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. 

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). 

 

Checkmate!

For a Thanksgiving Day treat, here's one of the best afterlife communication cases ever documented: the chess match between a living grandmaster and (purportedly) a deceased one!

As with my last post, I'm not going to summarize the case, since Miles Edward Allen has already done so (PDF). I'll just point out the two most striking features of this experiment. 

First, of course, there's the fact that a living grandmaster ranked third in the world could find himself struggling to win a match against a channeled opponent. The medium knew only the rudiments of chess, while the researcher who organized the experiment was a good player but nowhere near the grandmaster level. So where did the channeled chess moves come from? As Allen observes, 

Mind reading, even on a grand scale, can’t explain things.... Picking up impressions may be common, and discerning an occasional message from another’s mind is not unheard of, but no one has ever demonstrated an ability to learn a complex skill via telepathy. 

Indeed, I'm unaware of any documented case in which a person was able to learn a difficult new skill through ESP. And the channeled chess moves were not merely of grandmaster quality; they were consistent with the style of play from the deceased player's heyday, a style that had become somewhat dated by the time the experiment was done. 

Second, there's the wealth of personal information apparently communicated by the deceased. 85 verifiable items were recorded. Some of them were available in public records, but others could be confirmed only by combing through obscure archives or interviewing relatives. 70 hours of research on the part of an independent historian (who knew nothing of the paranormal aspects of the case) were required to track down these data. At the end, only two items (both trivial) were proved wrong; the rest were correct -- a success rate of more than 97%. And all these facts were relayed by the communicator in a single afternoon and evening. 

Most impressive perhaps was the communicator's insistence that one of his opponents was named Romih, when all known records spelled the name Romi. Only by obtaining a program from the 1930 tournament was it established that, at that date, the player did in fact spell his name Romih (he later dropped the "h"). 

The combination of a powerful skill -- chess play at the grandmaster level - and a mass of verified personal information makes this case anything but a Thanksgiving turkey!

 

 

An angry communicator

Having focused on some problems with mediumship and other afterlife evidence, and on the possibility that some of the evidence can be explained by sociological and psychological factors (such as mania) and by the influence of a collective unconscious constructing the desired phenomena, I now want to look at some of the strongest evidence, which seems to resist these explanations. A good place to find such evidence is The Survival Top 40, a website created by Miles Edward Allen, which lists many of the most compelling cases. 

One of the better ones, currently #29 on the Top 40 list, is "The Rationalist Spirit." I'd suggest reading the detailed summary (PDF) provided by Miles Edward Allen; like all his summaries, it's well-written, clear, and gets directly to the point. Below I'll provide a briefer synopsis. 

Alan Gauld, a longtime and highly respected parapsychological researcher, spent some time working with a home circle in Cambridgeshire, England, in 1959. While with the circle, he learned of a case from 1943 involving a drop-in communicator - someone with no known connection to anyone in the group. Fortunately, detailed records had been kept, including verbatim transcripts of the sessions, which were conducted with a "talking board" (a Ouija board or similar item). 

The communicator in question identified himself as "Adolf Biedebmann," adding, "I always was known and called Gustav." In his first appearance, on January 4, 1943, he was hostile and insulting. The spirit control, "Peter," warned, "A little later I am going to let the eel through.... Humour him. Get to know him. We can then deal with him from here." 

"Gustav" then took over the planchette, insinuating that he had impersonated "Raymond and a Doctor James" (presumably Raymond Lodge and William James) in an earlier session. When told that the group wanted to help him, he replied, "I do not want your help." The group said they were taught to help those who need it. "Wrong teaching," the spirit huffed. "I am not going to be bloody well pally [friendly] with you. Mind your own business. I did not come here to talk to you. Shut up."

He pretended to be a female spirit named Molly or Mollie - his spelling varied - but despite his insistence that they "mind [their] bloody business,"  the group quickly divined that he was male. "I was a man who always kept to himself," he added, inadvertently revealing his sex. "Damn," he commented when his slip was pointed out. 

Religion was "bloody rot," he said. When asked to be reasonable, he replied, "Shut up. Buggar you.... Only Hitler can help. He is the master mind.... I knew Hitler." Claiming his nationality was German, he took credit for a sentence in German that was spelled out by the board in a previous sitting. He lived in London, at a house in Charnwood Lodge. By the end of the session, he seemed calmer and more friendly. "Peter" assured the group that "Gustav" was genuinely sorry for his rude behavior, adding, "And he is German."

Three days later, on January 7, an apologetic "Gustav" showed up, giving his "correct name" (a version of his name given in the earlier session was inaccurate). "I was a rationalist," he said. "A type of religion to follow only the reasoning of one's own mind. It puts a barrier around." That was partly why he had been lonely in the spirit realm. "I was turned seventy when I passed away," he said, going on to explain that his references to Hitler were intended "to hurt." 

On February 4, he made another appearance. "I had my own business," he recalled. "In some remote way I am associated with the Lond[on] University." He said he'd passed over a year ago, and when asked if he was connected with publishing, made reference to the Rationalist Press. 

Gauld, examining the case in 1959, discovered the existence of a Dr. Adolf Gustav Biedermann (only a slight variation on the name Biedebmann, which was presumably misspelled during the session). Miles Edward Allen summarizes:

[He] was a German-born, naturalized citizen of England who lived at Charnwood Lodge on the outskirts of London until he died at the age of 73. He was a fairly wealthy businessman who also worked in the Psychology Department at London University.

Those who knew Biedermann described him to Gauld as an arrogant, obstinate, and aggressive man who, nevertheless, could be a pleasant companion when one got to know him. He seemed to revel in his German heritage and never dropped his accent. One acquaintance portrayed him as "an out-and-out rationalist" who may well have been attached to the idea of Aryan superiority.

He was hostile to claims of telepathy, and to religion. In his will he left money to the Rationalist Press Association. 

