Are we closer to understanding the nature of consciousness than we were twenty years ago? Ever since Chalmers posed ‘the hard problem’ of consciousness, of why sentient organisms have subjective experiences, the debate has gone in circles. Papers on the subject variously conclude, There really is a hard problem, there […]
Paul Kieniewicz
18 posts
By Paul Kieniewicz What follows is a letter from Raymond Moody describing an opportunity to contribute to a research project on shared death experiences. Please consider contributing. What is a Shared Death Experience(SDE)? Raymond Moody writes:In these experiences, bystanders who are close to a dying person experience many of the […]
By Paul Kieniewicz A series of recent articles in the Guardian, expressed a measure of outrage that many water companies in the UK today still employ dowsers to locate underground pipes or leaks. The writers described dowsing as pseudoscience, a “medieval practice”, essentially witchcraft. The articles inspired an outpouring of […]
The fact that living beings are surrounded by an electric field should not come as any surprise, as every living cell can be described as generating electricity. Early in the twentieth century, the Indian biologist J. C. Bose published a series of books in which he demonstrated the significant role […]
By Paul Kieniewicz (SMN Website Editor) In launching this blog, I am going back to some of the key ideas discussed in founding the Network over forty years ago. In those days, parapsychology was, as it is today, a disreputable field. Outside publications of the Society for Psychical Research and […]
Despite significant advances in neuroscience, consciousness remains a vexing mystery. Because the qualities of experience seem to be irreducible to physical parameters,1 a hypothesis that has been garnering attention is that consciousness is fundamental and spatially unbound, the brain corresponding to a dissociation or localization of its contents.2At first sight, […]
Vera de Chalambert, spiritual storyteller and Harvard-educated scholar of comparative religion offers a unique view of the recent US Presidential Election. Donald Trump’s election cannot be explained by politics alone. It involved the awakening of the archetype of Kali, the Dark Mother, destroyer of illusions. Last year, Kali, the Hindu Goddess […]
IONS scientist Dr. Garret Yount, along with collaborator Dr. Dawson Church, is doing a series of exciting experiments on the effects of Emotion Freedom Techniques (EFT) on biochemistry and gene expression. EFT is a noninvasive technique that uses elements of cognitive therapy and exposure therapy, and combines them with acupressure. […]
In a recent interview with journalist Wim Kayzer, string theorist Edward Witten says consciousness will remain a mystery that we may never solve. Thus he joins Roger Penrose, Clin McGinn and others who assert that the scientific method has limits to what it can explain in terms of other known […]
Should you take Hormone Replacement Therapy? Avoid eating peanuts while pregnant to lower the risk of peanut allergy in your child? Take a daily dose of Statins to lower your cholesterol? The answers are often by no means clear despite published medical studies. To complicate the issues, according to a […]