Michael Prescott's Blog

Rewriting the instructions, postmortem

In a previous post I speculated that the ultimate nature of reality is information, analogous to a set of instructions, and that in certain cases our own consciousness can rewrite these instructions and change reality. I'm not insisting this hypothesis is true; I'm just throwing it out there for consideration. And if there is any truth to it, then it ought to remain true even after our consciousness is separated from its physical vessel.

In this respect, it's interesting to look at a couple of quotes from a recent interview with Deepak Chopra, touting his new book Life after Death. I haven't read this book yet, although I intend to. I'm a little put off by the hype around it, specifically the claim that it is "the first major book on the afterlife to be published in decades." This is not true; such recent books as Is There an Afterlife? by David Fontana and Immortal Remains by Stephen E. Braude are very important additions to the literature on this subject, and there are many others. But I suppose Chopra is not responsible for his publisher's promotional schemes.

In any case, his remarks in the interview are directly relevant to our subject.

Q: What, in a nutshell, do you think happens after we die?

A: We return to our state of potentiality ... Our imagination creates our "here and now" while we are alive, and it can project a reality of our consciousness in all other realms, too ... All the mental abilities we use to create things in our life continue after death and in fact become more powerful. Whether we are in this domain or any other, we are in the same state of spiritual consciousness....

Q: Do you believe in reincarnation?

A: Reincarnation is one scenario. Everything the human mind can imagine is also a scenario. Rumi (a mystical poet) says, "When I die I shall soar with angels, and when I die to angels, what I shall become, you cannot imagine." Any imaginative realm that you can imagine exists in projective reality.

Consider the variety of afterlife scenarios that have been posited throughout the ages. Is it possible that all of these "scenarios," to use Chopra's word, actually can and do take place? Well, it is possible if we ourselves are writing or rewriting the instructions that give rise to these scenarios.

Here are some examples:

In his book 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don Piper, a born-again Christian, describes a near-death experience in which he found himself in a quintessentially Christian heaven, replete with pearly gates and choirs of angels.

In What They Saw ... at the Hour of Death, researchers Karlis Osis and Erlandur Haraldsson point out that American Christians on their deathbeds often have visions of angels or Jesus, while Hindus in India typically see Hindu deities.

Reincarnation studies, such as those carried out by Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, have shown that in cultures where people expect to be instantly reincarnated with no interval between lives, young children remember a past life that follows this pattern. But in cultures where it is presumed that an interval of some years passes between lives, children will report spending the appropriate amount of time in a heavenly realm.

In cultures where reincarnation within a family is considered the norm, such cases are typically reported. In cultures where reincarnation outside the family is considered normal, cases like that are reported.

In cultures where birthmarks are expected to reflect wounds or illnesses suffered in a previous life, many more such birthmarks are found.

The point is that our expectations seem to play a considerable role in determining our after-death experience. If we expect to find ourselves at the pearly gates, we may find ourselves there. If we expect to see Jesus, we may see him. If we expect to see a different deity, we may see him or her instead. If we expect to be reincarnated at once, we will be. If we expect to have an interval of rest and recuperation before our next earthly incarnation, then that is how things will work out. If we expect to carry birthmarks into our next life that reflect our previous existence, we will. And so on.

This is not to say that our expectations are all-powerful; if a suicide bomber expects to go to paradise, he may be disappointed, if only because the expectations of his victims regarding their killer's fate are quite different. But within limits, our own consciousness may have the ability to map out the blueprint for our experience.

All of this may sound chaotic, with a different path for every soul. But why would we expect the process to be neat and simple?

Besides, the ultimate reality is neat and simple. Consciousness (whether our own or the combined consciousnessness of many individuals) writes or rewrites the instructions that give rise to all experience, both on earth and in heaven. The many apparent contradictions among afterlife accounts simply reflect the variety of experiences that are possible, given the variety of assumptions that souls carry with them.

And if the ultimate purpose of all this incarnating (and reincarnating) is to have the widest possible variety of experiences, then why wouldn't there be a variety of experiences after life, as well as during life?

Again, I'm not insisting any of this is true. There is no way to prove it. I'm just putting it out there as food for thought. And if my speculation has any validity, then it might be worth asking yourself what kind of afterlife experience you want and expect to have.

Just be careful what you wish for -- you may get it!

The tummy switchers

Before I go further with my speculation on Q-waves, I wanted to post an excerpt from Carol Bowman's book, Return from Heaven, which deals with reincarnation within the same (sometimes extended) family. One of the readers of this blog suggested the book to me some months ago. Unfortunately, so much time has passed that I don't remember who it was. But if you're still reading, thanks!

It really is an fascinating book, despite the paperback's tacky and sentimentalized cover art, and it has persuaded me that reincarnation does take place in at least some cases. This is an idea I resisted for a long time because the prospect of reincarnation has never appealed to me. But "the facts beat me," as Alfred Russel Wallace said in explaining his reluctant adoption of spiritualism.

Bowman, who maintains a Web site about reincarnation, has investigated many of these cases. Unlike well-known researcher Ian Stevenson, Bowman concentrates on cases in the United States. She has found some doozies, and the story of a small boy named Sam is one of them. It's found in Chapter 7, "U-turn in the Womb." Bowman reports,

The story is condensed from the journals the mother, Jodie, kept as it was unfolding. Sam made many more statements not reported here in which he gave accurate details of his birth and at least two past lives, and he described "the other world" where he lived before he was born.

