You’ll Know When You Get There: Are We Ready For a Non-Local Consciousness-Technology Interface?

Abilities, skills, or more fundamental awareness? Psi reexamined

Forty years ago, psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove published the first and only dissertation successfully defended for a doctoral degree focused within parapsychology. Aptly titled, Psi Development Systems (Mishlove, 1983), this work remains relevant as an historical document detailing the breadth of contemporary scientific research that was piloted in the 1970s exploring the validity, development, and subsequent modern “training” of human mental faculties that correlate to physical reality. Known as extrasensory perception (ESP), psychic, or psi, these events include but are not exclusive nor limited to telepathy (mind-mind communication), psychokinesis (mind-matter interaction), precognition (reliable perception or forecasting of future events), remote perception/viewing (describing a blind target independent of spatial or temporal distance), mediumship/channeling (mentally connecting with discarnate and/or extradimensional intelligences), among other phenomena (Mishlove, 1983; Wahbeh, 2021).

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While Psi Development Systems served as a comprehensive literature review of the perennial human practice and capacity to refine mentally directed physical phenomena, the private sector has seen astonishingly little advancement from the breadth of work that began in the mid-20th century. While research and development in the emerging science of consciousness has yielded prolific results, its growth potential has been stifled by decades of implicit bias from institutions due to its mechanics being fundamentally incongruent with reductionistic, materialist scientific worldviews (Baru?s & Mossbridge, 2017; Grof, 2000). Yet, lack of acceptance or adoption has not diminished nor refuted a growing body of knowledge pertaining to consciousness and psi events specifically (Baru?s & Mossbridge, 2017).

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Key researchers and actors in the transdisciplinary field of consciousness now offer new investigators even more fundamental questions: are these consciousness-correlated psi events natively human abilities, skills, or more fundamentally and excitingly, simply an operable awareness of deeper substrates of reality? There is nearly unilateral agreement among researchers that anyone can experience and refine one’s mental faculties to effect psi events (Jahn & Dunne, 2011; McMoneagle & Ryan, 2024). If we shift our understanding of mind-matter interaction, for example, from an ill-defined metaphysical ability into a more unified cosmology capable of natively appreciating it, does not such a possible understanding provide the necessary user and sensor prerequisites to design and test innovations toward true consciousness-technology interfaces and operating systems? This paper seeks to open forum to this exciting question at the forefront of consciousness science and emergent technologies it is poised to enable.

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The need for psychology in consciousness technologies research and development

Since C.G. Jung’s studies exploring human understandings of the nature of mind throughout human cultures, civilizations, and self-inquiry (Jung, 1980, 1996; Jung & Wilhelm, 2022), a fair body of contemporary psychology literature has been borne exploring depths of consciousness and human mental capacities. Yet, attention and investment has progressed slowly, stifled by implicit biases (scientism) of mainstream professional communities in psychology, psychiatry, and health and medicine at large (Barnard, 2012; Baru?s & Mossbridge, 2017). Despite the hesitancy of professional associations and regulatory institutions to even recognize humanistic and transpersonal psychology and its contributions to its fields, no work of translational value, however large or small, goes unnoticed.

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Within the context of consciousness investigation transcending beyond the limiting conventions of institutional scientism, for psychology this work to date has largely been advanced by those adhering to principles of transpersonal psychology. In recent years, pioneer 20th century psychologists Stanislav Grof and Ralph Metzner both published comprehensive career-spanning opuses reviewing more than a century of theory and practice pertaining to aspects of consciousness capable of yielding exciting possibilities for future innovations and human potential (Grof, 2019b, 2019a, Metzner, 2017). Among Grof’s range of contributions are those of inducing organic (i.e., non-drug induced) states of consciousness capable of yielding psychological transformation and at times spontaneous direct experience of telepathic exchange or information retrieval through non-local, “extrasensory” perceptual means (Grof, 2000, 2006, 2019a, 2019b). Complementarily, Ralph Metzner (2017) provided psychology with preserved psi development systems from previous human societies and guiding recommendations for more rigorous empirical methodologies to yield findings capable of yielding deepening insight into phenomena and subjects that transcend physical observation.

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Yet, as is common with most early human ventures – particularly those that directly challenge prevailing orthodoxies – the consciousness science of the 20th century, though rich, waned in widespread acceptance due in part to systemic biases, but more importantly, to lack of immediate translational value to other disciplines. Simply, researchers and practitioners have worked in relative isolation and marginally succeeded in creating transdisciplinary coalitions and teams to translate findings into actionable intelligence and technological innovation. If psychology wishes to step up to the plate in non-local consciousness research, it must provide a case for its value, where to-date psychology has not been a perceived need. This is among our principal tasks as psychology professionals.

