ERA 3: One-Mind Medicine
ERA I and ERA II appear to have little in common, but they are quite similar in how they view the essential nature
of the mind. In both, the mind is equated with the brain and is assumed to be simply the result of the brain’s
chemistry and physiology (local). ERA III Medicine is space-free and time-free and concerns the non-local mind.
Eternity Medicine is about our awareness of the non-local nature of our mind, that is infinite, indestructible, and
immortal. —Larry Dossey, M.D.
Just over 80 years ago, in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland without warning, starting WWII—the most
cataclysmic conflict in the history of the world thus far. In 1943, philosopher Jean Gebser, political historian Eric
Voegelin, and psychoanalyst Carl Jung each independently recognized that the mounting crisis for Western
civilization was, in fact, a fundamental restructuring of consciousness.
Today, we recognize that this is not just a Western Crisis but a crisis of the world and all humankind and appears
headed toward an event that can only be described as a “global catastrophe.”
Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), the author, poet, and playwright who was the first president of the Czech Republic, saw a hell looming in our world and had the guts to say so on the international stage. As an antidote, he endorsed a type of awareness he called “responsibility to something higher.” In a speech to a joint meeting of the United States Congress on February 21, 1990, he said: “Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around… for this reason, the salvation in this human world lies nowhere else than in a human heart…” Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed—be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization—will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of accumulated nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean that we have definitely won. We are still capable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions, if they are to be normal, is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success—responsibility to the order of Being where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where and only where they will be properly judged.”
In February 2022, Vladimir Putin, like Adolf Hitler before him, invaded Ukraine without provocation. The Russian authorities and armed forces have been accused of committing multiple war crimes by carrying out both deliberate attacks against civilian targets and indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas. It remains to be seen how this war will end. Just as we are getting used to Longevity Medicine a third ERA of Medicine is dawning that is based on the evolution of consciousness.
The Real Cause of Our Healthcare Crisis
“Integral health is the process through which we humans achieve well-being by the ordering of consciousness. This includes the expansion of consciousness (knowledge) and the intensification of consciousness (wisdom).”
—Graham Simpson, M.D.
Spirituality and consciousness are linked
Spirituality is a search for higher consciousness, transcendence, and the sacred, and is closely related to a person’s state of consciousness. Some spiritual traditions, like Vedanta, have long explored the relationship between spirituality and consciousness. Vedanta believes in Brahman, the divine ground of being (source) which is infinite consciousness and existence.
Mainstream science views consciousness as a result of brain activity, but most models fall short of explaining the full range of conscious experiences as mentioned. Spiritual traditions, on the other hand, view the brain as a way to experience consciousness.
Jean Gebser in his 1943 book titled The Ever Present Origin convincingly showed that human consciousness evolved over 5 distinct time periods.
These 5 structures of consciousness have developed over the past five million years. I have explored these structures in my book Eternity Medicine – Healthy and Happy (2019). Although I would encourage those interested to read Gebser’s Ever Present Origin, probably one of the most interesting books I have ever read. Pick up any Art History book from early rock painting to Braque and Picasso, and you can easily see the evolution of consciousness, as art is simply “concretized consciousness”. These 5 structures of consciousness are shown in Table 1.
MIT scientists have recently found that our neocortex has developed in several distinct layers, and each of these layers shows distinct patterns of electrical activity. Across all mammalian species, brain waves are slow in the deep cortical layers while more recent superficial layers generate faster frequencies.
I believe that each of these 5 structures of consciousness had a predominant brain wave associated with it.
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, showed that all human development goes through these five stages (hence ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) and interestingly these same developmental stages are associated with similar EEG brain wave patterns—slow Delta wave predominance at birth to Theta, Alpha and then Beta waves in older teenagers, as shown in Table 1. Thus the evolution of consciousness that arises in each of us as we develop mirrors what has developed over time in our species. (Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny). The goal for each of us is to recognize these structures of consciousness and integrate them which is the path to “individuation” and the recognition of One Mind.
