Syllabus: Introduction to Lucid Dreaming


Course Description

This four week course will introduce you to the science, practice and potential of Lucid Dreaming, or the conscious realization of dreaming while in the dream state. Topics covered will include a variety of lucid dream induction techniques, methods to stabilize and explore the lucid dream state, scientific research on lucid dreaming and potential activities to engage in while lucidly aware (e.g., accessing creativity, enhancing emotional or physical health, engaging a responsive inner awareness, seeking information outside of one’s knowledge and conducting spiritual practices).

During the course, we will also take a special look at lucid dreaming and topics in the field of parapsychology, such as lucid dreams and deceased dream figures, precognitive and telepathic information in lucid dreams and more, along with thoughtful approaches to examining the results of personal experiments. We will also provide supportive advice for those who wish to use lucid dreaming for their own purposes.


Course Outline


  • Introduction to Lucid Dreams

    1. Introducing Lucid Dreams

      • Improving Dream Recall
      • Simple Lucid Dream Induction Techniques
      • Understanding Levels of Lucid Awareness
      • History of Lucid Dreaming
      • Scientific Evidence Validating Lucid Dreaming
      • Not ‘Control,’ But ‘More Aware Relating’
    2. Having a Lucid Dream

      • Additional Techniques for Inducing Lucid Dream
      • How to Stabilize the Lucid Dream, and Prolong It
      • How Lucid Dreams End
      • Understanding How Lucid Dream Events Reflect Your Thinking & Beliefs
      • Moving in Lucid Dreams
      • Scientific Research on the Lucid Dream Experience
    3. Advanced Techniques

      • Advanced Techniques for Inducing Lucid Dream
      • How Lucid Dreams Differ from OBE’s, Sleep Paralysis, etc.
      • Thoughtfully Interacting with Dream Figures, Including Deceased Ones
      • Engaging the Awareness Behind the Dream
      • Accessing Information Across Space and Time
      • The Shadow and Other Concepts
    4. Applying Lucid Dreaming Techniques

      • Surrendering in Lucid Dreams
      • Using Lucid Dreams to Enhance Emotional and Physical Health
      • Living Lucidly or Transferring Lucid Insights into Your Waking Life
      • Meditating in Lucid Dreams (and Other Spiritual Practices)
      • Am I Dreaming Now?
      • Exploring Levels of Creativity in Lucid Dreams

Course Materials

Suggested Readings: Lucid Dreaming Plain and Simple, by Robert Waggoner and Caroline McCready.


Course Activities

  • Students will be expected to view the class broadcasts or the recordings of the classes each week.
  • Students will be expected to participate in weekly discussion forums and activities. Each student will be expected to provide an original posting each week and to respond to at least one other student in the discussion forums. Greater participation in this area will be considered during class evaluations.
  • Additional practical applications of Lucid Dreaming and interactive activities may be included during the class.

 



Religious Perspectives on Psi - Syllabus


Course Description

This course will provide an introductory exploration of the relationship between psi phenomena (broadly, ESP and psychokinesis) and the world’s eastern and western religious traditions. The course will explore four main questions:

  • Does psi provide support for any of the core concepts of the eastern and western religious traditions?
  • How have religious traditions interpreted phenomena parapsychologists commonly classify as psi or psi related? For example, veridical out-of-body and near-death experiences, ostensible past-life memories, and communications from the deceased through mediums.
  • How is psi potentially related to other important features of religious belief and practice? For example, miracles, efficacious petitionary prayer, revelation and meditational insight, and prophecy.
  • How have religions distinguished between benevolent and malevolent manifestations of psi?

In this course, we will primarily be interested in how religious traditions have acknowledged, interpreted, and incorporated psi or psi-related phenomena, as well as how religions have deployed such phenomena to underwrite claims in their religious and theological narratives. But we will also consider from a point of view outside religious traditions whether psi offers support for religious concepts or claims, and whether aspects of religious narratives – for example, miracles, prophecy, and efficacious petitionary prayer – can plausibly be reinterpreted in terms of psi-functioning.

