"Materialism remains the dominant scientific view. Artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky memorably encapsulated the materialist position: 'The brain,' he said, slightly updating the machine paradigm, 'is just a computer made of meat.' Minsky, however, had not reckoned with the infinite worlds of possibility being opened up by a revolutionary new branch of physics called quantum mechanics (QM). QM has effectively smashed the scientific materialist worldview and, as we will see later in this book, is opening up infinite new worlds of possibility that are blowing the materialist box to smithereens.

"Materialist theories, despite their stubborn persistence in the scientific community, cannot solve the mind-brain problem. We need a new model through which to view the power of mind and its central role in the universe. This fresh point of view would be free of materialist dogmas that have outlived their time and blocked science from exploring avenues that have been there all along.

"Like Frederic Myers (a pioneer researcher in the psychology of the unconscious, or 'depth psychology,' who greatly influenced William James and the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung), I believe that great progress can be made if we follow a pillar of the scientific method and approach the mind-brain problem empirically: giving priority to the knowledge derived from observations and evidence. In the chapters that follow you will find a large body of evidence related to the impressive capacities of the mind and its fundamental, irreducible, nature.

"As you will see, multiple lines of hard evidence show that mental events do exist and can significantly influence the functioning of our brains and bodies. They also show that our minds can affect events occurring outside the confines of our bodies, and that we can access consciously transcendent realms — even when the brain is apparently not functioning. Most important, these various lines of evidence indicate that materialist theories of the mind are erroneous: we are not merely complex biological machines, computers made of meat. Reality is a vastly complex territory that we are only beginning to explore. It encompasses, as you will see in the chapters that follow, much more than the physical world.

"Times are changing quickly, particularly in science. The most exciting frontiers of twenty-first century science — quantum mechanics, cloud computing, virtual reality — show us very different models of what is real and what is possible than materialist science permits. They also give us tools with which we can explore the nature of the relationship between our minds — our consciousness, our self-identity — and our brains. Great advances in science are made by following the evidence, wherever it may lead. If our objective is truly to reach an adequate scientific understanding of the human mind, then we must be willing to take into account all the empirical evidence related to this issue."