When you turn on your television, the show that streams out is not being created or made or produced by the television. Instead it is coming from a signal somewhere else. If the antenna is damaged, the show might be fuzzy because the machinery that is receiving the signal is damaged. This is a really general metaphor that Mark Gober, author of The End to Upside Down Thinking uses to represent the fact that consciousness is not localized to the brain.

Why does it matter? Why is everyone so bent on grasping, identifying, and describing consciousness? This new book is another piece of the collective consciousness puzzle humans have been piecing together for ages. It matters because the way we view reality, interact with one another, live our lives- these things are all changed by our perception of creation and consciousness. We have so much information available to us, but we’ve reached a point in time where the noise doesn’t matter if the source isn’t clear, on a very micro, as well as macro scale.

What’s Real and What’s Fake?

Over the past decade, neuroscience has taken off. The brain is the technology of the twenty-first century, and while we are mapping out the synapses and processes, there is still so much we don’t know. And one of those missing pieces is whether or not consciousness resides in the brain, or within human beings at all. In his book, Gober takes a very strong stance saying, “Consciousness creates all material reality. Biological processes do not create consciousness. This conceptual breakthrough turns traditional scientific thinking upside down.”  Again we might find ourselves wondering why this matters, why we are stuck asking whether the egg or chicken came first, but the implications of this reversal in thinking are actually huge.

Global Disarray Points to Meaning

It doesn’t take much brain power to figure out that the state of our world, as we know it, is in absolute chaos. Sure, some of that is the exposure we have to events happening around the world, in real time, but things are pretty messy overall. This global disarray, as pointed out by Gober, can be linked to a fundamental misunderstanding of our reality. Collectively, we are so out of touch with what is real and what is fake, and this imbalance is creating more and more imbalance.

Are Politics Preventing Us From Evolving?

Not just government politics, or our political economy- but in science, in medicine, in technology, are we being held back? The short answer is yes. The implications, for an expert of just about any discipline, to step away from the popularly held beliefs of their field, are wide-ranging. It is damn-near career suicide to go against the grain of the greats of each industry, of each breakthrough, of each widely held belief system.

We Are Out of Time

Alternative therapies are also growing in popularity, and with that growth, there are also mounting naysayers. For every potential solution to a problem you may have, there are at least 10 people on every side of the argument telling you why you should or should not go this route. And we don’t have the time anymore to vet the sources, to know for ourselves, and to discern what noise is real and relevant and what isn’t.

Gober explores compelling scientific evidence from a diverse set of disciplines, ranging from psychic phenomena, to near-death experiences, to quantum physics, an approach that is sure to ruffle feathers across plenty of mediums.

Everyday Decisions Will Be Impacted

And this is how change really happens. Most change is in the day-to-day events and activities, which in turn create ripples throughout our own timelines, as well as in our interactions with others. This book aims to shift our outlook, to reshape our views on human potential, to change the way we treat one another, to recognize the consciousness that drives us all, and to create questions we should all consider about consciousness.

Is This How We Change the World?

“General readers will find comfort in the implied worldview, which will impact their happiness and everyday decisions related to business, health and politics.” For the entrepreneurs and designers who frequent this column, who go out in the world and create pathways for change, I encourage you to read this. I found myself both encouraged, and questioning reality as I know it, something that doesn’t happen often. If consciousness is as Gober, and his team of experts, describes it, perhaps the way we create change in the world is through raising our own consciousness, therefore contributing to the rising collective innovation too.