Michael Prescott's Blog

Going through channels

Reading Jon Klimo's well-known book Channeling, I came across this interesting passage:

The clairvoyant and precognitive material of the later fifteenth-century semi-mythical English medium Mother Shipton also appears to have come true. Like a number of other prophetic mediums before and after her, she chose to record what she received in poetic form:

Carriages without horses shall go,
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye ...
In the air men shall be seen,
In white, in black, in green;
Iron in the water shall float,
As easily as a wooden boat.

Two things struck me about this. First, if Mother Shipton is "semi-mythical," how can we be  sure of the provenance of her alleged prophecies? Second, the excerpt of the prophecy seems almost too accurate; I wondered what had been omitted.

Luckily, the Internet came to the rescue. Google easily turned up some answers. Here is the modern-day introduction to an 1881 book about Shipton by William H. Harrison, the complete text of which is online. (The intro, written in 2004, is by John Bruno Hare; links are in the original.)

Mother Shipton (1488-1561) is a traditional English character with a reputation as a prophet. Among the most startling predictions attributed to her is a short poem which predicts that

Carriages without horses shall go,
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.
The world upside down shall be
And gold be found at the root of a tree.
Through hills man shall ride,
And no horse be at his side.
Under water men shall walk,
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall talk.
In the air men shall be seen,
In white, in black, in green;
Iron in the water shall float,
As easily as a wooden boat.
Gold shall be found and shown
In a land that's now not known.
Fire and water shall wonders do,
England shall at last admit a foe.
The world to an end shall come,
In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

Alas, this is a forgery written in 1862. In the 20th century an expanded version of this was circulated (revised to exclude the 1881 apocalypse, and include world wars I and II). Today, variations of this are uncritically posted at various websites, just as bogus Nostradamus prophecies circulated in the wake of the events of 9/11/2001.

This essay about Mother Shipton was written in the year 1881; it gives the text of the earliest Mother Shipton prophecies, which primarily concern events from the reign of Henry the Eighth. As it turns out, these were also spawned after the fact, penned by a notorious plagiarist. The three earliest texts mention nothing about horseless carriages, submarines, the telegraph, iron boats, let alone predict the year the world will end.

So if there is any kernel of truth to the Mother Shipton legend, it can't be determined from any verifiable documentation. Mother Shipton belongs in the same category as Robin Hood or King Arthur: a legendary figure, possibly based on a real person, whose narrative has been enhanced by time and retelling.

An online resource called the Museum of Hoaxes agrees:

Mother Shipton’s prophecies are hoaxes, because it now appears that almost all of them were written by others after the events they described had already happened. For instance, the first record of her prophecy about Cardinal Wolsey dates from 1641, long after the man had died. Her prophecies about future technology, and about the world coming to an end in 1881, first appeared in print in the 1862 edition of her sayings, and Charles Hindley, the editor of that edition, later admitted that he had composed them.

The existence of Mother Shipton herself is uncertain. Her 1684 biographer, Richard Head, apparently invented most of the details of her life. In fact, she may never have existed outside of Yorkshire legend.

This matter, trivial in itself, raises questions about the general accuracy of Klimo's book, at least in its historical section. Note especially that he did not quote the lines of prophecy stating that the world would end in 1881 - a rather significant omission!

I noticed some other doubtful accounts in the same chapter. For instance, in recounting the story of the Fox sisters, Klimo reports that the rapping spirit in their Hydesville farmhouse identified himself as Charles B. Rosma, a peddler, who was murdered in the house and buried under it. This is correct, but he goes on to say,

When digging was undertaken, human bones were found. Fifty-six years later, another excavation unearthed the peddler's tin box and other bones and belongings. Today, the Fox house, along with Rosma's remains, are displayed in nearby Lily Dale, New York, headquarters for the Spiritualist movement.

This gives the impression that the remains were positively ID'd as Rosma's. In fact, however, all attempts to verify the earthly existence of a Charles B. Rosma failed, even though the story was very widely circulated. There may never have been any such person. The bones first discovered under the house may or may not have been human. The remains found half a century after the fact may have been planted in the house in order to revive local interest in the story.

