Michael Prescott's Blog

Science and the afterlife

I've been thinking lately about the scientific approach to proving the reality of life after death, and I'm beginning to wonder if, to some extent, these ongoing efforts are bit misguided. I'm not sure, but here is the direction in which my thoughts have been going.

The scientific method is an incredibly powerful tool, but like any tool, it has its limitations. A hammer is a useful tool also, but it's not of much help when what you need is a screwdriver. It's been said that when you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is the basic mistake made by adherents of scientism -- thinking that one tool, science, can do every job that's worth doing. It can't. And when science is pressed into roles for which it is unsuited, it becomes as clumsy and unhelpful as a hammer filling in for screwdriver.

The great hope of the early psi investigators who founded the Society for Psychical Research and its American equivalent was that, by using the scientific method, they would be able to prove the reality of paranormal phenomena. This hope was sustained by J. B. Rhine, Ian Stevenson, and other researchers. Some of the results have been impressive. For those who care to look with an inquiring mind, there is copious evidence for many psi phenomena and, I think, clear-cut proof of some (telepathy, remote viewing, precognition, and micro-PK).

And yet, when we come to the subject of life after death, we enter a realm where the evidence, however plentiful, is not ultimately dispositive. It is always possible to argue the evidence away on the grounds of coincidence, error, deceit, or "super-psi." These arguments generally do not seem compelling to me, because I'm impressed by the wide scope of the data and the high quality of some of it, as well as by the curious consistency of reports across cultures and eras. But it is impossible to refute such objections absolutely. And I'm starting to think that even the effort to refute them is not worthwhile. I'm starting to think that while the hammer of science may be able to hit the nail on the head in some areas of psi research, it is simply not the right tool for the exploration of the afterlife.

Afterlife cases, by their nature, don't lend themselves to laboratory testing. When a person is dying, there are other priorities besides running tests. We should want it no other way. The dying process has been dehumanized enough as it is, without further robbing the patients of dignity by intruding with scientific instruments on their last moments.

Of course, it's possible to test mediums under controlled conditions, but mediumistic communications are always problematic -- a mixture of valid and invalid information, remarkable hits and significant misses -- as well as a lot of material that defies analysis (philosophical claims, descriptions of the afterlife, professions of love, etc.).

Patients can be hypnotized and helped to remember alleged past lives, but the creative imagination of the hypnotized subject can never be ruled out as the material's source. And cryptomnesia, the mind's uncanny ability to retain and regurgitate detailed information obtained decades earlier, means that even verified factual details can be ascribed to "normal" perception. In those rare cases where imagination and cryptomnesia can be safely ignored, there remains the possibility of super-psi.

Even spontaneous recollections of children are susceptible to the super-psi argument, as are the comparatively rare but sometimes dramatic birthmark cases -- which, in a pinch, can be explained by PK.

Do I find these explanations credible? Not at all. But that's because I'm convinced, for a variety of reasons, that life after death is a fact. If I were not so convinced, I might find these other explanations acceptable. And from scientific standpoint, it's not enough just to prove your case to those who are already predisposed to accept it. You have to be able to prove your case to doubters, too.

It's not at all clear that the scientific method, no matter how rigorously applied, will be able to clear this hurdle with regard to afterlife research -- at least, not any time in the foreseeable future. The reason is not that the evidence is weak, much less that there is "no evidence," as some skeptics maintain. The reason is that the strongest evidence to date has been typically collected under conditions that are not altogether "scientific." Better results are obtained when investigators are not overtly skeptical, when controls are not too stringent, and when personal feelings are allowed to play a role in guiding and assessing the phenomena. But tough skepticism, tight controls, and the suppression of personal feelings are the hallmarks of the scientific method.