Spirituality as a form of consciousness constructs the world as a systemic whole, where different parts are interconnected. Thus, at the heart of spirituality lies systems thinking in one form or another. Systems thinking is a general view concerning the nature of reality – what we are, where we are going, how we know and what is of value.
As Gebser shows, emergent evolution, both individual and social, would proceed beyond what we have in our current societies. Higher forms of consciousness would emerge as the relevant development requirements come into place: the overall mental and cultural evolution would not stop in the context of post-industrial consumer culture.
Larry Dossey coined the term “non-local mind” in his 1989 book Recovering the Soul to express what he believed is a spatially and temporally infinite aspect of our consciousness. Non-local mind resembled the age-old concept of the soul.
Erwin Schrödinger believed in the One Mind (as many others from very different walks of life have – see Table 2 below). As Schrödinger put it, “Mind is by its very nature a ‘singular tantum.’” I should say: the overall number of minds is just one. In his books such as My View of the World, What is Life and Mind and Matter, he painstakingly built a concept of a single mind, in which consciousness is transpersonal, universal, collective, and infinite in space and time, therefore immortal and eternal.
Schrödinger believed we are suffering from a consensus trance, a collective delusion, about the nature of consciousness. As he put it, “We have entirely taken to thinking of the personality of a human being…as located in the interior of the body. To learn that it cannot really be found there is so amazing that it meets with doubt and hesitation, and we are very slow to admit it. We find it difficult to believe that we have not located the mind behind the midpoint of the eyes…It is very difficult for us to take stock of the fact that the localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic, just an aid for practical use.”
Immortality for the mind was a key feature of Schrödinger’s vision. He wrote, “I venture to call it (the mind) indestructible since it has a peculiar time-table, namely the mind is always now. There is really no before and after for the mind. There is only now that includes memories and expectations…We may, or so I believe, assert that physical theory in its present stage strongly suggests the indestructibility of Mind by Time.”
As Dossey writes: “The One Mind includes all individual minds. It includes thoughts, emotions, feelings, and cognition. The One Mind involves a vivid sense of connectedness and unity with all sentient life, and a profound sense of love, caring, and compassion. It is the overarching principle that makes individual awareness possible.”
In other words, our mind is not confined to our brain or body, as we’ve been taught, but it extends infinitely outside them. Having no boundaries or limits, individual minds merge with all other minds to form the One Mind.
The One Mind is also a source of great wisdom and creativity because it constitutes an infinite pool of information that we can learn to access, as many famous artists and scientists have done throughout history as shown on the following page.
Examples of Different Individuals That Recognize One Mind
| Christian Mystics | Theologens | Poets |
|---|---|---|
| Francis of Assisi (1185) | Teilhard de Chardin (1881) | William Blake (1757) |
| St. Theresa of Avila (1515) | Paul Tillich (1886) | Walt Whitman (1819) |
| St. John of the Cross (1542) | John Shelby Spong (1931) | Kahlil Gibran (1883) |
| Indian Mystics | Muslim Mystics | Budhists |
|---|---|---|
| Sri Aurobindo (1879) | Mansour Hallaj (858) | Gautama Buddha (463) |
| Raman Maharshi (1879) | Jalal Rumi (1207) | Tich Nhat Hanh (1926) |
| Yogananda (1893) | Imadaddin Nasimi (1369) | 14th Dalai Lama (1935) |
| Astrophysicists | Quantum Physicists | Psychedelic Explorers |
|---|---|---|
| James Jeans (1877) | Albert Einstein (1879) | Timothy Leary (1920) |
| Arthur Eddington (1882) | Erwin Schrodinger (1887) | Stanislov Grof (1931) |
| Fred Hoyle (1915) | Werner Heisenberg (1901) | Roland Griffiths (1946) |
| Philosophers | Writers | Ecologists |
|---|---|---|
| Franklin Merrell-Wolf (1887) | Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803) | Herbert Spencer (1820) |
| Paul Brunton (1898) | Henry David Thoreau (1817) | Rev. Joseph Tetlow (1930) |
| Jean Gebser (1905) | Herman Melville (1819) | Donella Meadows (1951) |
| Anthropologists | Mathematicians | Artists |
|---|---|---|
| Gregory Bateson(1906) | J.W.N. Sullivan (1886) | Paul Cezanne (1839) |