The case is strong for several reasons. First, the communicator matches up extremely well with the earthly Biedermann in terms of demeanor, beliefs, and personal history. Second, there was a clear progression from hostility to remorse and friendliness, suggesting the activity of a living mind, not a static bundle of memories. Third, no other communicator at this home circle ever behaved the way "Gustav" did; if the mental influence of the sitters or planchette operators had been responsible for the messages, we might expect to see other cases like this involving the same persons, but there were none. Fourth, the loneliness and confusion of "Gustav" dovetails with statements made through many channelers about the state of mind of spirits who hold a deep antipathy to spiritual values and a strong commitment to the ego. 

The only question I would raise is whether either of the planchette operators could possibly have known of Biedermann during his lifetime and unconsciously recreated his personality, manipulating the planchette either through subtle, unintentional muscular movements or via PK. But this seems doubtful, given the absence of any motive on the part of the sitters to bring "Gustav" to the circle. And it is unlikely that a casual acquaintance could know such details as Biedermann's legacy to the Rationalist Press. 

Some problems with mediumship in the heyday of Spiritualism

Recently we've been discussing the possibility that the heyday of Spiritualism constituted a "mania," in which normally sober observers found their judgment impaired by what Alan Greenspan would call "irrational enthusiasm." While the very best research from that period was well-designed and difficult to refute, there are undeniably problems with other claims, reports, and observations. What follows is a grab-bag of items in no particular order - things I've noticed in my reading over the years. I also offer a brief counterpoint whenever it seems appropriate. 

Inconsistencies. 

Spirit communicators offered conflicting statements on important subjects, most notably reincarnation. In the early years, there was little mention of reincarnation. After Madame Blavatsky popularized the idea of reincarnation through her Theosophy movement, mediums started talking about it a lot more. It's hard to resist the conclusion that the content of the mediums' messages, at least in this case, was influenced by what the sitters expected to hear.

Counterpoint: The greater part of the commuications was largely consistent, and this general consistency is found in more modern communications and in other afterlife evidence, such as near-death experiences and deathbed visions. Robert Crookall documented these consistencies in several books in the 1960s. 

Failed predictions. 

Spirit communicators made failed predictions, which were generally overly optimistic in nature. For instance, they predicted an era of universal peace and harmony following the First World War. Even during the buildup to the WWII they insisted there would not be another global conflict. They also predicted that the truth of Spiritualism would be universally acknowledged within 100 years and would be part of mainstream science.

Some of the people who analyzed the so-called "cross correspondences" became obsessed with the strange notion that a one of their number was destined to bear a son who would become a new messiah. This child was being "designed" by spirit entities to be a superior being, one who would lead the human race to a new era of peace. Though a child was born, he did not fulfill these expectations, though he did grow up to be a notably spiritual man who eventually became a Benedictine monk. The story is told here. 

Spirit controls.  

The spirit "controls" (i.e., spirit guides) exhibited many oddities, could not convincingly confirm their earthly existence, and often exhibited cartoonish or stereotyped behavior. More discussion here. 

Dogmatism and credulity.  

Some investigators seemed to become overly enthusiastic about their findings and exhibited dogmatism and credulity. James Hyslop, an early convert to belief in spirit communication and life after death, insisted that the case was proved beyond any doubt–clearly an overstatement. Arthur Conan Doyle was taken in by a number of fake mediums, notably the Davenport Brothers; he was fooled by obviously fake photographs taken by children in the "Cottingley fairies" case; and in one notable instance he insisted that Harry Houdini, the escape artist and famed debunker, must be a medium himself because only by dematerializing could he perform his escapes!

Bad science.  

Some of the claims made by paranormal investigators of the time clash with our modern understanding of science. For instance, in his book Thirty Years Among the Dead (PDF), psychiatrist Carl Wickland tells how his wife's mediumship helped cure mentally ill patients by freeing them from obsessing spirits. But with everything we now know about the chemical basis for much of mental illness, how plausible is the spirit-obsession hypothesis?

It was not unusual for alleged spirit communicators themselves to provide incorrect scientific statements. Many of these involved "the ether"–the invisible substance then widely believed to pervade the universe and to serve as a transmission medium for electromagnetic waves. Today the ether has been generally discredited, although there are occasional attempts to bring it back in a modified form. Other inaccurate scientific statements are found in The Spirits' Book, a collection of spirit communications compiled by Allan Kardec. (Example, passage 46: "Do not the tissues of the human body and of animals contain the germs of a multitude of parasites, that only await for their development the occurrence of the putrid fermentation necessary to their life?" This appears to be an endorsement of spontaneous generation, a popular view of the time, but discredited today.) It's hard to trust "the spirits" if they don't know basic scientific facts.

Counterpoint: Science writer Norman Friedman believes that channeled information attributed to Seth, and found in the works of Jane Roberts, sheds valuable light on quantum mechanics.

Bad history.  

Other channeled information included what appears to be clearly incorrect historical data. Edgar Cayce, for instance, made claims about the origins of the Bible and the circumstances and time periods in which it was written that would not be endorsed by any accredited biblical scholars today. His statements seem to be in line with what would be expected from someone with a layman's knowledge of the subject.

Counterpoint: Stephan A. Schwartz's work with psychics at archaeological digs has resulted in some impressive finds. Schwartz's work is meticulously recounted in his books, notably The Alexandria Project. 

Spirit photography.  

Some investigators accepted spirit photographs whose fakery is embarrassingly obvious today. Others were not deterred by photos taken during séances that showed clear signs of fraud. A notable instance was the case of Eva C., who supposedly had the ability to manifest spirit faces out of ectoplasm. Photographs make it clear that the spirit faces were drawings clipped from the newspaper. In one photo it is even possible to see part of the newspaper's masthead showing through the paper. Nevertheless, the investigator researching Eva C. refused to believe the spirit faces had been faked, because he did not think there was any flaw in his security protocols. Even today, there are people who defend the mediumship of Helen Duncan, despite the embarrassingly phony “spirit guide” that shows up in photos taken while she was supposedly entranced.

Helen Duncan and her materialized "spirit guide." 

Fraud.  

A large number of physical and materialization mediums were exposed as frauds. A common tactic was to tackle the materialized “spirit” in the middle of the séance and hold on to it until the lights came up, at which point the struggling figure would be revealed as the medium in disguise. Even mediums who were caught in such deceptions retained some followers. Florence Cook was caught at least once, and arguably twice*, by such a method, yet her principal investigator, William Crookes, never admitted she was anything less than genuine.

(*In the one debatable instance, the “spirit” wriggled free before the lights could be turned on; accounts differ as to whether Florence, when found in her cabinet, was securely tied to her chair as she should have been, or was only loosely tied, the knots obviously having been undone.)

Counterpoint: Some physical mediums held up under scrutiny. Despite a known penchant for cheating when she could get away with it, Eusapia Palladino impressed highly experienced and skeptical investigators at the Naples sittings in 1908. D.D. Home was never caught in fraud, and performed in lighted rooms under close observation. 

Parochialism. 

Frequent messages from the spirit communicators indicated that Jesus Christ is effectively the leading light in the spirit world, a message that seems perhaps a bit too nicely calculated to appeal to the Judeo-Christian sensibilities of sitters and researchers.

Evolution.  

Messages about the nature of the afterlife and the ultimate purpose of existence seemed to borrow liberally from Emanuel Swedenborg's writings, with one significant alteration. In Swedenborg's system, there is no continuing evolution of the soul after death; the soul migrates to whatever sphere is most suitable and stays there for eternity. Most of the Spiritualist mediums, on the other hand, stated that souls inhabit a given sphere only temporarily and are constantly moving onward in accordance with a universal law of spiritual progress. This idea of spiritual evolution seems to have been inspired by the fashionableness of Darwinian evolution, giving a more modern and progressive spin to Swedenborg's ideas. But if the descriptions were influenced by cultural and social trends, do they reflect a higher reality or only the assumptions of the mediums and sitters?

Slate writing.  

Some researchers continued to accept the validity of so-called slate writing–messages written in chalk on slate tablets in the pitch dark séance room–even after slate writing had been exposed as fraudulent many times. Admittedly these researchers took elaborate pains to guard against fraud. Nevertheless, the long history of fakery in slate writing and the need to place the slate out of sight during part of the performance should be enough to cast doubt on these claims. 

Oddball claims. 

Spiritualism was characterized, in part, by fantastic stories that seem to have been taken seriously by at least some of its adherents. For instance, there was the often-told story of the sudden “apport" of Mrs. Guppy, a 300-pound medium who allegedly appeared out of nowhere during another medium's séance. The claim was that Mrs. Guppy had been dematerialized from her home many miles away and rematerialized on the séance table. Stories like this did not help the credibility of the Spiritualist movement with the general public, and led many to see Spiritualists as gullible and silly. The acceptance of such unlikely claims by some of Spiritualism's enthusiasts may give credence to the idea that a mania was at work - though, again, there is a core of serious research that resists easy debunking. 

 

 

Spirit controls as functional entities

In his 2009 book A New Science of the Paranormal, longtime parapsychologist Lawrence LeShan offers his thoughts on a variety of psi phenomena. I found the appendix particularly interesting. Titled "When is Uvani?",  it addresses the thorny question of "spirit controls" in mediumship.

As readers of this blog undoubtedly know, a spirit control is said to be a discarnate entity that serves as a guide for the (usually entranced) medium. The control is an intermediary and a gatekeeper, who conveys messages from other spirits that are not able to come through on their own. The control also keeps out undesirable elements like low-level spirits who would disrupt the proceedings, and looks after the health and safety of the medium. 

Controls have always been controversial. For one thing, many of them have proved unable to establish their earthly existence with any plausibility. As one example, efforts to find historical records relating to Mrs. Piper's control, Dr. Phinuit (pronounced fin-wee), were unsuccessful. Moreover, many of the controls seem to be rather bizarre and questionable characters. Gladys Osborne Leonard's control, Feda, was a young girl from India who spoke pidgin English. One of Mrs. Piper's early controls was an American Indian girl with the unlikely name of Chlorine. Indeed, a disproportionately high percentage of controls were American Indians with colorful names and stereotyped speech patterns. 

From the beginning, serious researchers considered the possibility that the controls were expressions of the medium's unconscious -- personas created to facilitate the seance. Other investigators were convinced that the controls, for all their oddities, were discarnate spirits, just as they claimed to be. 

One of the more famous controls was Uvani, used by medium Eileen Garrett, who was studied by researchers around the world. In his essay, LeShan notes that even Garrett, after a lifetime of testing, could not say whether Uvani was a distinct entity or a fragment of her own unconscious. 

Because the usual approach to this problem has not gotten us very far, LeShan proposes coming at it in a new way. He writes,  

Let us start with the fact that the spirit controls often demonstrate paranormal abilities and have information that they could not have acquired through normal channels of sense or by extrapolation from data so gathered. Who doubts that this is so simply has not read the relevant literature…

In all serious cases described as “paranormal,” the normal laws of space and time are violated. We have been unable to “explain” this, and that has been the central problem of psychical research. We know that these laws of space and time cannot be violated, that exceptions cannot occur. We also know and have clearly and scientifically demonstrated in the laboratory and elsewhere that they are sometimes broken.…

Is it fruitful to try to approach the paradox in a new way? Let us try and begin by asking, “Are there classes of things (entities) to which the normal laws and limitations of space and time apply and classes of things to which they do not?”

Looked at in this manner it becomes evident that there are two classes of things. The first class we might describe as structural entities. These are things with length, breadth, and thickness. They are always subject to the “normal” laws of space and time. Things of this sort cannot, for example, move faster than the speed of light. They have a definite physical existence during their duration [and] they go on with this existence whether or not they are at a particular moment in anyone's consciousness.…

The second class of things we might call functional entities. These do not have any length, breadth, or thickness. They cannot be detected by any form of instrumentation although their effects often can be. They are not bound by the “normal” laws of space and time and often can, for example, move faster than light. If I point a telescope at the star Aldebaran and then swing it to focus on the star Altair, something very “real,” the point of focus of the telescope, has moved faster than light.…

The existence of these entities also differs considerably from that of structural entities. They do not have a continuous existence whether or not they are being mentally conceptualized.... [T]hey exist only when they are held in a mind, only when being conceptualized, only when being considered to exist. There is no reality to a mathematical point unless it is being conceptualized as such. You cannot be affected by the focus of a telescope when no one is thinking of it. Put in a better way, a functional entity can have no effect on other entities (and so–for all intents and purposes–ceases to exist) unless it is being conceptualized as existing.…

Of this class of entities we cannot ask the question “What is it?” and expect a reasonable answer. We can, however, ask other questions such as “When is it?” and hope to obtain a satisfactory reply. (A mathematical point is when it is conceptualized as the intersection of two lines.)...

In essence we might say: A functional entity is what it does and when it does it. Further, it only is (does anything) when it is being conceptualized by a perceiving and conscious entity.

Let us pause for a moment and ask about “things” with no length, breadth, and thickness. Can they really exist? Are there really entities about which one cannot successfully ask “what” or sometimes “where,” but can, perhaps, ask “when” and “why” and which do not exist between perceptions of them. Mathematical points are all very fine, but are there others more meaningful to our lives?

To the obvious question “Can a functional entity affect a structural entity?” we must answer in the affirmative. A mathematical point has an effect on a surveyor and subsequently on a steam shovel and a railway line. One can be profoundly affected by the point of aim of a hidden person with a rifle!

The essential point of this formulation is that it presents us with two classes of entities, one of which is not bound by the “normal” laws of space and time (that is, it can behave “paranormally”) and can affect the other class of entities, which is bound by these laws.

Having come this far, LeShan turns his attention to spirit controls, specifically Garrett's Uvani. He notes that "we have never been able to detect any physical structure related to … Uvani," and that Uvani "has beyond a doubt shown the ability to behave paranormally, that is, to acquire information, the possession of which clearly violates the laws of space and time." He goes on, 

Does Uvani exist between those times at which he is conceptualized as existing? If we take as a gauge of what we mean by “existing” the ability to influence other entities, then Uvani does not exist between conceptualizations….When in existence, Uvani can influence the behavior of structural entities such as the medium, the sitter, etc....

[P]sychiatrist Ira Progoff asked Uvani while Eileen Garrett was in trance, “How have you been since last we met?” Uvani, an otherwise invariably calm and self-possessed persona, became completely confused and unable to answer the question. In fact, he could not seem to understand it, although he asked Progoff on various other occasions how Progoff had been since last they met and was obviously capable of understanding both the implications of the questions and the answers…

I have elsewhere … described the state of consciousness during which paranormal processes occur, calling this the Clairvoyant Reality. This state of consciousness is particularly oriented to the perception of relationships rather than to the perception of structure. In it, and in the world-picture which it accepts as the valid metaphysical system, relationships are seen as primary and individual structures and the separateness of these structures is seen as secondary or illusory…

Seen in this light, the clairvoyant reality is primarily a way of perceiving functional entities.…

Uvani is “when” Eileen Garrett … moves into a particular state of consciousness in the presence of a perceived need of a sitter. When she conceptualizes the world in a particular way (the clairvoyant reality) and, in this world-picture, conceptualizes Uvani as existing, he exists. Further, he is conceptualized as having certain characteristics. Under these conditions, a functional entity with these characteristics comes into existence and functions according to them.

Clearly, it is not as simple as this. For a functional entity with certain characteristics to come into existence (to be able to affect structural entities), a highly coherent Weltbild, a world-picture permitting these characteristics, must be fully believed in by the perceiving structural entity.… Not only must the Weltbild be accepted, the functional entity itself must be clearly conceptualized as potentially and actually existing. However, given these conditions of acceptance of a proper Weltbild for it and the belief in the functional entity, it can come into existence.…

Certainly [this hypothesis] explains why we have never been able to devise even a theoretical method for satisfactorily determining “what” a spirit control is. And it explains why we have never been able to devise instrumentation that would detect a spirit control directly.…

In a curiously circular way, we explain Uvani's characteristics by saying that those are the characteristics he has. This procedure is invalid … when dealing with structural entities. It is the procedure we claim is valid when dealing with functional entities. The characteristics of “gravity” are those characteristics we get it when we wish to explain the tables of observations we make on solar phenomena. The functional entity “gravity” is a very useful one and enables us to explain old data and to predict new data, but its characteristics are explained by saying that those are its characteristics. To the question “what” is gravity we can only respond with a helpless shrug.

LeShan then discusses Conjuring Up Philip, by Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrow, “one of the most significant books published in the field of psychical research for many years. In effect, Owen's group has given us a guidebook on how to 'do' parapsychological research by designing the correct functional entities to accomplish those paranormal functions we wish to produce.” The Philip experiments recounted in the book began with a circle of sitters vividly imagining a supposedly historical figure named Philip, who they knew was actually a fictional invention. Despite the fact that there never was any Philip, the circle's concentrated attention on this fictitious persona eventually invoked an entity claiming to be Philip, which manifested itself with raps, table movements (sometimes quite violent), and other physical phenomena. The sittings were conducted in bright light and were witnessed by many people and even filmed. Later, other circles reproduced the experiment by "conjuring up" fictitious spirit entities of their own. 

Though LeShan doesn't mention it, one of the more interesting moments in the Philip experiment came when a sitter openly expressed his disbelief in Philip, informing the spirit that there never was such a person and that the group had made him up. The phenomena abruptly fizzled out, and it took some time and effort (i.e., concentration and commitment to belief in Philip) to bring them back. Philip is an example of a functional entity par excellence, and may well be the "type" of spirit controls in general. 

Since these functional entities are not independently real, and exist only in relation to the minds of mediums and sitters, they have a sort of deceptive pseudo-reality that leads to conceptual confusion, as investigators try to determine “where” they are located and what they are doing when they're not assisting the medium–meaningless questions, since they do not exist except in relation to the medium, and only when needed. The resulting confusion hamstrings psychical research, which treats these functional entities as if they were structural entities and hence can make no theoretical progress. That's the gist of LeShan's thesis. 

I find his idea of spirit controls as functional entities intriguing, though as he himself says, it is only a suggestion and not a definitive answer. In what follows, I want to depart from his essay and offer some speculations of my own. 

Belief, it seems, is critical -- belief in the spiritual entity itself, and in the world-picture that makes such an entity conceivable. In an atmosphere of intense belief, it is more likely that these functional entities will come into existence and be efficacious. So it seems to me that one reason for the greater prevalence of mediumistic phenomena in the Victorian Era was that more people were inclined to believe in the world-picture of Spiritualism, and that the most enthusiastic of these people were naturally the ones who attended seances. (As for the question of where the world-picture came from in the first place, I think much of it traces back to Emanuel Swedenborg.) 

In today's world, such belief is harder to come by. In a sense, we are all materialists now. I don't mean that all of us consciously accept the philosophy of materialism, but rather that we are immersed in it and probably absorb many of its tenets without even thinking about it. The Spiritualist movement is much diminished from its heyday a hundred years ago, and is less likely to influence us on a conscious or subconscious level. 

In the robust years of Spiritualism, a social atmosphere of intense excitement, coupled with a fairly clear belief system, allowed mediums and sitters to generate functional entities that provided the appearance of independently real individuals–“spirit controls.” We would expect these functional entities to reflect the biases, fears, and hopes of the mediums,  sitters, and investigators -- and to a large extent, they do. In the late 19th century, reincarnation was an unpopular and alien idea in the West, and few mediums talked about it. A little later, owing mainly to the influence of Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists, reincarnation became trendy in occult circles. Not surprisingly, mediums started talking fluently about reincarnation. 

These spirit controls, whose purpose is to facilitate the gathering of information by paranormal means and the exercise of paranormal talents like psychokinesis, really do seem to exist only when brought into being by the right state of attention and focus. Note Uvani's confusion when asked what he had been up to during his down-time. Similarly, Phinuit was known to become flustered when challenged on details of his earthly existence.   

Anything that contributes to belief will aid in the generation of these functional entities. Thus, even fake mediums holding phony seances may add to the general atmosphere of excited belief which can produce genuine phenomena in another setting. The "mania" for Spiritualism would precipitate more phenomena than cool, dispassionate observation ever could. 

Now we come to a question Lawrence LeShan does not raise, yet which seems highly relevant and important. Why should functional entities be limited to spirit controls? Why should we not classify at least some of the other spirit communicators this way? If Uvani, a functional entity with no independent existence, brings through my Uncle George to talk to me, how can I know that Uncle George is not also a functional entity with no independent existence? 

In other words, to what extent are spirit communications in general the result of functional entities "conjured up" by the medium's (and sitter's) beliefs and mental focus? How many of the communicators purportedly coming through are actually functional entities that exist only in relation to medium and sitter? 

Alan Gauld's excellent book Mediumship and Survival treats this basic issue, though he does not use LeShan's terminology. He finds that a great deal of mediumistic communication, though not all of it, can be explained in terms of a psychic connection between the medium and the sitter. 

One data point that might be cited in support of this thesis is that some communicators have insisted that the spirit controls are every bit as real as they are. This of course can be taken two ways. Either both the communicators and the controls are structural entities and have their own independent reality ... or both are functional entities and lack independent reality. 

There are exceptions. Gauld notes that cases of the "drop-in communicator" type seem to argue for the existence of a genuine discarnate spirit with its own agenda. The most famous drop-in communicator case, involving a rather demanding ghost who wanted his leg to receive a proper burial, is recounted here. Since the drop-in communicator serves no evident purpose in relation to the desires, interests, or needs of the medium and sitters, and gives every indication of having its own personal priorities, we may be justified in concluding that at least some of the communicators coming through mediums are not functional entities of the type LeShan describes.

But many of them may be. It's possible that a large part -- perhaps the greater part -- of mediumistic communication does not involve discarnate spirits at all, but functional entities that facilitate clairvoyance, telepathy, retrocognition, and PK. 

This does not mean there are no spirits, but it does mean that we may be in touch with them less often than we think.

 

Of tulip bulbs and mediums

In the comments thread of my last post, the subject of speculative bubbles came up. Of course we are all too familiar with such bubbles nowadays–the dot-com bubble, the real-estate bubble, the derivatives bubble. But the phenomenon has been well known since at least 1841, when Charles Mackay published his famous book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

In his book, Mackay deals with “manias” of all kinds. The book is best known for its discussion of economic manias, such as the famous tulip mania in 17th-century Holland, in which the prices of tulip bulbs were bid up to extraordinary levels before crashing. But Mackay focuses most of his attention on social and intellectual crazes. He devotes a great deal of space to alchemy, and he is fascinated by the dueling epidemic–a bizarre historical episode in which people were inexplicably quick to challenge each other to duels and consequently died by the hundreds.

Another famous social mania (not discussed by Mackay as far as I recall) was the revivalist craze that swept through the United States in the early 19th century. Revivalist preachers would travel around the country, hosting public events in which people were exhorted to confess their sins and be born again. Entire towns would convert to the old-time religion in a veritable orgy of righteousness, banning liquor and gambling and vowing to stay on the strait and narrow ever after. Within a few weeks, they naturally had backslid to their old ways, the preacher having long since moved on to a new community. But while the preacher was there, and for a little while afterward, almost everyone in the town was caught up in a fervid atmosphere of religious extremism.

A more famous historical example, and one that is treated by Mackay, is the notorious witch burnings. Gripped by mass hysteria, whole communities would become fanatically convinced that witches were working mischief among them. The number of so-called witches who died at the hands of these mobs is unknown, but the phenomenon continued for decades, springing up first here, then there, unpredictably, and almost always with fatal results.

In thinking about all this, I couldn't help but recall the history of Spiritualism in America and England. Spiritualism originated just a few years after Mackay's book was published (its origin is usually dated to 1848, the year when the "rappings" of the Fox sisters were heard) and spread like wildfire. Before long, ordinary middle-class people were spending their evenings table-tipping or playing with planchettes. People made assiduous efforts to develop their talents at automatic writing or to become trance mediums. Spiritualist churches sprang up in abundance, and in at least one case, a vocal critic of the movement converted to it after falling into a trance and producing channeled information himself! There were celebrity spiritualists like Arthur Conan Doyle, and there were distinguished scientists who backed at least some of the claims of the movement–people like William Crookes, Oliver Lodge, and Alfred Russel Wallace. Spiritualism even found its way to the White House during the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln's wife, a devotee of the movement, invited mediums to perform séances, some of which her husband attended, though his attitude about the whole thing is unclear. The movement had its ups and downs, but remained vigorous and influential at least until the 1920s, when repeated debunkings by Harry Houdini and enterprising journalists soured the public on the alleged phenomena.

Much of this fits the descriptions of public manias in Mackie's book. You have a social innovation that catches on with extraordinary rapidity and draws in people who, under ordinary circumstances, would have nothing to do with it. Just as nonviolent types somehow got caught up in the mania for dueling, and prudent investors somehow were drawn into the world of tulip bulbs, just as heavy drinkers became teetotalers and loving husbands joined a mob to burn their wives at the stake, so it seems that many otherwise cautious and sensible folks became committed to Spiritualism. Was this due to the high quality of the evidence they were receiving, or was it due to the social atmosphere of the times?

The question is important, I think, because a tremendous amount of the evidence for life after death was gathered during this very period. Even today, anyone with a serious interest in the subject of mediumship has to make reference to famous mediums of roughly a hundred years ago–people like Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard. The study of these mediums was more sustained and methodical than any such study before or since, and the results obtained are among the most impressive and often-cited in the field.

The usual skeptical objection to these studies is that they happened so long ago, they can't be taken seriously. My usual reply is that there's no reason to discard evidence simply because it happened to be collected sometime in the past, as long as it was collected by competent researchers following adequate protocols. And I still think that's true, as far as it goes. But what if the researchers' competence and protocols were compromised by a general atmosphere of mania–an atmosphere of irrational excitement and wild enthusiasm, which prompted people to overlook obvious flaws and jump to unjustified conclusions?

Remember that a society (or a segment of society) in the grip of a mania cannot function rationally. The businessman who ordinarily would not think of investing in any venture unless he thoroughly understood its methods, objectives, and prospects may throw all of his prudence out the window when gripped by a mania, and start tossing money at any dot-com stock or condo development in sight. He will invent reasons to excuse his own behavior and justify his own irrationality. No matter how many warning signs flash in front of him, he will ignore them and keep his gaze fixed firmly on the imaginary but irresistible prize on the horizon. He will not come to his senses until the whole investment scheme comes crashing down, and he and all of his like-minded colleagues have suffered huge losses. Then, perhaps, he will look back in bewilderment, shaking his head and wondering how he could have allowed himself to be so woefully deluded.

When we consider the effect that manias can have on even the most intelligent and worldly-wise individuals, we have to ask ourselves if the credentials, competence, and general honesty of the early Spiritualist investigators are as clear-cut as we might like to believe. I have no doubt that most of these people were intelligent, educated, knowledgeable, and well-meaning. But probably so was our deluded businessman. His intelligence and other qualities did not prevent him from being taken to the cleaners, because those qualities were short-circuited by mania. Could a similar short-circuit have been at work in the minds of the investigators whose research forms the bedrock of the scientific exploration of Spiritualism?

At least in some instances, there is reason to answer yes. William Crookes' controversial experiments with the medium Florence Cook are a case in point. When not performing for Crookes, Florence was caught cheating on more than one occasion. For a while, she partnered with another medium, quaintly named Rosina Showers, who turned out to be a complete fraud. It seems unlikely that Florence could have been genuine when she was working hand in glove with a con artist. The materialized entity that supposedly emanated from Florence Cook while she was in a trance sometimes bore a remarkable resemblance to Florence herself, although at other times it did not. The conditions of absolute darkness and the seclusion of the medium in a curtained-off cabinet made fraud a very real possibility. And yet Crookes, a distinguished physicist who was eventually knighted for his work in that field, seems to have been completely convinced of Florence Cook's authenticity. He wrote passionately on the subject, producing a rather feverish essay about his final moments with the dematerializing spirit guide, with whom he shared a secret kiss.

The whole episode is strange on many levels, but it seems less strange if we think of it in the context of the extraordinary popular delusions–the manias–that Charles Mackay writes about. Absent mania, under what circumstances would a normally sober physicist surrender his objectivity so completely? Notice that Crookes did not give up on Florence even after he learned that Rosina was a fraud, though surely he should have grasped that if the one girl was faking, then the other girl–performing at her side–could hardly have been the real deal. But he found some way to rationalize that problem out of existence, just as he rationalized the occasional physical similarity between Florence and the materialized spirit guide as reflecting the mysterious properties of Florence's own ectoplasm.

I'm not saying that all the investigative work done by scientific researchers during the heyday of Spiritualism was of this same low quality. But perhaps a great deal more of it falls into this category than we would like to believe. Perhaps it is a mistake to rely too much on the professional reputations of the investigators involved, or even on their personal reputations for probity and good sense. All these things can vanish like smoke in the grip of mania.

At the very least, it might be worthwhile to revisit the major investigative work undertaken during the Spiritualist years in an attempt to see how the researchers' unconscious biases, assumptions, and hopes, fueled by an atmosphere of credulity and enthusiasm, may have sabotaged their results. Was even a researcher as well respected as Richard Hodgson immune to the siren call of the Spiritualist mania? Perhaps he was. Perhaps not. It is often pointed out that Oliver Lodge, another distinguished physicist and afterlife investigator, developed an interest in the subject even before his son Raymond died in the First World War and allegedly began communicating through mediums. The implication is that Lodge could not have been swayed by emotion in his initial investigations because he had no close personal loss to cope with. But suppose he was swayed by something more general than personal grief. Suppose he was swayed by the turbulent atmosphere of an ongoing social craze that swept up both the educated and uneducated alike.

