical world) exist
Lazarus phenomenon. Cases of brain dead people returning to full awareness.
Also plants, slime mold, fungi have a type of counciousness.
Roger Penrose is a great resource for modern day experimentation into proving this point. Highly recommend reading up on his work.
Love Roger Penrose! His work with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff is so interesting.
Maybe this is good i haven't watched it yet though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CrNgbQNJ0
I just wanna say that I’m in a very similar boat! I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts and beliefs and I’ve got a coworker who thinks most of what I say is nonsense, but actually physically talking through and thinking through my beliefs out loud has really honed my personal thoughts on the phenomenon as well as my ability to discuss it without just sounding like a tinfoil hatter. I’m very interested in the discussion your post may generate!
I mentioned this in another comment, but the Telepathy Tapes and Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcasts have really, really helped me wrap my head around these theories. I’ve even gotten one of my skeptical co-workers hooked on the Telepathy Tapes.
The Telepathy Tapes are definitely what turned me onto the phenomenon. It really is a digestible introduction to get people going “hmmm, maybe science CAN’T explain away everything like I’ve been raised to believe”
The consciousness is not dependent on a brain, a body, or anything in this physical world to exist. I have first-hand experience; there was consciousness before there was ever physical matter.
Whether or not you are crazy, your best thing to say is that you believe consciousness has effects outside the brain and leave it at that. You don't have to convince people you are right. People not believing you doesn't necessarily hurt anyone and people believing you isn't necessarily helpful. Approach argumentation as a game you sometimes play, not a mission.
if i hit you in the head very hard you will lose all the consciousness memory and awareness also many diseases remove your consciousness how would you explain this ? why there is old people who cant even remember their wife kids or that they had any or who they are if its outside the brain how come the brain dmaage removes it ? how come removing part of brains removes parts of memory and knowledge our brains adapt and spreads all information into small parts so even cutting brain parts helps it to 2+2 some information or most and understand it but cause enough damage and you have no
Help them open to it; rationalist point of view? And now you're trying to find any confirmation for thing too already believe. That should sum up why people start looking at your as crazy. How are you different from religious people? Both of you believe things first and if there is something you can construe as evidence - all the better.
There's actually an overwhelming body of evidence and research.
And the fact that the government has had psychic and remote viewing operations for decades going back to the 70's through modern times, that's pretty persuasive alone.
As for HARD science, Michael Levin's laboratory research with flatworms is groundbreaking and demonstrates that intelligence is non-local to the brain.
There's also Princeton's Global Consciousness Project which uses physical random number generators all around the planet to measure major global events. Over 17+ years and 500+ world events, the statistical anomalies are 7 orders of magnitude beyond normal.
It's calculated to be over a 1 in 1 trillion chance the random number generators could statistically produce what they have been during major events.
But I still think the long list of government remote viewing programs going all the way up to modern day with DARPA's N3 program and all the declassified, confirmed, significant remote viewings that have taken place are the most persuasive pieces of direct evidence.
I made this list earlier and it seems just as relevant here so I'm going to repost it:
Project SCANATE (1972): First program, "Scanning by Coordinate." Funded by the CIA, conducted at the Stanford Research Institute.
Gondola Wish (1977): Early U.S. Army program to evaluate and counter the Soviet Union’s massive investment in psychotronics. First unit of psychic viewers.
Grill Flame (1978 to 1983): Transition of remote viewing from a lab to an operational intelligence tool. Recruited soldiers to assist in real-world missions.
Center Lane (1983 to 1985): Training more viewers and integrating into mainstream military intelligence. Monroe Institute’s Gateway techniques were used for training.
Sun Streak (1985 to 1990): Program was transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The methodology became a more rigid and scientific, process.
Stargate Project (1991 to 1995): most well-known program, encompassing all the previous efforts when they were consolidated under the DIA..
Project Phoenix (RF Research): Explored how specific frequencies (such as the 425 to 450 MHz range) could interact with the human nervous system, effectively moving the field toward the "artificial enhancement" of mental states.
Confirmed/declassified Successful Remote Viewing Events:
The Typhoon-Class Submarine (1979): Remote viewer Joseph McMoneagle was given coordinates in Russia. He described a massive, new type of submarine with two parallel hulls and 20 missile tubes. Satellite imagery later confirmed the Soviet Typhoon-class submarine, which matched his drawings perfectly.
The Downed Soviet Bomber: In 1979, a Soviet Tu-22 bomber went missing over Africa. Remote viewers provided coordinates for the wreckage in a dense jungle. A CIA team located the plane and its sensitive coding equipment before the Soviets could find it.
The Kidnapping of General James Dozier (1981): American General was kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy, remote viewers provided details about the city (Padua) and specific descriptions of the apartment building where he was being held.
The Sugar Grove Site: Viewer Pat Price was given a coordinate and proceeded to describe a top-secret NSA listening post in West Virginia. He drew detailed floor plans and described labeled file folders inside a secure room, which he should have had no way of seeing.
The Jupiter Viewing (1973): Ingo Swann performed a viewing of Jupiter before the Voyager 1 probe reached the planet. He described a "ring" around Jupiter, which was not known to exist at the time. When Voyager arrived years later, it confirmed the presence of the Jovian rings.
