Michael Prescott's Blog

There's no I in team

A couple more thoughts on Matthew Hutson's comments on "magical thinking," which were the subject of my last post. 

The tone of Hutson's piece suggests that people who believe there is someone "up there" looking out for them are fooling themselves in order to feel more important. They want to believe they are special, that their life is a mission, and that they are meant to do something important. It's an ego boost. 

My own perspective is very different. From what I've experienced, the belief that you have a guardian angel or a "spirit team" on your side engenders a certain humility and gratitude. It's not that you're special, because, after all, you assume that everyone else has a spirit team too. You may feel pleased that you're a little more in touch with your team than you used to be, or than some other people are, but that's about as much of an ego boost as you get. 

When things go right for you, you're less inclined to take the credit and more inclined to be grateful to your team for smoothing your path. "Thanks, guys," is a likely reaction. 

If things don't go so smoothly, or you're not sure what to do, you generally "get in touch" with your team through meditation, prayer, guided imagery, or what-have-you. Often an unexpected and viable solution will come to you in this altered state. The ability to relax and hand over your problems to "someone else" can be enormously helpful in relieving stress and anxiety. Again, if you get the answers you need, you don't feel personally responsible; you're indebted to your team. 

On the other hand, if you believe there's no one looking out for you and you're on your own, you tend to develop a much more ego-centered attitude, if only in self-defense. This is natural. You're a stranger and afraid in a world you never made, so you'd better have the biggest, baddest ego on the block. Otherwise how can you protect yourself in a dangerous and uncaring world? No one has your back, so you have to be tough, aggressive, vigilant, and above all, better than anyone else (however you define "better" in your particular social circle - smarter, more attractive, more talented, etc.). 

When things go right, you not only take the credit, you demand it. Like a small child you insist, "I did it! Look at me!" But no one ever does give you all the credit you feel you deserve, so you are perpetually dissatisfied. 

If things go wrong, you have two options: You can blame yourself and begin a dark spiral of self-accusation, anger, and depression; or you can blame this rotten world and all the idiots and lying bastards who screwed you over. 

Now, strictly from a psychological standpoint, which mindset seems healthier? Which is more likely to lead to happiness, contentment, and an appropriate balance of humility and pride? Which is more likely to lead to fear, anger, frustration, stress, anxiety, and dramatic mood swings that take you from self-aggrandizement one day to self-disgust the next? 

Studies have shown that regular churchgoers enjoy, on average, a more optimistic mood, lower blood pressure, greater longevity, a healthier old age, and other benefits when compared with non-churchgoers. Some experts speculate that the habit of socializing with like-minded people explains these results. Maybe. But another possible factor is that churchgoers believe that someone "up there" is watching over them, guiding them, and offering solutions to their problems. 

Hutson disparages this viewpoint as "magical thinking." Evidently he is sure there is no spiritual realm and therefore no possibility that anyone is actually watching over you. Let's say he's right. Let's say that, in fact, all the people who believe they have guardian angels, a spirit team, or saints or ancestors or a loving Savior looking out for them, and who believe they can in some way establish contact with these beings from time to time, are hopelessly deluded. 

Even so, if the actual results of this belief system are positive, what difference does it make? If you can come up with solutions to your problems by communing with an imaginary spirit guide, and if those solutions work, wouldn't you be foolish not to do it? If you can banish or minimize stress, fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions by convincing yourself that higher powers are on your side, then why not believe it? And if such beliefs possibly contribute to the positive health effects associated with churchgoing, even better. 

Why stigmatize a belief system and imply that people are silly or even a little bit crazy if they subscribe to it, when it has all these benefits? If a pharmaceutical company developed a pill that would help people solve intractable problems without strain, reduce stress, make them more even-tempered, engender optimism, lower blood pressure, lengthen their lives, and improve their quality of life into old age, wouldn't everyone be encouraged to take it? 

I'm sure there's a downside to belief in supernatural assistance. Any idea can be carried too far or can be misused and abused by people with psychological problems or an antisocial agenda. But for most of us, a belief that "somebody up there likes me" seems to carry a boatload of pluses and few, if any, minuses. Maybe we should paraphrase Patrick Henry and tell the experts, "If this be magic - make the most of it." 

