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| December, 2024 |
In this Issue
Maverick Milestones: SSE’s December Babies are in Good Company
- December 25, 1642: The legendary English physicist, mathematician, and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton was born.
- December 4, 1901: German physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote the theory of uncertainty and won the Nobel Prize in 1932.
As the holiday season unfolds, a familiar figure graces decorations, stories, and imaginations worldwide—Santa Claus, aka, Kris Kringle, Old St. Nick, or Nicholas the Wonderworker. With his jolly demeanor, iconic red suit, and global gift-giving escapades, Santa has become a symbol of generosity and joy. But beyond the myths of flying reindeer and chimney descents lies a fascinating historical and scientific story worth exploring and engaging.
The character of Santa Claus finds its roots in the historical figure of Saint Nicholas, a 4th-century Greek bishop from Myra (modern-day Turkey). Renowned for his acts of kindness, Nicholas became a patron of children, sailors, and the downtrodden. Over centuries, his legend spread across Europe, evolving and merging with local folklore. By the time Saint Nicholas crossed the Atlantic, thanks to Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, he began his transformation into the Santa Claus that we recognize today.
From a scientific perspective, Santa’s evolution offers a compelling case study in ‘memetics’—the way ideas spread and change across cultures and time. How did the modest bishop of Myra morph into the jolly figure associated with Coca-Cola ads and NORAD’s holiday tracking program? The answer lies in the interplay of tradition, art, and commerce. Likewise, the Christmas season offers a smorgasbord of frontier science topics to discuss, such as:
- Transpersonal Psychology and the Psychology of Belief: The enduring appeal of Santa taps into cognitive frameworks that value kindness, reward, and the suspension of disbelief. Children, in particular, embody this willingness to embrace magic, reinforcing the myth through each generation. Then again, magic might not be entirely fiction as illustrated by the research and commentaries from frontier scientists like Brian Laythe and Dean Radin.
- Physics of the Impossible: Santa’s annual globe-trotting raises playful questions about the (presumed) laws of physics. Could wormholes or time slips explain his spacetime-bending gift delivery? Is his sleigh an example of advanced aeronautical engineering courtesy of NASA or perhaps the crashed object purportedly involved in the Roswell UFO Incident? Does Santa’s technology violate physics as modeled by genius pioneers like Newton and Heisenberg? These speculations reflect humanity’s love for blending science with wonder.
- Naught-and-Nice List: Maybe Santa’s list is built using psi, like precognition or RV to check-in on all the children of the world?
- Non-Human Intelligence: Elves….do they exist as suggested by certain folklore traditions, or perhaps these ‘little people’ are extraterrestrials or something even more esoteric like tuplas, i.e., thought-forms utilized by Santa? And has Santaf discovered the legendary Fountain of Youth, or he is an immortal, akin to the mysterious historical figure of The Count of St. Germain, or ‘wandering immortal’ legends like that of Cartaphilus (sometimes known as Longinus), who supposedly was cursed to walk the earth forever as punishment for his role in Christ’s crucifixion.
- Cultural Adaptation: Santa’s image has adapted to local traditions, from Father Christmas in the UK to Sinterklaas in the Netherlands. This adaptability highlights how cultural exchange and globalization shape shared symbols.
Santa Claus also provides an avenue to engage young minds in scientific inquiry. Why do reindeer have antlers? How could one man traverse the globe in a single night? By exploring such questions, educators can inspire curiosity and critical thinking while embracing the spirit of the season.
As scientists, we are often tasked with demystifying the world. But Santa reminds us that not all mysteries demand resolution. Some, like the joy of giving and the spirit of togetherness, are meant to be celebrated. This holiday season let’s honor the real and imagined Santa—the historical figure who sparked centuries of kindness and the mythical character who continues to ignite imaginations worldwide.
Wishing you all a season of wonder and discovery,
James Houran, Ph.D.
Interim-President, SSE
Editor-in-Chief, JSE
Forthcoming Papers in JSE
2025 will be a provocative year for frontier science papers—just consider this small sampling of diverse topics to appear in JSE:
- An intriguing case study of a boy who reportedly sees ‘colored fields’
- Fresh analysis on ‘yugas, climate cycles, and world ages’
- A new validity study of the ‘Haunted People Syndrome’ concept
- Research on the issues of critical thinking and replication in science education
- Overview of the social miasm theory of wellness
- Further reports on apparent ‘after death communications’ involving animals
- Chemical processes potentially involved in reincarnation-type cases
- Empirical psi testing at sacred sites
- A new theory about the identity of the infamous ‘Zodiac’ serial killer
- Wealth of book and multimedia reviews… and so much more
Thank you, JSE Supporters!
