The Neuroscience of Suffering and Its End
Fourteen years ago Gary Weber’s thoughts disappeared, and all his suffering vanished with them. Was it the disappearance of his thoughts that saved him, or is something else going on?
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Articles
Whale Rising
This piece on whale consciousness and animal personhood won a Gold and a Silver medal at the 2012 Canadian National Magazine Awards. Whales are people too; the science proves it. Are humans ready to see them as equals?
Animal Empathy – There’s an App for That!
Communications technology is often accused of dissociating us from the natural world. A little thought-experiment that explores how the next generation of “augmented reality” technologies might close this gap, and help us hear like an elephant and think like a squirrel.
Here Come the Animals
Scientists and philosophers have long erected an insurmountable barrier between humans and animals. This seems to be changing. The human imagination is moving outward. The animals are coming. Hide the nuts!
Environmentalism and the Mind
What kind of mind do we need to address climate change and environmental degradation? A mountain eco-laboratory in northern New Mexico looks at four possible answers: a social mind, a creative mind, a receptive mind and an equanimous mind.
Among the Nonduals
Proponents of nonduality tell us that we take a leap of faith and actually live our lives from the truth of direct experience, eventually the age old barrier between inside and out will erode. A report from the 2013 Science and Nonduality conference in Holland.
Enlightenment: Is Science Ready to Take it Seriously?
Western psychology is still outgrowing a reactive skepticism towards the subjective anecdote that it inherited from behaviorism. Fortunately, this is changing. These days, there is a growing appreciation among investigators that if you want to understand consciousness – as opposed to just brain activity – you have to start taking first-person reports seriously. This will soon include reports of human “enlightenment.”
Making Art in Dream Space
The Dream Director is not unlike a set of DJ turntables, only the medium it remixes is the mind – the proto medium. As the DJ, the user can select from an infinite number of effects. The weirder the combination, the stranger the conjured world… come remix the dreaming mind.
The Laws of Dreaming
What might science look like in another reality? In lucid dreaming, an investigator can form a hypothesis in waking, fall asleep, become lucid, and then – in rainbow lab coat and marvellous wind-swept Vidal Sassoon hairdo – test her hypothesis as the dream surges around her.
The Tourists of Consciousness
This piece about mind, nature, and the fashionable jungle brew ayahuasca won Gold for best personal journalism at the 2011 Canadian National Magazine Awards. What can psychedelics tell us about reality? Less and more than you might think. Includes an update at end, because, you know, experience keeps changing.