Religious traditions will include Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. Topics will include past-life memories, mediumship, and near-death experiences in relation to life after death, psychokinesis in relation to efficacious prayer and miracles, and precognition and prophecy. Readings will include modern and contemporary philosophers, religious studies scholars, and scientists, as well as selections from sacred texts.


Course Objectives

The course has two main objectives:

  • The primary objective of the course is for students to develop an introductory-level understanding of how eastern and western religious traditions have acknowledged, interpreted, and assimilated phenomena which parapsychologists classify as psi or as psi related.
  • The secondary objective is for students to understand how, from a religiously neutral point of view, psi phenomena can be leveraged as (i) support for core religious ideas and (ii) an interpretative framework for other religious phenomena.

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will have demonstrated an understanding of:

  • six core ideas in the eastern and western religious traditions,
  • at least three ways researchers have argued that psi can be viewed as supporting core religious concepts,
  • four examples of how religious traditions have interpreted psi-related phenomena that are ostensible evidence for personal survival of death: out-of-body and near-death experiences, mediumship, and past-life memories and other features associated with cases of the reincarnation type,
  • at least two ways religious traditions have appealed to psi or psi-related phenomena to underwrite or support religious narratives,
  • at least two ways psi can be related to ostensibly supernormal or supernatural religious phenomena – for example, miracles, efficacious petitionary prayer, revelation and meditational insight, and prophecy, and
  • at least two ways religious traditions have distinguished between benign and malevolent manifestations of psi

Course Outline

Week 1

Course Introduction

  • Personal introduction
  • Course syllabus
  • Introduction to the course’s main questions

Week 2

Core Religious Ideas

  • God or transcendent reality
  • The world
  • The self
  • Praxis and personal transformation
  • Modes of knowing
  • Human destiny

Week 3

Psi as Potential Support for Core Religious Ideas

  • Defining Psi
  • Transcendent Reality
  • Mystical experience
  • Conceptions of the self
  • Human destiny and life after death

Week 4

Religious Perspectives on Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences

  • The Arda Viraf text of Zoroastrianism
  • Bardo in the Tibetan Book of the Dead
  • OBEs/NDEs in the Abrahamic Traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)

Week 5

Religious Perspective on Mediumship and Cases of the Reincarnation Type

  • Reincarnation in the Vedic (Hindu) traditions
  • Reincarnation in the Buddhist traditions
  • Reincarnation and Mediumship in the Abrahamic traditions

Week 6

Psi and Other Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice

  • Miracles
  • Efficacious Petitionary Prayer
  • Revelation and Meditational Insight
  • Prophecy

Week 7

Religious Perspectives on Malevolent Manifestations of Psi

  • Distinguishing between benign, benevolent, and malevolent psi
  • Psi, Demonic Possession, and Exorcism

Week 8

Course Summary – Key Themes, Problems, and Conclusions


Course Materials

  • Various articles selected by the instructor and provided for download throughout the course.

Course Activities

  • Students will be expected to view the class broadcasts or the recordings of the classes each week.
  • Students will be expected to participate in weekly discussion forums and activities. Each student will be expected to provide an original posting each week and to respond to at least one other student in the discussion forums. Greater participation in this area will be considered during class evaluations.
  • One multiple choice or short answer evaluations will be assigned after the 4th or 5th week of class.
  • Final Exam

Evaluation and Grading

Students who are taking the course for a grade will be assessed using a letter grade based on the standard letter grade format.

  • A (90-100)
  • B (80-89)
  • C (70-79)
  • D (60-69)
  • F (below 60)

Participation in the forums is a large component of the grading, and substantive postings are necessary to get full credit for each discussion topic.

