Galactic Minds

Dr. Mead Quort joins the Hygea, a mental treatment vessel circulating about the Milky Way Galaxy. He works as an archetypal psychoanalyst and opposes medical pharmaceuticals in psychiatry. The ambitious, power hungry Dr. Bax Muh incites a patient rebellion that is defeated. But a new Marfan psychoanalyst introduces hypnotic epiphany treatment. Dr. Muh attempts to use this successful method to take over the space mental clinic. He is opposed by Mead Quort and traditional Jungian psychoanalysts for control of the ship.

The bestselling author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way delivers fascinating essays on the human mind, the search for extraterrestrial (and thus nonhuman) intelligence, comet strikes as a source of species extinction, near-death experiences, apocalyptic prophecies, information theory, and the origin of laughter. Praise for The Mind’s Sky “It is a joy to read The Mind’s Sky. What a sense of humility in the face of mystery—the spirit of Ulysses, as Tennyson put it, determined ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’—and sense of poetry too!”—John Archibald Wheeler, physicist, Princeton University “A few chapters into this wonderful book I suddenly realized that I was taking wider views of my own mind’s sky than I have enjoyed in a long time. Ferris illuminates (among other matters) the mysteries of laughter, nirvana, common sense, and Joe Montana. He makes us think big thoughts.”—Jonathan Weiner, author of The Next 100 Years and Planet Earth “One of our best and most imaginative writers, Timothy Ferris has never been afraid to tackle big themes. The Mind’s Sky is a dazzling and provocative synthesis of inner and outer space. This book is sure to be as controversial as it is elegant.”—Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos

The only thing we can be absolutely sure of is our own consciousness. But what is consciousness? Is it a property that is unique to humans or do we share it with other lifeforms? Or is the philosophical doctrine of panpsychism correct—are stars and the entire universe conscious in some sense? Early chapters in this book examine the prehistory, mythology, and history of this topic. Arguments are presented from the viewpoints of shamans, philosophers, poets, quantum physicists, and novelists. A simple “toy” model of panpsychism is then presented, in which a universal field of proto- consciousness interacts with molecular bonds via the vacuum fluctuation pressure of the Casimir Effect. It is shown how this model is in congruence with an anomaly in stellar motions called “Parenago’s Discontinuity.” Cool, redder, less massive stars such as the Sun apparently circle the center of the galaxy faster than their hotter, bluer, more massive sisters. This discontinuity occurs at the point in the stellar distribution where molecules begin to appear in stellar spectra. As described in the first edition of this book, observations of main sequence stars out to ~260 light years and giant stars out to >1,000 light years—using the ESA Hipparcos space observatory—support the reality and non-locality of Parenago’s Discontinuity. Local, more conventional explanations for this phenomenon are not supported by observations of other galaxies and the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Since 2014, the new ESA Gaia space observatory has been obtaining kinematics and position data for ~1 billion stars in our galaxy. The first Gaia data release in 2016 has been used in 2018 by a Russian team to demonstrate Parenago’s Discontinuity for a large stellar sample out to ~500 light years from the Sun. These observations support the hypothesis that anomalistic stellar motion is due to stellar volition, as described by philosopher/author Olaf Stapledon in his classic novel Star Maker, as previously discussed by the author in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS). In light of the new Gaia observations and work by other researchers, it is not impossible that panpsychism is emerging from the realm of philosophy as a new subdivision of observational astronomy. Simple models of universal proto-consciousness may be subject to inductive tests using current and future space observatories. A special feature of this book is the chapter frontispiece art by C Bangs.

Light-Seeds has about it the scent of surpassing wisdom: A spiritual revelation narrated as soul-expanding adventure in two parts, Zen of Stars & ForeSeen, reveals the discoveries awaiting humanity. It considers our true cosmic history and destiny: it answers to the most fundamental issues. Core message: By 2020 we see merging hyper-dimensions challenging us into direct action - to end thought. Our today is a disconnect from our true past. St.Clair alters reality with light-encoded words, looking at it through the seer eyes of the leading world astrologer. He delivers solutions in a mind-altering, precision-guided prophecy. Via the new mind, his knowing is designed for you to engineer the paths of your incarnation from your own future. St.Clair - his Master of The Light, and his vision - changes your life, as he frees mankind, one soul at a time. Once a decade perhaps, a special book of profound impact appears: Light-Seeds is hailed by a sub-culture to be "it."