| Carlos Casteneda (1925) | Roger Penrose (1931) | Claude Monet (1840) |
| Richard Grossinger (1945) | Andreas Christiensen (1958) | Pablo Picasso (1881) |
| Biologists | Astronomers | Psychologists |
|---|---|---|
| George Wald (1906) | John O’Keefe (1939) | Carl Jung (1875) |
| Lynn Margulis (1938) | Katherin Mahon (1941) | Abraham Maslow (1908) |
| Rupert Sheldrake (1942) | Ali Habibabad (1958) | Ken Wilber (1949) |
| Physicians | Physicists | Musicians |
|---|---|---|
| John Eccles (1903) | Henry Margenau (1901) | JC Bach (1735) |
| Jonas Salk (1914) | John Wheeler (1911) | John Caltrone (1926) |
| Larry Dossey (1940) | David Bohm (1917) | Bob Marley (1945) |
I. Empirical Evidence for One Mind (Experimental)
The Solution For ERA III Medicine – Heart-Brain Coherence and Experience of Non-Local Mind
A person needs to increase consciousness (knowledge) and intensity of consciousness (wisdom). To Live Beyond 100 healthy and happy advanced meditation and spiritual awakening are essential elements to incorporate into anti-aging routines and practices.
1. Intercessory Prayer.
There are more than 40 major controlled clinical trials of distant intercessory prayer, around half of which show statistically significant results – far more than you would expect by chance. Healing studies are also confirmed in nonhumans – plants, animals, microbes, even biochemical reactions-which show that the healing response in humans cannot possibly be attributed only to the placebo response or the power of positive thinking.
2. Presentiment Experiments.
In the presentiment studies, a subject will be shown either a lovely, serene image or a violent, horrible image on a computer screen. If the violent image is going to be shown, then several seconds prior, the autonomic nervous system generates an exaggerated stress response before the randomized computer program has even selected which type of image will be shown. This is stunning evidence that we unconsciously sense the future. These results have been replicated by various scientists in dozens of studies.
3. Remote Viewing Experiments.
In remote viewing studies, a distant individual is able to receive and record information that is mentally “sent” to them days before the information is sent or even selected by a randomized computer program. Both types of experiments demonstrate the ability to know future information before it happens. These studies are important. They show that precognition, or premonitions, are not just “mere anecdotes,” as
skeptics charge. The odds against a chance explanation in both cases are around a million against one.
4. Ganzfeld Experiments.
A ganzfeld experiment is an assessment used by parapsychologists that they contend can test for extrasensory perception or telepathy. In these experiments, a “sender” attempts to mentally transmit an image to a “receiver” who is in a state of sensory deprivation.
5. Precognition.
The definition includes the supernormal knowledge of future events, with emphasis not upon mentally causing events to occur but upon predicting those the occurrence of which the subject claims has already been determined. In 2011, Daryl Bem published a report of nine experiments in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and showed precognition is scientifically valid. In 2016, Bem et al published another study of 90 experiments from 33 labs in 14 countries which yielded further positive data that exceeded “decisive evidence” in support of precognition.
6. Random Number Generator Influence.
Robert Jahn, former Dean of Engineering at Princeton was well known for experiments on mind-machine interactions. In 1987, Jahn together with Brenda Dunne wrote “Margins of Reality” a result of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) that Dunne ran. Over several years, the PEAR lab built physical and electronic devices known as random event generators, designed to test whether people can influence the physical world with their thoughts. In one test, researchers dropped ball bearings through a series of channels and asked people to try to influence the outcome with their minds.
Jahn and Dunne reported in several books and numerous papers that the operators’ intentions could affect results in what they said was a statistically significant deviation from chance. In other experiments, the lab reported that subjects acquired information about events with which they had no physical connection.
“We did not think we were looking at something weird or paranormal,” Dunne said. “We were looking at something that was entirely normal but was anomalous.” These investigations set Jahn at odds with many colleagues, some of whom objected to any such research on campus.
