Michael Prescott's Blog

Passing in review

This is one of the more interesting things I've seen in a piece of channeled material. It comes from the same book I discussed in my last post, The Country Beyond: The Doctrine of Re-Birth, by Jane Sherwood. I was just leafing through the book when I came across a passage that took me very much by surprise.

If the book had been published after 1975, I wouldn't have thought anything of it, because in 1975 Raymond Moody published his groundbreaking book Life After Life, which popularized the near-death experience (a term he coined). One of the key features of an NDE is the “life review,” in which a person relives his whole life–or at least its key moments–while seeing it from a new, enhanced perspective that includes not only greater clarity but a first-hand perception of the thoughts and feelings of the people affected by his own behavior.

This aspect of the NDE has since been reported in many well-documented cases, and would be known to anyone who is interested in paranormal or esoteric studies today. But in 1975 it was an unfamiliar idea. I'm not saying that nobody had ever recounted this particular observation before, but it certainly wasn't part of popular culture the way it has been ever since Life After Life.

Well, the thing is, The Country Beyond was first published in 1969, and if the author is to be believed–and I have no reason to doubt her on this point–the communications she recorded in the book were compiled over at least three decades. Life After Life cannot possibly have been an influence on her.

Yet take a look at this message channeled by Sherwood from a communicator calling himself E.K.:

“Soon after shedding the etheric body and waking fully on the astral plane,” he said, “one's thoughts begin to be much concerned with the life of earth which has been left behind. The clear-cut memory has been lost with the etheric body, and yet as one begins to use the astral body and it grows in strength, the scenes and events of the past life begin to come vividly back in terms of their feeling content and in a manner never experienced before. In the course of one's life on earth, experiences are reflected in consciousness and one never doubts that one has realized the whole of them. But the impressions of people, events and acts which now come crowding back are far more real and comprehensive than when they were actually experienced. The difference in this presentment of the past is that included in it now is the reaction of other people. I find this difficult to explain. Everything that happens to you affects others as well as yourself and every event has therefore has as many aspects in reality as there are consciousnesses affected by it. Each of these others concerned in these events had their emotional life altered thereby even though you were quite unconscious of what was being brought about by your agency. Now, in this process of recollection, as an instant comes back to one's mind it brings with it the actual feelings, not of oneself alone but of the others who were affected by the event. All their feelings have now to be experienced in oneself as though they were one's own. This means that the effects of deeds on the lives of others must be experienced as intimately as though to do and to suffer the deed were one. Where sorrow and wrong have been inflicted, sorrow and wrong must be felt, not merely known to exist.

"Most of our deeds on earth are performed in ignorance of their real bearing on the lives of others. There may be an uneasy sense that others are involved in suffering because of us but we often choose to ignore this. We have understood a situation with our mere intellect and have kept back sympathy which is the beginning of knowing in oneself what this suffering is. So often we have remained in ignorance of the real events we have set going in the lives of others and these things are now gradually revealed to us as a part of our own experience. Where sorrow and wrong have been inflicted, as I said, they must be felt. We have to face the reliving of our whole earth experience in this way.”

“That is retribution of such a deadly justice that it makes earthly justice look like mercy,” I said.

“Not only is it justice,” said E.K., “but it is redemptive suffering. It breaks up once and for all the hard core of selfishness and cruelty which earth life often forms and which would make a man unchanged in this respect an immense misery to himself and his world. It is a purely natural process, set going by the astral body itself which thus works to rid itself of impurity and disease. All these things which it has to re-live have been real events of this astral world and so are part of the unconscious experience of the astral self. As this is our actual, visible body now, and its reactions are no longer veiled by the physical, we have to know them intimately and the moral law is set for us now in physical terms.

“Now the detailed memory is lost, as you know, but this does not prevent me having a fuller knowledge of the real significance of all I did on earth. As I re-live it, I find it to be at once better, and worse than I knew. I saw it before ‘As through a glass, darkly, but now face-to-face’. I am only in the middle of this retrospect myself and have some way to go before all my earth experiences have been seen and known fully in the light of reality. I judge that by this process one is gradually emancipated from earth and, having repented and accepted the truth about oneself one is free to continue in other spheres the proper development of the being.” [Pages 135–137,  emphasis in original, spelling and punctuation Americanized]

To me it is striking, to say the least, that an observation made by so many NDErs–people with no interest in spiritualism, occultism, channeling, etc.–should be foreshadowed so precisely by a channeled communication obtained years, if not decades, before NDEs were widely reported.  

A far country

Currently I'm reading a 1969 book by Jane Sherwood, titled The Country Beyond: The Doctrine of Re-Birth, which I saw mentioned in a recent post on Robert McLuhan's excellent blog Paranormalia. (McLuhan, by the way, is the author of the outstanding book Randi's Prize, reviewed here.) 

The Country Beyond consists of Sherwood's automatic writings, which are said to convey messages from several spirit advisers. As with any “channeled” material of this type, there is no way to verify the claims independently. It is always possible that the ideas are coming from the writer's subconscious mind. This is especially true in the case of somebody like Sherwood who, by her own account, spent a good deal of time investigating Spiritualism, visiting mediums, and reading esoteric literature. In the end, all you can do is read the messages and see if they make sense to you and conform with other, similar communications.

Without attempting to summarize the book–or even the first half of it, which is all I've read so far–I'd like to present a few excerpts that particularly interested me. In the quotes that follow, I've Americanized the spelling and punctuation.

A frequent objection raised against some mediums, especially mediums of the past, is that they describe their spirit guides as rather exotic figures–often Native American chieftains or ancient Egyptian priests. Jane Sherwood encountered a number of such mediums in her early exploration of Spiritualism and was highly skeptical of the idea that such colorful characters would predominate in the spirit world. Later, after developing a facility for automatic writing, she obtained an explanation for this, purportedly from a deceased person who had tried to contact her at one of those séances and who had been described as an Egyptian in a white robe. The communication was as follows:

With all my might I willed myself into her [i.e. the medium's] mind, tried hard to give her a mental picture of myself and implored her to speak of me. Can you place all this? Do you remember the “Egyptian” who offered to guide and help you? This was the fantastic guise in which the medium dressed me and not my doing at all though, funnily enough, there was a foundation in my past history for the thought of the white robe. Her description of my face amused me as she told you, but the whole thing was distorted by her notion of Egyptian local coloring. Hieroglyphics, indeed! [P. 37]

We might dismiss this material as the product of Sherwood's own mind, since she was already skeptical of Egyptian (and other) spirit figures. Still, it's intriguing to consider the possibility that mediums in contact with legitimate but rather “ordinary”spirit guides have interpreted them in a somewhat fantastic light, perhaps in conformity with the popular thinking of the day.

The book also contains an interesting snippet of psychological analysis on the part of a deceased communicator.

“I wonder why some people are so anxious to prove that death is the end?” I [Sherwood] said. “They will go to any lengths to show that survival is impossible and faith in it simply wishful thinking.”

