Michael Prescott's Blog

Pyramid power

Here's an interesting little daydream that might be helpful in thinking about some problems arising from mediumistic communications and reincarnation accounts.  It stems from the idea that spirits at higher levels of development exist outside of time as we understand it.

Let's take a spirit named Casper. Casper goes through many incarnations on earth, while occupying time between physical incarnations on the spiritual plane known in the vernacular as Summerland. Casper's physical lives naturally play out in what we might call “clock time”–the kind of time we are familiar with on an everyday basis. Casper's Summerland interludes also play out in some kind of time that is unfamiliar to us but that seems to be related to earthly clock time.

Throughout his various incarnations, Casper makes progress  in terms of spiritual evolution, and eventually he reaches the stage where he can advance beyond Summerland to the next plane of spiritual existence. For the sake of simplicity, we will call this the 4th plane. On the 4th plane, Casper exists entirely outside of time as either we or even the inhabitants of Summerland experience it.

Okay. Think about what that means. Casper has reached the point where he exists outside of time. That means, in terms of earthly reckoning, he has always existed, he exists right now, and he will continue to exist indefinitely.

Meanwhile, here on earth, Casper is undergoing one of his many physical incarnations, and may not be anywhere close to the spiritual epiphany that will eventually summon him to the 4th plane.

Casper is in two places at once! He is here on earth at this very moment, perhaps incarnated as a stevedore in New Delhi or a greengrocer in Santa Barbara. But he is also on the 4th plane, because he is always on the 4th plane, because the 4th plane is outside of time.

Now, if Casper in his present earthly incarnation were aware of all this, he might say, “Well, then, what's the point of my striving through a series of difficult earthly incarnations when I am already on the 4th plane, and in fact have always been there and always will be?”

But Casper's objection would be misplaced, because it is precisely his series of incarnations that allowed him to attain his transcendent state on the 4th plane in the first place. If he had not undergone those incarnations, he would never have made it to the 4th plane. The fact that he is on the 4th plane means that he did undergo (or will undergo, and must undergo) the necessary incarnations.

Casper might say, “That means I have no free will.” Maybe yes, maybe no. It's entirely possible that he has a great deal of freedom of action in any given incarnation, and that in any one lifetime he can make mistakes that retard  his progress, or make good choices that advance his progress. On the other hand, he seems to have no freedom  of choice about participating in the overall process, nor is the end result of the process in doubt. We might say, not poetically but as a literal statement of fact, that it is Casper's “destiny” to rise to the 4th plane; he is fated to do so, and we know this because if he had not done so he would not be there ever, which means he would not be there now. 

Does this mean that Casper's identity is bifurcated into a timeless aspect and a time-bound aspect? Is Casper cut in two? From our earthly perspective it would seem so. But from the perspective of the 4th plane, it may not seem that way at all. It's impossible for us to know how things would appear to an inhabitant of a higher-dimensional plane of reality, just as it is impossible for the inhabitants of Flatland to imagine living in a three-dimensional world.

We might, however, make the idea a little clearer by means of a geometrical analogy. Suppose we picture earthly existence as one point on a triangle, while Summerland occupies the side of the triangle directly opposite that point. This is a two-dimensional figure, drawn on a sheet of paper–paper that is lying flat on a table. Now let's imagine that we place a small paper pyramid over the triangle in such a way that the pyramid's base precisely covers the triangle. The top of the pyramid represents existence on the 4th plane. What we've done, in short, is to extend a two-dimensional figure into a three-dimensional solid.  

Now imagine yourself as a point on the two-dimensional triangle traveling from the vertex representing earthly life to the line representing Summerland and back again, over and over, leaving a trail–represented by a straight line–each time. As a moving dot, you would be aware only of the line behind you–the history of your current incarnation. But suppose you instead occupied the vertex atop the three-dimensional pyramid. From this elevated vantage point, you could look down and see all of the lines spread out below you–all of your lifetimes on earth and in Summerland.

And yet your consciousness is not actually bifurcated, because the triangle is part of the pyramid (namely, the base), and the pyramid as a whole represents your awareness.

