Michael Prescott's Blog

For whom the bell Tolles

Having taken to task a blogger critic of Eckhart Tolle in my last post, I now reverse directions and level a critique at Tolle myself. (Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and all that.)

Many of Tolle's ideas are interesting and useful. His writings should not be underestimated. At the same time, though, I believe I sniff a trace of cultishness in his position, and more than a trace in some (not all) of his followers.

One of the most common attributes of a cult is described by Jeff Walker (following the lead of cult expert Eric Merrill Budd) in his book The Ayn Rand Cult:

[In a cult] the world at large is depicted as evil, violent, decadent, and as nearing a state of collapse. But thankfully a replacement utopia is waiting in the wings in the form of the leader's blueprint for a new order. Part of the convert's initial zeal for conveying the group's message is the presumption that the leader's ideology will be as unassailable and infectious for others as for himself ... The utopian forecasts certain disaster unless he has his way ... Cult leaders claim discovery of new knowledge or reclaimed exclusive access to ancient knowledge, or more often, combine both, by way of justifying a special life mission. Absent a successful completion of that mission, we are all doomed. (pp. 60-65)

Unfortunately, much of this aligns pretty closely with Tolle's message. Tolle says that mankind is in the process of evolving to a higher consciousness, and that his own writings are playing a pivotal part in bringing this about. And not a moment too soon - since if we do not quickly evolve, our "egoic" behavior will destroy the planet within a century. Thus we are in a race with disaster. Either we evolve to Tolle's level of consciousness, or we die!

This is not an ancillary aspect of Tolle's teaching. It is the main theme of his most recent book, A New Earth. Tolle disdains the label of utopian, but it is hard to see how else to characterize his views.

Some of the other distinguishing characteristics of cults listed by Budd and cited by Walker are:

• The claim that the cult leader possesses special knowledge.
• An insistence on developing "self-awareness," which results in noticeable personality changes.
• Elitism - the cult members are the vanguard of a new movement, even a new race. (Tolle, asked in an interview if he is "a mutant," remarkably enough answers in the affirmative!)
• Jargon and buzzwords. ("Egoic," "painbody," "the Now," etc.)

In technical terms, Tolle's movement could be described as an "educational-therapeutic" cult, as opposed to a political or religious cult.

Again, I'm not saying that Tolle's ideas are bad. As I have written earlier, I think his technique of focusing on the immediate moment and silencing the chatter of the mind can be refreshing and powerful. It is a useful relaxation exercise. It can help combat stress. It may even serve to stimulate spiritual growth.

But beware of anyone who tells you that a certain set of ideas (or self-improvement techniques) are all that's standing between the world and Apocalypse. That's a recipe for cultism - no matter how useful the ideas, on their own merit, may be.

Of blogs and logs

I've been reading Eckhart Tolle's books lately, and one thing he wrote has stuck with me. The ego, he says, is clever but it is not intelligent.

With that in mind, I'd like to look at posts by two bloggers that came to my attention. The first is an old post from November of 2005, written by a Brit named Stanley McHale, who is gamely trying to make a career in the fiendishly difficult world of standup comedy. (Anyone who doubts that doing standup is a nightmare should rent the documentary Comedian, perhaps the most depressing movie ever made on the subject of comedy.)

Anyway, McHale tells of his visit to a Liverpool bookstore.

In the current Waterstones, the self-help section is front and centre on the ground floor. It’s as if they didn’t want to put it in a secluded and appropriately unpopular part of the shop so that a) those in desperate need of some emergency self-help didn’t have to negotiate any stairs or start a search of the shop that might up their already chronic stress levels or further erode their fragile self-esteem, and b) so that the staff at the main check-out can have a good gander and giggle at the desperados that think these books can help them.

So we've established that McHale doesn't think much of self-help books or the people who read them. Clearly he is in no need of any self-help! In fact, he is planning to write a spoof of self-help books called The Power of Ten - this despite the fact that, as he admits early in his post, he has not actually read anything in the genre. But this deficit is to be rectified at Waterstones. He scans the shelves and is dismayed to find a prominent book with a title similar to his own. Instead of The Power of Ten, it's The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.

Remarkably enough, he has never heard of the book - which was, after all, a major international bestseller by this time. In any event, he decides to tell us about its contents.

It’s by a man(?) called Eckhart Tolle and, although I've not read it yet (and God help me I’m going to have to) is about living in the present. Basically, saying that if you’re not concerned with the future, and not the past, but just learn to enjoy the absolute moment you’re currently in, you’ll be really happy and that.

Yes folks, welcome to the highly practical world of the self-help book. THIS is why I’m so keen on writing my spoof. They’re sitting ducks.

Actually there is a great deal more to Tolle's ideas than this account would suggest, but since McHale has not actually, you know, read the book, he is no doubt summarizing it as best he can.

Standing in the bookstore, he does manage to read the introduction to the new edition, in which Tolle remarks in passing that Time magazine had dismissed his book as "mumbo jumbo." Tolle attributes this attitude to the fact that, "In many people, as well as in most of the political and economic structures of the greater part of the media, the old consciousness is still deeply entrenched. Anyone who is still totally identified with the voice in their head – the stream of involuntary and incessant thinking – will inevitably fail to see what The Power Of Now is all about."

McHale comments:

Brilliant. So journalists working for arguably the most respected magazine on the planet, not to mention those are ‘still totally identified with the voice in their head’ – i.e. their own unpolluted personality – will find the book be a complete and heavy load of elephant dung, but those fragile enough to be brainwashed by a preacher will think it’s great.

Remember, he still hasn't actually read the book.

He goes on,

I just hope that The Power Of Now isn’t a massive hit all over the world because it’ll make my book look like counter terrorism. I may not even read The Power Of Now just so that I’m not influenced in what I write.

Of course, The Power of Now was already "a massive hit all over the world." McHale just didn't know it, because he knew nothing of the genre he intended to satirize. And apparently he doesn't intend to learn - because by the end of his story, he has more or less talked himself into not reading The Power of Now, after all!

Well, why should he? He already knows it's "a complete and heavy load of elephant dung." "Journalists working for arguably the most respected magazine on the planet" have said so. Only "desperados [sic] that think these books can help them" could feel otherwise.

From here, we go to a blog entry that appeared just today, posted by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. Apparently somebody named Jerome Armstrong used to make stock recommendations on the basis of astrology. Armstrong is a liberal, and some of his fellow liberals are now defending him and saying that it's wrong to ridicule astrology. Hawkins finds this absurd, because he thinks that astrology is patently ridiculous.

I have no opinion about astrology. The only thing I know about it is that professional astrologers disdain the horoscopes published in newspapers or TV Guide. They say that each horoscope has to be prepared individually, with great care. Is there any substance to what they do? It seems doubtful, but I know of one study that supposedly did find a statistically significant correlation between birthdates and success in athletics. The skeptical organization CSICOP attempted to debunk this study, inadvertently ended up confirming it, and then tried to fudge the numbers so the debunking would still come off. When this sleight of hand became public, it caused quite a scandal. (Details on this episode, as recounted by former CSICOP member Dennis Rawlins, are found here.)

Anyway, back to Hawkins, who huffs and puffs:

Astrology is not a religious belief. It's pure, unadulterated, worthless crap drawn up by charlatans and fakers.

That being said, there's a difference between reading a horoscope and writing the horoscope. There's a difference between playing with a Ouija board on a lark and being a professional medium who conducts seances. There's a difference between having your palm read for the fun of it and being a professional palm reader.

The readees in my experience, are usually just curious, want to try something new, or at a minimum, give minimal credence to what their horoscope says.

But, professional psychics, palm readers, astrologers, and witches who actually offer their services to other people and live and die by this stuff? They're either nuts or crooked.

As I said, I don't know much (or care much) about astrology, but I do know and care about mediumship, which I have studied extensively. To say that all "professional psychics" are "either nuts or crooked" is astonishing. It's a statement that disregards more than a century of research into psychic phenomena. And it's backed up by no facts, no sources. I am willing to bet that Hawkins has never read anything substantive about the history of parapsychology. I doubt he knows anything about such famous mediums as Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborn Leonard (both tested for more than twenty years under rigorous conditions by top investigators, many of whom were deeply skeptical). I doubt he has even read about the work of J.B. Rhine at Duke University - or the ganzfeld tests - or, well, anything in this field.

He doesn't have to read it, you see. He already knows that all working psychics are "either nuts or crooked."

So what do we have here? One blogger is sure that Tolle's book is nothing but "dung," though he hasn't read it. In fact, all self-help books are dung, though evidently he hasn't read any of them. Meanwhile, another blogger is sure that all psychics are fakes or crazies, though he offers no evidence for his claim and demonstrates no knowledge of this complex and controversial field.

Tolle is right: the ego is clever, but it is not intelligent. It also will put up strong defenses to keep out unwanted ideas. Those defenses include ridicule, an attitude of superiority, and a refusal to even read any book or consider any idea that challenges the ego's fixed opinions.

But - and here you might want to hold on to your keyboard as I execute a 180-degree turn - I'm not writing all this to single out McHale and Hawkins. I have nothing against them, really. They merely serve as pertinent examples of a larger point.

You see, the truth is, we all do this kind of thing. We all have our blind spots and our "egoic" (Tolle's word) defenses. We all protect ourselves from ideas that might undermine our (always fragile) sense of self.

It's easy to see this in the above two writers, and a lot harder to see it in ourselves. But in ourselves is where we ought to look. McHale and Hawkins are no different from you or me. They're not "bad" guys, burdened with some incomprehensible alien psychology. They're just like us.

Or as somebody famous  from long ago (actually, he was kind of a self-help guru and practicing psychic) might have put it: We see the splinter in our friend's blog, but not the log in our own.

At the end of its string?

An interesting article by longtime science writer Sharon Begley, which appeared originally in the Wall Street Journal, questions whether string theory has become a dead end for physics.

"When it comes to extending our knowledge of the laws of nature, we have made no real headway" in 30 years, writes physicist Lee Smolin ...

He blames string theory for this "crisis in particle physics," the branch of physics that tries to explain the most fundamental forces and building blocks of the world....

[S]tring theory "makes no new predictions that are testable by current  - or even currently conceivable - experiments," writes Prof. Smolin. "The few clean predictions it does make have already been made by other" theories.

Worse, the equations of string theory have myriad solutions, an extreme version of how the algebraic equation X2 = 4 has two solutions (2 and -2). The solutions arise from the fact that there are so many ways to "compactify" its extra dimensions - to roll them up so you get the three spatial dimensions of the real world. With more than 10 raised to 500th power (1 followed by 500 zeros) ways to compactify, there are that many possible universes.

"There is no good insight into which is more likely," concedes physicist Michael Peskin of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

If string theory made a prediction that didn't accord with physical reality, stringsters could say it's correct in one of these other universes. As a result, writes Prof. Smolin, "string theory cannot be disproved." By the usual standards, that would rule it out as science.

Interesting stuff. I don't claim to understand string theory, but one thing that has always rung an alarm bell for me is that stringsters require a number of extra dimensions for their theory to work - and the exact number seems to be unknown. As Begley writes,

Oh, and strings exist in a space of 10, or maybe 11, dimensions. No one knows exactly what or where the extra dimensions are, but assuming their existence makes the math work.

This is the kind of thing that makes me dubious. It reminds me of the Many Worlds hypothesis, which requires an indefinite (but nearly infinite) number of alternate universes, none of which can be detected by any known means. Or Stephen Hawking's solution to the "problem" of the Big Bang, which is obtained by using "imaginary numbers" (the square roots of minus numbers). Since imaginary numbers exist only in equations and not in reality, Hawking's solution works on paper but not in the actual physical world we inhabit.

HT: Survival After Death.

Who ya gonna call?

August 3 is the publication date of a promising new book by Deborah Blum, titled Ghost Hunters: William James and the Hunt for Scientific Proof of Life After Death.

I'm keenly interested in the paranormal research that took place around 1900, when some of the top minds in the fields of physics, physiology, and psychology applied themselves to an in-depth exploration of mediumship. Their work with outstanding mediums like Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne-Leonard set a standard that in some respects still has not been matched. It's a shame that more people today are unaware of this remarkable field of study.

According to Kirkus Reviews,

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Blum (Science Journalism/Univ. of Wisconsin; Love at Goon Park, 2002, etc.) has done her homework; she seems to have read all the relevant correspondence and publications of the scientists and psychologists who, around the turn of the 20th century, tried to determine if there was scientific basis for spiritualism. Although her focus is on the redoubtable William James, she offers much about his colleagues in the ghost-busting business, including William Crookes, William Fletcher Barrett, Edward Gurney, Richard Hodgson, Fred Myers, Henry Sidgwick, James Hyslop and others. The author also focuses sharply on two women with apparent powers: the medium Leonora Piper and the Italian telekineticist Eusapia Palladino, who could make curtains billow and tables hang in the air. Blum excels at demonstrating how troubled James and his cohorts were by their investigations. In some cases, they simply could not find scientific explanations for the stories they were gathering, or for what some of them had witnessed. In her trances, Piper said things that astonished them; Palladino flummoxed more than one cocky skeptic.

But what makes me really interested in the book is this critical comment from the above review:

What's largely missing here is the author's perspective. Blum seems content to relate rather than to analyze; her text lacks analysis. She ends with the patent observation that the conflict between science and the supernatural endures. A useful but oddly uncritical summary.

To me, this is just another way of saying that the author does not attempt to impose her own opinion on the subject matter. Instead of debunking James et al in the approved modern style, she apparently is content to let the facts speak for themselves and let readers draw their own conclusions. Imagine that.

Obviously, the Kirkus reviewer would have preferred a book that put down all those silly, gullible 19th century types, with their funny-looking beards and fancy waistcoats. After all, we're much too sophisticated nowadays to be taken in by the idea that there is more to reality than what our five senses can perceive. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, " We are all materialists now."* Or so the intellectualoids would have us believe.

Deborah Blum seems to have escaped this cynical bias. If so, her book will be a major contribution to the historical study of some sadly overlooked phenomena.

By the way, if you share my interest in turn-of-the-century "psychical research," check out the Survival After Death Web site, which contains many articles and book excerpts from the period. (Hat tip: the Survival site alerted me to the existence of Blum's forthcoming book.)

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*What Nixon said was, "We are all Keynesians now," for which he was heavily criticized by non-Keynesian economists.

Repeat as needed

One of the strangest skeptical objections to psychic research is that psychic phenomena cannot be "replicated on demand." In other words, it is impossible to predict the outcome of any single psi experiment with certainty. One person may score well above chance in a mind-reading test, while the next person may score at chance or below. Since replication is a key concept in science, skeptics conclude that psi has not been scientifically verified.

This criticism is strange because it overlooks the crucial distinction between the hard sciences and the social sciences. In a hard science, such as chemistry, replication of individual test results can indeed be expected. If you mix two chemicals together under the same conditions, you will get the same chemical reaction - every time. But social science experiments are not like this, because the test subjects in these experiments are people, and people vary in their abilities and biases and behavior.

Suppose you're a social scientist testing memory. You place a large number of items in a room, then have a volunteer sit in the room for a few minutes. Next, you remove the volunteer from the room and ask him to list all the items he remembers. If you run this test with twenty different volunteers, you may get twenty different responses - because people's powers of observation and memory vary widely. How, then, can you get any usable data? You must run the experiment a hundred times or a thousand, until you have collected a large enough database to permit drawing statistical inferences. Then you may conclude that the average person remembers, say, fifty percent of the items in the room.

The fact that no two people may remember the exact same list of items certainly does not prove that there is no such thing as memory. It merely shows that memory varies from person to person.

Parapsychology is a branch of the social sciences, and the same rules apply. If you run a telepathy test on ten different volunteers, you may get ten different results, ranging from well above chance to no better than chance. This is because people's psychic abilities vary. How do you get any useful data? You run the test a thousand times, or three thousand, and then analyze the data statistically.

This is just what was done in the most famous series of telepathy tests, called the ganzfeld experiments. A total of 3,145 individual trials were run. The results, when analyzed collectively, were significantly above chance (odds against chance: 29 quintillion to one*). This does not mean that we can predict how the 3,146th participant in the tests may do. But it does mean that if another three thousand tests were run, we could expect the same statistically significant results to be obtained.

Thus, the claim that psi effects are not replicable is misleading. They are not replicable on a case by case basis, but neither are any other measurable effects in the social sciences. They are replicable when analyzed in the aggregate, using standard statistical methods.

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* Source: Dean Radin, Entangled Minds, p. 120

A still small voice

A brief summary of some of what I've learned from reading Eckhart Tolle:

When we identify with our possessions, we are always at risk of losing them.

When we identify with our accomplishments, we are always at risk of finding them inadequate.

When we identify with our relationships, we are always at risk of being abandoned as a result of divorce, death, and the vagaries of life.

When we identify with our physical form, we are always at risk of losing it as we grow older or as our health fails.

When we identify with our opinions and convictions, we are always at risk of being proved wrong.

When we identify with the "I" in our heads, the internal monologue that accompanies our behavior, our stream of consciousness, we are always at risk of not knowing who we are - because our "I" is no more than a collection of attitudes, memories, emotional states, opinions, beliefs, and ideas, any or all of which can change over time.

What, then, is our identity?

[God said,] "Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. (I Kings 19:11-12, New Revised Standard Version)

This is our identity - the "sound of sheer silence" or, as the King James Version memorably translates it: the "still small voice" that is with us when all the sound and fury of the world drop away.

If only

Here are three very short stories, all of them true.

1. When I was an unpublished writer, I thought that I would be happy if only I could sell a book. I did sell a book, and I was happy - for a while. But then the thrill of the sale wore off, and I wasn't so happy anymore.

2. Before establishing my career, I thought that I would be happy if only I could make a living as a writer. I did end up making a living as a writer, and I was happy - for a while. But then I started to wonder why I wasn't making more money and why I had noisy neighbors and why my political party wasn't winning more elections, and I wasn't so happy anymore.

3. After I had published several books with disappointing sales figures, I thought that I would be happy if only I could write a book that was a modest bestseller. I did write a book that was a modest bestseller, and I was happy - for a while. But then the sales figures of subsequent books began to decline, and I wasn't so happy anymore.

Do you detect a pattern here?

In each case I thought that I could be happy "if only" some external event took place. In each case, the event did took place, but my happiness proved fleeting. In the first example, I simply lost interest in what had happened; my enthusiasm wore off. In the second, my happiness was displaced by other cares and gripes. In the third, the event itself proved transient; circumstances changed.

Isn't this the case with all attempts to anchor our personal happiness to outside circumstances? Don't we invariably find that the anticipation exceeds the reality ... that no accomplishment or acquisition can satisfy us for long ... and that whatever we have attained proves to be merely temporary?

This is obvious, yet most of us resist it and continue to think in "if only" terms. We believe we will be happy ...

... if only the stock market goes up.

... if only we find true love.

... if only the world is converted to our religion, philosophy, political program, aesthetic preferences, or what-have-you.

... if only we can lose ten pounds, grow more hair, buy a new car, pay off the mortgage, get a raise.

These "if only" scenarios all have three problems. In ascending order of importance, they are:

a. They are, for the most part, unlikely to actually happen.

b. They are mostly outside our control.

c. They would result in only a temporary feeling of happiness even if they did come to pass.

I would say that it is a mistake to make outside circumstances, external events, even your own personal accomplishments, the hook on which you hang your happiness. Events may not cooperate with your hopes; even if they do, they may prove less joyful than you expect; and even if they make you happy, they will not last, because nothing lasts.

The real key to happiness is to be content with who you are and what you have, right now.

Now if only I could do that ...

Doubting Tom

I didn't plan on talking again about the Women's Entertainment series John Edward Cross Country, but recently I saw an episode that intrigued me, because it tackled the subject of skepticism head-on.

The topic arose in the context of an extended reading at a Phoenix seminar. Edward produced a large number of "hits" (items of accurate information), many of high quality, in the course of reading three people - two sisters and a man, Steven, who is married to one of them.

Here are a few of the better hits:

• Steven was making fun of Edward on the way to the seminar.
• Steven and someone else had recently looked through a photo album comparing photos of himself and his deceased brother, talking about which one was better looking and making a comparison in terms of the Baldwin Brothers.
• Steven played with firecrackers or fire as a boy, blew up stuff, and didn't confess to it.
• He has a "gift" that he doesn't like to talk about.
• The date September 9th is significant.
• Steven's wife feels as if she has been excommunicated from the family.
• The wife said that her mother was deranged.
• She used to call her father "the saint" for putting up with his wife.
• She sang for her father.
• There was a cervical cancer scare in the family.
• The deceased brother would not have let this day pass because he and Steven were so close.
• The brother is saying, "Stay off the ladder."

All of these points were acknowledged as correct by the family group. September 9th was the date of the brother's death. The mysterious gift that Steven didn't like to talk about turned out to be some sort of psychic ability of his own, though he was reluctant to discuss it. The woman did sing with her father, apparently while working with him in a grocery store, although the details were unclear. As for the ladder, Steven had fallen off a ladder which his brother had knocked over.

In a post-reading interview, Steven said, "They were things that only he knew," referring to his deceased brother. "Only a handful of people know" about his gift. "This was an absolute verification for me."

To me, however the most interesting part of the show was the appearance of the other sister's husband, a man described as a "firm nonbeliever," who hadn't attended the seminar. His name is Tom.

"I'm the skeptic," Tom said. "I'm a retired federal agent... My entire life is based on facts." Tom is clearly a no-nonsense sort of guy, intelligent, with good verbal skills; he bears a passing resemblance to Dick Cheney in both his demeanor and physical appearance.

Although he had been invited to attend the seminar, he had declined to go, expressing disgust at the whole idea. He also had never watched Edward on television and seems to have known nothing about him. Nevertheless, he was convinced that Edward is a fake.

Video footage of his family members' reading was shown to him while his reaction was recorded. It did nothing to change his mind. Tom pointed out that Edward's reference to the ladder did not actually include anything about falling off a ladder, much less that the deceased brother had knocked over. All he'd said was, "Stay off the latter." As Tom explained, this is a perfectly safe thing to say, since either the person has fallen off a ladder at some point in the past, in which case it will be scored a hit, or he has not, in which case he will simply be warned to take care around ladders in the future.

Similarly, Edward made a rather vague reference to the one woman singing with her father, but the details about the girl's singing in the grocery store were supplied by the family themselves.

When it came to the date of September 9th, Tom said at first, "I have no explanation for it," but after thinking for a moment, added, "Could he have found out?" The family members insisted that no one at the seminar had asked them any personal questions and that they hadn't talked about personal details while they were present. But Tom speculated that Edward could have done advance research by searching through death records and newspaper records. This is true, but in order for this subterfuge to work, Edward presumably would have had to know where the family was seated in order to be sure he was talking to the right people -- and as other episodes of the series have made clear, the seating is not preassigned; attendees take their seats on a first-come, first-served basis.

Tom also said that if the dead can speak to us, then it shouldn't require someone like John Edward and a ticket to his seminar in order to hear them. Everybody should be able to receive these communications. To me, this is a little like saying that if cello music is possible, then it shouldn't require someone like Yo Yo Ma and a ticket to his concert in order for us to hear it. Just because something is possible doesn't mean that everybody can do it or that it can be encountered on every street corner.

To put it another way, composing symphonies is possible, but most people can't do it. Just as there is a range of musical ability in the general population, with a few exceptionally talented prodigies at one end of the spectrum and a few musical illiterates (like me) at the other, and most people somewhere in between, why could there not be a comparable range of psychic ability? If this is the case, we would expect that there would be a small number of exceptionally talented individuals - like John Edward, perhaps.

Unfortunately, we did not get to hear Tom's explanations for some of the other information Edward provided - for instance, the fact that Steven played with firecrackers (or perhaps fire) as a child. I suppose one could argue that lots of boys play with firecrackers and blow things up. Then again, a lot of young boys don't. I didn't. There was also the fact that Steven was making fun of John Edward and the whole process on the way to the event. Could Edward have seen something in Steven's expression that led him to this inference? Steven did not appear openly skeptical in the footage I saw. Then there was the observation that Steven's wife had been excommunicated from the family by her mother ... the wife's nickname of "the saint" for her father ... comparing photographs in an album while making reference to the Baldwin Brothers ... Steven's "gift," which he prefers not to discuss.

Having had wide experience with skeptics, I know that they can and will proffer an explanation for each and every one of these "hits." At some point, however, the explanations start to ring hollow, at least in my ears. Could it all be nothing more than a series of lucky guesses? If so, Edward's ability at guessing might as well be described as a paranormal ability in itself. To come up with that many lucky guesses would be like tossing a coin 100 times and having it come up heads (say) 80 percent of the time.

Still, it is noteworthy that the show gave Tom a pretty substantial chunk of time to have his say. Tom's relatives were a bit irritated at his nonbelief, but Edward himself did not project any annoyance about it. In fact, the show included a brief series of clips of people from other seminars who had expressed skepticism, usually after the events.

Since the show is intended primarily as entertainment and the producers are under no obligation to provide equal time to skeptics, I was impressed with their decision to address this issue and to give Tom several minutes of airtime. That they did so speaks well for the show and, I think, for John Edward himself.

Abundance

Although those of us living in the industrialized world in the 21st century enjoy unprecedented prosperity, we often seem afflicted by a gnawing sense of lack. We never seem to have enough. There is always the craving for more - more money, more goods, more recognition, more free time, more success, more of everything.

For anyone suffering from this peculiar disease of modernity, I can recommend a simple treatment. Just watch Nanook of the North.

