History

The Network was founded in 1973 by George Blaker, with the help of Dr. Patrick Shackleton and Sir Kelvin Spencer, based on their collective desire to reconcile scientific investigation and scientific models of reality with the spiritual dimension of life, and so to open dialogue between scientists and spiritual luminaries of all backgrounds. The vision of the SMN founders was a profoundly holistic one: an organisation confined by no "fences of thought", but instead open to insight from every kind of human enquiry.

The founders believed that neither orthodox religion nor conventional science were, in their current forms, sufficient to answer pressing questions about our existence and about the mysteries of the cosmos, and that new ways of thinking, and new interdisciplinary approaches were needed to build bridges and to search for new approaches. The Network was initially an invitation-only organisation, as it developed into its early form as a place for scientists and medics to debate and dialogue about questions and ideas that were considered taboo in orthodox departments, on issues such as non-local consciousness, alternative forms of healing and paranormal phenomena.

The Network has now developed into an internationally recognised organisation providing conferences and publications on themes that traverse science and spiritual concerns, with an open membership policy for anyone who agrees with our aims and values. 30 years on from our birth as an organisation, scientific and medical orthodoxy is still compartmentalised, reductionist, atomistic, and still dismissive of spiritual or non-material dimensions to human experience or cosmic reality. And as yet there has developed no meta-subject in which all disciplines in science, medicine, theology and spirituality may be brought together. In this context, the SMN still has a unique and an important role to play in providing a truly trans-disciplinary, truly progressive, place to discuss, dialogue and learn about the universe in which we live and which gives us our being.

Read: Recollections of the Founding of the Network, by George Blaker, Founder