Klimo also reports the medium Nettie Colburn's meeting with President Lincoln - in which she supposedly convinced him to sign the Emancipation Proclamation - as if it were an established fact, when actually there is much doubt as to whether Lincoln gave any credence to mediums. (Doris Kearns Goodwin's bio of Lincoln acknowledges that he sat in on a few séances arranged by his wife, but says he was mainly interested in finding out how the mediums faked their effects.)

To give a final example, Klimo mentions the case of Helene Smith, who claimed to channel information from a race of beings on Mars. She was extensively studied by Theodore Flournoy, who wrote a book about her called From India to the Planet Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with Glossolalia. But Klimo does not tell us the conclusion of the affair: Flournoy determined that the alleged Martian words spoken by Helene Smith were derived from French, probably unconsciously, and that her channeling was primarily a psychological phenomenon.

As one online source summarizes:

By the late 1890s, Smith was being investigated by many researchers. The most notable was Theodore Flournoy, a Swiss professor of psychology. Flournoy, using psychoanalytic techniques, spent five years sitting in on séances, researching Smith's personal history, and corroborating historical information that she provided during her séances.

Flournoy's conclusions were the Smith had a fantastic imagination, perhaps complemented with telepathy and psychokinesis. The Martian language that she produced was a childish imitation of French ...

After Flournoy published his findings in From India to Planet Mars (1900) Smith's supporters stood by her, and Flournoy was banished from her life. The expose only served to increase her popularity as she enjoyed comfortable wealth and fame.

No doubt there is much valuable information in Channeling, a book that continues to enjoy a positive reputation in psi circles, but my advice when reading it would be to  follow Ronald Reagan's dictum: "Trust, but verify."

P.S. I should note that my comments are based on reading the first edition of the book. There is now a second edition, updated and expanded. Possibly the defects I found have been remedied in the newer edition; I don't know. For those who are interested, the revised edition is sold by Amazon.

Eye of a needle

In the comments thread about my post on Trinity United Church, Bruce Siegel pointed out that Oprah Winfrey has endorsed Barack Obama. He found this significant because, he said, "Oprah, in my view, is one of the most spiritually evolved, intelligent, compassionate, people on the planet."

I responded that Winfrey "has made a lot of money, but commercial savvy does not necessarily equal spiritual mastery (to put it mildly)."

Bruce replied,  "Nor does it disqualify her in the least, as you seem to be implying."

This got me thinking. Can making a huge amount of money be compatible with spiritual advancement?

I'm inclined to say no.

Now, when I say a huge amount of money, I'm not talking about earning a decent living or even doing pretty darn well for yourself. I'm talking about amassing an enormous fortune - in the hundreds of millions of dollars, or even in the billions of dollars. (Winfrey's net worth was reported as at least one billion dollars in 2007.)

Although I think capitalism (with appropriate oversight and a social safety net) is the best of the available economic systems, I still wonder if anyone can accumulate this kind of cash and remain spiritually healthy. Remember that great fortunes don't create themselves. It takes an incredible amount of work over a long period of time to build up a billion-dollar portfolio. It requires total dedication to the task of making money, relentless pursuit of profit, and ruthless determination to squeeze an extra percent or two of gain out of every transaction. One must be a stern taskmaster, a workaholic, and a driven, Type-A personality.

Are these qualities consistent with spiritual seeking?

In my own, admittedly limited exposure to movers and shakers - the type of people who earn large fortunes - I've noticed the following characteristics:

A hard-charging, perfectionistic personality, intolerant of weakness or failure in themselves or others.

Almost superhuman competitive drive, which impels them to win every contest and not just beat but crush and humiliate every rival.

Disdain for subordinates, less successful competitors, nonplayers in the business world - basically anyone who is not playing and winning at their level.

Total immersion in daily activity, which consists of an unending round of meetings, phone calls, and video conferences, with little or no quiet time (quiet time equals wasted time, in their minds).

A social Darwinist streak that rationalizes their success and the wealth gap between themselves and most other people.

Arrogance bordering on hubris - the expectation that every order will be instantly obeyed,  every wish carried out; fury and indignation at any delay, disagreement, or obstacle.

