by Michael Towsey
Introduction
It will be helpful to begin my reply with a personal disclosure. I am by training a biologist and computer scientist. My career of the past 40 years as an experimental scientist has given me an appreciation of the scientific method. I embrace its discipline, its commitment to honest investigation and to the primacy of experience over theory. Science offers society a robust defence (although not its only defence) against dogma and superstition. During the same 40 years I have also practised astaunga yoga, with sufficient dedication that it influenced my life in three ways. First, the regular practice of meditation gave me access to states of consciousness that, while they may have physical correlates, do not appear to have physical origins. Second, I read a sophisticated philosophy that acknowledges physical reality but also speaks of mental worlds. Third, I was introduced to a culture in which the ability to ‘read minds’ and ‘know-atadistance’ is not considered impossible.(continue…)