Syllabus – Premonitions: A Peek into the Future

Instructor: Christopher Laursen, PhD

Course Description

This four-week course provides humanities-focused, transdisciplinary routes into historical and contemporary experiences, ideas, and studies into premonitions – “a feeling or sense about a future event” (as the experimental psychologist and neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge and author Theresa Cheung define them in their 2018 book The Premonition Code). While the term premonition is best known, researchers more often use the term precognition to refer to ways of knowing or being influenced by information about future events outside of prediction “using memory, logic or your five senses” (Mossbridge and Cheung). The two words tend to be used interchangeably.

How can we come to terms with meaningful precognitive experiences – whether we ourselves experience precognition firsthand, or if we hear about such experiences from other people, in research, or in popular culture?

We’ll explore how a variety of experiencers, researchers, and societies have worked to make sense of precognition at the boundaries of knowledge-making. What roles do culture, consciousness, and one’s own life contexts have in considering the meaning found in precognitive experiences? In exploring these roles, we’ll gain a better understanding of why precognition matters in an accessible, thought-provoking way.

We’ll consider how precognition becomes discussed and applied on personal, social, and cultural scales. How do precognitive experiences become integrated into individuals’ lives? How are they translated by societies and cultures? How to navigate diverse perspectives, beliefs, and doubts about precognition? You’ll gain tools that you can apply both to advancing your studies of psi as well as exploring experiences.

Learning Outcomes

• Define premonitions and precognition in relation to historical experiences, major questions and ideas, and how to consider other people’s extraordinary experiences
• Compare the types of research on precognition and reactions to them
• Appraise the crucial roles of personal, social, and cultural contexts and meaningfulness in relation to precognitive experiences
• Integrate sharing subjective experiences and ideas alongside objectively assessing multiple perspectives in online discussions

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction: How to Come to Terms with Premonitions and Precognition

• Definition of terms
• Scope of the phenomena
• Historical experiences
• Introducing major questions and ideas in the sciences and across cultures
• Empathy and the consideration of other people’s precognitions
• Tools to come to terms with precognitive experiences

Week 2: Boundaries: How Have Answers Been Sought at the Edges of Science and Society?

• The roles of boundary work in the sciences
• Early studies of precognition
• Parapsychological studies on precognition
• “Feeling the Future” and the replication crisis
• Interdisciplinary studies on precognition
• Tools to compare historical and contemporary perspectives on precognition

Week 3: Lifeworlds: How to Consider Contexts and Meaningfulness

• Micro and macro: Personal boundaries, consciousness, and cultures
• The contextual qualities of precognition
• Realizing meaningfulness in precognitive events
• Authorizing a meaningful unfolding and its obstacles
• Decolonizing precognition
• Tools to better consider contexts and meaningfulness of precognition

Week 4: Integrations: How to Bring Together Critical Perspectives

• Pushing past boundaries, from experience to integration
• The meaningful intersection of precognition with other types of psi experiences
• Navigating relationships between precognitive experiencers, researchers, and skeptical thinkers
• How non-human animal and earth science studies on precognition matter
• From interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary studies of precognition
• Tools to integrate experiences and research of precognition

Course Materials

Recommended Books: To delve further into the latest thinking on premonitions to complement lectures and discussions, if you have the time, it’s recommended that you acquire Eric Wargo’s book Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious (Anomalist Books, 2018).

To work with precognition and learn more, you might also value Eric Wargo’s Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self: Interpreting Messages from Your Future (Inner Traditions, 2021) and Theresa Cheung and Julia Mossbridge’s The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition: How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life (Watkins, 2018).

These books are not required, but reading them alongside the course – or after it – will enrich your understanding of precognition.

Recommended Bonus Lecture:Christopher Laursen delivers an online talk to the Rhine on Friday, May 6, on the tragic 1966 flowslide disaster in Aberfan, Wales, to exemplify precognitive experiences and studies into them. If you miss it, you can watch the presentation to supplement the course from the Rhine Video Library. https://www.rhineonline.org/video-library

Other Course Materials, including written, video, and audio along with useful weblinks, will be included as supplements in the course. There will also be resources for further exploration of topics and methods covered.

To Get the Most out of the Class

Join us to watch the live broadcast or watch the recording at your leisure. Log into the RhineEdu Courseroom, meet your classmates, join the discussions, and take advantage of the free materials uploaded to the classroom for further study. No graded assigments will be required for this course.

Syllabus – Inside the Rhine Lab: The Early Years

Instructors: Carlos S. Alvarado, PhD & Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD

About the course:

This 4-week online course will focus on how the Rhine came into being, looking at J. B. and Louisa E. Rhine and how they got interested in psychical research in the 1920s, their journey from the University of Chicago through Harvard to Duke University, the mediumship research that started it all, the early days of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, and the decades after that to J. B.’s retirement and the establishment of the Foundation for the Research on the Nature of Man (yes, that’s what it was called), and its Institute for Parapsychology. Card-guessing, dice experiments, psychic healing experiments on gerbils and mice, random number generators, drawing experiments, the Ganzfeld, early psychic computer games: The history of the Rhine has it all! The course will include weekly online lecture broadcasts, discussion forums, readings, videos, online testing, and a couple of class projects. Come join us for this fascinating look at the history of research at the Rhine.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Describe J. B. Rhine’s approach, the line of experimental parapsychology he established, and the team of experimenters he gathered around him;
2. Describe Louisa Rhine’s spontaneous case collection and how her focus on the experiences informed the way experimenters looked at ESP and PK;
3. Discuss the growth of technology at the Rhine from pre-computer testing equipment through early computer games to the automated Ganzfeld and current experiments.
4. Discuss the Rhine and its place in the international field that studies anomalous experiences.

