James B Glattfelder

Dr. James B. Glattfelder is an author, academic, and quantitative researcher whose work bridges physics, complexity science, and the philosophy of consciousness. He holds a Master’s in theoretical physics and a PhD in the study of complex systems, both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. As a doctoral researcher, he co-authored The Network of Global Corporate Control, a landmark study mapping the architecture of ownership across the global economy. He is the author of two major works integrating physics, philosophy, complexity science, and the study of consciousness: Information—Consciousness—Reality and his most recent book, The Sapient Cosmos: What a Modern Synthesis of Science and Philosophy Teaches Us About the Emergence of Information, Consciousness, and Meaning, which offers what he calls syncretic idealism — a wide-ranging integration of complexity science, analytic idealism, the perennial wisdom traditions, and the contemporary philosophy of consciousness.

In this conversation, James explores the foundations of his inquiry — from his early encounter with quantum physics through the questions that eventually led him beyond the limits of physicalism, and into the metaphysical framework he calls syncretic idealism. He speaks to the hard problem of consciousness, the rise of contemporary idealism, the role of psychedelic experience, and the place of contemplative traditions within a rigorous scientific worldview. He considers symbolic cognition, synchronicity, the re-enchantment of the cosmos, and what it might mean to live in a participatory universe at a moment when humanity is, by many accounts, in a crisis of meaning.

Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction

00:04:20 From quantum physics to the question of consciousness

00:10:03 Science, philosophy, and the metaphysical commitment

00:17:51 The hard problem of consciousness

00:34:09 Pure consciousness and its contents

00:45:18 The unconscious: ontological or epistemological?

00:52:45 Psychedelics, set, setting, and the return to trust

01:08:11 Re-Enchanting the universe

01:19:37 Cultural complexes and the choice of hope

New Thinking Allowed Guest Host Leanne Whitney, PhD, is a depth psychologist and transformational coach based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali and currently serves as Executive Director of Center for Transformation and Integration. Her website is https://leannewhitney.com/

To learn about Leanne Whitney’s upcoming Transformational Coaching Certification Course with an emphasis in Somatic Integration Therapy, please visit: https://transformationandintegration.com/courses

Producer: Ricky Derisz

Editor: John Hartmann

(Recorded on June 19, 2026)

To order Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali by Leanne Whitney go to: https://amzn.to/2QY3tS2

To order The Sapient Cosmos by James B. Glattfelder go to: https://amzn.to/4vWzaew

Check out the New Thinking Allowed Foundation website at http://www.newthinkingallowed.org. There you will find our incredible, searchable database as well as opportunities to shop and to support our video productions – plus, this is where people can subscribe to our FREE, weekly Newsletter and can download a FREE .pdf copy of our quarterly magazine.

To order high-quality, printed copies of our quarterly magazine: NTA-Magazine.MagCloud.com

Check out New Thinking Allowed’s AI chatbot. You can create a free account at awakin.ai/open/jeffreymishlove. When you enter the space, you will see that our chatbot is one of several you can interact with. While it is still a work in progress, it has been trained on 1,600 NTA transcripts. It can provide intelligent answers about the contents of our interviews. It’s almost like having a conversation with Jeffrey Mishlove.

Download and read Jeffrey Mishlove’s Grand Prize essay in the Bigelow Institute competition, Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death, go to https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/docs/1st.pdf.

Published on July 15, 2026