Donor Spotlight: David Ritchey - Sensitivity and the Transpersonal Experience
"I have always been fascinated by the question 'what is "really" real,'" says IONS member David Ritchey, whose initial connection to IONS was in his support of the 1987 IONS conference, “The Greater Self: New Frontiers in Exceptional Abilities.” This fascination is revealed consistently in his life from his interest in the subjective reality of strong emotional experiences, to his illusion-making through his avocation as a magician, to his manipulation of reality using digital photography, to his work as a clinical hypnotherapist.
During his years working with hypnotherapy clients, Ritchey came to suspect that people who report having transpersonal (metaphysical, paranormal) experiences are different, in a variety of ways, from those who don’t. To test his hypothesis, he developed an innovative questionnaire, the “Holistic Inventory of Stimulus Sensitivities (HISS).” His most notable finding was that the people who report having transpersonal experiences are much more sensitive than the norm, not just in the realm of transpersonal experiences, but also in the physiological, cognitive, emotional, and altered states of consciousness realms. He calls these highly sensitive people Anomalously Sensitive Persons (ASPs) in his book The HISS of the ASP (Headline, 2003).
The HISS of the ASP explores the pitfalls and possibilities inherent in one's being an ASP and suggests that anomalous sensitivity may offer tantalizing clues to one of today's greatest scientific mysteries—the connection between mind and matter. Ritchey also proposes a single mechanism, based on established principles of neurology, quantum physics, and holography, by which all such experiences can be explained—thus bridging the chasm between the scientific and the spiritual worldviews.
Institute of Noetic Sciences Senior Scientist Dean Radin notes, “Ritchey's book is a brilliant example of how clinical observations followed up by systematic research can provide new insights into that realm of experiences called transpersonal, psychic, or mystical. I was impressed by the research described in HISS of the ASP, so Cassandra Vieten and I developed a questionnaire to see if we could independently verify his findings. We invited attendees at an IONS conference to fill out the questionnaire, and analysis of data returned by 500 people confirmed that Ritchey's conclusions were essentially correct: There is indeed a class of people who, by comparison to the "average" person, are extraordinarily sensitive in many ways. Identification of these unusual people provides intriguing clues about what these rarified experiences may be all about, and I believe that Ritchey's interpretation of those clues is well worth studying.”
In Ritchey’s HISS of the ASP, he shows that the traits of the ASP, which originate in the structure and chemistry of the brain, have important psychological, medical, educational, and social implications and suggests that simplistic attempts to “correct” this condition may be at the expense of undermining potential genius. This book should be of interest to therapists, scholars, and researchers who deal with ASPs, and to ASPs themselves in their search for both self-understanding and public recognition for their undeniable contributions to our appreciation of realities that transcend normal waking consciousness.
To purchase the book, or to find out how to take the HISS questionnaire yourself, go to
www.aboutsensitivepersons.com.
