Being & Biology

<p>Is consciousness actually the Life Force . . .the animating principle which underlies and unifies mind body and spirit in all living things and which philosopher Henri Bergson termed the <em>élan vital</em>? This book offers a compendium of empirical evidence and theoretical perspectives from a broad range of scholarly disciplines which suggest that there is an unbroken non-local collective aspect of consciousness that links distant individuals and events—a kind of resonant connectedness that defies separation in space and time.</p><p>In the words of some of the contributors . . .<br />"Even for the most materialistic of scientists consciousness has a privileged position as the matrix of human knowledge the basis of science itself." —Rupert Sheldrake</p><p><br />"The emerging view is that consciousness is fundamental in its own right and is not produced by the physical brain; . . . consciousness may be the primordial organizing force of the universe and of life itself." —Larry Dossey</p><p><br />"Henri Bergson . . . posited a vital impulse he called <em>élan vital</em> that underlies the creation of all living things a process of self-organization that he linked closely with consciousness." — Brenda Dunne and Robert Jahn</p><p><br />"Complementarity and Complexity ubiquitous as they are point to the need of a new kind of scientific endeavor that simultaneously brings forth and is brought from a deeper understanding of the workings of Consciousness." —Vasileios Basios</p>