So what is the solution? It just may be the case that afterlife studies aren't particularly amenable to a scientific approach. Science may be the wrong tool in this area. A different, more personal approach may be needed. Perhaps the goal should be, not to prove the afterlife to the satisfaction of skeptical bystanders, but to prove it to our own satisfaction. Each of us has different standards of evidence and proof. Each of us has different personal experiences, and each places trust in different people. If your best friend, whom you have no reason to doubt, confides in you with a story of a near-death experience, would you dismiss it as a hallucination or a lie because it's not "scientific"? I think it makes more sense to recognize that science is not the appropriate instrument to use in this instance. Honor your friend and his story. Who cares if no one else would be convinced? It's not your job to change the world or save the world -- an impossible task, anyway. Your job is to be true to yourself, not to "the world" (which is only an abstraction) or to "science" (also an abstraction, and quite possibly an inapplicable methodology in this area). To place either "the world" or "science" above your own truth is to commit an act of self-abnegation. There are higher truths than worldly truths, and there are other avenues to truth besides science, just as there are other tools in a well-stocked toolkit besides a hammer.

To be clear: I don't mean to denigrate science, which is an extraordinarily powerful means of knowledge, when applied to appropriate subjects. I'm just not so sure that postmortem survival is one of those subjects. In this area, perhaps the poets and mystics are more reliable guides. Better still, let your own experience and exploration be your guide. And if anyone tells you that your experience is not good enough, you might just answer, "It's good enough for me."

Bored now

Quite often on this blog, I've tried to counter various skeptical arguments about the paranormal. But I probably won't be doing as much of that in the future. The reason is that I'm bored with skepticism.

A good illustration of how boring skepticism can be is found in a discussion thread about the death of biochemist Jacques Benveniste, a longtime bete noir of James Randi. One of the participants in the thread has the screen name Ray Haupt. Let's look at some of what he has to say.

Study of anomalies surely must be interesting, but anomalies are things that exist in some way different from their relatives. A three legged duck, for instance, would be quite interesting.

But what is so interesting about things that don't exist? What these professors are doing is playing into superstition and ignorance, not enlightenment. The fact that some people think that things exist does not make them exist. Good examples are the Loch Ness Monster and UFO's.

In short those good professors quack like three legged ducks but I do envy Dr. Bauer for having spent a summer at Loch Ness, and quite honestly I would jump at the chance to go on that wild goose chase if it were offered.

Ho hum. We have been down these paths before.

This is a pretty good summary of the skeptical attitude. There is the affected ennui ("Ho hum"). The dead certainty that some things just "don't exist." (I agree about the Loch Ness Monster and am indifferent to UFOs, but it's the attitude that I'm addressing here.) The claim that the other side represents "superstition and ignorance," which naturally implies that the skeptical side stands for reason and knowledge. The casual implication that any investigation of the paranormal is a "wild goose chase." Above all, the sarcastically blase tone.

Here's another post from Ray:

Some things deserve a hard look by scientists and when the evidence has been examined then perhaps some logical conclusion will emerge. The Loch Ness monster, for example, has a certain appeal, it was investigated, and the logical conclusion is that it is just plain silly. The same can be said for reincarnation with a little bit of twist, the twist being that there is not only no solid evidence of reincarnation, but there is not even any soft evidence. All there is is the testimony of enthusiasts, and nothing more.

In fact, Dave, I did read a book on the matter called "Reliving Past Lives" written by some chick named Helen Wambaugh who claims a PhD, and predictably, resided for many years in California. Fortunately I did not spend any money on this book. I pinched it from a B&B in British Columbia. It was first published in 1966. Can PhD's be retracted by the educational institution? Here is a case where it should be. Is Wambaugh a member of SSE by any chance??

No one among skeptics that I have met would refuse a fair hearing on a subject such as Cold Fusion even though it does seem kind of unlikely at this point in time. That is, if there is some reason to believe that the claimant is credible and actually has some evidence to share, even thin evidence.

More of the same, of course. Now we are told there is no evidence of any kind for reincarnation. Really? Has Ray ever looked at Ian Stevenson's data? That's unlikely, but he did read a book "by some chick named Helen Wambaugh who claims a PhD." In passing I note the casual misogyny of "some chick." Normally I wouldn't mention this, except that the skeptical movement is overwhelmingly dominated by aggressive males, and this remark fits the profile to a tee. Note that he says Wambaugh (her name is more commonly spelled Wambach, though either spelling is acceptable) "claims a PhD." She didn't just claim it, she had a PhD, but the skeptics can't bear the thought that someone who disagrees with them might have any academic standing.

