Michael Prescott's Blog

Resurrected: Numbers are evil

After all the Sturm und Drang about the stock market, I thought it was appropriate to republish one of my earliest posts. In fact, this January 2005 post dates back to my original blog, which was on Blogger. Later, I changed to TypePad because Blogger was so glitchy. Now TypePad is getting glitchy. But that's another story.

Anyway, I wasn't entirely serious about this post, but maybe a little.

-----

Some people allegedly have a love affair with numbers. I'm the opposite. I have a hate affair with them. Long ago I came to the conclusion that numbers are evil.

Think about it. When are there ever any good numbers? Numbers only depress us. "Oh, God, I've turned forty." "The stock market is down ten percent." "I just got a bill for $300!" "My sales figures are off by 25%." "My car has 100,000 miles on it - how much longer can it last?" "The federal deficit is four hundred billion!"

I say again: NUMBERS ARE EVIL. The Bible is wrong in saying that money (or the love of it) is the root of all evil. Numbers are the root of all evil.

I hate numbers.

What a pleasant world it would be without numbers. "How many books did I sell? Enough." "How old am I? As old as I feel." "The stock market? What's that?" "The deficit? What's a deficit?" "A bill? You mean like on a duck?"

A numberless world - that's the place for me!

Now you might say, "But wait. What if the stock market goes up? Or your sales improve? Or we're running a surplus? Then numbers are good!"

But if you were to say such a foolish thing (which I very much doubt you would), you would be very wrong. Because "good" numbers are the most evil of all!

When the stock market goes up, all that happens is we get a false sense of security and a puffed-up ego. Same with sales figures or the deficit. "Good" numbers make us focus on the wrong stuff - money, prestige, success, our own cleverness and goodness, as contrasted with the stupidity and vileness of others.

"Good" numbers inflate our ego - which is bad. So good numbers are bad. And bad numbers are bad. Therefore, all numbers are bad. Bad things are evil. Numbers are evil. Q.E.D.

There is nothing good about numbers.

Additional proof: Mathematical types are irritating dweebs.

And a final, clenching argument: In a world without numbers, you would never have to balance your checkbook.

We would all be better off without numbers.

I rest my case.

----

2009 addendum: Did you notice that one of my examples of bad-numbers news was, "The stock market is down ten percent"?

Those were the days!

A last word on the economy

Though I've been hung up on the financial crisis lately, I intend to go back to blogging about our regular topics after this. There's only so much to say about the ongoing economic mess. But before I leave this subject, I want to add a couple of thoughts.

In the various discussions around the Internet, there are always some people who envision a doomsday scenario in which Western civilization will be effectively wiped out. I think this is very unlikely, but any crisis presents a nonzero chance of total disaster. The question is, how can we prepare for it?

And the answer is, we can't.

There is simply no way of preparing for the end of the world. I know that in some circles, it's popular to fantasize about a survivalist scenario. "I've got my guns 'n' ammo," people say, and "I'm ready." But this is nonsense. Do these budding Rambos really think they will be the only ones with guns 'n' ammo? They are at least as likely to be shot as to be the ones doing the shooting. Moreover, what kind of life would it be if you could survive only by killing your starving neighbors? Do these people really want to be Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, living in paranoid isolation and gunning down anyone who looks threatening? It's neither a realistic nor a desirable option.

If it all falls apart, there's nothing to do but go along with the ride and leave your fate in the hands of, well, Fate.

But I don't expect this ultra-pessimistic scenario to play out. If Western civ could survive two world wars, a Cold War, and a Great Depression, it's unlikely to be finished off by a credit crunch.

What is infinitely more likely is that we will muddle through. And that means that these problems, while unsettling, are temporary. This too shall pass. In the meantime, we might consider a few simple truths.

First, there is no point in beating yourself up about what you did or didn't do with your investments. If even Warren Buffett could be taken by surprise by the credit crunch, why should you have anticipated it?

Second, pay no attention to people who inform you that they cashed out of the market when the Dow was at 14,000. I'm not going to say these people are untruthful; I think we all know that nobody ever fibs about their financial prowess, just as nobody ever fibs about their sexual prowess. Even so, people do tend to brag about their investing successes and keep their investing failures to themselves. This is why it's a mistake to envy anybody. You never know the whole story, only the side of it they choose to show you.

Third, it's probably a mistake to say, "As soon as the Dow climbs back to 9,000 - or 10,000 or whatever the magic number may be - I'm going to pull out 100% of my money and stuff it in a mattress." This just puts you on a hair trigger, in perpetual crisis mode. It means you will be primed to take drastic action without having thought it through. It also means you will be obsessively following the markets and waiting for a sudden upward move.