Naturally, it would be possible to repeat this process. We could take our three-dimensional pyramid and squash it (conceptually) into a two-dimensional triangle, then build a new pyramid on top of it. And so on, and so on, building into higher and higher dimensions, each of which subsumes all the lower dimensions that went into building it up.

If the 4th plane is outside of time, what could the 5th or 6th or 7th planes be like?

The mind boggles.

Birth and rebirth

Update, June 25: I mistakenly attributed quotes from Testimony of Light to a different book by a different author. The error is corrected now. Thanks to Robert McLuhan for noticing the mistake. 

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I've often commented on the biggest inconsistency in ostensibly channeled communications about the afterlife — the question of whether or not spirits reincarnate. The same concern shows up in Stafford Betty's worthwhile book The Afterlife Unveiled, which consists largely of excerpts from channeled material.

Betty, a PhD in Theology, teaches religuous studies at California State University and has a special intetest in mediumship. In his concluding chapter, Prof. Betty writes: 

I wish I could report that there was unanimity on this very important subject [of reincarnation], but the facts don't permit it. This lack is the main reason I leave open the possibility, however slight, that this entire literature could be coming from the subconscious beliefs of mediums rather than from spirits. There are many reasons for thinking otherwise, and they impress me far more than this lone thorn among so many flowers growing together harmoniously, but there is no denying the prick.

Still, Betty's own book showed me that explicit references to reincarnation are found in some of the oldest modern mediumistic accounts. It does not appear to be the case, as I'd previously believed, that reincarnation scarcely makes an appearance in the older messages but starts appearing regularly in the more recent ones. Instead, there seems to have been a certain tension over this issue right from the start. 

I was already somewhat aware of this, having read The Spirits' Book (free PDF here). This well-known volume was compiled by Allan Kardec and originally published in 1857, not too long after the modern Spiritualist movement began. Kardec's communicating spirits make no bones, so to speak, about reincarnation, which they view as a natural part of any spirit's evolution. 

Asked, "How can the soul that has not attained to perfection during the corporeal life complete the work of its purification?", the spirits answer: "By undergoing the trial of a new existence…" Additional questioning brings out the clarification that the new existence must be a physical one:

The soul, in purifying itself, undoubtedly undergoes a transformation; but, in order to effect this transformation, it needs the trial of corporeal life… we all have many such existences. Those who maintain the contrary wish to keep you in the same ignorance in which they are themselves… In each new existence, a spirit takes a step forwards in the path of progress; when he has stripped himself of all his impurities, he has no further need of the trials of corporeal life.… he who advances quickly spares himself many trials. Nevertheless, these successive incarnations are always very numerous, for progress is almost infinite. 

Returning to Stafford Betty's book, we find a discussion of reincarnation in his chapter on the 1914 book Letters from the Afterlife, in which Elsa Barker channeled Judge David Hatch. The discarnate Hatch tells us: 

You should get away from the mental habit of regarding your present life as the only one, get rid of the idea that the life you expect to lead on this side, after your death, is to be an endless existence in one state. You could no more endure such an endless existence in the subtle matter [of Hatch's world] then you could endure to live forever in the gross matter in which you are now encased. You would weary of it. You could not support it…

I could probably force the coming back [to earth], but that would be unwise, for I should then come back with less power than I want… it is better for me to rest in the condition of light matter until I have accumulated energy enough to come back with power. I shall not do, however, as many souls do; they stay out here until they are as tired of this world as they formerly were tired of the earth, and then are driven back half unconsciously by the irresistible force of the tide of rhythm. I want to guide to that rhythm…

When the soul enters matter, preparing for rebirth, it enters potentiality, if we may use such a term, and all its strength is needed in the herculean effort to form the new body and adjust to it.

Hatch goes on to explain that “the tendencies of any given life, the unexplained impulses and desires, are in nearly all cases brought over" to the new incarnation, though specific memories are usually forgotten. 

Another thing I noticed when reading The Afterlife Unveiled is the sharp similarity between some channeled accounts and the accounts given by the hypnotically regressed patients of Michael Newton and other therapists interested in between-lives memories. Typically, these patients describe an afterlife environment that is more abstract and unearthly than "Summerland" accounts, while saying that their own bodily forms are essentially patterns of light and color. 

