Manifesto Authors

Mario Beauregard
PhD; Neuroscientist, University of Arizona; Author of The Spiritual Brain & Brain Wars
Materialism’s truncated understanding of what it means to be human often prevents us from seeing what is staring us in the face.

Larry Dossey
MD; Executive Editor, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, former Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital, author of 13 books and hundreds of articles.
A consciousness that is nonlocal with respect to space is infinite and omnipresent. A consciousness that is nonlocal with respect to time is eternal and immortal.

Lisa Jane Miller
PhD; Professor, Columbia University; Director, Spirituality & Mind Body Institute; Author of The Awakened Brain
I know childhood spirituality to be a powerful truth that is incontrovertible yet strangely absent from our mainstream culture.

Alexander Moreira-Almeida
MD, PhD; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Federal University of Juiz de Fora; Founder, Center in Spirituality and Health, NUPES
What we ask is for a science that's really committed to the scientific spirit of openness but at the same time very rigorous.

Marilyn Schlitz
PhD; Professor of Transpersonal Psychology, President of Academic Faculty, Sofia University; CEO/President Emeritus, Senior Fellow, Institute of Noetic Sciences; author of Death Makes Life Possible
The view of reality that is emerging in the twenty-first century is dynamic, inclusive, and in some ways beyond words.

Gary Schwartz
PhD; Professor of Psychology; Director, Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, University of Arizona; author of The Afterlife Experiments
Post-materialist theory will be an expanded vision for which the materialist model becomes a more limited or special case of the bigger theory.

Rupert Sheldrake
PhD; Biologist and Author of A New Science of Life & The Science Delusion
It is not anti-scientific to question established beliefs, but central to science itself. At the creative heart of science is a spirit of open-minded inquiry.

Charles T. Tart
PhD; Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of California & Core Faculty, Sofia University
There's much to be said for being open and flexible about examining our own beliefs, any beliefs, testing them rather than letting them become rigid.
Thinkers of the Month

Allan Leslie Combs
PhD; Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies; Director, The Center for Consciousness Studies; President, Society for Consciousness Studies
Conscious experience is like a dance in which we glide and then pause, glide and then pause. If we stop to reflect on our own awareness we capture only the moment of the pause.

Daryl Bem
PhD; Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Cornell University
The presentiment studies provide evidence that our physiology can anticipate unpredictable erotic or negative stimuli before they occur.

Brian Josephson
PhD; Professor Emeritus of Physics, Cambridge University, 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics
The idea that water has a memory can be refuted by any one of several easily understood, invalid, arguments.

Pim van Lommel
MD; Retired Cardiologist, Rijnstate Hospital, the Netherlands; bestselling author of Consciousness Beyond Life
There appears to be an inverse relationship between the clarity of consciousness and the loss of brain function.

J. Kim Penberthy
PhD, ABPP; Chester F. Carlson Professor of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia; Member of the Division of Perceptual Studies, UVA
Acknowledging our own lived reality, that our consciousness and associated abilities are not mere manifestations of our body’s efforts, is important in liberating our true extraordinary potential.

Marjorie Woollacott
PhD; Professor Emeritus of Human Physiology at the University of Oregon; Research Director for the International Association of Near Death Studies; President of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences.
I have come to think that the mind, while being influenced by the brain, is much more than a function of it.

Harald Walach
Dr, DrPhil; Professor, Poznan Medical University; Visiting Professor, Witten/Herdecke University; Founding Director, Change Health Science Institute, Berlin
Acknowledging that consciousness cannot be reduced to brain activity is in fact the most important element and the single most decisive step towards a post-materialist science and its according methodology.

Marilyn Monk
Professor Emeritus of Molecular Embryology, University College London; Honorary Professor, University of Melbourne; Formerly Adjunct Professor, Monash University, Australia
I have observed in my research, and in my love for all creatures on this earth, that all life is aware and responsive to surroundings.

Kathleen Noble
PhD; Professor of Consciousness, University of Washington, Bothell (UWB); licensed clinical and counseling psychologist
By the end of each year’s course students reported feeling increased optimism, hope, and a desire to learn more, and a corresponding decrease in feelings of depression, anxiety, and nihilism.