Among the most profound questions we confront are the nature of what and who we are as conscious beings, and how the human mind relates to the rest of what we consider reality. For millennia, philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers have attempted answers, perhaps none more meaningful today than those offered by neuroscience and by Buddhism. The encounter between these two worldviews has spurred ongoing conversations about what science and Buddhism can teach each other about mind and reality.

In Mind Beyond Brain, the neuroscientist David E. Presti, with the assistance of other distinguished researchers, explores how evidence for anomalous phenomena--such as near death experiences, apparent memories of past lives, apparitions, experiences associated with death, and other so-called psi or paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition--can influence the Buddhism-science conversation. Presti describes the extensive but frequently unacknowledged history of scientific investigation into these phenomena, demonstrating its relevance to questions about consciousness and reality. The new perspectives opened up, if we are willing to take evidence of such often off-limits topics seriously, offer significant challenges to dominant explanatory paradigms and raise the prospect that we may be poised for truly revolutionary developments in the scientific investigation of mind. Mind Beyond Brain represents the next level in the science and Buddhism dialogue.

Mind Beyond Brain Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal, David E. Presti, Columbia University Press, Paperback, 2018, 213 pp, $25.00

David E. Presti is a teaching professor of neurobiology, psychology, and cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley. He also teaches neuroscience to Buddhist monks and nuns in India and Bhutan. He is the author of Foundational Concepts in Neuroscience: A Brain-Mind Odyssey (2016).

CONTENTS: Mind Beyond Brain Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal
Foreword GESHE TENZING WANGYAL RINPOCHE		ix
Prologue: Deepening the Dialogue DAVID E. PRESTI and EDWARD F. KELLY		xiii
1	Scientific Revolution and the Mind-Matter Relation DAVID E. PRESTI	1
2	Near-Death Experiences BRUCE GREYSON	22
3	Reports of Past-Life Memories JIM B. TUCKER	45
4	Mediums, Apparitions, and Deathbed Experiences EMILY WILLIAMS KELLY	69
5	Paranormal Phenomena, the Siddhis, and an Emerging Path Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality EDWARD F. KELLY	91
6	An Expanded Conception of Mind DAVID E. PRESTI	121
Notes		147
Bibliography		173
Acknowledgments		195
Contributors		197
Index		201