Social anthropologist, consciousness researcher, Professor at Sofia Univ, and curious explorer of culture, science, and the wonder of it all.

Non-Fiction

15 Jan

Posted at 19:51h in Death and Afterlife, Death Makes Life Possible, Featured, Non-Fiction, Transformation

[caption id="attachment_1796" align="alignleft" width="300"] Paris, France. Thousands come together in solidarity for peace after the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris.[/caption] How can we use our own awareness around mortality to help overcome our aggressions and promote peace? Some social theorists assert that much of the violence and strife in our world is fundamentally the result of a shared cultural fear of death. As we look at the recent incidents in France, as well as other ethnic conflict around the world, we begin to see the application of this theory. The existence of alternative worldviews can cause us to question our own convictions and...

20 Nov

Posted at 09:00h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Transformation

According to a report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, almost two thirds of Americans with a 'great deal' of stress feel they have no control over it. Although we may be aware of how stressed we are on an every day basis, we may be less aware of simple practices that can help reduce stress and its debilitating effects. The book I co-authored, Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life,  includes a number of practices that can help in reducing and managing our stressful lives. One of these practices was inspired by an interview with Swami Veda Bharati, a teacher and spiritual...

05 Sep

Posted at 09:00h in Featured, News and Press, Non-Fiction, Transformation

                 Consciousness Transformation in Asia [caption id="attachment_1564" align="alignleft" width="225"] Conference participants Priscilla and Lily Yea with our Buddhist escorts in front of Asia University.[/caption] The call for transformation is echoing throughout Asia. Over the past few years I have visited Hong Kong and China. In June, 2014, this call brought me to Taiwan, where I met with scholars, scientists and spiritual teachers to participate in a series of global exchanges. I began at the International Symposium for Transdisciplinarity at Asia University. The private university in Taichung County was founded early in the 21st century. The focus...

17 Aug

Posted at 11:00h in Death and Afterlife, Featured, News and Press, Non-Fiction

Sukie Miller, Ph.D. was a force of nature. She brought gusto to every moment of every day. Her insights about culture, the after death realms, and depth psychology were spell-binding. Her enthusiasm for life was contagious. Her friendship was deep and true. As she approached the end of her embodiment, she was open to the next adventure  with characteristic panache. After a protracted illness that she would not let defeat her, she died on December 18, 2013. Sukie was a psychotherapist who dedicated her life to understanding human nature in all its complexities. Her seminal book, After Death, Mapping the Journey,...

15 May

Posted at 01:23h in Death and Afterlife, Featured, News and Press, Non-Fiction

For many years I have been studying the nature of worldview transformations. How do we change our minds? What actions do we need to take to make fundamental shifts in how we experience ourselves and the world? How can we shift our view of death in order to live life more fully? Over the past two decades I had the privilege to work with a team of researchers through the Institute of Noetic Sciences to study the nature of individual and social transformation. We published our results in Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life (Schlitz, Vieten,...

21 Feb

Posted at 17:37h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

  Final Reflections Through my work and my life experiences, I have seen that the transformative process involves a change in self that includes both our inner and our outer realities. It provides links between our direct experiences and our being in the world through action and service. Bridging the Akashic and the rational has allowed me to develop a deeper and richer sense of connection to myself, my family, my community, and my environment. In this process, I have developed an increasing awareness and appreciation for the sacred in every aspect of life. As each of us lives into expanded human capacities,...

14 Feb

Posted at 07:21h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

The Quest for a New Paradigm This leads me back to where I started: questing for a fundamental paradigm, cosmology, or story of the world that’s inclusive enough to embrace the Akashic, noetic dimensions while not losing sight of what is real and true in the objective and intersubjective realms of lived experience. We are alive in a time of enormous complexity—how do we make sense of the fact that a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, secular humanist, and Pagan are all using the same grocery stores, public schools, and health care centers? How is it that a materialist scientist can sit with...

07 Feb

Posted at 20:13h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

Exceptional and Transformative Experiences Over time, I have sought to understand the nature of psi and other Akashic experiences outside the laboratory. Obtaining a Ph.D. in anthropology, I felt that qualitative methods may reveal details that are left on the cutting room floor in our lab-based studies. I have been interested in how exceptional experiences impact people’s lives in ways that are transformative. This has led me to engage in a decade of research on what stimulates transformation, what sustains it, and what results from experiences that open us to a larger set of possibilities. In a recent book, Living Deeply: The...

31 Jan

Posted at 19:31h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

 The Effect of Distant Mental Intention on Living Systems A third study that I will mention involves my work on distant intention and healing. For more than a decade, I collaborated with William Braud at the Mind Science Foundation to develop a research protocol that allows us to study the correlation between one person’s intention and another person’s physiology. This is a procedure we eventually came to call distant mental interactions between living systems (DMILS). The idea behind the work was to simulate an experience in the laboratory that would allow us to study psychic healing, only working with healthy people who...

24 Jan

Posted at 19:09h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

 Exploring Psi in the Lab Since this early phase of my career, more than three decades ago, I have had many compelling encounters with the Akashic experience. Unlike most people, however, many of my personal encounters have occurred in the context of well-controlled laboratory experiments. Let me consider three specific examples from my formal research. Remote Viewing In 1980 I conducted a remote viewing experiment with Elmar Gruber in which we were both the subjects and the experimenters. We designed a formal study of ten trials over thousands of kilometers between Detroit, Michigan and Rome, Italy. Gruber selected a pool of geographical target sites...

17 Jan

Posted at 06:45h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

Psychic Exploration When I was an undergraduate, I had several meaningful events that helped shape my life. The first was reading Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolution. This book, and the idea that our paradigms of reality are socially constructed and not absolute, was nothing short of a conceptual liberation. It gave me hope that the failing vision of society that was around me need not be final or binding. Indeed, even in the context of science, we have experienced different models of reality—one replacing another. What was needed for our society, I felt sure, was a fundamental, whole systems...

10 Jan

Posted at 22:08h in Featured, Non-Fiction, Research

Where does one’s story start? I begin mine with what I don’t remember. At eighteen months old, as I am told by my family, I found a can of lighter fluid on the table. Being a curious child, I did what curious children do: I put it into my mouth. For months after, my small body rested and wrestled in a hospital, floating in and out of life as my lungs sought the affirmation of breath. Perhaps it was here, in the entrusted hands of a dedicated group of health professionals, in the prayers and intentions of my devoted family, in...

08 May

Posted at 18:32h in Ecology, Featured, Gardening, Non-Fiction

Before the rain drenched winter was over, I got the spring itch. I made my way to the Petaluma Seed Bank, eager to begin my small backyard garden again. This wondrous Seed Bank, housed in an historical building from the days of the California gold rush, specializes in heirlooms, free from genetic engineering and artificial anything.  Truly home grown. I wandered through the thousands of seed possibilities, feeling a sense of promise that awaited me over the months to come.  I found a packet of Squash Connecticut Field pumpkins. Reading the package, I learned that these seeds were a source of...