Graham Nicholls (born 30 July 1975) is a British author, installation artist and specialist on

out of body experience An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...

s. He speaks widely on

parapsychology Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near ...

, ethics and art at institutions ranging from the

London Science Museum The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...

, The Society for Psychical Research to the

Cambridge Union Society The Cambridge Union Society, also known as the Cambridge Union, is a debating and free speech society in Cambridge, England, and the largest society in the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1815, it is the oldest continuously running debatin ...

Early life

Graham Nicholls was born in the

Paddington Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Paddi ...

district of central London into a working-class family. He states that during his early life he was surrounded by crime and social problems, but that the influence of literature, art, science and spiritual philosophies helped him to look beyond the limitations of this environment.

Art career

Since the early 1990s Nicholls has developed artistic works that explore subjects such as

sensory deprivation Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing, while more complex devices can al ...

hypnosis Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...

, and

psi Psi, PSI or Ψ may refer to: Alphabetic letters * Psi (Greek) (Ψ, ψ), the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet * Psi (Cyrillic) (Ѱ, ѱ), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek Arts and entertainment * "Psi" as an abbreviatio ...

abilities. Nicholls had his first solo show at a gallery run by James Fuentes in New York City in July 1999 and in 2004 developed many of his psychological ideas into an interactive virtual reality installation called The Living Image. The installation was a collaboration between Graham Nicholls, 3D designer Roma Patel, and site-specific artist Trudi Entwistle at

London's Science Museum London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

, much of which was based upon Nicholls's life and locations from his childhood. The project was the subject of an academic study into the impact of virtual reality and installation art, the details of which were later published in two books dealing with scenography and performance. Technology and science, such as that used in The Living Image project, take a central role in his artistic output, his virtual web projects being considered internationally recognised by the ''Handbook of the economics of art and culture''.

Out-of-body experiences

Nicholls claims to have had

s (OBEs) since the age of approximately twelve years old. These experiences led him to study many aspects of

. In 2009 Nicholls outlined his experiences and ideas relating to OBEs in an article that appeared in Kindred Spirit magazine. In the article he makes it clear that he believes mainstream science will eventually fully embrace psi, or psychical perceptions as natural, rather than supernatural or paranormal. As part of his inquiry into

and human consciousness, in 2009 he began working on a series of

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

experiments in a joint project with controversial scientist

Rupert Sheldrake Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English author and parapsychology researcher who proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture which lacks mainstream acceptance and has been criticized as pseudoscience. He has worke ...

. The resulting data formed part of Rupert Sheldrake's research as director of the Perrott-Warrick project, administered by

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

Veridical cases

Nicholls also claims to have had several veridical out-of-body experiences. In his books, articles and in recent videos published he gives examples of his out-of-body experiences that have been witnessed and confirmed by others. The videos feature the witnesses describing what they saw and recorded in notes at the time of the OBEs supporting Nicholls version of events. He also outlines an example of a claimed objective OBE in his October 2011 article for the journal of The Institute of Noetic Sciences. Skeptics would generally dispute such claims as unreliable and impossible by current understandings of science.

Skepticism

In the October 2012 issue of The Psychologist, the journal of the

British Psychological Society The British Psychological Society (BPS) is a representative body for psychologists and psychology in the United Kingdom. History It was founded on 24 October 1901 at University College London (UCL) as ''The Psychological Society'', the organ ...

, a review of Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience by Graham Nicholls, criticised him for failing "to take into account psychometric properties (e.g. reliability and validity)" in the questionnaire section of the book. The reviewer went on to state that the book "does not meet the standards required by professional psychologists". Well known sceptic and critic of parapsychology

James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. ...

also responded to an article about Nicholls that appeared in 2011 asking why those mentioned in the article, including

Dean Radin Dean Radin (; born February 29, 1952) investigates phenomena in parapsychology. Following a bachelor and master's degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in educational psychology Radin worked at Bell Labs, as a researcher at Princeton Universi ...

, Rupert Sheldrake,

Michael Persinger Michael A. Persinger (June 26, 1945 – August 14, 2018) was an American-Canadian professor of psychology at Laurentian University, a position he had held from 1971 until his death in 2018. His most well-known hypotheses include the temporal lob ...

, and Graham Nicholls have not applied for the

One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge was an offer by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) to pay out one million U.S. dollars to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing ...

. Nicholls penned a response to Randi expressing doubts towards Randi's honesty, scientific credibility, and the limits of a single test to explore issues such as the existence of OBEs.

Activism

In 2004 Nicholls founded an organisation called the ''Shahmai Network'' with a special focus on work towards relieving poverty, as well as

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

. The network were official members of the

Make Poverty History Make Poverty History are organizations in a number of countries, which focus on issues relating to 8th Millennium Development Goal such as aid, trade and justice. They generally form a coalition of aid and development agencies which work together ...

campaign focused on campaigning for debt relief to countries in situations of extreme poverty, this culminated with protests aimed to influence the G8 conference, which took place in 2005. Beyond poverty he is also interested in the various social justice issues. According to a 2012 book on polyamory, Nicholls supports

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

issues,

polyamory Polyamory () is the practice of, or desire for, romantic relationships with more than one partner at the same time, with the informed consent of all partners involved. People who identify as polyamorous may believe in open relationships wit ...

, and

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

. In 2009 he founded www.polyamory.org.uk, the United Kingdom's first website about polyamory; at the time he was in a polyamorous triad with two female partners. He is also an outspoken supporter of

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...

and

veganism Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. ...

; in a recent interview he states that he has been vegetarian since 1992 and went vegan in 2005. He also states that "Veganism was the obvious next step in my ethical understanding and one that avoids supporting violent and exploitative practices."

Books

* Avenues of the Human Spirit (2011) * Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience: Radical New Techniques (2012)

References

External links

*
Extraordinary Out-of-Body Experience
– A video detailing a witnessed OBE, 2013
Interview with AfterlifeTV
– A video interview with Bob Olson, 2012
Avenues of the Human Spirit
– Interview about Nicholls' first book, science and scepticism, 2011
Out-of-Body Experiences: In Search of the Truth
– Article by Graham Nicholls for Noetic Now, the journal of the

Institute of Noetic Sciences The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is an American non-profit parapsychological research institute. It was co-founded in 1973 by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell,Pfeffer, Elizabeth''Stars aligned: Astronaut's mission seeks to answer life's b ...

, 2011
Skeptical Investigations
– A report on TAM London by Graham Nicholls, 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Nicholls, Graham 1975 births British anti-poverty advocates English human rights activists English installation artists English spiritual writers Living people British parapsychologists People from Paddington Polyamory Writers from London Polyamorous people