And under DARPA, the current frontier of this research has shifted from natural psychics to "artificially enhanced" individuals through DARPA’s N3 (Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology) program. The capabilities under this program and related ones are absolutely sci-fi and Black Mirror all in one, except it's all real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuBRdusJtLE&t=1673s
The question of whether consciousness exists “outside the brain” is slightly misframed, imo. The deeper issue is what must be true for anything to exist at all. To start, absolute nothingness is not an empty space but a complete lack of distinction. For reality to exist, there must be differences, a “this rather than that”. This is the most basic condition of being, and it is exactly what science studies: distinctions, relations, information, and structure.
But a difference that makes no difference to anything is indistinguishable from nothing. For a distinction to count as real, it must in some minimal sense be present within the system of relations that constitutes reality. This does not require a human observer, it simply means that reality is not merely structured, but self-registering at the most basic level. That minimal presence is consciousness in its weakest form. Not thought or self-awareness, but the fact that something is there rather than undifferentiated symmetry.
From this perspective, consciousness is not something produced by brains or acting as a separate force on matter. Brains are high-density structures that integrate, model and localize experience, but they do not conjure experience from nothing. What increases across evolution is not the existence of consciousness, but its depth and coherence. If one accepts that reality is fundamentally relational and structured, then treating consciousness as the intrinsic, interior aspect of that structure is not mystical but logically coherent, and avoids the unexplained leap required by emergence or dualism.
Philosophically, this conclusion follows from the logic of differentiation itself, while scientifically it is already implicitly suggested wherever reality is described in terms of symmetry-breaking, information, and relational structure rather than inert substance.
Check out www.essentiafoundation.org
I second that!
When you observe something, you do have the power to manifest reality by utilising past knowledge within your bio capacity then manifesting by repeatedly thinking about what and how you want to create then using your knowledge to produce the desired outcome with your biological capacity.
Naturally you'll be guided to various methods through life because you've rewired your brain to notice them through regular thoughts or manifestations on the subject.
Quantum probability is just outcome scales entangled with connecting variables and sure, it could be aliens but the probable chance of it being something else is probably much higher. Being smart enough to recognise the high probable variables and their connections isn't magic, its memory capacity and critical thinking using repeatable, man made measurement systems agreed upon by many.
There seems to be something about the "now" that is the operation time of consciousness across the universe and gravity is the method to manipulate that time and the now.
If a higher entity was watching our now, wouldn't that now be the same as the higher entities?
If a time traveler can experience past, present and future, the moment it decides where to look, it becomes its now observing that current states now which would make our previous now think about the state of the travelers now in its own now but it's still the now.
The universe is potentially an endless fractal Mobius strip waiting to be measured and manipulated by higher levels of consciousness.
The future is a manifestation of our consciousness only as much as its development allows learning from the past.
I still cant answer the existence of consciousness outside the brain but the brain does have to pass on information through evolution to get to a point to even understand how consciousness even works.
I just read a dan brown novel about this.
I don't really have anything to add to this conversation...I have to admit, I didn't even realize it was a thing. I thought it was a concept made up for the book.
I'm going to look into it now because I thought it was an interesting concept.
I recently started this book and immediately thought of it as I read OPs post. I wonder if it is more than coincidence that this topic is coming up right now.
What book?
The secret of secrets.
It was a typical dan brown. I liked it.
Sweet I’ll check it out, I haven’t read a Dan Brown book since the da Vinci code.
I just finished The Secret of Secrets a few days ago! It is indeed an excellent book and very thought provoking! I highly recommend!
It is not worth debating. Consciousness as primary is self-evident, if a person can’t recognize this by honest self reflection upon their own thoughts and perceptions, it simply means they are too conditioned by society.
the main problem of proving that consciousness is located outside the brain is that brain outside the brain looses all its logical and verbal tools. like fish outside the river looses all the ways to swim
Loses
Bruce Greyson, Jeffrey Long, Paul Perry, Penny Sartori, Susan Blackmore, Ian Stevenson, IANDS conferences… There’s so much evidence and the case can be argued from many angles. You’ve got a lot to read. It’ll be fun and entlightening!
Pineal gland producing dmt when you’re born and when you die. Spirit molecule. Brain and spirit working together but are separate.
The way I see it is consciousness is the informational lattice that the physical universe emerges from. As you place boundary conditions and limit the ways in which the information can express you will begin to compress that information and it will become structurally legible (think geometry). As that information is limited in more ways you get greater and greater compression until a physical phenomenon emerges (think quantum experiments such as the casimir plates). Eventually you get matter as matter is nothing more than a type of standing wave.
Now if I was to describe consciousness I would say that there are two perspectives one can experience it from and this can be explained by time = 1/frequency. What this equivalency means is you can experience things from the time domain or the frequency domain. Your day to day waking consciousness functions from the time domain and views reality as if it is a set of events happening in space as a sequence of events.
Alternatively consciousness can be experienced from the frequency domain where one could see the waves directly as they are in the informational lattice that is the universe. When seeing from the frequency domain time is no longer part of the way your experience because you would no longer see things as sets of events happening in time. Rather you would see the entire wave and will know exactly how things will transpire.
This gets a bit tricky to explain what it would be like as human but the best example I can give to the average person is when they have an intuition. Another example might be if you are playing with a hot wheels track and watching the car move along. Once you step back and see the shapes as it moves through space you can automatically know the path the car must take through space and time. The time domains would be like an ant riding in the car and an intuition is like an ant recognizing that they have been on the loop before and inferring the loops shape in space/time.