Book Award of the Parapsychological Association,2017
Winner of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 2017 (Spiritual)
First Place, Nautilus Book Awards 2017 (Science, Cosmology and Expanding Consciousness)
First Place, International Excellence Mind, Body Spirit Book Awards, 2017 (Human Consciousness)
Bronze Medal, Feathered Quill Book Awards, 2017 (Best Religious/Spiritual)
First Place, Great Northwest Book Festival, 2017 (Spiritual Books)
First Place, New England Book Festival, 2016 (Spiritual Books)
As a neuroscientist, Marjorie Woollacott had no doubts that the brain was a purely physical entity controlled by chemicals and electrical pulses. When she experimented with meditation for the first time, however, her entire world changed. Woollacott’s journey through years of meditation has made her question the reality she built her career upon and has forced her to ask what human consciousness really is. Infinite Awareness pairs Woollacott’s research as a neuroscientist with her self-revelations about the mind’s spiritual power. Between the scientific and spiritual worlds, she breaks open the definition of human consciousness to investigate the existence of a non-physical and infinitely powerful mind.
Marjorie Hines Woollacott, PhD, has been a neuroscience professor at the University of Oregon for more than three decades and a meditator for almost four. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and she coauthored a popular textbook for health professionals and has written more than 180 peer-reviewed research articles—several of which were on meditation, the topic that motivated her to write Infinite Awareness.
Foreword, by Pim van Lommel
1. The Making of a Renegade
2. To Examine a Quiet Mind
3. An Unaccountable Energy
4. Consciousness, Viewed as Bottom-Up
5. The Top-Down Perspective
6. Or Is Consciousness on a Continuum?
7. Awareness without a Brain
8. Following a Near-Death Experience
9. Consciousness after Death
10. Awareness and Healing
11. The Healing Intention
12. Research into Consciousness
13. The Consciousness-Brain Interface
Those interested in the expanding vista of twenty-first century science will find her exploration engrossing and encouraging.
— Light of Consciousness: Journal of Spiritual Awakening
This is a courageous book that adds to the growing evidence that we must transform and expand our scientific view of consciousness to postulate its primacy and recover our own human dignity in the process.
— Network Review
Extensively referenced by chapter, plus a large bibliography and a good index, I really do recommend this book as it is a pleasure to read and she may well be correct in her interpretation of our existence.
— Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
One of the most deeply ingrained myths in modern western science is that the brain creates consciousness out of purely physical matter. This lies at the heart of conventional science, yet no neuroscientist on earth has even the vaguest notion of how that linkage might work. Neuroscientist Marjorie Woollacott recounts her own fascinating lifelong journey in pursuit of deeper understanding of the relationship between mind and brain, with the sharp, probing intellect and open mind of true scientific inquiry. Her beautifully rendered and personal story of discovery mirrors what is happening globally as science finally begins to address the deepest mystery known to all of human thought—the nature of consciousness itself. This emergent revolution in scientific thinking and acceptance of the primacy of consciousness will fundamentally change how we view our own individual lives, humanity, and the universe. The implications are world-changing!
— Eben Alexander, MD, author of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife and The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People are Proving the Afterlife
This remarkably engaging account by a prominent brain scientist of her personal spiritual odyssey both describes and contributes to a rapidly emerging revolution in how we think about our minds, our selves, and our existence.
— Edward F. Kelly, professor of research, Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia, and co-editor of Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality
Marjorie Woollacott has written an intellectual adventure story of the highest order. Drawing on her own experience as a highly regarded neuroscientist and a long-term meditator, she skillfully and engagingly invites readers to reassess the common scholarly prejudice against parapsychology. In doing so, she brings us to the threshold of a genuine paradigm shift in thinking about the mind and the brain.
— Thomas B. Coburn, visiting scholar, Brown University; president emeritus, Naropa University
Marjorie Woollacott takes us on a voyage of discovery as she integrates her neuroscientific expertise and meditative insight. A candid, lively exploration in which scientific curiosity and spiritual seeking nourish each other, and in which mind is revealed to be much more than brain.
— Paul Marshall, PhD, BSc, RGN, RMN
Marjorie Woollacott has written a gripping account of her evolution after an unexpected experience forced her to question her neurophysiological training and explore the scientific research on expanded consciousness. What she learned challenged her basic assumptions about who we are, and it may permanently change yours as well.
— Bruce Greyson, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia Health System
Marjorie Woollacott provides an admirably lucid survey of the challenges various phenomena pose to the materialist paradigm, leading persuasively to a new worldview in which consciousness is primary. It is a wonderful introduction to this material, one filled not just with important information, but also with heart and considerable wisdom.
— Jim B. Tucker, Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia Health System
