Beyond the Brain 2025
Online Conference
The world’s premier conference series exploring whether and how consciousness extends beyond the physical brain
7-9 November 2025
We are in a civilisational inflection point marked by converging ecological, technological, and existential crises. These are not isolated issues but symptoms of a deeper epistemic collapse. The story that the West tells about reality is breaking down. We are entrenched in and increasingly disillusioned with reductionist, materialist paradigms.
Beyond the Brain is more than a conference – it is a bridge between science and spirituality. Join us for the world’s leading conference on the frontiers of consciousness research where science meets spirit, and personal experience meets scientific inquiry. For 30 years, Beyond the Brain has brought together pioneering researchers, scientists, and seekers to explore one of the most profound questions of our time:
Does consciousness extend beyond the physical brain?
Topics 2025
Threshold Consciousness: Where Worlds Meet
Near-death experiences, after-death communications, and visions at life’s edge. Here, dying and birthing reveal themselves as part of a larger spiritual dynamic.
Felicity Warner – Between Worlds: Exploring the transitional nature and expansion of consciousness, three Days Before and three Days After Death
Phyllida Anam-Áire – Transition: Waiting and Watching at the Crossroads in a Space of Non-judgment
Dr Raymond Moody, Anita Moorjani, Dr Sam Parnia – The Implications of NDEs for an Extended View of Reality and Human Transformation
Evelyn Elsaesser – Lessons from the Light: Common Features and Transformative Effects of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), Deathbed Visions (DBV), and After-Death Communications (ADCs)
The Self in Transit: Time, Memory, and Multiversal Identity
Exploring past lives and alternate timelines. Identity becomes fluid, a construct shaped by memory fields beyond ordinary time.
Birdie Jaworski – Mapping the Multiverse: A Seven-Year Blind Study in TransDimensional Mapping and the Question of Timelines
Prof Alexander Moreira-Almeida – Mind beyond the Brain: Proposal for a Pragmatic Interactionist Framework (includes past lives research)
Alef Trust session – Chaired by Dr Bethany Butzer and Dr Tadas Stumbrys
Tony Lee – How Synchronicity at Work Guides Your Life’s Purpose
Georgia Black – Does Practice Make Perfect (Collectively)? Exploring Morphic Resonance Through Word Puzzles
Paul McKeever – The Role of Belief and its Effect on Treatment as Experienced by Practitioners in Healing Practices
The Sensorium Beyond the Five Senses
From telepathy to synaesthesia, perception stretches beyond its limits. Sound is seen, light is felt, and we discover new ways of knowing from within.
Dr Susan Jamieson (Workshop) – Are We Galileo’s Lens, Some Practical Techniques
Dr Diane Hennacy Powell – Perception Beyond the Interface: Savants, Synesthesia, and the Fabric of Reality
Vicente Arráez – Detection of Randomness Changes Related to the Dying Process
Cosmic Ecology – Minds Entangled with the More-than-Human
Human minds interwoven with animals, Earth, and the cosmos. Spiritual ecology reframes consciousness as relationship in a living universe of shared intelligence.
Dr Rupert Sheldrake – Different Ways in which Minds Extend beyond Brain
Prof Brannon Wheeler – How do Non-human Intelligences Communicate with Humans?
Marina de Moses – Shaping the Invisible – Music & Principles of Harmony, Beauty and Order
Prof Marjorie Woollacott – Interviewer/Chair across multiple sessions (supports Sheldrake, Hoffman, and others)
Sacred Interfaces: Technology, Mind, and the Simulated Real
Do we see reality as it is, or only its dashboard? Simulation and illusion theory probe the boundaries of mind, matter, and the sacred.
Prof Donald Hoffman – Interviewed: Is Reality an Illusion?
Dr Diane Hennacy Powell – Perception Beyond the Interface: Savants, Synesthesia, and the Fabric of Reality (raises implications for simulation theory)
Sebastian Salicru – Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy: Promises and Pitfalls
What you’ll experience
Talks from world-leading thinkers in science, psychology, and spirituality
New research that challenges reductionist assumptions and opens new paradigms
Daily experiential sessions for direct engagement with expanded states
A global community of open-minded professionals, researchers, and seekers
What people say
Beyond the Brain is a wonderful conference that grounds the outer reaches of science in everyday experience. The speakers are the leaders in their fields. The SMN attends to all necessary details to make this a meaningful and memorable experience. I will continue to attend each year.
Beyond the Brain just gets better every year. It offers a range of inspiring presentations by international speakers and opportunities for experiential sessions that are seldom found anywhere else.
I think Beyond the Brain and the work of the Scientific and Medical Network very important. Their tireless work to shift the boundaries defined by scientific materialism and find common ground between the material and non-material worlds has to be a keystone to a better understanding of the world and cosmos in which we all live.
I attend Beyond the Brain every year. It is a spiritual pilgrimage which I joyfully undertake to discover more about ‘who I am’. It is the only place I know of where I can meet up with so many spiritually curious, like-minded souls, all intent on exploring consciousness in an open ended but scientifically informed manner.
Quite frankly, this symposium served as an inspiration to me during what I consider to be ‘dark times’ in planetary consciousness. The speakers were excellent and the information quite likely vital if humanity is to survive the current challenges we now face as a collective species.
Wonderful opportunity to listen to inspiring people, learn about the latest experiments and hypotheses and discuss ideas on consciousness and psi phenomena with others.
A most stimulating and mind-expanding experience.
The whole weekend was life changing and inspirational!
This far exceeded my expectations and allowed me to interact with leading academics on the subject of Near-Death Experience and allied subjects.
Thank you for another wonderful event – immensely enjoyable.
Thank you so much to the organizers and the speakers for their generous sharing… Very inspiring!
It was time WELL SPENT
This conference was a very well-planned and presented, offering wonderful insights into the world ‘Beyond the Brain’
I certainly will now be joining your organization. Great job!!!
My sincere thanks to all the organisers and presenters for their generosity, love and goodness.
David Lorimer is an excellent host, speaker and organizer. (…) Marjorie Woollacott is a true class act. She is a true model for clarity, humility, and breadth of approach, with a wonderful demeanor.
What a joy to stumble upon and experience this conference! For several years the idea of using my technical side and energy healing/expanded consciousness side together to help humanity has been hanging around, seemingly looking for viable paths in society. This conference opened up several possibilities for me – thank you so much!!! I plan to attend every year going forward if possible!
Only found SMN through the Galileo Commission and that only through Iain Mcgilchrists podcasts from earlier this year. Blown away by how much knowledge is locked inside this network completely opaque to me for all these years. So much to catch up on.
This was my first SMN event. I heartily applaud their work, and will be interested to join more of them.
