Mind Beyond Matter: How the Non-Material Self Explains Consciousness and Completes Our Reality – Interview with Dr. Gavin Rowland
- Donika Mishineva
- Jul 6, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 18
What if it turned out that we weren't just bodies with brains, but embodied souls, and that this explained a whole lot about our psychology and the fundamental nature of reality?
Cosmologists now agree that two thirds of the universe is invisible and non-material. They call this invisible substance dark energy. Dark energy offers new opportunities for the investigation of the age-old question of the nature of mind. The problem is, the mind sciences haven't yet caught up with the possibilities of this new cosmology, and are still trying, unsuccessfully, to prove that the mind is the product of the material brain.
In Mind Beyond Matter, Dr Gavin Rowland tackles perhaps the greatest scientific mystery of all - the problem of consciousness. He analyses the subject in depth and finds convincing evidence that the mind is a non-material thing. In the process, he develops a new science of the non-material, and a new understanding of the mind, of mental illness, of spirituality and of God.
I would like to introduce you the author of the book Mind Beyond Matter: How the Non-Material Self Can Explain the Phenomenon of Consciousness and Complete Our Understanding of Reality, Dr. Gavin Rowland, a general medical practitioner in Australia with a special interest in mental health. He is a published author in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research Oct 2016, а guest on the radio program "But I Feel Good" with Jacqui Chaplin, and participant at the 2016 Science of Consciousness conference, Tucson, Arizona.
Dr. Gavin Rowland believes that
"... dark energy holds the solution to an understanding of all things mental. That includes not only the basic questions of consciousness, but an understanding of emotions, mental illness, and spirituality. Changing our understanding of the fundamentals of reality can change our view of everyday reality in powerful ways."
Could dark energy be the missing ingredient in our search for an understanding of minds? Could dark energy be the stuff of consciousness itself? Mind Beyond Matter is an exploration of this possibility.
1
Dr. Rowland, what motivated you to explore the idea that the mind is nonmaterial and interacts with the physical brain, and why do you think these concepts have been overlooked in current scientific inquiry?
In my opinion, inquiry into the big questions has become very limited and conservative. I wanted to look at approaches that are implied by what has been discovered so far but are being neglected. I have proposed that the mind is a nonmaterial thing that interacts with the material brain, and I have also proposed that there is a dimension of constructiveness within space and time.
2
How does your theory explain the workings of the mind?
Because of this dimension, our mind has a destructive-constructive polarity to it. The degree to which it is destructive or constructive has a lot to do with our formative experiences and a lot to do with our current circumstances. It’s a long story as to how I get to this level of explanation – it’s towards the end of the book. This is where the theory really starts to pay off.
3
What role do past experiences play in mental health, and how does your theory challenge the current models of mental illness?
People with mental illnesses know that their conditions have a lot to do with their past and present circumstances, and yet the current model of mental illness tells them that these problems are biological conditions of the brain. I’m a medical practitioner and I don’t discount biological factors, but the additional layers of complexity added by my theory lead to a deeper understanding of many questions - of mental health, mental illness, free will and good vs evil.
4
How has the reception of your book Mind Beyond Matter been, and what challenges have you encountered?
Of those who have read the book, the reception has been excellent. It’s not an easy read, so some people get stuck in the early chapters. Amid the ‘experts’ of the field, my work has been completely ignored. This is a shame. I make use of a nonmaterial substance called dark energy, which has been part of our standard understanding of the universe for the past twenty years. To date, there has been no work, apart from mine, to incorporate the possibilities of dark energy into the big questions.
5
Why do you think modern science tends to ignore non-material explanations, and how does this affect the study of consciousness?
Partly, yes. It seems that if you want to be a credible theorist, you have to come up with explanations that are entirely material. Nonmaterial is pretty much taboo in science. So because new things to measure seem to be drying up, the popular explanations are that the material structure that would explain everything has to be too big or too small for us to observe. So on the big side, we have multiverses and on the small side, we have string theory and so forth. In the science of consciousness, it has become popular for theorists to say that then nature of mind is hiding somewhere material – in the complexity of the brain, or as a fundamental property of matter. But none of these approaches pay off in any deeper explanation of the mind. They are more ways of ‘explaining away’ our problems.
6
Where do you see your theory going in the future, and what changes would you like to see in the scientific community?
I’m happy to leave it out there for now. I published in 2015 and nothing is new since then. But I’m still in my 40’s so hopefully within my lifetime things will change.
* * *
The book Mind Beyond Matter: How the Non-Material Self Can Explain the Phenomenon of Consciousness and Complete Our Understanding of Reality is available as an ebook and paperback on the author's website and on Amazon. You can also grab a print edition from major online bookshops. Enjoy!
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