Pep talk

I came across a Salon article about people who have lucky or miraculous escapes from disaster and who, quite often, read a larger existential meaning into their survival. The author, Matthew Hutson, has a background in cognitive science and the article is excerpted from a new book of his that's critical of "magical thinking," so naturally he has no patience with this attitude. Here's his snarky conclusion:

You want to believe that all those flukes of luck leading to where you are were somehow meant for you. Customized kismet means someone’s got your back. It also means that those events that happened for a reason may be building up to some future purpose. It gives the entire story of your life both continuity and a destination, something to strive for. You were put here for a reason, you matter, and you’re on a mission. Everything before now was to prepare you for your calling! The universe is counting on you! Now hop to it!!!

Sometimes it’s fun to pretend.

Let's leave aside the fact that Hutson can't possibly know whether or not there is a larger meaning to these (or any) events, or if someone up there has or has not "got your back." He may say he's being scientific, but really he's operating on the basis of unstated materialist assumptions, which he holds, evidently, as an article of faith.

Leave aside also the fact that many of the most enlightened figures in history have said quite plainly that there is a higher purpose and meaning to life, and that the great error of most people is to deny it or not even to look for it. Whole civilizations and cultures have been built on these teachings, and most art, at least prior to the 20th century, reflects this worldview. 

But forget all that. Here's what struck me. Since Hutson characterizes all the statements in the first paragraph as merely pretending, he presumably believes that none of them is true. What is true, we are left to conclude, is the exact opposite. So if we don't want to pretend, but instead want to face reality like mature adults, we should believe something like this:

None of the key developments in your life was somehow meant for you. No one is looking out for you. No events in your past happened for a reason, and they aren't building up to any future purpose. The story of your life has no continuity and no destination - heck, it's not even a story - and there is nothing to strive for. You were not put here for a reason, you don't matter, and you're deluded if you think you have a "mission" in life. Face facts! You have no calling! The universe couldn't care less about you! Just give up!!!

Inspiring, isn't it? And materialists wonder why people find their philosophy unfulfilling. 

Link fest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early on the first day of the week ...

Since we're coming up on Easter Sunday, I thought I would point out that the story of Jesus' resurrection is one of the loveliest stories in all of literature. It appears in different versions in all four canonical Gospels, but I think I like the version in the Gospel of John the best. Here it is, in the translation known as the New International Version, courtesy of Bible Gateway.

¹ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

 ³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

 ¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

 ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

   “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

 ¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

   Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

 ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

   She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

 ¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

 ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

 There are variations among the four Gospels, as is typical when dealing with an oral tradition that has been passed down through different communities. In my opinion, it would be groundless to assume that any version–or some composite version–represents the factual, literal truth. Undoubtedly all four versions benefited from a great deal of embellishment and symbolism. But do they speak to an actual underlying event?

It is at least arguable that they do. For one thing, it is difficult to explain the rapid growth of the Christian cult in the absence of a triumphant reappearance of Jesus after his crucifixion. In those days it was not unusual for someone to proclaim himself the Messiah, but if he was arrested and killed by the Romans, his claims were dismissed, and he was subsequently regarded as a false prophet; his disillusioned followers dispersed, and he was largely forgotten. Indeed, one of the so-called Messiahs of the period is known to us today only by the sobriquet “the Egyptian,” his real name having been lost to history.

Something must have happened to turn the earliest Christian disciples from utter despair and disenchantment to hope and newfound religious fervor. Many of them were willing to die for their cause, and some of them did die in awful ways. It's unlikely they would have thrown their lives away for someone whose earthly crusade had ended in unambiguous failure. They certainly acted as if there had been some postmortem reappearance of their leader, and this was the core of the message they preached at their own risk.

Since I have no problem with the idea of postmortem appearances in general, and since some of the appearances described in the Gospels are consistent with reports of apparitions in more recent times (such apparitions often being surprisingly lifelike and tangible, albeit with the ability to appear and vanish at will, pass through walls, etc., just as Jesus was said to do), I'm inclined to think that the apostles really were reunited with Jesus not long after his death on the cross. Whether or not he was physically resurrected is, I think, somewhat irrelevant, since an apparition can seem convincingly physical and real, and can even be touched or embraced.