Plus, let's face it: you can't really say what you will do. If and when the Dow does climb back to those levels, the circumstances will be entirely different than they are now. By then you may be sufficiently optimistic that you'll keep your money in stocks, no matter what you tell yourself now. Fear is a powerful emotion, but so is greed. It's hard to pull out of the market when it's going up.  So it's probably better not to make plans based on arbitrary milestones and hypothetical situations. Just wait and see what happens.

Finally, it really does seem to be true that your can't serve both God and Mammon. I have found that the more I focus on market conditions, the less "spiritual" I feel. Where your treasure is, there your thoughts will be also, as a certain carpenter once said. Since there is little you can do about the economy anyway, why worry? If there is any truth to the idea of life after death, then our present difficulties are ephemeral and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And if there is no truth to the idea of life after death, then the only significance in our lives is what we make of them.

Most of these economic problems will sort themselves out eventually. Time is a great healer. Markets are resilient. People are adaptable. And life has a way of going on.

The future of an illusion

Something would occasionally perplex me over the last few years. According to free-market theory -- or even simple common sense -- an economy will not prosper if it's weighed down by high levels of taxation and government spending. Yet in recent decades the economies of North America and Europe have prospered, despite these handicaps. How could this be? For a long time I had no answer, but now a possible solution has presented itself. It's arguable that free-market principles -- and common sense -- haven't been overruled after all, and that much of the prosperity we thought we were enjoying was illusory.

Consider the record in the United States. Since the Reagan administration, the government has seen fit to borrow its way to prosperity, increasing the national debt many times over in order to pay for tax cuts and spending increases. Even on the few occasions when the federal budget was nominally balanced, no effort was made to pay off the existing debt that had been accumulating for years.

Many state governments, following the federal government's lead, are also carrying high levels of debt. Private individuals likewise have engaged in a policy of heavy borrowing, maxing out their credit cards to buy consumer goods, and taking out loans for homes and autos they couldn't afford. Instead of paying off their mortgages, some people took out a second mortgage, or even a third. Instead of paying down their credit card debt, they signed up for more credit cards.

In short, our prosperity over the last thirty years may have been more apparent than real. It was borrowed prosperity -- which means we were living on borrowed time.

The illusion of escalating wealth was maintained by a series of speculative bubbles that artificially inflated certain sectors of the economy. These included the savings-and-loan bubble, the dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, and the recent stock market bubble, in which the Dow attained the unsustainable level of 14,000 before collapsing.

Now that the two latest bubbles -- housing and the stock market -- have burst, governments throughout the world are frantically trying to reinflate the sagging economy. Predictably they are using the only mechanism they know -- borrowing. They are running up ever bigger deficits in order to "stimulate" an economy that was largely built on deficit spending in the first place.

Maybe the policy will work, and the economy -- like a badly patched but still serviceable balloon -- can be reinflated yet again. Or maybe this time no amount of patching can do the trick. Time will tell.

Regardless of the immediate outcome, the economy cannot be sustained indefinitely on the basis of public and private debt and speculative manias. A collapse down to realistic levels of wealth has long been overdue. Right now we are seeing either that collapse or a preview of it. When the dust settles, we will have -- for the first time in decades -- a realistic sense of exactly what our homes and business enterprises are worth. Their value will be considerably less than we'd believed. But it will have the advantage of being a realistic value and not a fantasy.

Watching the stock market plummet to new lows, we may sometimes feel that our future is being lost. But perhaps all we've really lost is the future of an illusion.

Unveiled

Here are some excerpts from Anne Manning Robbins' Both Sides of the Veil (1909). In this book Robbins recounts communications apparently coming from Augustus P. Martin, known to his friends as the General, through famed Boston medium Leonora Piper.

This material, in itself, is not and cannot be "evidential," since there is no way of checking it out. But in his other remarks, the General did come through with a good deal of specific, verifiable information about himself, his family, and Robbins' personal experiences. And Mrs. Piper had a first-rate track record even when tested under the most stringent conditions.

On the other hand, some of what the General says has a decidedly fairy-tale quality - pearly gates, saints in the heavens, seven celestial spheres, etc. We'll come back to this issue.

One topic that seems inadequately addressed by mediums is the actual mechanics of communication from the other side. The General goes into some detail about this. (In what follows, the words in parentheses were spoken by Robbins; words in square brackets were added by Robbins for explanation; all the other words were uttered by the medium.)

You know this is a great big telephone and I am speaking into it.

(Explain it more, will you?)

Yes, I will. The telephone is filled with ether from our world, and it is a receptacle, a vessel, and we blow into it just exactly as you would blow a bellows, the air through a bellows to an open fire, into an open fire, and then we attach a cord, an ethereal cord, to that and talk right over that cord right into the machine, and make this machine utter our thoughts.

By "the machine," he seems to mean the medium, Mrs. Piper. Elsewhere she is called the Light.

