ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the supernatural in terms of “Extraordinary Knowing,” exemplified in psi experiences and altered states of consciousness (ASC) that are used for the purposes of divination and healing in shamanic practices around the globe. The authors attempt to avoid both materialist and dualist frameworks in presenting a monistic interactionism view based on quantum accounts of the relationship between consciousness and the physical world. This trans-materialist perspective considers psi phenomena such as extrasensory perception to be the result of natural evolutionary processes in complex adaptive systems (CAS) that involve implicit and implicate information processing at quantum-classical interface. They propose that both ordinary consciousness and ASC/psi experiences involve an emergent order of informational organisation that has the ability to exert top-down causal influences on the neural networks involved in conscious experience and the physical world at large. In this view, formerly supernatural phenomena can be re-incorporated into natural scientific worldview, and both ordinary consciousness and mystical experiences are seen as informational processes that operate in compliance with natural laws, although our current understanding of the laws involved is still limited.