Another argument, which is often advanced by Christian apologists, is that if the story of the empty tomb had been entirely invented, it would not have depended on the testimony of women–one woman, Mary Magdalene, in John's version, and two or more women in the other versions. Women were not considered reliable witnesses in the ancient world, and according to what I've read, their testimony was not accepted in court. If someone wanted to make up a story out of whole cloth, he probably would have provided more respectable and authoritative eyewitnesses, especially considering that Mary Magdalene apparently had a checkered past as a victim of demonic possession, or what we would call mental illness, before being healed by Jesus. Who would choose someone with that background as the cornerstone of their story? Perhaps there was some subtle symbolic reason for the choice, but to me it seems more likely that she and the other women were mentioned because there were authoritative traditions that one or more women were indeed the first witnesses.

Finally, I can't help but mention the always controversial Shroud of Turin, purportedly the burial cloth in which Jesus' body was wrapped prior to burial in the tomb. In the 1980s, carbon dating of a few pieces of the cloth established that it originated in the Middle Ages, but this did not settle the matter, because later investigation showed that the corner of the cloth from which all the samples were taken was a patch, not part of the original. The patch is presumably newer than the original, but how much newer? Could the original, which includes the mysterious photonegative image of a crucified and scourged man, actually date back to A.D. 30? We'll probably never know, but even today no one has succeeded in precisely reproducing the subtle image on the cloth, though many people have tried and at least one has come pretty close.

Could the Shroud actually be the burial cloth in question, and could this haunting image have been impressed on it during a supernatural dematerialization of the physical body? I'm certainly not insisting on it, but I wouldn't rule it out.

negative image of the Shroud of Turin

But these factual and historical issues are, in a sense, beside the point. As Aristotle put it, “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” What makes the Easter story great is not its factual accuracy, which can be endlessly disputed, but its enduring emotional resonance. Its truth is not literal, but allegorical; not a matter of objective facts but of subjective interpretation and meaning. 

Even if we were to assume that the story of the first Easter is entirely fictional, it would still remain one of the sweetest and most poetic stories ever told. In a few simple words, with a bare minimum of description and characterization, the basic tale still has the power to stir the imagination and to summon feelings of renewal and hope. And in the end, that's what the Easter season is about.

Hmm. Just what do I believe?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:-)

Recently I got an email from Ben, a commenter on this blog, asking if I ever worried that the Light experienced in NDEs is not what it appears to be. Ben made reference to loosh, a term I'd never encountered before, and suggested (maybe not quite seriously) that the Light might simply be a supernatural being's way of preparing us for harvest. That is, perhaps the feelings of peace and oneness that NDErs report are merely a prelude to being sucked dry by the vampire-like creatures that feed on loosh. 

As I said, I'd never heard of loosh, which sounded like something Dr. Seuess might have made up. A little Googling (which, by the way, also sounds like something from Dr. Seuss) revealed that loosh is a term coined by OBE pioneer Robert Monroe to describe energy radiated by all life forms. According to Monroe, there are nonphysical beings that feed on loosh. This leads to the disturbingly paranoid idea that the human race has been cultivated by these parasitical creatures more or less as dairy cows are bred by farmers, and that we are subjected to distressing and painful events in order to maximize loosh production! 

As is the case with many of Monroe's statements, I find this whole notion more in line with the imagery of dreams (or nightmares) than with anything likely to be "real." But of course there's no way to either prove or disprove the existence of loosh or its feeders. There's no way to prove that the Light is benevolent, since it might simply be fooling us. 

In the end, it really does come down to faith. After his wife Linda died, Paul McCartney said that the two of them had shared an abiding faith "in the deep okayness of the universe." Or at least I seem to recall him saying that, or some words to that effect; I've never been able to verify the quote. Anyway, whether or not Sir Paul said it, the words ring true to me. Ultimately we can't know all the answers, so either we embrace despair or we believe that ultimately all is well. 