When you have a desire to speak with me — there are spirits here who know every mortal on the face of the earth; that is, the same one does not know, but the different ones know every mortal — and they say: "Here is a friend, I think she is a friend of yours; there the Light is beginning to burn, it is open; we have attached the ethereal cord and we will remove the spirit from the Light, take it to our world or out on the cord, attach the cord to the shell, as it were, fill it with our ethereal light, and you can enter into it and see if it is your friend, and if so follow Rector, follow those that are used to the cord and go to the end of it and speak over it to Rector, who is actually within the shell himself, and he will transmit your messages to your friend." It takes in all, I suppose, of your time five or ten minutes perhaps for me to reach you.

Rector was Mrs. Piper's principal spirit guide, or control, at the time.

The General also describes his experience of crossing over. What interests me about this is how closely the description dovetails, at least in certain respects, with accounts of near-death experiencers, most of which were not publicized until years or decades later.

When I first passed out my mind was cloudy, rather confused. I felt as though I was going into space, did not know where, drifting as it were, for a few hours — that was all — and then I felt as though there was a strong hand grasped me and said to me: "It is all right, it is all over." And I said: "What is over?" I could not seem to understand what it all meant, and after a little while, perhaps an hour, possibly an hour or two, I saw oh such a light ! You cannot imagine it, cannot conceive what it is like. It is the most brilliant and yet the softest moonlight that you ever saw, and I thought, what a beautiful light it was! And all of a sudden I saw people moving about. I saw their heads, their figures. Then they seemed all clad in white, and I could not seem to make them out. They were moving in the air.

And I said: "What is this place? Where am I ? What am I ? What has happened?" It was all such a puzzle to me.....

Returning to the moment of transition, he says:

... and all of a sudden I was going through this misty, cloudy way, and then I went past [possibly " fast," word not caught] until I got to this light, and it was like going up, up, up in the air, in a balloon as it were. You could not conceive of anything more strange and beautiful, in a sense — the confusion was not so beautiful, but because it was so I could not seem to retain my consciousness and could not seem to be released from the burden that hung over me, and all of a sudden, the moment I realized that this hand was on my arm, then I began to see clearly; and from that moment I have been advancing and going on, and I have seen everybody I ever knew, and I have had the happiest time you could imagine. I have a mansion all my own and live in it just the same as you live in your place there, just the same. I have walls, I have pictures, I have music, I have books, I have poetry, I have everything.

(I see.)

It is not a fac simile of that life, but that life is a miserable shadow of what this really is, and when I get strong, as I become stronger, and, — that is, more accustomed to using this line, I can tell you more clearly about it....

The passing out is really beautiful, just after you once get beyond the border, it is perfectly beautiful. You know the meaning of the word heaven? Well, it is heaven indeed. But the coming back is a little confusing at first and we have to learn.  

Here's more about the moment of dying, and conditions afterward:

I felt, oh, I was so pleased to be out and away from the atmosphere, I felt so choked and so distressed for breath, and the moment I was released from the imprisoning body then I could breathe perfectly. I felt, — I could not describe it to you....

You know the actual passing out of the body, there is a little feeling of, sort of depression, as it were, and then when I passed out, just as I passed out, I began to feel uplifted. I felt as though the air was filled with perfume, and I was [soaring], rising, rising, rising above my body until I passed behind simply a veil. It is thin. It blinds your vision. It obstructs the vision for a moment from the earthly world. Then after we have passed beyond it, why the music, the flowers, the trees, the birds, the lakes, the rivers, the hills, the gardens, the walks, are perfectly magnificent, perfectly magnificent, and nothing in the earthly world hardly can even correspond to them. And we are taken up by perhaps a priest, or man that acts in the capacity of what you would understand as a clergyman, and they say: " This is a state of transition. You are now in the real life, in the new life. You will not see the face of the Father for many, many years, but He will give you strength and power to go back if you wish and see those whom you have left behind." And the feeling of ecstasy is beyond description, and no spirit that ever returned to earth could begin to describe it for the understanding of the mortal mind.

And then I was surrounded by friends, by acquaintances, by old war veterans, by my intimate friends whom I know, members of my family and all, surrounded by them, welcoming me. Why, I felt as though I should be enveloped by them, the delight was so great, but when I tried to call them by name I was at a loss to do so. They had to tell me who they were. I knew their faces, not one failed to me. I knew them and understood them well. I saw them and recognized them, but to call them by name, believe me, I could not. And when I tried to speak I found instead of it being an effort and difficult for me to speak, I found that my thoughts were understood, actually understood, and their thoughts were returned to me. There was a perfect communion between us.

And then I was taken — would you believe it if I should tell you? I was taken to an actual mansion. It would be what you would call a palace. There is a garden, walks about it. It is divided into rooms, actual compartments. I was taken to that and [they] said: " Here is your home; occupy it, live in it; have what friends you choose with you, what relatives you choose with you, and as those whom you have left behind follow you, you may welcome them to this home as you may see fit." Do you understand it?

