Michael Prescott's Blog

Homily for the holidays

I was surprised to discover recently that I'm closing in on the 1,000th post of this blog. (This one is post number 977 on the present site; if you count the 24 posts on my old blog site, I've actually just passed the 1,000 mark.) Probably the majority of those posts have concerned the evidence for life after death. It's clear that I think the evidence is very good; otherwise, I wouldn't have spent so much time -- too much time, I sometimes think -- writing about it.

Yet while I'm pretty comfortable with my assessment of the evidence, I don't want to be dogmatic about it. There is, after all, a great danger in groupthink, when people become convinced that they have truth, goodness, and purity on their side, and that their critics are driven by base and ignoble motives. This is one of the lessons of the ongoing Climategate scandal, in which the CRU scientists simply stopped respecting their opponents. The problem is easy to see in that case, but harder to see when we look at issues that hit closer to home.

Despite my personal belief in an afterlife, based on my evaluation of the evidence, I think there are a number of perfectly understandable reasons why someone might choose not to believe in life after death.

Off the top of my head, I can think of the following possibilities:

1. You just can't imagine an afterlife or take the idea seriously. We all have limits to what we are willing to consider possible. We all have areas where our minds are made up. There's nothing wrong with this. It's human nature. There are theoretical possibilities that I refuse to consider because I find them too outlandish to be worth thinking about. For instance, the Many Worlds Theory, which holds that new universes are constantly branching off from our existing universe, strikes me as patently ridiculous. I know there is some kind of mathematical support for the idea, but I just don't believe it. And many people feel this way about life after death, or about the paranormal in general. Take the physicist Helmholtz, who once said: "I cannot believe it. Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses would lead me to believe in the transmission of thought from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sensation. It is clearly impossible." If you can't believe it, you can't believe it. There is no use trying to persuade yourself of something that cuts so deeply against the grain.

2. You don't find the evidence convincing, or convincing enough. The rules of deductive logic were originally formulated by Aristotle and refined over the centuries, and are now clear-cut. Using deductive logic, it's possible to prove a conclusion beyond any possible doubt. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal. QED. But inductive logic, which is what we use when drawing inferences from empirical observations, is a lot murkier. That's why one person can draw what seems like a perfectly reasonable inference from a body of data, while another person, looking at the exact same data, will not draw that inference. It is no use insisting that everyone should draw the same inferences from the same facts. Inductive logic, as presently understood and applied, simply doesn't work that way.

3. You've had a bad experience with religion or "spirituality." Some people have been pretty badly damaged by religious or spiritual authority figures, often in childhood, when they were most vulnerable. They have enduring psychological scars. The last thing they want to do is to embrace any idea that seems to give credence to a belief system that they have -- for perfectly sound reasons of psychological self-defense -- rejected. And it would be senselessly cruel to try to impose such a belief on them. It might simply reopen old wounds.

4. You find the idea of an afterlife repellent or scary. I can relate to this myself. In some ways I think personal extinction would be preferable to plunging into an unknown and largely unknowable future. C.D. Broad, a philosopher who was interested in paranormal investigations, explicitly said he did not want to survive death because he found the prospect undesirable. (Even so, he eventually became convinced that survival was more likely than not.) If even people who are sympathetic to psi research can be turned off by the idea of life after death, isn't it likely that people unsympathetic to psi would be even more turned off? And why should you believe something for which the evidence is not absolutely conclusive if you find it disturbing or frightening?

5. You find the idea of an afterlife distasteful on philosophical grounds. Somewhere in his writings Isaac Asimov said he had no qualms about the prospect of his personal extinction at death. He thought it was (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "the only appropriate destiny for a rational being." The idea of continuing to exist in some "spiritual" realm evidently struck him as disagreeable on an intellectual level. He wasn't necessarily frightened by the possibility -- I doubt he considered it even to be a possibility. It's just that, after a lifetime devoted to an outlook grounded in scientific materialism, he was philosophically averse to anything that smacked of mysticism. This is a perfectly understandable point of view.

6. You think general acceptance of life after death would lead to undesirable social consequences. Some people worry that if everyone became convinced of life after death, the value of earthly life would be diminished. Others fear that such a sea change in public attitudes would derail the scientific revolution and take us back to the dark ages. Still others note that people who are absolutely certain they will gain a reward in heaven sometimes become fanatics, inquisitors, and terrorists.

7. You think life after death is simply too good to be true. We all know that when a product or service is promised to deliver fabulous results at little or no cost, it's likely to be a scam. Life drills this lesson into us over and over again -- and for good reason. It's all too easy to be misled by wishful thinking. Somewhere in the world, there must still be people who respond enthusiastically to e-mails claiming that $2 million is waiting for them in a Nigerian bank account. We don't want to be one of those people. As the CSI: Miami theme song says, "We won't be fooled again." So when we hear stories about our departed loved ones living in a celestial paradise, we may very well think that anything that sounds this good is probably a ripoff. If our life experiences have taught us to react this way, it would be unreasonable to respond otherwise. After all, we've learned these reactions precisely in order to protect ourselves from harm.

This is, of course, only a partial list. Undoubtedly there are other sound reasons why someone either would not want to look at the evidence for life after death or would be unpersuaded by that evidence even after looking at it. When I say they are sound reasons, I mean that any of them is a good and sufficient justification for a person to reject the idea of an afterlife -- not because any of these reasons necessarily has logical merit, but because all of them speak to a person's subjective priorities, predispositions, and needs. And subjective considerations are every bit as valid as any "objective" or logical considerations. We are not obligated to inflict psychological damage on ourselves, or to compromise our deepest convictions, or to subject ourselves to fear and anxiety, or to turn our worldview upside-down and inside-out, merely because a set of data exists that may point to a particular conclusion. We are not here on earth to serve as data-processing machines, but rather to live our lives as best we can and to find happiness and contentment how we may.

I personally know people who have no belief in an afterlife or in any paranormal phenomena whatsoever, and are happy, serene, and joyful. Their worldview works for them, and there is no reason for them to change it. In fact, it would be unreasonable to ask that they change it, and even more unreasonable to demand that they do so.

If you think about it, there is really nothing more unreasonable than insisting that other people, who look at the world from their own unique perspective, should see things the way we ourselves do. First, it would be impossible for them to see the world through our eyes. Second, even if they could manage such a feat, nothing would be gained and everything would be lost; their distinctive qualities as individuals would be surrendered, and they would become mere carbon copies of us. If everyone in the world thought the same way and held the same set of beliefs, we would be like a race of ants, lacking individuality, personality, creativity, originality, and everything else that makes human life interesting.

There's nothing wrong in sharing our views with those who are open to them and interested in them. But proselytizing -- aggressively pushing a point of view on people who've made it clear they aren't interested -- is a violation of their personal space and a denigration of their personal dignity. And browbeating those who disagree with us, or treating them with anything less than respect, is not just an attack on a particular person (which would be bad enough); it's an attack on the uniqueness of every human being. It's really the ego's way of saying, "Everybody should be just like me." And what a sad world it would be if the ego should ever get its wish.

In this holiday season, we are sure to be reminded of the words of Luke 2:14 -- "peace on earth, good will toward men." One way to live that sentiment is to remember that we are each of us unique, and we shouldn't want it any other way.

The gift of doubt

Some years ago, security consultant Gavin De Becker wrote a worthwhile book called The Gift of Fear, which argues that fear, while ordinarily seen as a negative emotion, can actually serve a very positive and useful purpose in keeping us safe.

Maybe it's time for a book called The Gift of Doubt.

Most of us who are interested in the subject of life after death probably think it would be great to have no doubt -- to be utterly convinced of the reality of the afterlife once and for all. No more questions, no more searching, no more annoying equivocations, no more listening to that irritating skeptical voice in our heads -- just the sweet relief of certainty! We may find it frustrating that the evidence, while much stronger than most people realize, is nevertheless not quite conclusive. We may envy those who have achieved a state of total, unquestioning certitude.

But perhaps we shouldn't. There may be real advantages to maintaining some degree of doubt. We can see these advantages more clearly by looking at people who have lost all doubt, and how they have fared.

Many near-death experiencers report that they have lost all fear of death and are completely convinced that a beautiful afterlife awaits them. This might sound like a desirable frame of mind. But follow-up studies tracking these people (notably those conducted by P.M.H. Atwater) have found that many of them encounter a great deal of difficulty in readjusting to their normal, everyday lives following their NDE. They complain of feeling alienated from other people, of longing for the glorious afterlife environment and feeling dissatisfied with the comparatively mundane world around them, of feeling unfocused, of having difficulty committing to the priorities of their regular life. They may report extreme emotional sensitivity to relatively trivial stresses. Their relationships may suffer; their marriages may fail. On the plus side, they typically report significant spiritual growth. Whatever has happened to them clearly has had both positive and negative consequences.

Not infrequently, people who have had transcendent mystical experiences -- glimpses of what Richard Bucke called "cosmic consciousness" -- face increased difficulty in dealing with the workaday world. It's not a coincidence that many such people have retreated to a life of solitude and contemplation, finding the hurly-burly of everyday life too difficult to handle. Those who do remain out and about in the busy world may find themselves struggling heroically to balance their preternatural insights with their ordinary responsibilities.

Is it possible that some degree of doubt about the ultimate nature of life and death is psychologically healthy? That this kind of doubt is actually necessary to maintain a balanced state of being? Perhaps so. People who have become unhesitatingly convinced of the afterlife through their own personal exploration of the subject sometimes seem to gradually lose their critical acumen and eventually fall victim to obvious hoaxes and scams. The clearest example may be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose total commitment to the reality of life after death seems to have led him to accept some very dubious -- and in some cases definitively disproven -- claims, such as the purported materialization abilities of the Davenport Brothers and, most notoriously, the "Cottingley fairies" case.

An even more troubling development is the fanaticism that can accompany the absence of all doubt. The 9-11 hijackers apparently were motivated, at least in part, by the belief that they would be instantly transported to Paradise; the members of the Heaven's Gate cult, who committed mass suicide, were convinced they would be reborn aboard an alien spacecraft. In these cases and many others like them, some element of doubt might have prevented people from taking rash and tragic actions.

If doubt is, in fact, a useful component of our psychological makeup, perhaps it's not surprising that absolutely conclusive evidence for life after death remains, for most of us, somewhat elusive. The world may be set up in such a way that we get just enough evidence to dispel some doubt but not enough to dispel all doubt. If unquestionable scientific proof of life after death were ever announced -- something so conclusive that no one could dispute it -- the consequences for humanity might be pretty scary. An element of doubt may help keep most of us grounded; removal of all doubt could have unexpected and unwanted side effects.

So perhaps we should make friends with our doubt. Instead of treating the condition of doubt as a problem that needs to be solved, we might be better off seeing it as a necessary component of good psychological health. We might even be grateful to the universe for making it possible for most of us to maintain some degree of doubt.

In wishing for the resolution of all doubt, we may be wishing for something that's actually unhealthy. Like the child who longs to play with his daddy's gun, we may be better off not getting what we think we want. And the universe, like a wise parent, sees to it that most of us don't.

The limits of objectivity

While I was out for a walk today, something occurred to me that is pretty obvious, yet I hadn't thought of it quite this way before -- namely, that there can never be any objective answer to the question, "What is life?"

By "What is life?", I don't mean the strictly biological question of what physical processes are necessary to maintain the existence of an organism. Instead, I mean: "What is the nature, meaning, purpose, or significance of my life, or of the lives of others?"

Life, in this sense, is a set of subjective experiences. Everything we perceive, remember, or imagine is subjective -- a thought, image, sensation, etc. in our field of consciousness. This is not to say that there is no objective component to our experiences. There may well be. But we cannot access this objective component directly. What we know directly is only our personal experience, which is necessarily subjective.

Nor are we entitled to assume that the objective component, if any, is identical to our subjective experience of it. We simply don't know. A case can be made that our method of experiencing reality has developed in such a way as to simplify the world, and that our perceptions may no more resemble the underlying structure of reality than the icons on a computer desktop resemble the underlying applications they represent. This argument has been developed in some detail by Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive sciences at UCI, in his paper "The Interface Theory of Perception" (PDF).

In any event, all that we directly know consists of our subjective experience.

Now, suppose someone were to ask whether the formula "E equals mc squared" tastes sweet or sour. The obvious answer is that it has no taste, because mathematical formulas do not belong to the category of things we can taste. The question is a category error.

Well, subjective experiences are not part of the category of things that are objective. Therefore, if life is a set of subjective experiences, then looking for an objective answer to the question "What is life?" is also a category error. Or so it seems to me.

Objective methods of proof are possible only in regard to things that can be measured objectively. For practical purposes, we generally agree on what those things are. We can agree that there are objectively ten laboratory rats in a cage because we all agree on the existence of laboratory rats and the reliability of our sense perceptions. In fact, we are actually agreeing only that we all perceive ten rats, but as a practical matter, we assume that our perceptions accord with some underlying reality. To this extent objectivity is possible.

But when it comes to purely subjective experiences, how can there be any objective validation or proof? Without such validation, these experiences are doomed to be considered scientifically unproven, and some people will reject them for this reason. But in this case, "scientifically unproven" merely means that the particular method of science is not applicable to these experiences. There is no ground for saying that the experiences are unreal or unimportant just because they do not happen to fit the particular methodology that science employs.

Imagine if science were to "prove" that there is no such thing as love -- that love is purely a chemical reaction with no moral or spiritual significance. Would anyone be tempted to give up on love, to divorce his spouse or abandon his children, to deny his own subjective experience of love, merely because some presumed authority had ruled against it? But of course science could not "prove" such a proposition in the first place. The most it could prove is that there is some chemical state that is correlated with the subjective experience of love. Science as such cannot go beyond that point. Some individual scientist might presume to do so, but then he would not be speaking for "science" as such. He would be expounding his own private philosophy.

When I came back from my walk, I looked up an essay by William James called "Is Life Worth Living?", which can be read in full here. I had a vague recollection that there was something in this essay relevant to the subject at hand.

What follows is the final section of the essay, considerably compressed, and with a couple of the longer paragraphs broken up for easier reading. (It is worth reading the whole thing at the link provided.)

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Now, I wish to make you feel, if I can in the short remainder of this hour, that we have a right to believe the physical order to be only a partial order; that we have a right to supplement it by an unseen spiritual order which we assume on trust, if only thereby life may seem to us better worth living again. But as such a trust will seem to some of you sadly mystical and execrably unscientific, I must first say a word or two to weaken the veto which you may consider that science opposes to our act.

There is included in human nature an ingrained naturalism and materialism of mind which can only admit facts that are actually tangible. Of this sort of mind the entity called 'science' is the idol. Fondness for the word 'scientist' is one of the notes by which you may know its votaries; and its short way of killing any opinion that it disbelieves in is to call it 'unscientific.' It must be granted that there is no slight excuse for this. Science has made such glorious leaps in the last three hundred years, and extended our knowledge of nature so enormously both in general and in detail; men of science, moreover, have as a class displayed such admirable virtues, -- that it is no wonder if the worshippers of science lose their head....

[But science is still in its infancy, and therefore] our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea. Whatever else be certain, this at least is certain, -- that the world of our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no positive idea.

