646. Sharon Hewitt Rawlette

Consciousness, Synchronicity, and Survival After Death

Summary: This conversation explores synchronicities, near-death experiences, and other extraordinary reports as clues about the nature of consciousness. It also examines moral realism, reincarnation, and what these ideas may imply about death, ethics, and reality itself.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What do synchronicities suggest about how consciousness connects us to one another?
• How can near-death experiences, intermission memories, and after-death communications be understood as evidence for survival?
• What does it mean to say that consciousness, rather than matter, is the ground of reality?
• How might moral values be grounded in phenomenal consciousness rather than human convention?
• What do pre-birth memories and the timing of soul entry imply about abortion and the continuity of life?

Sharon Hewitt Rawlette is a philosopher and writer who studies extraordinary experiences and what they have to tell us about consciousness and the deeper nature of the world we live in. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University and taught for two years at Brandeis University before leaving academia in 2010 for a career as an independent writer and researcher. Her foray into the realm of extraordinary experience began with synchronicities, and her first non-academic book was The Source and Significance of Coincidences, published in 2019. In 2020, she published a memoir about her personal spiritual journey—The Supreme Victory of the Heart—and then in November 2021, she was named a runner-up in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies essay contest for her essay “Beyond Death,” on the best evidence for the survival of human consciousness after death. She has also contributed to a forthcoming collaborative volume on “deep weird” and a French collective work on the role of the Trickster in paranormal phenomena.

Another book, (forward by Thomas Nagel): The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness

Website: sharonrawlette.com

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.

Transcript, summary, and key takeaways from this interview

Interview recorded May 14, 2022

YouTube Video Chapters:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction to Buddha at the Gas Pump
• 00:04:40 – A Difficult Transition out of Religion
• 00:09:18 – A Serendipitous Encounter in Brittany
• 00:13:37 – Stories of Synchronicity
• 00:17:06 – A Mysterious Phone Call
• 00:21:00 – The Invisible Network of Consciousness
• 00:25:28 – The Intelligence and Gravity Connection
• 00:29:47 – The Evolution of Inhabitants of a Planet
• 00:34:06 – The Emergence of Consciousness and the Illusion of a Continuous Physical World
• 00:38:26 – The Mechanics of Observation and Consciousness
• 00:42:24 – The Paradoxes of the Universe
• 00:46:48 – Welcoming Anomalies and Going Beyond the Party Line
• 00:50:51 – The Impact of Specialization on Progress and Perspective
• 00:55:26 – The Intrinsic Value of Consciousness
• 01:00:17 – Ethical Boundaries and Unity of Consciousness
• 01:04:25 – Consciousness and the Holographic Nature of the Universe
• 01:08:27 – The Universe as a Playpen
• 01:12:33 – The Importance of Looking in the Mirror to Prevent Accidents
• 01:15:57 – Guardian Angels and Divine Interventions
• 01:20:11 – Higher Levels of Consciousness and Celestial Beings
• 01:24:13 – Imaginative capacities and renewal
• 01:28:35 – Overcoming Fear and Promoting Flourishing Consciousness
• 01:32:45 – The Power of Making Unpopular Decisions
• 01:36:42 – Between Consciousness and the Body
• 01:40:51 – Memories of Previous Lives and Afterlife Communications
• 01:45:10 – The Soul’s Entry into the Body
• 01:49:03 – Memories of Past Lives and Reincarnation
• 01:53:13 – The Value of Positive Consciousness and the Cycle of Life
• 01:57:17 – The Ethics of Abortion and the Soul
• 02:01:41 – The Possibility of Life after Death
• 02:05:20 – Organizing Content on batgap.com