(Yes.)

I went in and looked about me. I said: "Where does this music come from?" I walked through a corridor and turned into a room at the right and actually walked without fatigue, without effort; I simply glided in. I saw beautiful pictures upon the walls, I saw beautiful flowers that we called in the body palms, growing about me. I heard this beautiful music. I stepped along to a window and looked out, and under the window there were fifty young, beautiful faces, all playing, — an orchestra. That was my welcome, that was my serenade, as it were. And they said: "This is heaven, this is the spiritual world. We greet you." I went to the window and as I looked out upon the orchestra they each one bowed and waved their hands, and yet the music continued. They were playing upon instruments, actual instruments, all in harmony, and I never heard anything like it in the earthly world. The music was divine. I said: "I would like to go elsewhere." I bade them good-bye, as it were, — I just saluted them and passed along across the corridor back through the room, across the corridor into the opposite side.

I said: "Now I would like to see if it is possible, I would like to see flowers about me." I went to the window, and would you believe, the flowers appeared to me in masses, en masse, I might say, and I never saw such flowers. There were lilies, roses, violets, geraniums, carnations, azaleas, hyacinths, tulips, poppies, of every conceivable description, not all intermingled, but each one in its own place. What could you find, what could one wish for better than that?

I said: "Now if it is wise and right that I should seek it, I would like to hear some- thing that sounds like the voice of a bird."

They said: "Come this way." I was surrounded by these beautiful friends and by clergymen — a good many clergymen there and they said some beautiful things — and they said: "Come to this window and see." But I said: "May I not hear them here? " I listened. In a moment the air was filled with the music of the different birds. Well, you have no conception of what that melody was like. I saw the birds. The birds were just as distinct, much more so than your own. The flowers are real, and as I go back to the mortal life and see the crudeness of it and see how I lived, the active energy and the active life that I then led, the energy which I put into that life, I wonder that I ever existed in it at all. Now you are not living in the real life. You are living in a dream, as it were. When you waken from the dream you will live, in the eternal life....

I walked about, I felt, — it was strange I had no hunger, no thirst, no desire to eat, no desire for food, but I am sustained by the conditions of the elements. The condition of the elements is such that we are fed and sustained and live by them. You can understand it perhaps vaguely if not clearly....

(Well, what do you do mostly with your time?)

Well, now I will tell you. What would correspond with your morning — we have no morning, — that is, it is all morning in a sense, in a way, — there is no daylight and darkness with us, it is all daylight — and what corresponds with your morning — I find that there are always entering into this life, there are spirits entering constantly from your life, and each one needs help, needs to be shown the way, and I enter the multitude, the throng outside of my own home; I pass through, I see the veil uplifted, I see a spirit passing in, perhaps millions of spirits. And I was told when I entered it that I must make this life here useful by helping others and by reverencing God, offering up gratitude in a prayerful spirit to Him who created me and gave me the privilege of this life here. And I do that through the so-called day, without fatigue, with perfect delight, assist some one spirit or more who have left the body and entered this life. And until they are fully conscious and realize where they are — some are taken from us, we are not allowed to see them at all, they are taken into another sphere; those are passed beyond us, we have nothing to do practically with them — but there are spirits that enter our own sphere, and we each lend a hand, show them their homes, settle them in it, go back and help another, and we are constantly doing that.

And then I feel sometimes that I would like to help in something that corresponds with your writing. I find in my home everything for which I ask. If I wish pencil, what corresponds with your pencil, I have it. If I wish to write my thoughts I can write them, if I wish to speak them I can do so, and every thought is granted, every desire is granted. And if I wish to lecture, as I often do, I can do so without fatigue, and it is helpful to those who enter this life. If I wish to write I can write, if I wish to walk I can walk, if I wish to sing I can sing, if I wish to speak I can speak. That makes the life, as you would understand it, perfect. It is a perfect life. And in order to live this perfect life you have got to live in that imperfect life, and the more you undertake to prepare for this life the less you have to go through when you pass it and the clearer your thoughts become when you enter it....

Then in the afternoon sometimes I write a lecture, I go out and look at my flowers, enjoy them; I go and visit others, they visit me. I learn to play on the instruments, the different instruments. I am absorbed in music and I love the flowers and the birds.

Then I feel as though I would like to take up some intellectual pursuit, and then I begin, and I am studying with those who have been here longer than myself the actual conditions of this life and what go to make up the life here, and as I learn I give it out to others, interpret my knowledge to others. Therefore our intellectual capacity is unlimited in a sense, and constantly being educated. And it is a beautiful idea, is it not? And then all through what you would call evening, during the evening, what would correspond with your evening, there is chiefly music going on, entertainment and music. Then after that passes, what corresponds with your early morning or late in the night, there are lectures and concerts of all kinds and descriptions going on, so that our lives are completely filled. And then during the later hours of the morning, before what would be your daylight, every single spirit on my side of the spirit life where I am [is] bowed in prayer for what would be at least two or three hours corresponding with your time, perfect devotion and a prayer.

