Panpsychism, the ancient doctrine that consciousness is universal, offers some lessons in how to think about subjective experience today

John Cage’s 4’33″ is commonly described as “four and a half minutes of silence,” but in fact it’s the opposite — Cage hoped to lead the audience to hear the ambient sounds of the concert hall as music, to accept as art sounds that they wouldn’t normally consider in that way.

When spiritually oriented people are exposed to the information that has been provided, they show a measurable elevation of consciousness. Before and after each lecture, the consciousness level of the audience is calibrated, and it generally shows an increase, on the average, of between ten and forty points for the audience as a whole. This may vary individually from a low of four points to as high as hundreds of points...