Each of these 6 areas of the non-local mind gives odds against chance of a billion to one or combined odds against chance that are 1054 to one!
II. Experiential and Personal Evidence for One Mind
1. Saving Others
Larry Dossey begins his book “One Mind” with the story of Wesley Autrey – who saved the life of a young man from certain death in the New York subway. What does that have to do with the One Mind? “Wesley Autrey, 50, a black construction worker and Navy veteran, saw a young man fall onto the subway tracks in Manhattan while having a seizure in January 2007. He instantly jumped onto the tracks and tried to lift him onto the platform, but could not do so in time. As a train approached, Autrey shoved him into the slight depression between the rails and covered him with his own body. The train could not stop in time and several cars passed over the two men before it could be brought to a halt. Autrey was nearly beheaded; he had grease stains from the train’s undercarriage on his cap.” A more recent example which went viral on May 26, 2018 took place in Paris where a Malian man – “Manoudou Gassama” – scaled several floors to save a child dangling from a building in minutes with no concern to himself.
Dossey himself exhibited this behavior as a battalion surgeon in Vietnam in 1969, when he rescued a helicopter pilot from a crash when everyone believed it was going to explode. After the event Dossey wondered why he or anyone else would risk their life to save a perfect stranger? He continues: – “I eventually came across an explanation by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, described by mythologist Joseph Campbell. Schopenhauer believed that at a decisive moment the rescuer identifies so completely with the rescued person that their minds have literally fused; they have become a single mind. Their mental union is so complete that the rescuer is not rescuing someone else, he is essentially rescuing himself. I felt deeply that this explanation described my own experiences in Vietnam.”
In researching my book, I accumulated a number of life-saving stories. They are not just human-to-human events, but they also involve humans rescuing animals, animals rescuing humans, and animals rescuing animals – every possible combination.”
Dossey felt that Schopenhauer was correct: that there is a fusion of apparently separate, individual minds into a single, collective consciousness. In these instances, something larger than individuality takes hold: the One Mind is bridging and uniting individual minds, pushing separation aside in favor of unity and oneness.
2. Telesomatic Events (Communication at a Distance)
One of Larry’s favorite cases is one involving four-year old identical twin girls in Spain in the 1970s, Sylvia and Marta Landa. “When one of the little girls touched her hand to a red-hot iron, she erupted in a major second-degree burn, an actual blister, on her hand. At the same time, miles and miles away, her twin sister, who had no idea what was going on, erupted in the same way on the same hand, the same blister, the same pattern. So this is weird stuff. This is a jaw-dropping, One Mind type of phenomenon.”
3. Savants
Savant is a term that originally literally means “learned one.” These are people who are notorious for having low IQs. This is important because it means that most savants simply cannot learn like you and I would. They cannot acquire information by reading. But in spite of that, they have the most astonishing abilities, in music and math (doing complex calculations almost instantly) and other areas. Their knowledge is extraordinarily narrow but it is incredibly deep. For example, one savant who can’t even understand the questions that he’s asked about how he does all of this, can give you the zip code for any address in the United States. A lot of this knowledge is fairly useless but it’s there. And the question is: how in the world do they know this stuff? They’re not teachable; they can’t read.
Dossey’s hypothesis is that they dip into some domain of information that’s out there, that cannot be acquired by reasonable, commonsense methods of learning.
4. Dreams
Many people, lay folks and scientists have had dreams that resulted in breakthroughs for humanity. Dmitri Mendeleev’s dream of the periodic table that we all studied in school was one such breakthrough. He later reported, “I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. Only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.’ As a result of this dream, the periodic table of the elements was created.”
Here Larry gives us two of his favorites:
I: The Sewing Machine Dream
The sewing machine dream happened to a man named Elias Howe. He was stuck; he couldn’t figure out how to make the thing work. He was trying to put the hole in the needle at the top, where he thought it logically belonged. But he had a dream one night. As he described it, he found himself before a group of savages, who told him that he had 24 hours to come up with the answer to this sewing machine problem. He couldn’t do it, so he tried to run away from the savages, and in the dream he saw their spears raised above him, and they were about to stab him and kill him, when he noticed that there was a little hole in the tip-end of each spear. He woke up, went back to his laboratory and put the hole in the tip of the needle, which had never occurred to him before. That’s how he got the inspiration to put the hole in the tip of the needle, where it has been ever since, through this horrific nightmare.
