by Juan J. Rios
After reading Frida Kahlo’s diary (2005), I went to a Mexican restaurant where a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) themed painting hung on the wall: a woman’s face with skull-like features. My feeling was that it was a decorative picture, an example of commercial art designed for mass appeal that ticked all the familiar boxes. Beyond that, it stirred nothing in me. In contrast, pictures with similar death themes in Kahlo’s diary and her other paintings fascinated me, despite my limited interest in art.
This contrast reminded me of James Hillman’s (1975) idea of the soul. Kahlo’s art had soul; the restaurant painting did not. Hillman (1975) argued that “image-making is… a royal road to soul-making. The making of soul-stuff calls for dreaming, fantasying, imagining” (p. 38). For Hillman, soul-making is a creative activity, and when Kahlo paints her inner world, she literally gives the soul a tangible form through her image-making. This imaginal approach to the soul reminded me of a passage that clarifies her art: “To extend its knowledge of the soul, imaginal psychology draws upon a number of knowledge domains, including: spiritual traditions, creative arts, mythology, somatic practices, literary and poetic imagination, mystical philosophy, indigenous wisdom, deep ecology, and social critique” (Jaenke, 2010, p. 3). Kahlo’s art possesses an imaginative density that reflects her ability to channel information from the knowledge domains of the soul into physical form, filtering it through her lived experiences and cultural identity.
The question is: how does Kahlo channel the information contained in the knowledge domains of the soul?
Transpersonal Experiences and PSI in the Creative Process
Parapsychological research suggests that transpersonal experiences play a role in the creative process by allowing access to nonlocal sources of information, as shown in studies by Holt et al. (2004), Schwartz (2010), Benyshek (2013), Simmonds-Moore (2024), and others. Within these experiences, psi phenomena such as precognition or telepathy may occur as expressions of the information accessed through the transpersonal channel. This perspective provides a framework for understanding how artists, shamans, psychics, and visionaries draw inspiration from deeper layers of meaning that originate in a nonlocal field of consciousness.
Nonlocal consciousness (NLC) functions as a deeper, hidden informational layer underlying both mind and matter. In this view, the brain does not produce consciousness; rather, consciousness arises from within the NLC layer. However, we usually remain unaware of the information because “we are normally trapped in a familiarised automatic perception of the world. This is why higher states carry a strong sense of revelation—because they reveal a wider reality to us” (Taylor, 2026, para. 20). Transpersonal experiences elevate an artist out of their familiar perceptions and into higher states of consciousness, thereby enabling access to the information within NLC, the knowledge domains of the soul.
NLC as a Source of Soulful Creativity
The main argument of this essay is that a post-materialist science paradigm (Beauregard et al., 2014), specifically the theory of nonlocal consciousness (Radin, 1997, 2006), supports the existence of transpersonal experiences and psi phenomena. This framework provides a foundation for understanding how artists tap into soulful creativity.
With sustained focus and awareness, artists can enter a transpersonal state that grants access to the NLC information. Entering such a state opens the door to the knowledge domains of the soul, understood as a shared, deeper nonlocal field of information. In this sense, the NLC field resembles Carl Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious: a reservoir of inherited mythological, archetypal, and universal themes shared across humanity and expressed throughout history in art, myth, dreams, and cultural narratives (Jung, 1969; Le Grice, 2009).
The collective unconscious is not a personal component of the artist’s mind. It is a deeper, transpersonal layer of the psyche, which includes conscious awareness, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious from which the psyche draws patterns and meanings. Although the collective unconscious usually remains outside everyday consciousness, it may become accessible through transpersonal experiences (Grof, 2013).
NLC may also explain why certain creations, in any artistic medium, achieve a timeless, cross-generational resonance. When a work continues to enchant audiences long after its creation, it suggests that the artist channeled themes from a shared field of collective meaning that viewers intuitively recognize immediately on a profound level. Enduring art may indicate a form of soulful creativity, insofar as it reflects humanity’s deepest unconscious imprints rather than merely an individual artist’s personal expression. Consequently, enduring art becomes a portal through which the soul takes form in the world, a process enabled by transpersonal experiences.
Enduring art may indicate a form of soulful creativity, insofar as it reflects humanity’s deepest unconscious imprints...
