Worldwide extensive research is being published related to the mind-body connection, and many investigators have come to the conclusion that the mind is simply not confined within the brain, that the brain is a vehicle for the mind, and not the source of the mind.

So phenomena like out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences and so on can only be explained if we expand our understanding of the mind. The relationship of the mind and the brain is like the relationship between electricity and a battery.

I am someone who is interested in reality and not a subjective opinion. I have come to realize over the years that equating reality with what we discover in scientific labs is too limited. Also, we have confused knowledge with scientific knowledge. Science is one way of knowing, but there is knowledge that comes from philosophy, and there is knowledge that comes from intuition.

Our civilization in the last 300 years has constricted and limited the belief about knowledge as coming only from the sensate world, namely that the only valid knowledge is the knowledge available through our five senses aided by scientific methods. That's a tragic error, and we're still paying the price for it.

All these things, combined with research about remote viewing and the impact of thought on matter under controlled experiments, has convinced me that the mind is not confined within the brain.

Many books and articles have been written about trying to study mystical phenomena scientifically. Huston Smith, the great comparative religion scholar, claims that if there's one thing he discovered in his life, it's the following: that we can only control and study things that are below us. Science can study humans, animals and the physical, but that which is above us is beyond our power to control. Therefore, God cannot be subject to the requirements of science.

However, what science can do is record and describe states of being of people who are considered to be great saints and mystics. Today they are talking about alternate states of consciousness. They found out the people who are in those states, their brainwaves are radically different from other forms of consciousness, such as hypnosis, being on drugs or dreaming. What some have called the shamanic state of consciousness is a reality unto itself. We can identify and record this and study it scientifically.

Anthropologists are quite familiar with these things. In the very nature of anthropology, you are forced to examine other cultures outside the sphere of Western rationalism. In the modern West, we tend to think of numinous phenomena, to the extent we think of them at all, as something largely alien to Christianity and found primarily among Eastern and shamanistic religions.

There is a mystical tradition in Christianity that has been ignored because of what happened in Western Christianity as it confronted the challenge from science. However in Eastern Christianity, this mystical tradition has been preserved.

Western people disenchanted with materialism are trying to find it in Hinduism or Buddhism. They go to India and Tibet looking for renewal, but what they're looking for can be found in mainstream Christianity: how to experience the divine. I should say that much of Orthodoxy is not aware of this tradition, but it's there. These things are not paranormal phenomena. These are buried within each person's soul. We normal people live paranormally; our ultimate journey should be union with God.

Many of my clients over the years have told me about their experiences with the divine, angels, loved ones who have passed on, many other incidents of awareness. There is this fear of the paranormal, that somehow we will lose our precious reason and regress to the Dark Ages. If we look at it from a different perspective, we're not abandoning reason but incorporating it on a higher level, expanding our use of it.

I think the rationalists are like dinosaurs. I am not anti-reason; it is reason that takes me in the direction of belief. The rationalist position is totally irrational given what's happening on the frontiers of science today. I think rationalists live in a different world. They want to cling to the materialism of the 19th century. I think it's only a matter of time before they come around ? or they will become irrelevant.

Christopher Stewart is a Medical Intuitive assisting others in their healing process. His work is compassionate, uplifting and empowering. You can visit Christopher's website at http://www.clairvoyantguide.com for further information and to schedule a private consultation. You can also look for frequent updates to his blog at: http://intuitiveliving.blogspot.com/ Publisher's Guidelines: You may freely publish this article online, in email newsletters, or in print so long as the resource box and byline are in tact. Author would appreciate a notification, however that is optional.