As I wrote in an older post, 

There also is very little discussion [in Newton's accounts] of what has been called Paradise or Summerland -- the earthlike environment of the afterlife, featuring gardens, meadows, houses, birds, etc. Some of Newton's subjects do recall studying in a beautiful library, but for the most part the afterlife environment, as they depict it, seems to consist of blobs of color (which are souls) zipping around in a rather abstract geometric setting. It reminds me a little of the old sci-fi movie Tron.

Newton's patients also report being part of a group soul — an organizational unit that allows spirits to learn from each other and make progress together. 

Compare all this with the discussion of reincarnation in another of Betty's sources — The Road to Immortality, channeled by Geraldine Cummins and published in 1932. (Complete text online here.) The communicating spirit, allegedly famed psychical researcher F.W.H. Myers, tells us that on the fourth spiritual plane the spirit acquires

a body entirely dissimilar from the human body. As regards appearance, it can only be described as being apparently a compound of light and colors unimaginable. The shape of this form is influenced by all the ego's past acts so far as they have impressed themselves on his deeper consciousness. This colored compound may be grotesque, bizarre in form, may be lovely beyond words, may possess strange absurdities of outline, or may transcend the loftiest dream of earthly beauty… 

Within the subtle world of which I speak you will perceive a variety of forms which are not known on earth and therefore may not be expressed in words. Yet there is a certain similarity, a correspondence between the appearances on this luminiferous plane. Flowers are there; but these are in shapes unknown to you, exquisite in color, radiant with light. Such colors, such lights are not contained within any earthly octave, are expressed by us in thoughts and not in words…

Betty summarizes the book's presentation of the group soul concept: 

Myers introduces us to the Group Soul, one of the hallmarks of the Fourth Plane. A Group Soul is “a number of souls all bound together by one spirit.” There are countless Group Souls, each headed and inspired by a single spirit of uncommon power. Each Group Soul might contain as few as 20 souls or as many as a thousand. And there is some unifying interest, for example music, that acts as the thread that binds the group together.… Most Group Souls significantly quicken progress. Myers is himself a member of one: “The interesting feature of my state here is that I am within a larger mind, and many of my affinities are contained in it.” He tells us we will “realize how fine and beautiful is this brotherhood within the one being; how it deepens and intensifies existence; how it destroys the cold selfishness so necessary to an earth life.”

Of special interest is the economy of the Group Soul. Each soul is so privy to the experiences of its fellows that the lessons normally learned only by a succession of many reincarnations can be speeded up. It works like this:

“… what the Buddhists would call the karma I had brought with me from a previous life is, very frequently, not that of my life, but of the life of the soul [in my group] that preceded me by many years on earth and left for me a pattern which made my life. I, too, wove a pattern for another of my group during my earthly career. We are all of us distinct, though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being.”

Myers tells us he will not reincarnate. The surrogate experiences of his brothers and sisters, which he feels with as much intensity as if he were the actor, are teaching him all the remaining lessons of earth needed for his advancement.

Another point made by Newton's patients is that they plan out their earthly lives before birth, even choosing their parents. Yet the vicissitudes of life and the vagaries of free will mean that the plan — mostly forgotten by the conscious mind while incarnated — is often not carried out successfully. This idea is paralleled in Betty's excerpts from Testimony of Light (1980), by Helen Greaves, a book of material purportedly originating with a deceased nun, Frances Banks. Note that Greaves' book was published 14 years earlier than Newton's first book, Journey of Souls. 

Here is how the life plan is described by "Frances Banks":

Somewhere in the deeps of my mind two ‘blueprints’ are brought forward into my consciousness. These are so clear that I can (literally) take them out, materialize them and study them. One is the Perfect Idea with which my spirit went bravely into incarnation. The other is the resultant of only a partially-understood Plan… in fact my life as it was actually lived… First of all the mind looks at the whole comparison, and sets the blueprints side-by-side. This is the first shock; a true humbling of yourself to find that you did so little when you would have done so much; that you went wrong so often when you were sure that you were right. During this experience the whole cycle of your life-term unfolds before you in a kaleidoscopic series of pictures. During the crisis one seems to be entirely alone. Yours is the judgment. You stand at your own bar of judgment. You make your own decisions. You take the blame.… You are the accused, the judge and jury.

Readers of Newton's accounts obtained from hypnosis sessions will find this description strikingly familiar.

And here is Frances on the group soul: 

Whilst I was meditating in my golden garden, I found myself ‘transported’ to… a cluster of entities about a Teacher. Immediately I experienced a rise of consciousness, an upsurge of joy, a mingling of unity and harmony which colored my hole being. I cannot explain this in any of the terms, though I doubt whether they will have the same connotation for you. I knew this was right for me. I had come into my own. There was no definite acceptance, the entire operation was unobtrusive and simple, yet I had the conviction that all was well, that I was amidst my fellow-travelers on the Way.

This "upsurge of joy"and sense of belonging are typical of the reactions of Newton's hypnotized patients, often expressed in highly emotional terms. 

Finally, it's worth mentioning a little-known channeled book called The Afterlife of Leslie Stringfellow, which Betty discusses in one of his early chapters. Stringfellow died in 1886. Thereafter, his mother obtained fifteen years of mediumistic communication allegedly from him. Eventually she wrote up the best of these and published just one hundred copies of the resulting book, which she called Leslie's Letter to His Mother. Betty writes, "Leslie's Letter to His Mother was lost to the world until a librarian at the University of Arkansas, Stephen Chism, stumbled across a copy and was so intrigued by it that he undertook to bring it out in a new edition (2005) with the title The Afterlife of Leslie Stringfellow." 

What does Leslie say about reincarnation? I'm not sure. I did not see it mentioned in Betty's overview, but in his last chapter, Betty reports, "One of our seven sources (Benson/Borgia) says nothing about [reincarnation] and even implies that it doesn't occur. The other six do mention it, and five of those six endorse it."

"Benson/Borgia" refers to the famous book by Anthony Borgia, Life in the World Unseen* (1956). Presumably, then, the Stringfellow book does contain some discussion of reincarnation — and given its early date and near-total obscurity, I'd be interested to know what it says. So I've ordered it. (Amazon sells only used copies, starting at $95, but the book is available from the publisher for $14.95.) 

It should be noted that even some contemporary channeled material throws cold water on reincarnation. The Risen, by August Goforth and Timothy Gray, quotes its discarnate coauthor as stating emphatically that reincarnation does not occur. 

So what can we conclude from all this? First, reincarnation has been part of Spiritualist literature from early days, and is not a later accretion inspired by the Theosophy and similar movements. Second, there has never been unanimity on this issue. Third, there are interesting parallels between some channeled material and the accounts of between-lives hypnotic regressions. 

If reincarnation is a fact, it would seem most likely that the group soul concept is intimately connected with it, and that the whole process is more subtle and complex than it might appear. The channeled material attributed to Seth and to Silver Birch tends in this direction also.

Voltaire may yet be proved correct in his observation: "It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."

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*By the way, I should note that Borgia's book, Life in the World Unseen, has always read like fiction to me. Prof. Betty's summary of the book does nothing to change my impression. 

More from The Country Beyond

Having finished The Country Beyond, by Jane Sherwood, I thought I'd post a few more excerpts from the book that I found interesting. I'm not saying that these “channeled” claims are necessarily true–who knows?–but at the very least they are thought-provoking.

 Jane Sherwood, summing up a long channeled conversation in her own words, writes: 

Then we have two aspects of truth to connect... First, there are the four interpenetrating substances [physical, etheric, astral, and spiritual] in a man's body all geared in together to work as a harmonious whole. Secondly, each of these substances is related to and continuous with its own special universal field of force. Man would appear to be a complex area of density in four fields of force at once and this region of complex activity is his body, physical and spiritual. One must no longer think of him as a being separate from his world, an independent organism clear of control or influence and nicely segregated in a body. He is a kind of tangle, or knot in a continuous pattern woven in fourfold fashion throughout the universe and is thus in contact with all its fourfold activity. If this could be realized and acted upon, it looks as though man might learn to wield extraordinary powers as yet undreamed of. [Page 111]

The issue of the influence of our feelings on other people is discussed at length. As in many spiritual or New Age writings, the idea here is that our feelings have real, tangible effects on those around us.

Yet these emotions from other people are received, not as emotions, but as sensations. Thus to receive a pang of anger does not in the least arouse anger in return. The anger simply hurts the astral body which apparently reflects its injury down through the etheric and physical. It seems clear that the harm inflicted is due to inharmonious vibrations which have a jarring effect on the body, upsetting its normal rhythms and so causing real suffering. Just as the receipt of good emotions acts as a tonic, so bad ones cause injury.

Antidotes to evil emotions come to be known and used as experience increases. Love will smooth out any vicious vibration, speedily overruling it and tranquilizing the body again. [Page 115]

The point is pressed in a slightly later passage:

You are never immune from influences from your fellows. Even though you are insensitive to them your astral body has to absorb them.

Every man, then, must carry about with him all the time his own emotional atmosphere. He is a powerful center of influences which stream off from him and affect all within his orbit. There goes a red thrust of anger, there a pure beam of love, there a sparkling ray of fun, and each must be absorbed by the astral bodies of those he meets. You are blind to these exchanges, but there is no way of hiding our feelings here. They are all proclaimed by the visible colors and patterns of the aura. It is a pity that your real emotions are so easily hidden on earth since you can deceive yourselves that they have no effect unless they are outwardly expressed. But you must reckon with this: in the actual raying out of your own harmful or helpful emotions they are bound to have tangible effects on others and when you cannot understand [other people's] behavior, it may well be a deeply instinctive response to your real but hidden attitude to them. [Page 117]

I have a mixed reaction to such claims. On the one hand, I can see how they could be true, if consciousness is as powerful as psi phenomena suggest. On the other hand, I worry that excessive concern with monitoring one's own emotions could lead to emotional repression. If you're authentically angry, isn't it better to feel angry than to pretend you're perfectly calm?

On the other hand, I have experienced the calming effect of projecting a feeling of benevolence onto other people, even if that feeling is somewhat artificial. So perhaps the claims really are correct. 

Later in the book, there is discussion of the so-called ego-principle, which can be loosely defined as self-awareness, and which is seen as the most advanced of the four elements of the human person, the other three being the physical, the etheric, and the astral. Ego in this context does not refer to the obsessive and insecure self-consciousness connoted by terms like egocentric or egotistical. It is more akin to the higher self. 

The other work of the ego-principle is to infuse the whole of  experience with the special value we call meaning. Thus, purpose grows definite only because emotions have meaning.…

Without [the ego's] agency the etheric brain could only reflect its record of changes in the chemical substances of the brain, to which the astral consciousness would give merely a confused sense of “feeling” reactions. No clear thought or perception could emerge unless the ego was present to translate all this into terms of meaning. One sees a tree, shall we say; that is, the physical reactions caused by certain vibrations in the etheric brain which are picked up by the astral in terms of pleasure-pain, but the meaning of the thing called a tree has to be supplied by the ego-principle. It alone can relate the reactions of the other bodies to the world of meaning, which is, in effect, the only real world. Apart from these connections with reality made for us by the ego all perceptions would be seen to be the illusions that they really are. A misty unreality would pervade the whole world of perception and feeling.

In themselves, the processes of reasoning would go on in the etheric brain like reactions in a computer but they would be devoid of meaning and as automatic as a piece of machinery. Memory, too, without the intervention of the ego activity would operate in a purely mechanical way. It would be able to reproduce an experience with its associated feeling tone (astral record) but it simply would not mean anything at all. The ego alone deals with the world of meaning and although it can and sometimes does give wrong meanings to events, it at least deals with sense data in a meaningful way. [Pages 144-145]

This seems to be saying that what are technically called qualia are made possible by the ego-principle, and that without the ego-principle the nervous system would still function in a mechanical way, much as physicalists or materialists believe, but without the all important dimension of self-awareness and meaning.

Finally, here is part of a discussion of humankind's spiritual evolution. Some may object to this scenario, inasmuch as it suggests that “primitive” peoples were less spiritually advanced than us more modern types. In many circles today, the opposite assumption reigns. Still, I think there is some merit to this idea, particularly when you consider that as we go deeper into the past, we seem to find a much more joyless and even despondent picture of the afterlife than we do in modern religious or spiritual traditions. Very early religions in the historical era tend to picture the afterlife as a misty realm of bloodless and confused shadow figures–the Greeks' Hades, the Israelites' Sheol. There is also a disproportionate emphasis on devils and demons, for instance in the religions of ancient Sumeria and Babylon. It does indeed appear as if conceptions of the afterlife have progressed toward more vivid, inspiring, and uplifting imagery over the course of time.

Anyway, here are the relevant excerpts:

Primitive man had an astral being but barely the dawning of an ego-principle. After death his being would hover between the etheric and lower astral and would quickly descend again into a physical body. His highest experiences, then, would be those of the lower astral planes and in many cases no doubt the after-death experience must have been dominated by the animal plane from which he had only just emerged. When such a being went back to earth his vague yearnings for spiritual truth would bring back to him visions of animal forms, of elemental beings of earth, air and water and of the unformed primitive man-soul itself. Fleeting visions of these things would haunt his dreams and he would carve them into his images, symbolize them in his legends and sing them in his songs. But each life cycle would add to his development and enable him to reach a higher plane of existence here [in the afterlife]. In later lives, when he reached the higher astral planes after death, he would go back to earth with the power to create more beautiful forms, to imagine more beautiful beings and to experience more beautiful emotions. Angels henceforth mingle with the demon and animal symbols of his earlier worship. Heroes and demi-gods, half human, half divine, reflect  in his religion the stages of his spiritual experiences up here. Then, still progressing, he reaches the higher spheres and becomes aware of exalted spiritual beings who lead him on to a knowledge of the higher spiritual truths and set him hungering to find and worship the supreme spirit.

When he comes back to earth the kingdom, the power and the glory of his heritage will be present in his inner being and he will know the hunger of the soul which cannot be satisfied by even the most wonderful experiences of earthly life. So his hunger, his urge to find again the pure joy once known by him here will influence his religious thought and will purify and ennoble the form of religion he finds as his inheritance on earth. If he has gone far here so that he brings back to earth a pure thought of God, his inner knowledge may lead him into rebellion against the state of religious thought he finds on earth. He may become a great heretic, a great reformer; but such a heretic is the saint of the future. The vision is always with him, the kingdom of heaven is within him. Earthly religious forms carrying the outworn symbols and images of a more primitive past must, for him, be purged and lifted on to a more enlightened level of spiritual truth. The connection with evolution becomes plain. But for this perpetual reaching up to the highest possible to manage lifetime there could be no progress since no higher plane can be reached here unless the power to reach it has been developed on earth. The earth experience is decisive and controls the rest of that cycle and the plane to which ascent can be made. [Pages 228-229]

Responding to this last channeled message, Jane Sherwood comments:

I suppose the chaos in psychology is largely due to ignorance of the existence of special powers of the four principles of the human body, for if every activity has to be accounted for by glands, secretions and reflexes muddle and contradictions are inevitable. It is as though the glass and the mercury backing of a mirror had to be accountable for all that moves in the mirror. [Pages 229-230]

Bam!

Recently I came across an interesting interview with David Webster, a philosophy professor and author of a new book called Dispirited. The excerpts that caught my attention are here; the full interview is here. 

Webster says he begins his book (which I haven't read) with the following declaration: 

When someone tells me that they are “Not religious, but very spiritual,” I want to punch them in the face.

Hard …

Now, I don't know about you, but when I read a statement like that, it makes me think that the author may be in need of a dose of spirituality himself. 

Of course it's hyperbole, and as the opening sentence of a book it succeeds in capturing the reader's attention, which is what opening sentences are supposed to do. Still, it is a tad off-putting, especially coming from a college professor whose field of expertise is Religion, Philosophy and Ethics. 