A rapacious desire for more - more money, more real estate, more deals, more acquisitions - not necessarily for the sake of having these things, but in order to prove capable of getting them; their self-worth appears to be measured by their success at winning high-stakes games, and the winnings are valued mainly as proof of their supreme competence.

And finally, in the men at least, a rather odd conflation of business acumen with sexual power - the sense that as Masters of the Universe they are continually proving their virility. Sexual metaphors of the locker-room sort are commonplace, and unsuccessful competitors are dismissed as unmasculine or sexually maladroit.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who builds up a huge personal fortune necessarily matches this description. There may be exceptions that test the rule. But as a thumbnail description of the personality of an individual who becomes mega-rich, I think the above list of features is more likely to be accurate than not.

I remember reading an account of Michael Jordan, who crafted an image as a mild-mannered, kid-friendly superstar while garnering hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements. The journalist who wrote the piece pointed out that this image was a complete fabrication. The real Jordan was not mild-mannered or laid-back; he was a compulsive competitor who became enraged when he lost any contest, even a golf game among friends. The real Jordan, the journalist wrote, was not the father figure who traded quips with Bugs Bunny, but the guy who won a championship game with a deciding basket at the last second and then made a circuit of the arena, his face twisted in a fierce, snarling rictus of angry triumph.

I'm not saying this to put down Jordan, a classy player of supreme talent. I just think we sometimes overlook what it takes to be a super-achiever. I suspect that almost anyone could become a multimillionaire, given a reasonably open economy and a fanatical, all-consuming will to succeed. Most people lack the will and are content with ordinary achievements (which is by no means a bad thing - in fact, I think it is rather admirable). A few people, however, cannot stand being relegated to the ranks of the ordinary, the common, and so they push themselves and everyone around them, they crack the whip, they work impossible hours, they drive their staffs to exhaustion, they alienate friends and family members, they refuse to accept defeat under any circumstances, and they succeed.

But having done all this, can they still have time to listen to the still, small voice that guides us to higher spiritual understanding? I very much doubt it. That voice was probably drowned out long ago by the incessant chirp of their cell phone, the buzz of their pager, the assistant reminding them about the next appointment and the next, and the never-ending mental calculations devoted to preserving status and maximizing gain, not to mention the entourage of yes-men and hangers-on who attach themselves to the successful.

In short, to attain a certain exalted level of success, one must become a predator - hungry, impatient, restless, ravenous. And predators, it seems to me, are not the most promising candidates for spiritual growth. 

I could be wrong. But my guess is that Jesus had some idea of what he was talking about when he said what he said about the rich man and the eye of the needle.

Your Eternal Self

I've started reading R. Craig Hogan's Your Eternal Self, and I'm finding it very interesting. It's basically a compendium of evidence for the proposition that philosophical materialism is wrong - that the mind is something apart from the brain, and therefore likely to survive the death of the brain. In a way, it's like a much less academic, much more popularized version of Irreducible Mind - though much briefer and also, thankfully, not nearly as pricey.

Much of the material is familiar to me, but not all of it, and even the more familiar stuff is still worth having in an easily accessible format, rather than scattered across dozens of blog posts and Web articles.

One story I don't think I'd encountered before concerns Jay Greenberg, a twelve-year-old musical prodigy enrolled in Juilliard.

Greenberg says that music just fills his head and he has to write it down to get it out. He doesn't know where it comes from, but it comes fully written, playing like an orchestra within his head: "It's as if the unconscious mind is giving orders at the speed of light," he reports. "You know, I mean, so I just hear it as if it were a smooth performance of a work that is already written, when it isn't." ...

In fact, at around age two, Greenberg started drawing instruments. Before he knew what a cello was, he had drawn a picture of one and had written the name ... At age three, he was drawing the notes for a cello performance. He had not been taught how to draw notes, and certainly not how to create a cello performance, yet they came to him.