II. The Founding of Organic Chemistry
Friedrich von Kekule was trying to figure out how the six carbon atoms in the benzene molecule were arranged…This was a world task in science. He dozed before the fire and in his dream he saw a snake eating its tail. And he knew in an instant that the benzene carbon atoms had to be in a circle. He did the refined experiments and found that this was indeed the pattern of the six carbon atoms. This was the founding of organic chemistry, the revelation that the benzene structure was a circle. Or as we call it now, a hexagon, but circular in any case.
5. Connections Between Animals and Humans
I met Rupert Sheldrake when my wife and I enjoyed a weekend together at Larry’s house in Dallas. Rupert has written several books and is most well-known for his theory on “morphogenic fields.”
Sheldrake also created a firestorm of controversy with his very subtle and rigorous experiments with dogs, who seemed to know when their owners were returning. He used a constant video stream that tracked the movement of dogs in the living room or wherever they happened to be in the house. The dogs were known by their owners, or by their caretakers who stayed home, to come to the window or the door, and stand in alert anticipation, just before their owner was about to arrive at home.
Sheldrake thought that there might be something telepathic going on between the returning owner and the animal, and he tried to fake the dogs out by having the owners return at odd times in the day, and by using different modes of travel. He tried to fool the dogs but he couldn’t fool them. Statistically, this was an airtight study. The dogs tended not to make these movements when the owner wasn’t coming, and they certainly did when the owner was just about to return. This seemed to be a One Mind piece of evidence showing the bridging of thoughts or feelings or something between owners and their pets.
6. Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
The concept of a higher self that often forms part of the NDE is an affirmation of One Mind. It is a virtual certainty that some aspect of human consciousness is infinite in space and time, that it is indestructible and immortal. One study found that statistically everyday in the US nearly 800 people have a NDE. Many of these individuals become aware of One Mind and many are able to share their experiences.
7. Reincarnation (Past Lives)
In the field of research on past lives Ian Stevenson MD (1918-2007) professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia investigated thousands of children (on every continent save Antartica) who appeared to remember past lives. Typically, children will begin to speak of past lives between the ages of two and four about experiences they had in a previous life. Between the ages of five and eight, as memories fade the child ceases to speak about a remembered life. In his book, Where Reincarnation and Biology intersect, Stevenson reports 35 cases, including photographs. They show a wide spectrum of physical deformities and birthmarks that seem to be transmitted from one life to another. In addition to memories, birth defects, birthmarks, Stevenson believes that behaviors may be carried over from life to life. The most important consequence of reincarnation is the duality of mind and body. We cannot imagine reincarnation without the belief that minds are associated with bodies during our familiar life, but also at some later time becoming associated with another body. Stevenson’s, “soul bearing” and Lewis Thomas (Director of Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) “biospherical nervous system” believed that consciousness did not disappear at death – both would have been comfortable with the notion of One Mind.
8. Terminal Lucidity
This phenomenon is well described by Marjorie Woollacott on YouTube. She is a neuroscientist who has been researching and teaching at the University of Oregon for 3 decades. In these cases patients who have severe Alzheimer’s or people in comas will often become lucid just before they die. Roughly 5-10% of terminal Alzheimer’s patients become lucid just before they pass on.
Dr.Peter Fenwick did a prospective study on several hundred nursing homes and hospice centers and found that over 80% of them reported at least one or more of these occurrences each year (this was not due to removing drugs from patients at the end of life). Dr. Alexander Balthany is doing a large study the “European Study of Terminal Lucidity” – he explains this using the metaphor of an eclipse – the sun is shining brightly but the sick brain obscures the light and often terminal lucidity patients before dying the sick brain (which is just an organ of the mind) gets out of the way so that the patient can often say goodbye to loved ones.