Ray tells us that he "pinched" the book from a bed and breakfast. Is he being funny, or is he seriously admitting to petty theft? Then he asks if PhDs can be retracted. Amusingly, James Randi has made exactly this same point (cited in Parapsychology and the Skeptics, by Chris Carter). Randi, of course, is no PhD and I'm betting Ray isn't, either, but both are eager to dictate who may or may not hold that title.

Then there's the "we're actually so open-minded" argument, used this time in relation to cold fusion. Skeptics, Ray says, would give a fair hearing to cold fusion claims. Really now. Would they?

Next we hear from another skeptic, confusingly enough also named Ray. His screen name is RayGavel, and he quotes his own long, long, long review of Wambach/Wambaugh's book. He does make some valid points, and I'm not here to carry water for Wambach, whose methods have been criticized even by people sympathetic to parapsychology. (Scott Rogo, for instance, dismisses Wambach's work as being of little value in his book The Search for Yesterday.) What's interesting to me aren't the more substantive criticisms but the casual asides.

Here are a few highlights. The material in square brackets is RayGavel's; for some reason he uses these brackets a lot.

According to Sagan (1996, p. 138) "... hypnosis is an unreliable way to refresh memory."

This may be true, but since when is astronomer Carl Sagan an authority on hypnotism?

Wambach questions whether the experience is fantasy or a reflected reality, and, after ten years and over 2000 hypnotic regression sessions, she feels she has her answer. Her subjects had neatly "divided themselves into 49.4% past lives as women and 50.6% as men -- a biological fact in past time periods." She claims the subjects couldn't have arrived at these percentages "by telepathy, fantasy, or chance alone. Past-life recall did accurately reflect the past."

[HOLY STATISTICS BATMAN!!! I wonder how many pages of data she had to sift through to come up with ~that~ correlation. Where did she obtain the data she used for comparison purposes? How can she be certain these percentages were "a biological fact in past time periods"? Where did she obtain the census figures for the entire planet, for example, and just why is she so enamored with telepathy?]

This is just silly. Is RayGavel seriously contending that a roughly 50-50 split between males and females is not typical of all eras and cultures? 78% of Wambach's subjects were female, yet in the aggregate they recalled male and female past lives in almost equal measure.

Moreover, she found many other statistical correlations, which RayGavel doesn't find room to mention in his long, long, long review.

Though no scientific evidence exists for telepathy Wambach seems to accept it as a matter of fact.

Here is skepticism at its best - when there are thousands of studies conducted over more than a hundred years, just say there's "no evidence."

During an abnormal psychology class Wambach's student, Sheryl, relates a dream of a car crash whereby she is decapitated. Wambach interprets the dream as a conflict between having fun and the need to study. The decapitation indicates worries about approaching exams.

Three months later Wambach finds out Sheryl was killed in a car accident that nearly decapitated her. That seems proof to Wambach that "Sheryl had foreseen her own death."

[Nowhere does Wambach mention the possibility of coincidence.]

Ah, "coincidence," the favorite last resort of the skeptic. A young woman dreams of being decapitated in a fatal car crash and three months later she is "nearly" decapitated in a fatal car crash. Coincidence!

She relates the story of a young housewife who, after one of Wambach's lectures, hands in a journalism assignment for an imaginary news event. The young woman writes of an airplane crash, giving the flight number (401), date, place (Florida), and the fact one hostess survives and another dies.

The imaginary news story turns out to be a horribly prophetic fact -- all the details match exactly, except the date. Wambach is "astounded", and speculates that the student "was in a mildly altered state of consciousness... [and had] tapped in to a probable future reality..."

[No explanation of how that would be possible, but the details ~almost~ match exactly, so it's considered a 'hit'.]

And why would this not be considered a hit? Just because we don't understand the mechanism? Skeptics seem to think that unless we can explain how something happens, we aren't justified in believing that it happens, even if we have direct evidence of it. When you think about it, this mindset is totally bizarre. We understand very little about life and the universe - we have far more questions than answers - yet we continue to make observations. How could we do otherwise? There still is no generally accepted theory of gravity. Should we ignore all observations of falling objects because we don't have the theoretical wherewithal to explain them?