“I also have sinned, don't forget,” said Scott [a communicator]. “Perhaps psychology can help us to understand this tendency. It is surely a kind of masochism, a stoic resolve to punish the wishful thinking one suspects is behind any belief in immortality. It feels very stern, strong and noble to deny the thing one secretly longs for, and so to prove that one is quite able to do without it. It is easy to find arguments to support this denial and see how superior it makes one feel to say “I, at least, do not need to believe in such things”.” [Pp. 48, 49]

Again, it is entirely possible that this message originated in Sherwood's own subconscious, but wherever it came from, it's very neatly stated.

Another book I'm currently reading is Dancing Past the Dark by Nancy Evans Bush, a treatment of negative or “hellish” near-death experiences (this book has also been discussed in Paranormalia, and I plan to review it in an upcoming post). Some of the material in The Country Beyond casts an interesting light on the whole issue of negative afterlife accounts. One of Sherwood's communicators, who died in a car crash and had an initially unpleasant postmortem experience, explains:

I think the experience of death must vary considerably because it is governed by the state of mind in which one passes over. Also, there is a vast difference between a sudden passing and a quiet and prepared one. The shock of an unnatural death sets the invisible being in a mad turmoil and makes adjustment to a new environment impossible for a while. One finds oneself in a fantastic dream world with no continuity of experience. Flashes of vivid awareness burn themselves out into unconsciousness and the chaos of unconnected states of mind have [sic] no proper framework of space and time.

Out of the sleep of death there comes first the mere sense of identity, a point of self-awareness growing out of nothingness. From this I judge that the higher activity of the ego-being is the first to assert itself. One wakes next to a tumult of emotions and hurried, anxious thought. Somewhere in this part of the experience comes the unrolling of memories. Your mind helps me to find a simile; it is like a speeded-up run through of a film shown backwards, a swiftly moving vision of life from end to beginning, flickering rapidly past the mind's eye until it ends in the unconsciousness of one's beginning. More unconsciousness follows and in my case the rest was a phantasmagoria. Glimpses of the world seen, clutched at and blotted out, dreamlike awareness of people and events on earth at which one grasped because of their dear familiarity only to realize that one could not make one's presence known. In the effort to do so the scene would melt and change into another. Then the final fading of earth and a long sojourn in what I think of as Hades, the place of the shade, a dim and formless world which I believe is peopled by the miasma of earth emotions and the unconscious projections of its inhabitants. Finally comes the stabilization of the new body and a growing awareness of the real world again; light, clear outlines and real people moving about in a glorious world.

Much of this earlier nightmare could have been avoided if I had known how to avail myself of the help that is freely offered. But I suppose the adjustment could not have been easy for me. I took over a very difficult make-up full of powerful repressions and tangled complexes all of which caused me much suffering before they were straightened out. My own obstinacy and pride were largely to blame for my plight. This was purgatory, if you like, but unavoidable unless one has done the job beforehand. I think I really had the maximum difficulties: an attitude of blank unbelief in any future life, a repressed and powerful emotional state, and the shock of a violent death. So this was not the normal passing but just a difficult and painful personal experience. I am satisfied that it was a just necessity and that I had made it inevitable by my willful ignorance and skepticism. “Whatsoever a man sows” you know. [Pp. 58, 59]

 One of the most famous nightmarish near-death experiences, discussed in Bush's book and many other places, is the one recounted by Howard Storm. What struck me about Storm's account is how completely secular his outlook on life must have been at the time. Finding himself at the mercy of demonic beings that tormented him in a dark hellish place, and believing himself to be dead, he desperately tried to summon up a prayer, but initially had no idea how to do it. He writes, 

From inside of me I felt a voice, my voice, say: "Pray to God."  My mind responded to that: "I don’t pray. I don’t know how to pray." This is a guy lying on the ground in the darkness surrounded by what appeared to be dozens if not hundreds and hundreds of vicious creatures who had just torn him up. The situation seemed utterly hopeless, and I seemed beyond any possible help whether I believed in God or not. The voice again told me to pray to God. It was a dilemma since I didn’t know how. The voice told me a third time to pray to God.  

I started saying things like: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ... God bless America ..." and anything else that seemed to have a religious connotation. 

Clearly, Storm was innocent of any religious background or training and had spent no time whatsoever pondering the possibility of a spiritual dimension or an afterlife. He says so himself: "I had absolute certainty that there was nothing beyond this life – because that was how really smart people understood it.... While I was undergoing this stress [of dying], prayer or anything like that never occurred to me. I never once thought about it. If I mentioned God’s name at all it was only as a profanity."

His lack of preparedness, coupled with his own mental state (fear and confusion) and his unexpected and agonizing medical crisis, may account for the “hellish” aspects of his experience, just as Sherwood's communicator suggests.

Incidentally, it's also interesting to notice how reliably the idea of a past-life review comes up in Sherwood's accounts and in many other accounts channeled through mediums. Of course, it's an old cliché that one's life flashes before one's eyes at the moment of death, but I'm not sure the cliché ever involved a life review after one has actually died. It's thought provoking at the very least to notice how one of the key aspects of near-death experiences–a subject not popularized until 1975, six years after Sherwood's book was published–is reflected in these earlier channeled communications.

Another of Sherwood's communicators, who died peacefully and had a much more pleasant passing, discusses his transition:

Where death comes gradually and naturally like this one wakes quietly in the new conditions after an interval of a few days. One is fully through, as we say, and although the newcomer has to be cared for and kept quiet until the new rhythms of his body are fully established, he soon becomes strong and vigorous and ready to begin his new life. The transition, like all natural processes, should not be interfered with by violence or haste. Death is a kind of birth and it should proceed with a quiet inevitableness and not be accompanied by pain or distress. Much of the apparent suffering of a death-bed is not consciously felt by the sufferer. His real life is already half retired from the mortal body and neither experiences nor records its pangs. Shakespeare is very near the literal facts when he speaks of “shuffling off this mortal coil”. Comparison of various accounts of the death-change make it clear that there are at least two stages, separated by intervals of unconsciousness. Actual death is followed by a period of unconsciousness which lasts for some time; this gives way to a kind of awareness but not a consciousness of one's environment. The new senses have not yet begun to function so there is nothing, or at best a misty, unreal setting, fantastic and dreamlike. During this interval, the memory appears to be stimulated so that one lives through a resume of a lifetime just past. Then one sinks into a second period of unconsciousness which should give place to a full awakening in the new world. We might with justice speak of a first and second death because not only the physical body has to be shared but the next body also. [P. 61]

 The reference to the line from Hamlet's soliloquy is interesting. The metaphor is frequently misunderstood; modern readers picture somebody shuffling–dragging his feet–as he walks off stage. The actual image is of a snake shedding its skin. To "shuffle off this mortal coil” is to slough off the coil of snakeskin that the snake leaves behind. Sherwood's communicator is saying that Shakespeare is “very near the literal facts” in describing death as sloughing off an unneeded part of the body, with the body understood as a compound entity of physical, etheric, astral, and spiritual forms.

Asked to elaborate, the communicator begins with the first stage of awareness he described, the one in which there is “a kind of awareness but not a consciousness of one's environment.”

I found myself awake in the transition state of which we have spoken. I thought myself still weak and ill, but I rose from my rest feeling marvelously refreshed and happy and I wandered for a while in the something-nothing surroundings of this queer world and was unable to make any sense of it. The brooding silence drug me into unconsciousness for a long time, because when next I woke my body felt quite different, no longer frail and weak as I had supposed, but vigorous and ready for anything as though I had suddenly stepped back into youth. This delighted me although I was daunted by my condition. There was a feeling of expectation, of waiting for something to happen. I was wide awake, quietly comprehending my state and content to sink into myself. Thought turned inward and it moved at a surprising rate. It raced over the record of a long lifetime which it lit up with a searchlight that spared no blunders, sins or weaknesses, but impartially illumined it all, as one holds up an old, finished garment to the light and notes with dismay its rents and stains. This clear blaze of recollection showed me the honest shape and cut of the thing too. I reviewed it as though I had no longer a special responsibility for it but had to understand clearly in what it had failed and in what succeed. I was saddened enough and humbled by what I saw, and then, with a sigh of acceptance I was able to turn to other thoughts.

My whole religious outlook had to be rethought in the light of this unexpected experience. [Pp. 62, 63]

Later, there is a rather technical discussion of differences between earthly and heavenly perceptions of time and space, which may or may not have any mathematical validity; I have no idea. One thing that interested me was a little digression on human nature, as expressed by one communicator:

You have, of course, to take another dimension into account and it is probably the coefficient of the new dimension which is upsetting your time comparisons. The fourth dimension, i.e. time, has been modified for us by a fifth dimension, that of degree of being. This last must vary as the measurement of frequency alters. It applies to organisms and is the scale by which their development is measured. Its sign is a differing quality of consciousness which runs up the scale from the lowest organism to man. In man each one of the degrees of being is represented because of his possession of all the grades of being from the etheric, which we agreed was the first remove from the physical, to the astral, up to the ego-being which is at present his highest element. But in man on earth, the consciousness that belongs by right to this highest degree cannot function fully because all the higher degrees have to be timed down to the physical and cannot free themselves to work independently until the physical body is shed. That accounts for the perplexing difference in your mode of consciousness and ours, and is one of the clues to this troublesome contradiction between your time and ours. [P. 94]

Leaving aside the issue of extra dimensions or the subjective nature of space-time, I was interested in the idea that a human being's higher consciousness rarely functions on earth because “all the higher degrees have to be timed down to the physical and cannot free themselves to work independently.” This is somewhat consistent with the so-called filter theory, which claims that the brain serves as a filtering mechanism to screen out most input from higher consciousness, allowing us to focus on our “lower” physical needs.

Despite inevitable discrepancies and dissonances, there is an interesting continuity in much of the channeled material from various mediums. This might be explained in terms of all the mediums dipping into the same esoteric sourcebooks or acquiring the same trendy ideas from mentors or clients. On the other hand, one could also see it as evidence of a degree of objectivity in the mediums' messages. This was the approach taken by British researcher Robert Crookall. 

A point in favor of the latter interpretation is that similar ideas crop up across the globe, even in remote societies whose traditions are unlikely to have been influenced by Western spiritualist trends. Almost everywhere, it seems, we find shamans going on vision quests and reporting experiences and observations very much like those described by Jane Sherwood's communicators. It's enough to make some of us think that these messages really do come from a country beyond.

----

Clarification, May 22: Looking more closely at the copyright page, I now see that The Country Beyond is an older book than I'd realized. The edition I'm reading was printed in 1991, but is a reissue of an earlier, 1969 edition. I assumed 1969 was the original publication date. However, I missed some text lower down on the page: "'The Country Beyond' was first published in 1944. The present edition contains the original work together with additional material from an earlier book, 'The Psychic Bridge'." 

So the material in the book cannot be later than 1944, which is 31 years before the publication of Raymond Moody's Life After Life. 

Incidentally, all page numbers cited in this post refer to the 1991 edition put out by The C.W. Daniel Company Limited, a British publisher. 

Click on this

One of the more frequently discussed topics on this blog is the famous near-death experience reported by Pam Reynolds. Gallons of ink and megabytes of pixels have been spilled arguing over the details of her experience, especially its “veridical” (or verifiable) aspects. Although Pam Reynolds passed away in 2010, the debate continues. The current issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies (Volume 30, Number 1, Fall 2011), put out by IANDS, is devoted in its entirety to the Pam Reynolds case–and specifically to the question “Could Pam Reynolds Hear?”

The issue takes the form of a debate. First there is a foreword by noted NDE researcher Janice Holden. Next, Gerald M. Woerlee, an anesthesiologist and afterlife skeptic, argues that Reynolds could have overheard conversation, music, and other noises in the operating room in an entirely non-paranormal way. A brief response from anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, best known for developing a model of quantum consciousness with Roger Penrose, follows. Then there is a much longer, more detailed, and more aggressive response from Chris Carter, author of Science and the Near-Death Experience and the forthcoming Science and the Afterlife Experience. 

(As evidence that intellectual disputes sometimes get personal, shortly after the Journal issue came out, Woerlee published a very hostile one-star Amazon review of Carter’s earlier book Science and Psychic Phenomena. He begins by writing that he “purchased this book with my usual open mind,” which struck me as funny given his intransigent opposition to all paranormal claims and to anything that smacks of religion or spirituality. His review has generated 44 comments so far.) 

Anyway, after the articles by Hameroff and Carter, Woerlee delivers his rejoinder. As a matter of courtesy, he is given the last word in the issue, but as Janice Holden notes, the debate continues online with a riposte by Chris Carter (PDF) on a Dutch website devoted to NDE’s.

It would be fruitless to attempt to synopsize all of these points and counterpoints in a blog post. For those who are interested, I recommend buying the issue. It costs $16 plus postage. Think of it as a donation to IANDS, a worthwhile organization in its own right. Incidentally, if you have any trouble checking out (as I did), you may be able to get the shopping cart to work by clicking the onscreen refresh button near the shopping cart logo (not your browser’s refresh button).  

Though I won’t try to summarize all the points, I’ll give you the flavor of the exchange by focusing on one specific detail: the earplugs that were inserted in Pam’s ears, and whether or not they made it impossible for her to hear the sounds she later reported. One of the biggest questions surrounding these earplugs has always been the rate and volume of clicks that were played in alternate ears in order to provoke a response from Pam’s brainstem. Some people have argued that the clicks were loud enough to drown out any other noise; others have argued that the clicks, while certainly audible, were not prohibitively loud.

On this topic Woerlee draws draws first blood. (In quotations from the Journal, all citations of sources have been omitted.) On pages 7—9 he writes:

But could Reynolds have heard or perceived any sounds above the 100-decibel clicking sounds applied to her ears through the molded earphones?

This question brings us to a discussion of the parameters of these 100-decibel clicking sounds applied at a rate of 11.3 clicks per second. Indeed, 100 decibels is very loud, equivalent to an orchestra at its loudest. I have even heard of one person who listened to music through earphones at an intensity of 100 decibels. He heard absolutely nothing of what happened around him or what was said to him. Many people do just as this man: They imagine these clicking sounds are similar to loud 100-decibel music.… But is this reasonable or true?…

The duration of the BAEPs [Brainstem Auditory Evoked Potentials] induced by these clicking sounds is clearly indicated [in a technical article by the surgical team]: they last no more than 12 milliseconds.

What this all means is that at a rate of 11.3 clicks per second, a total time equal to 11.3 x 100 = 11,300 µsec = 11.3 milliseconds per second was occupied by these clicking sounds. This means that for each second, only 11.3/1000 = 0.0113 second, or a little more than one 100th of each second was occupied by these clicking sounds.…

[Taking into account the brainstem’s processing time] these clicking sounds occupied at most only 12.46% of her hearing and brainstem processing capacity. This duration left her with more than sufficient time and neural capacity to perceive other sounds.…

The clicking sounds were administered to only one ear, with a masking sound in the opposing ear. Such a masking sound consists of white noise.… The masking noise consisted of continuous white sound in the other earplug at a level of 40 decibels.

Normal human speech at a distance of one to two meters has a loudness level of 60—70 decibels, and people typically listen to music at levels of 70—85 decibels. Consequently, neither the clicking sounds with the parameters described above nor the continuous white sound at a 40-decibel level preclude hearing with bone or air conduction.

This is very useful information, which goes a long way toward clarifying the terms of the debate. It seems clear that the clicks, though undoubtedly loud, were also of such incredibly brief duration that even 11 clicks per second did not take up more than a fraction of a second, leaving plenty of time for Pam Reynolds to receive auditory impressions.

In his extended reply, Carter quotes some 2007 remarks made by Michael Sabom, the original investigator of the Pam Reynolds case. Sabom wrote:

Stephen Cordova, Neuroscience Manager at the Barrow Neurological Institute, who was the intraoperative technologist responsible for inserting small molded speakers into Spetzler’s patients in the early 1990s when Reynolds’ surgery was performed, told me that after the speakers were molded into each external auditory canal, they were further affixed with “mounds of tape and gauze to seal securely the ear piece into the ear canal.” This “tape and gauze” would “cover the whole ear pinnae” making it extremely unlikely that Reynolds could have physically overheard operating room conversation one hour and twenty minutes after anesthesia had been induced. (p. 46)

Carter also notes, “In her testimony Reynolds neither mentioned hearing loud clicks nor struggling to hear through them.”

Finally, Carter quotes from Stephen Cordova himself. Cordova points out that as the “lead technologist back then” he is “most familiar with the technical parameters that were used,” adding that he was monitoring a case in the next operating room while a colleague monitored Pam Reynolds. He writes:

The auditory stimuli in the ipsi ear was a broad-based frequency spectrum click… We stimulated at a rate of 11.3/second with a pulse duration of 100 µs. The contralateral ear was masked with 40–60 decibel white noise. We used Hal-hen brand earpieces (probably size 5) to introduce the stimuli, which was generated by a Nicolet brand T-300 audio generator. We then used vi-drape sticky “glue” on the inner area of the pinnae of the ear, before sealing up the system with gauze and micropore tape.

I know how loud we played the music in those operating rooms… and I know the individual team members and how loud their voices are. I would be surprised if a repeated experiment with the exact parameters allowed a person to hear through the stimuli. Of course none of this information is a scientific argument for the fact that she did or did not hear: what is need[ed] is an experiment. (p. 47) 

Carter adds that Cordova has  “offered to reenact the clicking with test subjects, using the exact same parameters,” and invites Woerlee to participate. Carter says that “the proposed experiment is the only way to definitively settle the issue of whether or not Reynolds could have heard conversation and music via normal channels.”

In his rejoinder, Woerlee does not make reference to the invitation. Personally I’m doubtful that even this experiment, if conducted, would settle things. We can never reproduce exactly how close-fitting Pam Reynolds’ earplugs might have been, or the exact volume level of conversation and other noise during the long-ago surgical procedure. It could always be argued that one of Reynolds’ earplugs had slipped out a little or wasn’t as well fitted as it might have been, or that the conversation and music were a little louder than people recall, etc.

Naturally, the Journal debate deals with much more than just the clicking and masking sounds in Pam’s ears. There is the whole question of whether a person who has been anesthetized would be able to consciously hear anything at all, even if the signals reached her brain. As Woerlee concedes his rejoinder, “Chris Carter was correct when he stated that the BAER is a measure of only the response of the brainstem to the auditory stimuli applied to the ears. Conscious perception occurs only when these stimuli register in the cortical regions of the brain concerned with secondary processes of hearing.” (p. 57) He argues that Pam could have been conscious during parts of the procedure, that such anesthetic awareness is rare but well-documented, and that some cases of anesthetic awareness have qualities similar to Pam’s NDE. Carter’s argument is that anesthetic awareness often involves pain, panic, and other negative qualities absent from Pam’s experience, that few cases of anesthetic awareness have visual components (as Pam's did), and that an experienced team of physicians closely monitoring Pam’s neurological activity and other vital signs are unlikely to have allowed her to regain consciousness even intermittently.

I found the whole discussion very interesting, and I suggest that those with a serious interest in NDEs invest a couple of sawbucks in this issue of JNDS. Just don’t expect a definitive resolution.

Regardless of what Pam Reynolds could or could not hear, it’s safe to say that we, at least, have not heard the last of this controversy.

Link fest

Kopimism, a "religion" for people who like to steal copyrighted material, is already a hit in Sweden. Now it's coming to the USA! 

Here's an interesting account of one bereaved mom's visit to the Afterlife Communication Conference in Phoenix. She came away moved by some of the events and amused by some of the offbeat people she encountered. 

Psi research is often criticized for lack of reproducibility. But even mainstream science suffers from difficulty in replicating its findings. One study in the field of cancer science found that peer-reviewed experimental results could not be reproduced in 47 out of 53 cases. (!) From the article: 

Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies.

"We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure," said Begley. "I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they'd done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It's very disillusioning."

Sounds like a file-drawer effect to me. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen in "real" science. 

I'm enjoying Sabrina Feldman's book The Apocryphal William Shakespeare, which explores a collection of obscure plays that were credited to Shakespeare (or to "W.S.") during the 16th and 17th centuries, but which are generally dismissed today. The book advances a new authorship theory, but its scholarly treatment of this neglected body of work should also appeal to Shakespeare buffs with no particular interest in the authorship controversy. It's available in both print and Kindle editions. 

My friend and fellow author J. Carson Black's Darkness on the Edge of Town has been optioned by Winkler Films as a possible TV series. The Kindle edition of Darkness is currently selling for only 99 cents. It's a great read, and at that price it's such a steal that even a Kopimist might pay for it. 

Hmm. Just what do I believe?

In the comments section of my blog post about Stratfordian arguments, Bruce Siegel asked an interesting question: Which am I more certain of–that Oxford wrote the works of Shakespeare, or that there is life after death?

I ended up giving this question a lot more thought than I would have expected, and I've already changed my mind once about the answer. The interesting thing, to me, is not so much the issue of Oxford's authorship of the Shakespearean canon, but my degree of certainty–or uncertainty–about an afterlife.

I know people who are absolutely certain of life after death, either because they had a near-death experience or because they've witnessed phenomena that convince them beyond any doubt. I also know people who regard the whole idea of life after death as transparently ridiculous and not even worth discussing. When the brain dies, the mind goes out of existence, and that's that.

But how about my own view? It turns out, when I really think about it, that I'm sure of only one thing: whatever is going on, it's a lot more complicated then the materialist worldview would suggest.

I definitely do not believe that all the evidence for life after death can be explained away as hallucinations, delusions, mistaken observations, hoaxes, urban legends, and trickery. These explanations no doubt account for some of the purported evidence, but I'm convinced they cannot account for all of it. Something is happening–something real, something that millions of people have experienced, something that has actually shaped the course of human history by providing the impetus to art, architecture, science, literature, music, in fact culture in general. Without a belief in a spirit world, it's safe to say there would have been no cave paintings, no pyramids and ziggurats, no astrology and alchemy (which laid the basis for astronomy and chemistry), no psalms or epic poetry along the lines of Gilgamesh or the Iliad, and no ritual banging of drums or playing of flutes. As strange as it may seem in this predominantly materialistic era, a belief in spirits–in some kind of supernatural dimension that can interact with our own–is one of the great driving forces of history, and I don't buy the idea that it was all just a lot of hokum foisted on the gullible by a self-serving cadre of shamans and priests.

No, something sure as heck is going on … but what?

The simplest explanation, of course, is that the spirit survives physical death and continues to exist in another realm. And for the most part, I accept that explanation, at least intellectually. But when somebody I know passes on, I have to admit that I don't assume they still exist in an afterlife realm. It's more of an intellectual concept to me than a gut-level belief. On a gut level, I really don't know.

Similarly, I think that near-death experiences are not just hallucinations of a dying or traumatized brain; and yet, when  I heard about the AWARE  study, which will see if NDE patients report noticing hidden images in the hospital room during their out-of-body phase, my gut feeling was that no such sightings would be reported. And that is still my expectation. There may be design flaws in the experiment that make it unlikely that a hovering spirit would notice or remember these images, but even if that were not the case, I'm not sure I would expect a positive result.

But why not? If I really think the spirit does leave the body and has enhanced vision, why wouldn't it see the targets, at least in some cases? Or is it that I really don't believe?

No, I think it's something little more complicated than that. What I believe is that obtaining evidence of life after death is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. The evidence seems to be inherently elusive, ambiguous, frustrating. And therefore any protocol that attempts to gather this evidence on demand--to collect dozens of authenticated cases of target sightings or what-have-you--will likely end in either negative or bewilderingly ambiguous results. 

And this is true of afterlife evidence in general. The same medium can produce high-quality evidence on one day and gibberish on the next. Or a medium can produce evidence in conditions that seem to preclude any possibility of cheating, and yet under less stringent conditions the same medium may very easily be caught cheating.

Some channeled material from allegedly higher spirits seems to convey profound philosophical and moral truths, but other material from the very same source can be just plain goofy.

Near-death experiences have common elements that stretch across the centuries and bridge very distinct cultures, and NDEs can have a profound impact not only on the NDErs themselves but even on those who merely read about the subject; and yet there are other elements of NDE's that seem ridiculous–for instance, in many NDE's reported in India, the person finds he was called to the afterlife because of a bureaucratic mixup involving a similarity of names with another individual. (Bureaucratic snafus in the afterlife?)

The same kind of problem pertains to out-of-body experiences, as explored (for instance) by Robert A. Monroe. Monroe was by all accounts was a dedicated and serious researcher, and he does appear to have had legitimate OBE abilities, yet some of his accounts of the bizarre realms that he visited seem more like vivid dreams or nightmares than like anything real.

There is a tricksterish quality to the evidence for life after death; it's almost as if the universe is teasing us, giving us just enough information to justify a belief in an afterlife if we are so inclined, but not enough evidence to cement that belief, at least for most people. The whole field of Forteana encompasses just this kind of bizarre, inexplicable evidence which doesn't fit neatly into our standard picture of reality and doesn't seem to fit into any particular alternative worldview either, unless perhaps it's the view that the world is inherently insane. And yet the overall regularity of the physical world seems to rule out that viewpoint also. 

So ... how much do I really believe in life after death?

I believe that something happens to us after we die. I believe that reality is multifaceted and multilayered and that we experience only a small part of it–the tip of the iceberg–during our physical incarnation. But exactly what it's all about, how it works, and what our deceased friends and relatives might be experiencing, or what sort of beings they might be at this point, or even whether they retain their individuality or their humanness–all of that is beyond me.

Oxford was Shakespeare, though. That much I'm sure of. Hey, at least it's something. 

Book review: Transcending the Titanic

Michael Tymn, quite possibly today's foremost writer on 19th century and early 20th century Spiritualism, has a new book out called Transcending the Titanic. It's a brief book, only about 90 pages of text, but it covers a lot of ground. 

The book begins by asking why the Titanic tragedy continues to hold our interest when other disasters like the great San Francisco earthquake have been largely forgotten. One answer may be that the ship was something of a microcosm of humanity, bringing together people from all walks of life and all social stations. Another is the variety of responses from the passengers, ranging from panic to disciplined action to calm resignation. Perhaps another is that the slow foundering of the vessel gave the passengers ample time to face the inevitability of their demise.

Next we are treated to an impressive recreation of the event. Unlike the 1997 movie, which presented relatively few heroic characters and concentrated on the chaos and desperate struggle to survive at any cost, Tymn shows us that many of the passengers behaved courageously, even nobly. Many men gallantly escorted their wives to the lifeboats but would not board even when permitted to do so, considering it wrong to leave the ship while any women or children were yet to be rescued. The fact that many of the boats were only half full is also explained in a reasonable, nonjudgmental way: at first, many passengers simply refused to embark on the lifeboats, either because they believed the ship would not really sink or because the boats themselves looked too dangerous. As a result, the crew was forced to drop some of the boats into the water with only a handful of people aboard. 

But the book's real focus is not the tragedy itself but the paranormal, spiritual, or transcendent elements of the story. In later chapters we read of possible premonitions of the sinking; some of these are poorly documented or can be explained by coincidence, while others are more intriguing. And we learn of evidence that a few of the deceased passengers were able to communicate via mediums with the living. Among these communicators, perhaps the most illustrious was William T. Stead, the real hero of Tymn's story.

Stead was a larger-than-life journalist and social activist who was converted to Spiritualism after studying the evidence, and who became a channeler (via automatic writing) himself. Stead, who never did anything halfway, endangered his reputation by championing the cause of Spiritualism and even publishing his channeled scripts under the title Letters from Julia (later retitled After Death: Letters from Julia, and still available in print and ebook form). During the last hours of the doomed voyage, Stead was reported as appearing utterly calm, unfazed by the prospect of death, which he regarded as merely a transition to a better world. 

Very soon after his death, Stead began communicating through mediums, even purportedly materializing in some seances and speaking via direct voice in others. At times Stead apparently brought through other victims of the shipwreck, notably the multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who had conducted himself with dignity and courage during the crisis, but who (if the communication can be trusted) came to regret his earthly materialistic ambitions when immersed in a higher spiritual reality. "Why are not these things taught in the world?" he is said to have cried out through a medium. "Why did no one ever tell me these things?" 

Despite its brevity, Transcending the Titanic is a remarkably complete book that covers the whole story of the doomed liner and the paranormal activity surrounding its destruction. More than just a recital of facts and claims, it's a thoughtful meditation on life and death, and on the modern tendency to deny and avoid the whole subject of mortality unless it is placed in a safely fictional context. It's well worth a read.