- JSE published 71 articles in 2024 (not even including book reviews or letters), spanning a diverse range of topics including UAP/UFO reports, near-death experiences, reincarnation cases, general arguments and evidence for the postmortem survival of consciousness, historical mysteries like the Shakespeare Authorship Question and unusual deaths associated with the Pharaohs’ Curse, psi talent in ritual magic practitioners and macro-PK sitter groups, contents and features of poltergeist cases, and plasma anomalies.
Several times this year JSE research was also featured in the news media—a testament to the provocative nature of our topics and authors.
- Kudos to JSE’s Editorial Team: Brian Laythe, Managing Editor and Garret Moddel, SSE Publications Chair… and our tireless Associate Editors: Imants Baruss, Jeremy Drake, Álex Escolà-Gascón, Harmute Grote, Rachael Ironside, Rense Lange, Roger Nelson, Mark Rodeghier, Robert Bobrow, James G. Matlock, Jeff Meldrum, Paul H. Smith, Harald Walach, and N. C. Wickramasinghe.
Big Research and Educational Initiatives Coming to SSE!
SSE’s Executive Committee is finalizing several new campaigns to benefit all categories of SSE membership, including new website features and a slate of innovative educational projects that will support member networking and cross-pollination of topics in frontier science and anomalistics. Stay tuned for some fun and interactive opportunities in 2025—the social spirit of SSE and intellectual mission of JSE are literally coming alive!
C.M. Chantal Toporow
Meet C.M. Chantal Toporow, Ph.D., Education Chair, & International Liaison for the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE)…and a ‘wild card’ in the science community. She is a long-time professional member of the SSE and an accomplished scientist and educator with a background in engineering from UCLA and extensive teaching experience at institutions including UCLA, CSULB, CSUN, LMU, SMC, and Otis Parsons. A retired innovator from Northrop Grumman Space (TRW), Chantal contributed to advanced photovoltaic arrays and critical national security missions across submarines, aircraft, and spacecraft. She now serves as an interdisciplinary consultant who focuses on creative problem-solving to advance visionary projects. Passionate about integrating scientific inquiry with the exploration of anomalous phenomena and human potential, Chantal continues to investigate bioenergetics, qi (life-force energy) cultivation, psychic art, and other modalities as pathways to understanding and optimizing human capabilities. Her interests also include dowsing, remote viewing, introspective counseling, and psychokinesis. You can read more about her background and current work here:
Please talk about your career journey and what led you to your current work?
My journey started in a most serendipitous manner! In 1989, I organized an Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineering (IEEE) conference—“A Delicate Balance, Technics, Culture and Consequences”—in which Dr Bob Jahn, Dean of Princeton Engineering at that time, and a Founding Father of the SSE, came to present his work on the REGs which he had been unable to publish to date. I was intrigued and placed him in the sweet Friday morning slot, and my aerospace electrical engineer colleague and conference team member during this presentation expressed to me that this was very controversial, I replied that this was great as I wanted my conference to be exciting and innovative.
After the conference, when I sat down with my published IEEE proceedings and studied Bob Jahn’s paper but still could not grasp the significance of it. This was before email and internet, so on a hunch, I spontaneously called the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Labs and spoke to Brenda Dunne who offered to send me their 1987 book Margins of Reality which, upon first hearing the title, I was concerned about being drug-related (remember this was the 80s) in the context that i had reached very high levels of national security clearances and a ‘red flag’ went up. She offered to mail me the book along with some other papers that they had been unable to publish due to controversy. And within this package she also included an application for a Fetzer scholarship to attend the first 1994 Academy of Consciousness at Princeton University.
On a lark, instinct, or serendipity again, I applied (not even knowing what consciousness was (mind you I was a dyed-in-the-wool aerospace research engineer, ‘consciousness’ was not even in my vocabulary!) selling myself on my right left brain balance (I had, in my young age, been an artist before embarking on my engineering journey, my brain being the closest thing I could relate to the word “consciousness’) I got in… one of the 40 out of 800 applicants. I later asked Bob Jahn why did you pick me, he replied “you were our wild card.”
At this Academy, I had a hard time relating to the others, psychiatrists, physicists, sociologists, etc., so I decided to hang out with Dr Hal Puthoff since he was more like the people with whom I was used to working, namely a ‘blue suiter’ of sorts working highly classified military projects like me, (but along completely different directions). As we took a walk one day along the little river running through the campus, same one as Einstein took his daily strolls when at Princeton, I was ribbing Hal about remote viewing and challenged him to view a drawing in my super safe skiff all the way ion the opposite coast, in Los Angeles. He said he’d get back to me… and i secretly laughed at the thought. The next day at breakfast he laid down a piece of paper in front of me, and it was the exact geometry on in my doubly locked, key lock and combo lock, in my super secure Faraday impenetrable skiff at my work. I was not laughing anymore! The next day we were to be guided on a remote viewing exercise for us to do, and while still extremely skeptic, I nailed the target. The genie was thus out of the bottle, and my sense of “conventional reality’ permanently shattered!!