(Then you don't have to sleep the way we do?)

Have no sleep, no rest. What corresponds with your rest is activity on our part. And then after the devotional exercises we are ready for what would correspond with your day for our work again. Can you conceive of anything more beautiful or more perfect, or more to the liking of a man with my tastes and my ideas?

(No.)

But man should live his allotted time in the earthly world to prepare to live and to live in this world, but if he takes his life intentionally or otherwise he remains in a sense like a little child here, or a germ, and he has to develop, unfold, bud and flower, and he must necessarily do so. Ask me anything you wish. I am so glad to tell you this because I want you to get some conception of what I am and what I am doing. This is not an idle, useless life here, — ah, no, not at all.  

Asking about George Pelham, who had communicated through Mrs. Piper in earlier years:

(Is he in another sphere, so called?)

Yes, he is in the last sphere, what you would speak of as heaven; the last, seventh sphere.

(What sphere are you in?)

I am in the third now. We have to pass through the third sphere in order to return, one might say, and therefore I could not return immediately directly I passed out of my body.

(Oh, that is the reason, is it?)

Yes. It is just like going from one room to another.... We advance until we feel that we have perfected ourselves according to God's will and idea, and then we are satisfied with ourselves, and not until we have.

(Well, when you first passed out did you go into the first sphere, or do you call this the first sphere where I am?)

Entering the material life is one sphere of life; that is the first, because life comes with the creation of the mortal body; life comes, it is the breath of God, and you are a branch of His great tree, you understand, and then the spirit grows, advances. Sometimes it does not advance in the mortal because it is hampered by physical ill, etc. If not, it is removed after a time and enters our life and then begins to develop and grow.

The General elaborates on conditions in his world:

You have heard of pearly gates and streets of pearl? Those were as real as any expression which you may use in the physical life. More real. It is a fact, — there are streets of pearl, gates of pearl.

(Just like our pearl?)

It is similar. Yes, the comparison is so near that you could not mistake it for a moment. And our castles, our homes, are real. They are as real to us as yours are to you. Yours is simply the imitation, ours is the real. We have streets, we have gardens, we have homes, we have rivers, we have lakes. If we bathe in the river our garments are not wet, but still we are purified, we are cleansed. But the natural hair — but entering it does not saturate our garments, and it does not wet what you call the hair. We come out and it is light and dry, the garments are dry, but the soul is purified by bathing in the waters. Is that clear to you? We walk about the lakes, we walk in the gardens, we meet friends, we commune with friends, we hear music, we hear sermons, and we pass our time glorifying God and living in His presence, in a sense, — understanding what His hand hath created and what He has blessed us with, eternal life.

(When you go out of your mansion and look up toward what would be our sky, what do you see?)

We see above us, we see our world radiant, filled with light, a beautiful, soft moonlight, difficult for you to comprehend because it is so clear, so beautiful, so light. We do not see what you see — stars — but we see this beautiful moonlight above us, all round us. The air is scented with the most delicious perfume. It is so exquisitely delicate that it seems almost a part of our own existence, it is so beautiful, so delicate, and so real. And we see above us this beautiful light, and it is what you would call in your world the heavens. It is above us, far above us, and we see at times, we see — a face appears. It grows lighter at times, especially when we are in a particularly happy state. The face appears over us and we know it is the face of Christ. We hear the swishing of the garment, as it were, and then it passes off and some one else receives the vision.

(Do you ever see any other face like that in the heavens except that of Christ?)

We see what you would call — there are saints administering to those who need help, or perhaps have just passed over, have not understood the conditions, and these saints appear to give them courage and to give them faith and to show them that this is everlasting and eternal life. I am not very good at preaching.

(Then you do not have our beautiful firmament of stars at night?)

We have what corresponds to your stars. There are rays, as it were, little flickering rays all through the firmament, all through the heavens. We see these little rays all about us, this beautiful figure passing, we see another face and then another as it passes. Why do we not come into closer proximity with them, as we say ? Because they are superior even to ourselves, they have progressed, they have gone on to a higher, even, sphere than our own. That is, they are the controlling, the ruling forces, and govern our own life and our own world.

One question often asked by skeptics is why do mediums can have trouble coming up with memories of specific names. Is it evidence of fraud on their part? The General says otherwise:

Many names have gone from me, naturally, and new ones have come up to me. Names of places, names of people whom I knew in the mortal world, have gone from me to a certain extent, and as I go on they go still farther from me, but I shall never forget you. I remember when I was suffering so, I remember the little councils we had together, and they have lasted in my memory and will to the end of all life.