Transcending the Titanic can be purchased on Amazon (US) in both paperback and Kindle editions. 

Book review: Paranormal

People had near-death experiences for centuries before Dr. Raymond Moody began to study the phenomenon. But although NDE anecdotes could be found throughout literature, and glimpses of the experience could be seen in works of art like Hieronymus Bosch's Ascent of the Blessed, nobody seems to have identified the NDE as a distinct phenomenon. In fact, nobody had even thought to name the experience.

All of that changed with the publication of Moody's first book, Life After Life, in 1975. Put out by a small publisher who optimistically thought it might sell 10,000 copies, the book became an international sensation. In it, Moody coined the term “near-death experience” and listed the main features of the NDE–features which have become almost too familiar through their subsequent dramatization in movies like Ghost and Flatliners, and in innumerable TV shows. Although Moody's book was more anecdotal than scientific, it paved the way for more rigorous studies conducted by Kenneth Ring, Michael Sabom, Bruce Greyson, and others. Today, although the true meaning and nature of the NDE remain in fierce dispute, nobody denies that the phenomenon is real; hundreds, if not thousands, of cases have been carefully documented, and if public opinion surveys can be trusted, millions more have taken place.

In his new book Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife, co-written with Paul Perry, Moody gives us the background behind his investigations into NDE's and other, even more esoteric phenomena. The book is briskly paced, engagingly written, and remarkably open. 

Perhaps the most surprising revelation is that for most of his life Moody has suffered from a serious thyroid condition that can cause severe mood swings, and that, during one period of intense depression when his thyroid had essentially shut down, he attempted suicide and had a brief, preliminary NDE (or at least the prologue to an NDE) of his own.

The suicide attempt is the focus of the book's introduction, where the outcome is left hanging. Several chapters later, the authors return to the subject to tell the rest of the story. (Rather oddly, they choose to recapitulate several pages of the introduction word for word at this point, an unnecessary bit of padding.) Moody observes that he had kept his thyroid problem secret from the general public in part because he did not want it to cast doubt on the validity of his work on NDE's; but at this point, with the reality of the NDE phenomenon acknowledged by all researchers, he felt free to reveal this aspect of his life at last.

Moody recounts an equally dramatic episode from another period of low thyroid activity. At that point he was actively engaged in studying the ancient esoteric practice of mirror gazing, in which people look deeply into a reflective surface and sometimes perceive deceased loved ones in the glass. The effects he obtained in his homemade "psychomanteum," detailed in his book Reunions, were anecdotal but nevertheless impressive; some practitioners even insisted that their deceased loved one stepped right out of the mirror and interacted with them in the room. 

But when Moody — his energy at a low point with his thyroid largely out of commission — discussed this work with his skeptical father, the elder Moody decided his erratic son was having a mental breakdown and promptly had him committed! Trapped in a psychiatric hospital, he was misdiagnosed as bipolar, his every move and statement interpreted as further evidence of his disorder. Luckily, thyroid treatment was able to restore his normal functioning within a few days, while friends and associates who had experienced the psychomanteum for themselves arrived at the hospital to testify on Moody's behalf. As a result, he was finally released – but it seems to have been a close run thing. Just one of the perils of exploring psychic phenomena in a skeptical world …

Another intriguing section of the book deals with Moody's developing interest in past-life memories. Initially he was dismissive of such claims, assuming–as most people do–that such memories typically involve reliving the life of a famous historical figure like Joan of Arc or Napoleon Bonaparte. But when a hypnotist convinced him to try past-life regression for himself, he experienced a succession of quite ordinary lives that were sufficiently vivid and realistic to call his earlier doubts into question. I have to say I was unaware of his interest in this subject, although Moody actually wrote a book about it titled Coming Back.

One of the things that have sometimes frustrated me about Moody is that he can seem stubbornly skeptical or iconoclastic about his own investigations, an attitude epitomized by his rather strange book The Last Laugh, in which he seemingly calls much of his own research into question. For someone with a deep-seated interest in paranormal phenomena, he can also be surprisingly hostile toward parapsychologists, a trait I discussed in an earlier post. Now I wonder if these periods of intensified skepticism may be correlated with periods of diminished thyroid activity, with its concomitant self-doubt and self-destructive tendencies. Could the emotional swings Moody vividly describes in his memoir possibly relate to his occasional, baffling attempts to undermine his own credibility and the credibility of like-minded researchers? Moody himself doesn't say this, and maybe I'm wrong about it, but it might make sense of the somewhat contradictory messages he has put out over the years.

In any case, in Paranormal the good doctor seems to have moved beyond his earlier skepticism. In the conclusion of his book, he makes reference to “what happens to our souls after death," and then comments that this statement

is a big step forward for me. In the beginning, when I first named the near-death experience and started near-death studies, I made it a point to neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of the soul or a place called heaven. I was raised in a family that didn't attend church or believe in God. But aside from that personal history, I felt it was unscientific to conclude that we have a soul or that there is an afterlife. To do so would mean to some people that I wasn't objective in my work, that all of my research was merely aimed at propping up a belief, not at testing one. My goal in this research was to remain a true skeptic in the ancient Greek sense–one who neither believes nor disbelieves but who keeps searching for truth.

After more than four decades of studying death and the possibility of an afterlife, I have come to realize that my opinion is buttressed by thousands of hours of research and deep logical thought of the type that few have devoted to this most important topic. I have concluded that if everyone else has an opinion on the subject of life after death, why shouldn't I? As a result of his conviction, I have become brazen about voicing my viewpoint.

He then reproduces an answer he gave during a TV interview:

What do I think happens when we die? I think we enter into another stage of existence or another state of consciousness that is so extraordinarily different from the reality we have here in the physical world that the language we have is not yet adequate to describe this other state of existence or consciousness. Based on what I have heard from thousands of people, we enter into a realm of joy, light, peace, and love in which we discover that the process of knowledge does not stop when we die. Instead, the process of learning and development goes on for eternity.

As Moody points out, he “answered the question from the heart.” It is this heartfelt quality of self-revelation and emotional honesty that is perhaps the most striking feature of this fascinating and worthwhile book.

Extraction

In spy thrillers and military adventure stories, there often comes a point where plans have to be made for an extraction. The hero has gotten in over his head and needs to be pulled out of a dangerous situation. His cover is about to be blown, or the odds against him are just too great, and the higher-ups decide his mission must be scrubbed. Sometimes he calls for the extraction himself; other times the people at headquarters make the call. Or maybe he has successfully completed his mission, and simply needs to be transported home.

It occurs to me that extraction is a useful metaphor for dying. We could look at being born as the beginning of an undercover mission, a foray into hostile territory, a dangerous assignment with an unpredictable outcome. At a certain point in any assignment, extraction becomes necessary. As with the spy or the military operative, our mission may have been completed successfully, or we may have run into insurmountable difficulties that make it impossible to continue. Maybe we make the call–there are people who seem to choose when and how they pass on, even without committing suicide in any obvious way–or maybe the call is made for us by those who have a wider perspective on the situation.

One way or the other, we are extracted–pulled out of enemy territory and escorted home.

