James M. Corrigan
The goal of my writing is to promote an unconstrained science founded upon an inclusive cognitive frame that allows us to go beyond the inherited limitations of mechanical materialism. To advance that goal, I present a novel paradigm for understanding ourselves and our world, which is called Responsive Naturing, to replace the physical causality that modern science currently reduces all explanations to. This novel paradigm developed out of my lifelong contemplative practice using a singular meditation technique, called Great Responsiveness Meditation, which I also write about and teach.
Responsive Naturing provides a sound foundation for veridical science, so that both science and spirituality can be founded upon a common understanding of ‘how things work’. This empowers us in ways that our disjointed and parochial schools of thought lock us out of completely, opening up new possibilities, and methods of looking at problems, and finding solutions, across disciplines.
I have been an entrepreneur, inventor, an activist with a lifelong involvement in environmental and compassionate campaigns, a local elected official serving a community of 8,000, an award-winning university lecturer, philosopher, contemplative scientist, and a daily meditator for over 60 years. I have a doctoral-level education in Philosophy and will be defending my doctoral dissertation in 2024 at Stony Brook University. As well, I have had a 30 year career in Software Design focused on automated software development, where I was first confronted with the unsolvable enigma — from within our current cognitive frame of mechanical materialism — of human creativity.
I strongly believe that only by changing how we think about our problems, and how we relate to each other and our shared world, will we be able to overcome the extreme challenges that we face today. We can't fix problems with the old way of thinking and acting that caused those problems to begin with.
“Our belief in a world external to ourselves, filled with things and people that are not us, is an overwhelming fact of our existence. But similarly, our absolute certainty that there is more to reality than just this physical world is a spiritual fact that bears more truth than any other in our lives. We seek to explain this spiritual nature as some metaphysical reality, accepting the constraint of Science that will not allow for any usurpation of the actuality of the physical universe. And we flounder trying. Once we allow our thoughts to be forced into some metaphysical realm, we find ourselves stripped of that single most important validation of spiritual truth – the undeniable presence at the heart of our existence. This is the spiritual truth that we seek, and it is not to be found in the physical reality of Science. The physical reality of Science is to be found in it! “An Introduction to Awareness” is a philosophical journey that takes the reader into the heart of this pure presence of nondual reality – a reality in which the spiritual is not metaphysical, but actual, in which physical reality is 'a machine in the ghost'. This pure presence that we cannot deny is the awareness that lies at the heart of our experiences and thoughts. This irrefutable truth is used as a starting point in a processual analysis of awareness, and of our ideas about existence and self, leading to a clear understanding of the nondual nature of reality as the pure presence of non-individuated Awareness.”