Transpersonal
Daniels (2013) defines “transpersonal (beyond or through the personal) . . . [as] experiences, processes, and events in which the usual self-conscious awareness is transcended and in which there is a sense of connection to, or participation with, a larger, more meaningful reality” (p. 23). Such experiences, which link individuals to a deeper, more profound dimension of meaning, often happen in spiritual and religious contexts (Grof, 2013). As Krippner notes, “each interpretation of the experience is dependent upon both the experients’ consciousness and its cultural context” (2013, p. xvii). He further observes, “what may be a transpersonal experience in one culture might not be considered so in another” (2002, p. 2).
Crucially, transpersonal experiences can serve as gateways to Jung’s archetypal realm of the collective unconscious, revealing patterns that were previously hidden during ordinary conscious awareness (Grof, 2013). In this way, transpersonal experiences create the foundation for insightful creativity that is not just a personal expression, but a participation in a nonlocal field of meaning, one that aligns with Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious and suggests an underlying unity.
The Underlying Unity: From Esoteric Traditions to Modern Fields
Throughout history, esoteric traditions have posited the existence of an underlying, unifying force that permeates the cosmos: “Since their earliest recognition by Paracelsus and Athanasius Kircher, magnetic and subsequently electric fields have offered scope for scientific speculation about agents that connect all parts of the cosmos” (Goodrick-Clarke, 2008, p. 241). Building on this lineage, Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875) described the magical unifying substrate as the “Astral Light” or “Great Magical Agent” that “suffused the universe with vital forces, connecting the macrocosm to the microcosm and enabling the one to influence the other” (Harvey, 2015, p. 561).
Modern field theories echo these esoteric intuitions by proposing a universal interconnectedness, reflecting ideas of an animated continuum that permeates the cosmos and suggests a reciprocal relationship between the mind and the world it perceives (Goodrick-Clarke, 2008). Collectively, these ideas point toward an underlying unity that binds all phenomena, whether physical, psychological, or spiritual.
Western post-materialist science reinterprets this underlying unity in contemporary terms, suggesting that the material world originates from an invisible realm of non-material forms that act as informational blueprints for the physical world (Bohm, 1980; Laszlo, 2004; Pribram, 1991; Sheldrake, 2009). Although not directly detectable by our senses, these informational patterns can manifest through the cultural forms they shape, such as art, narratives, and imaginal activity. These blueprints resemble the archetypal structures in Jung’s collective unconscious. They form deep, hidden patterns of information that connect living beings and objects into an inseparable whole, in which consciousness appears as a fundamental cosmic trait (Valadas & Schäfer, 2013).
This concept can be articulated as a two-layer model of reality. Layer 1 is the nonlocal hidden informational layer: an underlying, interconnected realm in which all phenomena exist as informational patterns that serve as blueprints for the physical world. These patterns “can appear as physical structures in the external world and as archetypal concepts in our mind” (Valadas & Schäfer, 2013, p. 601). In this view, mind and matter are connected expressions of the same informational substrate. Building on this understanding, Schwartz (2015) notes, “all consciousnesses, regardless of their physical manifestations, are part of a network of life, which they both inform and influence and are informed and influenced by” (p. 259). From this perspective, Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious may therefore point toward this unifying substrate in which the collective unconscious dimension of the artist’s psyche is both embedded and with which it participates in a reciprocal exchange of information.
Layer 2 is the emergent physical world: the tangible universe of material substances, forces, and phenomena that manifest as expressions of the informational patterns in Layer 1.
NLC and Layer 1
Max Planck, whose work helped establish quantum physics, “suggested a conscious and intelligent mind can be the matrix of all matter” (Samarawickrama, 2023, p. 110001-1). His insight aligns with the idea that mind and matter are fundamentally interconnected, as both emerge from Layer 1, which parallels Jung’s collective unconscious. It follows that the artist’s mind participates in this nonlocal domain of archetypes, symbols, and cultural narratives, a realm of information that may constitute the knowledge domains of the soul. Therefore, the artist’s creative insights do not originate solely from personal experience because consciousness is inherently relational, arising through a reciprocal exchange between the individual psyche and the collective field.
NLC Research: Beyond Space and Time
In recent decades, scientists have increasingly investigated the nature of consciousness, a topic once considered purely philosophical and outside the scope of scientific inquiry (Daw & Roe, 2024). Despite this growing interest, most research funding still supports materialistic approaches that assume consciousness emerges solely from the brain, a material substance. However, this assumption faces a fundamental challenge because, as Fodor noted, “nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious” (as cited in Kuhn, 2024, p. 156).