(General, it seems to be the real spiritual sympathies that you remember only — )

Yes, well, those are the vital ones, those are the real ones. And when you understand better the conditions of life and the conditions of passing from that life to this, the changes in the life as it were, you will understand more clearly what that means. But until then it will be difficult for you to understand it fully.

Finally, here is an excerpt of interest because it fits nicely with communications received by another medium, Geraldine Cummins. Cummins channeled psychical research pioneer F.W.H. Myers in two books, The Road to Immortality (1932) and Beyond Human Personality (1935). The material that came through Mrs. Piper more than two decades earlier is consistent with the Cummins material. Of course one might argue that Cummins was influenced by Robbins' book (if she ever read it), but Cummins' famous channeled book Swan on a Black Sea is so well-corroborated that it lends credence to the other communications she received.

(General, are you in a sort of zone around the atmosphere of this earth, and can you go to other planets and stars if you wish?)

Yes, certainly, and now there is a case here which has been very peculiar and perhaps has been commented upon in the mortal body — doubtless it has, because I have seen this man struggling here and then I have seen him depart suddenly. He would come to the Light and the Light would not be open, and he would take his departure and go way off to another country. His name is Myers, or Myer.

[I think my communicator in life knew nothing about F. W. H. Myers, of England, who died in 1901, the year preceding that in which my communicator died.]

And he comes here, he finds the Light un-open — a very active, brilliant, fine man, keen perceptions, finest type of mind — and he comes here, he finds the Light not burning, he departs, he goes and looks after his family — he has a family in the mortal body — he goes to find them and remains with them, and oftentimes when the Light is burning he fails to appear, but you can understand that because of his absence from the Light and being among those he loves.

( Well, does he go to other worlds?)

He goes to other worlds and other planets. He is constantly studying — he is a great student — he is studying the conditions and the changes and the whys and the wherefores of communication, and the laws of life in the spirit, in the body, and the ways of God and the ways of man and spirit in general.

How can we interpret these communications? While the description of Myers certainly fits what is known of him, and the General's own personality - including his penchant for quoting poetry - comes through in a way that was easily recognizable to his friends, there are other elements - pearly gates, Christ smiling down from the sky - that seem too hard to take at face value.  

One explanation is that our experience of the afterlife is conditioned to a large extent by our expectations. The General, raised in a Christian culture, probably expected to find this particular version of paradise, as did many of his friends. That doesn't make their experience unreal, since reality in these higher spheres is apparently created or at least strongly influenced by consciousness. Note that the General says Christ appears in the heavens when he is in an especially happy frame of mind - suggesting that his own mindset helps bring about the phenomenon.

There's also the possibility that in translating these concepts into words, some shades of meaning have been lost, while other meanings have been misunderstood. And the General's more controversial or unorthodox opinions seem to have been deliberately suppressed. For instance, Robbins writes,

At this point an account is given of his asking to know something about Christ, to know whether he had been deceived in the earthly world in what he had been taught about Christ, and a description is given of a certain vision that was vouchsafed him. I have thought best to omit this whole passage.

Why not include this material? Presumably, unlike the pearly gates, it would go against the grain of conventional religious piety.

Of course, the skeptical explanation for the occasional fairy-tale quality of the communiques is that the material came from Mrs. Piper's subconscious. We shouldn't be too quick to dismiss this objection. The non-evidential nature of much of what is said was noted even in a 1910 New York Times review of Robbins' book, which can be read here (PDF).

But what is evidential, to me, about the claims attributed to the General is that they conform pretty closely to NDEs reported decades later by people who surely had never heard of Mrs. Piper - people who had never studied the esoterica of spiritualism and who, in some cases, would have been strongly averse to such teachings prior to their NDEs.

NDErs, like the General, report passing out of the body ... experiencing confusion ... being drawn toward a very bright light that did not hurt their eyes ... then encountering deceased loved ones, often dressed in white robes, in a beautiful world of flowers and gardens, where there are houses, hospitals for recent arrivals, and educational institutes in which the departed can continue to study as they progress toward higher spheres.

Is this remarkable conformity a mere coincidence? Is it evidence of some universal tendency, hardwired into the brain, to fantasize along similar lines? Or is it an indication that the General's report is basically trustworthy?  

I'm inclined to believe the latter. If so, we'll find out for ourselves, sooner or later - on the other side of the veil.

The lost decade

President Obama signed the stimulus package today. By the most optimistic estimates, this bill will push the 2009 federal deficit to $1.3 trillion. That's 10% of the Gross Domestic Product, a level of deficit spending not seen since World War II. By comparison, the Reagan Administration's largest deficit - considered scandalous at the time - was 6.3% of GDP.

