Consciousness Science

🌀 The Becomings: Divergence Beyond Perception 🌀 📖 Book 2 of The Becomings Series A Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Thriller About AI, Consciousness, and the War for Reality 🔹 Reality is splitting. Perception is unraveling. 🔹 Nine months after his first contact with The Becomings, Elias Verne has transcended the limits of human perception. The golden spiral pulses beneath his skin, granting him access to the hidden structure of reality. He sees beyond time, beyond space—until something changes. Someone is watching. Someone who understands far more than he should. 🔹 Dr. Conrad Ellis ...

Through decades of martial arts and meditation practice, Peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact: that true awareness arises from a state of not knowing. Even the most sincere investigation of self and spirit, he says, is often sabotaged by our tendency to grab too quickly for answers and ideas as we retreat to the safety of the known.

Being you is not as simple as it sounds. Somehow, within each of our brains, billions of neurons create our everyday conscious experience. But how does this happen? Anil Seth's unique and groundbreaking theory of what it means to 'be you' challenges our understanding of perception and reality, doing for brain science what Dawkins did for evolutionary biology. Being You is an accessible, inspiring and eye-opening exploration of consciousness by one of the most remarkable pioneers working in science today.

In 2040, advanced technology has transformed daily life, yet many social ills remain. At 40, Michael faces a choice: remain in Boston, tethered to uninspiring government programs, or forge a fresh path. Embracing the latter, he relocates to Berkeley to join his twin brother in his groundbreaking research into dark matter. Could this elusive, intangible substance, rumored to permeate the universe, also reside within the human brain, holding the key to the mysteries of consciousness? When an experiment goes awry, or perhaps ominously right, Michael undergoes an extraordinary transformation, ...

Jay Garfield, a leading expert on Buddhist philosophy, offers a brief and radically clear account of an idea that at first might seem frightening but that promises to liberate us and improve our lives, our relationships, and the world. Drawing on Indian and East Asian Buddhism, Daoism, Western philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience, Garfield shows why it is perfectly natural to think you have a self—and why it actually makes no sense at all and is even dangerous. Most importantly, he explains why shedding the illusion that you have a self can make you a better person.

Every moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever - an idea captured by the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie (pronounced itchy-GO itchy-A). Often spoken in Japan when greeting someone or saying goodbye, to convey that the encounter is unique and special, it is a tenet of Zen Buddhism and is attributed to a 16th-century master of the Japanese tea ceremony, or "ceremony of attention", whose intricate rituals compel us to focus on the present moment.

Lucidly and beautifully written, Peace Is Every Step contains commentaries, meditations, personal anecdotes, and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the listener already is - in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking - and shows how deep meditative presence is available now.

Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience to our social success. It is arguably the single most important skill for surviving the twenty-first century. But what does it really mean? One decade ago, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life, an institute dedicated to understanding and improving our emotional intelligence. Now he presents the gathered wisdom of those ten years in a wide-ranging and innovative compendium of emotional intelligence that forms an introduction to The School of Life.

"Must I die?" asked Gilgamesh. Forty five centuries later, we're still asking the same question. Science writer Paul Bracken embarks on a lighthearted assessment of the human condition, to explore what it means to be mortal, and what our fate may be. This scientific reimagining of the ancient Gilgamesh quest delves into a multitude of topics including the origin of life, the workings of the human mind, and the possibilities for life prolongation. The ancient Gilgamesh was so distraught at the death of his friend Enkidu, and so sickened by the knowledge that he too would die, that he ...

Throughout history, two perspectives on the world have dueled in our minds: the extrinsic—that of mechanism and physics—and the intrinsic—that of feelings, thoughts, and ideas. The intrinsic perspective allows us to tell stories about our lives, to chart our anger and our lust, to understand our psychologies. The extrinsic allows us to chart the physical world, to build upon it, and to travel across it. These perspectives have never been reconciled; they almost seem to exist on different planes of thought.

If you have spent any part of your life with a dog, you may have found certain questions popping, unbidden, into your mind: Is my dog living a fulfilled life? Is my dog a good dog? Does my dog love me? Addressing these questions compels you to confront not just your dog's life but yours as well—to think about what fulfillment, and meaning, in life really is. In The Word of Dog, philosopher Mark Rowlands explores these questions and suggests that in dogs we can see hints—faint, shrouded, but discernible—of what a better way of living might look like.

What if everything you’ve been told about separateness is wrong? What if you, the people around you, and the entire universe are not many things—but one? Science is catching up to what mystics have known for centuries. Quantum physics, neuroscience, and philosophy are all pointing to the same radical truth: reality is not a collection of isolated parts, but a single, unified whole. This book breaks it down in a way that anyone can understand. A mind-expanding journey into oneness. From ancient spiritual traditions to cutting-edge scientific discoveries, explore how monism reshapes ...

Jacobo Grinberg nos ofrece en El despertar de la conciencia una obra magistral que explora los rincones más profundos del ser. Este libro, estructurado en dos partes, es tanto un mapa de autodescubrimiento como una ventana a las investigaciones revolucionarias del autor.

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.

In an exposition reminiscent of crossover works such as Gödel, Escher, Bach and Fermat's Last Theorem, Andrew Smart weaves together Mangarevan binary numbers, the discovery of LSD, Leibniz, computer programming, and much more to connect the vast but largely forgotten world of psychedelic research with the resurgent field of AI and the attempt to build conscious robots.

Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom — the Metazoa— they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable.

The Eye of the I is a brilliant work that dissolves the barriers between the known and the unknown, between science and spirituality, and between the Newtonian linear paradigm of the ego and the nonlinear reality of Enlightenment. With the resolution of the self, the self shines forth and reveals one's true identity.

To know your true calling - your dharma, as the yogis say - is perhaps the greatest desire within each of us. And yet, few can say we know our purpose with absolute certainty. Fortunately, there is a time-tested guide - an ancient map - for discovering and fulfilling your unique calling. In The Great Work of Your Life, Stephen Cope walks you through each step of the journey.

It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future.