Also at that same event, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research's Academy of Consciousness, attendee Paul Devereux, Founding co-editor of Time and Mind: Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, had just returned from a conference at Oxford, and he commented "if only archaeologists would talk about their experiences while on the sites, it would change science as we know it"... I thought to myself, how much unreported data there must be of researchers trying to save face and not be ridiculed or ostracized by colleagues.
Seeing that Bob and Brenda attended the annual SSE conferences, I decided that perhaps I should too! In 2004, the conference was in Las Vegas, close enough to drive to from L.A. And from that moment I was hooked. First person I met was Dr Dean Radin, and within a year I was on SSE scholarship committee with Dr. Bob Jahn, and Dr. Bob Wood (an aerospace engineer like me working on UFO related things, truly fascinating and puzzling, not to mention ‘out of this world’), and, like a kid in a candy shop by 2005, I quickly moved on to a SSE Council Position and became very active in the society
What do you find most rewarding about your research in frontier science?
Researching at once the invisible and the unknown! Everything functions under two sets of the Laws of Nature. One set is well-researched and comes from the world of solid and seemingly separate things. In this world, which we call the ‘real world’ our bodies grow, mature, age, and eventually stop functioning. The other set of laws stems from the vibrational energetic world of the invisible, which functions very differently from everything learned in school and have been conditioned to follow in our daily lives. Our ignorance of this world beyond what we can see with our own eyes has kept us from vital information we can no longer afford to ignore.
Having taught at major universities such as UCLA has helped develop my teaching skills to a high level, and now that I am retired, I can bring to students my studies and research of all things ‘inexplicable/ anomalous/ paranormal,’ particularly bioenergetics, subtle energies, and the many other things in our ‘unseen' worlds. I enjoy bringing to the students the importance of furthering our scientific understanding of the seemingly anomalous, random, yet synchronous events around us and our own psi related abilities. It is my most important goal in life to teach online at the university level these types of courses world-wide for college credit contributing towards a more diverse and inclusive curricula.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your career, and how have you overcome them?
I believe the ability for critical thinking, the years of discipline, and rigorous research have been immensely beneficial to pursuing these avenues of research. A healthy curiosity, an open mind, a willingness and fearlessness to jump into the experiments myself to experience the anomalous phenomena firsthand, and sense of wonderment are all extremely useful for research in anomalous fields.
How has being a part of SSE benefited you both professionally and personally?
I have met the most incredible, brave, innovative, out-of-the-box researchers, who dared to research topics which could cost them their jobs or tenure in academia. This gave me access to the rare individuals and their latest research in these anomalous, controversial fields! As a scientist/ researcher/ engineer driven by curiosity, I greatly benefited from everything that the SSE has to offer to expand my view of the world, both in the real world, and yet-to-be-known invisible world.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out in frontier science?
Science, at present, is overwhelmingly driven by objective methodologies, causing a sort of myopia when looking at "inexplicable/paranormal" events. I'm guided by Goethe’s more subjective scientific methods, though pushed aside by the dominant Newtonian objective science, these are equally enduring and valid as we move forward in balancing our subjective and objective views of the world around us. Only through this amalgamation of apparently anomalous events, random, yet, synchronous, with those which are the standard ‘predictable and the repeatable,’ can we begin to fully develop our understanding of the inherent nature of the inter-connectivity of knowledge. This objective/subjective duality must be balanced out in order to reap the vastness of extraordinary.
To better understand the inexplicable, the anomalous, the paranormal: we must do more than "observe" as is so common and de rigueur in the objective science paradigm. If I had not had those remote viewing experiences at the Princeton Academy of Consciousness, I would have never realized whole other worldly reality existed “out there.’ By seeking out these anomalous experiences and experiencing them myself firsthand has given me new perspective and understanding.
We need to ‘experience’ and put ourselves within the experiment itself. We need to start to consider all those individual subjective experiences in their totality and amalgamate the very essence of our human nature and consciousness. Only in this wholistic approach can science truly move forward. extraordinary human experiences, many, totally unrepeatable and exceedingly.
These were Bob Jahn’s marching orders from our 1994 Academy of Consciousness and as well as his ‘swan song’ at his last SSE 2009 public presentation. My intention is to keep them alive:
“Create a complementarity by nurturing the Science of the Subjective so that both objective and subjective perspective work alongside each other in such a way that it is acknowledging and utilizing the innate consciousness strategies of association and assimilation to achieve a unity of self and not-self, in its search for a participatory role in the mechanics of creation.”
A Farewell Funny
“A new monk shows up at a monastery where the monks spend their time making copies of ancient books. The new monk goes to the basement of the monastery saying he wants to make copies of the originals rather than of others' copies so as to avoid duplicating errors they might have made. Several hours later the monks, wondering where their new friend is, find him crying in the basement. They ask him what is wrong and he says, “the word is CELEBRATE, not CELIBATE!”
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