Despair seems to become a fixture in our modern life. The problems we face are enormous and our efforts so inadequate they often seem futile. We are paralyzed in our ability to think in rational ways. The fuse that trips the whole circuit is a sense of helplessness – how can I make any difference.
Dossey writes, “Only by realizing, at the deepest emotional level, our connections with one another and the Earth itself can we summon the courage necessary to make the tough choices that are required in order to survive. So, this is about staying alive – saving the earth and our own skin. One Mind, its power is revealed when we realize that our combined action with it is not merely additive but exponential. In the One Mind, one plus one no longer makes two, but many. This realization diminishes the “slow-motion relentless sorrow” of individual activities.”
This understanding led Margaret Mead to observe, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Love is a gateway to One Mind because love tempers the forces of isolation, separateness and individuality.
Similarly Alice Walker said, “Anything we love can be saved” – including, I suggest, the earth itself, ourselves, our children, and generations yet unborn. The One Mind facilitates our connectedness and oneness with all else, therefore our love for all else. The entire universe may be suffused by love. It may even be possible to detect rudimentary expressions of love, a kind of proto-love, in the subatomic domain. As we move from there toward systems of increasing complexity, love becomes more recognizable, reaching its fullest expression in humans, with our participation in the One Mind.
Abundant evidence shows that isolation is terrible for health, happiness, and longevity. We are not designed to live apart.
A sense of being connected with all others and with all sentient life has been recognized throughout human history as a source of immense joy and fulfillment.
Unity with others has always been a highly prized goal of the great wisdom traditions.
Recently, I have become interested in the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and believe he may well be birthing ERA III Medicine. I have met Professor Hemal Patel (UCSD), who is heading up a scientific team to document the physical and mental changes that people experience during Dr. Joe Dispenza’s retreats. Professor Patel believes the science, but cannot fully explain how these changes in well-being occur in participants.
As I show in ERA III, gamma EEG waves (higher frequency brain waves) appear to be a more recent evolutionary development in us, which causes a heightened sense of awareness, consciousness, attention, and energy related to more creative, transcendental, or mystical experiences—whatever is happening in your inner world becomes much more real to you than many experiences you have had in your outer world.
Dr. Dispenza shows how the pineal and pituitary glands are key players, as he writes: “In all of my research about the pineal gland, I’ve evolved my own understanding of it into the following definition: The pineal gland is a crystalline superconductor that sends, as well as receives, information through the transduction of energetic vibrational signals (frequencies beyond the senses, also known as the quantum field) and translates it into biological tissue (the brain and the mind) in the form of meaningful imagery, the same way as an antenna translates different channels onto a TV screen.”
It seems that the mitochondria play a key role in all 3 ERAs of Medicine and have been intimately associated with our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being at every stage of human development and awareness.
Recently, I have become interested in the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and believe he may well be birthing ERA III Medicine. I have met Professor Hemal Patel (UCSD), who is heading up a scientific team to document the physical and mental changes that people experience during Dr. Joe Dispenza’s retreats. Professor Patel believes the science but cannot fully explain how these changes in wellbeing occur in participants.
As I show in ERA III, gamma EEG waves (higher frequency brain waves) appear to be a more recent evolutionary development in us, which causes a heightened sense of awareness, consciousness, attention, and energy related to more creative, transcendental, or mystical experiences—whatever is happening in your inner world becomes much more real to you than many experiences you have had in your outer world.
Dr. Dispenza shows how the pineal and pituitary glands are key players, as he writes:
“In all of my research about the pineal gland, I’ve evolved my own understanding of it into the following definition: The pineal gland is a crystalline superconductor that sends, as well as receives, information through the transduction of energetic vibrational signals (frequencies beyond the senses, also known as the quantum field) and translates it into biological tissue (the brain and the mind) in the form of meaningful imagery, the same way as an antenna translates different channels onto a TV screen.”
It seems that the mitochondria play a key role in all 3 ERAs of Medicine and have been intimately associated with our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being at every stage of human development and awareness.