ions - kn

A few weeks ago, I had a much-anticipated dinner with a longtime colleague whom I had not seen since before the pandemic. What should have been a joyful reunion turned into an awkward and uncomfortable evening. I was completely caught off guard by my colleague’s visible fear, anger, and paralysis resulting from the pandemic’s continued impact on what had been our normal lives. Her coping skills were clearly depleted and her prior “leadership energy” was long gone. I was thrown off by her negative state of mind and felt a twinge of guilt for my more constructive — even optimistic — state of mind. While I have known for a while that we have experienced the pandemic in very different ways, I had no idea how profoundly different our experiences have actually been.

Since inception, IONS has set out with an understanding that everything is interconnected. We are all connected to each other, to the world, and to information beyond time and space. This hypothesis is what has driven us to conduct ground-breaking research on meditation, energy healing, presentiment, and more. In recent years, we have begun to investigate channeling abilities. Our Channeling Research Program is spearheaded by Dr. Helané Wahbeh who is our Director of Research, as well as a trance channeler, hailing from a long line of trance channelers.

It has long been said that psychic abilities may be hereditary. One study in Scotland looked at family trees of people with Second Sight and found that psychic abilities appear to run in families.¹ There have also been several other research studies on the heritability of psychic abilities. “Second Sight” implies that there are two types of sight — our ordinary eyesight and a second type of sight that allows an individual to have prophetic visions. These visions may happen spontaneously and not usually “on-demand.”

Every night around the world, hundreds of thousands of people try to induce a lucid dream. Some succeed. Many fail. But either way, the quest continues to experience that extraordinary Zen-like moment of suddenly realizing, “This is a dream!”

The material in this blog posting is adapted from an interview with Dr. Krippner¹ that will appear in the book, Chaos and Nonlinear Psychology: Keys to Creativity in Mind and Life, edited by David Schuldberg, Ruth Richards, and Shan Guisinger, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Dr. Krippner was interviewed by the three editors; the remarks excerpted and adapted here focus on the meanings and implications of chaos and complexity theory.

Did you miss the latest session of our “Noetic Leadership in Action” series with author, academic, and intuitive consultant Dr. Helen Stewart? It’s not too late — watch a video replay!

The IONS Experience & Engagement Department invites you to join us for our weekly, free webinar series, ConnectIONS Live — now enhanced with video closed captioning! During these weekly sessions, we invite guest panelists to engage in in-depth conversations on science, spirituality, leadership, purpose, collective consciousness, and so much more. We collectively explore the leading edge of noetic research, practices, and philosophy.

What do people who channel have in common? Can anyone channel? There is growing evidence that yes, everyone has some channeling capacity, but that the way they access it is unique.

IONS has published a paper on channeling that investigates the differences between mental disorders and trance channeling experiences.

Does psychic ability run in families? Dr. Dean Radin, one of the world’s premier investigators of psychic abilities and Chief Scientist at IONS, recently spoke about this topic in a Mystery Wire interview.