The limitations of materialism have sparked a growing interest in exploring NLC theories, which propose that consciousness is not confined to the brain but extends beyond its physical boundaries. These theories offer a broader explanatory framework for understanding psi phenomena that materialist consciousness theories cannot adequately explain (Daw & Roe, 2024).
According to NLC theories, consciousness exists independently of the brain, and as Dossey (2014) describes, it is “not confined to specific points in space, such as brains and bodies, or specific moments in time, such as the present” (p. 1). In this view, the brain does not produce consciousness; rather, it functions as a receiver or conduit for a source of consciousness that arises from within a nonlocal informational field, described in this essay as Layer 1, the same substrate that Jung approached through his theory of the collective unconscious.
When a transpersonal experience opens awareness to this nonlocal dimension of consciousness, it can enable psi-related phenomena, including the transmission of information between minds across vast distances or even across time. Individuals may report sharing information with ancient ancestors, perceiving distant or future events, or even exchanging information with non-human entities, including plants, animals, or seemingly inanimate objects (Grof, 2013). Charles Tart (2009) observed that it is “the sort of mind that would be basically ‘spiritual’” (p. 322).
NLC as a Portal to the Numinous Informational Architecture
Mystics, philosophers, and poets have long expressed a persistent spiritual vision of a unifying force connecting all humans, the environment, and the cosmos. Medieval thought depicted this ultimate unity through the concept of the unus mundus, the one world underlying all existence. Centuries later, Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung revisited this idea and proposed a modern interpretation “of unus mundus [that] suggested a universal symbolic or archetypical reality, with mind and matter being complementary aspects of that same underlying reality” (Stillfried, 2025, p. 401). Further, “Jung’s later work… intimated the ancient understanding of an ensouled world, of an Anima Mundi in which the human psyche participates and with which it shares the same ordering principles of meaning” (Tarnas, 2006, p. 57).
We can view the Anima Mundi as the living expression of this underlying unity, suggesting that everything in the cosmos is interconnected through an ensouled unity. Contemporary post-materialist science aligns with this view of an underlying unity, especially through Jungian concepts such as synchronicity, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. Each of these concepts points toward a nonlocal underlying realm of unity and interconnectedness that transcends space and time (Le Grice, 2009). Such a realm may correspond to the Anima Mundi, as spiritual and numinous experiences often convey a sense of contact with a deeper layer of reality, an encounter with a dimension of meaning qualitatively different from ordinary awareness (Dossey, 2014).
During numinous experiences, individuals report feeling as if they have encountered the sacred, an unknowable presence vastly grander than themselves. Jung described numinosity in the following terms: “We should not be in the least surprised if the empirical manifestations of unconscious contents bear all the marks of something illimitable, something not determined by space-time. This quality is numinous” (as cited in Schwartz, 2018, p. 403). From a post-materialist science perspective, numinous experiences can be viewed as expressions of NLC, since they involve receiving and exchanging information from a realm that transcends ordinary boundaries of space and time.
Schwartz (2018) argues that numina “should be thought of as information. Numinosity is a kind of nonlocal informational architecture that can be detected by consciousness and to some degree manipulated through intentioned focused awareness” (p. 403). This insight is especially relevant to the creative process. When an artist enters into a deep state of creative absorption, their focused awareness can trigger a transpersonal experience that opens a channel to this numinous nonlocal informational architecture—the knowledge domains of the soul.
We can view the Anima Mundi as the living expression of this underlying unity, suggesting that everything in the cosmos is interconnected through an ensouled unity.
Conclusion
NLC presents a parapsychological view of the creative process as a transpersonal event, an engagement with the underlying patterns of meaning in the cosmos rather than a solely personal expression. This field may have a sacred, numinous quality and resembles Jung’s collective unconscious: a reservoir of inherited mythological, archetypal, and universal themes shared by humanity, which underpins both individual artistic experience and collective meaning. Enduring art emerges in brief transpersonal moments when artists participate with the informational patterns of an ensouled unity that breathes meaning into the cosmos and shapes both mind and matter.
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In this issue of Mindfield, the contributors examine the theme of “Mapping the Unseen: Psi, Media, and the Cultural Imagination.” The editorial by Jacob W. Glazier, Anastasia Wasko, and David S. B. Mitchell examines how fictional narratives can create the cultural space in which new scientific ideas and research agendas emerge. In his Presidential Column, …
by Carl Lorenz Cervantes