I've condensed the material much more. Those who want the full story and many other interesting and highly evidential case histories are urged to read Carol Bowman's book. Here is a greatly shortened version of Jodie's first-person narrative about Sam and his younger brother, Peyton:

Sam's first word was cousins.... Sam was obsessed with his cousins since he was a baby. When we first took him from Sacramento to visit them in San Francisco, before he could talk, he was visibly changed from the moment he saw them, excited and happy to be with the four cousins and his aunt Molly and uncle David. But his continuing obsession didn't make a lot of sense because the cousins were much older than Sam -- six to twelve years older -- and we didn't visit them more than a couple of times a year.

David and Molly are Jodie's in-laws. Several years earlier, Molly lost twin babies in the eighth month of pregnancy when a kink in the umbilical cord caused the twins to asphyxiate.

Even though I didn't know Molly very well, I asked her to be with me at Sam's birth.... When I told her my due date, October 19, she responded, "Oh, my God, that's the day I lost the twins."...

From the time Sam figured out that the car was the vehicle that would take to his cousins' house, every time we got in the car he would yell, "Cousins! Cousins!"... When we actually did intend to take a family trip to see David and Molly and the cousins, we couldn't tell Sam until the last minute, because if we did he would camp at the front door days in advance...

Once he asked, "Mom, when can I live with the cousins in the big house by the water with the big stairs? ... The stairs which didn't have carpet and I could hear them walking up and down the stairs."... I had no idea what he was talking about....

As he got older, Sam began insisting that Molly's family was his real family.... [Once] Sam burst into the room mad, hands on hips, extremely excited, and asked, "Why it isn't Kevin [David and Molly's oldest child] my big brother?" I tried to stay cool. I explained to him that Kevin was his cousin, not his brother; Peyton was his brother. But Sam would not accept this. "Why isn't Kevin my big brother? Why are you keeping me here?"...

Then one evening a few weeks later, we were all winding down before bedtime and Sam asked ... "Do you remember when Peyton and I were in your tummy at the same time?"

Jodie explained that this was incorrect; Sam was born first, and Peyton was born two years later.

Sam got a blank look on his face... then he started laughing with relief and said, "Oh, now I remember. You're wrong, Mom! We were in Aunt Molly's tummy at the same time and we didn't get born! ... Why didn't we get born, Mom? Why didn't we get born?" Then, before I knew it, he took off after his little brother, screaming, "It's all your fault! I told you I wanted to get born really bad and you didn't want to! Tell me how you took me out of there! ... How did you do that?"... Peyton pulled the pacifier out of his mouth, and his little face got more angry than I have ever seen it. He yelled at his big brother, "I wanted Daddy!"

Sam fired back, "I didn't want Daddy, I wanted Uncle David!"

When things calmed down, Sam decided to "figure this out" and

started counting on his fingers. "First I was in Aunt Molly's tummy and I didn't get born. Then I tried to get back into Aunt Molly's tummy but Sophie [Molly's youngest daughter] was there in the way. So I tried to kick her out ... and that didn't work, Mom! Then I got in your tummy and then I got born.... I sure did work hard getting here, Mom!" [A few moments later Sam] asked me, "Does Peyton always have to follow me every time I'm born?"...

Sam told his little brother what he had just remembered. Peyton started laughing. To my surprise he seemed to understand completely. I sat there thinking, "These two are talking about something that happened long before they were born [and] they're acting like it's normal." ...

Recently we were making a homemade birthday card for Aunt Molly. I asked the kids what they wanted me to write on the card... Peyton said, "Tell her I was her blue baby and now I'm Peyton and now I'm red."

Remember that the twins asphyxiated and so were literally "blue" babies. Although Jodie wisely did not write this on the card, she did eventually share her experience with Molly. Molly accepted it and said it explained why she had felt compelled to be present at both boys' births. Asked about the house on the water, she explained,

"When I was pregnant with twins, we lived in a house right on the bay; it was the only house we ever lived in that had uncarpeted stairs. We moved from that house three days before the twins died!"...

[Molly] showed Sam a picture of herself pregnant with twins. She asked him, "Do you know who's there in my tummy?" Without hesitation he answered, "Me and Peyton."

Molly then asked Sam why the twins were not born, but Sam didn't answer. Later he told his mother

that he really couldn't tell her everything. When I asked him why not, his response surprised me: "I couldn't tell her because they would laugh at me... They would laugh at me because they know it's not allowed." ...

"What's not allowed?"

He said, "Switching tummies. I had to get permission for that." Then he got very quiet and guarded, as if someone were looking over his shoulder. I realized there was something he wasn't supposed to tell and I wasn't supposed to know....

Since the day I acknowledged Sam's memories and he accepted me as his mother, his behavior has been totally different. He's not dark and angry anymore.... He's much more relaxed and easy-going and his frequent temper tantrums have almost completely stopped. [Pages 169-179]

Rewriting the instructions

Somewhere in his rambling, bizarre, exasperating, and thought-provoking memoir Cosmic Trigger (Vol. I), Robert Anton Wilson quotes someone as saying, "We are information." He means that the whole space-time universe and all of its contents, including ourselves, is actually a grid of information that we mistakenly or superficially perceive as material entities.

For the fun of it, let's assume that this is true. Let's say that there is a substrate of reality beneath what we ordinarily think of as the real world. The real world consists of people and plants, tables and chairs, atoms and molecules, photons and electrons, all the way down to the quantum vacuum. But underlying all these arrangements of matter and energy (which are really only energy in different forms) there is a more fundamental reality that is pure information.

This other realm is analogous to David Bohm's implicate order, the holographic plate inscribed with wave-interference patterns out of which the physical world is constructed. Or it is analogous to the Mind of God, sought by physicists like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. Or it is analogous to Being in the mystical sense.

To carry this a step further, let’s say that this realm of pure information is comprised of something called Q-waves. I have no idea what the hell Q-waves are, or what the Q stands for. Maybe it stands for Question, since the very existence of such waves, let alone their nature, is an open question.