The metaphor may take some of the sting out of the loss of a loved one. It's not that the person has “died,” in the sense of being obliterated; instead, he or she has been retrieved by the higher-ups, brought home to rest, recuperate, and assess the success (whether partial or complete) of the mission.

And there will be other missions, other assignments … and other extractions. And the game goes on. 

 

Book review: Consulting Spirit

I don't have a whole lot to add to my brief review, posted earlier, of Ian Rubenstein's book Consulting Spirit. As I said earlier, I enjoyed the book for its sensible, matter-of-fact approach to paranormal phenomena and Spiritualism, and for the author's wry sense of humor about himself and the strange people and events he encountered.

Rubenstein is a British medical doctor who developed an interest in clairvoyance and after-death communication, and gradually cultivated his own previously unsuspected talents as a medium. In the process he discovered the surprisingly active world of British Spiritualism, populated with colorful characters, and found himself opening up to new interpretations of life and death. Throughout it all, he remained at least somewhat skeptical, and even at the end of the book, he refrains from drawing any monumental conclusions. I have to say that if I'd had some of the experiences he recounts, I would probably be a little less skeptical and a little more convinced!

To me, books like this are in some ways more valuable than scientific studies involving control groups, double-blind test conditions, and statistical analysis. I'm not sure that any amount of laboratory data will persuade people of the reality of mediumship, but a sober, common-sense account like Dr. Rubenstein's may succeed where tables, charts, and graphs are likely to fail. Reading his story, I couldn't help feeling that if I were in his shoes, I would have had many of the same questions and considered many of the same non-paranormal explanations. Nothing in his book struck me as exaggerated or embellished; if anything, the author's tendency seems to be to play down the more dramatic elements of his story.

His sense of humor keeps him–and the reader–firmly grounded, no matter how apparently outlandish some of the developments in his narrative may seem. Here he is, talking on the phone to an eccentric medium he has never met. Rubenstein asks:

“Do you honestly think my patient can see spirits?” 

“Oh, yes. Why not? I see spirit all the time. There’s a whole unseen universe out there. Once you tune in, you realize just what you’ve been missing. I’ve even got an alien living in my apartment. He’s quite shy, but I know he’s there.”

Was this how it ended, in an apartment somewhere looking for aliens? I made a neutral “uh-huh” remark, just to let him know I was listening and that, well, you know, who doesn’t have an alien living in their apartment nowadays! 

Rubenstein notes how easy it is for the mind to fail to process anomalies such as paranormal phenomena. This is something I've noticed myself. I may experience a remarkable synchronicity or premonition, but unless I very firmly make a mental note of it or–better yet–write it down, I will probably forget it within an hour or so. Later, all I will remember is that something really interesting happened, but for the life of me I cannot recall what it was. As Rubenstein comments,

Work, raising a family, and generally muddling through life tends to keep our thoughts focused on normal, everyday things. When something strange occurs, it’s very hard to know what to do with it. The effort of trying to understand how unusual experiences fit into our lives is just too great. So we simply don’t bother. If we ever recall what happened, maybe when something jogs our memory, then perhaps we mention it as an interesting story. Otherwise we ignore it and get stuck back into our everyday, normal lives. 

The author makes another point that dovetails with my own observations: I have more of these synchronicities and premonitions (and more powerful and meaningful ones) when I'm in a negative state of mind–depressed, upset, confused. It's as if the lowering of my emotional energy opens me up to more outside influences. Or maybe it's just that in times of difficulty, I'm in greater need of such influences. Rubenstein writes,

I rather enjoyed these [synchronistic] coincidences. I began to see a pattern to them. When I was calm and happy, nothing unusual seemed to happen. I wasn’t certain, but they seemed to occur when I was stressed, confused, or looking for direction.  

Although the main focus of the book is on Rubenstein's personal journey to become a medium, there are interesting tidbits of metaphysical speculation scattered along the way. At one point he gets into a conversation with a Spiritualist about the nature of spiritual energy.

“Ian. Think of the caduceus.”

“You mean the medical symbol? The two snakes intertwined around a staff?”

“That’s right.” Dave took a pen out of his jacket pocket.... With his pen he drew a rough picture of the caduceus: a single upright staff with a pair of wings projecting from its top end and two snakes sinuously winding up the staff from bottom to top. The snakes crossed over each other several times and their heads met at the top of the staff, just below the wings....

“The caduceus was supposedly the staff of the Ancient Greek god Hermes,” he said. “The single unifying theme in all modern psychic work is energy. It’s even crept into Spiritualist jargon replacing the term ‘vibrations’ or ‘spirit power.’ The idea goes like this: a flow of universal subtle energy regulates the whole of existence. There is only one type of energy but it has two directions of flow: from spirit to physical, and then back from physical to spirit. You can think of Man, who has both a physical and a spiritual body, as acting as a link, or conduit, between the two. In fact, you can think of all life as acting in this way. The physical form of the energy is at a lower frequency than the spirit form. As it flows from spirit to physical, its frequency is lowered. As it flows from physical to spirit, its frequency is raised.”

I thought about this.

“So, living beings would be what? Transformers? Transducers?”

“Yes,” agreed Dave. “In transforming this energy, living beings do work, and the work they do is what we term life.”

“Okay. That makes sense to me.”

“Good, because it’s very important. Let’s consider the symbol of the caduceus further. You have two currents of energy, symbolized by the snakes, forming a circuit. Notice how the snakes cross over each other several times.” Dave tapped on his drawing with his pen to indicate the crossing points. “You can think of the points where they cross as centers of psychic energy.”

“You mean chakras?”

“Yes. Chakra is a Sanskrit term which means wheel. Each chakra represents a crossing point of energy. Where they cross, the two opposing currents set up a rotating vortex of energy. So the word ‘chakra’ is quite descriptive. Traditionally, there are seven major chakras and these need to open up in order to do any form of psychic work. In order to do this you require a free flow of energy, which means you need a strong link to spirit and also to be well-grounded...”

“...in order to complete the circuit.”

“Yes, in order to complete the circuit.” 

Rubenstein also recounts a conversation with parapsychologist Maurice Grosse, who investigated the famous Enfield poltergeist.

“So, what do you think is going on in these poltergeist cases?” I asked him.

Maurice sat back in his chair, his fingers steepled in thought. He paused for a moment, carefully considering his position.

“Some people feel it’s all down to spirit influence in these cases; in effect the focus, the person at the center of the disturbance, is a haunted individual. If you like, ghosts haunt places, while poltergeists haunt individuals. Others say it’s just down to telekinesis, mind over matter, on the part of the focus, the person around whom these events tend to occur. These people would say that it’s all just a manifestation of unexplained mental abilities and would deny the involvement or even the existence of spirits. Of course, other people just blame it all on trickery....

“My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the focus certainly provides energy. In some cases the focus can even use this energy to affect the environment. At the same time, any passing entity can also pick up this energy and play with it, too. Think of a kid kicking around a football in the park. Then a couple of other kids come around and start playing with it as well. It’s like a sort of ‘energy football.’ Think of the emotional energy children generate when they reach puberty. That’s why they’re so often the focus of such cases.”

This made sense to me and seemed to tie in with what I was learning in my psychic development circle. In order to manifest in the physical world, discarnate entities such as spirits required some form of physical energy supplied by a living person.