In 2007, [his mother] reported that "... he told us he often hears more than one new composition at a time. Multiple channels is what it's been termed." Says Jay, "... my brain is able to control two or three different musics at the same time - along with the channel of my everyday life." He doesn't revise his compositions. They usually come out right the first time. [p. 43, Your Eternal Self]

In any book that covers so much ground, there will be room for nitpicking. The weaknesses in certain cases are not always mentioned. For instance, in a discussion of Charles Tart's experiments with a clairvoyant, there is no mention of the fact that a (very dim) reflection in the room could conceivably have allowed the subject to see the target object - a flaw that Tart himself has acknowledged. Hogan often points to the credentials of scientists who support psi, but this is a slippery slope, since there are many other scientists with equally good credentials who oppose it. And some of the authorities he cites are not the ones I would choose.

But as I said, this is nitpicking. Your Eternal Self is an important contribution to the debate over psi and life after death. It presents a wealth of specific cases, many of them quite recent, to lend credence to the idea that "you are not your brain." And it's got its own Web site, which includes additional cases like these.

R. Craig Hogan, by the way, is the coauthor with Allan L. Botkin of Induced After-Death Communication, another highly interesting and important book.

Tempest in a teapot

Mark Anderson's blog makes note of six new scholarly articles apparently establishling that Shakespeare's play The Tempest, long thought to have been written after 1604, was actually based on sources that considerably predate that year. As Mark says, this is important to the authorship controversy, because the leading candidate for the "real Shakespeare," Edward de Vere, died in 1604. "If any Shakespeare play could definitively be dated after 1604," Mark writes, "then de Vere is kicked to the curb as a 'Shakespeare' candidate."

The two plays most often cited as post 1604 are The Tempest and Macbeth. If The Tempest was penned before 1604, then only Macbeth remains - and only if we buy the dubious argument that a play about the assassination of a Scottish king was written to "flatter" King James, himself a Scot.

The debate continues, and the level of scholarship on the anti-Stratfordian side just keeps climbing higher.

Nooooooooooo!!!

Say it ain't so, Laurie.

Moldy oldie: "Evil"

I'm a little too busy and preoccupied with personal matters to do much original blogging right now, but rather than leave the blog idle, I thought I would republish an older post. The one I picked, "Evil," appeared for the first time on March 12, 2005. I'm reposting it here with no changes other than correcting a couple of typos. The "coda" following the three asterisks was part of the original piece.

---

I just finished reading The History of Torture, by Daniel P. Mannix, and I have to say the book's relentless chronicling of man's inhumanity to man was pretty depressing. I had liked to think that we are making moral progress, but Mannix's book made me wonder if I was wrong, and if my optimism about humanity was misplaced. I ended up writing some notes to myself, in which I came to some sort of understanding of the perennial problem of human cruelty. Rather than tidy up these notes, I'm going to reproduce them with only minor editing and abridgments. Maybe some of you have gone through the same thought process and will recognize yourselves here.

Here's what I jotted down:

The thing that haunts me is the fact of human evil. The use of torture, the cruelty, the demonic aspect of people - what is it, if not Original Sin? And yet I don't believe in Original Sin. I like to believe in moral progress. But if someone held the Roman "games" today, wouldn't people show up? They enjoy the emotional pain and humiliation of reality-TV shows, even the surgical disfigurement of The Swan (a show in which contestants are put through plastic surgery). They attend cockfights, dogfights, bullfights, boxing matches, car races that end in deadly crashes. There seems to be something inherent in human nature that responds to blood sport. Maybe we haven't made so much progress, after all. Or perhaps it's better to say that whatever progress we've made is painfully slow, painfully hard won.

I used to think this kind of cruelty was an outgrowth of materialistic culture. The Romans, after all, were materialists who believed in nothing but sensual gratification. On the other hand, the Inquisitors believed they were saving souls, and the Aztecs believed they were placating the gods. It's not a simple matter of "materialism bad, spirituality good." It goes deeper. Any belief system is compatible with torture - as if the lust to kill is so deeply ingrained in human beings that it can be rationalized under any system of thought. If so, it's incorrect to "explain" cruelty by reference to ideology or philosophy or culture. Ethics can mitigate cruelty, but the potential for cruelty is always there, and we are all capable of it.

We all mistreat people, abuse people, insult people. No one is ever blameless. When I was a big sports fan, I used to root so hard for my team that I actually hoped the opposing players would be injured.

