Unusual experiences and abilities—including clairvoyance, near-death experiences, remote viewing, and others—intrigue many of us. But most scientists dismiss these phenomena, judging them to be inauthentic or impossible. The common assumption that the brain produces or generates the mind leads to these judgments. Through a Glass Darkly shows that, rather than producing consciousness, the brain mediates access to an informational domain far wider than humans natively perceive. The sensory organs and brains of humans and other species have evolved to select and constrain information from this larger domain, conveying to awareness only that information which serves fundamental biological purposes of survival and reproduction. In this view, the brain transmits rather than generates consciousness.

Variation in the degree of informational constraint over time in a single individual explains unusual states of consciousness, such as meditation, near-death experiences, psychedelic effects, and others. Variation in constraint among different individuals explains unusual traits, such as genius, mysticism, clairvoyance, and others. This constrained transmission model of consciousness embraces anomalous experiences and abilities that the prevailing production model must actively avoid in order to remain viable. Its acceptance neither refutes existing neuroscientific knowledge nor devalues ongoing scientific efforts to further explore the relationship between mind and brain.