About the Rhine Research Center in Durham, NC

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Rhine Research Center
2741 Campus Walk Avenue
Building 500
Durham, NC 27705
Phone (919) 309-4600

Dear Friends of the Rhine,

I am writing to you to express my gratitude and appreciation for your interest and support of the Rhine in the past and to ask you to consider making a tax deductible contribution to the Rhine as the year comes to a close.

The current year has been extremely active at the Rhine. The Rhine Education Center was created to provide online learning opportunities in the science of parapsychology for students around the country and around the world. In addition, there are 4 active research projects at the Rhine including studies on EVPs (electronic voice phenomena related to hauntings and apparitions), the states of mind associated with enhanced ESP performance, and an examination of the energies produced by energetic healers and meditators.

2011 also saw a change in leadership and organization at the Rhine. Sally Rhine Feather, the guiding light of the Rhine for many years, has taken the new title of Executive Director Emeritus and passed the day to day activities involved with leading the center to me, John G. Kruth. I am humbled and feel privileged to be in this position at this time, but it should be clear that Sally is still very involved with the activities at the Rhine, and her guidance is still strong within the center.

As we move into 2012, the Rhine continues to expand its
outreach and growth with the redesign of the Rhine website which will include a new members’ area, video and audio archives, and an opportunity to view our exciting Friday night events via a live broadcast over the internet. This will enable our educational events and talks to be viewed by people all over the world with just an internet connection and a link from the new Rhine website. Besides the live broadcasts of our events, the Psychic Experiences Group (PEG) is working to establish chapters in other parts of the country and even to provide virtual PEG meetings using the internet. The use of the available technologies is helping the Rhine to reach out to more people in the world and to provide a greater awareness of the important research and knowledge that is being gained every day at the Rhine.

John Kruth In other exciting news, the new year will bring a spotlight to parapsychology in the South Eastern US, where the original studies of ESP began at Duke University in 1927. Two conferences will be hosted by the Rhine in 2012: a conference on Clinical Approaches to Exceptional Experiences, and the international meeting of the Parapsychology Association which is co-hosted with Atlantic University. We at the Rhine are proud to participate in these events and to help present this information and knowledge to the scientific community.

Our extraordinary growth this year is due to the efforts of a dedicated staff and a great vision of how the Rhine can help provide education and research in parapsychology while helping to foster a community for people who have extraordinary experiences. As the year comes to a close, please consider making a tax deductible donation to help us to make 2012 even more successful. Thank you for your past support and for your dedication in helping us to grow and to continue to bring this message of consciousness and knowledge to the world in 2012.

John G. Kruth
Executive Director, Rhine Research Center

The Rhine Research Center is a tax exempt, non-profit, 501(c) 3 public educational organization legally incorporated and licensed in the State of North Carolina. You will receive a receipt for tax purposes.

About the Rhine Research Center Today

The Rhine Research Center in Durham, NC The "New "Home
In 2002, over thirty years after the move from Duke to the FRNM building, it was decided there was a need for more modern experimental space and updated research equipment as well as for expansion of the Center’s library. The aging Buchanan Avenue building was sold to Duke University and a new building, the first ever in the world built for experimental work in parapsychology, was constructed for the Rhine Research Center at 2741 Campus Walk Avenue in western Durham about a mile west of the Duke Medical Center. This location, across from the Millennium Hotel, is easily accessible from the interstates and is near the Stedman Auditorium on the Duke Center for Living campus where frequent Rhine Center programs are held. Smaller programs and social events are regularly held in the Rhine Center’s Alex Tanous Research Library that was initiated and supported by a gift from the Alex Tanous Foundation of Portland, Maine.

Who We Are
The Rhine Research Center is a hub for research and education on the basic nature of consciousness.
The Center presents a wide range of educational offerings in which we attempt to draw together and present the most interesting and challenging current ideas on the nature and enhancement of consciousness. We present conferences, teach classes, and offer workshops, lectures, study groups, and other events. Some of these activities are face-to-face in our Durham NC headquarters, and some are web-based.

We conduct careful scientific studies on the parapsychological dimensions of consciousness, in order to answer basic questions about the nature of consciousness, its reach, its durability, its power, its healing potential, and the extent of its autonomy and independence of physical constraints. An important aspect of our research effort is the publication of the Journal of Parapsychology a peer-reviewed scientific periodical that has been published continuously since 1937, and that has consistently offered to the scientific community a large portion of the best theoretical and empirical work that has been done on these problems.

What We Intend
An Integrative Center for the Study of Consciousness.
Now independent of Duke University, the Rhine Research Center is still located near Duke’s West Campus and Medical Center. We aim to meet the great need for information about the depth and breadth and potential of human consciousness. We will continue to present in various formats the best and most instructive current thought on these things. And we will continue to add to the body of scientific knowledge about the nature and power of the mind.
Generating scientific knowledge about consciousness and presenting a wide array of speculative ideas about consciousness and its enhancement might seem to be different and even contradictory things. They are potentially complementary, and we attempt to integrate them.

If anyone wishes to make a truly independent study of any subject, and not simply learn of the prior opinions and findings of others, there are two basic paths for exploration. We may study something empirically, and rely upon the methods of science: theory and hypothesis, objective measurements, control of variables, mathematical analysis of results, and peer-review of conclusions. Still, not all important questions are readily amenable to these methods. The other path for study is more personal and informal. We may find an interesting idea and tentatively adopt it, and try it out in the “laboratory” of our own experience. If we find that it is useful, and adds to our sense of understanding important things and enhances our personal sense of efficacy, then we may keep it and build upon it as a basis for testing other new ideas. If it does not prove to be very useful, hopefully we will be clear-headed and independent enough to toss it out, and look for something better.

Most people carry out this sort of informal “research” all their lives. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive, but each has its unique advantages and disadvantages. Personal, informal research permits us to test out ideas that we find difficult or impossible to squeeze into the structure of empirical study. The downside is that our personal perspective is always limited and potentially biased in unwitting ways, and our range of experience is relatively narrow. We may reach conclusions that are wrong, or only very narrowly true, and never know it. Empirical research is painstaking and often slow-going, and may be somewhat narrow in terms of the questions it can manage. It may seem to miss some of the richness and immediacy of ongoing experience. Its advantage is that with it we can know something for sure, and integrate it with the rest of scientific knowledge. It is with scientific knowledge, after all, that our culture has constructed our modern world, with all its advantages.

Certain knowledge is powerful knowledge.
The Rhine Research Center strives to pursue both these paths of study, and make them available to all interested persons. Because empirical knowledge is more powerful and certain than the results of purely personal exploration will ever be, our preference will always be for scientific exploration when that is possible. Pursuing both these paths at once, we will continue to advance our understanding of consciousness – its reach, power, durability, healing power and spiritual depth. What J. B. Rhine discovered, we explore.

Mission Statement
The Rhine Research Center is an integrative center for the study of consciousness. We are a hub for ground-breaking research and educational activities on the nature of human consciousness – its reach, its reality, its durability, its healing capacity, and its spiritual dimension.

“The scientific worker seizes upon the inexplicable phenomenon as he (or she) would upon a suddenly discovered treasure. The more unexplainable and mysterious it is, the more insight it will yield when eventually explained.” --J.B. Rhine (1947)