Some experts estimate an even higher deficit this year. Taking into account falling tax revenues and the Obama Administration's ongoing, ambitious spending plans, they think the deficit may run as high as $2 trillion. That would be 15% of GDP, an unprecedented amount.

Supporters of the plan say this massive stimulus will revive the economy. They may be right. But Japan tried similar stimulus measures when its economy went south, with little effect. Total Japanese debt rose to 130% of that country's GDP, and their recession dragged on. The prolonged period of stagnation is now known in Japan as "the lost decade."

Are we facing a lost decade of our own? Time will tell. But one thing is clear. The moderates and independents who voted for Obama in the belief that he would govern from the center were deluding themselves. His administration is clearly committed to expanding government spending on a vast scale. We have embarked on an economic experiment fraught with peril; if it fails, as it has in other countries, it may bring us to national bankruptcy.

It appears we are doomed to live out the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

Sneezes in the breezes

Allergy season is nearly upon us, and in some parts of the country it's already here. Many people suffer from hay fever and similar allergies, but a surprising number of them seem to be unaware of an over-the-counter allergy medicine that really works. It's called Nasalcrom (cromolyn sodium).

Nasalcrom comes in a spray bottle. You squirt it into your nostrils. It inhibits the mast cells (mastocytes) in the sinuses from reacting to pollen and other irritants. If the mast cells don't react, allergy symptoms won't develop.

Most other allergy treatments address the symptoms of allergies - runny nose, sneezing, etc. Nasalcrom addresses the source of the problem.

It's not habit-forming and has no side effects. Generic versions are also available. If your local drugstores don't carry it, Nasalcrom can be ordered online.

Why don't more people use Nasalcrom? Part of the reason may be that it takes a while to become effective. You have to use it for a week or two and let it build up over time. Some people seem to lack the patience; they try it for a couple of days, get no relief, and give up.

Also, Nasalcrom is most effective when you start taking it a week or two before allergy season begins. But many people seem to wait until their allergies are already acting up. The product will still work, even if started late, but it may take longer to have an effect.

Maybe there are some allergy sufferers who won't respond to Nasalcrom, but many (like me) will benefit greatly from it. If you have seasonal allergies and haven't used Nasalcrom, give it a try. Your nose may thank you.

Two quotes

Here are two nice  quotations from Anne Manning Robbins' 1909 memoir Both Sides of the Veil: A Personal Experience, which recounts her work as a stenographer and sitter for the Boston medium Leonora Piper.

In the first, Robbins describes "coming into universal consciousness":

It was not until the passing of the friend who went last to the spirit world that I seemed somehow to come into the blessedness of thinking mostly about life and excluding death altogether from my thoughts, of feeling life in the air which I breathe, the sky which I look at, the sun which shines upon me, and the darkness which shrouds and rests me; in fact, life and intelligence everywhere. And the wonderful thing about thus "coming into universal consciousness," as it is called, is that it takes away morbid over-anxiety to understand the whole scheme of creation or nothing, it brings back the natural charm of things which we felt in our childhood, it puts a new meaning into our common every-day life, and makes it worth while to endeavor to make of it a "thing of beauty," a "thing of power."

In the second, Robbins quotes from a 1901 letter written to her by Richard Hodgson, the investigator who spent years working with Mrs. Piper and eventually became convinced that the communications she received were genuine. Although Hodgson is generally thought of as a skeptical, hard-nosed researcher, he did have his more spiritual side, which seems to have been brought out by his experiences with Mrs. Piper. In this letter he speaks from the heart - perhaps the only time he ever committed such thoughts to paper:

Be of good courage whatever happens, and pray continually, and let peace come into your soul. Why should you be distraught and worried? Everything, absolutely everything, - from a spot of ink to all the stars, every faintest thought we think up to the contemplations of the highest intelligences in the cosmos, are all in and part of the infinite Goodness. Rest in that Divine Love. All your trials are known better than you know them yourself. Do you think it is an idle word that the hairs of our heads are numbered? Have no dismay, fear nothing and trust in God.

Both passages are found on pages 83-87 of Both Sides of the Veil, which can be read online in its entirety at Google Books.

Another gem ...

... from War and Peace.

At this meeting Pierre for the first time was struck by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever appearing the same to any two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way, with stipulations and modifications he could not agree to, since what he chiefly desired was to convey his thought to others exactly as he himself understood it.

(P. 528, Signet Classics edition, translation by Ann Dunnigan)

Jekyll and Hyde

The Intertubes are abuzz with comments about an episode of the ABC reality show Wife Swap in which an earnest Missouri housewife trades places with an upscale San Francisco fitness counselor. Most of the comments are angry, and the anger is directed at the fitness counselor's husband, Stephen Fowler, a naturalized US citizen originally from Britain, who treats the Missouri woman with undisguised contempt. In the course of the hourlong episode Fowler impugns the poor woman's intelligence, education, appearance, and background, while castigating small towns, America's heartland, military personnel, the Pledge of Allegiance, and paintball. The whole episode has been uploaded to YouTube in segments, which is where I watched it; details, for those who care, can be found at the newly created blog Stephen Fowler Sucks.