But what's got Webster so riled up about spirituality, anyway? The answer is found in his book's not-very-subtle subtitle, How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish and Unhappy.

In the interview, Webster elaborates: 

Stupid—because its open-ended, inclusive and non-judgemental attitude to truth-claims actually becomes an obstacle to the combative, argumentative process whereby we discern sense from nonsense. To treat all claims as equivalent, as valid perspectives on an unsayable ultimate reality, is not to really take any of them seriously. It promotes a shallow, surface approach, whereby the work of discrimination, of testing claims against each other, and our experience in the light of method, is cast aside in favour of a lazy, bargain-basement-postmodernist relativism.

To some extent I agree with this. It's my basic complaint about New Agery. There is too much blanket acceptance of untested (often untestable) claims. However, it's not true of all spiritual traditions or approaches. It is more common in what might be called "vulgar spirituality," or Oprah-style feel-good spiritual pablum.

And even in its most popularized form, this approach to life does offer some benefits. For one thing, it makes many people happier than they might otherwise be -- not an insignificant matter. For another, it may put people in touch, at least glancingly, with higher spiritual truths that have sustained human beings for thousands of years. Admittedy, these truths are presented in an adulterated and dumbed-down version; still, that's better than nothing. Isn't it? 

Selfish—because the ‘inner-turn’ drives us away from concerns with the material; so much so that being preoccupied with worldly matters is somehow portrayed as tawdry or shallow. It’s no accident that we see the wealthy and celebrities drawn to this very capitalist form of religion: most of the world realizes that material concerns do matter. I don’t believe that we find ourselves and meaning via an inner journey. I’m not even sure I know what it means. While of course there is course for introspection and self-examination, this, I argue, has to be in a context of concrete social realities.

Possibly true. New Agery does seem to appeal to people's narcissism, and to encourage it. On the other hand, sometimes immersion in spiritual teachings and experiences can make one a better person. For instance, reading a lot about the life review in near-death experiences can make one acutely aware of how one treats others, and can make compassion and helpfulness seem more important than competitiveness and self-seeking. Kenneth Ring devoted a whole book to this idea, pointing out that even people who've never had an NDE often show spiritual progress after reading or hearing about other people's experiences.

I also think it's hard to argue that hardcore materialists are necessarily better, more caring people than those who are spiritually inclined, even if their brand of spirituality is of the "vulgar" variety. There is an awful lot of angry invective and personal score-settling on the part of the more vocal atheists and skeptics. P.Z. Myers and Penn Jillette are two obvious cases in point. Even skeptic Ray Hyman is on record as saying, "As a whole, parapsychologists are nice, honest people, while the critics are cynical, nasty people." 

So I have mixed feelings about the author's first two points. But it's with his third point that he really loses me. 

Finally, I argue that the dissembling regarding death in most contemporary spirituality—the refusal to face it as the total absolute annihilation of the person and all about them—leaves it ill-equipped to help us truly engage with the existential reality of our own mortality and finitude. In much contemporary spirituality there is an insistence of survival (and a matching vagueness about its form) whenever death is discussed. I argue that any denial of death (and I look at the longevity movements briefly too) is an obstacle to a full, rich life, with emotional integrity. Death is the thing to be faced if we are to really live. Spirituality seems to me to be a consolation that refuses this challenge, rather seeking to hide in the only-half-believed reassurances of ‘spirit’, ‘energy’, previous lives, and ‘soul’.

Although I agree that longevity movements are problematic, overall I find a raft of difficulties with this analysis.

First, Webster is apparently unaware that there is, in fact, a considerable body of empirical evidence pointing to postmortem survival. Those who maintain this belief are not necessarily "dissembling" or refusing to face facts, as he assumes. In many cases they have been persuaded by reading about, or directly experiencing, phenomena that do not readily lend themselves to any other explanation. One might even argue that the materialists' unwillingness to properly address this mass of evidence is indicative of their refusal to face facts. 

