For decades, Laurence O. McKinney has explored the fascinating intersection of neuroscience, spirituality, and human consciousness. Rethinking Reality challenges conventional thinking and invite readers to discover new perspectives on life's biggest questions.
Discover MoreWorking alongside prominent medical researchers and mind science experts connected with Harvard University, Laurence O. McKinney developed educational materials for schools and the armed forces while exploring the relationship between science and human behavior.
His research expanded through conversations with leaders from diverse religious traditions and notable figures including the Dalai Lama, Tim Berners-Lee, Mother Teresa, Carl Sagan, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard.
Inspired by advances in neuroscience and social science, he pursued further study at Harvard Divinity School, where his work evolved into groundbreaking books exploring consciousness, religion, and reality.
Years of Research & Writing
Books Published
Readers Worldwide
Thought-Provoking Ideas
This thought-provoking book examines how much of human experience is shaped by the brain's interpretation of reality. It explores religion, sexuality, time, dreams, and mortality through the combined perspectives of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.
He uses the term for the model of the world your brain builds moment to moment. What we take to be "out there" is a construction assembled from limited sensory data, memory, and expectation — a virtual reality generated inside the skull.
It looks at religious experience as a natural product of how the human brain evolved — the same structures that give us empathy, awe, and narrative also give us the sense of the sacred. The aim is to explain, not to explain away.
Because desire and attachment shape consciousness as powerfully as thought does. The book treats sexuality as one of the strongest forces organising perception, memory, and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Time is presented as something the brain manufactures rather than something it simply receives. Our sense of past and future emerges from memory and anticipation, which is why time can stretch, compress, or seem to disappear entirely.
Calmly and without dogma. If the self is a process the brain runs, then death is the end of that process rather than a journey into somewhere frightening. Many readers describe this chapter as unexpectedly comforting.
How much of what we call reality is actually made by us? Everything else in the book — religion, sex, time, and death — follows from taking that single question seriously.