The best answer so far is that consciousness is the ground of being, and what we experience as "matter" and "energy" ("time" and "space" as well:  see Physics As Metaphor, by Roger S. Jones) are manifestations of consciousness. Thus consciousness can create matter. This only becomes difficult to understand if we ascribe primary reality to these manifestations of consciousness.  Conscious Acts of Creation: The Emergence of a New Physics, by William A. Tiller Ph.D. and Walter Dibble, and Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality, by Edward F. Kelly are excellent resources. Many of the writings of Amit Goswami elucidate how far superior a science within consciousness is over the physically-based science to which we have grown inured. A good researcher will want concrete examples of physical manifestations by means of consciousness. The simplest one is the experience of some of my acquaintances who enjoyed eating some fruit manifested by a Yogi during their visit to India. More intellectually-based examples that require less credence from the researcher could be given, but discussing these would require far more space than is available in this forum. But consider the question: which is more real, the rock on which you stubbed your toe, or your perception of pain? We only know anything about the rock by means of perceptions, which are "mind stuff", existing only in consciousness.

Your question seems to want a physicalism-based answer, which may be forthcoming sometime, but it is not yet clear what that answer would be. As in wave-particle duality, we often find that the existence of an answer -- and almost certainly its form -- depend critically upon the metaphor in which we phrase our question!

I disagree that I need a physical based answer as I am not reductionistic and believe that there are realms beyond corporeal existence that we can tap into. The theory of the mechanism that allows us to tap into it, however, demands a physical explanation though, at least on the human end of this connection. This physicalism-based answer is to please those in power or who ARE reductionistic, this necessity is not for me.

Yes I agree with the metaphor idea, but when I attempt to explain, say the new research involving the double slit experiment using the metaphor of antagonistic pairing (aftereffects) in our colour receptors in our eye, I get told that quantum physics doesn't work like that and these metaphors are not acceptable as answers. Thoughts?  it seems  contradictory to me that physicalistic answers are revered and metaphors do not count.  

Hi, Sandra --

 I'll try to elucidate more fully. If physical manifestations are created by consciousness, then how that happens is not explainable in a physicalist paradigm, but in fact needs no explanation in a consciousness-based paradigm. The most "mainstream" indications that it does happen are provided by the PEAR experiments described by Jahn and Dunne in Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. But similar results have been reported in work extending back at least as far as the research of J. B. and Luisa Rhine at Duke University in the 1930's. Note that these are cases of consciousness creating physical events, not of consciousness creating physical objects. To my knowledge, the latter has not yet been studied scientifically.

The physicalist paradigm breaks down at a number of points, and therefore to find that certain phenomena cannot be explained within that paradigm is not, ipso facto, an indictment of those phenomena. I did not say that you need a physically-based answer; I said that your question seems to want a physicalism-based answer -- as you say, to please those whose thinking is reductionistic. Pleasing those folk may in fact be impossible, since from the Rhines to Jahn and Dunne, researchers in consciousness-based science have found that the response of the most firmly entrenched reductionists has been name-calling and accusations of fraud. I have a good friend and colleague in that camp, so I do not condemn their reactions. As one teacher has said, we do not condemn someone for ignorance, we just pity them and hold to our peace.

I believe we are using the term "metaphor" differently. I am using it in the sense that no knowledge is perfect and complete, and it seems unlikely that we can really know anything "as it really is", since "as it really is" implies the possibility of perfect knowledge. It seems to me that you are using the term "metaphor" to describe an alternative method of description of a phenomenon. This is certainly an option in verbal communication, but I believe that all our views of reality are actually metaphors built using our own paradigms, biases, and perceptual filters. This in my usage, metaphors are not optional, but inescapable, and we make a grave error in logic if we consider our metaphors to describe reality in its suchness (to use a Buddhist term). Owen Barfield called this error "idolatry".

In this paper  " The Physics of Mind-Matter interaction at a distance" available here:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2968430 we tried to fill in the gap between mind and matter.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed.

@Richard Honeycutt Thank-you for your elaboration! Creating events, way easier than creating objects. I know of the thought experiments with the random number generators and am fascinated with the Maharishi effect!  I wonder what would happen if 1% of the world all meditated on positivity and peace. Yes, my question wants a physicalist answer because there might be one through the research of the Dirac's Sea and if William James is correct, and if consciousness acts like light by being both a particle and a wave, and if photons create matter, we might be onto something!