I can think of a number of questions that, if answered, might provide a more mundane explanation for the woman's story. For example, where was the woman from? Did she have any connection to Florida? Had she or any relatives ever flown in Florida? Since she wrote her story right before the Christmas holidays, was she or any relative going to be traveling by air during that time period?

How, pray tell, would any of these lines of investigation help to explain the apparently accurate premonition? RayGavel seems to think that the woman may have known the three-digit flight number through normal means, but even if this is true (and there is no evidence for it), so what? Tens of thousands of flights take off and land safely every day. Just knowing the flight number would not help the woman to accurately predict that this one particular flight would end in tragedy.

Wambach admits she is fascinated by parapsychology and decides to teach it full time instead of her usual courses in Child Development and General Psychology. She decides to devote her attention and energies to parapsychology, hypnosis, and ESP.

[I wasn't surprised -- her acceptance of paranormal events and theories, such as telepathy, ESP, and reincarnation, was plainly evident.]

Get that? Wambach "admits" to an interest in parapsychology - as if  this is a shameful secret that RayGavel has managed to ferret out. Then he says proudly he "wasn't surprised." Well, since the book Wambach wrote is about reincarnation and is titled Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence under Hypnosis, why exactly would he be surprised? "Her acceptance of paranormal events and theories ... was plainly evident." Gosh, ya think? What gave it away?

As noted, some of the specific criticisms of Wambach's cases are probably justified, but there's nothing in those criticisms that any reasonably astute readers couldn't have come to on their own. All that RayGavel adds to the discussion is snark, false generalizations about the lack of evidence for the paranormal, and weak appeals to coincidence.

As for the other Ray, all he adds is belligerence and general pigheadedness - reminding me of something said by yet another Ray - the academic skeptic Ray Hyman, who observed that, "As a whole, parapsychologists are nice, honest people, while the critics are cynical, nasty people."

If you doubt it, consider this parting shot from Ray Haupt. Remember that the ostensible subject of the discussion, before it got sidetracked, was the recent death of Jacques Benveniste, who studied the properties of highly diluted solutions.

"Is it true," Ray Haupt quips, "that Benveniste wanted the undertaker to use a 30C dilution of embalming fluid?"

Ha ha. Good one, man.

I don't know about any of you, but increasingly I find responding to these "criticisms," or even reading them, to be a waste of time and energy. It's like arguing with members of the Flat Earth Society. At some point, you just have to recognize that these folks have made up their minds (usually without even glancing at the evidence presented by the other side) and are not going to be persuaded to think differently, no matter what. Which in itself might not be so bad, if they were friendly and civil - but too often, they're hostile, sarcastic, self-righteous, and frankly, kinda weird. I mean, what is it with people who can be this sure of themselves when most of them know little or nothing about the subject and are only repeating what they've heard from such dubious authority figures as James Randi and Carl Sagan?

As Willow would say: "Bored now." Until the skeptics start coming up with some fresh material, I'll be paying a lot less attention to them.

Underground movement

Roger K in comments pointed me to a recent article on an incredible series of underground temples created by a retired insurance broker (yes, you read that right) who was inspired by vivid impressions of a past life. Some have dubbed the 300,000 cubic foot subterranean complex "the eighth wonder of the world." And it was kept secret from the outside world for 16 years!

If this were fiction, it's a story nobody would believe for a minute. Actually, I kept expecting to see that it was some kind of belated April Fool's joke.

Apparently, it's all true. See for yourself.

Unfortunately the temples now seem to have become the focal point of a cult, or at least a rather cultlike movement. Their slow-loading website is here. A description of the movement is here. According to the latter site:

Citizens abandon the use of their family names and adopt two new names when they join the community. The first is the name of an animal species, the second is of a plant.

The community has a "programmed births" project which attempts to time the arrival of children to meet astrological and economic criteria.

Sounds a tad creepy (okay, more than a tad) to me. The temples are amazing, though.

