Duane Elgin

Dear Dialogue Friends, I will be away from my office for the next ten days and without internet access. I look forward to seeing how the conversation develops in the meantime and hope I’ll have a few new things to contribute. Regards to all, Duane

Jennifer, You asked about my understanding of the nature of consciousness, so let me offer the following brief summary. I regard “consciousness” as an invisible ecological substrate of life-energy extending throughout the universe that provides a “knowing capacity” for systems at every level in ways that are fitting for their form and functio…[Read more]

Ed,   Thanks for your wise words. I certainly did not intend to anthropomorphize nature. I see the universe in a very different manner than human biological systems. My years of laboratory research as a subject in psi research persuaded me there is an ecology of consciousness infusing the universe that can operate in a non-local f…[Read more]

Do you use the term?

Why do you use the word “self” in self-organize? What do you mean by “self”?

Hi Karen, I’d like to clear up what seems to be a misunderstanding. Earlier you wrote that I “believe that some special guidance is needed to form anything we see (life, trees, bugs, us) from the materials we have (carbon, other atoms, sunshine).” I do not believe that “special guidance” is required from some external (supernatural?) force.…[Read more]

Hi Karen,I’d like to clear up what seems to be a misunderstanding. Earlier you wrote that I “believe that some special guidance is needed to form anything we see (life, trees, bugs, us) from the materials we have (carbon, other atoms, sunshine).” I do not believe that “special guidance” is required from some external (supernatural?) force. Rather,…[Read more]

 Jon, You wrote, regarding my question about the understanding of terms such as matter, dark energy, time: “Duane, as we discussed before, definitions can be found in the dictionary. . . No struggling is needed.” So, I decided to do as you suggested and look in the dictionary to find commonly accepted definitions. Here are three that I explored…[Read more]

Ursula, I am confused by what is meant by a “god-of-the-gaps” approach. If, for example, 95% of the known universe is invisible, does this constitute one of the “gaps” to which you refer? Or, if you view “consciousness” as only a by-product of biochemistry in a neural system and I see it as a part of the ecology of the universe (based on three…[Read more]

Ursula, Regarding a “science-based” narrative, I am not aware of a common, “scientific” definition of the nature of “matter,” “time,” “space,” “consciousness,” “dark energy,” “dark matter,” “life,” and more. So, until we do, it seems to me we will have to struggle with understanding the elegant design and complexity of the universe. 

Ursula,   Regarding Murakami credentials as a scientist: He was appointed as a professor at the Tsukuba University, one of the leading universities in Japan. He founded the Institute for the Study of the Mind-Gene Relationship . He is now Professor Emeritus of the University of Tsukuba. Among his greatest scientific success was the genetic dec…[Read more]

I wrote in an earlier posting how there is more genetic information in a grain of rice than there is in a human being. Synchronistically, I’ve just returned from a conference in Japan where I met Prof. Kazuo Murakami, described as “one of the top geneticists in the world.” He played a significant role in the decoding of the genome for rice and was…[Read more]

I wrote in an earlier posting how there is more genetic information in a grain of rice than there is in a human being. Synchronistically, I’ve just returned from a conference in Japan where I met Prof. Kazuo Murakami, described as “one of the top geneticists in the world.” He played a significant role in the decoding of the genome for rice and was…[Read more]

<p>Hi All,</p><p> </p><p>In a few hours, I’m off to a conference in Japan focusing on the social and spiritual transformation of humanity’s future — there will not be too many “scientific materialists” in the crowd, so I’ll have to wait until my return the middle of next week to get my paradigm software re-straightened out. 🙂 I look forward to t…[Read more]

Hi Ed, Thanks for your creative contributions to this inquiry: You write, “… could some portion of our consciousness exist as a software application in the “quantum foam,” with our human body simply an I/O device allowing out consciousness to express itself in the physical domain?” While I have difficulty regarding consciousness as a “sof…[Read more]

Hi Karen,   Thanks for your wonderful willingness to do the math on all the waves on all the shores in the last 10 million years!! I was curious about this but too intimidated to try and do the math.  Also, I appreciate your curiosity about the definition of a biological system and a living system… and universe and multiverse. . .  However, I’…[Read more]

Hi Karen, Thanks for your wonderful willingness to do the math on all the waves on all the shores in the last 10 million years!! I was curious about this but too intimidated to try and do the math.  Also, I appreciate your curiosity about the definition of a biological system and a living system… and universe and multiverse. . .  However, I’m n…[Read more]

Hi Ed, I have several questions in mind with regard to your comments about my comments. . .  However, I’m swamped right now, getting ready to travel to Japan. So, I have one, core question that keeps nagging at me: Can something be consciousness without being alive? If something is conscious then can it be considered “alive”? What connection do y…[Read more]

Hi Ed, Thanks for posting this rich array of resources! I am just beginning to explore them so I don’t have coherent questions — yet. I’m still at the “Hmmmmm…..” stage. Much of what you describe seems largely congruent with many of my own experiences in the research laboratory working with Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff in the early 1970s.…[Read more]