Mark Gober is the author of a new book entitled “An End to Upside Down Thinking”. His book introduces the public to science that turns traditional scientific thinking upside down and indicates, contrary to mainstream assumptions, consciousness is not produced by the brain, rather, consciousness creates all material reality. Through this book, Mark traces his journey exploring compelling scientific evidence from a diverse set of disciplines, ranging from psychic phenomena to near-death experiences, to quantum physics and beyond.

According to Science magazine, the #2 question that remains in all of science is: “What is the biological basis of consciousness?” Consciousness can be thought of as our mind or awareness; our inner, subjective experience and our sense of being alive. So, Science magazine is asking how a physical body and brain can generate a non-physical mind. I can touch my arm; I can touch my leg; I can touch my head; but I can’t touch my mind. This is known as “the hard problem of consciousness.” No one has figured out how it happens. And some really smart people have tried (unsuccessfully), such as the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, Francis Crick. To his dying day, he was unable figure it out.

Before exploring this topic, I didn’t even know this was a question. I had always assumed that we knew the answer. Doesn’t consciousness just come from complex chemical and electric stuff in our brain? The open secret is that we don’t have a clue how that could happen. All we know that there is a strong relationship or correlation between our brain and our conscious experience. Damage a part of your brain and your conscious experience is affected. That doesn’t prove that the brain produces consciousness though. Correlation does not imply causation. There is another possibility: What if the brain is like an antenna/receiver or filtering mechanism that processes a consciousness that exists outside the body?

That would redefine what it means to be a human being. We would go from being a body that has a consciousness (the belief of mainstream science and my former belief) to being a consciousness first and foremost that is having the experience of a physical world through a body. If the latter were true, consciousness wouldn’t be confined to the body (i.e., it would be “non-local” to the brain) and consciousness wouldn’t die when the physical body dies.

The hard problem of consciousness is only a problem because it assumes incorrectly that consciousness comes from the brain. It’s like trying to solve a trick question. No wonder it hasn’t been solved.

For example, a branch of physics conceived nearly 100 years ago points in this direction. Quantum physics deals with the counterintuitive behavior of particles that occurs at the ultra-small scale. It shows a reality that doesn’t match our common sense, but we know it to be true based on repeated studies. The findings of quantum physics led one of its founders, Nobel Prize-winner Max Planck, to say in 1931: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.” This is precisely what I am arguing.

There is much more evidence beyond this, such as scientific evidence for “psychic phenomena.” This actually makes a lot of sense if consciousness isn’t localized to the brain. I was shocked to learn that strong evidence has emerged for these phenomena from the US government, Princeton University (e.g., the former dean of engineering, Dr. Robert Jahn), the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, and beyond. The evidence is so controversial that it is often swept under the rug.

For example, the US government ran a nearly 25-year program in which it used psychic spies for national security. Previously classified documents have been released publicly, and they state that a phenomenon known as “remote viewing” (seeing something at a distance with the mind alone; sometimes called “clairvoyance”) is “a real phenomenon” and the “implications are revolutionary.” In fact, in 1995 Congress and the CIA asked a prominent statistician, Dr. Jessica Utts (former President of the American Statistics Association) to look at the data. She states in her report: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance.”

Why does all this matter? If these ideas are true, then our science and medicine need to change radically to account for them. What advances might we see if our science and medicine were updated appropriately?

But beyond that, what if we do have the potential to develop psychic abilities (even if they are sometimes subtle)? How might we live each day if we thought that the death of our physical bodies wouldn’t mean the death of our consciousness? And what if we are interconnected as part of the same underlying consciousness, meaning that separation is actually just an illusion? How would we treat one another if our consciousness is fundamentally connected beyond what our eyes can see?

These ideas are nothing short of world-changing. We might be on the cusp of a shift bigger than the Copernican Revolution and bigger than the discovery that “earth isn’t flat.”