Dr Sharon Hewitt Rawlette is a philosopher and writer specialising in extraordinary experiences and what they have to tell us about consciousness and reality. She earned her doctorate in philosophy from New York University in 2008. From 2008 to 2010, she was Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Ethics at Brandeis University before leaving academia for an independent writing career. Her subsequent research has focused on consciousness, parapsychology, and spirituality, and her writing, in multiple genres, has appeared in peer-reviewed journals as well as in popular media such as Salon and her Psychology Today blog “Mysteries of Consciousness.” In November 2021, her essay on the survival of consciousness, “Beyond Death,” was named a runner-up in the BICS essay contest. A supporting researcher for the International Centre for Reincarnation Research, she is now also a Director of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies.