Michael Prescott's Blog

Rise above it

This weekend I got an email from a reader who suggested that my little feud with Victor Zammit has gone on too long, and that I should take to heart the Buddhist saying, "Rise above it."

My reply was that while "rise above it" is generally good advice, I felt that Victor was trying to wear down his critics through incessant vituperation and stonewalling, and that I wasn't going to let him get away with it.

However, upon reflection, I think this was the wrong answer. The Buddhists are right. In a case like this, further argument will not result in any progress. Each side will only dig in its heels. Our egos will only get more invested in the outcome. The exchanges will inevitably get nastier, and no good purpose will be served.

So, for now, I'm going to exercise self-restraint and forgo further discussion of l'affaire Thompson on this blog. I reserve the right to return to this subject if some major breaking news warrants it. (Further unsubstantiated claims of Thompson's abilities, or further eccentric diatribes on Victor's part, don't constitute breaking news. Only something really noteworthy counts.)

I will, however, continue to follow the discussion in the Spiritualist Chatroom forum and to contribute occasional thoughts. (To use the forum, click here, register, then use the search feature to find the topic - e.g., "David Thompson" - that you're looking for.)

It's important for us all to realize how insignificant this whole controversy really is. There can't be more than a few hundred people who are following it. Caught up in the drama of it all, we may start to think we're engaged in a historic struggle of epic dimensions, when actually it's a petty quarrel that would appear ridiculous to 99% of the general public - and with good reason. Even parapsychologists aren't interested.

By all odds, the names Victor Zammit, David Thompson, and Michael Prescott will not even be footnotes in the history of the paranormal. We are just not that important, and our opinions are not that important. It's only too easy to lose sight of this simple fact and to take ourselves much too seriously. I believe that's what has happened here. It's time to take a step back and look at this whole nonsensical dispute with self-effacing humor. If someone had told me a few years ago that I would be arguing strenuously about whether or not an ectoplasmic Satchmo was playing the harmonica in a pitch-dark room, I would have said they were crazy. Yet that's what I've been doing. Who's crazy now?

As I said, if there's some big new development, I'll certainly cover it. Maybe Thompson's abilities will be vindicated by infrared photography or foolproof security measures, and I'll have to eat a healthy serving of (white?) crow. Or maybe the lights will come in the middle of a seance, and Thompson will be caught playing the harmonica in the middle of the room. Most likely, neither of those things will happen, and the argument will go on and on, until it eventually peters out from sheer lack of anything new to say.

In the meantime, the Buddhists have the right idea, and many thanks to my email correspondent for mentioning it. Rise above it. Imagine how much brighter our world would be if we all followed this advice.

Happy New Year!

Button, button, who's got the button?

One detail of the David Thompson seances that has drawn some comment is a trick involving his cardigan sweater. Before each performance, Thompson has the buttons of the sweater tied into the buttonholes with cable ties. When the performance is over, the sweater is sometimes found to have been "reversed."

I originally thought that the sweater had been turned inside out, but apparently "reversed" means simply that it is worn backwards, with the front buttons now on Thompson's back. Either way, however, the trick is no big deal.

It is easy to turn a sweater inside out without unbuttoning it. Try it yourself. (I did.)

And of course it's even easier to slip out of a sweater and then put it on backwards.

But, Thompson's supporters will say, how could he take off the sweater when the buttons are tied into the holes? Most sweaters are flexible enough to allow you to pull them off and on without unbuttoning them. After all, many sweaters have no buttons at all, and are intended to be pulled on and off over the head.

The cable ties prove nothing except that the sweater remained buttoned throughout the act. (Technically, it is possible to undo a cable tie by slipping a pin into the locking mechanism, but there would be no need for Thompson to do this.)

Of course, the "phenomenon" is considered significant by Thompson's fans. Why? Because they assume that he remains secured to the chair at all times. If this were indeed the case, then it's true that the reversal of his sweater would defy normal explanation.

But if Thompson can slip out of the cable ties that hold him to the chair, then it is simplicity itself for him to pull off his sweater and put it on backward. Apparently it's never occurred to the dedicated investigators in charge of the Thompson seances that the "medium" uses a sweater precisely because it is expandable enough to be pulled off and on without being unbuttoned.

If he really wants to demonstrate paranormal powers, he could try being secured in a dress shirt, with the front of the shirt tied shut, all the way up to, and including, the collar. Assuming that the collar is reasonably tight, he would probably find it impossible to extricate himself from the shirt without unbuttoning it.

Anyone think he's going to do this? If so, I have some New York real estate to sell you.

Colin Wilson's war

Two interesting articles on Colin Wilson from a blog called phinnweb.

The first, "The Right Man and the Fear of Losing Face," quotes extensively from Wilson's writings on A.E. Van Vogt's theory of the "right man syndrome." I think this theory is very relevant to any consideration of zealotry and fanaticism, whether on the part of militant skeptics or militant true believers.  I found this part especially apt:

Why is it that some men believe that anyone who contradicts them is either dishonest or downright wicked? Do they really believe, in their heart of hearts, that they are gods who are incapable of being fallible? ...

'The violent man' or the 'Right Man' ... is a man driven by a manic need for self-esteem -- to feel he is a 'somebody'. He is obsessed by the question of 'losing face', so will never, under any circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong.

I encounter this sort of mentality quite often on the Internet. It's the person whose first response to a statement he disagrees with is: "You're lying!" It never occurs to these people that the other person might be honestly mistaken or might even (God forbid) have a legitimate point of view. No, it has to be a "lie" - a product of deliberate malice.

I suspect that this type of personality gravitates toward the Web because it is easier to control the online environment than to handle face-to-face disagreements. This may explain why Right Men are overrepresented on the Internet.

The second article consists of excerpts from a 2005 interview with Wilson, in which he discusses how to improve the chance of having "peak experiences."

Mr. Wilson has spent much of his life researching how to achieve those moments of well-being that bring insight, what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow called 'peak experiences.'

Those moments can come only through effort, concentration or focus, and refusing to lose one's vital energies through pessimism.

'What it means basically is that you're able to focus until you suddenly experience that sense that everything is good,' Mr. Wilson said. 'We go around leaking energy in the same way that someone who has slashed their wrists would go around leaking blood.'

'Once you can actually get over that and recognize that this is not necessary, suddenly you begin to see the possibility of achieving a state of mind, a kind of steady focus, which means that you see things as extremely good.' If harnessed by everyone, this could lead to the next step in human evolution, a kind of Superman.

What dreams may come

Some time ago I read a long skeptical essay attempting to debunk near-death experiences. One of the principal arguments was that people who have near-death experiences will sometimes report encounters with apparently fictional or mythological beings. The author believed that NDEs should be dismissed as elaborate hallucinations because of these nonfactual elements.

I think there is another way of looking at it, one that is more in line with a vast array of testimony from spiritual traditions all of the world. The best way to present this idea is by quoting from Robert Crookall's 1961 book The Supreme Adventure, which analyzes the transition from life to death in exhaustive detail.

But first, a word of explanation.

Crookall's statements, when read out of context, can seem to be nothing but strange mystical pronouncements. It is important to realize that he meticulously supports his general conclusions with a whole raft of evidence from a variety of sources and fields. His method was to collect accounts of the dying process and the afterlife from anthropological studies, ancient literature, sacred texts, mediumistic communications, and what we would now call near-death experiences, among other things. He then looked for commonalities in these various reports. If he found points in common that could not be reasonably explained by collusion or coincidence, then he felt entitled to assume that these common points were indeed accurate. This is why he is able to speak with apparent glibness about esoteric concepts like the Soul Body and the "vehicle of vitality."

Quoting Crookall in brief excerpts is really a disservice to him, but obviously I can't quote the whole book, so all I can do is give you the flavor of it.

In discussing a sudden transition, such as is normally the case with an NDE, Crookall writes:

When a man is forced to die suddenly in the prime of life circumstances are different. This man is usually awake, alert and active at the time of transition and ... he tends to remain awake for a period. But, since the Soul Body is enveiled by the vehicle of vitality ... his consciousness tends to be 'sub-normal' in the sense of being between waking and dreaming. During this waking-dream, the environment of the newly-dead man includes two different kinds of 'objects': the first consists of the 'doubles' ... of physical objects.... The second group of elements in his environment consists of mental images (such as we see nightly in dreams). Thus, the total environment in this, the (abnormal) 'Hades' state, consists of (a) things which are objective and common to everyone in that state (namely, the 'doubles' of physical objects) and (b) 'thought forms', i.e. mental images (some created collectively but others individually and therefore more or less private to their creators). Just as the substance of the vehicle of vitality ... is ideo-plastic, automatically assuming forms that correspond to people's mental images, so the substance of the 'Hades' environment ... is ideo-plastic. Men whose transition was enforced may at first find it difficult to distinguish between 'reality' (the common and objective environment) and 'hallucination', 'illusion' or 'dreams', i.e. mental images): they may, for instance, 'think' (dream) is that they smoke cigars.

This type of environment is clearly the 'Amenta' of the Egyptians, the 'Hades' of the Greeks (and Romans), the 'Sheol' of the Jews, 'Kama Loca' of the Hindus..., 'Bardo' of the Tibetans, 'Limbo' of the Scholastic theologians and the 'Lower Borderlands', 'Lower Astral', 'Plane of Illusion', 'Greyworlds', etc., of various communicators. (It is not 'hell', i.e. Gehenna, the place of torment. Average men do not enter 'hell'.) [Pages 70-71]

The reference to smoking cigars is inspired by Oliver Lodge's 1916 book Raymond, a collection of mediumistic communications purportedly from his son by that name, who died in the First World War. In one brief passage, the communicating Raymond says that some of his buddies smoked cigars after passing over. Skeptics picked up on this detail and subjected Lodge to ridicule. But anyone familiar, even in passing, with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and similar documents would know that there is a long tradition in spiritual circles of a confused period in the passage from life to death, a period in which subjective imagination and objective reality are bewilderingly intermingled.

This is the point Crookall is making above. He goes into more detail about it in a later section, when talking about statements made by mediums that may contain realistic and unrealistic elements.

Clairvoyants make the same statement as communicators: the 'next world' has objective, as well as subjective, elements. Phoebe Bendit (Payne), a clairvoyant of extraordinary power and undoubted integrity, in Man Incarnate, ... pointed out that at psychic 'levels' there are objective things, as well as subjective mental images (or 'thought-forms'), and that non-psychic mortals who are in the half-asleep, half-awake condition may confuse the two... After stating the fact that undue passivity 'loosens' the vehicle of vitality ... she insisted that, on account of the "the fluidity and lack of sharp barriers in the psychic realm, an untrained sensitive may confuse the images produced by his own mind with those of psychic objects and situations not so produced, but existing in their own right outside himself."

