New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Jan 1, 2026 James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a visual artist, and also author of The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution. In addition, he has written two dystopian novels – Blue Lies September  and Ireland I Don’t Recognize Who She Is. He discusses various elements of society that are antagonistic to mysticism. He notes that the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, while antagonistic to religion, and therefore mysticism, ought not to be – since it emphasizes individual freedom. However, objectivism has strong rationalistic and scientistic elements that tend to view mysticism as a dangerous superstition. Similarly, psychiatry also tends to confuse mysticism with psychopathology. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on January 18, 2020)