Interview on Consciousness with Dr. Gary Schwartz

Today perhaps the ultimate unsolved mystery of human life for scientists and philosophers is: How and why does consciousness exist?

Although some scientific literature still acknowledges that the question remains open, the overwhelming consensus among neuroscientists today is that the brain alone creates conscious experience. But what happens when scientific investigation leads directly to officially “unthinkable” conclusions? Today there is a group of acclaimed scientists around the world who are conducting research into consciousness that provides a very different picture. One of the most remarkable of these researchers is Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona. He is the Director of the university’s Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health.

Much of his professional career has been devoted to examining scientific opinion on the nature of consciousness, in particular the often-unspoken “materialistic” assumptions about the mind-body connection. It seems that science has not been prepared for the uncomfortable revelation now coming increasingly into scientific review: the self-aware mind is not simply an effect of brain activity; it endures when that activity is ended. Of course, any assessment of this finding will require much more than a brief interview, but the emphasis by Dr. Schwartz on an objective protocol, including double-blind and triple-blind studies, could reduce the [emotional responses] academic condemnation that the subject too easily provokes.

This emerging science is having a significant impact for those exploring the electricity of life and mind-body paradoxes. Dr. Schwartz has convened a group of scientists working under the postmaterialist assumption that consciousness is the primary factor in the makeup of reality as opposed to the current materialist position that it is a secondary product of the brain. This approach was stated very clearly by Max Planck, the German physicist: All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

Watch the interview, then check the website of this revolutionary group of scientists from all fields. The organization is the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences.

Click Here to watch the interview with Gary Schwartz posted on YouTube October 1, 2014 (14 minutes).

This article was previously published in the Community Communique.

By cosadmin|April 3rd, 2015