I watched this video of a lecture by Ingo Swann. Interesting despite the limited attention span I seem to have these days. I remember reading about Swann and ‘remote viewing’ many years ago; he is one of the world’s most famous psychics. Here he reminds us that science cannot tell us how consciousness arises and cites Roger Penrose.

Penrose says that consciousness is not (only) ‘computational’ but arises from the physics of the world. I don’t understand what that means but what Penrose is saying is that science does not understand consciousness because it is looking in the wrong place; that it is a problem for physicists not biologists and computer scientists. Swann is saying science cannot understand consciousness in general and psychic phenomena in particular because they are outside the physical realm that science deals with. Mind is ‘experiential’ and is intuitively understood. Swann points us to Patanjali’s sutras and makes the point that Sanskrit is a more appropriate language in which to discuss mind because it is more experiential while English is more material. The Patanjali connection is really interesting and I need to reread the sutras.

Although Swann says that science or the scientific method cannot comprehend the mind so mind science cannot be approached by science alone he references research which he sees as indicative of psychic phenomena and predicts that defence agencies will be looking into telepathy as they looked into remote viewing in the 1970’s.