The following activities will be considered to contribute to the courses as follows:

  • Discussions (5 points per week; Total 40%)
  • Midterm (30%)
  • Final (30%)



Syllabus: Dreams & Altered States of Consciousness


Course Summary

This survey course will examine altered states of consciousness (ASC) including those induced by meditation, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, music, and substances. ASCs will be explored from the perspectives of neuroscience, psychology, consciousness research, parapsychology, and anthropology. As this is a survey course, it provides essentially an overview of a spectrum of ASCs, with a deeper exploration/focus on dreams.


Course Outline

  1. Introduction & Overview
    • Overview of the Course
    • What is Consciousness?
    • What is an Altered State of Consciousness?
    • The Importance of Perception to ASCs
    • Overview of Specific ASCs and Techniques to Induce Some of Them
  2. Meditation, Hypnosis, & Sensory Deprivation
    • Types of Meditation
    • Effects of Meditation on States of Consciousness
    • Effects of Meditation on the Brain
    • Hypnosis: An Overview
    • Is the Hypnotic State Really an Altered State?
    • Effects of Hypnosis on Perception, Memory and the Body/Brain
    • Sensory Deprivation Techniques
    • Effects of Sensory Deprivation on States of Consciousness
  3. Sleep & Dreaming
    • Sleep & Dreaming in general
    • Cycles of Sleep and Dreaming
    • Types of Dreams
    • Lucid Dreaming in Brief
    • Nightmares and Night Terrors
    • Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic states
    • Normative, Repetitive and Impactful Dreams
    • Theories of Dreams and Dreaming in Brief
  4. Psychic Dreaming I
    • Overview of Psi in Dreams
    • Healing Dreams
    • Visitation Dreams
    • Telepathic Dreams/Mutual Dreaming
    • Past Life Dreams

    Mid-Term Quiz

  5. Psychic Dreaming II
    • Real-Time Dreams
    • Precognitive Dreams
    • Déjà vu and Dreams
    • Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences
    • Lucid Dreaming
  6. Sleep Disorders & Working with Dreams
    • Overview of Sleep Maladies: Disorders and Parasomas
    • Sleep Paralysis and Hypnagogic Visions
    • Dream Recall
    • Dream Incubation
    • Dream Symbology
    • Creativity and Dreams
    • Working with Psychic Dreams
  7. Consciousness Altering Drugs & Technologies
    • Overview of Mind-Altering Substances
    • How is the Brain Affected?
    • Food & Nutrition
    • Alcohol
    • Psychedelics & Hallucinogens
    • Stimulants & Depressants (Legal and Illegal)
    • PsychoTechnology: Biofeedback, Magnetic Fields (Natural & Man-Made) and More
  8. Additional ASC Inductions & Wrap up
    • Music/Sound as an ASC Induction Technique
    • Movement/Dance as an ASC Induction Technique
    • Disease and Illness as Inducing ASCs
    • Overview of Uses of ASC Induction: from Shamans to Modern Medicine
    • Parapsychology and ASCs
    • Summary and Wrap-Up

    Final Quiz


Course Materials

Various articles, videos, and other information provided throughout the course.


Course Activities

 

  • Students will be expected to view the class broadcasts or the recordings of the classes each week.
  • Students will be expected to participate in weekly discussion forums and activities. Each student will be expected to provide an original posting each week and to respond to at least one other student in the discussion forums. Greater participation in this area will be considered during class evaluations.
  • One multiple choice or short answer evaluations will be assigned after the 4th or 5th week of class.
  • A final evaluation will be a short answer quiz in the final week of class.

 


Evaluation and Grading

Students who are taking the course for a grade will be assessed using a letter grade based on the standard letter grade format.

  • A – 90 - 100
  • B – 80 – 89
  • C – 70 – 79
  • D – 60 – 69
  • F – Below 60

 

Participation in the forums is a large component of the grading, and substantive postings are necessary to get full credit for each discussion topic.