The same site tells us that the temples were almost destroyed on account of the predictable philistinism and bovine stupidity of governments everywhere:

After an investigation, the City of Vidracco ordered the destruction of the temple. It had been constructed without building permits, and was in violation of various zoning regulations. However, public opinion and support from cultural and scientific sources has stalled the enforcement of the order. The community has since resumed construction, and expects to continue for decades into the future.

There are books about the temples - a book of photos and a  book covering the history of the project.

P.S. For what it's worth, just before going online and learning about this story, I woke up from a nap in which the name "Shirley Temple" kept coming up in my dreams. This was in the context of vivid, colorful cartoonlike imagery (see the first link in this post). The dreams puzzled me. Why, I wondered, would I possibly dream about Shirley Temple?

Holiday reading

Reader Bruce Siegel (in comments) pointed me to the reincarnation case of James Leininger, which is worth reading in its entirety. Certainly one of the best cases I've seen.

Another article on the case features an amusingly lazy armchair rebuttal from uberskeptic Paul Kurtz, founder of CSICOP. Kurtz

thinks the parents are "self-deceived."  "They’re fascinated by the mysterious and they built up a fairy tale," he said.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Twenty questions

Marcel Cairo reports that that his Internet radio show Afterlife FM will be returning from hiatus next week, and his first guest will be George P. Hansen, author of The Trickster and the Paranormal and an authority on parapsychology. Mr. Hansen maintains a blog here.

The interview will be pretaped on Sunday, and the show will air a few days later. Check Marcel's website for details on when the broadcast will be heard.

Marcel is interested in getting recorded questions for Mr. Hansen. Anyone who has a question is encouraged to call this toll-free number: 1-877-372-5367. 

"In case you flub your question, you can always press the pound sign and start over," Marcel says. He adds that all submissions should be received by Saturday night.

Battleground

In her book Children's Past Lives, Carol Bowman tells the story of her own son Chase, who was subjected to hypnotic regression on two occasions three years apart. (Pages 8-26, paperback edition.) Ordinarily I am not too impressed with past-life regressions under hypnosis, because the mind is awfully good at concocting stories to please the hypnotist. But this story is interesting.

Chase spoke of being a soldier in a war. Particularly intriguing, as Bowman herself notes, is how consistent the two versions of Chase's narrative are, even in small details, despite the considerable lapse of time between the two tellings.

When he was five years old, Chase began experiencing a hysterical fear of loud booming noises, like fireworks. A hypnotherapist offered to regress him. Under hypnosis Chase reported:

"I'm carrying a long gun with a kind of sword at the end.... I have dirty, ripped clothes, brown boots, a belt. I'm hiding behind a rock, crouching on my knees and shooting at the enemy. I'm at the edge of a valley. The battle is going on all around me... I don't want to look, but I have to when I shoot. Smoke and flashes everywhere. And loud noises: yelling, screaming, loud booms. I'm not sure who I'm shooting at -- there's so much smoke, so much going on. I'm scared. I shoot at anything that moves. I really don't want to be here and shoot other people.... I'm hit in the right wrist by a bullet someone shot from above the valley. I slide down behind the rock, holding my wrist where I was shot. It's bleeding -- I feel dizzy.

"Someone I know drags me out of the battle and takes me to a place where they took soldiers that are hurt -- not like a regular hospital, just big poles, like an open tent, covered with material. There are beds there, but they're like wooden benches. They're very hard and uncomfortable...

"I'm walking back to battle. There are chickens on the road. I see a wagon pulling a cannon on it. The cannon is tied onto the wagon with ropes. The wagon has big wheels."

Note that Chase specifically mentioned "loud noises: yelling, screaming, loud booms" - the sounds of combat, which clearly tie in with his sudden fear of loud noises. (This fear cleared up immediately after the regression.)

Also note that although he did not know the word bayonet, he described "a long gun with a kind of sword at the end." Instead of Hollywood-style heroism, Chase's account is that of a frightened man who doesn't "want to be here" and who's not sure who he's shooting at. His description of the makeshift field hospital seems accurate, as does his account of the cannon "tied onto the wagon with ropes" and the "chickens on the road."

