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incomplete. Just as Newton’s theories had eventually been improved upon by the quantum theorists, perhaps Heisenberg and Einstein themselves had been wrong, or at least only partially right. If quantum theory were applied to biology on a larger scale, we would be viewed more as a complex network of energy fields in some sort of dynamic interplay with our chemical cellular systems. The world would exist as a matrix of indivisible interrelation, just as Ed had experienced it in outer space. What was so evidently missing from standard biology was an explanation for the organizing principle – for human consciousness.
    Ed began devouring books about religious experiences, Eastern thought, and the little scientific evidence that existed on the nature of consciousness. He launched early studies with a number of scientists in Stanford; he set up the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a non-profit organization whose role was to fund this type of research; he began amassing scientific studies of consciousness into a book. Before long, it was all he could think of and talk about, and what had turned into an obsession tore his marriage apart.
    Edgar’s work may not have lit a revolutionary fire, but he certainly stoked it. In prestigious universities around the world tiny pockets of quiet rebellion were sprouting up against the world view of Newton and Darwin, the dualism in physics and the current view of human perception. During his search, Ed began making contact with scientists with impressive credentials at many of the big reputable universities – Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Edinburgh – who were coming up with discoveries that just didn’t fit.
    Unlike Edgar, these scientists hadn’t undergone an epiphany to arrive at a new world view. It was simply that in the course of their work they’d come across scientific results which were square pegs to the round hole of established scientific theory, and much as they might try to jam them into place – and in many cases, the scientists wished, indeed willed, them to fit – they would stubbornly resist. Most of the scientists had arrived at their conclusions accidentally, and, as if they’d landed at the wrong railway station, once they’d got there, they figured that there was no other possibility but to get out and explore the new terrain. To be a true explorer is to carry on your exploration even if it takes you to a place you didn’t particularly plan to go to.
    The most important quality common to all these researchers was a simple willingness to suspend disbelief and remain open to true discovery, even if it meant challenging the existing order of things, alienating colleagues or opening themselves up to censure and professional ruin. To be a revolutionary in science today is to flirt with professional suicide. Much as the field purports to encourage experimental freedom, the entire structure of science, with its highly competitive grant system, coupled with the publishing and peer review system, largely depends upon individuals conforming to the accepted scientific world view. The system tends to encourage professionals to carry out experimentation whose purpose is primarily to confirm the existing view of things, or to further develop technology for industry, rather than to serve up true innovation. 5
    Everyone working on these experiments had the sense that they were on the verge of something that was going to transform everything we understood about reality and human beings, but at the time they were simply frontier scientists operating without a compass. A number of scientists working independently had come up with a single bit of the puzzle and were frightened to compare notes. There was no common language because what they were discovering appeared to defy language.
    Nevertheless, as Mitchell made contact with them, their separate work began to coalesce into an alternative theory of evolution, human consciousness and the dynamics of all