Teaching about "extraordinary knowing"

Psychology professor Kathleen D. Noble writes: “In 1975 at the age of 25, I suffered an anaphylactic reaction that precipitated three cardiac arrests and three near-death experiences that completely changed my life. Prior to these events I had studied yoga and meditation for several years and I’d had many incidences of “extraordinary knowing” and “synchronicity” as described, respectively, by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer (Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind, 2007) and Carl Jung (“Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle,” Collected Works, 1952), all of which had led me to wonder about the nature, range, and scope of consciousness. But none of these incidents prepared me for the vast, sentient, multidimensional, compassionate, and purposeful reality that I encountered during my excursions into death.”

After earning a Ph.D. and teaching for several years Noble created a course on consciousness for university students that also involved reading Raymond Moody (Life After Life, 1975) and an essay by Pim van Lommel (“Near-death Experience, Consciousness, and the Brain,” World Futures , 2006).

A study of students who completed the course “was transformation for most students,” Noble writes, as by “the end of the course they recognized that there is much more to consciousness and to reality than the materialist mindset admits. For most, this was an  earth shaking realization. Yet as their core beliefs began to change, students reported an accompanying sense of excitement and curiosity that most said they rarely experienced in their academic or personal lives. Studying consciousness enabled them to explore aspects of themselves and of life that were otherwise neglected in higher education and elsewhere.”

As students talked with “friends, family, partners, and professors” about the course, “many returned to class shocked by the negative and ill-informed reactions that they encountered.

On the basis of student evaluations of the course, Noble writes: “Undergraduates who had largely and unconsciously absorbed contemporary materialist biases toward consciousness were able, in a short period of time, to open their minds to a wealth of information that reveals these assumptions to be wrong. They left the course feeling more empowered, optimistic, and hopeful about their individual lives because they saw new possibilities for helping to create a healthier and saner world.”

Kathleen D. Noble, John Joseph Crotty, Aarshin Karande, Alexa Lavides, Andrezej Montaño, “Why Consciousness? Teaching and Learning at the Leading Edge of Mind Science,” NeuroQuantology, June 2016, Vol. 14, Issue 2, 175-192.