And why was I rooting so hard? Because my ego was invested in the team. Their victory was my victory, and their defeat was my defeat - my humiliation.

The ego is the key. The small-minded, petty, grasping, insecure, defensive part of us that wants to be superior, wants to control others, wants dominance and power and safety. Only by getting beyond the ego can we escape from violence and cruelty.

The Roman mob rooted for slaughter because they were powerless and frustrated, and it pleased them to see someone worse off than themselves. The Inquisitors were willing to torture because of their egoistic conceit that they, and only they, were in possession of absolute truth. The Nazis worshiped Hitler, a megalomaniac, the personification of ego. The Aztecs, too, were operating on an ego level - they were terrified of the gods, and to propitiate these deities they engaged in wholesale massacres. (The ego is all about fear and vigilance and saving oneself regardless of the cost to others.)

Religious and ethical traditions have always opposed the ego. Greek myths warn of "hubris," or overweening pride, and the myth of Narcissus is a critique of excessive self-love. In the Bible, violence enters the world (Cain's murder of Abel) right after humanity acquires an ego (Adam and Eve's defiance of God). The Ten Commandments stress the need to subordinate the willful self to God, to parents, to social norms. Do not covet = don't be envious or jealous (ego qualities). Do not put any false gods before God = don't elevate the ego to godlike status.

The ego is part of human nature and can't be eradicated. The best we can do is keep it in check. Moral systems teach us this truth. If we have made progress since the days of the Roman "games" or the Inquisition, it's only because we have a long ethical tradition that attempts to put some restraints on the ego.

So it looks like there really is such a thing as Original Sin - and it's the ego. It's part of us all.

***

That's the end of my notes, but as a coda, here's a quote that just occurred to me. It's from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, a play about cruelty and hubris:

But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured
(His glassy essence), like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep ...

Measure for Measure, II, ii. 122-127

Tidbits of trivia

A random collection of semi-coherent thoughts for Sunday reading.

R. Craig Hogan sent me a copy of his new book Your Eternal Self. It's a compendium of evidence for life after death, and looks well worth reading (even if he does include a certain British "materialization medium" among those he considers rigorously tested) ...

Rod McKenzie emailed me to recommend signing an anti-whaling petition. I'm not much into petitions, but for those who are, here's the link. Warning for those at work: the site plays music ...

The new Indiana Jones movie actually looks pretty good. And the John Williams theme music still soars ...

The campaign to eliminate plastic bags is apparently based on an amateurish journalistic blunder ...

Google Books includes a preview of Jenny Wade's excellent (but challenging) Changes of Mind, for those who are interested ...

The new Amazon Video Unbox service is pretty cool. You can buy a TV show or movie and download it to your PC or portable device. Rentals are available too. High-speed connection required ...

Spiritualist Chatroom, which has been hacked at least twice in the past, is now offline again. More hackery? Or just a technical snafu? I don't know, but the site has been down for at least three days ...

Rolling Stone tells the sad, bizarre story of how Britney Spears lost her mind. With most celebrities, "losing one's mind" would be a purely figurative expression ...

George Clooney is cool. Here's how he responds to a Web site calling him "gay, gay, gay": "No, I'm gay, gay. The third gay – that was pushing it." Heh.

That's all for now. 

Transcend and include

In his book A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber makes a simple but important point. He says that as things go through the process of evolution, they will inevitably transcend and include their earlier stages of development. In other words, each higher step on the evolutionary ladder not only transcends all the previous steps but also includes them.

An obvious example is the multicellular organism that both transcends and includes the individual one-celled life forms that gave rise to it. Another example is the molecule that transcends and includes the atoms of which it is constituted, just as the atom transcends and includes its subatomic constituents.

But where the idea is really useful is in the evolution of consciousness. Probably the best book I've read on this subject, at least from a scholarly perspective, is Changes of Mind by Jenny Wade. Though Wade's book is written in rather dry and technical language and is not always easy to read, it comprehensively outlines the stages of development of consciousness all the way from the prenatal to the postmortem (as indicated by near-death experiences). Wade does a fine job of showing how each stage of consciousness transcends the previous one -- but I'm not sure she is equally clear in showing that the higher stages also include the lower stages. Yet this insight seems critical to me. It means that, no matter how far we may travel in the development of our own consciousness, we will still embrace what we might call the "lower elements" of our nature. To put it another way, even if we manage to largely transcend ego-based behavior, our ego will still exist, and we will still find ourselves acting egoically in some situations.