Could he have seen these details in a movie? Bowman says the five-year-old's  TV watching was carefully monitored and did not include any programs about war. Of course we can't be sure that he never caught a glimpse of a war movie, but his account seems to go beyond the memory of a film.   

Several months later, out of the blue, Chase mentioned the time when he saw that he "was a soldier." He told his mother, "I talked funny." He spoke English, he said, but, "We sounded different... You know how black people talk?... Well, I was black.... There were black soldiers and white soldiers fighting together."

This led Bowman to speculate that her son was remembering the Civil War. However, she did not pursue the matter until Chase himself expressed the desire for another regression. This was during the 1991 Iraq War, when news coverage of the fighting reawakened old fears in the now eight-year-old boy. By this time Bowman had learned hypnosis, and she regressed her son.

Note how well his second, more sophisticated rendition of the tale dovetails with the first:

"Can't hear sounds, but can see it. I see horses coming in the valley. Men with guns with spears on the ends. I see myself crouching behind a rock, looking up at them. I'm feeling sad, scared, proud. There are soldiers on horses on my side. I'm now kneeling behind a rock. Waiting.

"There's a battle going on. Smoke everywhere. I'm not shooting, I'm waiting. I start to shoot at the enemy -- I don't have any choice, I want to protect myself. The people on the horses are white, I'm black. White soldiers are on my side. There's too much going on. Confusion everywhere. I'm scared half to death. Oh -- he gets my wrist with a shot. It hardly hurts. Everything goes black...

"Now I'm going back to fight with a bandage on my wrist. I see horses pulling a cannon, making a lot of dust. The cannon is on a wagon with big wheels -- it's tied down with heavy ropes. There's chickens walking along the road. It's a time between fighting. I'm thinking of how unhappy I am about going to war. I didn't know what I was getting into....

"I'm back in battle. I'm shooting a cannon from the top of the valley. I pull a string, the cannon fires. I'm not loading it, though. I can't shoot a gun because of my arm. I'm scared shooting the cannon. Now I know how the others feel to be shot at. They're scared too...."

Asked how he came to be in the war in the first place, Chase replies,

"I'm at a house. It's mine. Sort of a cabin made of rough wood. The house has a front porch with a railing -- a place to hitch horses. There's a rocking chair on the porch and a door in the middle. I have two kids. I think I have a wife -- I do. I'm happy. It's before the war. I was where the blacks are free. I see my wife -- I see her from behind. She's in the house. She's wearing a blue dress with a white apron. She wears a dress with petticoats and black boots. She has straight hair she wears pulled back in a rag.

"I see a black man on the porch smoking a pipe -- it's me. I'm not young -- about thirty or something. I'm very happy in the town. I wasn't born there, but I was brought there as a baby in a covered wagon. I'm a painter and a carpenter, and I make pots and sell them and make models out of wood for a hobby. There's a green area behind my house with bushes around. That's my favorite place -- that's where I make my pots.

"There's a dirt road in front of my house that goes to town. My town is a friendly town with wagons and farms. Chickens walk free. There are other black people who get along pretty well. The name of our town is something like Collosso.... It's eighteen-sixty-something, at the beginning of the war.

"People are standing around a post where the roads meet -- it's the center of town. There is a lot of excitement, they're talking about the war. I'm reading a notice attached to the post. The notice says 'WAR' and has little print. I'm not sure that I can read, but I know the notice is asking for volunteers. I get excited too, and I volunteer. I sign a paper. I don't know what the paper says. I can't read.

"I'm leaving my family. This is a sad time for me and my family, especially my kids. They're crying. I'm very sad. This is the saddest time of my life...

"We're meeting with someone important, a general or something, after I join. He's talking about strategy. It's for my own good to listen. But I'm not paying attention -- I'm thinking about my family. I feel totally pushed around, and I don't like it. People around me are more sad than scared....

"I'm hurt in the wrist. I'm under a big cloth held up by poles -- it looks like a tepee or a covered wagon -- wide open on the sides. It's very crowded. A lot of noise -- war in the background, gunshots. Someone is putting bandages around my wrist.. Others are screaming because they're in so much pain. I'm thankful I don't have as much pain as the others. I guess my wrist isn't that bad. I'm sad to go back to battle. I miss my family. I'm behind the cannon. I'm hit!...