The following activities will be considered to contribute to the courses as follows:

  • Discussions (Total 40%)
    • 5 points each week
    • Includes an original response
    • Students MUST reply to at least one other student post to get full credit
  • Mid-Term - Short Answer/essay (30%)
  • Final Exam - Short Answer/essay (30%)

 



Syllabus: Exploring Exceptional Experiences


Course Description

This 8-week academic course will discuss the nature of spontaneous experiences, the types of experiences explored by parapsychologists, and how researchers take a structured approach to understanding what people experience and how they understand their own experiences.

We will explore topics like precognitive dreams, clairvoyant experiences, poltergeists, near-death experiences, spontaneous after-death communication, ghosts & apparitions, and reincarnation experiences. From classifications of experiences to examinations of peer-reviewed research articles, this course provides a foundation for understanding psi in daily life.


Course Outline

  1. Week 1: What are Exceptional Experiences?
    • Spontaneous Events, encounters of ESP in daily life
    • Case collections by Louisa Rhine & Sally Rhine Feather
    • General approach to spontaneous cases
  2. Week 2: Spontaneous ESP & Premonitions
    • Examples of spontaneous cases
    • Following personal experiences through life
    • Qualitative approaches to investigations
  3. Week 3: PK In Everyday Life; Spontaneous Healing
    • Examples of spontaneous PK
    • Spontaneous healing
    • Dreams of medical issues & intuitive diagnostics
  4. Week 4: NDEs, OBEs, Reincarnation
    • IANDS Database (Moody’s phenomenology, Greyson scale)
    • OBEs
    • CORT – Stevenson & Tucker
    • Midterm Exam
  5. Week 5: Apparitions, Hauntings, Poltergeists
  6. Week 6: Encounters & UAPs
  7. Week 7: After Death Communications
    • Spontaneous mediumship
    • Séance experiences
    • Spontaneous ADC (phone calls, etc.)
  8. Week 8: Theories of Spontaneous Psi
    • PMIR (Stanford)
    • First Sight (Carpenter)
    • Model of Pragmatic Information (VonLucadou)

Course Materials

Suggested Readings:

The Gift by Sally Rhine Feather & Michael Schmicker

Various articles, videos, and other information provided throughout the course.


Course Activities

 

  • Students will be expected to view the class broadcasts or the recordings of the classes each week.
  • Students will be expected to participate in weekly discussion forums and activities. Each student will be expected to provide an original posting each week and to respond to at least one other student in the discussion forums. Greater participation in this area will be considered during class evaluations.
  • One multiple choice or short answer evaluations will be assigned after the 4th or 5th week of class.
  • Final project: 3 – 7 page paper as described in the courseroom under the final project description. Document in MS-Word format due 10 days after the final class broadcast.

 


Evaluation and Grading

Students who are taking the course for a grade will be assessed using a letter grade based on the standard letter grade format.

  • A – 90 - 100
  • B – 80 – 89
  • C – 70 – 79
  • D – 60 – 69
  • F – Below 60

 

Participation in the forums is a large component of the grading, and substantive postings are necessary to get full credit for each discussion topic.

The following activities will be considered to contribute to the courses as follows:

  • Discussions (Total 40%)
    • Week 1-2 (10%)
    • Week 3-4 (10%)
    • Week 5-6 (10%)
    • Week 7-8 (10%)
  • Assessment #1 (30%)
  • Final Project (30%)

 


Syllabus: Introduction to Parapsychology


Students who complete this course with a passing grade will receive a certificate of completion from the Rhine Education Center.


About the Course

This 8 week course is designed to introduce students to the field of Parapsychology and what parapsychologists study. Topics will include an overview of the phenomena (Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Precognition, Psychokinesis, and Survival Issues), history, research methodologies in the lab and for field investigation, and related issues that make up the vibrant field of scientific parapsychology. Also covered will be the major criticisms and critics of Parapsychology and a look at fraud as it applies to professionals and to consumers. The course textbook is Introduction to Parapsychology, 5th edition by Harvey Irwin and Caroline Watt, and will be supplemented by additional articles.

