"Advances James on consciousness farther than anyone" --Eugene Taylor
A mystical experience on a Vipassana Meditation Retreat undermined my common-sense understanding of reality, and sent me on a quest to explore the nature of consciousness. I began with William James's classic text, The Principles of Psychology. Reading this text and other works of James's for the past 3 decades has been like falling down Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole. I believe I have landed where James persistently suggested the descent was leading--consciousness is "already there, waiting to be uncovered"--even as he tried to steer himself elsewhere. In addition to my 2 books, Sciousness (Eirnin Press) and The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (SUNY Press), I have published a dozen articles on James in various academic journals. In the anthology The Volitional Brain: Towards a neuroscience of free will, I am the dissenting voice. My brief manifestio challenging the materialist presumption of the Bienniel Tuscon Consciousness Conference was published by the Journal of Consciousness Studies and posted online by SAND (Science and Non-Duality). Without changing a single word in my SUNY Press book on James, its title could have been The Illusion of Will, Self, Time, and Matter.
From 2007 to 2017, I had the great privilege of being a Program Director for the New York Open Center, and am currently a Program Consultant for Eastover. My live engagements with so many teachers who, like James, tilt toward the transpersonal, has been critical to the evolution of my thought. I am also a Founding Board Member of the Society for Consciousness Studies.