Weekly Topics

Week 1: Beginnings: Arthur Conan Doyle to Margery the Medium to ESP Testing in the Lab (Alvarado)

Week 2: The Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University: ESP and PK to Case Studies (Alvarado)

Week 3: The Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM) and the Institute for Parapsychology: The Changing Face of Research (Zingrone)

Week 4: Research, Education and Outreach: The Road to the New Rhine (Zingrone)

Class Materials

Suggested readings (articles, books, and blogs), YouTube videos, experiencer websites, links to other researchers and their websites as well as links to websites that will help you continue to study this topic after the course is over.

To Get the Most out of the Class

Join us to watch the live broadcast or watch the recording at your leisure. Log into the REC Classroom, meet your classmates, join the discussions, and take advantage of the free materials uploaded to the classroom for further study. Take part in the two class projects.

Syllabus - Dreams and ESP: Introduction to Exceptional Dreaming

Instructor:  Ryan Hurd

About the course:

This special four week adult education course will focus on the fascinating topic of Extraordinary dreams, including telepathic and precognitive dreams, as well as other kinds of impactful and “anomalous” events that happen while we sleep. Each week will include a live class broadcast, some suggested readings or videos, and a discussion forum on the topic of the week. We will also have a fun dream telepathy contest for those who wish to take part. Topics will include: extraordinary dreams throughout history; contemporary Dream Telepathy experiments; the connection between precognition (seeing the future) and dreams; and how to work with extraordinary dreams in your own life.

This is a seminar course and will not be graded.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Describe the history of dreaming and ESP from ancient times to today.
2. Describe experimental efforts to understand the experience of ESP in dreams.
3. Discuss how the future seems to influence dreams and what actions dreamers have taken in response to such dreams.
4. Find more resources on ESP and dreaming for future study.

Weekly Topics

Week 1:  Introduction to Extraordinary Dreaming: Impactful dreams, Psi Dreaming, and Visitation Dreams.

Week 2: Psi Dreaming: History and Evidence for Telepathic, Precognitive, and Post-cognitive dreams.

Week 3: Contemporary Dream Telepathy Experiments and Psi Dreaming Contest with Dr. Angel Morgan.

Week 4: Working with Extraordinary Dreams (and contest winners announced!)

Class Materials

Suggested readings (articles, books, and blogs), YouTube videos, experiencer websites and links to other fascinating materials will be provided for those who are interested in delving more deeply into ESP and dreams.

To Get the Most out of the Class

Join us to watch the live broadcast or watch the recording at your leisure. Log into the REC Classroom, meet your classmates, join the discussions, and take advantage of the free materials uploaded to the classroom for further study.  Be part of the dream telepathy experiment offered in the class to get the most out of the experience.

Syllabus - Exploring Mediumship Research

Instructors: Carlos S. Alvarado, PhD & Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD

About the course:

In this course students will be given an in-depth look at mediumship research, from teh 19th century to the present.  Among the topics will be: the history of mediumship, physical and mental mediumship, the medium in popular culture, and the impact of mediumship on theory-building in parapsychology, expecially on research into survial beyond bodily death.

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Describe the history of mediumship and how mediumship is expressed in at least one other culture.

2. Name and describe some important mediums and the individuals who investigated them.

3. Discuss how mediumship has been portrayed in popular culture.

4. Describe the work of the Windbridge Institute and explain how their work illustrates both quantitative research and qualitative research into mediums and mediumship.

    

Weekly Topics

Week 1: Introduction to Mediumship Research (Alvarado)

Week 2: Types of Mediums 1: Mental Mediumship (Zingrone)

Week 3: Types of Mediums 2: Physical Mediumship (Alvarado)

Week 4: Mediums in the Popular Culture (Zingrone)

Week 5: The Psychology of Mediums (Alvarado)

Week 6: Methodology, Training and Verification of Mediums: The Windbridge Institute Research #1: (Zingrone)

Week 7: Qualitative Investigation of the Mediumship Experience: The Windbridge Institute Research #2: (Zingrone)

Week 8: Mediums and Survival after Death (Alvarado)

Class Materials

The classroom includes a Course Materials section. In it you will find assigned readings for every week. The course textbook will be Among the Mediums: A Scientist’s Quest for Answers by Dr. Julie Beischel of the Windbridge Institute. Click the title of the book to be taken to the book page on Amazon.com.

Suggested readings (articles, books, and blogs), YouTube videos, experiencer websites, and links to other materials will also be listed on a week-by-week basis in the Course Materials book. Suggested readings are not assigned, but are provided for those who are interested in delving more deeply into some aspect of mediumship on their own.

Assessments

Discussion Forums, Assessments #1 through #8

Each week will include a discussion forum. Students will be expected to complete one post of their own responding to the week’s question, as well as respond to at least one discussion post authored by another student. Each week’s work will have a maximum of 5 points.

Quizzes, Assessments #9 and #10

At the end of Week #4, Quiz 1 will become available. At the end of Week #8, Quiz 2 will become available. Each quiz will be 15 multiple-choice items, each item worth 1 point.

Presentation-Project, Assessment #11

By the end of Week #8 students will be expected to upload a 10-minute presentation or a 10-page term paper on some topic of the student’s choosing that is related to the course content with a potential maximum of 30 points.

Assessments will contribute to the overall grade in the following proportions:

Discussion Post Assessments: 40% of the grade

Tests: 30% of the grade

Presentation-Project: 30% of the grade

Students will receive a letter grade for their overall efforts. A grading rubric will be available in the Rhine Education Center classroom, and students will be able to check their points total as they go along.