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Transpersonal psychology to date has shone in extending far beyond conventions of modern medicine of palliative care toward therapeutic value, full-spectrum healing, and psychospiritual transformation of the individual (Grof, 2013; Grof & Bennett, 1993; Tarnas, 2022). Yet, it becomes clear in survey of literature that though thematically complementary, serious investigations in consciousness have been siloed not only by scientific disciplines but by domains of investigation, interests of funders, intent, and testability. Parallel to the first fifty years of transpersonal psychology led principally by Dr. Stanislav Grof have been exceptional longitudinal research and development in consciousness science within the married fields of physics and engineering (Radin et al., 2016; Radin & Anastasia, 2023; Targ, 2012; Targ & Puthoff, 1974, 2005). While the former has focused largely on therapeutic value to the human psyche and a qualitative approach to investigation of the nature of mind, the latter has been borne largely in vacuums of defense subcontracts including military, private think tanks and other non-mainstream institutions, and increasingly, modern private venture capital investment (Davis, 2004; McMoneagle & Ryan, 2024; Targ & Puthoff, 1974; Tart et al., 1980).

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While science strengthens through transdisciplinary communication, investigation, and adaptation, it may at present be of greater value for psychology professionals to intelligently permeate the exceptional consciousness research silos of physics, engineering, and private enterprise rather than produce siloed research, submit for conventional publication through academic confirmatory channels, and expect results to be received by external actors to any meaningful magnitude. Such a transdisciplinary approach to consciousness investigation is arguably necessary to push research into new connective frontiers (László, 2003), expand theory-building and impact (Kelly, 2023; Tarnas, 2022), and broaden application value. As an example, some experimenters from the late PEAR Lab referred only in passing to psychology, referring only to utilization of “micro-psychology” to stimulate immediate results by percipients during psi trials with random event generators (REGs) (Valentino, 2014).

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As we enter the mid-21st century and institutional orthodoxies for credibility (e.g., peer review) continue to wane in value or any actual need due to rapidly accelerating information channels and market interests, there has never been a more fertile ecosystem for innovation. If we, as investigators in the domain of consciousness, broaden how we think about the application value of research findings, in this moment exists an unprecedented opportunity for accelerating how we think about and utilize emerging concepts, particularly in non-local mechanics directed by the human mind.

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Epihuman or transhuman: Ethics, agency, and the future of consciousness science

"When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?" – Mary Shelley (Shelley, 1818/2018)

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There is every indication that as we enter the mid-21st century, biotechnology is going to continue to accelerate. As private business entities continue to push boundaries of what is technologically possible via complexifying engineering, regulatory agencies will face insurmountable real-time pressures to exercise or even agree upon ethics of emerging technologies.

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In surveying the present landscape of nanotechnology research and corresponding venture capital investment, it is conservatively safe to say that by 2050, there will likely be few fields in technology and medicine untouched by rapidly accelerating interest in nanotechnologies. And as these trends continue, public perception seems strongly slated toward a questionably radical acceptance. Popular nonfiction titles continue to populate bestseller lists from biotech entrepreneurs sensationalizing invasive cellular-inhibiting nanotechnology interventions promising aging prevention if not reversal (Sinclair, 2019). This cultural trend is ethically alarming but not unexpected: technological advancement and ethical ambiguity is perennially interconnected. As economic actors evolve emerging technologies to capitalize upon emotional responses to the very things that make us human, it is imperative that we engage collectively in conversations to share ideas and values, as well as increase public scientific literacy. It is beyond the scope of this paper to critically analyze such ethical considerations, though for the field of consciousness research and its prospect for interfacing technologies, such conversations are integral and becoming increasingly relevant.

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Case study: In May 2024, Elon Musk announced that his neurobiology-nanotechnology interface startup company, Neuralink was in preparatory stages for recruiting a second participant for clinical trials in its telepathy cybernetics brain-computer interface system (Musk, 2024). While this work is novel for private enterprise, one criticism is this: that while present clinical trials are cybernetic, they are oppositional to telepathic.

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This is problematic for reasons twofold: 1) that non-local consciousness terms are being captured by private enterprise employing comparatively conventional (in this case, biochemical) science, and complementarily 2) frontier science and technology enterprise is building contemporary R&D on incorrect assumptions about the nature of consciousness. The latter point is clearly demonstrated by many private enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) labs that today are modeling machine learning heuristic networks after neuronal systems, often with a theoretical transhumanist – a complex philosophical epistemology that assumes humanity is imperfect and can be optimized by integrating artificial technologies into intrinsic evolutionary processes (Pruchnic, 2014) – end goal of uploading one’s “consciousness” into a digital mainframe (Harris, et al., 2024). While achieving a goal often becomes stifled or nullified by an incorrect elemental understanding of key concepts, the real-world repercussions of such goals could, unchecked, be catastrophic to humanity.

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An open question presently exists that may prove paramount in importance moving forward: If reductionistic models of consciousness correlating with transhumanist ideologies (exercised by narcissistic and sociopathic personalities) prove to be limiting and/or incorrect, may alternative, non-local consciousness models satisfying simpler cosmologies yield more altruistic, harmonious, epihumanistic ideologies equal or more capable of technological innovation? This may indeed become one of the more central questions of coming decades should private enterprise be open to competing frameworks.