It's worth thinking about, especially when we consider that much of our data not only about mediumship but also about crisis apparitions, deathbed visions, and hauntings stems from this era. If a great deal of this material is merely the result of an "extraordinary popular delusion," the case for life after death will look very much weaker. 

The over/under of the soul

There's a major discrepancy in the evidence for the afterlife that's always puzzled me. I don't claim to have the answer, but I thought I would throw out a highly speculative suggestion.

The discrepancy pertains to the always thorny issue of reincarnation. In most near-death experiences and in a great deal of channeled communications, reincarnation does not come up. Some alleged communicators have even gone so far as to state with certainty that reincarnation is a myth. Other communications received by mediums, however, say just the opposite. Moreover, past-life researchers who have hypnotized their subjects not only obtain detailed accounts of previous lives, but in some cases obtain descriptions of a life between lives in which the soul plans its next incarnation.

The inconsistency is most apparent in accounts of the soul's transition to the afterlife. If we listen to near-death experiencers and many purported spirit communicators, we hear that the soul arrives in the afterlife with no memory of any physical incarnation other than the most recent one. The afterlife environment, at least initially, is a place for rest and the casual enjoyment of arts, leisure, and learning. But if we listen to patients placed into deep hypnosis, we hear that the soul arrives in the afterlife with an immediate recall of many past lives. The soul is reunited with other souls that it knows from various earthly incarnations and from many interludes in the spirit world. Moreover, the soul almost immediately embarks on a training program to prepare itself for its next incarnation. Though there are some parallels between the two accounts, the differences are substantial and seemingly irreconcilable.

One obvious explanation is that at least one of these two bodies of evidence is not reliable. If I had to jettison one batch of afterlife accounts, I would choose the material obtained through hypnosis. Hypnotized subjects are notorious for their tendency to confabulate–in other words to invent fictional accounts–in order to satisfy the explicit or implicit demands of the hypnotist. Experiments in hypnotism performed in the late 19th century strongly suggest that a person's latent psi abilities may be greatly accentuated when under hypnosis; therefore, I would not rule out the possibility that the hypnotized subject is actually reading the hypnotist's mind and simply reiterating what it finds there, creating a kind of feedback loop or folie a deux. If this is the case, then the evidence from hypnosis studies may be of limited value. Meanwhile, the evidence of near-death experiences and mediumship in general strikes me as much more solid.

Still, there may possibly be a way of reconciling these two very different sets of accounts. Let's suppose that each type of account is valid, but that the accounts come from different sources. To put it plainly, what if the stories told by near-death experiencers and most mediumistic communicators originate with the ordinary soul, while the stories told by hypnotized subjects originate with the oversoul?

According to some mystical traditions, our earthly identity, which we might characterize as our soul, is only part of a larger, more comprehensive identity known as the oversoul or the higher self. This oversoul allows various aspects of itself to incarnate at different times and in different places in order to experience a variety of conditions in the physical world. The oversoul itself, while connected to the soul, remains distinct from it, much as a tree may be distinguished from a leaf on one of its branches. While the tree and the leaf may be seen as a single organism, they may also be seen as separate entities.

In this view, the individual soul does not reincarnate, since to do so would require losing the individual identity it had built up in its first (and only) incarnation. Instead, some other part of the oversoul undergoes the next incarnation, perhaps carrying with it some of the memories or karma acquired by the first soul in its earthly adventure. We might compare it to a relay race, in which the torch is passed from one runner to the next.

Now if there is any truth in this, we might perhaps see a way to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the two versions of the afterlife. In most cases, near-death experiencers and mediumistic communicators are speaking from the point of view of the individual soul–for want of a better word, the undersoul. On the other hand, some of the higher channeled entities, as well as the entities that communicate when a subject is in deep hypnosis, represent the oversoul, and thus provide a different perspective.

From the perspective of the undersoul, individual identity does not change very much in the transition to the next life. There is no memory of any previous incarnation and no knowledge of any master plan. The main purpose of the afterlife, at least in its early stages, is to provide an opportunity for rest and recuperation, as well as for an assessment of lessons learned.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of the oversoul, individual identity is largely dropped or at least minimized upon the transition back to the spirit world. Memories of all the incarnations of its constituents are immediately available to it, and it quickly embarks on developing a strategy for its next incarnation.

This distinction might help to clarify something rather odd about statements made by the hypnotized subjects, who often seem to distinguish between themselves and the person they were on earth. One such subject, for instance, said she felt that one of her earthly incarnations was a good learning experience for her and also worked out well for the person who served as her incarnation. It is rather strange to think of the soul viewing itself both as the incarnated person and as somehow outside the incarnated person at the same time; but this paradox might be resolved if we see it as the oversoul drawing a distinction between itself and one of its constituent undersouls.

In some channeled literature we are told that the soul–that is, the individual soul or undersoul–is eventually motivated to give up its life of leisure and to progress to higher dimensions of the spiritual plane. My hypothesis suggests that this advancement to higher dimensions consists of merging more and more fully with the oversoul, until eventually the distinction between oversoul and undersoul has been largely erased. Of course it is also possible that the oversoul itself may need to progress and merge with other over souls into some larger unity, and eventually, perhaps, into what we may call God itself.

One thing worth noting is that the level of profundity of near-death experiences seems to vary directly with the extent to which the subject is exposed to the so-called Being of Light. Some near-death experiencers do not encounter any Being of Light at all; others see the light but do not interact with it; still others establish a profound spiritual connection with the light. In my hypothesis, the Being of Light–which is sometimes characterized as Jesus or Buddha or some other religious figure–is actually the oversoul or higher self. (This idea is not original with me; Kenneth Ring suggests it in one of his books.) Possibly the more an NDEr interacts with or merges with the Being of Light, the more profoundly the experience affects him and the more closely he continues to identify with the oversoul, and to minimize the importance of the undersoul, even after returning to earthly life.

It is also possible that when we pray, our prayers are directed toward the oversoul; that so-called guardian angels and spirit guides are aspects of the oversoul; and that mystical “cosmic consciousness” experiences involve a direct, albeit brief, apprehension of the oversoul, or at least of a more substantial part of it than we usually can access.

