Two famous people

Here are two brief stories about famous people with a perhaps unexpected connection to the world of paranormal phenomena.

The first comes from the recently published book Glimpses of Eternity, by Raymond Moody and Paul Perry. Glimpses concerns what Moody calls "shared death experiences," episodes in which an NDE or deathbed vision is shared by a hospital worker or loved one. I didn't find the book quite as compelling as some people do, but I have no doubt that such events do take place, and they have been documented in the literature of psychical research as far back as the 19th century (as Moody and Perry freely acknowledge). 

Anyway, the story from Glimpses of Eternity has nothing to do with shared death experiences. It's about channeling -- and a most unlikely medium. The authors write:

Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, ... shocked the world when he revealed that he sat up late at night, receiving messages from another realm. The New York Times Magazine published an article about Salk in November 1990 in which it said that Salk fell into a "trancelike state, filling page after page in an almost indecipherable hand." He collected more than twelve thousand handwritten pages of notes that were later published in three books: Man Unfolding, The Survival of the Wisest and Anatomy of Reality. [pp. 172-173]

Jonas Salk practiced automatic writing? Who knew? (The Times article can be read here.) 

The second story is from Michael Grosso's 2004 book Experiencing the Next World Now, a literate and well-researched overview of afterlife evidence. This story concerns Mark Twain. I knew Twain had an interest in the paranormal; he was convinced of the existence of what he called "mental telegraphy," and made reference to some telepathic episodes in his own life when requesting membership in the Society for Psychical Research in 1884. But I didn't know that his interest in parapsychology extended beyond ESP.

Grosso tells us:

For over forty years Mark Twain had a recurring dream. He always dreamed of the same fifteen-year-old girl; he would meet her in India, in England, in Hawaii, in Athens, and in America. Her name would change, her face and voice would change, but he always knew her to be the same girl whom he loved with a chaste and reverent heart. One night he dreamed of her in Hawaii, and she died. He was stricken beyond any grief of his waking hours.

Later he dreamed of a temple in Athens in which she appeared to him again, and he realized she had never really died. "It may be that she had often died before, and knew that there was nothing lasting about it," he wrote. Mark Twain was faithful to his platonic sweetheart. "In our dreams -- I know it! -- we do make the journeys we seem to make; we do see the things we seem to see; the people, the horses, the cats ... are real, not chimeras; they are living spirits, not shadows; and they are immortal and indestructible. My Dreamland sweetheart is a real person, not a fiction."

And what's more, the dream is more real than the everyday world: "more deep and strong and sharp." Mark Twain holds this up against our waking "artificial selves" and the "dull-tinted artificial world" and finds the waking world wanting. To the author of Huck Finn, this dream world is what we step into when we die. "When we die we shall slough off this cheap intellect, and go abroad into Dreamland clothed in our real selves." *[pp. 181-182]

This information is taken from Twain's short story "My Platonic Sweetheart," published posthumously in the December 1912 issue of Harper's Magazine and readable online. Grosso describes it as "an autobiographical story." The Harper's editor, perhaps wishing to protect Twain's reputation, plays down any autobiographical content, labeling the story "a delicate fancy." More recently, a writer for the Smithsonian Magazine argued that the dream figure was most likely Laura Wright, an early love interest of Twain's. If so, the story has been fictionalized to some extent, but it seems likely to reflect a genuine series of recurring dreams.

===

*The actual line is "When we die we shall slough off this cheap intellect, perhaps, and go abroad into Dreamland clothed in our real selves ..." The word perhaps was omitted in Grosso's book. Also, the description of Twain's reaction to the dream-girl's death is a bit exaggerated; Twain says it "transcended many sufferings that I have known in waking life," not that it was worse than any waking grief. 

Comments

[with a grain of salk]

I looked at the nyt article salk. I'm a believer in spirits and all, but I think it is dangerous when someone starts injecting people with a live aids virus vaccine because he thinks he is an advanced soul on a missison to help humanity to evolve (and a mission to vindicate his legacy to humanity by proving live vaccines are still important). And because of his role in human evolution, the vaccine is destined to succeed.

He links the ability to channel with being advanced. This is a classic mistake that often leads to an unhappy end.

[Alexander1304]

Hello Michael,
I was folowing Your blog for awhile,but it's my first post.
Personal question: did You hear about that Bulgarian woman,Vanga: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Vanga)?
My interest in paranormal started after I read about her(actually,after reading the story about how one well-known russian psychologist visited her).
Thanks

[Michael Prescott]

Hi Alexander1304,

I'd never heard of Vanga till I looked at the Wiki article you linked. One thing that jumped out at me is that she predicted WWIII would start in November 2010. Let's hope she was wrong about that! We've still got one day left to go ...

[Alexander1304]

I became interested not because of her predictions(and I hope she is wrong about WW3 starting this November :)).Well,she just had the same abilities as all other well-known mediums.
Here history is very interesting(as You read) - she became blind and after that she got these mediumistic/paranormal abilities
This psychologist is convinced that through her he "had a conversation" with his mother and grandm,a and that Vanga immediately told him that his mom was not born in Russia,but in some french-speaking country(which was correct),and she told correctly their names.Sounds very intriguing
Well,Alan Gauld at the end of his "Mediumship and Survival" still stated: "certainty is not to be had"...and S.Braude on Sceptico: "Until we really start trying to get a grip on what human abilities are, what limits human abilities are, what savants and prodigies are and so on, I don’t think we’re in a position to really answer conclusively whether we’ve got good evidence for survival, however nifty the cases may be."...well,if these well-known researches are i some way are uncertain,so I am too allowed not to jump to any definite conclusions right now...:)
BTW - great blog

[Alexander1304]

Oh,and Michael,how it worked in her seance with this russian well-known psychologist - it seemed to me a little bizzare,since I read a lot of info about mental mediumship -I've never heard something like that.Before he was scheduled to go to her - she asked him to sleep on the piece of sugar adn to bring it to her...and he brought her some flowers...then she threw away the sugar,but started to touch the flowers and told - "Through these flowers Your deceased women came here...".
Interesting...I'send You the link,but...it's in russian language...:)(I'm russian speaking,and this bulgarian woman was pretty popular in Russia)

[Kathleen]

Yes, luckily, we have only one more day left in November 2010...let's hope no foreign leader is very upset by any of those embarrassing U.S. diplomatic cables just leaked...

Thanks for the post on Mark Twain. His musings sound very much like Jane Roberts' Seth, who wrote that our dreams are actually real. One of my most interesting dreams was looking at myself in a mirror and seeing myself as an Asian woman wearing a stylish 1940s dress. I'm surprised Twain didn't work his dreams into a written story, it could have been very good.

[Bruce Siegel]

Michael, that's interesting about Salk. I hadn't a clue about that.

As to Twain, I knew that he had a psychic side, and thought that you might talk about his famous precognitive dream. It's got enough quirky detail to make it really intriguing:

"The American writer, Mark Twain, and his brother Henry once worked on riverboats on the Mississippi. One night Mark had a dream about his brother's corpse lying in a metal coffin in his sister's living room. It rested on two chairs, with a bouquet and a single crimson flower in the center. He told his sister about his dream.

Just weeks later, his brother was killed in a massive explosion on a riverboat. Many others died and were buried in wooden coffins. But one onlooker felt such pity for young Henry that she raised the money for an expensive metal coffin. At the funeral, Mark was shocked to see the coffin exactly as it was in his dream. As he stood over Henry's casket, a woman placed a bouquet with a single red rose in the middle."

[J9]

Maybe World War III has started with this North Korean nonsense but we just don't know it yet, dun, dun, dun...

[Cyrus]

Yeah technically if WWIII broke out in Asia the shelling on Yeonpeong could be considered the kick-off. Leaked docs seem to reveal strong ties between Iran and the DKRP. Korea could invade Seoul, Iran could come and help, maybe backed by Turkey. Presto, WWIII

But, global predictions by any medium, NDEr, etc are notoriously wrong. Which makes me think there's less pre-scripted destiny then we may think. People can get things right in the short-term, but further up the line it gets murkier and murkier.

[dmduncan]

Fascinating about Salk!

I too am concerned that Yeonpeong could be the start of something that historians much later might point to as a pivotal moment.

I don't see how it turns out well. Doing something provocative in response could lead to war. And doing nothing is extremely likely to embolden NK to do it again...and again...and again, until a response is finally provoked which leads to war.

[dmduncan]

I was cleaning out my inbox when I came across an email from the Exopolitics.com site, making predictions of impending doom.

Here are some quotes:

"The Web Bot technology is now predicting a 1.289+ billion mega-death resulting from an 'ill-wind' and the BP Gulf oil disaster. Researcher Clif High has published a prediction expecting a ‘tipping point’ around November 8, 2010 into global nuclear war, triggered by a mistaken Israeli-influenced attack on Iran that could come anytime after July 11, 2010."

"The Web Bot ALTA report and Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa – both of whom arguably accurately predicted the BP Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe before it occurred - are now predicting the BP Gulf oil catastrophe may one of the largest single human depopulation events in history."

[J9]

Dmduncan, well now I'm worried! I can add that to my list of fears which include mega tsunamis and massive meteor impacts.

[Matthew Shapiro]

I met Salk twice during the week of his death in 1995. I learned that he'd been working on a new book - tentatively titled "Millennium of the Mind" (or "For the Mind") but unfortunate disputes over "literary rights" have prevented the papers from ever moving into a publishable form.