a strange cosmos
Modern Science, Noetics and the Re-Enchantment of Reality
What if consciousness is not something the brain produces, but something woven into the fabric of reality itself? A Strange Cosmos begins with a simple problem: there are experiences and phenomena that sit awkwardly within the assumption that consciousness is entirely produced by the brain. Near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, precognition, presentiment, remote viewing and other anomalous phenomena have been investigated for decades, with results that remain contested, uneven and often difficult to interpret. Yet dismissing the anomalies doesn’t make the underlying questions disappear.
What if the problem isn’t necessarily the phenomena, but the model of reality we are using to understand them?
The book follows that question from the edges of consciousness research into the strange territory of modern physics. Quantum phenomena challenge our classical intuitions about matter, locality, causality and information. Holographic approaches suggest that the relationships between parts and wholes may be far more fundamental than our everyday experience implies. And noetic research asks whether consciousness itself might need to be understood as something more than an emergent property of biological matter. From these converging lines of inquiry emerges a possibility: that consciousness may be fundamental, that the physical world may be an expression of a deeper informational order, and that we may participate in reality rather than merely observe it.
This is not an attempt to prove a new theory of everything, but rather an invitation to reconsider the assumptions beneath our existing picture of reality. And to ask what becomes possible when consciousness is placed back at the centre of the question.
What the book explores
I. Weird Phenomena
The Case for Non-Local Consciousness
Some experiences seem to challenge the assumption that consciousness is entirely produced by the brain and confined to the individual body. Near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, precognition, presentiment, sudden savant abilities, remote viewing and telepathy each raise different questions about the limits of perception, memory, time and mind. None provides a simple proof of non-local consciousness, and each demands careful scrutiny. But if even some of these phenomena are genuine, they may point towards a reality in which consciousness is not quite as local, bounded or brain-dependent as we have assumed.
II. QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS
What if physical reality itself is less classical than we think?
If consciousness is not entirely confined to the brain, where might it fit within the deeper structure of physical reality? Quantum physics offers a radically different picture of the universe from the solid, local and deterministic world of everyday experience — one shaped by superposition, entanglement, contextuality and non-local correlations. Theories of quantum consciousness ask whether phenomena at this level might play a role in conscious experience. But the deeper question is more provocative: could quantum physics be revealing something fundamental about the relationship between consciousness, information and physical reality itself?
III. THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE
What sort of universe would make a non-local consciousness intelligible?
If consciousness is not entirely contained within the brain, we need some way of thinking about how the local relates to the whole. The holographic principle offers one intriguing way into that question. In its scientific formulation, it suggests that information describing a volume of space may be encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary. More broadly, holographic approaches invite us to consider a reality in which the parts are not as separate from the whole as they appear, and in which information and relationships may be more fundamental than the objects we perceive. Applied to consciousness, this suggests a different possibility: rather than imagining consciousness as something generated inside an isolated biological system, we might understand individual experience as a localised expression of a deeper informational and relational order.
IV. REALITY AS INFORMATION
What if consciousness isn't something that happens to information, but is intrinsic to the informational structure of reality itself?
Quantum theory gives us a physical world in which information behaves in ways that defy many of our classical intuitions. Holographic approaches push the question further, suggesting that information about a system can be distributed in ways that do not map neatly onto our ordinary experience of space, locality and separate objects. Together, these ideas invite a deeper question: what if matter and energy are not the deepest level of reality, but relatively stable expressions of underlying informational and relational patterns? If so, consciousness might not be something that mysteriously appears once matter reaches a sufficient level of complexity. It could instead be intrinsic to the informational order from which physical reality emerges, with individual conscious experience arising through the localisation and organisation of that deeper structure within biological systems. This shifts the question from how does matter produce consciousness? to something more fundamental: what if consciousness, information and physical reality are different aspects of the same underlying order?
V. THE PARTICIPATORY COSMOS
If consciousness is fundamental and reality is relational, what does it mean to be a person within it?
The preceding chapters lead towards a radically different picture of the relationship between consciousness and the physical world. Rather than being produced exclusively by biological brains, consciousness may be a fundamental feature of reality, while individual experience emerges through the brain’s ability to localise, filter and organise a deeper informational and relational order. If that possibility is taken seriously, the implications extend far beyond the question of how consciousness works. They reach into some of the most intimate questions of human existence: Who are we? What is the nature of time? What happens when the body dies? How much agency do we have? And what does it mean to participate in reality rather than simply observe it?
VI. RE-ENCHANTING REALITY
What happens when we stop seeing ourselves as detached observers of an inert universe?
Re-enchantment does not mean abandoning science for superstition, or returning to a pre-scientific picture of the world. It means asking whether the materialist account of reality has become too narrow to contain everything we know about consciousness, experience and the universe we inhabit. If consciousness is fundamental, if information and relationship are woven into the structure of reality, and if conscious beings participate in rather than merely observe the world, then the cosmos begins to look very different. We are no longer isolated minds inside a meaningless machine. We are local expressions of a larger whole, embedded within relationships we do not fully perceive and participating in a reality that may, in turn, participate with us. This changes the questions we ask about consciousness, meaning, agency, death and our place in the universe. It also changes what it might mean to be human. The re-enchantment of reality is therefore not a retreat from reason, but an expansion of what we are willing to consider real.
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◦ essays exploring the nature of reality and consciousness through altered states, anomalous experience, high strangeness + mind-matter edge cases || drawing on insights from a holographic universe model, psychology + ancient esoteric traditions ◦
In my work I explore consciousness, anomalous experience, and high strangeness using modern science, psychology, and esoteric traditions to bring these perspectives into dialogue for better understanding the world we inhabit.
My aim to answer three questions:
- Who are we?
- What kind of world do we inhabit?
- And how can we participate in it more consciously and effectively?