An example of this confusion was given by H. Bland ... A sensitive described a number of discarnate souls... and went on to describe "an extraordinary figure with a wooden leg and a patch over one eye". The latter was a mental image (subjective) produced by someone present who had recently read Treasure Island -- it was a mental image of Long John Silver....

Leslie Weatherhead ... failed to recognize that the 'next world' does in fact consist of 'many mansions'. He complained that 'Raymond' (Lodge) described dead friends as smoking cigars, etc. and said that these conditions cannot be descriptive of 'the final home of our spirits'. Such a claim was not made by 'Raymond' or any other communicator: on the contrary! 'Raymond' himself was (1) "newly-dead" and (2) killed suddenly in the prime of life and he was, therefore, living among discarnate souls who were temporarily 'earthbound', i.e. in 'Hades' conditions, living among earth-memories which persisted in the (still-unshed) vehicle of vitality, imagining, or dreaming, that there were smoking cigars, etc. They had not, as yet passed through the 'second death' (the discarding of the vehicle of vitality) and so entered 'Paradise' conditions (in the Soul Body). The subsequent shedding of the Soul Body and entrance into true 'Heaven' conditions which are "the final home of our spirits" was necessarily far in the future. [pp. 150-152]

We should expect, then, that accounts of NDEs and deathbed visions will involve a mixture of realistic and unrealistic imagery. In their cross-cultural study of deathbed visions, Osis and Haraldsson found that Americans were likely to see deceased relatives or sometimes Judeo-Christian figures like Jesus and Moses, while people in India were less likely to see deceased relatives and more likely to see various Hindu gods. This difference probably reflects different expectations. The Hindus, believing in reincarnation, may not have expected to be met by departed loved ones. Instead they saw one or more of the divinities of their religion. Devout Christians, the other hand, saw Jesus, whom they expected to see.

And yet we cannot write off the entire experience as hallucinatory, because it is well documented that some deathbed visions include accurate, verifiable information to which the patient had no ordinary access. As Crookall said, "The total environment in this, the (abnormal) 'Hades' state, consists of (a) things which are objective and comment to everyone in that state (namely, the 'doubles' of physical objects) and (be) 'thought forms', i.e. mental images 'some creative collective way but others individually and therefore more or less private to their creators)."

Fortunately, this intermediate stage does not last very long in most cases, and some people do not experience it at all.

Of course, there is no way to prove any of this beyond all doubt. It is possible that all these various traditions and reports are mistaken -- that some hard-wired propensity of the human brain universally brings about the same set of illusions when dying, and that these illusions have been mistaken for mystical experiences. Speaking personally, when I look at the totality of evidence for life after death, this skeptical explanation doesn't carry much weight. But it does remind us that absolute certainty in this area will continue to be elusive.

Merry Christmas from Victor!

Just in time for the holidays, Victor Zammit has updated his "Michael Pisspot" post. This time, I'm glad to say, he actually uses my name (in addition to the sarcastic nickname). This is the first time he has ever identified me by name in all of his attacks, so I feel I am making progress.

Or maybe not. You judge. This is the revised post. I've put the new stuff in red:

MICHAEL Prescott - PISSPOT – He tries to stab Victor in the back. He's got blogs to try to denigrate, discredit and debase everything Victor stands for. He tries to take away Victor's credibility, integrity and honesty. He imputes dishonesty. He implies fraud and trickery in Victor's materialization methodology. He's not an empiricist, not a scientist, not qualified, knows nothing about scientific method, knows nothing about evidence - but he's negatively prejudicial against materializations. He shows he's full of hatred, jealousy and green with envy, exudes sewer-level information – someone who tries to attack me. Michael Pisspot - a closed minded loser defeatist is too silly to rebut the afterlife evidence, too dumb and negatively prejudicial to understand objective, repeatable evidence, too much of an imbecile to understand intellectual afterlife substance. This Pisspot who tries to attack me shows he experiences too much frustration in not being able to rebut my hard core evidence for the afterlife – so he does the next thing he knows: he throws mud at the source of his frustration and LIES and cheats to mislead the unthinking readers - one of America's greatest cowards! Wake up loser!

Does anyone else find it weird that Victor refers to himself in the third person?

Some readers have commented that it's awful for me to be subjected to this kind of attack. I don't feel that way. Although I was taken aback by Victor's first shot across my bow more than eighteen months ago, I've gotten used to his diatribes and have even learned to enjoy them. And believe it or not, I don't think he really intends any of this personally. He writes essentially the same thing about all his critics, even using the same words and expressions (loser, defeatist, imbecile, liar, closed-minded, lives in a sewer, throws mud, etc.). This just seems to be the mode that he enters when he feels he is under assault. He has certain catch-phrases that he starts blurting out.

I believe he's quite unconscious of resorting to the same (rather limited) arsenal of invective over and over. But the subconscious is wiser than the conscious mind, and it is letting him know. Notice that many of the insults he flings at others accurately describe his own behavior - "throwing mud," for instance.