Agnostic positivism, of course, admits this principle theoretically in the most cordial terms, but insists that we must not turn it to any practical use. We have no right, this doctrine tells us, to dream dreams, or suppose anything about the unseen part of the universe, merely because to do so may be for what we are pleased to call our highest interests. We must always wait for sensible evidence for our beliefs; and where such evidence is inaccessible we must frame no hypotheses whatever.

Of course this is a safe enough position in abstracto. If a thinker had no stake in the unknown, no vital needs, to live or languish according to what the unseen world contained, a philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe either one way or the other would be his wisest cue. But, unfortunately, neutrality is not only inwardly difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, where our relations to an alternative are practical and vital. This is because, as the psychologists tell us, belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not. If, for instance, I refuse to believe that the room is getting cold, I leave the windows open and light no fire just as if it still were warm. If I doubt that you are worthy of my confidence, I keep you uninformed of all my secrets just as if you were unworthy of the same. If I doubt the need of insuring my house, I leave it uninsured as much as if I believed there were no need.

And so if I must not believe that the world is divine, I can only express that refusal by declining ever to act distinctively as if it were so, which can only mean acting on certain critical occasions as if it were not so, or in an irreligious way. There are, you see, inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action, and must count as action, and when not to be for is to be practically against; and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an unattainable thing.

And, after all, is not this duty of neutrality where only our inner interests would lead us to believe, the most ridiculous of commands? Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner interests can have no real connection with the forces that the hidden world may contain? ... Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic "thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence" is simply an expression (free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind....

It is a fact of human nature, that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma or definition. The bare assurance that this natural order is not ultimate but a mere sign or vision, the external staging of a many-storied universe, in which spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal, -- this bare assurance is to such men enough to make life seem worth living in spite of every contrary presumption suggested by its circumstances on the natural plane.... 

Probably to almost every one of us here the most adverse life would seem well worth living, if we only could be certain that our bravery and patience with it were terminating and eventuating and bearing fruit somewhere in an unseen spiritual world. But granting we are not certain, does it then follow that a bare trust in such a world is a fool's paradise and lubberland, or rather that it is a living attitude in which we are free to indulge? Well, we are free to trust at our own risks anything that is not impossible, and that can bring analogies to bear in its behalf....

[James analogizes the life of a domestic animal, who cannot conceive of the larger sphere of human relations around him, to the life of a human being, who cannot fathom the possible larger sphere of divine activity around him.]  In the dog's life we see the world invisible to him because we live in both worlds. In human life, although we only see our world, and his within it, yet encompassing both these worlds a still wider world may be there, as unseen by us as our world is by him; and to believe in that world may be the most essential function that our lives in this world have to perform.

But "may be! may be!" one now hears the positivist contemptuously exclaim; "what use can a scientific life have for maybes?" Well, I reply, the 'scientific' life itself has much to do with maybes, and human life at large has everything to do with them. So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or text-book, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.

And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. Suppose, for instance, that you are climbing a mountain, and have worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Have faith that you can successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself, and think of all the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair, you roll in the abyss.

In such a case (and it belongs to an enormous class), the part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself. You make one or the other of two possible universes true by your trust or mistrust, -- both universes having been only maybes, in this particular, before you contributed your act....

Suppose, however thickly evils crowd upon you, that your unconquerable subjectivity proves to be their match, and that you find a more wonderful joy than any passive pleasure can bring in trusting ever in the larger whole. Have you not now made life worth living on these terms? What sort of a thing would life really be, with your qualities ready for a tussle with it, if it only brought fair weather and gave these higher faculties of yours no scope? ....

Here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature of things; and compared with these concrete movements of our soul all abstract statements and scientific arguments -- the veto, for example, which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith -- sound to us like mere chatterings of the teeth. For here possibilities, not finished facts, are the realities with which we have actively to deal....

Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. The 'scientific proof' that you are right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or some stage of being which that expression may serve to symbolize) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may then turn to the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry IV. greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory had been gained: "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! we fought at Arques, and you were not there."

The spectrum

My life is very exciting. Take last night, for instance. It was a Saturday night, a time when most people are going out to dinner, taking in a movie, or visiting a nightclub. Me? I was thinking about split-brain patients.

You've heard of them -- people who've had their two cerebral hemispheres surgically severed, and who then exhibit clear signs of independent mental function in each hemisphere. Such cases are sometimes used as an argument that consciousness is produced by the brain, as opposed to the dualistic idea that consciousness operates through the brain. The argument, as I understand it, is that if consciousness did originate outside the brain, it could not be split in two by the splitting of the brain; it would remain unitary regardless of the brain's condition.

As you might expect, I'm unimpressed by this line of reasoning. It seems to me that the split-brain experiments show this much, and nothing more -- that consciousness as it is experienced while we are embodied on earth is dependent on the brain, and can be affected in various ways by changes to the brain.

I'm not sure why this is thought to be a point worth making, as I doubt that very many people have ever questioned it. Anyone who has consumed alcohol or observed the effects of Alzheimer's -- to give just two examples -- knows that changes in brain chemistry or brain structure will affect the way consciousness is experienced.

The particular significance of the split-brain data is held to be that two loci of consciousness are produced -- a left hemisphere locus and a right hemisphere locus. The right hemisphere locus seems to be fairly limited in its capabilities; nevertheless, there is some consciousness operating in (or through) that part of the brain, which is distinct from the consciousness operating in (or through) the left hemisphere. Thus the nonverbal right hemisphere will be aware of things that the verbalizing left hemisphere doesn't perceive.

This phenomenon is certainly interesting, but I fail to see why or how it says anything about whether consciousness is produced by the brain, or merely operates through it. If we assume, for argument's sake, that some form of dualism is true and that consciousness uses the brain as an instrument, then cutting the instrument into two separate pieces is clearly going to affect the way consciousness uses it. As a rough analogy, consider a situation where a gust of wind blows through a pipe, producing a musical sound. If the pipe is cut in two pieces, then the gust of wind will blow through both pieces and produce two sounds. But there is still only one gust of wind.

In order to address this kind of argument in greater detail, we first have to consider the more fundamental question: what is consciousness? Clearly, consciousness cannot be simply what we are aware of at any given moment. Such a narrow definition would leave out the subconscious mind and, for that matter, the nonverbalized right-hemispheric awareness of split-brain patients.

I think the best understanding of consciousness is the one suggested by F.W H. Myers' term "the subliminal self." By subliminal, Myers meant below (or above) the limits of ordinary awareness. Myers' conception was that consciousness was a multilevel affair, comparable to a house with a cellar (the subconscious) and a sunlit attic (what we might call the superconscious).

Or, to change the image, we might think of consciousness as a segment of a frequency spectrum. A narrow band of frequencies in the middle of the spectrum corresponds to our ordinary consciousness, while the much wider bands on either side correspond to our subconscious and superconscious -- our "lower self" and "higher self." How far these may extend in either direction is unknown, but possibly they extend a good deal further than we imagine.

Proponents of dualism sometimes regard the brain as a receiver or a filter. Continuing the spectrum analogy, we might say that the brain can strongly and clearly pick up only the frequencies in the midrange, and can pick up, at best, only weak, ghostly impressions from the higher and lower ranges, roughly similar to the occasional bleed-through from one radio station to another one that is adjacent on the dial.

Now, if there is any truth in this picture (which is purely illustrative and not intended as a formal theory), then what would happen if consciousness were to find itself operating "outside of" the body -- i.e., freed from the brain? I think we would expect to have sudden access to the whole spectrum, including the ends that had previously been cut off by the limitations of the brain as a receiver (or filter). We would still be conscious of "ourselves," because the familiar midrange of the spectrum would not have been lost; but we would abruptly be aware that we are much more than we had realized.

We would have immediate access to the total spectrum of our consciousness, including the "high end" of the spectrum, and from this higher perspective we might see a logic, a pattern, a wholeness, a meaning and significance to everything that had previously seemed random, accidental, and unimportant. This perspective, once glimpsed, could never be completely forgotten -- but if we then returned to our normal brain-based mode of consciousness, with all its narrowness and limitations, we would be hard-pressed to prove our insights or even to put them into words. They would be "ineffable."

Varying the analogy slightly, suppose that a person with normal human vision were briefly gifted with the ability to see beyond the edges of the visible light spectrum. A whole new world would open up for this person, a world of infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths, of X-rays and microwaves, of radio waves and gamma rays. If he were then to return to using only his normal vision, could he adequately describe in words the colors and sights he'd seen? I don't see how he could. The experience could not be translated into the terms familiar to the rest of us, who are restricted to normal vision. Yet in fact what we call normal vision perceives only a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the other frequencies in the spectrum are no less real than the visible light frequencies.

So this is the kind of experience we would logically expect if something like the spectrum idea is true of consciousness. And in many cases, isn't this exactly what we do observe? The literature of transcendent mystical experiences, deathbed visions, and near-death experiences all seems to agree that a person freed from the limitations of ordinary consciousness does experience precisely this feeling of expanded awareness, holistic perception, and union with a higher self.

It seems to me that changes in consciousness brought about by changes in the brain -- whether temporary changes like intoxication or permanent changes like split-brain surgery -- pose a problem for dualism only if we assume that our ordinary embodied consciousness is the only consciousness there could possibly be. On the other hand, if we see our ordinary consciousness as a narrowly filtered slice of the larger spectrum of consciousness, the greater part of which we cannot access during our embodied life except under special circumstances, then the problem simply disappears. (In the postscript below, I look at a related objection, first addressed by William James.)

Is there any way of testing this idea or trying to disprove it? Showing that brain illness, brain damage, and pharmacological alteration of the brain can affect or even split consciousness will not disprove it. What would disprove it, I suppose, is if no "higher" or "expanded" consciousness was reported in conditions where a dualist would expect to find it. For instance, if people undergoing NDEs, whose brains have temporarily stopped functioning or are barely functioning, did not report a state of consciousness different from their ordinary state, then this would be good evidence that the brain does not act as any sort of filter or receiver, or at least that there are no higher or lower frequencies of consciousness that are being cut off by the brain's reception.

But of course, people undergoing NDEs frequently do report a higher, expanded state of consciousness in various respects. For instance, they may report supernormal perception, as in this NDE of a drowning victim:

Suddenly I could see and hear as never before. The sound of a waterfall was so crisp and clear that it just cannot be explained by words. Earlier that year, my right ear had been injured.... But now I could hear perfectly clearly, better than I ever had before. My sight was even more beautiful. Sights that were close in distance were as clear as those far away, and this was at the same moment, which astounded me. There was no blurriness in my vision whatsoever. I felt as if I had been limited by my physical senses all these years, and that I had been looking at a distorted picture of reality. [quoted in Lessons from the Light, by Kenneth Ring, p. 35]

Or they may report supernormal knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, as in Carl Jung's NDE:

I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality. There I would at last understand - this too was a certainty - what historical nexus I or my life fitted into. I would know what had been before me, why I had come into being, and where my life was flowing.... My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had it taken this course? Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me? What had I made of them? What will follow? I felt sure that I would receive an answer to all the questions ..."

Are there other test cases we find, besides NDEs? How about Induced After-Death Communications -- subjective encounters with the deceased that can be brought about by EMDR therapy? I've discussed these elsewhere. For our present purposes it's enough to point out that the deceased figures encountered in these IADCs invariably communicate understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance, and give the impression that they can see life from a higher perspective. They are still recognizably themselves, but they seem to also be more than themselves -- an enhanced, ennobled, elevated version of themselves. Again, this is just what we would expect if there is a wide spectrum of consciousness, much of which is unavailable to us during our embodied existence, but which becomes available after the brain no longer cuts out the high and low ends of the spectrum.

How about mediumistic communications? According to many such messages, the difficulties of "coming through" are considerable; the communicator must "lower his vibrations" and enter a trancelike state in order to speak through the medium. In other words, to use the medium's brain as an instrument, the communicator must reduce his own range of consciousness. Isn't this strikingly consistent with the spectrum idea? Doesn't it help explain lapses in the quality of mediumistic communications, and the frequently expressed frustration of the communicators themselves?

I also can't help thinking of the persistence, across time and cultures, of the idea of guardian angels. Suppose for a moment that the spectrum idea is true, and that the brain ordinarily receives only the midrange of the spectrum, cutting out the highs and lows; but that in certain states of mind, such as meditation or a hypnagogic state, some part of the hidden material can bleed through. Wouldn't the insights -- fragmentary and tantalizing though they might be -- that we glean from these "altered states" of consciousness dovetail neatly with the idea of a guardian angel (or personal deity) with whom we can commune, and from whom we can gain special wisdom? Socrates' daimon, who was said to have guided him throughout his life, could be part of the higher range of the spectrum of his consciousness, intuitively accessible through reverie or meditation.

I don't think anyone would deny that there are at least two levels of consciousness -- the everyday conscious mind, and the subconscious. Myers' "subliminal self" makes room for a third level, a higher self, which is just as mysterious to our ordinary consciousness as the subconscious is, but no less real. And I see no reason why this total range of consciousness, though it no doubt can be influenced by our experiences and conditions while embodied, must be in any way dependent on our embodiment.

In short, I see no problem for dualism in the undeniable fact that our ordinary waking consciousness can be impaired, distorted, or chopped up as a direct result of injuries and insults to the brain which consciousness uses. There is just no reason to think that our ordinary, everyday consciousness is the totality of our consciousness. On the contrary, I think it is likely to be a rather thin slice of a wide spectrum ranging from the subconscious to the superconscious, from the lower self to the higher self. A temporary alteration of brain activity, perhaps during meditation or at the advent of sleep, may put us in touch with a larger portion of this total spectrum, and death (if it entails separation of consciousness from the body) would naturally open up even more of the spectrum of consciousness to our immediate awareness. We would still be ourselves, but we would also be more than what we presently know ourselves to be.

This idea, of course, cannot be proved, but it is consistent with a great deal of mystical teaching, folkloric tradition, and parapsychological research. I think it is more likely to be true than any purely materialistic account, which cannot explain mystical transcendence, paranormal phenomena, or for that matter, consciousness itself.

====

P.S. One anti-survivalist argument is that if consciousness is radically divided in two by split-brain surgery, then our personality as such must similarly be the result of the brain's structure, and so upon death (even in a dualistic framework) the individual personality would be extinguished, and all that would be left is some egoless universal consciousness. William James, in his famous essay "Human Immortality," which lays out the transmission theory of consciousness, anticipates this objection and addresses it in endnote 5:

The transmission-theory connects itself very naturally with that whole tendency of thought known as transcendentalism.... But it is not necessary to identify the consciousness postulated in the lecture, as pre-existing behind the scenes, with the Absolute Mind of transcendent Idealism, although, indeed, the notion of it might lead in that direction. The absolute Mind of transcendental Idealism is one integral Unit, one single World-mind. For the purposes of my lecture, however, there might be many minds behind the scenes as well as one. All that the transmission-theory absolutely requires is that they should transcend our minds, -- which thus come from something mental that pre-exists, and is larger than themselves. [endnote 5]

In his preface to the second edition, James elaborates on his point:

So many critics have made one and the same objection to the doorway to immortality which my lecture claims to be left open by the "transmission-theory" of cerebral action, that I feel tempted, as the book is again going to press, to add a word of explanation.

If our finite personality here below, the objectors say, be due to the transmission through the brain of portions of a pre-existing larger consciousness, all that can remain after the brain expires is the larger consciousness itself as such, with which we should thenceforth be perforce reconfounded, the only means of our existence in finite personal form having ceased.

But this, the critics continue, is the pantheistic idea of immortality, survival, namely, in the soul of the world; not the Christian idea of immortality, which means survival in strictly personal form.

In showing the possibility of a mental life after the brain's death, they conclude, the lecture has at the same time shown the impossibility of its identity with the personal life, which is the brain's function....

The plain truth is that one may conceive of the mental world behind the veil in as individualistic a form as one pleases, without any detriment to the general scheme by which the brain is represented as a transmissive organ.

If the extreme individualistic view were taken, one's finite mundane consciousness would be an extract from one's larger, truer personality, the latter having even now some sort of reality behind the scenes. And in transmitting it -- to keep to our extremely mechanical metaphor, which confessedly throws no light on the actual modus operandi -- one's brain would also leave effects upon the part remaining behind the veil; for when a thing is torn, both fragments feel the operation.

And just as (to use a very coarse figure) the stubs remain in a check-book whenever a check is used, to register the transaction, so these impressions on the transcendent self might constitute so many vouchers of the finite experiences of which the brain had been the mediator; and ultimately they might form that collection within the larger self of memories of our earthly passage, which is all that, since Locke's day, the continuance of our personal identity beyond the grave has by psychology been recognized to mean.

It is true that all this would seem to have affinities rather with preexistence and with possible re-incarnations than with the Christian notion of immortality. But my concern in the lecture was not to discuss immortality in general. It was confined to showing it to be not incompatible with the brain-function theory of our present mundane consciousness. I hold that it is so compatible, and compatible moreover in fully individualized form. [Preface to Second Edition; emphases in original]

I think it is fair to say that a purely logical terms, there can be no objection to the possibility that the personality does dissolve upon death, leaving only an egoless "world mind." However, in considering the problem, we are obliged to use not only logic but also empirical data. And it seems to me that the empirical evidence makes this idea highly unlikely, inasmuch as people who have reported transcendent mystical experiences, near-death experiences, etc., generally do not speak of losing the sense of self altogether. Rather, they speak of an expanded sense of self.

Even mystics who report that they were "united with all existence" seem to retain some sense of personal identity, though its importance may be vastly diminished; they say, "I was one with the universe," which implies that there was still an "I."

On the basis of reports from people who've undergone these altered states of consciousness (and on the basis of ADCs, IADCs, mediumship, past-life memories, etc.), I would say that the individual personality probably does survive death, but in an expanded form. Though the alternative possibility of merging selflessly into a universal mind is logically possible, it does not seem to fit the facts, or what I take to be the facts. (This is not to say that at some later stage of postmortem existence, the personality might not eventually lose itself in the vast ocean of a universal mind. Who knows? But in the earlier stages, this does not seem to happen, if the available evidence can be trusted.)

Incidentally, note that James's formulation above fits the spectrum idea very nicely:

If the extreme individualistic view were taken, one's finite mundane consciousness would be an extract from one's larger, truer personality, the latter having even now some sort of reality behind the scenes.

This is just the way I look at it, and I think it is precisely this possibility that is overlooked by those on the other side of the question, who seem to assume that consciousness must be limited to our everyday experience of it (our "finite mundane consciousness," as James put it).

====

P.P.S. Here are a few additional examples of the enhanced clarity of thought often reported in NDEs.

In Irreducible Mind, by Kelly and Kelly et al, we read:

A recent analysis of our collection [of NDE cases] showed that 80% of near-death experiencers described their thinking during the NDE as "clearer than usual" (45%) or "as clear as usual" (35%). Additionally, 74% described their thinking as "faster than usual" (37%) or at "the usual speed" (37%); 65% described their thinking as "more logical than usual" (29%) or "as logical as usual" (36%); and 55% described their control over their thoughts as "more control than usual" (19%) or "as much control as usual" (36%). [p. 386, footnote 16]

The authors add:

Furthermore, an analysis of cases in our collection in which we were able to examine contemporaneous medical records showed that, in fact, people reported enhanced mental functioning significantly more often when they were actually physiologically close to death then when they were not. [p. 386, main text, emphasis in original]

The fact that proximity to physical death correlates positively with enhanced, as opposed to merely normal, mentation would count as evidence that the brain does act as a filter of sorts, and that as its filtering activity lessens, consciousness expands.

Irreducible Mind also quotes the famed NDEr Pam Reynolds as saying that during her NDE she was "the most aware that I think I have ever been in my life," and that her vision was "not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision," while her hearing "was a clearer hearing than with my ears." (p. 393, citing Sabom, Light and Death.)

Two other quotes from Irreducible Mind are worth noting. One is a statement by a cardiac arrest patient, who said, "I do not have words to express how vivid the experience was. The main thing that stands out is the clarity of my thoughts during the episode." Another is a statement made by a six-year-old who also suffered cardiac arrest (presumably during surgery), and remarked that "it was realer than real." [pp. 417-418]

"Realer than real" is how we might expect our experience to feel if we abruptly obtained access to a wider range of consciousness and perception.

Also, I looked at Robert Crookall's book More Astral Projections, which compiles numerous accounts of OBEs and NDEs (although the term NDE had not been coined when Crookall's book was published in 1964). Comparing the statements of OBErs and NDErs with those communicated through mediums, Crookall writes:

Both astral projectors and the 'dead' state that the physical body acts on the Soul Body, and therefore on the Soul and on consciousness, after the manner of the "blinkers" on the harness of a horse, or like a damper, a blanket, a sphincter, etc.: it narrows, focuses and retards our thought and emotions. This statement accords with another (made independently) that when the physical body is shed, either temporarily, as in astral projection, or permanently, at death, thought and feeling is much more rapid and more intense.... [Case] No. 20 similarly said,  "You may think that you can think and act with rapidity -- but once you have become conscious in the astral body you will realize at what a snail's pace the conscious mind moves in comparison." ...

The "communicator" of E.C. Randall (The Dead Have Never Died ... 1918, p. 122) said that all the mental actions of mortals are "intensified to a degree you cannot imagine" once the blinkers-like body is cast off . [Three similar examples are given, followed by:] "Julia" told W.T. Stead [After Death ... 1897, p. 33] "Material senses are not so much to help us to see and hear as to bar us off from seeing and hearing. We are on earth, as it were, with blinkers on.... Death is more of a laying-down of the blinkers that limited and confined our vision than almost anything else." [pp. 122-123]

It's just me

My last post concerned the scientific investigation of NDEs. Here I want to speak personally. I want to make clear, right up front, that what I'm saying is purely subjective and is not intended to serve as any sort of scientific argument or thesis. It's just a personal observation, which may resonate with some readers.

When I first started looking into paranormal phenomena back in 1997, I was very skeptical and wary of being drawn in too deeply or too fast. One area that I avoided looking at for quite a while was life after death. I couldn't conceive of how such a thing would be possible -- where would the dead people go? -- and I felt the whole subject was likely to be a waste of time.

Sometime around 1999 (I think), I was in a used book shop and saw a paperback copy of Raymond Moody's bestseller Life After Life. I reacted with disdain. Who would want to read that crap? Yes, I had read some of Rupert Sheldrake's books by then, and other books dealing with outré theories and strange phenomena, but this was a bridge too far. I wasn't going to buy it. But then I noticed that because the book was in very poor condition, it had been marked down to 50 cents.

Well, I figured, for 50 cents, why not give it a shot? It'll be good for a laugh anyway. So I bought it.

My point is, I was not predisposed to like this book.

Nor is the book terribly scientific in its approach. Later studies of NDEs -- those by Kenneth Ring and Michael Sabom, for instance -- made an effort to approach the subject in a methodical way. Life After Life, on the other hand, is basically a series of reports Moody elicited from his patients, in no particular order, with few details and no clear method.

Nevertheless, when I read the book, a peculiar and unexpected thing happened. I felt that it made sense to me. More than that, it felt real. It felt ... familiar.

Actually, it felt as if I had known this all along, but somehow had forgotten it. Now Moody had reminded me, and I thought, "Well, of course. I should have remembered."

Sometime after reading the book,  I recalled a rather odd feature of my early childhood, which was that I was chronically dissatisfied with the world. I felt irritated -- exasperated, even -- by things like litter and unkempt lawns and ramshackle buildings and rude people. I thought that everything should be perfect. In fact, I liked to imagine designing a theme park like Disneyland where everything would be immaculately maintained and the staff and visitors would be unfailingly cheerful and kind. I didn't care so much about the rides at this fanciful park of mine; what appealed to me was the idea of a community, a self-contained world, where everything was beautiful and clean and perfect and happy.

Life After Life brought back these childhood memories, and I wondered if maybe -- just maybe --  I had remembered, as a child, a perfect, beautiful environment that I had known before I was even born, and if my desire to recreate it was an attempt to get back to that better, cleaner, shinier, happier world.

Be that as it may, my response to Life After Life was that it was probably true. This response, I freely admit, was not based on any scientific evaluation of the book's contents. It was simply a gut feeling. This is the way it is -- that's how I felt.

Naturally I was not intellectually satisfied with a mere feeling, so I dove into the literature of NDEs and quickly found that there were more rigorous studies available. But I wouldn't have pursued this interest in the first place if the book -- the very idea -- hadn't felt "right" to me.

I suspect that Life After Life became a surprise bestseller in part because other people, consciously or unconsciously, shared my response. It may be that this knowledge -- nonverbal, nonrational -- is part of us all, but is usually buried under the pressures, strains, and distractions of daily life, emerging only when someone reminds us of it. It's like a dream we've forgotten, until something comes along to jog our memory.

Our culture being what it is, we then feel the need to justify, explain, rationalize, defend, and prove our position, rather than simply accepting our feelings as valid indicators of a larger truth. And this is not altogether a bad thing, since a commitment to rational analysis may help us steer clear of chimerical notions and false leads.

Still, an intuitive sense that this is the way it is probably underlies a great deal of the fascination with the paranormal, and especially with life after death. And I don't think we should be too quick to dismiss such intuitions.  Of course, they will never be convincing to other people who don't share them. But should that matter? Where is it written that our purpose in life is to get other people to agree with us? Shouldn't our purpose, instead, be to define our own truth, on our own terms, in a way that at least makes sense to us, even if to no one else?

As I said, this is unscientific, and I am not trying to prove anything here about the validity of NDEs or life after death. I simply want to raise the possibility that we may, perhaps, at times, experience a kind of "deep knowing" that goes deeper than scientific investigation, and which may never persuade anyone else, but can be immensely persuasive to us.

And perhaps we can benefit from honoring this kind of knowing, even if it isn't something that can be written up as a laboratory report, peer reviewed, and footnoted.

On the road

Since 1997, I've been intensely interested in spiritual issues -- the whole question of the "meaning of life" -- why we're here, what it's all about, and whether it matters. I've tried different paths with differing degrees of success.

One of the routes I explored was "nondualistic mysticism," a venerable tradition in both East and West, but probably more commonly associated with Eastern religions. Though I've read some books on Buddhism, my main exposure to this way of thinking comes from the popular writer Eckhart Tolle, who's become something of a cultural phenomenon, especially after being embraced by New Age diva Oprah Winfrey.

Tolle offers some valuable insights and is no doubt correct in many of his criticisms of the ego-driven modern world. The meditative techniques he describes so well can be quite helpful in shutting down the stream-of-consciousness babble of the mind and providing some much-needed "inner peace."

That said, I must add that I don't find Tolle's overall philosophy or worldview very satisfying. For me at least, it seems to lead to a certain lassitude, a feeling that nothing matters much or at all; and this feeling slides pretty easily into a depressed state of mind. I'm sure many of Tolle's admirers are not depressed, so this may just be a personal quirk of my own. Nevertheless, it's enough to keep me from adopting the Tollean perspective.

Another thing turns me off Tolle, as well -- namely, the fact that his viewpoint doesn't seem to match up very well with the information provided by mediums and near-death experiencers. For Tolle, the personality is an artifice that will dissolve upon death -- yet mediumistic communicators emphatically state (and demonstrate) that personality persists after death. NDEs usually indicate the same thing; it is rare that a near-death experiencer reports losing the sense of self in a transport of mystical oneness, though occasionally such claims are made. For the most part, NDErs (like those who come through mediums) seem to remain who they were during life, but with access to a different perspective that gives them new insights. I can't see any reason to discount all this evidence, some of it very compelling, simply to adopt the Tollean viewpoint -- a viewpoint that strikes me as enervating and dispiriting anyway.

Of all the major world religions, Christianity is the one I've looked into most thoroughly. I went through a period when I was reading a good deal of New Testament scholarship and Christian apologetics. Much of the apologetic material is quite sophisticated, but I can't shake the feeling that the same kinds of arguments could be employed just as easily to prove the truth of any other faith tradition.

Moreover, any belief system that depends ultimately on ancient texts is problematic. Who can say if the texts are accurate, or if the events they described took place at all? I don't doubt the historical reality of Jesus, and I think he was probably "resurrected" in the sense that his etheric body was seen by his followers. I even think it's possible the tomb was empty, and the earthly body vanished in some miraculous way. And I've read enough about the Shroud of Turin to think that it may be a genuine relic, preserving Jesus' image at the time of and this event. (Yes, I know about the carbon dating, but see here for more on the story.)

So I am obviously very sympathetic to Christianity and to claims for the extraordinary nature of Jesus. Still, I think his story has probably been somewhat misinterpreted. To me, he was -- or is -- a spiritual master of the highest order, someone whose insights, teachings, and powers were far beyond those of nearly all other people. But I don't think he was infallible, omniscient, omnipotent, or part of a triune deity.

Actually, Jesus' teachings have something in common with the messages received by some mediums. It has often been noted that mediumistic communicators, in trying to deal with earthly problems, can be rather impractical -- suggesting solutions that would work in an ideal world but not in the world as it is. In particular, many of these spirits seem to have lost their understanding of money and the role it plays in human life. Jesus' teachings strike me in somewhat the same way -- lofty, idealistic, powerful, but not altogether practical. It is easy enough for a spirit, or a spiritual master, to advise us not to fret about money -- "the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin" (Matthew 6:28) -- but in our practical day-to-day lives financial considerations can be pretty darned important. We can't actually live like the lilies of the field, but it seems that those persons, incarnate or discarnate, who reach a certain level of spiritual advancement have trouble relating to the practical problems that dog the rest of us.

In any event, I take the story of Jesus as the (imperfect and embellished) record of an advanced spiritual teacher who, after his death, was able to manifest himself to his disciples -- many of whom were probably chosen for their latent psychic abilities in the first place. A complicated theology arose out of this episode as those followers and others who came after them tried to make sense of it, but this theology, overlaid with both traditional Hebrew and neo-Platonist formulations, may be more misleading than helpful.

If I don't go in for traditional Western religion, as represented by Christianity, or for the Eastern mystical tradition, as represented in popular form by Tolle, then just what is my belief system at present? I would have to say that of the various worldviews I've looked at, spiritualism -- the movement that began in the 19th century and enjoyed its heyday during the First World War -- is the one that most appeals to me. That's not to say there isn't a lot of nonsense in spiritualism -- of course there is. There have been fraudulent and self-deluded mediums, and there are inconsistencies in messages received even by genuine mediums. But when we strip away the doubtful or discredited mediums and look at the essence of what the best mediums had to say, I think we find a a worldview that is largely consistent with itself and with the best evidence from other sources, such as NDEs, OBEs, IADCs, and Stevenson's reincarnation research.

The worldview of spiritualism essentially holds that "we are spiritual beings having a physical existence." (The quote is from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I don't think he was a spiritualist in the sense in which I'm using the word, but his statement sums up spiritualism very nicely.) Spiritualism doesn't deny the existence of physical reality with all its travails and challenges, but it does say that this phase of our existence is temporary and serves a purpose. The purpose is for us to learn certain lessons -- lessons that vary from person to person depending on the individual's stage of spiritual growth. Reincarnation is part of the plan, though the details are a bit murky and -- according to some communicators -- impossible for the earthly mind, bound by space and time, to fully comprehend.

There are heavens and hells -- more precisely, different planes of spiritual existence -- but these too are temporary. What we may think of as heaven or paradise is not a final destination but more like a way station, a place to rest, recuperate, and recharge the spiritual batteries before continuing to new challenges and opportunities. (In this respect, it is interesting to recall the cryptic saying attributed to Jesus, "In my Father's house are many mansions" [John 14:2]. The word incorrectly translated as "mansions" actually means "resting places" or "way stations.")

Those who've done their best to be good and decent in their earthly lives will make the journey faster than those whose cruel and malicious behavior has stunted their spiritual growth. The worst offenders will have to undergo a change of heart and sincere repentance and atonement, perhaps throughout several incarnations, before moving on. But no one is left to languish in misery forever, even if that misery is self-inflicted.

This sort of thing is rather abstract, but I've found that some of spiritualism's claims can be tested in a private, introspective (and necessarily subjective) way. Spiritualist teachings emphasize that we all have one or more spirit guides available to help us, if we only ask. I've found that if I put myself in a suitably relaxed frame of mind -- an almost trancelike state similar to the hypnagogic stage that precedes sleep -- and address a specific question to a (vividly imagined) "spirit guide," I can receive meaningful answers that clear up the question very satisfactorily to me. Some of the insights I've received via this method have been enormously helpful, and I've come to rely on it whenever I'm faced with a problem or a dilemma. Am I "merely" accessing otherwise hidden portions of my own mind? Possibly, but even so, this would not contradict spiritualism, which places great importance on the "higher self" ordinarily concealed from our view. To me, the crucial point is that the method works. Understanding exactly how it works is less important to me than actually being able to use it.

Some people say rather indignantly, "I've never sensed any spirit guides or guardian angels. I've never met any beings like that!" A question to ask would be: "Have you ever tried to meet them?" Some ideas can be tested only by personally seeking the answer with an open mind. The person who insists there is no spiritual world because "I've never seen it," when he has never actually looked, is like a person who insists there's no such thing as music because "I've never heard it," while he resolutely holds his hands over his ears.

Spiritualism can be criticized on various grounds; advocates of more traditional religions call it shallow, while those inclined to mysticism call it crude. Both camps seem to regard spiritualism as simplistic, almost childish, and there is some justice in this criticism. But then, many great truths have a disarming simplicity, an almost childish quality. The Golden Rule, probably the greatest moral truth ever enunciated (and one found in many traditions around the world), is simple enough that even a child can grasp it. Its very simplicity is the key to its power.

Besides, might we not expect the ultimate truth about our spiritual nature to be consistent with the thoughts and feelings of childhood? Childhood is when we are probably more closely in touch with our spiritual side than at any later time. Arguably the fairy-tale, happily-ever-after quality of some spiritualist messages is a point in their favor. Children may enjoy fairy tales precisely because they are young enough to dimly recall -- and yearn for -- the kind of heaven that such stories re-create. Perhaps Jesus was alluding to something along these lines when he said that only by becoming childlike could one be ready to enter "the kingdom of heaven."

At any rate, of the approaches I've investigated, spiritualism remains the most compelling to me. I don't think it is the whole truth, but I do think it takes us closer to the truth than ancient texts or Zen-like mindfulness (though these approaches, too, have their place).

Of course, we all have to travel down our own road -- and your mileage may vary.

Okay, now I feel old

Really old.

"Did my dad ... really ever think this was a credible piece of technology?"

I wonder what this kid would think of an eight-track player. Or a phonograph.

Thought for the day

On the comments thread of my post "Rovin', " there's been an interesting debate in progress between Keith Augustine and some of our regular commenters. I've found it enjoyable to follow along.

There's no doubt it can be irritating to encounter someone who disagrees with one's own views, especially if those views are deeply held. On the other hand, it's worth remembering that the other person's views are just as deeply and sincerely held, and he may feel equally irritated by us!

Just today I was rereading Michael Tymn's excellent book The Articulate Dead, an overview of early studies in mediumship, and I came across a purportedly channeled quote from Claude's Book (1919), by L. Kelway-Bamber. The discarnate Claude, communicating to his mother, says of his afterlife environs:

What makes this place so interesting is the variety of the people in it, just as the [earthly] world is interesting for the same reason. It would be dull if human beings were all exactly of the same stereotyped pattern physically and mentally. I think that is what made the old idea of the conventional heaven so uninviting.

It's a commonplace thought, in a way, yet the truth it expresses is all too easily forgotten.

By the way, the complete text of Claude's Book is available in PDF form here.

I reviewed Michael Tymn's book here.

The simple life

In my recent post "Does Survival Matter?", I wondered if there was any need for the personality to survive death. The responses were very interesting, and after due consideration, I think the points that were made answered my question very well.

There is, first of all, the likelihood that the self continues growing and changing, so that the small, petty aspects of the self that sometimes imprison us now will drop away. More than one commenter observed that the person you are now is not the person you were at age six, or at age one. Yet there has been continuity of consciousness, despite all the changes and personal growth.

Furthermore, it is quite likely, as Art points out, that a key purpose of life on earth is precisely to individuate - to "learn separation," as he says. Learning to be a separate individual would seem pointless if, at the end of the day, we simply merge into an undifferentiated collective consciousness. Presumably this sense of personal uniqueness continues, even as new qualities evolve. Otherwise the whole exercise of living out an earthly lifespan would seem to be a waste of time.

Zetetic Chick expands on this idea:

Suppose that individual selves don't exist. In such scenario, what's important and what's unimportant? For who? For what motive? Who cares?

So, the concept of importance seems closely related with the existence of individual self or identities (given that something is important to some individuals but not for others; but not important in the absence of individuals).

If the individual self is important (since it's the basis of all consideration of importance), then the survival of the personal self is important too (in some sense).

It does seem true that without individual selves, there can't be any values. If we are all fated to merge into an anonymous collective mass, then there is nothing to strive for, to hope to attain or to hope to avoid - nothing to value or disvalue. Then we're faced with the depressing and (almost literally) dispiriting conclusion that nothing means anything, and there are no values. This is essentially the conclusion that some atheistic humanists have reached, and it is responsible for a good deal of the angst and anomie reported by modern intellectuals.

Now, a thing can be depressing and still be true - but if a given line of thought leads us to a nihilism, we ought to retrace our steps and make sure we haven't gone off track. Nihilism, after all, is a moral, intellectual, and spiritual dead end.

ZC goes on,

What will be important in the afterlife? We don't know, but some afterlife communications suggest the spirit cares about his family on earth, or about the evolution of the soul in the spirit world, or about raising the level of consciousness about spiritual matters, etc.

But keep in mind that such interests, concerns, and worries (all of them revealing some "importance" to certain spirits) entails that a certain self/personality exists in the afterlife.

Hence, in my opinion, the survival of human personality is not only important but, maybe, the most important fact about our existence.

I think it's very worthwhile to point out that empirical evidence supports the proposition that discarnate communicators are a) still personalities and b) still deeply committed to certain values. This observation tends to negate the nihilistic conclusions mentioned above.

Ben observes that this bleak, nihilistic mindset may simply be a reaction to hard times, and this rings true for me. Though often we can learn by suffering, sometimes hardship blinds us to truths we have already learned.

DMDuncan suggests that "love is the meaning, the point, and the purpose."

Can you imagine a life totally devoid of love and also imagine in that life some meaning or purpose? I cannot.

When life sucks, death doesn't seem so bad or frightening a thing, but when life is good you do not want it to end. But things change. The wheel turns. But if we have love, then even when things are bad we still have faith that being is better than non being, and that the bad times will pass as the good times did.

Another excellent point. I would define "love" broadly as the love not just of another person(s), but of animals, nature, artistic creativity, scientific knowledge, etc. Maybe we could call it "valuing."

A life spent in a total absence of any valuing would indeed be meaningless.

Hope Rivers adds some helpful thoughts about this:

We are created to experience love by love.

I also had an NDE and there is no word that can express the divinity, the purity, the peace and joyful ecstasy one encounters when basking in God's light (love)....

This life is an exciting journey with all its ups and downs, but one thing that's certain is that we are so loved. We are created out of love, so this makes me feel pretty darn good too know I was thought about and created by "God" to experience the dream called "life," given freedom to make my choices but also to know in my heart that the little voice inside that kept me seeking truth was me being nudged by the creator to not give up. "Love" does not impose, love sets us free. Once the selfishness and ego are stripped, love begins to manifest, you connect with your creator and slowly but surely you can't help but want to love in return, which transpires to all of God's creations, because you realise that all things were created with such care, magnificently beautiful and perfect. Its only evil that perverts and makes us sick, confused, abandoned, fearful and dark.

Many people who have had NDEs, OBEs, and mystical experiences have said love is the beating heart of creation. Although I am sometimes cynically tempted to ignore them because what they're saying sounds too good to be true, I think Hope is right in reminding us to heed their wisdom.

Of course there are intellectual arguments that can be made against the proposition that God is love - for instance, what about all the pain and suffering in the world? - and I've made some of these arguments myself, but in the end the ego's intellectualism must yield to the deeper insights of the spirit.

William seems to agree:

The mystics and most advanced spirits tell us that evil is nonexistent as an absolute reality. For evil to be a reality, there would have to be an aspect of God that is evil, and since God is infinite perfect awareness, there is no evil in God.

But there is evil in ignorance, but then ignorance is not an absolute infinite reality but a temporal reality. Now, that temporal part can be very long as our reality, but to the Infinite, time is nonexistent....

Hope, I cannot speak to your experience as I have not had a NDE, but I do know this - until one experiences such a love or understanding, for the most part you will be speaking to deaf ears. This may explain why we have to experience life to gain understanding.

Cyrus then writes,

Only Van Gogh could paint a Van Gogh painting. Only Mozart could invent a Mozart symphony. Everybody has something to offer to the universe, and only people who are fully realized can begin to enjoy that process.

Which brings us back to the uniqueness of each individual perspective - a uniqueness that seems to be nurtured by the universe. But why is it nurtured? Perhaps simply because a multiplicity of perspectives is more interesting than a single perspective. Individual uniqueness gives rise to dynamic interplays of personalities and ideas that would be impossible if Mind were experienced only as a monolithic whole.

We might ask why there is something rather than nothing. Perhaps because something is more interesting than nothing. So why are there many rather than just one? Perhaps because many are more interesting than one.

This is a rather simple viewpoint, perhaps, and could be dismissed as childishly simplistic; but as William says on a different thread:

I have suspected for some time that the “truth” or truths are much simpler than we can imagine. It may very well be the intellect that makes these truths complex and weird sounding.

He is talking about quantum physics, but the point holds true in general. We humans do have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be. Straightforward answers are rejected as "too simple" or "too obvious." And yet as "simple" and "obvious" as they may be, we still have a hard time grasping them in all the fullness of their implications.

It appears that the ego - a clever but shallow aspect of ourselves - rejects anything that seems too "easy," preferring complicated puzzles, riddles, and conundrums that will keep the mind spinning in circles. The irony is that the "easy" solutions may be the hardest ones to wholly absorb and accept, because we must transcend the ego in order to do it. Satori or enlightenment is perhaps the moment when the ultimate simplicity of things becomes apparent to the mind and the ego melts away - two events that must occur simultaneously, since the ego and the clear awareness of simplicity cannot coexist. 

Anyway, it was a very thoughtful and (yes) enlightening discussion. My thanks to all who participated, and my apologies to those I didn't specifically cite. It's not that your contributions weren't appreciated, only that I had to keep this post to a manageable length.

Does survival matter?

A lot of my blog posts concern the topic of life after death. But lately I've started to wonder whether the postmortem survival of the personality is actually that important.

This may seem like a strange thing to say. After all, what could be more important to us on a personal level than our own survival? And yet, I've begun to feel that the personality itself is not so important; and if the personality doesn't matter too much, then the survival of the personality after death doesn't matter much, either.

Now, I still think there is a very large accumulation of evidence supporting the after-death survival of the individual's personality. I'm not disputing that evidence or the most parsimonious conclusion to be drawn from it -- namely, that personal survival is a reality in many (possibly all) instances. I'm just wondering how much it really matters.

From a philosophical standpoint, it matters a great deal. Postmortem survival has major implications for the nature of the universe -- for the nature of reality as such. And there are ethical implications, as well. If the "life review" that near-death experiencers report is a reality, then the Golden Rule takes on a newfound immediacy. Moreover, at least some of the malaise and anomie that afflict modern society are probably traceable to the lack of belief in a higher meaning or purpose to life. The view that a human being is nothing but a collection of chemicals, temporarily activated and then deactivated, is hardly conducive to a high-flown sense of moral purpose.

But I'm not looking at the question from that standpoint right now. I'm looking at it from a purely personal standpoint. And it seems to me, at least at certain moments, that the personality itself -- or the ego, or the self -- is a somewhat artificial and trivial construct, a collection of repetitive behaviors and engrained attitudes. And if this is all the personality is, then the survival of the personality -- the survival of this assemblage of quirks and tics -- seems considerably less urgent. In fact, there are some occasions when the idea of my personality, my constricted little realm of self-centered thoughts, persisting eternally is rather depressing to me.

Of course, a consistent theme of spiritualist writings is that we go through various changes in the afterlife and evolve into higher, less egoic beings. Still, if we carry the residue of our earthly lives -- our memories, beliefs, and attachments -- then we will continue to be caged in the tight, confining space of our ego, at least to some extent. If we lose all of our earthly memories, beliefs, and attachments, and with them the ego itself, then how can "we" be said to have survived at all?

We probably all have times when we get tired of being ourselves. But at least we know that our earthly existence is of limited duration, so we won't have to put up with ourselves forever! Ah, but here's the rub: what if we do have to put up with ourselves forever? What if we're destined to persist throughout many eons, perhaps growing and changing in some ways, but still essentially ourselves? Is this a desirable outcome?

Sometimes I think it is, but at other times I must admit to thinking that simple nonexistence -- or perhaps losing one's own identity and merging with a universal mind -- would be, in Hamlet's words, "a consummation devoutly to be wished."