Good questions--Intriguing answers. The teachings continue . . . Your planet is at a dire crossroads from a physical standpoint, but from a spiritual standpoint, it is experiencing a great awakening. Never before have there been so many conscious lightworkers, awakened spiritual beings, and masters as there are on this planet now. A great sense of a spiritual harmony emanates from the many starseed groups, and there is also a new spiritual energy and force that is spreading throughout the planet. We want to send this special Arcturian frequency to Earth, because it will suddenly release energy toward higher light. It is a throbbing, pulsing frequency that will bring you into alignment with the Galactic Council, Andromedans, Pleiadians, and many higher levels of etheric energy. Together, we will help you to remove a very powerful block from within your mind, opening you very quickly and directly to receiving the light and consciousness from these other beings. You will then receive ideas and images about how to do certain things and how to heal certain things in the physical. Material problems, business problems, medical problems, and political problems--all aspects are now going to be open to the fifth-dimensional energy and the fifth-dimensional realm. Be prepared for the possibilities of disruptions in your life from various sources such as political upheavals and storms. As you prepare, know that you are going to be sheltered and protected. You will find that maintaining the energy contacts with Arcturian starseeds will create energy bridges of support that will sustain you through anything that will happen on this planet. The more bridges you create, the stronger your Group of Forty is going to be. It is important for all of you to focus on the bridges--the energy bridges that you have made in the group and the energy bridges that you make with us as a group.

Transparent Minds explores the intersection between neuroscience and science fiction stories. Paul Matthews expertly analyses the narratives of humans and nonhumans from Mary Shelley to Kazuo Ishiguro across 200 years of the genre. In doing so he gives lucid insight into the meaning of existence and self-awareness. Rigorously researched and highly accessible, Matthews argues that psycho-emotional science fiction writers both imitate and inform alien and post-human consciousnesses through exploratory narratives and metaphor. Drawing from a diverse range of scholars and critics, Matthews explores topics such as psychonarration and neuroaesthetics, to create a thoughtful and cogent argument. By synthesising concepts from philosophy, neuroscience, and literary theory, Matthews posits the potential for science fiction to bridge the gap in understanding between AI and human minds. Given the recent advancements in AI technology, Matthews’ timely discussion enters the speculative realm of sentient technology and postcyborg ethics. The work constitutes a major contribution to cross-disciplinary perspectives on alien and posthuman psychology, that engages with future states of existence in both ourselves and the machines we create. Transparent Minds will be of interest to innovators, authors, and science fiction enthusiasts alike.

In terms of the scale of the galaxy, both in space and time, we humans are new comers. Though we are newly on the scene, we are already thinking about how to create large structures in space. Recently, analysis of data from one of the stars in the Kepler data set has led to speculation regarding huge artificial structures (called Stapledon/Dyson Spheres) constructed by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. The NASA Kepler space observatory has been observing light curves of about 100,000 stars in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyre. This star, popularly dubbed “Tabby’s Star” after the first name of the astronomer leading one of the data reduction teams, shows intriguing periodic dips in its luminosity. Stellar Engineering starts by considering terrestrial organisms, and early humans, who have constructed, on their scale, “megastructures,” and continues with a history of the development of the stellar engineering concept. Kepler data on the subject star is reviewed as is observational data on other possible Stapledon/Dyson Sphere candidates. Possible applications of such enormous constructs are discussed, as well as the intriguing speculation that we might live in a Stapledon/Dyson swarm of alien space habitats within our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt. The chapter frontispiece art illuminates the ideas presented.

In dialogue with groundbreaking technologies and scientific models, twentieth century fiction presents readers with a vast mosaic of perspectives on the cosmos. The literary imagination of the world beyond the human scale, however, faces a fundamental difficulty: if, as researchers in both cognitive science and narrative theory argue, fiction is a practice geared toward the human embodied mind, how can it cope with scientific theories and concepts— the Big Bang, quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and so on—that resist our common-sense intuitions and appear discontinuous, in spatial as well as temporal terms, with our bodies? This book sets out to answer this question by showing how the embodiment of mind continues to matter even as writers— and readers—are pushed out of their terrestrial comfort zone. Offering thoughtful commentary on work by both mainstream literary authors and science fiction writers (from Primo Levi to Jeanette Winterson, from Olaf Stapledon to Pamela Zoline), Embodiment and the Cosmic Perspective in Twentieth-Century Fiction explores the multiple ways in which narrative can radically defamiliarize our bodily experience and bridge the gap with cosmic realities. This investigation affords an opportunity to reflect on the role of literature as it engages with science and charts its epistemological and ethical ramifications.