I think he would benefit from reading Eckhart Tolle and learning how unconscious much of our everyday, conditioned behavior really is. Of course, I have no realistic hope that he will take my advice.

Anyway, Victor, if you're reading, there are no hard feelings on this end, mate. I get a kick out of your posts, especially when they're about me. Keep 'em coming! I wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy - nay, a world-shattering - New Year!

The same goes sentiment goes out to all my readers, even those who don't think I'm one of America's greatest cowards. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Waking up is hard to do

It is sometimes suggested that near-death experiences in the operating room are the result of incomplete anesthesia, which can allow for some degree of patient awareness. This phenomenon gained some national recognition lately when the movie Awake came out. Though the movie bombed, it probably did give some people the idea that waking up during surgery is fairly common, and one natural conclusion would be that operating-room NDEs can be explained in this way.

A closer look at "patient awareness under general anesthesia," the technical term for this condition, makes any connection to NDEs doubtful. Here is what one document, prepared by an organization devoted to patient safety, has to say on the topic.

Under general anesthesia, a patient is given medications that are expected to relieve the pain of surgery and prevent consciousness. If either of these fails, the patient may awaken and be aware of the procedure.

Although the incidence of anesthesia awareness is relatively low, at about 0.1% to 0.2%, that percentage translates to 20,000 to 40,000 incidences a year in the United States.

The first thing to note is that this condition is estimated to occur, at most, only 0.2% of the time. NDE researchers who have interviewed postoperative patients have found a much higher percentage of cases. For instance, Dr. Pim Van Lommel conducted a study of cardiac surgery patients. Here is what he found:

We performed our prospective study in 344 survivors of cardiac arrest to study the frequency, the cause and the content of near-death experience (NDE). A near-death experience is the reported memory of all impressions during a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings, and seeing a tunnel, a light, deceased relatives, or a life review. In our study 282 patients (82%) did not have any memory of the period of unconsciousness, 62 patients (18%) however reported a NDE with all the “classical” elements. [The quoted article, "Medical Evidence for NDEs - A Reply to Shermer," is found here, 2/3 of the way down the page.]

Van Lommel, then, found that 18% of the patients he surveyed had experienced an NDE - not 0.2%, as we would expect if incomplete anesthesia were the explanation. The rate of NDEs in this study is nearly 100 times (10,000%) greater than the estimated rate of anesthesia-related awakenings.

The near-death experience is also markedly different from the experience reported by patients who wake up during surgery. The medical document cited above tells us:

For the patient, awareness is frightening and can lead to debilitating emotional injury. For anesthesiologists, it ranks second only to death as a dreaded complication. ...

Auditory perceptions and being unable to move or breathe are the most commonly described sensations. Patients also report feeling (1) anxiety or stress, pain, (2) the endotracheal tube, and (3) surgery without pain. Implicit recall emerges indirectly through painful, often inexplicable, psychological difficulties that appear following surgery, including sleep disturbances, dreams and nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety. Explicit recall is responsible for the most traumatic and horrific incidents of anesthetic awareness and may, in rare cases, lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

These symptoms bear almost no resemblance to those of near-death experiences. NDErs do not report "being unable to move or breathe." On the contrary, they report floating outside their body and feeling a wonderful sensation of freedom. It seems clear that patients who wake up during surgery still feel very much "in" their bodies; they can feel the endotracheal tube, the pain of surgery, and the paralysis of their limbs. Conversely, NDErs report being out of their bodies; they do not report feeling the endotracheal tube, nor do they report pain (except after they have reentered the body at the conclusion of the experience).

In fact, NDEs are noteworthy precisely because the experiencers feel no pain, and normally no anxiety or stress whatsoever. Typically, the NDEr finds himself looking down on the surgical procedure and wondering why the medical team are making such strenuous efforts to revive his body. The emotion most often reported is one of relief at being free of the burdens of the body, and extreme reluctance to reoccupy it.

Of course, NDEs also involve the tunnel phenomenon, the life review, reunions with dead loved ones, a sense of mystical oneness with the universe, etc., none of which appear to be part of the incomplete anesthesia experience. 

The long-term effects are also different. NDErs usually lose their fear of death and find themselves more loving, nonjudgmental, and serene. They are not typically burdened by "sleep disturbances, dreams and nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety" or "post-traumatic stress disorder." They do not regard their experience as "traumatic and horrific." The exceptions are the apparently rare cases when NDErs find themselves in a hellish environment, but this environment is not the operating room; it is perceived as some other dimension.

The actual characteristics of NDEs, then, are quite different from those ascribed to patient awakenings. And given that awakenings seem to occur in only 0.2% of surgeries, while NDEs apparently occur far more often, there is no reason whatsoever to think that patient awareness under general anesthesia can explain the NDE phenomenon.

Two other points: First, NDEs are hardly limited to the operating room. People have had these experiences in circumstances where anesthesia was never applied and couldn't have been a factor. Second, even in operating-room NDEs, the experience often starts just when the patient's heart has stopped. How could the patient "wake up" at the very moment when he is clinically dead?

Wake-up call (updated)

Someone at the Spiritualist Chat Room directed my attention to this posting by Victor Zammit. Why, I do believe he's talking about moi.

