IAC studies the consciousness (integral personality, individual essence, “soul”, spirit) in its entirety, researching the nature of our manifestations from an all-inclusive standpoint that encompasses both our physical and multidimensional (non-physical) nature. This viewpoint deepens our understanding of human life and provides a greater direction and purpose to our existence.
As a consequence of this approach, IAC promotes the development of new research methodologies, techniques, and leading-edge studies to integrate the multidimensional aspects of the consciousness and subsequent multidimensional experiences in this area into contemporary science. This is done through the sponsoring of scientific debates around a range of subjects related to consciousness research and psi phenomena through forums, public meetings, congresses, journals, and other scientific publications.
In the same way that conventional sciences operate with uniformity of nature, conscientiology assumes there is uniformity in human experience and how it is structured. For example, language is possible because humans are able to share meanings, which are completely internal and subjective. Science operates on shared meanings as well. Conscientiology anatomizes the study of consciousness to the point where there is a very specialized vocabulary for all sorts of subtle internal phenomena and experiences. People who study conscientiology use this technical language to describe, compare and study their experiences.
Can we scientifically evaluate whether the out-of-body experience is only the result of neurological activity or if it reveals dimensions beyond the physical reality? Would this lead to a new frontier for science and human development? In short, can the OBE falsify the materialistic or physicalist paradigm, including a brain-based account of who and what we are? The OBE allows us to study psychical processes from a multidimensional perspective that might reveal processes hidden from our usual awareness. It could even be a means to verify our existence beyond this life or a subtler dimension of reality. In this study the scientist cannot be just an observer. Investigators need to undertake enough personal expeditions in order to begin to understand the OBE and what it reveals about so-called anomalies and even about often-overlooked instances of our daily life. Having said that, we must acknowledge that open-minded researchers, who engaged in researching OBE accounts and their characteristics, such as Robert Crookall (1890-1981), made great contributions to the understanding and scientific analysis of the OBE, compiling thousands of accounts and reaching conclusions that are commonly observed by others experiencing OBE’s.
Clearly, being a new science with a new paradigm, distinct expectations and rules must apply to the phenomena that go beyond physical reality. The consciential paradigm, adopted in conscientiology, treats psi phenomena through a holistic model by recognizing that they are linked to subtle energy, which cannot be experienced, investigated, and understood through the use of physical senses and technology alone.
IAC’s research and training is based on this alternative framework, which suggests that many conventional scientists could be asking the wrong questions, based on an inadequate perspective. Experiences like clairvoyance and the out-of-body experience can reveal to the researcher-observer that he or she (the object of the observation) is not limited to the physical body or physical dimension, can survive biological death and, hence, is not of physical origin.
Multidimensional experiences, like OBEs (and NDEs), allow us to have observations of what exists after the biological death. Such studies have very practical applications in helping individuals overcome the fear of death and its ramifications, as well allowing the study of such topics with no religious agenda. It also allows individuals and researchers to adopt a perspective which goes beyond the observations of a single physical life.
Despite not being easily replicable, corroboration with the experience of other practitioners or researchers and shared or joint experiences allow scientists to reach more objective, consensus-based, scientific conclusions akin to the multiple, subjective observations and analyses of conventional science. The consciential paradigm could be seen as a multidimensional logical positivism. It is based on the use of logical tautologies and first-person observations from experience without restricting the experience to physical perception, and without applying the same demands of physicalist research.
IAC follows scientific principles without being limited to a reductionist, materialistic, Newtonian-Cartesian research paradigm predominant nowadays in mainstream science, which considers reality to consist solely of a material universe operating under physical laws.
Our collective personal experiences and consciential laboratory experiments strongly suggest that the consciousness can operate in a multidimensional reality. Rather than dismissing the ‘psychic,’ ’spiritual,‘ or ‘transcendent’ experiences reported by millions of people around the world as illusory, we aim to research these experiences in an unbiased, rational, and participative manner. We call this novel paradigm that arises from and underlies our research and education approaches, the consciential paradigm.