“So, in this case the girls provided the energy and a spirit came along and used it to move objects and communicate,” I summed up. “That’s a very interesting theory.” 

Elsewhere, he presents the somewhat familiar image of a diamond as a symbol of the group soul. Although this image is not original with the author (as he freely acknowledges), I found his explanation very clear and straightforward.

I’d been thinking about this one day when I had a realization, which came to me seemingly out of the blue. I experienced the mental image of a huge, multi-faceted diamond. Light was shining through the diamond. I could see that the diamond represented a human soul. Each facet of the diamond represented one lifetime. I realized that time as we experience it on Earth is merely an illusion due to our current perspective. The diamond exists, has existed, and will always exist in a sort of timeless state.

I could see that the purpose of life was to polish each facet. We say life grinds us down. A diamond in a jewelry workshop could make the same complaint. In fact, the grinding polishes our facets, to add beauty and harmony to the whole gem.

Perhaps “I” as I experienced myself in each life, am merely one aspect of the whole diamond, and a very limited aspect at that. As a mere facet I am flat compared with the three-dimensional nature of the whole diamond. The whole diamond would be my “higher self.” Then suppose each diamond was stacked together with others. Perhaps each whole diamond in its own way represented a single facet of an even greater diamond, a huge structure, which kept on stacking up until what? God? 

I don't know if there's anything really new in Consulting Spirit, and I wish the author had been a little more willing to overcome his skepticism and carry his thinking a little further, but overall I enjoyed the book quite a lot. In some ways, it's almost a throwback to accounts that were common in the early part of the 20th century when Spiritualism was more widely accepted. Rubenstein presents an array of supernatural phenomena in a calm, sober voice, laced with humor and occasional self-doubt. I found his story very appealing, and I think you will too. 

Slices of life

As readers of this blog know, I've been puzzled by the divergence between two sets of afterlife reports. One set essentially involves a trip to either a disturbing, hellish limbo or a beautiful paradise (known as Summerland to Spiritualists), while the other set involves an immediate awareness of a higher self that chooses various incarnations for the purpose of growth.

The trouble is that the first set of reports (often found in NDEs and mediumship) typically has little to say abut reincarnation and suggests that the earthly persona continues after death. But the second set (obtained through hypnotic regression and the channeling of allegedly advanced spirits) insists on reincarnation and regards the earthly persona as a temporary role that is quickly discarded. 

Moreover, the two sets of reports differ in other aspects. The first set focuses on an earthlike environment of gardens, parks, homes, and even cities, inhabited by beings in human form, while the second set tells of a more abstract environment of pure geometry in which souls see each other primarily as glowing lights (with different colors of the spectrum relating to different degrees of spiritual evolution).

The easiest course of action would be to jettison one set pf reports and concentrate exclusively on the other. But I think there is pretty good evidence for both, although the first set has been more extensively investigated, and the second set is weakened by the inherent problems of hypnosis (e.g., hypnotized subjects may confabulate or may be influenced by the hypnotist). If I had to choose just one set, I'd go with the first, but I suspect that there is some truth in each set -- but not the whole truth in either.

Noodling on this, I sketched out the simple little diagram reproduced below. I admit this could look a lot better if done on a computer, but I'm busy right now and don't have time to put together a better chart. Still, this crude drawing at least gets the basic idea across.

The idea is that the Self, in the sense of the totality of the spiritual entity that we know as "I," may extend across various levels of existence. Spiritualists are always talking about different planes of reality, and the implication is that we travel from one plane to the next. But suppose that our Self actually cuts across all the planes simultaneously, and what "travels" is only our awareness (or at least our primary awareness, in the sense of of our principal focus). Moreover, suppose that time either has no meaning in this scheme or operates very differently from the way it does in our spacetime universe. The end result is that the Self could operate on various levels at once, and the story told by the Self when focusing on its experience in one plane would differ from the story it tells when focusing on a different level of experience. 

Though I did not mark it this way in the diagram (because I didn't think of it), we could label each sub-Self as Self 1, Self 2, Self 3, etc., with higher numbers representing higher levels of existence. Note that the Self is depicted as a circle on each plane, and that the radius of the circle varies consistently as you go from one plane to the next. Awareness on higher planes is represented by a bigger radius, while awareness on lower planes is represented by a smaller radius. This simple graphic tries to express the idea that consciousness expands as it moves deeper into the system.

Note also that various circles are slices of a cone, which represents the Self in its entirety. The cone expresses the idea that these circular slices or cross-sections are part of a larger, continuous whole which bridges the gaps between the planes. Because the Self is ultimately one entity, no matter how it may be sectioned into slices, no part of it is really cut off from the rest, which means that the relatively restricted awareness of the earth plane can come into contact with the higher awareness of higher planes (perhaps through prayer, meditation, or a burst of insight sometimes known as "cosmic consciousness"). This viewpoint also dovetails with the hypothesis popularized by Aldous Huxley that the brain serves as a "funnel" or "filter" restricting a wider range of consciousness. 

Perhaps this diagram, though obviously simplistic and metaphorical, can make some sense of the conflicting sets of reports. NDErs and ordinary mediumistic communicators are reporting from the level of awareness depicted here as "limbo" or "Summerland." Those who recall past lives under hypnosis, and especially those who recall a life between lives, may be reporting from a higher (or deeper) level of awareness. In this respect it is worth noting that between-lives therapists insist that only the deepest stage of hypnosis can access these memories. Naturally, the reports of purportedly high-level channeled beings would also reflect a higher plane of awareness. 

What is perhaps most noteworthy is the implication that all of this is going on at the same time, or perhaps "outside of" time. While it may seem as if we are engaged in a long and tedious struggle to attain spiritual enlightenment, this model suggests that we have already attained it -- in fact, that we never had to attain it because it was part of us from the beginning. The various lower levels of awareness with their more restricted range (represented by smaller radii) are part of a continuum with the highest level of awareness, so whatever we are seeking on this plane has already been found (actually did not have to be "found") on the higher plane. And the awareness on that plane is just as much "I" as the awareness on this plane; it is not a separate entity, though it may feel separate from the limited perspective of earthly life.

Finally, notice that the various cross-sections form a series of concentric circles, suggesting that each smaller circle is contained within the larger one. Nothing is lost; there is only expansion to a wider point of view. If this is correct, then it may be wrong to say (as, in the past, I have) that the ego is sloughed off after death. It may be more correct to say that the ego is subsumed within a wider consciousness that places it into a more appropriate perspective, thus robbing it of its power to mislead or confuse. This higher awareness, even on the limbo or Summerland planes, would be consistent with many reports of communicators who see their own mistakes more clearly than than they did on earth, and who (especially at the Summerland level) have risen above their earthbound limitations of perception. The field of induced after-death communication offers many examples of communications that seem to come from this level of awareness.

I'm not sure how clear this all is, and being busy, I can't revise and clarify my remarks as much as I ordinarily would. But it just may be the case that the apparent contradiction between the two sets of afterlife reports can be resolved by looking at the whole issue from a different perspective. 

My thanks to commenter Juan, whose remark about slicing off circular sections of a sphere probably got me thinking along these lines (although I realize I am not going in quite the direction he suggested).