MICHAEL PISSPOT – He's not an empiricist, not a scientist, not qualified, knows nothing about scientific method, knows nothing about evidence - but he's negatively prejudicial against materializastions [sic]. He shows he's full of hatred, jealousy and green with envy, exudes sewer-level information – someone who tries to attack me. Michael Pisspot - a closed minded loser defeatist is too silly to rebut the afterlife evidence, too dumb and negatively prejudicial to understand objective, repeatable evidence, too much of an imbecile to understand intellectual afterlife substance. This Pisspot who tries to attack me shows he experiences too much frustration in not being able to rebut my hard core evidence for the afterlife – so he does the next thing he knows: he throws mud at the source of his frustration and LIES and cheats to mislead the unthinking readers. Wake up loser!

He seems just a tad, um, disgruntled, wouldn't you say?

In other Zammit-related news, a commenter named Veritas on the same thread (which is titled "Victor Zammit/DT" and is found in the Physical Mediumship Newsgroup; free registration required) casts some doubt on Victor's career as a lawyer. Veritas writes:

Five minutes research locates that his claim to be a 'solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court' is bogus. A solicitor is defined by possessing a practising certificate from the Law Society, and being admitted as a solicitor by the NSW Legal Practicioners Board. Only a Barrister is admitted to the "bar of the court" which is what the term Barrister means.

Zammit is making a misleading claim to inflate his legal qualifications (his scientific qualifications being nonexistent)....

Zammit says he is a "Retired Lawyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and the High Court of Australia." Is he trying to fraudulently represent that he was (is) a BARRISTER? It says on his bio details that he was a SOLICITOR, in which case he's not actually admitted to the Bar of any court (i.e. can't make representations to the court). 

Solicitors must instruct the Barrister to address the bench of the court, the Solicitor can't do this themselves (at least in the higher courts, as he listed). I'm no legal expert, but perhaps someone who is can look closely at the rule governing the way a Solicitor can represent themselves.

I know zilch about the legal system in Australia, so I can't comment on this statement. Anyone out there better informed than I am about this whole barrister/solicitor thing? Not that it really matters at this point; I'm just curious. (NOTE: see "Update" below.)

I'll admit that it always seemed odd to me that a high-profile attorney would write and reason (and even spell) as poorly as Victor does.

P.S. Further searching turned up two posts identical to the two published by Veritas, but appearing much earlier on a different site and attributed to someone named Scot. Is Scott the same person as Veritas, or did Veritas copy Scot's posts?

Anyway, the site includes this anecdote from hard-line skeptic Andrew Skolnick:

About a half year ago, I found myself being vilified and defamed by Victor Zammit on his crackpot web site. Rather than reply to him, which would have accomplished nothing, I created a spoof "Victor Dammit" web site, that is almost as funny as the original. He went ballistic. At first, he demanded that I immediately stop "defacing" his web site. He threatened both legal action and implied physical threats from his friends "on the East Coast." "If you knew who they are," he said in an email, "you would shit in your pants." So far, I haven't received any legal notices or any visits from da boys from New Jersey. As you can see, my spoof site is still getting almost as many laughs as his.

Sounds like Victor has been channeling The Sopranos ...

As I wrote on the Spiritualist Chat Room thread, I'm beginning to think Mr. Zammit is a few hops short of a kangaroo.

UPDATE (12-22-07): A contributor to the Spiritualist Chat Room thread named Mickey_D has this to say about Victor's legal background:

"Solicitor to the Supreme Court of NSW" is the full title of a NSW solicitor. This is what would appear on his practise certificate. He's not, therefore, claiming to be a barrister. Solicitors can (and usually do) represent clients at the pre trial stage in any court. By using the full title he's trying, possibly, to aggrandize himself but he's not lying about his legal qualifications.

Comments problem, part 2

Cyrus reports,

I learned that the spam filter kicks up when you copy and paste anything into the text box. Problem solved.

Obviously the filter shouldn't block comments just because they contain copy-and-pasted content, but being aware of this problem may at least make it easier to post comments until the glitch is fixed.

Comments problem

Recently it's gotten harder to publish comments here. TypePad seems to be aware of the problem. They put up this notice today:

Thank you for all of your comments letting us know that the spam service is being overaggressive in categorizing your blogs' comments as spam! This is great feedback. We’ve heard you and have made a change to the service that will help direct legitimate comments straight to your comments folder.

Their "change to the service" has not actually solved the problem, unfortunately. But I'm sure they will continue to get complaints and will respond more effectively before long. Until then, commenting may be spotty.

I've found that comments blocked as spam get shepherded into a separate folder, where they can be retrieved. Below are some of the blocked comments that were mistakenly characterized as spam. I've also published these comments in the appropriate threads. In a couple of cases I've replied to these comments here, but not on the threads.

----

Neutrinos can be detected. Thoughts can be detected as brainwave patterns. The soul has yet to be detected. This is why scientists find it logical to believe that there is empirical evidence for the existence of neutrinos, but none for the evidence of souls. Why does this confuse you so?

The problem isn't the soul's  lack of weight or it's invisibility to the naked eye. The problem is that despite allegedly consisting of pure 'energy' (a much misused term in New Age circles) the soul has not yet been detected by even the most sensitive of instruments.