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Sensors, filters, and a new paradigm for technological development

“Not once in the dim past, but continuously, by conscious mind is the miracle of the Creation wrought.” – Sir Arthur Eddington (Jahn & Dunne, 2004)

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In their summary paper from the longitudinal work of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory, Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne (2004) outlined their verifiable experimental theoretical model for future work in consciousness. Central to their modeling is a hypothesis of consciousness primacy to observable sensory reality. Principally, within an experimental framework, consciousness moves from being an epiphenomenon of neuronal processes to its baseline source. As such, neuronal processes become understood more appropriately as expressions or antennae of bi-directional information flow, “resonant channels of communication between the mind and its source environment” (Jahn & Dunne, 2004).

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In a model where consciousness becomes assumed as primary, a new world opens for scientific inquiry, experimentation, and interpretation of results. From our agency as organic, intelligent living beings, the conscious and biological reality of our mind-body complex becomes the most fundamental and advanced technology available to us. From our awareness of who and what we are, we experiment, define, and create our novel model of reality at large.

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If we understand consciousness to be synonymous or even complementary to the empirical source of reality, logic reasonably follows that all manifest expressions of reality may be understood as varying informational constraints, channels, resonances, or otherwise constrictive heuristics of its source. These constricted informational channels of experiential “reality” are defined by Jahn and Dunne as “filters” (2004). Under this experimental paradigm, filters are not exclusive to purely mental realms of human perception and experience but may be extended into the emerging origin and substance of observable reality, from quanta of energy to cellular development and cosmos at large.

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Complementing the model of filters as constructs of reality is the formal necessity of sensors to acquire, interpret, and bi-directionally interact with reality. For example, the biophysical sensors of the human body acquire information within a limited range of sensitivity to saliently make sense of and move through one’s physical environment. One’s mental awareness becomes likened to a conscious sensor with its own highly dynamic range of sensitivity to make meaning and locally or non-locally interact with one’s environment. This conceptual model provides an actionable framework to influence and communicate either through local or non-local (physical or psychical) means.

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While this model is likely to be vastly oversimplified, it is an exciting starting place. Such a model both extends experimental potential toward new scientific frontiers and mirrors and complements cosmology from wisdom traditions throughout human history, suggestively adding credulity and simplification of theory building central to science itself.

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To briefly recap, here is what we know:

• Complex mind-matter (e.g., machine, organic compounds) influence, mind-mind interaction, and non-tactile, extra/episensory information retrieval is real (Jahn & Dunne, 2011).
• Such events are mental in nature, effected psychically by a conscious agent through numinosity, intention, and desire of percipient(s) and experimenter (if applicable) (Targ, 2012).
• Such events are non-local, e.g., independent of observed space or time distances and/or environmental shielding (Targ & Puthoff, 2005).
• Overwhelming significance suggests consciousness/mind is fundamental, not neuronal systemic (Baru?s & Mossbridge, 2017; Kelly, 2023; Mishlove, 2024).
• Mental influence/psi has been identified as essential to varying advanced physics and engineering research and development, e.g., teleportation systems (Davis, 2004).

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When we complement this with the summative findings from the last fifty years of work in psi development systems, a question reasonably follows: if such a consciousness model employing filters and sensors is not exclusive to humans or intelligent biological organisms but is universal to reality, should we not be able to thus design material technologies capable of non-local mental influence via sensor systems sensitive to mind-originated fluctuations? I contend the answer is yes.

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What would it take to design such a psi mediation (sensor) system? This can be accomplished today through two rudimentary and potentially synergistic domains: organic and digital. Further discussion may be offered by the author and interested parties ready for novel research and development.

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Success in prototype development will de facto leap over invasive transhumanist models of organic-machine interaction presently in development via biochemistry operating systems (e.g., Neuralink and various biotech longevity enterprises), and begin true human consciousness assisted technologies.

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Concluding remarks

We are living in a moment of rapid acceleration, coupled with overwhelming paradox. In a moment of existential resource scarcity and collapse of global social, economic, and political systems, technological innovation seems as if we are reaching inflection points in capability to perceived possibility. During times of such profound acceleration, how we think and feel about ourselves inevitably becomes the primary architect of our future. Do we succumb to limiting beliefs and choose to live in a state of emergency, or do we expand our awareness and choose to live in a state of emergence?

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How each of us answers this philosophical question will determine the direction of our sciences, our technologies, and our world. As we enter the mid-21st century, information decentralizes, and societal pressures demand rapid scientific acceleration, the implications of consciousness science may prove to be essential. After all, as émile Souvestre wrote, “more powerful than strength, than courage, or even genius itself… is an idea whose time has come” (1848, p.194).

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