Metaphysics

Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy (along with epistemology, logic, and ethics), which studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter. The word “metaphysics” comes from two Greek words that mean “after or behind or among [the study of] the natural.” It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first-century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. ‘after the Physics,’ another of Aristotle’s works).

Parapsychology

Parapsychology is concerned with investigating events that cannot be accounted for by currently known natural law and knowledge that cannot have been obtained through the usual sensory abilities. Parapsychology studies the cognitive phenomena often called extrasensory perception (ESP), in which a person acquires knowledge of other people’s thoughts or of future events through channels apparently beyond the five senses. It also examines physical phenomena such as the levitation of objects and the bending of metal through psychokinesis. Though belief in such phenomena may be traced to the earliest times, parapsychology as a subject of serious research originated in the late 19th century, partly in reaction to the growth of the spiritualist movement.

The Society of Psychical Research (SPR) was established in London in 1882, and similar societies were later founded in the U.S. and in many European countries. In the 20th-century, research into parapsychology was also conducted at some universities, notably at Duke University under J. B. Rhine.

Consciousness

Most of the more influential modern physical theories of consciousness are based on psychology and neuroscience, including theories proposed by neuroscientists such as Gerald Edelman and Antonio Damasio and by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett. They endeavour to explain consciousness in terms of neural events occurring within the brain. However, since 1973, exciting, though less mainstream and more controversial research into consciousness is also being done at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS), which includes Chief Scientist Dean Radin, which focuses more on consciousness and its role in our lives and the physical world including the interconnection between personal, inner space and the “outer space” of shared reality. The IONS institute’s guiding hypothesis is “Everything is interconnected. By embodying an awareness of this interconnection, we can tap into information and energy not limited by space and time, and profoundly amplify transformation, innovation, and well-being.”

It is easy to see how the two lenses may not always be congruent, particularly when Radin’s area of study is often dismissed as pseudoscience by his scientific counterparts, who focus on more orthodox scientific studies.

Hypnosis

Hypnosis (hypnotherapy or hypnotic suggestion) is a trance-like state in which one is more susceptible to suggestion. Producing heightened focus and concentration, hypnosis is usually conducted by a therapist using relaxation techniques, verbal repetition and mental images. People have described the feelings under hypnosis as typically including feeling calm and relaxed.

Hypnosis has been used successfully to assist in gaining control over a number of undesired behaviours, including smoking cessation and weight loss, and to help people better cope with such conditions as anxiety or chronic pain. Other areas for which the effects of hypnosis are being studied include hot flashes associated with menopause, cancer treatment side effects, and various mental health conditions, including phobias, post-traumatic stress, and memory recall. One thing that is important to understand about being under hypnosis is that although one may be more open to suggestions, you certainly do not lose control over your behaviour.

More recently, in 2011, an additional paper in the journal discusses relationships between trance or altered state effects, suggestibility, and how those concepts can be assessed.

Meditation

An article on Mindfulness exercises in The Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Lifestyle and Consumer Health says, “mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you are sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.” It goes on to explain how the lack of mindfulness and too much time spent on problem-solving, time management and the likes can be draining, affect sleep, and increase stress, anxiety, and symptoms of depression and that numerous clinical trials have yielded evidence to support the effectiveness of meditation for such conditions. Further research indicates that meditation may also assist in pain management, asthma and increase focus.

A 2003 article from the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis by J Holroyd comments on the two aspects of Buddhist meditation—concentration and mindfulness—and explains that “Mindfulness training facilitates the investigation of subjective responses to hypnosis. Concentration practice leads to altered states similar to those in hypnosis, both phenomenologically and neurologically. The similarities and differences between hypnosis and meditation are used to shed light on perennial questions: (1) Does hypnosis involve an altered state of consciousness? (2) Does a hypnotic induction increase suggestibility? I conclude that a model for hypnosis should include altered states as well as capacity for imaginative involvement and expectations.” (J Holroyd – American journal of clinical hypnosis, 2003 – Taylor & Francis).

The word Gnostic pronounced  näs-tik comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge.”

Gnosticism is so much broader than a collection of religious ideas and systems originating in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of the reigning religious institutions. Now that is interesting. In the diversity of early Christian thought, the group known as Gnostics believed in such things as secret knowledge of how people could escape the prisons of their material bodies and return to the spiritual realm from where they came.

The term “Gnosticism” can be utilized broadly, to characterize any religious movement based on an internal, individualized recognition (“Gnosis”) of one’s divine inner “spark” that links an individual with a higher divine force. In this sense, moments of “Gnosticism” have emerged at various historical periods. In a more narrow sense, however, most scholars of Gnosticism presently consider it a phenomenon that peaked in the 2nd century of the Common Era in the Roman Empire and that characterized one side of a division in the formative early Christian movement. Beyond that, there is currently no consensus concerning what “Gnosticism” was, how we might define its parameters, and whether it is correct to identify it as an ancient religious mentality at all.

