Pioneering thinkers who point us towards a non-materialistic explanation of consciousness

As long ago as 1978, Itzhak Bentov, the Czechoslovakia-born Israeli-American scientist and inventor, who became an innovator in the field of bio-medical engineering in the USA, suggested that consciousness is the common uniting element of all creation, and that through this link all things are in permanent contact.

His was a holistic model of the universe that encompassed not only physical, observable objects but also the distant universe and other ‘realities’ (Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the mechanics of consciousness, Itzhak Bentov, Wildwood House, 1978).

For most of the 20th century, consciousness was excluded from serious scientific research, but since the 1990s it has become an expanding arena of study, although findings remain far from conclusive about the nature of consciousness, frequently referred to as ‘the last great mystery of science’.

According to Bentov, who was killed, aged 55, in the American Airlines plane crash at Chicago in 1979 (the worst such crash in the USA), consciousness evolves to the ‘absolute’ which is the source of all consciousness. Matter, composed of quanta of energy, is the vibrating, changing component of pure consciousness. The absolute is fixed, manifest and invisible.