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The Consciousness Lab

Updated May 11, 2023

"Exploring the mind frontier is essential and the key to successful exploration is a greater psychic awareness. The mind is rich in unfathomed resources ripe for exploration, a limitless source of treasures for advancing all mankind, and a serious threat to those who ignore its potential. We must overcome our psychic inhibitions, stop denying the existence of paranormal events, and start trying instead to understand the nature of these phenomena."—Dolan M. McKelvy, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, May 1988

I have a primary interest in the fundamental nature of consciousness and the practical applications of the knowledge gained from such research. I agree with McKelvy's assessment. We have barely begun this work and the impact of the practical applications is enormous. My lines of research in the past, in chronological order, have included mathematical logic, quantum mind, beliefs about consciousness and reality, mathematical modelling of consciousness using category theory, altered states of consciousness, anomalous phenomena, self-transformation, the flicker theory of reality, the theory of meaning fields, and instrumental transcommunication. Rather than summarizing them here, readers can just follow the paper trail on the Publications page. Completed student projects can be found on the Thesis Supervision page. What I will do here is to list the projects that my students and I are involved with at this time.

Moi: Eight years ago I was interviewed by an editor from Wired magazine about readers who claimed to be getting messages from the deceased on their cell phones. With funding from the Bial Foundation, my research assistants and I have begun a project to examine possible after-death communication with cell phones to see what we can find.

PhD student in Theory and Criticism: A philosophical inquiry about the veridical nature of near-death experiences. Successfully completed and graduated. You can read her dissertation here: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/7895/.

BA student thesis in Psychology: A second survey of Finders Course alumni to seek to determine the level of integration of living in persistent transcendent states of consciousness with social functioning. Completed and graduated. Paper published in Psychology of Consciousness. See the Publications page.

Undergraduate Independent Study student from the Faculty of Science: Psychological parameters in random event generator experiments using both psychologically healthy participants as well as psychiatric out-patients. Completed. Presented at an annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration as well as several other research venues. Manuscript published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. See the Publications page.

Research Assistant: Survey of afterdeath communication using cell phones. Completed. Results presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration.

BA student thesis in Psychology: Spiritual aspects of global crises. Completed. Received King's Thesis Award. Presented at American Psychological Association Annual Convention in 2022.

BA student thesis in Psychology:  Survey of posttraumatic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thesis completed. Found that posttraumatic growth acts as a buffer against the adverse impact of the pandemic.

BA student thesis in Psychology: Survey of the social self in people with and without near-death experiences. Thesis completed. Found that greater authenticity was associated with having had a near-death experience, even after controlling for the effects of age.

BA student thesis in Psychology: Survey of attributions of anomalous object displacement experiences. Thesis completed. Anomalous attributions were associated with greater spirituality.

© 2013−23 Imants Barušs