Awakening from Dreams

	Book review on The Conscious Mind and the Material World by Stokes, Douglas M. (2007) Reviewed by David Lorimer, 2008 published in Network Review No 97
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Douglas Stokes is the author of The Nature of Mind: Parapsychology and the Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, which I reviewed ten years ago. Here he turns his attention to the nature of the self in the light of psiand arrives at some rather unusual conclusions. As he explains in his introduction, the first awakening is from what he calls the dream of matter: self cannot be identical with the body, since its components are constantly changing. The next awakening involves the dream of the person with the discovery that we are not the content of our consciousness and memories. Finally, if we thought we were formless and pure consciousness itself, we need to wake up from the dream of Atman and Brahman to realise that we are multiple selves which are constantly transformed and recycled like other components of the universe. Death is understood as 'the rope that frees us from the quicksand of current identities.' Hence, he suggests that our true selves are both much less and much greater than we think. He claims that he finds this conclusion as uncongenial as it may seem to the reader but that it can grow on one. I am not so sure.

The main body of the book consists of a number of chapters about mind and matter, mind and the quantum, spontaneous phenomena as evidence of psi, experimental investigations of psi phenomena and the implications of both spontaneous and experimental work. The book moves on to discuss death and the mind, and the nature of the self in relation to the Self. It is exceptionally well-informed, and contains a long bibliography of sources. The main interest for readers of this journal will be its assessment of psi phenomena and their implications, and the issue of the nature of the conscious self.

Readers will agree that current scientific knowledge is far from complete, and should address psi phenomena; also that spontaneous and experimental work both have a role to play. However I found a number of individual areas unsatisfactory. For instance, Rupert Sheldrake's staring experiments were questioned on the basis that 'the subject could be responding to differences in the starer's breathing patterns and bodily movements between staring and non­staring trials.' In addition, there is no counter criticism of Richard Wiseman's article about dogs who know their owners are coming home, which Rupert himself published. At the end of his chapter on experimental investigations, Stokes concludes that the sceptics are probably ahead on points - a highly questionable judgment. The discussion of the well-known Chaffin Will case supposes that the dreamer might have picked up cues from his father's behaviour before death, a suggestion which has absolutely no basis in the published accounts. Similar implausible speculations are made about the work of Grof and even Ian Stevenson, including the criticism that the child may have acquired information about previous life through normal means and used this information to construct a past life fantasy or hoax. Stevenson himself investigated and ruled out this possibility in cases where it might have been advanced. The section on survival also omits all references to the Scole Experiment and the cross-­correspondences.

The discussion of the nature of the self is less contentious, and covers all well-known positions. Stokes develops the 'Shin' or mini-self theory of Thouless and Wiener, partly because he thinks that split brain research indicates that we have at least two others as sub-personalities. He goes as far as to claim that 'we may be constantly recycled, awakening in a new body each morning with no memories of are real adventures the day before.' I can't say that this corresponds to my own experience. The reader may or may not agree that the findings of modern cognitive neuroscience to make it more doubtful that major portions of self could survive the death of body - this question is not addressed with direct reference to the evidence. However, it is intriguing to think through the implications of the universe as one of conservation, 'of rearrangement, not destruction' whereby components at all levels are recycled from system to system. There is much with which to agree and disagree in this provocative book, which provides a comprehensive overview of a wide range of issues, along with competing explanations.

 

 

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