Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, PhD

In addition to the blog posts featured below, you may want to check out Sharon’s Psychology Today blog Mysteries of Consciousness.

  • Can an Organ Transplant Alter Your Identity?

    Can an Organ Transplant Alter Your Identity?

    In 1988, Claire Sylvia received the first heart-lung transplant performed in New England. In the days and weeks following her surgery, she realized that she had some strange new cravings. For one thing, she found herself “dying for a beer,” even though she’d never liked beer before. She also began to add green peppers to Read more

  • Why It’s Simpler to Believe That Everything Is Conscious

    Why It’s Simpler to Believe That Everything Is Conscious

    Physicalism is often seen as being a simple, no-nonsense theory of reality, well suited to hard-nosed, scientifically minded folks. But, in fact, the classic physicalist view postulates much stranger, more mysterious entities than another type of view that’s now gaining currency in philosophical circles: the view that everything that exists is conscious. I explain this Read more

  • The Couple Who Met in a Near-Death Experience

    The Couple Who Met in a Near-Death Experience

    [12 June 2023 Update: There is a more recent version of this post, citing the newest edition of Dr. Heinbuch’s book, We Met on the Other Side.] I recently had the great pleasure of discovering Dr. Scarlett Heinbuch‘s new book Waking Up to Love, about the way she met her husband during a shared near-death Read more

  • My Interview on Chasing Reality

    My Interview on Chasing Reality

    My video interview with molecular biologist Ryan Bissett of the new consciousness-focused podcast Chasing Reality is now available on YouTube! We cover so much ground: the place of consciousness in our world, laboratory research on psychokinesis, our personal spiritual journeys, and of course the source and significance of coincidences! Ryan is a wonderful host, and Read more

  • Are Your Number Coincidences Significant?

    Are Your Number Coincidences Significant?

    Do you feel like you keep seeing the same number over and over in lots of different contexts? Do you wonder whether it’s really showing up more often than it used to, or whether maybe you’re just paying more attention to it? In today’s Psychology Today post, I describe a simple experiment you can do Read more

  • Mind Over Matter

    Mind Over Matter

    Today on PsychologyToday.com, I discuss strange coincidences where the world seems to respond uncannily to our thoughts and emotions. The most dramatic thought-mirroring synchronicity I describe is one from my own life: the smartphone GPS incident that was the tipping point in my interest in this subject. Along with a couple of other anecdotal examples, I Read more

  • Are Near-Death Experiences Just Comforting Illusions?

    Are Near-Death Experiences Just Comforting Illusions?

    My most recent post over at Psychology Today focuses on the aspects of near-death experiences that can be verified to accurately reflect reality: specifically, verified perceptions of events at a distance and verified perceptions of events that occurred during the period when the NDEr’s body was in cardiac arrest and had minimal to no brain function. Read more

  • Is Life a Dream?

    Is Life a Dream?

    Today’s post on my Psychology Today blog, “Mysteries of Consciousness,” explores a question that has bothered skeptical philosophers for centuries, if not millenia: How do we know that life is not just a dream? I argue that this is not just an idle question and that the answer to it stands to have important empirical Read more

  • Introducing My Psychology Today Blog: “Mysteries of Consciousness”

    Introducing My Psychology Today Blog: “Mysteries of Consciousness”

    Those of you who are particularly interested in the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of my research into coincidences and consciousness may also want to follow my new Psychology Today blog, “Mysteries of Consciousness.” My first post, yesterday, was called “What If Consciousness Comes First?” and discusses how finding an adequate explanation for the way the Read more

  • A Doctor Who Washes the Windows of the Soul

    A Doctor Who Washes the Windows of the Soul

    Have you ever wished your doctor or therapist could just read your mind? So you wouldn’t have to go to all the trouble of trying to explain your symptoms, your medical history, your emotionally traumatic past, or your uncomfortable, distressing present? No doubt that’s what has brought many of Dr. Mary Helen Hensley’s clients to Read more