Required Text: Introduction to Parapsychology, 5th ed. by Harvey J. Irwin & Caroline A. Watt. McFarland & Company: 2007. Available from Amazon.com and other booksellers.

Additional articles will be assigned and provided in the classroom, or linked from the classroom.


Course Outline


 

Week 1: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW: What is Parapsychology?

      • Definition of Terms
      • Scope of the phenomena
      • What makes psi research a science?
      • The Scientific Method
      • Popular Misconceptions:: Parapsychology, the Occult & the New Age
      • The Interdisciplinary Nature of Parapsychology; where it overlaps with other fields of science

 

Week 2: A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY: An Overview

      • The Roots of Psychical Research
      • Spiritualism, Empirical Science and the Serious Investigation/Research of Psychic Experience
      • The Society for Psychical Research (and the ASPR)
      • Seances and Science in the early 20th Century
      • The Rise of Parapsychology and Controlled Laboratory Research
      • The Duke Era
      • Psi Research in the 2nd Half of the 20th Century

 

Week 3: EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION: An Overview

      • Phenomenology of ESP: Spontaneous ESP Experiences
      • Conceptual Issues
      • Experimental Research: Methodologies and Findings
      • Theoretical Considerations

 

Week 4: PSYCHOKINESIS: An Overview

      • Phenomenology of PK: Spontaneous PK Experiences
      • Conceptual Issues
      • Experimental Research: Methodologies and Findings
      • Theoretical Considerations
      • Mid-Term Quiz Available

 

Week 5: PSYCHOKINESIS: Special Topics AND PSYCHIC FRAUD OVERVIEW

      • Experimenter Effect
      • Experimental Research: Healing / DMILS
      • Macro-PK
      • Poltergeists
      • Psychic Fraud:
      • In the “Wild”: Psychics, Mediums, Magicians, and Mentalists
      • In the Laboratory: Controlling for Potential Fraud

 

Week 6: SURVIVAL OF BODILY DEATH: An Overview of Concepts and the Evidence

      • What is Consciousness? What Might Survive?
      • What is the Evidence for Survival?
      • Concepts
      • Out of Body Experiences
      • Near Death Experiences
      • Apparitional Experiences
      • Mediumship & Research
      • The Super-Psi Hypothesis vs. the Survival Hypothesis

 

Week 7: FIELD RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATIONS

      • Applying Experimental Parapsychology to Field Research and Vice Versa
      • How Parapsychological Field Investigation Differs from Methodologies of Modern Ghost Hunters (and Why)
      • Apparitions
      • Hauntings
      • Poltergeists
      • Reincarnation
      • How Good is Evidence Gathered in Field Investigation & Research?

 

Week 8: EXPLANATIONS, CORRELATIONS, CRITICISMS, IMPLICATIONS & APPLICATIONS and WRAPPING UP

      • Are ESP & PK Two Sides of the Same Coin?
      • Key Correlates to ESP and PK: Personality, Belief, Environmental, etc.
      • Criticisms of Parapsychology
      • Implications of ESP, PK & Survival
      • Applied Psi
      • Course Summary and Wrap Up
      • Final Quiz Available

 

  



Grading for this course

All students are considered to be auditing the courses, but students may choose to take this course for a letter grade. Whether being graded or not, all students are encouraged to participate fully in this class and join in the online discussions. This provides an opportunity to get the full experience of the online class and learn the most about the topics that are presented.

Students taking this course for a letter grade will be evaluated using the following information and every student who completes the course with a passing grade will be awarded a Certificate of Completion from the Rhine Education Center.

Grading and Assessments
Discussion Participation (40% of your grade)
 

Engagement with discussion forums throughout the course (total 40%)

  • 5% for each discussion question for the 8 weeks of the course
  • Besides answering the discussion questions, students should participate in the discussions by posting responses to other students.
Assessment I (30% of your grade)
 
Multiple Choice and/or short answer test (submitted online).
Assessment II (30% of your grade)
 
Multiple Choice and/or short answer test (submitted online).
 
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