Gnosis Association for Multidisciplinary
Research on the Hypothesis of Survival
The Gnosis Association for Multidisciplinary Research on
the Hypothesis of Survival is a parapsychology research facility
founded by Giorgio de Simone (1925 ) in Italy in July
1981. Simone, a professor at the University of Naples, began
work in parapsychology in 1950 and for a quarter of a century
was the president of the Italian Centre for Parapsychology
(196389) For most of that time he was also editor of Informazioni
di Parapsychologia (196489).
Parapsychology has concentrated on laboratory research
into ESP (clairvoyance and telepathy) and psychokinesis. It
has largely neglected research on survival that was the mainstay
of psychical research in the early twentieth century. Simone felt
that the time had come for a renewed interest in the possibility
that a self-aware autonomous nucleus (analogous to the soul)
exists independently of bio-physical laws and is capable of operating
on its own. That is to say, he was positing the possibility
of this nucleus functioning with intelligence and decisionmaking
abilities after the death of the human body.
Gnosis was established as an interdisciplinary effort to assemble,
study, and evaluate all of the data, both research and
speculative, on the single problem of the survival of the human
self following bodily death. The object would be the formulation
of a rational theory on the survival of the self beyond
death. Gnosis has offered itself as a point of unification and discussion
of survival in a context of objectivity and free from what
is considered the irrationality of magic and religious dogmatism.
The Gnosis program has four main areas Observation (primarily
in philosophy, anthropology, and history of religions);
analysis (parapsychology); critical elaboration (using material
from other sciences), and experimental work investigating such
phenomena as out-of-the-body travel, trance, hypnosis, etc.
Gnosis publishes a triannual journal, Quaderni Gnosis, and
holds an annual convention. It is headquartered at via Belvedere
87, 80127, Napoli, Italy. Its website is at http
www.agora.stm.it.gnosiswmoremt.htm.
Sources
Gnosis Association for Multidisciplinary Research on the
Hypothesis of Survival. httpwww.agora.stm.it.gnosis
wmoremt.htm. April 19, 2000.
