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What is the substack about?

I’m driven largely by a desire to communicate the validity and reality of self-transcending spiritual states of consciousness. I seek to convey that there is nothing in these states that contravenes science, quite the opposite. Not only do these states cohere with our best scientific understanding of the brain and experience, I believe they allow us to see reality more clearly and offer a way of dispelling certain assumptions that block deeper understanding of consciousness and our place in existence. What’s more, coming to live from these non-ordinary states has the power to relieve suffering.

Here, I will be exploring the many facets of what is ultimately quite a simple vision of a reality that is always inherently whole, and in which perceived separation is the prime suspect whenever we find discord and suffering playing out. I hope these articles can provide both intellectual and emotional nourishment but, more than anything, I want my writing to function as a hand on the shoulder, signalling that it is okay to give up the struggle with existence, the struggle of feeling like a separate self that needs to navigate in a hostile universe. It is only through this visceral surrender that we come to behold the wondrous lack of separation that pervades all existence.

Bio

James trained as a neuroscientist after an awakening as a teenager that showed him the reality of spiritual states of consciousness. He has three degrees in experimental psychology and neuroscience from Oxford University, including a PhD in neuroscience. He has conducted research into the brain basis of consciousness at such institutions as Oxford University; the University of California, Berkeley; University College London; Trinity College Dublin; and Riken Brain Sciences Institute in Tokyo. At the University of London, Cooke achieved the theoretical breakthrough that forms the basis of his first book The Dawn of Mind: How Matter Became Conscious and Alive, first publishing his findings in the prestigious journals Entropy and Journal of Consciousness Studies. Outside of academia, he founded the Inner Space Institute, a platform for promoting understanding around science and secular spirituality. He is also the host of the podcast Living Mirrors with Dr. James Cooke.

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