Second, having lived as both an atheist with no belief in an afterlife, and as a theist with a pretty strong belief in an afterlife (though not an absolute certainty), I can't agree that the former approach represents healthy, vital living, while the latter entails a cramped, bloodless existence. I felt considerably less grounded, less alive, and more pessimistic, unhappy, and simply empty in my atheistic days than I do now. Many other people report the same thing. Again, look at NDErs -- typically, they find themselves living life more joyfully and with more zest and courage than they did before their experience. And this change of attitude is not simply a result of surviving a close call with death. According to their own accounts, it is their personal conviction of life after death (derived from the NDE) that gave their lives a new direction and purpose. Indeed, when you contrast the energy of NDErs and other spiritually inclined types with the exhausted ennui of stridently secular cultures, it seems that spirituality has a definite edge. 

But don't tell David Webster. By way of demonstrating his commitment to "a full, rich life, with emotional integrity," he just might punch you in the face.  

Getting it wrong

This post is basically a big nothingburger -- just something I was thinking about and decided to write up. It concerns famous or characteristic statements by well-known fiction writers which may be clever but simply are not true. 

"There are no second acts in American lives." - F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

Fitzgerald was a very fine writer, and The Great Gatsby is one of the essential American novels. But his famous pontification about American lives couldn't be more wrong. American society is all about second acts. How many Americans do you know who have changed careers in midlife, or gone back to college, or remarried, or moved across country or even overseas?

In many ways Ronald Reagan's life story is quintessentially American. He started off as a radio sportscaster, then took a chance and went to Hollywood, becoming a successful movie actor (not a B-movie actor, as sometimes claimed; he made A pictures). Later he made the transition to television and became the national spokesman for GE. As he traveled the country he grew more and more interested in politics, eventually winning the office of governor of California and, later, president of the US. As president, he survived an assassination attempt, after which he developed a deep religious faith.

No second act? Reagan's life had a third, fourth, and fifth act! 

Reagan may have been unusually protean, but Americans in general are constantly reinventing themselves, as is America itself. Strange that Fitzgerald, an otherwise acute observer, could miss such an obvious fact. 

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy. 

This famous opening sentence to Anna Karenina packs a lot of punch, and without a doubt the novel itself is one of the high water marks of world literature. But if you think about it, Tolstoy's seemingly profound observation makes little sense. How are happy families all alike? The truth is that families often find very different ways of being happy. In fact, there is at least as much variety among happy families as there is among the unhappy ones.

One might even maintain that unhappy families tend to be more alike, since the things that typically drive families apart (infidelity, drug and alcohol addiction, emotional and physical abuse) fall into a pretty restricted range. 

"Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions." - Ayn Rand. 

This key quote from John Galt's epic speech in Atlas Shrugged sums up a great deal of Rand's philosophy, and it is certainly powerful rhetoric. But is it true? Hardly. First, it is impossible to determine exactly what constitute "rational goals." Reason is crucial in developing strategies to achieve a given goal, but it can't tell us what goals to seek in the first place. Reason is about means, not ends. (Rand's attempt to solve the is-ought problem at the root of this distinction was a failure.) Moreover, it is psychologically impossible to be "rational" -- in the narrow, limited sense in which Rand uses the term -- all the time. Even if this state of mind were desirable (which I doubt), it is not achievable, because human beings are not purely creatures of reason; we are motivated in part by instinct, emotion, sentiment, and neurotic hopes and fears, not to mention the apprehension of transcendent truths that don't translate readily into "rational" argument.

If Rand's statement were true, then no one would ever have been happy in the whole history of the world, including Rand herself, who had more than her share of irrationalities. Among other things, she had phobias about germs and air travel; she became addicted to diet pills containing amphetamines; she was neurotically afraid of investing her money in anything riskier than a low-interest savings account; she had an explosively violent and unpredictable temper; she irreparably damaged her marriage by pursuing a younger man who was not in love with her; and she alienated most of her close friends and supporters by treating them badly. She was, in short, human -- all too human. 

So what's my overall point? I don't have much of one; this is a nothingburger post, remember? But I guess I would say that facility with words and plots and fictional characters does not necessarily translate into truthful observations about human nature. Sometimes it does (Shakespeare and Mark Twain were keen observers) and sometimes it doesn't. 

Or in shorter terms: caveat lector (reader beware)!