And arguments along the line of "well we don't know everything about how consciousness works therefore we might as well believe in souls" are too banal for words. You might as well argue that because we don't know how the Big Bang started, we may as well believe in Santa Claus.
-Graylien

["Thoughts can be detected as brainwave patterns." Two problems here. First, thoughts per se are not detected as brainwave patterns; what is detected is a certain brain state that appears to be correlated with a thought. Second, would anyone argue we need "scientific" evidence to establish that we have thoughts?

"The problem isn't the soul's  lack of weight or it's invisibility to the naked eye." But that was the argument put forth by the skeptic whom I was criticizing. If you think that this argument is weak, then we are in agreement. - MP]

----

For the elucidation of the questions of the survival of bodily death and the nature of the soul in general, I think that it is good that Robert Crookall's The Supreme Adventure gets some of the attention it deserves.  In my estimation this is an extremely important work.  By relating accounts one by one of the transition from this world to the next Crookall places before us a pattern.  Each account is independent from and uncoordinated in its origin with the others.  This gives the pattern that emerges a claim to "objectivity," (whatever that term may ultimately mean).  This approach leaves the skeptic with a vexatious and, to my mind, an insoluble problem.
     Michael has drawn our attention to "the tunnel" as a common feature of the experience of casting aside the physical body in the accounts that were recorded before the publication of Raymond Moody's well-known book in 1975.  Moody's book in effect called up witnesses who were ordinary people to confirm what had been expressed much earlier by mediums--i.e., extraordinary people.
     I would like to call attention to another facet of Crookall's book, his distinction between the experiences of those who died a natural death (in old age) and those who died what Crookall calls an "enforced" death, i.e., violently, at a relatively young age.  The accounts that Crookall cites consistently show that in the cases of those who die of natural causes in old age a "call" goes out from the dying person and someone--a loved one, friend, relative, or what Crookall calls a "deliverer"--comes to meet the dying person to assist them in their transition.  In the accounts of those who meet their death suddenly, in accidents, or especially in war, nothing like this happens, or if it does it is later in the process.  They often find themselves wandering alone in a fog, not realizing in many cases that they are dead.  The experiences of the two groups are quite different.  Without belaboring the point, the question is: Why would all of these stories agree on this distinction if they were works of imagination?  The consistency of this line of demarcation buttresses the view that we are dealing here with a reality of some sort.
     And one final point.  Crookall's study casts a bright light on the brain/mind problem.  Firstly, in many cases the dying persons experience a dual consciousness, being aware both of the surroundings where their physical body is located and also of a new environment toward which they are headed.  It is as if there are two minds operating simultaneously.  Secondly, once death has become irreversible there is a great expansion of consciousness.  Thought has much greater range and clarity once the physical body, and its brain, are cast off.  If we take these accounts seriously, this indicates (at least to me) that those who look upon the brain as a limiting, filtering device designed to help us survive in a dangerous and unpredictable world, are correct.  The brain, as someone said--I think it was William James--is like unto a reducing valve.
     I think anyone who gives Crookall's book some serious attention will find it to be a gold mine.

-wvogt

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Your argument is a straw-man argument and totally false.

1) No one ever said the neutrino was invisible. You assumed that because you can't see it. Being small is not invisible.
2) As science does, to find the truth they tested the idea. They did not require you to believe something without evidence. Now, belief is not required. As religion expects you to believe with evidence.
3) Science only deal with the real world. Mysticism, make believe and superstition is not part of it.
4) If you think there is a soul, test for it and find it. Don't complain that because the idea of a massless neutrino is the same as a massless soul they should be recognized as the same idea. Wrong. Neutrinos were know to exist and detected them. It was whether a mass or no mass, was the question. belief not require. Lets find out the truth.

Straw-man argument you put in this blog.

-Ed

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Hi all,

The 'meme' explanation was thoroughly squashed by "Historical Perspectives on Near-Death Episodes and Experiences", by John R. Audette (article, not book). He cites:

* Albert Heim's work on NDEs in people who survived life-threatening situations (such as falling climbers). Heim mentioned the 'quickening of thought', past-life review, and incidentally - for those that have ready my essay in Darklore, or Rogo's books on transcendental music - that they often heard beautiful music.

* The near-drowning of Admiral Francis Beaufort in 1795. Again, the quickening of thought, and the life review ("the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed placed before me in a kind of panoramic review, and each act of it to be accompanied by a consciousness of right or wrong").

* Catholic priest Louis Tucker's NDE (occurred in 1909, but was published in 1943): "The sensation was not quite like anything earthly; the nearest familiar thing to it is passing through a short tunnel on a train. I emerged into a place where people were being met by friends. It was quiet and full of light, and Father was waiting for me.

And so on: besides tunnels and life reviews, other things that pop up are the 'telepathic' nature of communication in the otherworld, and also the 'crossing of a border'. He also cites Crookall's work as evidence of NDEs before Moody's book came out. I should mention too that Mike Tymn wrote up an early NDE on his blog a little while back.

The question in relation to correspondences with mediumistic communications, which I talked to Michael about via email, is whether these things were known at the time or in the occult literature. e.g. where does the saying "his life passed before his eyes" originate, how much was known about 'astral travel' etc. Myers wrote about the past life review in 1895, so it was at least in the literature - and would therefore be difficult to use as hard evidence that mediumistic communication is backed up by NDEs.

Kind regards,
Greg

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>In sum, we were expected (until lately) to accept the reality of an invisible massless neutrino, but to reject and ridicule the reality of an invisible massless soul. All because science "says so."

