Peter Russell M.A., D.C.S. (born May 7, 1946) is a British author of ten books and producer of three films on consciousness

Consciousness

Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

, spiritual awakening and their role in the future development of humanity. He has designed and taught personal development

Personal development

Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitates employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations...

 programs for businesses, and has remained a popular public speaker.

Early life and education

Peter Russell was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. He attended Steyning Grammar School

Steyning Grammar School

Steyning Grammar School is a state comprehensive school in Steyning, West Sussex, England. It is the only state school in West Sussex which caters for boarders...

 and Maidstone Grammar School

Maidstone Grammar School

Maidstone Grammar School is a grammar school located in Maidstone, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1549.-Admissions:The school takes boys at the age of 11 and over by examination and boys and girls at 16+ on their GCSE results. The school currently has almost 1200 students and approximately 120...

. In 1965 he was awarded an Open Exhibition to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, to study Mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

. In 1969, he gained a First Class Honours in Theoretical Physics

Theoretical physics

Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...

 and Experimental Psychology

Experimental psychology

Experimental psychology is a methodological approach, rather than a subject, and encompasses varied fields within psychology. Experimental psychologists have traditionally conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, developmental psychology, sensation, perception,...

. He then went to Rishikesh, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, where he trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation refers to the Transcendental Meditation technique, a specific form of mantra meditation, and to the Transcendental Meditation movement, a spiritual movement...

 under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi , born Mahesh Prasad Varma , developed the Transcendental Meditation technique and was the leader and guru of the TM movement, characterised as a new religious movement and also as non-religious...

. In 1971, he gained a post-graduate degree in Computer Science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

. From 1971 to 1974, he studied for a Ph.D. on the psychophysiology of meditation at Bristol University.

In 1975, he began working with Tony Buzan

Tony Buzan

Anthony "Tony" Peter Buzan is an author and educational consultant. He is a proponent of the techniques of Mind Mapping and mental literacy. He claims to have worked with "corporate entities and businesses all over the world; academics; Olympic athletes; children of all ages; governments; and...

 teaching mind map

Mind map

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Especially in British English, the terms spidergram and spidergraph are more common, but they can cause confusion with the term spider diagram used in mathematics...

s, and memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

 skills to various European corporations. In the eighties, he expanded this work to include personal development

Personal development

Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitates employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations...

 tools and mindset

Mindset

In decision theory and general systems theory, a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods or notations held by one or more people or groups of people which is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices,...

s, teaming up with Roger Evans to run programs on creativity

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...

 enhancement.

Principal Books

In The Global Brain Awakens (1995), an update of The Global Brain (1983), Russell's most popular book, he opens with part one on the Gaia Hypothesis. In part two, he discusses orders of evolution going from the evolution of the early universe during the Big Bang

Big Bang

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...

, through biological evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

, and finishing with "the emerging social superorganism

Superorganism

A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms. This is usually meant to be a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods of time. Ants are the best-known example of...

." In part three, he discusses "inner evolution" and the "high-synergy

Synergy

Synergy may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.The term synergy comes from the Greek word from , , meaning "working together".-Definitions and usages:...

 society". In some ways, this book echoes the optimistic dot-com

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

 zeitgeist

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...

.

The White Hole in Time also took an evolutionary perspective on human affairs, arguing that the current global crisis is a result of our mental development not having kept up with our technological development. He suggested that we are heading towards an evolutionary singularity, which he equated with Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point

Omega point

Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving....

. This is not the same as Raymond Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil is an American author, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition , text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments...

's subsequent notion of a technological singularity

Technological singularity

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...

. A new edition of this book was published as Waking Up in Time.

In From Science to God, Russell evokes Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...

's paradigm shift

Paradigm shift

A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...

 to argue that science is on the threshold of a new superparadigm¹. Russell disputes scientific materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

 and likens current efforts to explain consciousness

Consciousness

Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

 in terms of neuropsychology

Neuropsychology

Neuropsychology studies the structure and function of the brain related to specific psychological processes and behaviors. The term neuropsychology has been applied to lesion studies in humans and animals. It has also been applied to efforts to record electrical activity from individual cells in...

 to the convoluted epicycles before the Copernican revolution

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

 in astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

. Russell's views are in sharp contrast to materialists like Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

, author of Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained is a 1991 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett which offers an account of how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain.-Synopsis:...

. The view is similar to views held by nonmaterialist thinkers like Plotinus

Plotinus

Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...

, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber

Kenneth Earl Wilber II is an American author who has written about mysticism, philosophy, ecology, and developmental psychology. His work formulates what he calls Integral Theory. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, for teaching and applications of Integral theory.-Biography:Ken Wilber was...

.

External links

• Peter Russell, home page
• Peter Russell MP3 audio - from Shift in Action, sponsored by Institute of Noetic Sciences
• http://www.leapbeyondillusion.com (2008)Leap! The Documentary explores our reality.