And this is not necessarily a bad thing, because there are circumstances in which an egoic reaction is probably the most desirable. We do not, after all, want to become doormats who let people walk all over us.

The ideal outcome is not to lose the ego entirely, which is probably impossible anyway, but to minimize the extent to which the ego controls our behavior. The ego then becomes part of a repertoire of possible responses in any given situation. Most of the time, an ego-based reaction will be counterproductive -- but not always.

Maybe there are some spiritual masters who reach such an exalted stage of personal development that they no longer have any ego-based responses at all. But I suspect that this level of development, if it exists, is exceedingly rare. More often, we may see through the illusion of ego-based behavior in most circumstances but still fall back on it occasionally. Even Jesus is depicted as becoming angry and violent at certain points in the New Testament -- when overturning the tables of the money changers, for instance, or in his heated arguments with the Pharisees. This is not to say that a spiritual master like Jesus did not transcend the ego, but only that in transcending it, he still included it as part of his makeup.

Anyway, the idea seems useful to me. It means we don't need to beat ourselves up on those occasions when we revert to immature or even infantile behavior. The possibility of behaving like a child or spoiled teenager or a narcissistic twentysomething remains part of our nature even if, for the most part, we've moved beyond it. We never lose anything. We transcend and include.

Last rites

Here's something a friend of mine sent me, concerning a Buddhist ceremony for her late mother-in-law, Jane. (Names have been changed for privacy.)

I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I was very impressed yesterday evening when the Buddhist monks came. There were two of them, and one was clearly the accomplished famous monk.  Of course Jim, Gary and I made many jokes about the monk coming – Monks R Us, we might need a back-up monk, are there monks on the bench?  But this was really good.  There were about fifteen of us in Susan’s living room.  One wall is all glass, and she has a huge mirror that reflects the outdoor garden.  We were sitting on the couch where I could look straight into the mirror and it was incredibly beautiful, because the late afternoon light backlit some fan palms so they were bright green, against a background of blue-green-gray oleander that moved wildly in the wind.  It was gorgeous. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, except to look at the monk in his dark red robe.  And the monk explained what he was doing. He was matter-of-fact and made a lot of sense, talking about how life was only completed by death, and this is not a sad thing.  He had a way about him that made me feel Jane really was going on up the path to enlightenment. The monk wasn’t trying to convince anyone. It just was. There was no self-consciousness in any way – he wasn’t the arrogant Top Monk, and he wasn’t plaintive.  I was moved by his presence.  We were to give her her favorite foods by throwing them into the fire, as well as water and tea.  He told us Jane was present and her consciousness was there, but in a different way. She lay on a gurney and had been dressed in a beautiful midnight-blue tunic, she looked like a monk herself.  He said that he hoped everyone would let her go on her path and not try to keep her from it, that this was a part of life.  He embodied acceptance of the way things were, and acceptance of what could be done to help Jane on her journey.  He helped her reach up to a higher consciousness.  I was deeply moved. 

If you ever get a chance to participate in a ceremony like this, it’s worthwhile.  Especially since you are interested in death and the afterlife.  The chanting can be a bit onerous, but I left thinking I don’t know everything.

Paranormalia

Stephen E. Braude points me to a blog called Paranormalia, which looks to be of extremely high quality from the bits I've read. It seems to have started up in September of 2006, but posting was infrequent until the last two months.

The blog description reads:

Parapsychologists think some paranormal claims are genuine. Sceptics say they can all be explained in terms of fraud or misperception. Paranormalia takes the view that parapsychologists are right, but recognises that the issues are hard to penetrate. It comments on recent controversies, research and books to help shed light on this fascinating and much misunderstood subject.

The blog's author is  a British freelance journalist, Robert McLuhan.

It's good stuff. Check it out.