This week’s statistical report on our cases of suspected spirit possession has exceeded 300. This report shows the frequency distribution of where patients are accommodated, i.e. with family, independent, in hospital, in jail, homeless or somewhere else. In addition to statistics, each case is also audio/visually recorded for phenomenological study and offers the student of qualitative research methods a fascinating insight into the relationship between beliefs and experience and how mediums communicate with spirits and dissociated sub-personalities. How can any dedicated health-care professional or serious researcher into the nature of human consciousness ignore this gold-mine of information?
In 1969 Sir Alister Hardy invited scholars to Oxford to discuss
whether a scientific approach to the study of religious and spiritual
experience was possible. Following this symposium he founded the Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC).
Now, 50 years on, we continue to engage with the study of spiritual and
religious experience, albeit with greater urgency in the context of
progressive secularisation.
We are celebrating the 50th anniversary with a three-day conference
on the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David
which hosts the research centre now. The conference will look back at
the work of the research centre during the past five decades and also
look forward to the future, with keynote lectures from Prof Ann Taves (University of California, Santa Barbara, former President of the American Academy of Religion), Prof Jeremy Carrette (University of Kent) and Prof Leslie Francis (University of Warwick), chair of the Alister Hardy Trust Board of Trustees.
The RERC Conference will offer opportunities to senior academics as
well as Master’s students and doctoral researchers to present their work
on topics related to religious and spiritual experience. If you would
like to contribute a paper or organise a panel, please submit an
abstract (app. 300 words) with a short biographical statement together
with your academic affiliation by 11 March 2019 (via the Conference
Registration form below).
The RERC Conference is supported by the Alister Hardy Trust
and will run from 1 to 3 July 2019 on the Lampeter Campus. There will
be a conference fee that will also cover lunch, coffee/tea (approx. £18
per day) as well as an option for dinner (approx. £20 for dinner). The
University has reserved accommodation (B&B) for delegates in one of
the halls of residence (approx. £35 B&B per night).
The RERC conference will be followed by the Fourth Annual Interfaith
conference (July 4-5, 2019). Information about the Interfaith
Conference will follow later on the Interfaith Conference webpage. You
can register your interest in either (or both) of these conferences via
the Conference Registration page below.
The deadline for paper proposals has now closed. We will
send out the decision about the proposals very soon. Soon afterwards the
conference registration will open. Everyone who has registered interest
in the conference will get an email when the programme is uploaded on
the website and the registration opens.
This ticketed event is open to practitioners, people
with lived experience of psychosis, families, carers, academics,
researchers and anyone with an interest in the subject of psychosis.
The first event of its kind for the South Coast, this one-day conference initiated and promoted by ISPS UK South Coast Network in collaboration with local organisations including Soteria Brighton, Hearing Voices Brighton, and the Spiritual Crisis Network Brighton. It is hoped that this conference will be the beginning of a regular Annual South Coast Network Conference programme. The conference is part of the National ISPS UK post-Liverpool Congress Strategy of ‘keeping psycho-social approaches at the heart of the NHS’. Follow this link for tickets.
Signs of Reincarnation provides
a systematic, inter-disciplinary examination of beliefs in as well as
evidence for reincarnation that will appeal to students of anthropology,
religious studies, philosophy, and the psychology of consciousness and
memory, as well as parapsychology. Matlock discusses various ways the
reincarnation evidence may be interpreted and shows that although the
postmortem survival and reincarnation of consciousness entails a
rejection of the materialist notion that consciousness is generated by
the brain, it does not require the acceptance of any radically new
concepts or the abandonment of well-established findings in mainstream
psychology or biology. The book includes an extensive bibliography and a
glossary of specialized and technical terms.
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Here is a Power Point presentation used recently to deliver a lecture on dissociation to a class of 1st year undergraduates studying the Psychology of Religion. Be sure to give slides 4 and 5 plenty of time to load in order to view the videos embedded in them.
