Peter Russell (born May 7, 1946) is a British author of books on consciousness, spiritual awakening and their role in the future development of humanity. He has degrees in physics, psychology, and computer science from the University of Cambridge (UK) and has studied eastern and western philosophies of the mind. May 7 is the 127th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (128th in leap years). ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... A spiritual awakening is a religious experience involving a realization or opening to a sacred dimension of reality. ... The University of Cambridge (often called Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Western philosophy is a line of related philosophical thinking, beginning in Ancient Greece, and including the predominant philosophical thinking of Europe and its former colonies, and continues to this day. ... Mind refers to the collective aspects of human intellect and consciousness that originate in the brain and which are manifest in some combination of thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination. ...

In The Global Brain Awakens (2000), an update of The Global Brain (1983), Russell's most popular book, he opens with part one on the Gaia Hypothesis. In part two, he discusses orders of evolution going from the evolution of the early universe during the Big Bang, through biological evolution, and finishing with "the emerging social superorganism." In part three, he discusses "inner evolution" and the "high-synergy society". In some ways, this book echoes the optimistic dot-com zeitgeist. This article is about the year 2000. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Gaia hypothesis is a class of scientific models of the geo-biosphere in which life as a whole fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by helping to create an environment on Earth suitable for its continuity. ... According to the Big Bang theory, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state (bottom). ... A speculative phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. ... A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms. ... Synergy or synergism (from the Greek synergos meaning working together, circa 1660) refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than the sum of the effects each is able to create independently. ... Dot-com (also dotcom or redundantly dot. ... Look up Zeitgeist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

In From Science to God, Russell evokes Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift to argue that science is on the threshold of a new metaparadigm. Russell disputes scientific materialism and says science will come to "embrace spirit and -- dare we say it -- God".¹ He likens current efforts to explain consciousness in terms of neuropsychology to the convoluted epicycles before the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Russell's views are in sharp contrast to materialists like Daniel Dennett, author of Consciousness Explained. Depending on one's point of view, Russell's perspective could be argued as either protoscientific or pseudoscientific. Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... Paradigm shift is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describe the process and result of a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. ... In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ... The English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath. ... Michelangelos depiction of God in the painting Creation of the Sun and Moon in the Sistine Chapel Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, one of the manifestations of the ultimate reality or God in Hinduism This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ... Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes. ... In the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the epicycle (literally: on the cycle in Greek) was a geometric model to explain the variations in speed and direction of the apparent motion of the Moon, Sun, and planets. ... Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was an astronomer who provided the first modern formulation of a heliocentric (sun-centered) theory of the solar system in his epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). ... Radio telescopes are among many different tools used by astronomers Astronomy (Greek: αστρονομία = άστρον + νόμος, astronomia = astron + nomos, literally, law of the stars) is the science of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earths atmosphere, such as stars, planets, comets, auroras, galaxies, and the cosmic background radiation. ... Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston) is a prominent American philosopher. ... Cover of Consciousness Explained Consciousness Explained (published 1991) is a book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett which attempts to explain how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. ... For Wikipedias policy on avoiding bias, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Phrenology is regarded today as being a classic example of pseudoscience. ...

In the field of creativity enhancement, Russell has advocated the use of mind maps. Creative (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. ... A mind map (or mind-map) is a diagram used to represent words and ideas linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. ...

Books by Peter Russell

• The TM Technique (1976) -- on Transcendental Meditation.
• The Upanishads (illustrated 1978), (2003), with Alistair Shearer. Translation and commentary on the Upanishads.
• The Brain Book (1979)
• The Creative Manager (1992)
• Waking Up in Time: Finding Inner Peace in Times of Accelerating Change (1992). Updated edition of The White Hole in Time (1992).
• The Global Brain Awakens: Our Next Evolutionary Leap, (1995). Updated version of The Global Brain (1983) which was published as The Awakening Earth (1982) in the UK.
• The Consciousness Revolution (1999), with Stanislav Grof and Ervin Laszlo.
• From Science to God: A Physicist's Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness, (2002).

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Upanishads (; Devanagari ) are part of the Hindu Shruti scriptures which primarily discuss meditation and philosophy and are seen as religious instructions by most forms of Hinduism. ... Stanislav Grof (born 1931 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneering researcher into the use of altered states of consciousness for purposes of healing, growth, and insight. ... Dr. Ervin Laszlo is a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, founder of the Club of Budapest, and editor of World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution. ...

External links

• Peter Russell's home page
• ¹ A New Superparadigm? - arguing for a new spiritual basis for reality to supersede current scientific materialism
• Peter Russell MP3 audio - from Shift in Action, sponsored by Institute of Noetic Sciences