Man I'd love for there to be souls, but its much easier to repeat neutrino experiments... =)

> What this amounts to is an appeal to authority

Not all authorities are created equal. Repeatable, competitive and adaptive ones are much cooler.

I think belittling science is a bad habit, and perhaps a little reactive.  Its not a belief system, its the single most effective system we have for explaining the universe in a repeatable, usable fashion.

Now, its certainly true that individual scientists can be very resistive to change, but thats actually signs of a healthy system.  If scientists dropped everything for every single anomaly they'd end up rewriting science for an awful lot of sloppy experiments and computer glitches.  Extraordinary claims... well you know.  If its true, there will be evidence, and that evidence will mount.

>Invisible and massless entities are accepted without demur if they are consistent with the materialist worldview, but rejected out of hand if they contradict materialism

The evidence for things that contradict materialism tends to be of poor quality.  I've looked at a fair amount of it, it seldom fails to disappoint although there's just a hint there that makes you go hmmm.

Don't attack the messengers, go get better evidence. 

>Unfortunately, it would appear sentient massless things do exist; considering that people are able to accurately identify things in different places from their bodies due to becoming a "sentient massless form"

I've not seen a decent experiment like this (although again, would be cool).  Mostly its kind of like the numbers game (where you take a number and find a bunch of things that have the same number... there will be lots... and go... coincidence!!?!!).  Vague drawings that can be interpreted a variety of ways.  There were some cool correspondences, but you have to know how many hits there were or how many misses.

And there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics (like the pear experiments /sigh) =) so you have to be very careful with vague experiments.

Well anyways... found this via the anomalist.  Don't usually post but I think parapsychology would have a better chance of progressing without the 'science attacking', which serves nothing but the forces of ignorance.

>Most atheists refuse to deal with consciousness preferring to call it the hard problem.

It is a hard problem and a very cool one.  Admitting we don't know is infinitely preferable to making something up on slim evidence.

But, I still hope there's a soul... =)

- Tracy

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There is a thin line between obe's, astral projections and lucid dreams.
From all the stuff I read and from my own experience I would describe it as follows:
Out of body experience: being out of body in the physical realm which makes it possible to check on friends and get some verifiable data from OBE's.

Astral Projection: out of body but projected to another realm/dimension/sphere/inner planes/afterlife whatever one wants to call it. Here beings etc, teachings can be experienced. But most of the time there is also some subconscious influence of how things are perceived like always.

Lucid dreaming: Out of body but totally in our own created world. Kind of like an astral projection with a huge amount of subconscious influence. Most of the time during LD's there isn't any communication with beings which are perceived other then pieces of ourselves.

Dreams: out of body but totally not self conscious and absorbed in our own drama play.

Anyhow I said there is a thin line because they can mix pretty easily with each other.
During a lucid dream one can actually project from there to another plane. Or from an astral projection one could go back to the physical realm and actually
Kind of the same how a lucid dream can become a normal dream or how during a lucid dream there are gradations of self awareness...

I think the difference is felt in the atmosphere and the depth of the experience.
For people interested in learning how to have OBE's themselves checkout www.robertpeterson.org it's a free online book and gives a great introduction on the whole OBE thing.
Robert is a computer programmer and was a big sceptic himself until the moment he started exploring it himself and couldn't deny his own experience. Real skepticism in action :)

greets,
Filip

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According to the index tunnel is listed on pages 15, 60, and 104. I missed or forget the one on page 15. Little of my research to date that I can remember has talked much about the tunnel experience except during an NDE. But then my memory is suspect at this stage of my life.

It appears to me that passing through a doorway is mentioned more than passing thru a tunnel in this book but it appears that when one experiences an NDE passing through a tunnel is the most popular explanation of the transitional stage. I always wondered why an NDE would be different than those that cross over, communicate thru a medium, and don’t speak about the tunnel experience.

The last paragraph on page 55 is a worthwhile read concerning how or why mediums are able to produce ectoplasm and how sitters may be able to enhance this ectoplasm output. This appears to be the case, as it seems that sitters do influence the output of the medium. Many mediums have suggested this causal correlation between the sitters and the mediums having an impact on the séance.

I think I have posted this before on here but it is worth repeating.

“It is because of the divine spirit within us that we seek truth: it is because of the divine spirit without us that their is truth to discover” Lily Dougall page 51

This quote pretty well sums up my 16 years of research into one sentence. Love it. Something to ponder. Who is “us” if the divine spirit exists without us?
-William

[The book's index is not very good. There are other tunnel references. See pp. 106ff, for instance. - MP]

The tunnel

Lately I've been reading The Supreme Adventure: Analysis of Psychic Communications, by Robert Crookall. In it, Crookall collects many accounts of the dying process from a variety of sources and examines them to see if they tell a more or less consistent story. His idea is that if the details of the story are consistent and cannot credibly be explained by collusion or coincidence, then there's good reason to believe that these details are true.

One particularly interesting detail is the well-known "tunnel" through which the spirit is said to travel after leaving the body. This imagery became famous in the 1970s when the term near-death experiences was coined by Raymond Moody, but Crookall's book precedes Moody's by 14 years and contains the same imagery.