Julian of Norwich, a 14th century Christian mystic, captured the latter viewpoint in words that have become famous: 

And the beholding of this, with all the pains that ever were or ever will be... was shown to me in an instant, and quickly turned into consolation. For our good Lord would not have the soul frightened by this ugly sight. But I did not see sin, for I believe that it has no kind of substance, no share in being, nor can it be recognized except by the pains which it causes.

And it seemed to me that this pain is something for a time, for it purges us and makes us know ourselves and ask for mercy; for the Passion of our Lord is comfort to us against all this, and that is his blessed will for all who will be saved. He comforts readily and sweetly with his words, and says: "But all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well."

Julian lived during a period of recurrent attacks of the Black Death, which killed millions. Many preachers of the time blamed the plague on sin, saying that God was punishing his wayward flock. Julian's more optimistic and comforting perspective was unique in its day. 

We may not have the Black Death to contend with nowadays, but there is never any shortage of worries -- not primarily because of external events, but because of an internal process. It's the ego that gets us all worked up, no matter how safe and comfortable we may be. The ego just loves to torment us with hellish and nightmarish scenarios. "What if the plane crashes? What if my 401(k) is wiped out? What if I get cancer? What if my spouse is cheating on me? What if the 'wrong' party wins the election? What if the icecaps melt? What if there's a new Ice Age? What if ...?"

And of course: "What if the Light is a demon in disguise? What if communicators who speak through mediums are devils impersonating our loved ones? What if everyrthing is a lie, and the universe is insane, and God is a monster?" 

But it's the ego -- at least when it gets out of control -- that is insane, dishonest, and a kind of demon or monster. The unchecked ego is a liar and a subverter, a tyrant and a fiend. It's not looking for the truth, and it's not looking out for our best interests. It can be useful -- even vital --  in certain situations, when properly trained and restrained, but it is not our friend. It is more like a vicious animal that can either protect us or tear us to pieces, depending on our relationship to it, a relationship that is never set in stone.

Or maybe this is giving the ego too much power, and it would be better to say it's like a small yapping dog that can either please us or drive us crazy. A well-trained lapdog can be a good companion and even a protector, but a poorly trained, hyperactive, noisy and frantic little dog will make you nuts!

If we gently nudge the ego aside for a while and relax into mindfulness, all our ego-based worries go away, and we can say with Julian, "All will be well, and every kind of thing will be well." 

Or to quote a modern philosopher: "Don't worry, be happy." 

Extraction

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

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

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

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

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

 

The ineffable strangeness of the creative process

Recently I was at a dinner party where one of the guests, a medium and healer, offered to read Tarot cards. I'd never participated in this kind of thing before and found it very interesting. We were each advised to shuffle the cards and then cut the deck into four piles while thinking of a question. The question I framed in my thoughts was, “Should I finish the book I'm working on?”

The book in question is a thriller along the lines of the other ones I've written over the years. But even though I've already written a good deal of  the book, I'd been having a lot of trouble with it and was starting to think it just wasn't going to work out, I decided to let the mysterious Tarot cards tell me what to do–though I didn't necessarily intend to follow their advice. After all, as Alice would say, “Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!”

Anyway, the medium drew the top four cards from the deck and told me I was going in the wrong direction and needed a change of perspective. When she was not entirely satisfied with what she was getting, I prompted her by asking my question out loud. At that point, she elaborated that the book I was writing needed to be rethought, and that I should step back, look at it from a new perspective, and try a different approach, or I would be unhappy with the results.

Of course, you could say that the initial answer was too vague to be meaningful, and that the second answer was tailored to the information I had provided. Nevertheless, I couldn't disagree with the answer I got, so I decided to take it as a legitimate message. Regardless of where it came from, it still felt right to me.

But that left me with a dilemma. It's easy enough to talk about taking a step back from the project and coming up with a new approach, but it's a lot harder to actually do it. I spent a good deal of time over the next couple of days trying to see the book in a new light, filling many pages of a notebook with ideas on how to rethink the story, and basically beating my head against the wall, without anything to show for it except a pounding skull. I reached the point where I just couldn't stand to think about it anymore. I was exhausted, discouraged, and thoroughly sick of the book.

So then I tried something new. I addressed any spiritual entities that might be responsible for the Tarot card message, and I did so in rather impolite terms. “Okay, you guys,” I said, “you're telling me I need to rethink the book, but you're not giving me any help. I need some new ideas here, or a new point of view, and obviously I can't do it on my own, so it's up to you. If you really want me to do this damn book, you're going to have to figure it out for me, because I am done. You got that? I've had it. I'm tired and I'm going to bed, so if you want this stupid book to ever get written, then you guys show me how to do it. Otherwise, just shut up about it.”

With that tirade out of the way, I did indeed go to bed. And as I lay there in the dark, it all came to me–a new structure for the story that would solve the plot problems that bothered me, make the characters more interesting, and provide a smoother narrative flow. I can't say exactly how it came to me–I don't really remember–but I think I saw the pieces of the story rearranging themselves into a new and more pleasing pattern. I do remember thinking that maybe I should get up and write it all down before I forgot it, but then I decided I probably wouldn't forget, so I just went to sleep.

The next morning, I remembered all of it quite clearly and wrote it down, filling four notebook pages . What I had was a drastically revised synopsis of the early and middle parts of the novel–the problematic areas. Of course,  the actual book still remains to be written, or rewritten, but the basic story seems to work now, and it didn't work before.

Did the Tarot cards really send me a message, or did I just hear what I wanted to hear? Did some higher spiritual entity–a guardian angel, or my higher self–provide me with the solution to my creative block, or was it the workings of my subconscious mind? And does it even matter, as long as I got the answer I needed?

I don't know, but to be on the safe side, I apologized to my spirit pals. “Sorry I was rude to you last night. I can get a little impatient about these things. Thanks for coming through for me!”

:-)

Dream a little dream

A couple of weeks ago I had a fairly vivid dream, and as soon as I woke up, I wrote it down. In the dream, I was one of many students, or perhaps interns, at what seemed to be a kind of hospital with bright white corridors. We were all dressed in white outfits, and part of our daily schedule was a meeting in a large bright auditorium, where an instructor or supervisor would deliver a lecture or review the day's schedule.

On this particular day, there was a pop quiz. The tests were handed out, and I experienced the kind of anxiety that sometimes comes over us in dreams–the realization that I was totally unprepared for this test and could not answer a single question. While I sat staring helplessly at the test paper, the instructor interrupted to say that he'd been informed that one of us had told a patient, “I forgive you.” He wanted to know who'd said this. It turned out I had. At that point, the instructor declared that I no longer had to take the test because I had already learned what I needed to know.

What was most intriguing to me about this strange dream was the issue of forgiveness. It appeared that at some earlier point I'd said I forgive you to a patient at this hospital. And this was evidently a major breakthrough for me. But what did it mean? Why would anyone express forgiveness to a hospital patient anyway? After all, people who come to the hospital are either seriously ill or seriously injured. They don't have anything to be forgiven for. It seemed to make no sense.

As I thought about it (now wide awake), here's the interpretation I came up with.  Normally, when we think of forgiveness, it involves people who have done something morally or socially wrong–people who have behaved in a way that is cruel, insensitive, or thoughtless. These are the people who need to be forgiven, if we are going to forgive anybody. But what makes a person behave that way? Isn't it a kind of spiritual sickness or spiritual injury? Aren't acts of cruelty, insensitivity, and thoughtlessness merely expressions of the person's own pain, incompleteness, fear, or sense of inferiority?

If wrongful acts are the result of spiritual disease or damage, then it might make sense to offer forgiveness to someone who comes to the hospital–if it's a hospital focused not on healing the body but the soul. Patients in that hospital would be suffering from spiritual maladies–maladies that no doubt made them seem like bad people, or at least highly disagreeable people, while physically incarnated–maladies that caused them to do things that now stand as a guilty memory and a hindrance to progress. The ultimate cure for such people might indeed rest, not in memorized answers to a standardized test, but in compassion, empathy, and heartfelt forgiveness. In that sense, saying I forgive you might be the highest form of healing, and the ability to say it would be proof of having learned the most important lesson the institution could teach.

Of course,  it's possible the dream had no meaning at all. But I doubt it. 

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).