"I'm floating above the battlefield. I feel good that I'm done. I see the battle and smoke below. As I look down on the battlefield, everything is still and smoky -- nothing is moving down there. I feel happy that I'm done. I get to go to a happier life. I float over my house. I see my wife and kids. I say goodbye to my family. They don't see me because I'm in spirit, but they know that I'm dead....

"Everyone has to be in a war. It balances everything out. Not necessarily die in a war, but experience it. It teaches you about feelings. It gives you a sense of how other people feel. It's a bad place. I skipped World War II. I was up. I was waiting for my turn to go back to a more peaceful time. I had a short life in between."

Bowman comments:

The consistency between this most recent version of the story and his first regression was remarkable. Although these two accounts were three years apart, Chase reported the same images and feelings almost word for word....

Chase gave what sounded to me like an accurate portrayal of a Civil War soldier's life. His account of what it felt like to be in the middle of a confusing battle and to be "pushed around" is more realistic than the glorified version of war that is commonly depicted in movies and on television. The mundane details added color and realism to the story: chickens running free, his wife's black boots and multiple petticoats, the recruitment poster on a poll that was the center of town, enlistment papers he couldn't read, the field hospital made of poles and canvas, pulling a string to fire the cannon (which, I verified later, was how these cannons were actually fired). The cumulative effect of the details, the flow and cogency of his story, and the credible predicament of the protagonist would do credit to any novelist. Yet this was coming from an eight-year-old boy with virtually no exposure to the realities of war.

Most importantly, the benefits of these regressions were tangible. After this last regression Chase was immediately more confident and relaxed.

There are other similarities between the two accounts. These include the setting of a valley,  the soldier crouching behind a rock, the bayonets (still unnamed but clearly implied by "guns with spears on the ends"), the smoky battlefield, the confusion of the war zone,  the wrist wound, dizziness in the first account and blacking out in the second, the wagon with big wheels, the cannon tied down with ropes. Remember that the accounts were three years apart, and most eight-year-olds would not retain a clear memory of a story they had last told when they were five. 

To me, the most interesting thing Chase said was, "I skipped World War II. I was up." As Bowman comments, "Where was 'up'?"

Now, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?

Hail Science

Here's an wryly amusing excerpt from the underrated 1978 novel The Far Arena by Richard Ben Sapir. The story involves an ancient Roman, Eugeni, who is revived after being cryogenically frozen in an ice drift. In this scene, told from the Roman's point of view, Eugeni is in conversation with two moderns whom he calls Semyonus (a Soviet doctor, a hardcore materialist, whose real name is Semyon) and Olava (Sister Olav, a nun fluent in classical Latin).

The excerpt begins with Eugeni asking:

"You mean your miracles are only recent? They have not been built carefully, like Rome?"

And at this, the man who called himself Semyonus the physician became excited. Olava had to talk quickly and sometimes to interrupt Semyonus to keep up with him.

"There is no such thing as magic," she translated. "There are scientific principles, which scientists discover and write down, and these principles are followed by engineers who invent such things as what you call the flying monster or the electric lights. Scientists discover principles, engineers act on them. Yes?"

"Hail the priests of Science and their temple slaves the engineers," I said. "Truly the god Science is a great god. You worship a great god."

"It is not worship. It is science." Semyonus angry, Olava smiling.

"I am sorry to have given offense to the god Science but you must understand this is a strange land to me. Will your god understand?"

Semyonus was very angry. Olava translated for him.

"Science, Eugeni, is immutable. It understands nothing and forgives nothing. It is what it is."

"A mysterious god, great for the Pantheon."

"Science is not a god. It would not like you calling it a god. If you think of it as a god, it will never let you know its mysteries. You must approach it in a scientific manner, with an open mind. Men devote years of their lives to it, their entire lives. It has given us everything we have today." Thus said Olava for Semyonus.

"Hail Science, giver of things," I said. "Let us sacrifice to it."

