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sight. While Bergson’s perspective does not deny that psychological, cultural, and biological factors can crucially influence the particular form that various nonordinary phenomena take (in fact, he would insist that this is the case), nonetheless , Bergson’s work suggests that various transcultural and/or transpersonal factors may also be operative in the genesis of these types of experiences. (Bergson ’s philosophical framework also provides an ontological basis for understanding a variety of more prosaic modes of consciousness that are also often not highly valued in Western culture, perhaps in part because they appear to be trans-empirical in nature—for example, intuition and empathy. His work also suggests an alternative and fertile way to understand the genesis of crowd contagion , possession states, and certain forms of mental illness.) The final chapter of section 2 focuses on how Bergson’s theories on psi phenomena were closely linked to his speculations on the possible survival of personal consciousness after the death of the physical body. If Bergson is correct and our consciousness, even now, has a degree of independence from material reality; if our brain does not actually store memories, but instead offers those memories an opportunity to help us to interact effectively with material reality; if there is, in fact, reliable data that indicates that it is possible even now for our consciousness to transcend the boundaries of our physical form (e.g., the numerous critically sophisticated and well-documented studies on telepathy, clairvoyance, near-death experiences, and so on), then we have every right to rationally conclude that there is a high probability that our own consciousness does not dissolve when our physical body dies.5 In the final rumination of section 2, amplifying Bergson’s rather sparse discussion of postmortem survival, I draw upon the implications of his broader work on the nature of consciousness and offer a series of suggestions about how we might envision the specific “textures” of the afterlife—positing that Bergson’s insights into how we even now create numerous interacting yet highly pluralistic “worlds of experience” to inhabit might well be applicable after the death of the physical body as well. As has perhaps become apparent, the thrust of section 2 (and in fact of Living Consciousness as a whole) in many ways moves in the direction of an examination of a range of topics that are generally avoided (or more seriously, mocked) within the academy—for example, psi phenomena, mysticism, and postmortem survival. However, no serious student of Bergson’s work can deny that this is precisely the direction that Bergson’s own scholarship took (even if, tellingly, it would be very difficult to discern this telos of Bergson’s work in many, if not most, of the recent academic discussions on Bergson’s thought). Bergson’s early work can easily be understood and examined on its own terms, divorced from these more controversial topics of discussion and (as noted earlier) can be profitably applied to numerous and important contemporary philosophical and psychological concerns (e.g., the nature of consciousness, the mind/body problem, and so on). As has been made clear, one of the central goals INTRODUCTION xxxv of this book is to illuminate and underscore the contemporary applicability of Bergson’s thought—especially the ideas expressed in Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory. These early texts are the living seed of all of Bergson’s later (and at least in his own time period, more well-known works, that is, Creative Evolution and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion). My hope is that this text, at the very least, offers a clear and helpful elucidation of these two foundational works. Nonetheless, I would also (in my more optimistic moments) like to hope that Living Consciousness provides something more: a glimpse into the ways in which Bergson’s metaphysics and epistemology can offer us an intriguing, and to my mind exciting, way to philosophically make sense of a variety of phenomena that are all too often not taken seriously in contemporary academic discussions (e.g., intuition, telepathy, clairvoyance, postmortem survival). I would also (again, in my more optimistic moments) like to imagine that this examination of Bergson’s work can underscore the ways in which Western philosophy, in various ways, was perhaps somewhat premature to pronounce that we now live in a postmetaphysical world. As the subtitle of Living Consciousness indicates, Bergson’s vision of reality was resolutely metaphysical (it was also, I would submit, truly visionary in...

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