The underlying notion of the consciential paradigm is that consciousness is not a by-product of matter or energy, but another property or element of reality. Hence, its study may not be complete without acknowledging the direct, personal experience of non-ordinary phenomena experienced by the consciousness. This extends beyond the approaches of physics, biology, neuroscience and other conventional sciences.
The major challenge that presents itself for the consciential paradigm is how to conduct science beyond material reality in the absence of objective, physical measurement. Within the consciential paradigm, a single, subjective observation is problematic, since it is difficult to distinguish a factual observation from imagination, fabrication, distorted perception, wishful thinking, or a purely subjective altered state. An evolving scientific consensus develops through the comparison and contrast of accounts of experiencer-researchers, many of whom are trained in both science and intentional psi phenomena.
For this approach to remain scientific, it is critical that any and all hypotheses be subject to the tests of reason, competing subjective, intersubjective, and objective evidence, and alternative models. A consensus should be relative, limited, and temporary, as it is in conventional sciences, with researchers representing multiple schools of thought even while considering the same data.
Hence, according to IAC, conscientiology should have a different approach than that of religions, closed groups, or totalitarian communities which, on the other hand, are dominated by a small group of influential individuals, many times considered infallible or more advanced. This can result in anti-scientific, ethnocentric, politicized, centralized, homogeneous, biased, or rarely challenged viewpoints. Mindful of these pitfalls, IAC is preventing conscientiology, a cutting-edge neo-science, from devolving away from scientific principles. IAC defends a heterogeneous, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, ethical, participative science of subjective, multidimensional consciousness experiences (psi phenomena). To remain a science, conscientiology must never divorce itself from reason, logic, coherence, healthy skepticism, questioning, independence, and diversity.
Science has no owner, no central individual, group, location, or institution that may control it. IAC is no exception to this rule. Every science, including conscientiology (consciousness science), must develop and progress based on the accumulation of evidence, debate, replication, and refutation of published research. For science to evolve, it must be open to technical speculation that questions even those ideas that are considered absolutely “proven.” As such, a scientific publication should have no censorship; hence, peer-review should be aimed at promoting original, well-supported, and well-structured work.
Science is motivated by a universal pursuit of knowledge that frees our minds, enlightens us about the nature of self and the reality we inhabit, advances our technological progress, and results in greater wellness for civilization. Ethics, progress, evolution, the pursuit of cutting-edge relative truths, and the well-being of our fellow humans should be the basis and driving force for all scientific research, projects, publication or discussion.
Conscientiology, like any other science, should consider scientific contributions on their own merits, without discrimination based on institutional affiliation, country of origin or residence, gender, profession or cultural background.
IAC envisions a conscientiology science established as a permanently recognized area of study, with the following characteristics:
- Coherent with the scientific spirit, free of restrictive boundaries of any type other than ethical principles.
- Inclusive of philosophical, theoretical and practical studies. Open to look at knowledge generated from any line of study, but applying multidimensional and experiential criticism to make use of what is consistent.
- The ability to improve knowledge while being ready to let go of inappropriate approaches and ingrained, outdated beliefs and ideas.
- A field of study in which all individuals are able to contribute with works based on their own merit and maturity, aiming to be unbiased, ethical, and egalitarian while at the same time realistic, substantiated, and truthful to scientific principles.
- Non-dogmatic, universalistic, and open to various ideas and approaches that contribute to expanding the understanding of consciousness while preserving scientific tenets and actively discouraging regressions towards less open schools of thought.
- A group of researchers and field of knowledge that is determined enough to go against the flow and face the criticism of skeptics who are not open-minded to a broader paradigm that includes multidimensionality and the non-ordinary capabilities of consciousness.
- A group of researchers who embrace the challenge of developing a non-reductionist paradigm for science that is less matter-limited, while respecting science’s valuable and essential principles.
- A multidimensional scientific study for true freethinkers.
- A body of researchers that dares to devise new methodologies for researching non-physical manifestations and experiment with them.