Crookall writes,

A common symbol used in describing the act of shedding ... the Physical Body is that of passing through a 'tunnel' (or a 'door', 'passage', 'tube', 'shaft', 'hole', 'funnel', etc.): this is clearly related to the 'momentary coma' [experienced upon separating from the body], though lasting somewhat longer and, perhaps, with some dim consciousness, of existence if not of environment. There are many considerations which strongly suggest that in this symbol a genuine experience of a surviving soul is indicated.

He then lists a number of statements "by people who left the body other than by death and who use identical symbols" -- that is, by people who had out-of-body experiences (astral projection) or, in some cases, what we would now call near-death experiences. (Where possible, I have given the date of the published account.)

"I seemed to float in a long tunnel. It appeared very narrow at first but gradually expanded into unlimited space." (1952)

"Suddenly there appeared an opening, like a tunnel, and, at the far end, a light. I moved nearer to it and was drawn up the passage." (1950)

"A constant preliminary to the loss of consciousness is the symbolic passing through a pitch-black tunnel." (1953)

"I was falling ... down a dark, narrow tunnel or shaft ... Sometimes the speed is so tremendous that one gets the effect of tumbling through a hole into a new sphere."

"I find myself going down a long dim tunnel ... At the far end is a tiny speck of light which grows, as I approach, into a large square, and I am there!"

"In one of my own experiences I seemed to pass through a tunnel in a dream-like state and emerged through the opening at the end into a scene of bright sunlight." (1956)

"I was hurried off at great speed. Have you ever looked through a very long tunnel and seen the tiny speck of light at the far end?... Well, I found myself... hurrying along just such a tunnel or passage." (1935 near-death experience)

Crookall includes a 1946 mystical experience:

"I closed my eyes and watched a silver glow which shaped itself into a circle with a central focus brighter than the rest. The circle became a tunnel of light proceeding from some distance on in the heart of the Self. Swiftly and smoothly I was borne through the tunnel."

And a number of statements from people who had an out-of-body experience under anesthesia:

"I was in a long tunnel with a light at the end... I knew that if I could only get to the light at the end I should understand everything." (1935)

"I seemed to float down a dark tunnel, moving towards a half-moon of light that was miles away."

"On being given ether I was moving, at a terrific rate, through what seemed to be a tunnel."

"I found myself in an avenue of trees, slowly moving farther and farther from my body... I continue to advance along the avenue towards a brilliant light at the end of it." (1955)

"I found myself proceeding along a straight black tube with hardly any room to move." (1894)

What is most interesting is that these statements agree with communications through mediums.

"I remember a curious opening, as if one had passed through subterranean passages and found oneself near the mouth of the cave... The light was much stronger outside."

An alleged discarnate who said he helped people make the transition said he tried "to make this passage through the tunnel as happy as possible." (1931)

Another communicator said he traveled through a "dark tunnel" while leaving his body. Yet another spoke of "traveling down a tunnel".

A 1926 communicator said: "I saw in front of me a dark tunnel. I stepped out of the tunnel into a new world."

These ostensible communicators also seem to agree that returning to the physical body can require going through a tunnel. This is true even if the discarnate entity is trying to temporarily enter the body of a medium.

"Do not look at me too critically: to try to transmit through the organism of a medium is like trying to crawl through a hollow log." (George Pelham, communicating through Mrs. Piper to Richard Hodgson)

Another discarnate compared entering a medium's body to getting into "a sort of funnel" (1948).

One would-be communicator failed to get through: "He was able to see the light in the darkness of a long funnel. But he doubted so much that it went out. He was frightened for fear he would never find his way back." (1936)

Interestingly, Crookall notes that the tunnel symbol "is also used for describing the experience of reentering the Physical Body" in what we would today call near-death experiences. "This also is felt as a brief coma, 'blackout', or passage through a 'tunnel' (depending on the duration of the experience)."

One NDEr said, "I turned away from the bright light... and entered a gloomy tunnel. I fought my way back to a tiny light in the distance... When I got back to the light, I found myself back in bed."

Crookall even quotes an account given by Plutarch in A.D 79 (On the Delay of Divine Justice) in which a certain Aridaeus suffered a severe fall and was momentarily startled out of his body. Surviving the fall, he felt himself reenter his physical shell. "Then, as though he were suddenly sucked through a tube ... he lit [i.e. alit] in his body."

However, Crookall notes that most people appear to have only a momentary blackout, rather than the full tunnel experience, when they reenter their bodies. He cites a 1923 study of out-of-body experiences in support of this statement. Modern studies of NDEs also find that the tunnel phenomenon is more commonly remembered when leaving the body than when returning, and that the return is often much more rapid.

It appears, then, that the tunnel phenomenon is not easily explained as a neurological quirk. Neurology might explain the experience of the tunnel in NDEs, when the brain is presumably shutting down. It does not explain the tunnel imagery in more routine out-of-body experiences, such as astral projection experiments, when there is no physical damage to the brain. Nor does it explain the persistence of this imagery in mediumistic communications ostensibly originating from the deceased, who are describing their own passage - either their passage out of the body upon death, or their passage into the medium's body for purposes of the séance.

And remember that all of the above quotes were collected prior to 1961, the publication date of The Supreme Adventure. This rules out the conjecture that the tunnel with a bright light at the end is merely a "meme" originating in Raymond Moody's 1975 bestseller Life after Life and popularized by the media.