So, in this thought experiment, we have a realm of Q-waves encoding information in some inconceivably elaborate pattern. Out of this pattern, the familiar space time world with all its subatomic particles and atoms and cells and people is somehow constructed or projected. We can think of these Q-waves as instructions. They are like a blueprint for a building, or a recipe for a meal. They are not the entities themselves. The blueprint is not the building, the recipe is not the meal.

Or perhaps we can think of Q-waves as programming for a computer. The computer is the universe. The Q-waves are the set of instructions that run the universe.

Now, instructions can be altered. Change the blueprint, and a different building will result. Change the recipe, and you'll have a different meal. Change the programming, and the computer will behave differently because it is carrying out a different set of instructions. A computer, for instance, can be programmed to shut down automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity. Once this program has been entered, the computer will obey. Its behavior is determined by the instructions. We can change the programming so that the computer does not shut down after 30 minutes, and then the computer's behavior will be different.

All right. Now, if this is true at all, then Q-waves also include the instructions for ourselves. And we can perhaps alter these instructions and make changes in our physicality (health), outlook, life circumstances, etc. Of course this would depend on accessing the Q-wave instructions directly and on demand, something few people know how to do. The ones who do have this ability would have seemingly magical powers – the power to influence reality directly by means of their thoughts.

Access Q-wave instructions for a human body producing too few white blood cells, and you can rewrite the instructions so the body produces more white blood cells. Access the Q-wave instructions for a hammer, and you can rewrite the instructions so the hammer levitates or teleports or floats on water. Just as the computer behaves differently when its instructions are changed, so the human body – or the hammer – behaves differently when its instructions have been changed.

Although we may not know how to do this, it's possible that we are doing it anyway, more often than we realize. We may be influencing our health, our success in romance or business, and various other things according to the way we unconsciously rewrite the instructions.

Subatomic particles, for instance, behave as particles or as waves depending on how they are observed. Is it possible that their behavior varies because their instructions vary? That by setting up the experiment in a certain way, we actually write the instructions that program and determine the outcome? If so, we are rewriting the instructions simply by performing the experiment. And we don't even know it.

The placebo effect in medicine may be a result of rewriting the instructions for our own body. We believe we have taken real medicine, and so we reprogram our body to react accordingly.

Or take hypnosis. People under hypnosis, told that they have burned themselves, will spontaneously form a blister on their skin. This happens even though they have not actually been burned at all. Is it because the hypnotized mind, being unusually sensitive to suggestions, has accepted the idea of being burned and rewritten the instructions for its skin to confirm to this belief?

And then there are psi phenomena - ESP and PK. Studies have shown that psi is result-oriented -- you indicate or focus on your intention and it comes about without your knowing the steps of the process. Your intention is all you consciously know; the mechanism by which the intention is carried out is unknown. In people with powerful psi abilities, is intention sufficient to rewrite the programming code at some non-conscious level -- either subconscious or superconscious?

All of this is not to say that we wrote the instructions in the first place. You don't have to be the original programmer in order to rewrite the software code. You only need to be able to access the code and change it.

Did the mind of God write instructions for physical reality at the moment of the Big Bang? Could those instructions have been amended as time goes on?

Suppose evolution depends on Q-waves. Changes in the instructions lead to new body plans, new species, new behavior patterns. A species in crisis somehow alters its own evolutionary course by reprogramming its own software. Laboratory tests have shown that bacteria subjected to stress adapt much more rapidly to changing conditions than chance alone would dictate. Do the bacteria change the instructions coding their physical properties, perhaps by tapping into or participating in a universal mind? Or does the experimenter's own mind may rewrite the instructions for the bacteria? Either way, since the instructions are nonlocal, the effects will show up in other labs – as indeed they do, if Rupert Sheldrake's data are correct.

Q-waves, however, are different from Sheldrake's posited morphic fields, at least in one respect. They are closely aligned with consciousness. In fact, we might say that Q-waves are consciousness in its raw form, and that the whole space-time universe is projected out of this field of consciousness. Q-waves are not just one facet of reality, as morphic fields may be. Q-waves are the Ur-reality and the uber-reality - the ground of being.

The manipulation of Q-waves makes nuclear fission look like child's play. Properly harnessed, Q-waves could alleviate all suffering and imperfection. Improperly harnessed, Q-waves could rewrite the instructions and render the cosmos uninhabitable. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and nearly became "as gods." Knowledge of Q-waves and how to use them would make us "as gods" -- a scary thought, and perhaps one reason why occult knowledge is taboo in all cultures, most definitely including ours.

If we visualize the whole physical world as a vast computer run by disembodied strings of programming code, and then we imagine having the power to directly access that code and rewrite it, we can see how this power could destabilize the physical universe. In small doses this may be actually happening -- hence anomalous (Fortean) events, psi, miracles, et cetera. And hence the taboos against talking about them or taking them seriously – and the extreme emotional reactions on the part of some people when confronted by them.

Over the course of a lifetime we rewrite our own instructions -- unfortunately imprisoning ourselves in our expectations and self-image. "I'm a lousy athlete" gets imprinted; results would be different if "I'm a good athlete" were applied at a deep enough level. "I'll never get ahead in my career" versus "I have great prospects" can influence your future because of how you're reprogramming reality - not just your own psychological reality, but the external reality of the obstacles or opportunities you encounter. People who are lucky or unlucky may have rewritten the instructions in a positive or negative and ongoing way. People can think themselves sick, even fatally ill; they can also sometimes think themselves well. Perhaps people who walk on fire, or people who supposedly live without sustenance, have rewritten the instructions for physical reality.

The key to rewriting the instructions may be to remain flexible. If you think "everything is fixed and you can't change it" (to quote from Jesus Christ Superstar), then this will be true - for you. If you think a variety of outcomes are possible and you can choose or at least influence which one will occur, you have a better chance of rewriting the instructions to bring about the desired result, even if you have no clear strategy as to how to do it.

I'm not insisting that any of the above is true. But if there's anything to it, then we would expect rewriting the instructions to play an even bigger role in our existence after death, when the mind is free of the limitations of the physical body. We'll take a look at that next time.

And while we're on the subject, where's my flying car?

As the old saying goes, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Case in point, Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger (Vol. I), published in 1977.

This funny, provocative, and deeply strange book recounts Wilson's experiments with marijuana, peyote, and LSD, in the course of which he became at least somewhat convinced that he was receiving telepathic messages from extraterrestrials in the Sirius star system. Or maybe he didn't actually believe this; since Wilson insists that he does not actually believe anything, it's hard to say.

But for a man who doesn't believe anything, his book is chock full of optimistic forecasts of our immediate future - which, from the vantage point of 1977, means the period leading up to, and just slightly beyond, the year 2000. Sadly, these prognostications have proven less than accurate.

By the turn of the next century, Wilson writes on p. 218, referring to the year 2000,

we will be a completely new species in many dimensions: living in space, not on a planet; able to program our nervous system for any degree of function we wish; possessing a lifespan in centuries, and well on our way to Immortality.

Well, not so much. On p. 233 he gives more details:

The British Interplanetary Society already has a design for a starship that could be sent to Barnard's Star (6 lightyears away) in 2000. The first O'Neill space cities will be orbiting the earth by then, and by 2004, according to Dr. [Isaac] Asimov's calculations, the biological revolution will be producing DNA for any purpose we want, possibly including immortality.

Elsewhere he predicts an "Immortality Pill" available by around the year 2000, which will at least double and perhaps quintuple the human lifespan.

The "O'Neill space cities" he mentions are also known as L5 colonies. (L5 refers to an advantageous point in Earth orbit.) These colonies were a big idea in 1977. I was a college freshman then, and I remember reading Gerard K. O'Neill's book High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, which laid out a vision of immense space cities that would capture solar energy and beam some of it to Earth, while using the rest to power hydroponic gardens and space-based industries. The cities would eventually become self-sufficient, supporting an increasingly large segment of humanity. All this was supposed to happen within a couple of decades. As the Amazon review of the book's latest edition points out, paraphrasing George Friedman, "the L5 society's slogan 'L5 in '95!' certainly wasn't referring to 2095."

Such predictions weren't limited to Wilson, O'Neill, and a few other visionaries. On P, 217 Wilson reports a McGraw-Hill Publications poll

in which a cross-section of scientists are asked to predict the technology of the next quarter-century.... [T]he majority predicted that by A.D. 2000 we will have:

• drugs to cure cancer
• artificial eyesight for the blind
• drugs to permanently increase intelligence
• chemical control of aging
• chemical control of senility
• successful cryogenic preservation.

A swing and a miss! I suppose we could argue that chemotherapy constitutes "drugs to cure cancer," though I suspect the scientists were predicting a more dramatic and surefire remedy. Artificial vision is slowly being developed, but is hardly commonplace. I'm not sure what is meant by "successful cryogenic preservation," but if it means cryogenically preserving and then resuscitating the dead, it hasn't happened.

Were a time traveler to have met with Wilson on one of his peyote trips and announced that he had come from the tail end of 2006, I suspect Wilson would have been dismayed to learn that as of this date there are no space cities, only a modest space station still under construction; no immortality pills, only a gradual increase in the average lifespan owing to better medical care and higher living standards; no pharmacological methods of boosting intelligence. Since Wilson predicts elsewhere in his book that humans would be landing on other planets by 2000, he would have been still more dismayed to learn that not only have no boots set down on Mars, but even the Moon has been off limits to our species since the mid-70s.

All of which is worth keeping in mind when we hear contemporary predictions of "the singularity" - the mind-blowing scientific breakthrough slated to occur in 2045. Will it happen? Unless we get that Immortality Pill in a hurry, not all of us will be around to find out.

My cherished beliefs

After I posted my multi-part series critiquing James Randi's million-dollar challenge, I received a predictable number of comments from disapproving Randi fans eager to dispute one point or another. One person insisted that my entire analysis was only a rationalization devised to protect my "cherished beliefs." This got me thinking about the whole issue of belief and what role it plays in our lives.

First of all, the criticism is somewhat true. (Almost any criticism contains some truth.) Whenever you take a position in a controversy, and especially if it is a public position, your ego becomes invested in being "proved right" and seeing the other side "proved wrong." I suspect that there is some primordial, instinctual territorialism at play here, and that we defend our intellectual territory with much the same ferocity as we would defend our physical territory. The same kinds of emotions seem to be stirred up in either case.

Of course this is true of skeptics as well. They, too, have invested their egos in a set of positions and feel impelled to defend this intellectual territory against attack. I say this not as a criticism of skeptics but simply as an acknowledgment of a general truth about human nature, which applies to all of us. And certainly it applies to me.

But when we get beyond the simple question of ego commitment, there remains the more interesting issue of what a belief in the paranormal means. Here I think the answer is somewhat more complicated than some critics may think.

There are quite a few issues of parapsychology that do not stir any particular emotional commitment on my part. For instance, I don't much care about ESP. I think the evidence for ESP is very good, and if it were not so far outside the prevailing intellectual paradigm it would long ago have been accepted as dispositive, but I can't say that I care about it very much one way or the other. I've never had much interest in the decades of experiments conducted by J. B. Rhine at Duke University. Even the celebrated ganzfeld experiments, which I think provide the best laboratory evidence for ESP, do not hold any great appeal to me.

But usually when critics raise the issue of "cherished beliefs" regarding the paranormal, they are thinking about life after death. Their assumption, I think, is that believers are so panic-stricken about their own mortality that they will go to great lengths to deceive themselves into believing in an afterlife.

Again, there is undoubtedly some truth to this. But I think skeptical view is a bit simplistic. For me personally, the prospect of an afterlife is not an unmixed blessing.

On the positive side, an afterlife does hold out the promise of earthly injustices being righted; the dictator who lived in luxury and died in contented old age will finally have to face the consequences of his inhumane policies. And it offers the promise of discovering an ultimate meaning and purpose to life -- some larger plan which is mostly hidden to us while we are living on earth, but which will be, perhaps, revealed to us at some point after death.

The afterlife can be the basis for an ethical belief system predicated on the Golden Rule. The so-called "life review" often reported in near-death experiences suggests that we must relive all the events of this life while learning firsthand how our actions affected other people, for better or worse. Thus, any pain, whether emotional or physical, that we inflict on others will ultimately be experienced by us. What we do unto others will be done unto us -- the ultimate in cosmic, or karmic, justice, and a very compelling reason for applying the Golden Rule in our lives now.

And let's not forget the most obvious appeal of an afterlife -- the idea that death does not mean personal extinction, but rather continuation, not only for ourselves but for our loved ones, with whom we will be reunited.

So there certainly are positive implications to an afterlife, and these implications are sufficient to lead many people to embrace the idea even without studying the evidence for it, or without being aware that there is any evidence at all. (For a good survey of the evidence, see David Fontana's Is There An Afterlife?) But before we assume that a belief in an afterlife is an unqualified positive for the believer, let's consider the negative implications.

For one thing, an afterlife means we will be thrust into another dimension outside our familiar space-time universe, where we will have no very clear idea of our prospects. This can be a mighty unsettling notion. In some ways, personal extinction might seem like the better option.

Then there is the issue of punishment. While we might like to think that we have lived a good life, who can say how we will be judged and what will become of us? Some near-death experiences are described as hellish, with the person plunged into a dark scary realm of pain and terror. Hardly an enticing prospect!

There is also the question of reincarnation. Some people find the idea of being endlessly reincarnated quite appealing and romantic, but others, including myself, find it a depressing and disturbing possibility -- an endless round of dreary lifetimes spent learning and relearning the same lessons by making the same stupid mistakes.

For all these reasons, my own attitude about an afterlife is decidedly mixed. There are times when I wish I could go back to believing that death is simply oblivion. In certain ways it would make my life much simpler. But I've read too many case histories to dismiss them all as the product of hoax and delusion. I am stuck with the belief in an afterlife -- or to put it more accurately, the belief that there is a high degree of probability of an afterlife -- whether I like it or not. At times I do like it. At other times I don't. I suspect this is true of many people.

I will also say that despite my intellectual position on this issue, I remain quite dubious about the idea of an afterlife on an emotional level. That is, life after death is not a reality to me at a gut level in the same way that some other abstract propositions are. That's one reason why I frequently find myself reviewing the evidence with a rather jaundiced eye.

If I look , say, at a reading by John Edward on his TV show, my attitude constantly swings back and forth between the belief that he is probably for real and the belief that he is probably a fake. If he seems to be leading the person or picking up on cues that the person has inadvertently supplied, then I lean toward the "fake" hypothesis. But if he blurts out some item of information that would seem impossible to obtain by any known method of cold reading, then I lean toward the "for real" hypothesis. I go back and forth as the reading continues. I've never come to any firm conclusion.

Again, I suspect this is true of many people who take my position. We don't just sit there slack-jawed, gaping in awe at everything Edward has to say.

Or rather, many of us don't, but some of us do. There are true believers whose ego is heavily invested in their belief system and who are apparently unconscious of their own biases. They may mean well, but they do not necessarily help the cause of parapsychology. Like the more militant skeptics, they seem to lack skill in introspection. They do not see that their own predilections, emotional needs, and other ego-related issues can skew their interpretation of the facts. While all of us are blind to our biases to a certain extent, those who are the most blind are also typically the most reluctant to admit it.

The issue of beliefs, then, is complicated. For most of us, it is not a simple matter of believing things just because they make us feel good. They may not make us feel good, and even if they do, we may remain doubtful.

Some traditions advise us to hold no beliefs whatsoever. I'm not sure this is humanly possible, but it is probably best to couch our beliefs in terms of probabilities, and to eschew any claim to certainty. And, as far as ego permits, it is best not to cherish our beliefs too much. Often the beliefs we most cherish are the ones most likely to be wrong.

It's all in your head

Here's an odd little story recounted by Robert S. Bobrow, M.D., in his fascinating new book The Witch in the Waiting Room: A Physician Investigates Paranormal Phenomena in Medicine.

The story was originally reported in the British Medical Journal by Dr. I.O. Azuonye in 1997.* It involves a British housewife known in the case history only as A.B., who was about 40 years old and had no history of serious illness or psychiatric disorders.

While reading quietly one evening, A.B. heard a distinctive voice inside her head. The voice politely said: "Please don't be afraid. I know it must be shocking for you to hear me speaking to you like this, but this is the easiest way I could think of. My friend and I used to work at the Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street, and we would like to help you." While A.B. knew of this hospital, she had never been there and didn't know where it was.

The voices assured her of their sincerity, even supplying some factual tidbits for A.B. to confirm (she did).

Despite this confirmation, A.B. understandably feared that she had developed some form of mental illness. She promptly saw a psychiatrist, the aforementioned Dr. Azuonye, who diagnosed the episode as "hallucinatory psychosis." When A.B. started taking a prescription antipsychotic medicine, the voices went away for a while. But when she was on vacation abroad, they came back.

This time, they told her that she needed immediate medical care, and should return to England right away. She returned, and the voices gave her an address to go to; her husband was good enough to humor her, and actually took her to the address just for reassurance. It may not have been that reassuring when it turned out to be the CAT-scanning department of a large London hospital, and that as she arrived, the voices told her to go in and have a brain CAT scan.... [The voices] informed A.B. that she had a brain tumor.

Again consulting with Dr. Azuonye, she was advised to get the brain scan simply in order to set her fears to rest. Since she had no symptoms of a brain tumor, both she and the doctor expected nothing to be found. After some squabbling with the government-run health-care system, the CAT scan was eventually carried out.

The result? A brain tumor, which doctors thought to be a meningioma.

Meningiomas are neither the rarest nor the most common of cranial growths. Their cells, which arise from the brain's coverings, generally grow slowly without eating through the brain and only rarely float off to start new colonies elsewhere in the body (called metastasizing). But the space they take up squashes good brain. Removal, as soon as possible, is usually recommended. So while there were no headaches or specific neurological abnormalities, A.B.'s neurosurgeons opted for immediate surgery. The voices told her they agreed.

Surgeons found and removed a meningioma that measured two and half by one and a half inches -- about the size of an egg. When A.B. awoke from the anesthesia, the voices spoke once more: "We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye." They never returned. [Pp. 43-45]

In his discussion of the case in the British Medical Journal, Azuonye notes:

It is well known that intracranial lesions can be associated with psychiatric symptomatology. But this is the first and only instance I have come across in which hallucinatory voices sought to reassure the patient of their genuine interest in her welfare, offered her a specific diagnosis (there were no clinical signs that would have alerted anyone to the tumour),directed her to the type of hospital best equipped to deal with her problem, expressed pleasure that she had at last received the treatment they desired for her, bid her farewell, and thereafter disappeared.

Azuonye reports that while some doctors accept the case as genuinely paranormal, others have suggested either fraud or a subconscious motive.  Those who allege fraud speculate that the patient

had been given the diagnosis of a brain tumour in her original country and wanted to be treated free under the NHS. Hence, they surmised, she had made up the convoluted tale about voices telling her this and that.

Azuonye objects:

But AB had lived in Britain for 15 years and was entitled to NHS treatment. Besides, she had been so relieved when the voices first disappeared on thioridazine that she had gone on holiday to celebrate the recovery of her sanity.

As for those who think something was going on in A.B.'s subconscious:

Their view was that, the total lack of physical signs notwithstanding, it was unlikely that a tumour of that size had had absolutely no effect on the patient. "She must have felt something," they argued. They suggested that a funny feeling in her head had led her to fear that she had a brain tumour. That fear had led to her experience of hallucinatory voices. She may have unconsciously taken in more information about various hospitals than she realised, and this information was reproduced by her mind as part of the auditory hallucinatory experience.

I think it's more likely that A.B. tapped into some channel of higher consciousness - whether that of "spirit guides" or deceased well-wishers or God - and obtained the information that way. Conceivably the tumor itself brought about changes in the brain that made her nervous system more receptive to such extracerebral influences.

One other interesting aspect of Azuonye's write-up is that apparently quite a large number of the doctors who heard his presentation were entirely comfortable with the paranormal interpretation. I doubt this would have been true a generation ago. Despite skeptical resistance, minds are changing -- slowly but surely.

Or as the old Arabian proverb has it: The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

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*Azuonye, I.O. "Diagnosis Made by Hallucinatory Voices." British Medical Journal. 1997; 315:1685-86.

Ups and downs

The other day I suggested to a friend that she was expending too much energy on being upset with George Bush. Unfortunately, I didn't make my point very well, so I tried again, at greater length. As is often the case when I write something fairly long in an email, I decided to get a blog post out of it. (Hey, it's easier than starting one from scratch.) So here's what I said, with a few edits:

My point about Bush is not to defend him. It's that it may be unhealthy to be so angry. I was very angry at Clinton a lot of the time in the '90s, and I was very angry at Reagan in the '80s (he wasn't libertarian enough for me back then). In retrospect, this anger was wasted energy that accomplished nothing except to make me feel bad.

I think we all tend to get caught up in spirals of negative thinking and negative emotion, and it reinforces itself and becomes self-perpetuating. It becomes part of our identity. The best way to let it go is to see it as something artificial - something manufactured by the ego for the purpose of maintaining the conflict and drama the ego thrives on. It's sort of a show that we put on for ourselves, and we get swept up in it. To pull back from it is to see that it's only a show.

The issues and problems of the world are real, but we can choose how to react to them. Unfortunately, for the most part, we don't choose. We react automatically, based on habitual, engrained patterns. Much of our thinking is reflexive and automatic - stimulus and response. In order to take control of our thinking, rather than letting it control us, we need to step back, distance ourselves from our own thoughts and see them as "just" thoughts, which may or may not be important, may or may not be worth paying attention to. Very often, they are not important, not really worth our time. 

I admit this is difficult to do and can feel alien and unnatural, but I think the rewards are worth it. The alternative is to ride a roller-coaster of highs and lows, which is exciting ("drama") but
exhausting.

Do you know which demographic group scores highest for happiness? Old people. The older they are, the happier they are (in general - of course there are exceptions). Why is this? It's because they have learned that every up is followed by a down, and vice versa; that things are never as good as they seem or as bad as they seem; that all the drama is self-created. But why should this wisdom be reserved for the elderly? We young(er) folks deserve a share of it, too!

Who are the unhappiest people in society? Teenagers. Why is that? After all, they're young, healthy, at their sexual peak. They don't have to earn a living yet; they can study and learn and choose what they want to become. They have their whole lives ahead of them. They should be happy. But (mostly) they're not - because for them, everything is drama. Every setback is a crisis, every disappointment is the end of the world. It's all ups and downs, all the time. Exciting? Yes. But in a good way? No. If it were good, there wouldn't be so many teen suicides.

Teens are hyper-reactive. They inflate everything out of proportion, whether good or bad. Seniors are closer to being nonreactive. They keep things in perspective and stay calm and content. "This too shall pass" is their motto.

It's not a bad one, really. Not bad at all. 

P.S. For more about the happiness quotients of different age groups, see Barbara Sher's excellent self-help book, It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now. 

The challenge, addendum

As a minor postscript to my three-part posting on the JREF Million Dollar Challenge FAQ, I wanted to mention one other detail. Throughout the FAQ, JREF assures the reader that it really does want to test all applicants and that it will bend over backward to treat applicants fairly. Some may wonder why I didn't quote these statements.

The simple answer is that I can't quote everything, and I selected the passages that struck me as most problematic for the applicant. The more involved answer is that these reassurances do not carry any legal weight.

JREF may very well believe that it is entirely reasonable and fair in all of its actions. But what one party to an agreement believes to be reasonable and fair may seem most unreasonable and unfair to the other party. In a one-sided power relationship, there is no way for the aggrieved party to have his grievances addressed. In a more balanced relationship, where power is allocated to both sides, an aggrieved party can seek redress.

It should be clear from the FAQ that the million dollar challenge is a one-sided arrangement. While JREF administrators may behave in a way that seems reasonable and fair to them, the applicant who disagrees with their decisions has no legal recourse.

An analogy would be a dispute between a taxpayer and the IRS. The IRS may believe it handles such disputes with impeccable fairness and reasonableness, but if a given taxpayer disagrees, what can he do about it?

But at least the IRS has a taxpayer advocate who can be appealed to. The million dollar challenge does not provide for any appeal process or any mediation. All the power rests with JREF. The only power the applicant has is to walk away - an option that a great many applicants apparently exercise.

If JREF wanted to protect the rights and interests of applicants, rather than just paying lip service to fairness, they could set up an independent mediator who would oversee disputes. This would go a long way toward making the process more balanced and giving disgruntled applicants some right of redress.

In the absence of any such arrangement, protestations of fairness and reasonableness amount to nothing but window dressing.

The challenge, part three

(This is the conclusion of a three-part post. As before, all emphases in bold are my own.)

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Once the applicant for the JREF's million dollar prize has been finally accepted for testing, he's "in," right?

Wrong. He can still be dismissed at any time, at JREF's sole discretion, if he is deemed guilty of bad behavior.

Section 6 of The JREF Million Dollar Challenge FAQ goes into exhaustive detail about this. Again, I urge you to read the whole thing. Here are some highlights:

Section 6.1:

The Challenge Administrator may close your file and reject all future applications submitted by you based upon negative behavior.

The following are some examples of the type of behavior than can result in the rejection of your claim:

1. Continuous Belligerence, Hostility or Obstinacy. Repeated use of Profanity Following Warnings from The JREF asking you to STOP. Willfully or Unreasonably Delaying the Application Process (for reasons that can only be considered vain). Canceling a Test at the Last Minute (for reasons that can only be considered "vain"). Threatening Legal Action Against The JREF or its Employees & Investigators. Slandering the JREF or its Employees. Making Libelous Accusations (such as insisting that the Challenge itself is a Sham/Fraud or that Randi himself is a liar and a cheat who will never award the prize money even if the Applicant Passes the Tests). A Consistently Aggressive or Violent Tone in Correspondence.

2. A Proven Inability to Comprehend or Accept the Rules of The Challenge.

Section 6.2:

The JREF alone determines when an applicant's behavior is unacceptable. There is no Appeal Process, and there is no mediator.

Section 6.3:

This rule applies both to private correspondence and communications between the applicant and the Challenge administrator, as well as the JREF forum, which all applicants are welcome (and encouraged) to join....

You have the right to have your say, but don't expect it to be allowed to continue beyond the point of what is deemed Reasonable.

All forum members have the right to state their position. If you chose to abuse that right, you will lose it.

At that point, you can also expect to have any further applications you submit discarded upon receipt. The JREF is NOT compelled to accept subsequent applications from persons who have proven themselves impossible to deal with on a reasonable level.

Section 6.5:

Dissenters and JREF opponents will always be allowed a voice on the forum, but it must be a civil voice, and a voice that does not break the forum rules. If a member, any member, behaves in a manner that ultimately saps JREF resources — even when there may not have been any forum rules broken — that person may nonetheless be viewed as a detriment and a hindrance to the JREF mission. It is well within reason for any organization to eliminate obstacles that might prevent it from operating nominally whenever possible.

So, if you wish to see your claim tested (and if you wish to remain a forum member), behave appropriately.

Section 6.6:

The JREF is in no way required to test your claim regardless of how you behave. Other applicants have believed so and been sorely disappointed by the facts.

Remember; it's the JREF Paranormal Challenge, and The JREF alone dictates the rules surrounding it and how it is run, so, if your nature is to quickly turn belligerent and rude, or to accuse the JREF of being disingenuous, you should not apply.

Notice that the applicant can be dismissed for behaving "in a manner that ultimately saps JREF resources - even when there may not have been any forum rules broken." This is as vague a formulation as one could ask for, and covers virtually any behavior whatsoever. Who, after all, is to say what "ultimately saps JREF resources"?

Moreover, we are told that the applicant can be dismissed for "insisting that the Challenge itself is a Sham/Fraud or that Randi himself is a liar and a cheat," or even for "accus[ing] the JREF of being disingenuous." But what if the applicant sincerely feels that the procedure is unfair - perhaps that it's being unduly dragged out, or that unreasonable obstacles are being placed in his way? To voice these objections, not only in the forum but even in "private correspondence and communication," is to invite dismissal. So the candidate is effectively silenced before his test has even been run.

So what have we learned? Even after an applicant has succeded in qualifying for the challenge - which is clearly no easy task - he can still be rejected at any time for "negative behavior." Acting as judge and jury, JREF can dismiss any applicant for being "rude" or "hostile" or even for suggesting that JREF itself is misbehaving. Evidently, any criticism of JREF's procedures can also be grounds for dismissal.

At every stage of the process, the applicant finds himself facing long odds - and not just because he may or may have the ability to demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon. The application process is arduous and time-consuming, often requiring multiple resubmissions over a period of months or even years. Applicants can be rejected for virtually any reason, including the "incredible" nature of their claims. Applicants may be placed in the position of trying to prove they are not mentally ill. Applicants are effectively muzzled from criticizing JREF or Randi either publicly or privately, and may be dismissed at any time for a variety of offenses subjectively determined by JREF administrators, including rudeness and "sap[ping] JREF resources." JREF is the final authority in all cases; there is no mediator and no appeal. Since no lists of applicants and outcomes have been made available on the Internet by JREF, and since Randi himself does not seem to know the number of claimants who've actually been tested, we can only guess at how many people succeed in reaching even the preliminary testing stage. By Randi's own estimate, the number is small, with the "vast majority" of applicants failing to negotiate the application process, or dropping out or being dismissed before the test is attempted.

Given all this, is it really such a mystery that the more sophisticated researchers and test subjects in the paranormal field steer clear of the much-publicized JREF Challenge?

The challenge, part two

(This is a continuation of the post begun below. As before, all emphases in bold are added by me.)

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How easy is it for a claimant to apply for James Randi's vaunted million dollar prize? According to The JREF Million Dollar Challenge FAQ, not easy at all. Section 4.4 of the FAQ reads:

An application made by an earnest applicant may take 1-6 months to handle, considering the refining of the application wording and the mutual negotiation of a mutually acceptable preliminary test. It should not take longer than a few weeks, ideally, so long as an acceptable test is quickly agreed upon. However, securing a team of qualified observers is not always an easy thing to do, so the time that lapses between your claim submission and the actual test can be several months, or even longer.

Such long delays must discourage a lot of people. In his Personal FAQ at the end of the above-linked document, Randi seems to concede as much:

Many hundreds have applied, and most have had to be instructed to reapply — sometimes several times — because they did it incorrectly or incompletely. There are, at any given time, about 40 to 60 applicants being considered, but from experience we know that the vast majority will drop out even before any proper preliminary test can be designed. Of those who get to the preliminary stage, perhaps a third will actually be tested, and some of those will quit before completion.

Hundreds have applied ... often several times because of problems with the paperwork. But "the vast majority" drop out even "before any proper preliminary test can be designed." And even most of those who make it to the preliminary test don't actually get tested - only "perhaps a third."

So what kind of numbers are we talking about? Section 1.3 reports:

Between 1964 and 1982, Randi declared that over 650 people had applied [3]. Between 1997 and February 15, 2005, there had been a total of 360 official, notarized applications.

It's not clear what happened between 1982 and 1997, but in the 26 years covered, 1,010 people applied. Whether all these applications were accepted is a different issue, one that's not taken up in the FAQ.

Who are these applicants and what became of them? Section 4.7 addresses this question. In response to the question, "Where can I find a list of all the people who have ever applied?" the FAQ states: 

Since the Challenge has been going on since before the World Wide Web gained in popularity, no such list exists online. The JREF has limited resources, so most of the applications are maintained in a file cabinet at the JREF headquarters. In other words, if you want a lot of details about the former applicants, you are going to have to visit the JREF and do your own research.

However, the JREF forum also contains a CHALLENGE APPLICATIONS section that describes in detail the claims received, the correspondences exchanged between the JREF and the applicant, and subsequent protocol negotiations and test results.

I'm not sure why the fact that the challenge predates the popularity of the Web is relevant. A great deal of the data on the Web predates the Web itself. Those data have simply been uploaded to Web servers. JREF prefers to keep its data in file cabinets, presumably where few people can see them. If I were a skeptic, I might be skeptical about this.

It appears, then, that the application process can extend for many months, with the applicant told to resubmit his paperwork (often including notarized documents) again and again. No lists of applicants and outcomes are readily available. Randi himself is vague about the number of people who have been tested (as contrasted with the number who have applied). It's also unclear whether all 1,010 applicants between 1964-1982 and 1997-early 2005 were actually accepted, or whether some, or even most, of the applications were rejected.

For a look at the slow-as-molasses "progress" (if that's the word) of one candidate's application, readers can go to Peter Morris's Web site. Here we see that correspondence between the applicant and James Randi began on March 6, 2004. Correspondence relating to the application itself began on August 31, 2006, and the application was mailed on September 11, 2006. On October 16, 2006, Randi acknowledged receipt of the application. As of November 3, 2006, the applicant and Randi were still arguing about whether or not the claim would be tested.

Remember also that some applicants are rejected out of hand. An example is provided on Richard Milton's Web site. Someone named Rico Kolodzey tried to apply for the challenge, claiming he could survive without food for an indefinite period. In his reply, Randi simply dismissed the claim as preposterous:

Please don't treat us like children. We only respond to responsible claims....

If this is actually your claim, you're a liar and a fraud.  We are not interested in pursuing this further, nor will we exchange correspondence with you on the matter.

The one thing that stands out here, beyond the obvious difficulty of getting an application approved in the first place, is the disparity between the number of people who successfully apply and the number who are actually tested. Do all these claimants drop out voluntarily even after going to the trouble of applying, or are there other factors involved?

We'll look at that question and wrap things up in part three.