- A field whose researchers, scholars and professors acknowledge their limitations in terms of what phenomena they cannot produce at will, while valuing the phenomena they can bring about and the evidences from other individuals’ research and personal experience.
- A body of researchers that, in the absence of sufficient evidence, maintains discernment to think about the problem or phenomena (theoretical science) without dogmatic viewpoints, avoiding mystical religiosity, reductionist scientism, or biased science.
- A field of study in which specialties and differences in approach are respected as long as they are unbiased and loyal to scientific and ethical principles.
Published by IAC, the Journal of Conscientiology (JofC) has been the official, international vehicle of scientific communication for conscientiology since 1998. The JofC serves as a forum open to the presentation of conscientiological investigations, consciousness studies, and scientific debate.
The Journal, whose entire collection is available electronically through the website www.jofc.org, compiles articles by nearly 350 scholars from around the world, affiliated with 36 different institutions.
A peer-reviewed publication, today it is listed in international indexes (EBSCO) and is highly graded by QUALIS. It is distributed to subscribers in 35 countries and collected by various libraries and international research institutions.
The IAC Global Award for Scientific Contribution to Conscientiology is a program dedicated to encouraging consciousness investigation and recognizing distinguished research. It honors researchers who have published papers that have made significant theoretical or empirical advances in any subdiscipline of conscientiology (consciousness science), leading to the understanding or envisaging of important concepts.
As the fundamental goal of the program is to advance the science of consciousness (conscientiology), the award is offered to encourage larger-scale investigative activities and projects that are aimed at making a significant impact on the body of knowledge, research methodology, and communication of conscientiological science and its corresponding subdisciplines.
The IAC Global Scientific Award serves also to underscore the importance that IAC attaches to research initiatives in conscientiology, be they formal research or self-research. The prize is seen as an integral part of conscientiology’s ongoing objective of advancing sciences dedicated to consciousness studies. It promotes dialogue between conscientiologists and mainstream scientists in general, establishing a more adequate scientific paradigm that is not reductionist or purely mechanistic.
- Global Symposium on Existential Inversion
- International Congress of Conscientiology
- International Symposium of Conscientiological Research
- International Symposium on Intrusionlessness
- International Symposium on Vibrational State
- Sponsoring of an unbiased, uncensored journal for scientific publications (Journal of Conscientiology, JofC)
- Creation of an award to recognize quality research in conscientiology and encourage further investigative projects (IAC Global Award for Scientific Contribution to Conscientiology)
- Organization of an international conference to debate consciousness science methodology and epistemology (International Symposium of Conscientiological Research)
- Organization of a conference for open discussions on consciousness science under a multicultural and multidisciplinary approach, bringing together international researchers, aiming to establish a non-reductionist science (International Congress of Conscientiology).
- Acoustics applications for projectiological training
- Analysis of the effects of the vibrational state and energy techniques via fMRI
- Application of evolutionary intelligence
- Basis for an energogram
- Basis for a despertogram
- Basis of holochakrology
- Bioenergetic Technology
- Chakras: subtle organs
- Energetic characteristics and influences of consciential laboratories on firsthand experimentation of parapsychic phenomena
- Energosoma: para-physiological and para-anatomic analysis
- Extraphysical perception: an experimental research
- fMRI as a means for detection and measurement of bioenergy (subtle energy)
- Holokarma: evolution’s self-regulatory mechanism
- Holosomatic pattern on breast cancer’s panorama
- Hypothesis of the mechanism of energosomatic activation
- Identification of the measurable parameters of the VS
- Intraconsciential recycling: basic principles and processes
- Mentalsomatic gestations in conscientiology
- Methods on enhancing intuition
- Online OBE Survey: a complete and universalistic study on the phenomenon of the out-of-body experience
- Online VS Survey
- Exploring paratechnology and paraecology
- Punctuated progressive procedure for OBE
- Synchronicities, coincidences, accidents, and karmic events: an analysis to establish correlations and differences
- Study of factors that hinder projection in different individual types
- Study of neurological aspects of the vibrational state via fMRI
- Understanding existential recycling: its causes, effects and techniques