Nanook is a 1922 silent documentary by pioneering filmmaker Robert Flaherty. In a little over an hour, it tells the story of the Eskimo hunter Nanook and his family, who struggle for survival in a treeless arctic wasteland, where the only vegetation is a species of moss used as fuel. Food is the focus of their lives. There is seldom much of it. Dangerous encounters with walruses and seals, as well as long, patient sessions of ice fishing, are Nanook's only means of providing for his family. In the brutal winter, the whole family is perpetually on the move in pursuit of game, crossing the barren landscape, living in hastily improvised igloos, subsisting on whatever wildlife they can catch and kill.

The film, almost hypnotically slow-paced, is strangely fascinating. We see how an igloo is built from the ground up, complete with a window in the form of a block of ice. In one long, uninterrupted take, we see Nanook struggle to hold on to a fishing line that has snared a seal, while in the background his family races to his aid via dog sled. We see the savagery of the Husky sled dogs when the smell of blood rises in the frigid air.

It is impossible to convey in words the sheer desolation of Nanook's environment.  No trees, no grass, no flowers. No villages, no roads. There is a lone, distant trading post where the modern marvel of a phonograph player is showed off to Nanook and his family, and where snacks of sea biscuits and lard are served.

Other than this meager outpost, there is only the frozen land and the icy sea. The cold is constant. The threat of death - from starvation, carnivorous animals, and sudden storms - is ever-present.

And yet Nanook and his family are happy. This is the remarkable thing. Nanook's broad, open face beams with delight as he teaches his young son to hunt toy polar bears (made of snow) with a child-size bow and arrow. He enjoys building the igloo and glows with happiness when it's done. His children roll and sled down the snowy inclines, laughing. His wife is always smiling. This is a happy family. Faced with a frightening scarcity of material goods, fighting for survival in a barely habitable land, they still enjoy their lives and each other's company.

Any American today, no matter how impoverished, enjoys an immeasurably higher standard of living than Nanook. By comparison our lifestyles are laughably easy. The abundance that surrounds us is phenomenal - not only our economic abundance, but our abundance of flowers and trees, people and places, opportunities for learning and growing. Nanook, who was mystified and delighted by a hand-cranked gramophone, would be overwhelmed by our world - a world we take for granted, as if it has been ever thus.

It hasn't been. For most of history, and all of prehistory, men and women lived lives not very much different from Nanook's. And quite probably, a great many of them managed to enjoy themselves despite their hardships, just like Nanook and his family.

If they could be happy while having almost nothing, surely we can be happy while having almost everything.

Can't we? 

Me, myself, and I

At the welcome suggestion of Matthew Cromer, I've been reading Eckhart Tolle - specifically his short book Practicing the Power of Now and his longer, more recent book A New Earth. Tolle's ideas are very interesting, and he has the gift of being able to convey difficult concepts in plain language.

One of his ideas, which he emphasizes consistently, is that you are not your thoughts.

This seems counterintuitive. After all, what are we if not our thoughts, opinions, attitudes? Yet if you think about it, there are (at least) two good reasons why your opinions are not you.

1. You can change your opinions. What you believe today may be different from what you believed some time ago. Yet you are still you.

2. More important, you can observe yourself holding an opinion. You can be aware of how you came to believe such-and-such, what observations or experiences led you to it, why it's important to you, and what degree of certainty you have about it. But if so, then who is the real you - the one holding the opinion, or the one who is aware of holding it?

To put it another way, consider Descartes' famous dictum I think, therefore I am. Tolle, echoing Jean-Paul Sartre, observes that there are two I's implied in this statement. There is the I who thinks, and there is the I who is aware of thinking.

Your thinking, then, is not you. You may identify yourself - your self - with your thinking, in much the same way you may identify your self with your career or your bank account or your appearance in the mirror. But all of these are externals. The mistake we make, all of us, is to confuse the externals with what really matters.

In Practicing the Power of Now, Tolle provides simple exercises aimed at accessing the real you and detaching from the false identification with the ego. In the process, we learn how to clear the mind of chatter, much like sweeping out a cluttered attic and letting in the sun. We learn to stop replaying the same old "audiotapes" of interior monologues and dialogues, and to simply pay attention to the present moment.

Though I'm still a novice at this, I must say that it can be remarkably refreshing , and that, at times, it reawakens the sense of wonder that is common in childhood - the sense of seeing the ordinary things around you as if for the very first time.