European scholarship—with significant academic centers studying Gnosticism in Scandinavia, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy—tends to be more positivist, employing the term “Gnosticism” or “Gnosis” without the apparent apprehension of their American counterparts who, more reticent in using the term, are more likely to place it in quotation marks. A second issue in the field has been the question of primary sources. Up to the mid-20th century, studies of Gnosticism were hampered by the paucity of original texts from “Gnostics” themselves. The greatest source for reconstructing Gnosticism was the work of their opponents, Christian heresiologists. This all changed in1945, however. The global study of Gnosticism was set on a new path by the discovery of a set of twelve 4th-century codices near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. These texts, known as the Nag Hammadi Library or the Nag Hammadi Codices, contained approximately fifty-two documents, some of which were previously known, and some of which had until that point, been entirely lost. Although not all of the Nag Hammadi documents are “Gnostic” as such, many of them were ascribed to Gnostic authors in our extant heresiological writings. The translation and study of the Nag Hammadi documents has dominated scholarship since that time, largely replacing any attention to the work of Christian heresiologists. A concerted effort has been made at international collaboration and the expeditious production of critical translations of the codices, producing impressive results.

Miriam-Webster defines the term noetic no•et•ic \ nō-ˈe-tik from the Greek noēsis/ noētikos, as meaning inner wisdom, direct knowing, or subjective understanding; the first known use of which was in 1653. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as of, or pertaining to the mind or intellect; characterized by intellectual activity.

Noetics is considered a branch of metaphysics – the branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility, including questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter. It is also considered a form of parapsychology, the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc.

Institute of Noetic Science

Needless to say, the study of noetics is not new. The Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) was established in 1973 by the late Apollo 14 mission member Dr. Edgar Mitchell — the sixth person to walk on the moon— and uses modern scientific approaches to study the interconnectedness of humanity and the nature of reality.  Dr. Mitchell, an engineer and astrophysicist, was inspired by his return trip to earth and founded the institute one year after retiring from government services. He left a decades-old legacy that continues to this day through the institute, which conducts scientific research into some of the most intriguing mysteries of the human experience. Researching such areas as spontaneous remission, meditation, consciousness, alternative healing practices, consciousness-based healthcare, spirituality, human potential, psychic abilities, psychokinesis, extra-sensory perception (ESP), lucid dreaming, telekinesis, presentiment and survival of consciousness after bodily death, the institute has citations to more than 6,500 articles.

Dean Radin

IONS Chief Scientist, Dr. Dean Radin MS, Ph.D. has authored and co-authored hundreds of technical articles, 125+ peer-reviewed journal articles, nearly 50 book chapters, four best-selling books. He has spoken at numerous prestigious schools worldwide for the US government and has appeared in numerous interviews and podcasts around the world as well as documentaries. For over 30 years, Dr. Radin has been engaged in research on the frontiers of consciousness. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at the University of Nevada (as Director, Consciousness Research Laboratories), Bell Labs, GTE Laboratories, Princeton University, the University of Edinburgh (as a visiting Fellow) and SRI International ( as a visiting scientist on a classified program of psi research) as well as other academic and industrial facilities including the Interval Research Corporation, a Silicon Valley consumer electronics laboratory over which he was in charge of a research program, and was President of the Boundary Institute (a nonprofit research think-tank dedicated to the exploration of the boundaries between physics and consciousness).

Dr. Radin has served several times as President of the Parapsychological Association (PA), an international organization of scientists and scholars interested in psi phenomena whose mission is to: Promote scholarship and scientific inquiry into currently unexplained aspects of human experience; Disseminate responsible information to the wider public and to the scientific community; and Integrate this information with knowledge from other disciplines. The PA is an elected affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Remote Viewing (R.V.) is the practice of seeking to obtain impressionistic information about a remote, distant or unseen target (person, place, object etc.) through the employment of extrasensory perception (ESP).

Similarly, remote Influencing (R.I.) is the practice of seeking to affect a distant or unseen target (person, place, object, etc.) through the employment of psychokinesis to biological systems.

Co-creators of Remote Viewing and the infamous Stargate Project include Dr. Harold (Hal) E. Puthoff, Ph.D., Quantum Electronics — Co-founder and Vice President, Science and Technology at To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, President and CEO of EarthTech International, and owner of its research division: the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin (a privately-funded research organization exploring novel ideas in basic and applied physics and engineering)— Russell Targ, BSc, Physics, previous President at Bay Research Institute and author of such works as “THE REALITY OF ESP: A PHYSICIST’S PROOF OF PSYCHIC ABILITIES,” producer of the Third Eye Spies and inspiration behind the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. The SRI remote viewing project also encompassed the work of such consulting “consciousness researchers” as the late artist/writer Ingo Swann (1933-2013) who was dubbed the “Scientific Psychic”.

Initial research into the process of remote viewing commenced at SRI International, with experiments that caught the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Swann is credited with proposing the idea of controlled remote viewing (CRV), which is the process by which viewers would “view” an undisclosed location with no information but geographical coordinates in a highly controlled manner.

Stargate Project was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Standford Research Institute (SRI International ), which is an American not-for-profit scientific research institute and were tasked with the investigation into the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. The project, and its precursor/sister projects, went by various code names until 1991 when they were consolidated and renamed as “Stargate Project.” In 1991, the research program was transferred to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as part of the Stargate Project. While the SRI projects were classified at the time, the research materials were subsequently made public in 1995, and a summary of the early history of SRI and the origins of Stargate was published the following year.

In November 2001, there was an article by Michael Persinger published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences. The results with Swann suggested that during his remote viewing there were associated measurable changes in brain activity. There was bipolar electroencephalographic activity over the occipital, temporal and frontal lobes. Persinger concluded that there was “significant congruence” between the stimuli and Swann’s electroencephalographic activity. ” The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences — Persinger 13 (4): 515 — J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci”. Neuro.psychiatryonline.org. doi:10.1176/appi.neuropsych.13.4.515. Retrieved 6 January 2010.