Consciousness: Spirit, Mind Or Brain? - A Book List

[Black Flag]

Hey guys,

This evening, I attended a lecture by Pete Hulme OBE this evening, a former consultant psychologist and head lecturer at my university. The talk was titled Consciousness: Spirit, Mind or Brain? It was incredibly interesting and inspiring, mentioning things from philosophy to LSD. He left a reading list as a handout that I thought might be interesting/useful to some people.. so here you go!

1. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary: The Spiritual Brain - a Neuroscience's Case for the Existence of the Soul. A rigorous examination of the work done up to that point in the field of parapsychology.
2. Stephen E. Braude: Immortal Remains - the evidence for life after death. An in-depth consideration of a small number of the strongest cases in favour of medium-ship and reincarnation, testing them against such alternative explanations as dissociated or psi. 
3. Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick: Past Lines - an investigation into reincarnation memories. One of the more readily accessible treatments of this issue, again considering other explanations as well as reincarnation. 
4. David Fontana: Is There an Afterlife? - a comprehensive overview of the evidence. One of the rare books, written by a practicing psychologist, that is not dismissing the evidence out of hand.
5. H. J, Irwin: An Introduction to Parapsychology. A basic introduction.
6. Edward F. and Emily Williams Kelly: Irreducible Mind - toward a technology for the 21st Century. A comprehensive attempt by two academic editors to gather together a detailed overview of the evidence for mind-brain independence.
7. David C. Lamberth: William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. A fairly demanding exploration of Jame's approach. 
8. Pim van Lommel: Consciousness Beyond Life - the science of the near death experience. A presentation of one of the few prospective studies done in this area to date. 
9. Alexander Moreira-Almedia and Franklin Sanrana Santos: Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship. A bit of a curate's egg but there are some excellent chapters triggered by the proceedings at a symposium in Brazil. 
10. Dean Radin: The Conscious Universe - the scientific truth of psychic phenomena. It deals in depth with the supportive research that had been undertaken until that point on the vexed issue of psi. t has been criticized for failing to take hoaxes into account and for misinterpreting the file-drawer effect. Worth a look none the less. 
11. Jeffery M. Schwartz: The Mind and the Brain - Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. This book principally addresses the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and concludes: "The clinical and physiological results achieved with OCD support the notion that the conscious and willful mind cannot be explained solely and completely by matter, by the material substance of the brain." 
12. Evan Thompson: Waking, Dreaming, Being. Just to show that I don't only read books that confirm my biases, this one is worth a look. Thompson perhaps comes closer than most to the ideal of complete agnosticism in his exploration of consciousness. I don't think he quite manages to shake off a bias towards a skepticism that reads more like dismissal sometimes.

So yeah, hope you enjoy  

It's also worth noting that he considers himself of the Baha'i faith.

Good vibes to you all.