As I say, this is only a speculative hypothesis. It seems to be broadly consistent with several different classes of evidence and with some important strains of mystical tradition. But when dealing with this kind of material, it's wise to add this caveat: everything I just wrote may be completely wrong.

Mediums rare

An interesting article appears in the January 2011 issue of The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (volume 199, number 1; article available for purchase here). Written by Emily Williams Kelly, one of the principal authors of Irreducible Mind, and Dianne Arcangel, author of  Afterlife Encounters, the article is entitled "an investigation of mediums who claim to give information about deceased persons." It was brought to my attention by Vitor Moura.

Kelly and Arcangel tested a total of 13 mediums in two separate studies. The first study, involving four mediums and 12 sitters, did not yield results above chance levels. The second, more extensive study, involving nine and mediums and 40 sitters, and using a different methodology, produced statistically significant results. Since the second study is more interesting, it's the one I'll focus on.

Each medium was sent a photograph of a deceased person but received no other information. The photographs were selected to be as neutral as possible; they "showed the person alone and not engaged in specific activities (such as playing tennis or reading) that might provide significant information about the deceased." The mediums were not told anything about the sitters, nor did the mediums and sitters ever come in contact with each other.

For each reading, either Kelly or Arcangel served as a proxy sitter. Arcangel knew nothing about the sitters or the deceased persons; Kelly did have some information about some of the sitters, but her knowledge of the deceased was limited at best, and, in some cases, nonexistent. As it turned out,  Arcangel's  sessions were slightly more successful than Kelly's, suggesting that cold reading did not play a role.

The article continues:

The 14 audio-taped readings were transcribed, and E.W.K. edited all of the transcripts to remove any references to the appearance of the person in the photograph or other such clues. She also removed any conversation unrelated to the reading, as well as unnecessary or often-repeated words (such as "um," "you know," and the like), to make the transcript less choppy (as spoken conversation often is) and thus easier to read. Otherwise, none of the medium's own wording was changed ...

Each sitter was sent 6 transcripts -- the real one, as well as 5 intended for other persons, all 6 selected from the same age and gender group. Readings were also distributed in such a way that each one served as a "control" an equal number of times. Sitters were instructed to read carefully through all 6 and then rate each on a scale of 0 to 10. They were also asked to comment on the readings and to explain why they chose the one that they rated the highest.

The scoring of the transcripts was handled in a "global" fashion. In the first study, sitters had been asked to score each item of information individually, but the authors say this proved problematic: "Itemizing statements is not a straightforward process, particularly because many statements are interrelated and not independent of each other." On the other hand, "a global evaluation allows for the likelihood that much of what a medium says in a sitting is in fact what we might call 'filler' material -- that is, general, vague, or interfering imagery and impressions coming from the medium's own mind and having nothing to do with the intended target, the deceased person." 

For the second study, the sitter was expected to assess the reading as a whole, though he or she was encouraged to go into detail in explaining why a given choice choice was made.

So what were the results? Although 40 sitters were used, only 38 returned their ratings. "14 of the 38 readings were correctly chosen, and 7 others were ranked second. Altogether, 30 of the 38 were ranked in the top half. Analysis of these results with the sum-of-ranks method ... gives a z score of -3.89 (p < 0.0001)."

One medium in particular enjoyed an unbroken run of success; all six of this medium's readings were correctly chosen by the sitters. (Neither this medium nor any of the others is identified in the article.) The other eight mediums showed more mixed results, but "even when the top-scoring medium's results are removed, analysis of the remaining readings, again using the sum-of-ranks method, gives a z score of -2.69, which is still highly significant (p < 0.0074)."

The article gives a few examples of specific "hits." In one case, the medium said that "there's something funny about black licorice.... Like there's a big joke about it ..." The sitter said that his wife and deceased son had a running joke about licorice. In another case, the medium said the deceased girl's hair, as seen in the photo, had "gone", and that "at some point she's kind of teasing [her hair], she tried many colors. I think she experimented with color a lot before her passing." This was correct; the girl, who lost her hair during chemotherapy, had colored her hair hot pink before her cancer surgery. In the same sitting, the medium made reference to Northampton, Massachusetts, citing its "college town beatnik kind of feel." The girl had intended to go to college in Northampton. 

In a third case, the medium made reference to "Mike, Mikey, Michael." The deceased person's son, according to the article, "was known as 'Mikey" when young, 'Michael' as he grew older, and finally 'Mike.'" The same medium referred to a mother or grandmother who "can strangle a chicken." The sitter's grandmother, who was the mother of the deceased, did kill chickens, and as the sitter reported, "It freaked me out the first time I saw her do this. I cried so hard that my parents had to take me home. So the chicken strangling is a big deal.... In fact I often referred to my sweet grandmother as the chicken killer."

One of the most encouraging aspects of the study is the authors' willingness to share their raw data with interested parties. After pointing out that Kelly's utterances during the readings were largely limited to "OK" and similar comments, the authors add: "Of course, readers can only take our word for this, but we would be glad to provide interested readers with unedited transcripts or audiotapes so that they can evaluate this for themselves." Earlier, in the same vein, they wrote: "We welcome comments from other persons about the editing of the transcripts, and will provide copies of unedited and edited transcripts to persons who wish to examine and evaluate them." The transparency of this approach is refreshing.

The authors characterize the study as merely a preliminary effort and do not come to any conclusion about its "broader implications." Perhaps the most significant finding was the discovery of one particular medium whose readings were consistently ranked number 1 by the appropriate sitters. "We hope to follow-up what this person in additional studies. We also hope that we, or other investigators, can identify more such persons. Truly gifted mediums may, like other gifted persons, be rare, and those who can perform under the kinds of conditions necessary for inadequate scientific evaluation rarer still."

Also rare are investigators willing to take the time to conduct this kind of cautious, disciplined examination of what most people would dismiss as a spurious "fringe" phenomenon. I hope they'll continue their work. The heyday of psychical research into the mediumship may be far behind us, but Kelly and Arcangel are keeping that tradition alive.

Richard Hodgson, F.W.H. Myers, and William James must be well pleased.