Poem for a rainy Sunday

In a comments thread, a reader objected to my use of the term "skeptic" when applied to debunkers. He argued that the word denotes someone with an open mind who is simply looking for good evidence. In reply, I said that while this was what the word originally meant, today it refers mainly to debunkers. Language changes; the meaning of words is not set in stone.

Ruminating on this, I came up with a little poem.

Suppose tomorrow we all agreed to

Use "elephant" to mean "mosquito."

In language, usage is king,

So before long you'd feel the sting

Of the pesky elephant.

The word's other meaning - irrelevant.

Campers would carry elephant spray

To keep the thirsty critters at bay.

Stores would be stocked with insect repellant,

Each can emblazoned with the word "elephant."

But what of the big beast, you say.

Would it go nameless? Nay!

There's a backup term:

"Pachyderm."

An extraordinary rendition?

Here's an interesting tidbit from Anthony Everitt's fine bio, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor. It concerns Augustus on his deathbed, after a long reign filled with accomplishment but also crowded with bloody strife.

Just before he died, his wits seemed to wander, for he suddenly cried out in terror: "Forty young men are carrying me off!"   [p. 314]

Considering the many cruelties Augustus inflicted on other people throughout his life, especially in his early years, one has to wonder if his wits had really wandered ... or if, in fact, he was seeing his immediate future quite clearly. 

House of lies

In my last post I said that the ego is a liar. A couple of people felt I'd gone overboard with this observation. But I was serious about it. The ego really is a liar, and you don't have to take my word for it. You can find out for yourself.

Here's a simple test. Just take any ego-driven statement and assess its truth.

To do this, you first have to distinguish ego-driven statements from all the other kinds. A straightforward factual statement like "It's ten o'clock in the morning" is not ego-driven. For the most part, ego-driven statements are those relating to yourself, usually in relation to other people or to the world in general. And even then, they aren't statements of fact ("I'm taller than Joe") but statements requiring a subjective evaluation. The ego likes to compare itself to other people -- usually to its own advantage. For the ego, everything is competition, a zero sum game, and tallying winners and losers is all-important. Moreover, everything is highly dramatic, a life-and-death situation. The combination of these two factors produces grandiosity -- an outsized sense of self, and a feeling that the world revolves around you.

Here are a few examples:

"I'm much more successful than _____" (Insert name of rival.)

Don't you think _____ is saying the same thing about you? You can't both be right, can you?

"I always treat other people right."

Are you sure? What would they say?

"It's the other guy's fault."

Isn't it always?

"If I don't get this promotion, I'll die."

Will you really?

"I may not be perfect but I know I'm better than those _____." (Insert name of group you dislike: liberals, conservatives, atheists, Christians, skeptics, woo-woos, etc.)

That one speaks for itself.

By the way, though the ego will say, "I may not be perfect," it actually believes it is perfect. That's another lie. And pretending to be modest about it is yet another lie.

The ego doesn't always lie to puff you up. Sometimes it lies to make you feel bad about yourself -- as bad as possible. This may seem paradoxical, but the fact is, the ego doesn't care if you're happy or sad, as long as you are feeding its needs. And like an unruly child or a spoiled pet, the ego needs attention. The more obsessively you think about yourself, the more attention the ego gets. It doesn't matter whether you're thinking how terrific you are or how miserable you are. Once the ego has you thinking about me, me, me, it's got you in its grip.

"I've never succeeded at anything ... I'm a pathetic loser ... I'm the unluckiest person in the world ... Nobody knows the trouble I've seen ..."

More drama, more self-absorption, and more lies. That's why simply putting yourself down in order to counterbalance the ego's grandiosity doesn't work. You just substitute one ego trip (or ego trap) for another.

The real solution is to stop making these evaluations and comparisons in the first place. Don't concern yourself with how you stack up against other people. Be satisfied with who you are, on your own terms. It's hard to do. But it's the only way to shake free of the ego's control.

If you don't believe me, try listening to your ego and then assessing the truth of what it tells you. I'm betting you'll find, as I have, that the edifice built by the ego is a house of lies.