Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness by Imants Barušs and Julia Mossbridge

Abstract

Imants Barušs, professor of psychology at Kings University College (Western University Canada), and Julia Mossbridge, Visiting Scholar in Psychology at Northwestern University and an experimental psychologist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, have written what can be called a “post-materialist” psychology text. It alleges that consciousness is independent of the brain and that each person, potentially, is in contact with all other people and events in the past, present, and future and cannot only obtain knowledge of these events but can influence them as well. Barušs and Mossbridge see consciousness as “fundamental,” existing “prior to space and time as usually experienced.”  Their paradigm is meant to replace “materialism,” which they purport is “on its way out” (p. 20), in part because it has ignored or discounted the acquisition of information outside of the usual sensory channels (p. 29).