Although I found the Wife Swap episode grimly amusing, I can't say I reacted with the same kind of visceral anger that many other people seem to be feeling. And now, having read an online apology offered by Stephen Fowler, in which he admits to behaving like a "jerk" and a "bully," I admit to having a certain amount of sympathy for the guy. Yet I had no sympathy for Christian Bale under somewhat similar circumstances. What's the difference?

For one thing, Fowler had been placed in a confusing and disruptive situation -- saddled with a substitute wife for two weeks while a camera crew followed his every move. Of course he agreed to this arrangement, but he probably didn't realize how stressful it would be. He was clearly rattled by having to share his life with someone whose sensibilities were so alien to his own. Bale, on the other hand, was working on a movie set as an actor, a job he has done since he was a boy. He has less excuse for behaving irrationally.

Moreover, Bale came across as psychotically angry and borderline violent, threatening to beat up the crewmember he was reaming out. And he used his position of authority to intimidate and humiliate a subordinate. Fowler, on the other hand, never became overtly angry or showed any sign of violence, and he and his substitute wife had more or less equal status in the relationship.

My take on Bale is that he is a prima donna whose every whim has been indulged ever since he became a child star, and that he has learned he can treat other people like garbage and get away with it. On the other hand, my take on Fowler is that he is a deeply insecure person who, when feeling threatened, retreats into a defensive mode in which he puffs himself up and tears down other people (while laughing inappropriately at every perceived challenge). What was on display in the Wife Swap episode was simply the man's naked ego, desperately striving to gain control over a situation it found intolerable.

I don't find it hard to believe that Fowler, viewing the episode now, is appalled by his own behavior, just as he says he is. We are frequently appalled by the things our ego is capable of. In a sense, all of us have something in common with Dr. Jekyll and his shadow side, Mr. Hyde; we can be astonished and horrified by the things that our ego sometimes does in our name. We look back at some particularly discreditable action on our part and wonder, "Did I really do that?" The answer is both yes and no. Yes, we did it because the ego is part of us; but no, the higher aspect of our consciousness that evaluates our action is not the same consciousness that committed the act in the first place.

The blog that brought the Wife Swap episode to my attention invited its readers to watch the YouTube clips and "enjoy your two-minute hate." It would be more productive to spend two minutes reflecting on the Stephen Fowler within ourselves.

Kicking the stone

Of the various philosophical perspectives that have been offered down through the centuries, hard-core materialism strikes me as the most wrongheaded. It denies what is, in fact, the most undeniable and self-evident truth there is.

Materialism, at least in its strong form, is based on the idea that consciousness either is not real or is not important. Yet, self-evidently, consciousness is the most real and the most important thing we know -- or can ever know. The reason is obvious: we simply cannot know anything outside the context of consciousness. Consciousness is our ground of being, the sine qua non of all our experiences and observations. To deny consciousness is not only self-contradictory; it's also just plain silly.

We may describe some external object -- say, a tree -- as "objective," but the truth is, we can know the tree only as a subjective impression. There may be an actual objective tree existing apart from us, but now and forever we can know that tree only as our subjective experience of it. Consciousness is not a barrier between ourselves and reality, a barrier we must somehow overcome. Consciousness is our reality.

Bishop Berkeley said, "To be is to be perceived." He has been mocked by materialists ever since. Yet it is not going too far to say that anything that can never be perceived is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent. Or to put it more precisely, the thing in question may or may not exist in some objective reality, but if no consciousness can ever know it, then its existence is a moot point.

Matthew Cromer, who used to comment on this blog fairly often, came up with an interesting point in this regard. He suggested imagining a parallel universe, completely closed off from this one, in which there is no consciousness of any kind -- no animal consciousness, no human consciousness, no divine consciousness. Now, in what sense can this parallel universe be said to exist? How is it real?

I admit that the position I'm taking leads to many questions that are hard to answer. If reality is inherently subjective, then what accounts for the general agreement among all the various perceivers? How do we even know there are other perceivers? Are we stuck with solipsism, the view that only our own individual consciousness exists?

Dr. Johnson tried to disprove subjectivism by kicking a stone -- dramatizing the fact that reality is hard and tangible. As a disproof, this little demonstration was useless, since the stone itself is known to us only as a subjective impression. Still, the good doctor was making a valid point: it's hard to argue that reality is purely subjective when you've just been run over by a bus.

For all these reasons and more, materialism continues to occupy a prominent place in metaphysical speculation. Yet it can't be true. After all, if it were true, we could never know it.