ISSSEEM: eSEEM Community TouchPoints

Bulletin Board
News from ISSSEEM Board of Directors & Members

Our Journal, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine

For mystically-inclined scientists and scientifically-inclined mystics

By Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H.
ISSSEEM Past President, 1997-98

Among professional membership societies in science and medicine, ISSSEEM was established with a uniquely egalitarian vision. We are a home both to researchers interested in exploring transcendent and unitive experiences, scientifically and personally, and to transpersonally oriented practitioners and laypeople committed to helping to advance the frontiers of the science of human consciousness. ISSSEEM is a place for these two constituencies to mix, share their perspectives, and learn from each other. This is a core value for ISSSEEM, one reflected in the unofficial motto of our Society as a home for mystically-inclined scientists and scientifically-inclined mystics.

As a scientific society, ISSSEEM's most important product is our peer-reviewed journal, Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine. Founded in 1990, the journal is now in its 19th volume. SE&EM publishes three issues per year on a wonderfully eclectic range of topics. The subtle energies and energy medicine field has emerged at the interface of applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, biomedical and electrical engineering, mind-body research, quantum biophysics, advanced electrodynamics, and complementary and alternative medicine, and the journal's content reflects this diversity. Articles include theoretical, experimental, and clinical contributions, as well as reviews, brief reports, invited perspectives, technical comments, and correspondence. Each volume also includes that year's presidential address along with the major keynotes from the annual scientific conference. Through the years, SE&EM has been the leading scientific forum for this field, and its contributors represent a "who's who" of leading figures at the cutting-edge of science, medicine, and consciousness. The current editor, Dr. Berney Williams, is also the immediate Past President of ISSSEEM.

The most recent two issues of SE&EM exemplify the very best of the journal's eclecticism and scientific excellence. Volume 18, Number 3 features several fascinating and provocative empirical papers as well as the second of a multi-part theoretical discussion of consciousness. These papers, collectively, exemplify ISSSEEM's longstanding interest in the bioelectromagnetic energy spectrum and its instrumentality and salience for human physiology, medicine and the healing process, and the physical and more subtle interconnections linking us consciously with all sentient life. Volume 19, Number 1 features contributions from last summer's annual meeting. Included are wonderful papers by three world-renowned scientific figures: Drs. Larry Dossey, Dean Radin, and Christine Page. Drs. Dossey and Radin have contributed several times in the past to our journal, and Dr. Page is also a Past President of the Society. This issue also features Dr. Williams' presidential address, an impassioned, scholarly, and entertaining call for an "omni-disciplined perspective" in research seeking to identify "where healing happens."

As an academic scientist, I recognize what a precious jewel our journal is, both for our Society and for the larger scientific and medical communities. Frankly, there is nothing else like it out there. The underlying science of subtle energies and the clinical applications of energy medicine are subjects that greatly fascinate all of us who are ISSSEEM members. More importantly, the scholarship that is contained in every issue of SE&EM can be of inestimable benefit to an academic world that is still quite resistant to new ideas, especially those challenging the rather narrow presumptions of materialistic science and Western biomedicine. The best way for us serve as agents of change among the stodgy world of academicians is to ensure that the great discoveries and innovations of SE&EM's authors continue to reach the widest possible audience. The best way to do that is to subscribe to the journal, even if you yourself are not a working scientist.

As a former President of ISSSEEM and a member of Journal Advisory Board for many years, I can state unabashedly that of all the things that ISSSEEM does and represents I am most proud of the journal. SE&EM has been a vital contributor to scholarly discourse on a subject that means so much to all of us. In fact, our journal is of considerable historic importance, having predated by several years almost every major North American academic journal in the field of complementary and alternative medicine. Please join me, if you have not done so already, by subscribing to SE&EM and helping to share the very best research on subtle energies and energy medicine with a growing community of scientists and scholars that is coming to recognize the great value in what ISSSEEM has to offer.

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When Weird and Good became Synonymous

By Bernard Williams, Ph.D.

Recently, comedian George Carlin was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain prize for American humor, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington DC. Carlin had been previously named to receive the prize, but died before the presentation, so the proceedings took the form of a memorial, with extensive video clips showing the evolution of his humor through his more than forty year career.
Most of the presenters emphasized Carlin's incisive use of humor to offer criticisms of social hypocrisy. And nearly all emphasized his lyric mastery of language. In one of the last interviews of his life, Carlin succinctly characterized the rhetorical nature of humor. Perhaps more than any prior recipient of the Mark Twain award, Carlin fit the mold of Sam Clemens, both in his craft and in his moral courage.

PBS broadcast the proceedings, and Lilly Tomlin was one of the presenters. She celebrated the good fortune to have been George's friend and professional peer during the times of social change that were both reflected in and urged forward by Carlin's humor. As she most succinctly phrased it, she and George were young humorists during the era when weird and good became synonymous. Her remark prompted my reflection on what Tomlin's observation says about the recent history of our healing community. Because she is as much a master of language as was George Carlin, I suspect that Lilly Tomlin knows the etymology of the word weird; which in Old English was spelled wyrd, and referred to fate personified or to the magical power to control fate. The term derives from the Anglo-Saxon and Norse triple goddess Ur�r (Wyrd), who bestows fortune upon newborns, the deified form of the midwives.

From Christine Page